1690-] William's Irish campaign. La Hogue 261 leaving Mary as Regent with a council of nine to assist her. In his absence the Grand Alliance fared ill alike on sea and land. On July 1 Luxembourg won a great victory over the Allied Army at Fleurus; on the previous day Admiral Tourville severely defeated the Allied Fleet off Beachy Head. Disgrace accompanied disaster, for Admiral Herbert (Lord Torrington), by allowing the main brunt of the fighting to be borne by the Dutch, somewhat unjustly incurred the censure most fatal to a sailor. The strategic consequences were not as serious as is sometimes supposed, nor was the Cross of St George almost banished from the None the less, Tourville triumphantly swept the Channel, threatened the southern coasts, and burnt Teignmouth. In this extremity the spirit of the nation rose; subscriptions poured in; crowds of volunteers rushed to arms; and London took the lead in patriotic ardour. But the hour of suspense was not long, for, on July 4, a courier rode through the City with the news that William had won a great victory in Ireland. seas. William had come to Ireland only just in time. On the very day that the sea-power of England was temporarily destroyed he was able triumphantly to restore its military renown. By his victory of the Boyne (July 1) William secured the fall of Drogheda and Dublin and the flight of James from Ireland. But as yet William's power stopped at low-water-mark. Without a fleet he found it impossible to reduce Limerick, though Marlborough was able to capture Cork and Kinsale. In 1691, Russell replaced Torrington in command of the navy, and held in check the sea-power of France. The inevitable result was the fall of the hopes of Louis and James in Ireland. In July the last Irish army was routed at Aughrim, and the appearance of an English squadron in the Shannon decided the fate of Limerick, the last Irish fortress of note which held out (October 3, 1691). On May 19 (O. S.), 1692, the French fleet was utterly defeated by Admiral Russell off Cape La Hogue, under the very eyes of King James, who watched in anguish from the shore. Henceforward the command of the sea was triumphantly restored. to England. After this the French could carry on a destructive privateering warfare, and the English were also repelled with great loss from attacks on the French coast at St Malo (August, 1692) and at Brest (1694). But such reverses were irritant rather than dangerous; and, the fighting fleet of France having been once swept from the seas, neither England nor Ireland could be in vital danger of invasion. Not even William's defeat at Steinkirke (August 3, 1692, O. S.) nor the fall of Namur (May) could dash the hopes of England. Two attempts to restore James had thus failed, the first at the Boyne, the second off Cape La Hogue — a third remained to be planned. The energy and firmness which James had once displayed, alike in the shock of battle and amid civic strife, had deserted him at the end of 1688, and they never returned. In Ireland he showed a vacillation and weakness admitted by his own followers, and openly proclaimed by French 262 James at St Germain. Assassination Plot [1689-96 generals and statesmen. The inconsistent series of proclamations issued to his rebellious subjects (1689-93) awoke dismay in his supporters and scorn in his opponents. In 1693 (July 29) Luxembourg achieved his last triumph over William by worsting him in the bloody rout of Neerwinden (Landen). The hopes of James now stood high, for in this same year the French privateers destroyed an enormous Anglo-Dutch convoy from Smyrna. But in 1694, though an English expedition to Brest was disas trously repulsed, the English navy swept the seas, and William held his own in Flanders. In 1695 he took the offensive, and, finding the incompetent Villeroi at the head of the French army in the place of Luxembourg, was able to recapture Namur (October, 1695) in the most brilliant and successful campaign which he ever directed. During the last months of 1694 the English fleet had triumphantly wintered in the Bay of Cadiz, and had thus assured England's command over both Mediterranean and Atlantic. Louis thus found his fleet swept from the seas, and his armies seriously weakened on the land. Few historic contrasts have more pathos than that which these years presented between the luxurious splendours and the thronging crowds of courtiers which surrounded the omnipotent sovereign at Versailles, and the unreal pageantry, the fast dwindling band of exiles, which clung to the phantom King at St Germain. Like most exiles, James vastly exaggerated the strength of the party in his favour in England. His delusions were fostered by assurances from Godolphin, Marlborough, and Russell, and by correspondence with Anne, Penn, Halifax, Dartmouth, and Shrewsbury. In spite of all his flatterers, Louis had a more real grasp of the English situation than that to which James and his followers attained. He now made it clear that he would not risk sending a French force until a rising offering fair chances of success should have broken out in England. This resolution on the part of Louis determined the form of the third and last serious attempt to re-establish James. In January, 1696, the Duke of Berwick, the natural son of James, came over to England in disguise, and, failing to organise an armed insurrection, hurried back to France to avoid being party to a plot. A plan to assassinate William was at this time being devised by George Porter and a few other Jacobites in England. The plot was not unknown to James, and the exiled monarch came to Calais to await the flash of a beacon fire from Dover cliffs, which was to be the announcement of William's death. On receiving the signal, James was to step on board a fleet of French transports, and convey an expeditionary force to England. That signal never came, for the "Assassination Plot was detected (February 24, 1696). Porter turned King's evidence, with the result that his own life was spared by William, though Sir John Fenwick, who knew nothing of the real nature of the plot, was executed. While he was awaiting the signal James had written pious letters to de Rancé, the austere Cistercian Abbot of La Trappe, hinting that 1692-6] England and the War 263 “a visible interference of the good God for His greater glory" would soon be manifested in his favour. When this did not appear, his thoughts turned elsewhere; and henceforward he edified divines by his devotion to religion, as much as he enraged statesmen by his indifference to politics. After 1696, when James refused the French offer to support his election to the Crown of Poland, Louis ceased to regard him as an independent political factor, as, indeed, he ceased to consider himself. The influence of de Rancé had transformed him into a mystical recluse, whose garments were touched by pilgrims from afar, whose miracles. were attested by bishops, whose holiness was admitted by the Pope. The progress of the War, from the shame of Beachy Head and Steinkirke to the triumphs of La Hogue and Namur, had been viewed in England with mingled feelings. After 1692, and still more after 1694, the war seemed to be carried on for aggrandisement rather than defence, for gain not for existence. England's trade interests in the Indies or Mediterranean might indeed be secured or impaired by the progress of the war in Flanders. But many English did not measure the war either by the loss of convoys or ships to Whig merchants, or by gain in security to German Princes and Dutch burghers. The landed gentry, who formed the backbone of the Tory party, simply calculated whether the war in Flanders real gave adequate benefits to England in return for its enormous expense and frequent disasters. This exclusive consideration of insular interests, which made Parliament willing to grant large sums for the navy, but feluctant to increase the army, William could not understand. He speaks contemptuously of "the inconceivable blindness of people here," and ascribes it to the spirit of party; yet in this matter he was really thwarted on national, not upon partisan, grounds. But the causes of his irritation were perfectly natural. He could not but be conscious, though his gaze was fixed upon Europe rather than upon the Indies, that the War was exalting beyond measure the maritime and commercial supremacy of England. The Dutch were forced by treaty to supply a larger proportion of troops than of ships to the common cause. Hence their commerce and marine suffered. If William's conversations with Montanus are to be believed, he had realised long before 1688 that the inclusion of England in the Alliance must advance her shipping and commerce to the detriment of that of his own people. In any case, he had realised this during the war, and was therefore exasperated on finding that, when he had sacrificed so much for the common cause, England did so little to help him. He was giving her the commercial and naval empire of the globe, and she showed her gratitude by cutting down the numbers of the army and starving his military campaigns. Milton had discovered that war moved by two main nerves, one of iron and the other of gold; and Louis had declared in the midst of his victories that the Power with the last gold piece would win. Hence it is 264 Bounty Act. Whig commercial policy [1671-96 as much to the superiority of organisation and method in developing their economic resources, as to their superiority in naval power, that the English kingdom and the Dutch Republic owed their eventual triumph over France. That England should depend on her own food supplies in time of war, and upon a prosperous landed class in time of peace, had been accepted dogmas for some years before 1688. A series of severe prohibitory Acts, beginning in 1671, had penalised and checked the im portation of foreign corn. The Bounty Act of 1689 gave large bounties on the export of corn to foreign countries, and thus increased the home output. The economic result was to produce immense immediate prosperity to English agriculture, though corn was encouraged to the detriment of turnip and grass cultivation, and to the retarding of a more scientific system of agriculture. As with the economic effects, so with the political, the result was to give prosperity to what was existent without providing for the future. The new Act favoured the landed gentry at the expense of the merchant, gave an undue preference to the landlord, who possessed capital, and discouraged the small yeoman who did not. The result was to increase and make permanent the power of the landed gentry and of real property, the confirmation of which was so distinct a mark of the Revolution settlement. The Bounty Act was the economic counterpart of the philosophy of Locke and Harrington. It was by the operation of this Act that the landowners were enabled to hold at bay for so long the rising forces of wealth and commerce. The earlier economic laws of the reign gave security to the landed class, just as the later gave security to the commercial; and these facts, though marking the transition of political power from Tory to Whig, show that the Revolution settlement was likewise national in character and aim. The general commercial policy of England is perhaps the only department of public life in which the Revolution made no striking or even apparent innovation. Though immense developments of her commerce and shipping took place within the period, England's trade really increased by means of the sword or diplomacy, and not in the main through any specifically new commercial provisions. For the main lines of mercantilist policy were already laid in the Poor Laws, the Corn Laws, and the Navigation Laws. A broad system of national policy thus existed, which was amended in detail but not disturbed in principle. In 1696 a reorganisation of the committee of the Privy Council dealing with commerce and colonies was necessitated by the persistent criticisms of Parliament. The Board of Trade was constituted with a permanent staff as well as privy councillors, in order to prevent further encroachments of Parliament upon the executive. By these means some order was reintroduced into departments which had been carefully organised by James, and much neglected by William. The chief effect of the new Board, of which Locke was an active member, was the adoption of an mercantilist policy, which gradually ruined the nascent linen e 1692-6] Finance. The Land Tax 265 and cloth industries of Ireland, in order to protect the drapers and clothiers of England. The debts of the Protectorate and the extravagances of the Restoration monarchy had been immense; but the outbreak of the continental war speedily entailed expenditure on a scale unknown to Cromwell or to Charles. The extravagant Charles had maintained an army of less than nine thousand men; for the frugal and thrifty James an annual income of less than fifteen thousand pounds had usually sufficed. Englishmen recalled these days with regret when the Dutch deliverer showed them the cost of freedom by demanding an army of over eighty thousand men and an income of nearly six millions (1693). The first real measures to grapple with the problems of expenditure and revenue were taken in 1692, and the impulse came in the main from the Whig party and their famous financier Montagu. The method of raising subsidies which had prevailed in the first half of the century was now hopelessly obsolete. Under the Commonwealth and the Restoration a new plan had been tried. The sum to be raised was fixed, and then distributed according to assessments based on the reputed wealth of each county. In 1692 a newer and more exact valuation of landed estates was made, and it was decided to fix a rate on the values of the rentals which should vary as necessity demanded. The only serious drawback was that the new valuation was in many respects inaccurate, and fell with undue severity on the Eastern Counties. Still, the new tax was the most productive yet imposed, and when, as in 1693, the rate of 48. in the pound was imposed, about two millions annually flowed into the Exchequer. Nothing is more obvious to a modern observer than that there must occur crises in the history of every nation, when it can no longer settle all its obligations at the end of each year. Such a crisis had already occurred in the history of France and of Holland, both of which had large debts. It had, in fact, also occurred in England, when Charles II refused to repay to the goldsmiths the sum of £1,300,000 which he had borrowed from them (January, 1672). In 1692 the creditors had received no interest for ten years, and they seemed to have no prospect of repayment of capital. With this unhappy example before him, the average Englishman might well consider the contraction of a debt by Government, which extended beyond the end of the year, to be suggested by the discreditable shifts of a royal spendthrift or the mischievous innovations of a foreigner. All this was very different in Holland, where Sir William Temple had long ago pointed out the advantages of a national debt as a sound investment for private individuals. On every side and in every enterprise stock-jobbing drew on or deluded the individual investor. Watered stock and bogus companies, over-capitalisation and falsification of accounts-none of the expedients or disasters of modern speculation were wanting. The scale was indeed small, but the modern |