A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

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Title: A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

Author: J. Franck Bright

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ENGLAND, PERIOD III. CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY ***

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND

_CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY_

1689-1837

_A HISTORY OF ENGLAND._

_By the_ Rev. J. FRANCK BRIGHT, M.A., _Fellow of University College, and
Historical Lecturer in Balliol, New, and University Colleges, Oxford;
late Master of the Modern School in Marlborough College_.

With numerous Maps and Plans. _New Editions._ Crown 8vo.

This work is divided into three Periods of convenient and handy size,
especially adapted for use in Schools, as well as for Students reading
special portions of History for local and other Examinations.

Period I.--MEDIÆVAL MONARCHY: The Departure of the Romans, to Richard
III. From A.D. 449 to A.D. 1485. 4_s._ 6_d._

Period II.--PERSONAL MONARCHY: Henry VII. to James II. From A.D. 1485 to
A.D. 1688. 5_s._

Period III.--CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY: William and Mary to the Present
Time. From A.D. 1689 to A.D. 1837. 7_s._ 6_d._

[_All rights reserved._]

HISTORY OF ENGLAND

BY THE REV.

J. FRANCK BRIGHT, M.A.

FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, AND HISTORICAL LECTURER IN BALLIOL,
NEW, AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGES, OXFORD; LATE MASTER OF THE MODERN
SCHOOL IN MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE

_PERIOD III._

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

William and Mary to William IV.

1689-1837

With Maps and Plans

RIVINGTONS
_WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON_
Oxford and Cambridge
MDCCCLXXX

[_Third Edition_]

A LIST OF SOME USEFUL AUTHORITIES.

GENERAL HISTORIES.

Macaulay's _History of England_, 1600-1702. Macaulay's _Essays_.
Mahon's _History of England_, 1713-1783. Massey's _History of
England_, 1745-1802. Martineau's _History of the Peace_, 1800-1848.
Erskine May's _Constitutional History_, 1760-1860. Ralph's _History
of England_, 1689-1727. Pauli's _Geschichte Englands_, from 1814.

BOOKS OF GENERAL REFERENCE.

Cobbett's _Parliamentary History_, to 1803. Hansard's _Debates_,
from 1803. _The Monthly Mercury_, from 1690. _The Annual Register_,
from 1758. _State Tracts._ Anderson's _History of Commerce_.
Maculloch's _Commercial Dictionary_. Eden's _State of the Poor_.
Howell's _State Trials_. Macpherson's _State Papers_, 1688-1714.
Hardwicke's _State Papers_, to 1727.

FOREIGN HISTORIES.

_Documens inédits sur l'Histoire de France_ (for the Spanish
succession). Sismondi or Martin's _Histoire de France_, to 1789.
Von Sybel's _French Revolution_. Lanfrey's _Histoire de Napoleon_.
Ranke's _History of Prussia_. Bancroft's _History of the United
States_. Mill's _History of India_. Grant Duff's _History of the
Mahrattas_. The _Despatches_ of Wellesley and Cornwallis. Froude's
_The English in Ireland_, to 1800.

WILLIAM III.

Burnet's _History of his Own Time_, 1660-1713. Kennett's _History
of England_, vol. iii. Defoe's Works are instructive as to the
state of England at this time.

ANNE.

Stanhope's _Reign of Queen Anne_. Coxe's _Life of Marlborough_.
Marlborough's _Letters and Despatches_, 1702-1712. _Bolingbroke's
Correspondence._ _Life of Sacheverel._

GEORGE I.

Swift's _Drapier's Letters_, etc. _The Stuart Papers_, edited by
Glover. Coxe's _Life of Walpole_. Boyer's _Political State of Great
Britain_.

GEORGE II.

Hervey's _Memoirs of the Reign of George II._, 1727-1742. Horace
Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George II._, 1751-1760.
Doddington's _Diary_, 1749-1761. Waldegrave's _Memoirs_, 1754-1758.
Southey's _Life of Wesley_. Philip's _Life and Times of Whitfield_.
Johnstone's _Memoirs of the Rebellion of 1745_.

GEORGE III.

Horace Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George III._, 1760-1771.
_The Letters of Junius._ _The Grenville Papers._ _The Bedford
Correspondence._ Buckingham's _Memoirs of the Court and Cabinet of
George III._ Russell's _Life of Fox_. Thackeray's _Life of
Chatham_. Stanhope's _Life of Pitt_. Wilberforce's _Life_.
Malmesbury's _Diary and Correspondence_. _The Cornwallis
Correspondence, 1770-1805._ Napier's _Peninsula War_. _Life of
Bamford the Radical._ Lord Dudley's _Letters_, 1814-1823. Bell and
Stapleton's _Lives of Canning_.

It is not, however, necessary to give a detailed list of authorities,
which would be little more than a catalogue of the lives, letters, and
memoirs of most of the important men of the time. Of these the number is
constantly being augmented, and it is from them and the contemporary
tracts, monographs, pamphlets, and fugitive writings that the details of
the History must be drawn.

CONTENTS.

WILLIAM AND MARY. 1689-1702.

PAGE

1689 The Declaration of Right, 806
=Character of the Revolution=, 806
Personal unpopularity of William, 807
Discontent of the clergy and the army, 807
The Convention turned into a Parliament, 808
William's difficulties in forming a ministry, 808
Settlement of the revenue, 810
Settlement of the Church, 810
Oaths of allegiance and supremacy, 811
=The European war breaks out=, 811
Devastation of the Palatinate, 812
=State of Ireland=, 812
Panic among the Englishry, 813
Londonderry and Enniskillen garrisoned, 813
Negotiations with Tyrconnel, 813
James goes to Ireland, 814
Character of the Irish Jacobites, 814
Siege of Londonderry, 815
Wild legislation of the Irish Parliament, 815
Its effect on the English Jacobites, 816
Battle of Newton Butler, 816
=Character of the Revolution in Scotland=, 817
Contrast of the letters from James and William, 818
Highland politics, 819
Dundee in the Highlands, 820
=Battle of Killiecrankie=, 820
Mackay concludes the war, 821
Factions of the English Parliament, 821
=William threatens to leave England=, 824

1690 =William dissolves Parliament, and undertakes
the Irish war=, 824
Tory reaction in the new Parliament, 824
Cause of the venality of Parliament, 824
Settlement of the revenue, 825
The Act of Grace, 825
Discovery of a Jacobite plot, 825
=Battle of Beachy Head=, 826
=Battle of the Boyne=, 827
James's flight from Ireland, 828
Siege of Limerick, 828
William returns to England, 828

1691 Siege of Athlone, 829
=Battle of Aghrim=, 830
Second siege of Limerick, 830
=End of the Irish war=, 830
The Revolution completed in Scotland, 830
Jacobite plots in England, 831
=William's successful policy abroad=, 831
=First crisis of the war over=, 832
James's hopes upheld by the treason of the ministry, 832

1692 Marlborough, suspected of treason, deprived of his
offices, 833
The Queen's quarrel with her sister, 834
Massacre of Glencoe, 834
=Threatened invasion of England=, 836
=Battle of La Hogue=, 837
=Second crisis of the war over=, 838
Fall of Namur, 838
Battle of Steinkirk, 838
The discontent of Parliament, 839

1693 Montague's financial measures, 839
Disastrous campaign, 840
Battle of Landen, 841
Loss of the Smyrna fleet, 841
=Factions in Parliament necessitate the gradual formation
of a united Whig ministry=, 842

1694 Establishment of the Bank of England, 843
The Triennial Act passed, 844
Death of Queen Mary, 844

1695 Expulsion of Trevor and Caermarthen for venality, 845

1694 =Success abroad=, 846
Treachery of Marlborough at Brest, 846

1695 Campaign in Flanders, 847
Surrender of Namur, 848
=William's triumphant return=, 848
=New Whig Parliament=, 848

1696 Re-establishment of the currency, 848
William's want of money, 851
Failure of the Land Bank scheme, 851
The Bank of England supplies the money, 852
The credit of England restored, 853
The Assassination plot, 853
Trial of Sir John Fenwick, 855

1697 =Complete triumph of the Whigs=, 856
=Treaty of Ryswick=, 858
The Parliament reduces the standing army, 859

1698 Coalition of the rival East India Companies, 861
William's attention directed to the Spanish succession, 862
=First Partition Treaty=, 863
=The Country Party in the new Parliament=, 864

1699 William's grief at the dismissal of the Dutch guards, 864
Rivalry between the two Houses, 865
The Darien scheme, 865
Question of Irish forfeitures, 868

1700 The Resumption Bill passed, 868
=Second Partition Treaty=, 869
Unpopularity of William and the ministry, 870
=New Tory ministry=, 870

1701 New Parliament, 870
The Succession Act, 871
Impeachments against the Whigs, 871
The Kentish Petition, 872
The Legion Memorial, 872
The Grand Alliance, 873
Death of James II., 873
Louis rouses English patriotism by acknowledging the
Pretender, 873

1702 New Parliament and changes in the ministry, 874
=Death of William=, 874

ANNE. 1702-1714.

=Marlborough's power=, 875
Work of the first Parliament, 876
Tory ministry, 876
=Beginning of the war=, 877
Marlborough's first campaign, 878
Position of Holland, 878

1703 Savoy and Portugal join the coalition, 880

1704 Critical position of Austria, 882
=Battle of Blenheim=, 885
Progress of the war in Spain, the Cevennes, and Italy, 887

1705 Failure of Marlborough's plans, 888
Peterborough's success in Spain, 889

1706 =Battle of Ramillies=, 892
Results of the victory, 893
French disasters make Louis desire peace, 894
Marlborough rejects his terms, 894

1707 The tide of victory turns, 895

1708 Threatened invasion of Scotland, 896
=Battle of Oudenarde=, 898
Siege of Lille, 900
Capture of Port Mahon, 901

1709 Louis offers to negotiate, 902
He rejects the high demands of the allies, 903
=Battle of Malplaquet=, 903

1702 =Summary of political parties=, 905
=Marlborough seeks the support of all parties for
the war=, 905
Tory Parliament, 906

1703 Dismissal of Rochester, 906
Occasional Conformity Bill rejected, 906
The Methuen Treaty, 907

1704 Disputes on the Aylesbury election, 908
Dismissal of Nottingham, Jersey, and Seymour, 908

1705 =Gradual introduction of Whig ministers=, 910

1707 Weakness of the composite ministry, 911
Harley's intrigues against Marlborough, 911

1708 Harley and his colleagues resign, 912
=A Whig ministry=, 913

1709 Insecurity of Marlborough's position, 913

1710 =Fall of the Whigs=, 914
Dr. Sacheverell's sermons, 914
Dismissal of Sunderland and Godolphin, 914
=Harley's Tory ministry=, 915
Conference at Gertruydenberg, 915
The war in Spain, 915
Harley's policy, 916

1711 Peace negotiations, 917
Attack on Marlborough in Parliament, 919

1712 Ormond given command of the army, 920

1713 =Peace of Utrecht=, 921
Conduct of Harley and Bolingbroke on the succession
question, 922

1714 New Tory Parliament, 922
Jacobite intrigues, 923
The Queen's death, 924

1702 Lengthened negotiations for the Union of England and
Scotland, 924

1707 =The Union completed=, 928

GEORGE I. 1714-1727.

1714 Probability of a restoration of the Stuarts, 929
Council of Regency, 930
=Peaceful accession of the King=, 930
New Whig ministry, 931
=The Hanoverian succession a Whig triumph=, 931
Riots in the country, 931

1715 Impeachment of the late ministers, 932
=The Jacobite rebellion=, 932
Disaffection in Scotland, 933
Failure of the Jacobite hopes of French help, 933
Mar organizes the insurrection in Scotland, 934
Vigorous measures of the Government, 935
Mar's success in the Highlands, 935
Forster defeated at Preston, 936
Mar defeated at Sheriffmuir, 937

1716 The Pretender arrives, but shortly withdraws again, 937
Punishment of the rebels, 938
=The Septennial Act=, 938
=First signs of the disruption of the ministry=, 940
George goes to Hanover with Stanhope, 940
Negotiations with France, 940
Hanover threatened by Charles XII., 941
=Dismissal of Townshend=, 942

1717 =The Triple Alliance=, 942
=Stanhope's ministry=, 942
=Threatening state of Europe=, 942
Danger to England from Charles XII., 943
And from Alberoni, 944

1718 =The Quadruple Alliance=, 945

1719 Fall of Alberoni, 946

1720 European peace, 946

1717 =Stanhope's home policy=, 946
Constant opposition of Walpole, 946
Trial of Oxford, 947

1719 Repeal of the Schism Act, 947
Rejection of the Peerage Bill, 947

1720 Strength of the ministry. Walpole joins it, 948
=The South Sea Bubble=, 949

1711 Formation of the South Sea Company, 950

1720 The South Sea Scheme, 950
Competition of other companies, 951
The rage for stock-jobbing, 952
Bursting of the bubble, 953

1721 Punishment of the directors, 953
=Supremacy of Walpole=, 953
Revival of Jacobite hopes, 954

1722 =Bishop Atterbury's plot=, 954

1723 Quarrel between Carteret and Walpole, 956

1724 Excitement in Ireland, 957

1725 Disturbances in Scotland, 957
=Spanish difficulties=, 958
Intrigues of Ripperda, 959
Treaty of Vienna, 960
The secret treaty, 960

1726 The Treaty of Hanover, 961
Excitement of Europe, 961

1727 =Preliminaries of peace signed at Paris=, 962
Opposition to Walpole headed by Bolingbroke, 962
The King's death, 963
Review of the reign, 963
Increased importance of England abroad, 963
Private and public immorality, 963
Influence of the Hanoverian courtiers, 964

GEORGE II. 1727-1760.

=Walpole retains his position=, 966
Increase of the Civil List, 966
Influence of the Queen, 967
=Character of Walpole's ministry=, 967
Character of the Opposition, 967
Strength of the Government, 969
Depression of the Jacobites, 969
=European complications=, 970

1729 Congress at Soissons, 970
Treaty of Seville, 971
Disappointment of the Emperor, 971

1731 Second Treaty of Vienna, 971
Complete supremacy of Walpole, 972

1730 Rejection of the Pension Bill, 972

1731 =Retirement of Townshend=, 972
=Walpole's home government=, 973

1733 His financial measures, 973
His pacific foreign policy, 975

1734 Refuses to join in the new European war, 975

1738 Definitive Peace of Vienna, 976

1734 Increasing opposition to Walpole, 976
Wyndham's speech against him, 977

1735 Prince of Wales head of the Opposition, 978

1737 Quarrel of George with his son, 979
=Death of the Queen=, 980
=Walpole retains his influence with the King=, 980

1738 The Opposition attacks his pacific policy, 980
George desires war, 981

1739 Negotiations with Spain, 982
=Walpole declares war rather than resign=, 982

1740 Increased vigour of the Opposition, 983
Ill success of the war, 984

1742 =Walpole resigns=, 985
Review of Walpole's ministry, 985
=The new ministry under Wilmington=, 987

1743 =Pelham succeeds Wilmington=, 988
=The question of the Austrian succession=, 989
Ambition of Prussia, 989
Position of Maria Theresa, 990
England supports Austria, 991
The English army in Flanders, 991
=Battle of Dettingen=, 992
Effect of the victory, 994
Negotiations for peace, 994
Treaty of Worms, 995

1744 League of Frankfort, 995
Threatened invasion of England, 995
Progress of the war, 996
Changes in the ministry, 996

1745 German subsidies granted, 997
Campaign in Flanders, 998
=Battle of Fontenoy=, 998
=Charles Edward lands in Scotland=, 999
Cope marches against him, 1001
Charles avoids him, and gains Edinburgh, 1001
Battle of Prestonpans, 1002
Indifference of England, 1002
Charles marches to Derby, 1003
He retreats to the relief of Government, 1004

1746 Charles besieges Stirling, 1005
Battle of Falkirk, 1005
Cumberland takes command of the army, 1006
He defeats Charles at Culloden, 1007
He cruelly suppresses the rebellion, 1008
Charles escapes to France, 1008
Ministerial crisis, 1009

1747 Effect of the rebellion on the continental war, 1010

1748 =Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle=, 1011
Results of the war, 1011
=Pelham's conciliatory government=, 1012

1750 His financial measures, 1012
Increase of wealth and of trade, 1013

1751 Reform of the Calendar, 1014

1753 Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act, 1015
Decay of the Church, 1015

1730 Rise of the Wesleyans, 1016

1754 =Pelham's death gives the Government to Newcastle=, 1018
=Approaching danger from India and America=, 1018
Newcastle tries to confine the war to the colonies, 1019
George's anxiety for Hanover, 1020

1755 His subsidiary treaties against Prussia, 1020

1756 The French capture Minorca, 1021
Newcastle resigns, 1021

1757 =Pitt's vigorous government=, 1022

1754 Europe prepares for war, 1023

1756 =The Seven Years' War begins=, 1023
Alliance between England and Prussia, 1023
Frederick's first campaign, 1023
Foreign policy of the various parties in England, 1024

1757 Disasters of the year, 1025

1758 Change of generals, 1026
Success in America, 1026
Victory of Creveld, 1027
Expeditions to Cherbourg and St. Malo, 1027

1759 Naval victories of Lagos and Quiberon, 1028
Capture of Quebec, 1029
Victory of Minden, 1031

1760 Frederick's campaign, 1032
Battle of Torgau, 1033
Pre-eminence of Pitt, 1033
Death of the King, 1033

GEORGE III. 1760-1820.

=Bute's influence over the young King=, 1035
George's view of royalty, 1036

1761 Signs of a change of ministry, 1037
The campaign of 1761 produces a desire for peace, 1037
Negotiations between France and England, 1038
Pitt, suspecting the Family Compact, opposes peace, 1038
=Pitt resigns. Bute becomes Premier=, 1039

1762 War with Spain, 1039
Peace with France concluded, 1040

1763 =Close of the Seven Years' War=, 1041
Attack on the Whigs, 1041
Bute resigns, 1041
=The Triumvirate ministry=, 1042
=The Bedford ministry=, 1042
=The trial of Wilkes=, 1043
Origin of the American provinces, 1045
Restrictions on colonial trade, 1046

1764 Suppression of smuggling, 1047

1765 =The Stamp Act=, 1047

1765 The King's illness, 1048
The Regency Bill, 1048
Negotiations for a change of ministry, 1049
Pitt retires into private life, 1050
Ministry of the Whig Houses, 1050
The question of American taxation, 1051

1766 =Return of Pitt and his declaration of views=, 1051
The Stamp Act repealed, 1052
Weakness of the Government, 1052
=Pitt becomes Lord Chatham and Prime Minister=, 1053
His comprehensive plans, 1054

1767 =His illness and mental failure=, 1054
Townshend's financial measures, 1054

1768 Corruption of Parliament, 1055
Wilkes elected for Middlesex, 1055

1769 Increase of American difficulties, 1056
The Letters of Junius, 1057
Weakness of the ministry, 1057

1770 Camden, Granby, and Grafton resign, 1058
=North's ministry. Triumph of the King's policy=, 1059
Grenville's reform of election petitions, 1060
Increased irritation in America, 1061
Affair of the Falkland Islands, 1062

1771 The liberty of reporting Parliamentary debates, 1062
North's ministry gathers strength, 1063

1772 Royal Marriage Law, 1064
Fate of the Queen of Denmark, 1064
Division of Poland, 1065
Constitution of Poland, 1065

1773 =Organized opposition in America=, 1067

1774 Dunning's petition rejected, 1068

1772 The India Company's difficulties, 1069

1774 Boston Port Bill, 1070
Massachusetts Government Bill, 1070
Crisis of the quarrel, 1070
Acts of the General Congress, 1071

1775 Chatham's motions for reconciliation, 1071
Skirmish at Lexington, 1072
The Canada Bill, 1072
=The Congress assumes sovereign authority=, 1073
Washington commander-in-chief, 1073
Battle of Bunker's Hill, 1073
The Olive Branch Petition, 1075
Attack on Canada, 1075

1776 Howe retires to Halifax, 1076
Fresh offers of conciliation rejected, 1076
=Declaration of Independence=, 1077
Battle of Brooklyn, 1077

1777 Washington recovers New Jersey, 1079
Threefold plan of the English, 1079
Howe's expedition against Philadelphia, 1080
Battle of Germanstown, 1080
Washington reorganizes the army, 1081
=Burgoyne's disasters=, 1081

1776 =Effect of American affairs in Parliament=, 1082

1777 Increase of the Civil List, 1082
=France acknowledges the independence of America=, 1084
Chatham's energy in Parliament, 1084

1778 North's Conciliation Bill, 1085
Rupture with France, 1085
Death of Chatham, 1086
Laws against Roman Catholics repealed, 1087
=America rejects North's conciliatory offers=, 1087
Effect of the alliance between America and France, 1088
Weakness of North's ministry, 1088

1779 Difficulties in Ireland, 1090

1780 Motions for economical reform, 1091
The Lord George Gordon riots, 1092
Rodney's victory, 1094
Capture of Charleston, 1095
War with the Dutch, 1095
Armed neutrality of the North, 1096
Arnold's treachery, 1096
Death of Major André, 1097
=Campaign in Carolina=, 1097

1781 St. Eustatia captured, 1098
Battle of Guildford Courthouse, 1100
Battle of Hobkirk's Hill, 1100
Battle of Eutaw, 1101
Cornwallis in Virginia, 1101
=Surrender of Yorktown. Close of the war=, 1103
New session of Parliament, 1103

1782 =North's resignation. The Rockingham ministry=, 1104
The agitation in Ireland, 1105
Economical reforms, 1106
=Conclusion of the American War=, 1107
Exorbitant demands of France, 1108
Siege of Gibraltar, 1109
Changed tone of French demands, 1110

1783 Terms of the peace, 1110

1782 =Death of Rockingham. The Shelburne ministry=, 1111

1783 =Shelburne resigns. Return of the Whig ministry=, 1112

* * * * *

=Retrospect of Indian history=, 1113

1600 Foundation of the India Company, 1113

1640 Foundation of Madras (1640), Bombay (1662),
and Calcutta (1698), 1114
Decline of Portuguese and Dutch competition, 1114

1707 Decline of the Mogul Empire, 1115

1744 Competition with the French Company, 1115

1750 Success of Dupleix, 1116

1752 Dupleix defeated by Clive, 1117

1756 The Black Hole of Calcutta, 1118

1757 The Battle of Plassey, 1119

1761 =Overthrow of the French power in India=, 1119
=Contest with the native states=, 1120

1763 Massacre of Patna, 1121

1764 Battle of Buxar, 1121
=Maladministration of the India Company=, 1121

1769 Rise of Hyder Ali, 1122

1770 Famine in Bengal, 1123

1773 =The Regulating Act=, 1123

1774 Death of Clive, 1124
Warren Hastings, 1124

1778 The Mysore war, 1127

1780 Robbery of Cheyte Singh and the Begums, 1128

1781 Parliamentary inquiry, 1129

1783 Dundas's India Bill, 1129
Fox's India Bill, 1129
The King procures its rejection, 1131
=Fall of the Whig ministry. Pitt's first ministry=, 1132

1784 Pitt's victory over the Opposition, 1134
Dissolution of Parliament, 1134
Pitt's Budget, 1134
Pitt's India Bill, 1135
Pitt's Irish policy, 1136
Failure of Pitt's Reform Bill, 1137
Pitt's financial success, 1138

1785 Charges against Warren Hastings, 1139

1787 Conduct of the Prince of Wales, 1140

1788 Trial of Warren Hastings, 1141
First motion against the slave trade, 1142
The King's illness. The Regency Bill, 1142
=Pre-eminence of Pitt=, 1143

* * * * *

=Effect of the French Revolution in England=, 1145
=Pitt's foreign policy=, 1145
=Political development of the country=, 1146

1789 Affair of Nootka Sound, 1146
Alliance with Holland, 1146
Pitt's efforts to oppose Russia, 1147
Alliance with Prussia, Holland, and Sweden, 1148

1790 The Convention of Reichenbach, 1149
=Industrial development of the country=, 1150

1789 =The French Revolution=, 1151
Assembling of the States-General, 1153
Louis XVI. brought to Paris, 1154
=Excitement produced in England=, 1154

1790 =First reactionary movement=, 1154
Rejection of the Abolition of Tests and the
Reform Bill, 1154
Burke's "Reflections," 1155

1791 The Canada Bill, 1155
Breach between Fox and Burke, 1156
The Birmingham riots, 1156
Pitt's policy as yet unchanged, 1156
=Progress of the French Revolution=, 1157
The King's flight to Varennes, 1157

1792 The Girondin ministry declares war, 1158
The King suspended, 1158
Massacres of September, 1159
Declaration of the Republic, 1159
Revolutionary character of the war, 1159
Edict of Fraternity, 1159
=Change of opinion in England as to the Revolution=, 1160
=Formation of a new Tory party=, 1161
Sympathy with the Revolution among the poor, 1161
Revolutionary societies, 1162
Rejection of Grey's Reform Bill, 1162
Proclamation against seditious writings, 1163
Riots in Sheffield and Dundee, 1164
The militia called out, 1164

1793 Signs of approaching war with France, 1165
The Alien Bill, 1165
Death of Louis XVI., 1165
Pitt's efforts to continue peace, 1166
Determination of the French for war, 1166
=Declaration of war with France=, 1167
French successes on the Continent, and against the
royalists in France 1168
Pitt's difficulty in keeping up the coalition, 1170

1795 The French capture Amsterdam, 1172
Indirect advantages gained by England, 1172

1794 Defeat of the French fleet, 1173

1795 Prussia, Spain, and Holland leave the coalition, 1173
Insurrection of La Vendée, 1174
Expedition to Quiberon, 1176
=Confidence of the English in Pitt=, 1177
=His repressive policy=, 1178

1793 The Traitorous Correspondence Bill, 1178
Trials for seditious writings, 1179

1794 Portland joins the ministry, 1181
Desire for peace, 1181

1795 The Prince of Wales' marriage, 1182
Sufferings of the lower classes, 1183
Assault on the King, 1183

1793 =Retrospect of French affairs=, 1184
The Committee of Public Safety, 1184

1794 The Reign of Terror, 1185
Fall of Robespierre, 1186

1795 The Directory established, 1186

1796 =Pitt's first negotiations for peace=, 1186
Napoleon's Italian campaign, 1187
Pitt's second negotiations, 1188
=Preparations to resist a threatened French invasion=, 1190
French expeditions to Ireland and Bristol, 1190
=Critical condition of England=, 1191
Monetary crisis; suspension of cash payments, 1192
Victory of St. Vincent, 1193

1797 The mutiny at Spithead, 1194
The mutiny at the Nore, 1195
Disorganization of the French Government, 1196
Negotiations at Lisle, 1197
Battle of Camperdown, 1198
=Peace of Campo Formio=, 1198

* * * * *

=Ireland=, 1199
Complications attending Irish difficulties, 1199
Necessity for the Union, 1199
Irish opposition to Government, 1200
Grievances of the peasantry, 1201
Weakness of the executive, 1202

1789 =Effect of the French Revolution=, 1202
Formation of the Society of United Irishmen, 1203

1791 Disunion among the Catholics, 1204
=Mismanagement of the Government=, 1205

1793 Catholic Relief Bill passed, 1206
Renewed agitation for reform, 1207

1794 Failure of Fitzwilliam's efforts, 1208

1795 Lord Camden succeeds Fitzwilliam, 1209
The character of the rebellion, 1210

1796 =Defensive measures of Government=, 1210
Arrest of the revolutionary committee, 1211
The expedition to Bantry Bay, 1212

1797 Lake's success in Ulster and Munster, 1212

1798 =Outbreak of the rebellion=, 1214
Cornwallis succeeds Camden, 1215
Humbert's expedition to Killala, 1216

1799 Opposition to the Union, 1217

1800 =The Union completed=, 1219

* * * * *

1797 Desire of France to invade England, 1219

1798 Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, 1220
Battle of the Nile, 1220
=Pitt forms a second coalition=, 1221

1799 Italy regained by the allies, 1222
The allies capture the Dutch fleet, 1223
Napoleon defeated at Acre, 1223
Jealousies and disasters of the allies, 1224
Success in India, 1224
Napoleon made First Consul, 1225

1800 Napoleon's victories in Italy, 1226
Battle of Hohenlinden, 1227

1801 Treaty of Lunéville, 1227
=Dissolution of the coalition=, 1227

1800 Internal condition of England, 1228

1801 Rejection of the Catholic Relief Bill, 1229
=Pitt resigns. Addington made Premier=, 1230
Illness of the King, 1230
The French army in Egypt, 1231
Battle of Alexandria, 1232
Battle of Copenhagen, 1232
Peace between England and Russia, 1233
Napoleon appropriates Holland, Switzerland, and Italy, 1235

1802 =Peace of Amiens=, 1236
Napoleon continues his aggressions, 1237
Demands the repression of the English press, 1237
And the expulsion of the emigrants from England, 1238
Consequent change of feeling in England, 1238
Negotiations for Pitt's return, 1239

1803 Napoleon examines the resources of Egypt, England,
and Ireland, 1239
His interview with Lord Whitworth, 1239
The militia embodied, 1240
Failure of renewed negotiations for Pitt's return, 1240
=Declaration of war with France=, 1241
Character of the war, 1241
Napoleon arrests the English in France, 1241
He excites discontent in Ireland, 1241
Emmett's Rebellion, 1242
Difficulty of Addington's position, 1243

1804 Pitt offers to undertake the Government, 1245
=Addington resigns. Pitt's Tory ministry=, 1245
Preparations to resist the French invasion, 1248
The Additional Force Bill. Increase of the navy, 1248
Napoleon attempts to form a coalition, 1250
His conduct with regard to Georges' conspiracy, 1251
His murder of the Duc d'Enghien, 1251
Napoleon made Emperor, 1252
Harrowby retires. Addington joins the ministry, 1252
Failure of the Catamaran expedition, 1253
=Success in India against the Mahrattas=, 1253

1802 Wellesley's subsidiary system, 1254

1803 The Mahratta war, 1255
Battle of Assye, 1256

1805 Conclusion of the war, 1257
Sad close of Pitt's career, 1257
Attack on Melville's administration, 1258
Sidmouth resigns, 1259
Treaty of St. Petersburg, 1261
=The third coalition formed=, 1261
Napoleon prepares to invade England, 1261
Nelson's pursuit of Villeneuve, 1262
Failure of Napoleon's schemes, 1263
He marches against Austria, 1264
Capitulation of the Austrian army at Ulm, 1264
=Battle of Trafalgar=, 1265
=Battle of Austerlitz=, 1265

1806 =Death of Pitt. Fox's ministry=, 1266

1805 Treaties of Schönbrunn and Presburg, 1269

1806 Napoleon erects dependent kingdoms, 1269
Fox's negotiations with Napoleon, 1270
Death of Fox, 1270
Abolition of the slave trade, 1271

1807 Rejection of the Catholic claims, 1273
Resignation of the Grenville ministry, 1274
=The Perceval ministry=, 1274

1806 Prussia declares war with France, 1276
Battle of Jena, 1276
The Berlin decree, 1277

1807 The orders in Council, 1278
Battle of Eylau, 1280
Incapacity of the Grenville ministry, 1280
Expedition to Buenos Ayres, 1280
Expedition to the Dardanelles, 1281
Expedition to Alexandria, 1282

1806 Expedition to Sicily, 1282

1807 =Dissolution of the third coalition=, 1282
=Treaty of Tilsitt=, 1283
Capture of the Danish fleet, 1285
War between Russia and Sweden, 1285
Continental System acknowledged except in Portugal, 1285
=Condition of the Peninsula=, 1286
Joseph made King of Spain, 1287
Napoleon's armies in Spain, 1288
Invasion of Portugal, 1288

1808 Enthusiasm in England for the Spanish insurrection, 1289
Wellesley sent to Portugal, 1290
Combat of Rorica, 1291
Battle of Vimiero, 1292
Convention of Cintra, 1293
Sir John Moore's march to Salamanca, 1294
Napoleon in Madrid, 1295

1809 =Battle of Corunna=, 1297
Opinion in England concerning the war, 1298
Scandal of the Duke of York, 1299
Charges against Castlereagh, 1299
Opposition to Napoleon in Germany, 1300
Battle of Aspern, 1300
Battle of Wagram, 1301
Peace of Vienna, 1301
The Walcheren expedition, 1301
Wellesley victorious in Portugal, 1303
=Battle of Talavera=, 1304

1810 Wellington fortifies the Lisbon promontory, 1306
Battle of Busaco, 1307

1811 =Battle of Albuera=, 1309
Critical position of the French, 1311
Threatened war between Russia and France, 1313

1812 Capture of Rodrigo and Badajos, 1315
=Battle of Salamanca=, 1316
Wellington in Madrid, 1317
He retreats to Portugal, 1318

1813 =Battle of Vittoria=, 1319

1814 =Battle of Toulouse=, 1321
=Long tenure of power by the Tory party=, 1321

1809 Quarrel of Castlereagh and Canning, 1322

1810 Illness of the King, 1323

1811 The Regency Bill, 1324

1812 =Assassination of Perceval. Liverpool made Premier=, 1325
=War with America=, 1325

1814 Capture of Washington, 1327
=Abdication of Napoleon=, 1328
=Character of the Tory Government=, 1329

1810 Depression of trade, 1331

1811 The Luddite riots, 1332
Misery of the agricultural labourer, 1333

1814 =Difficulties attending the settlement of Europe=, 1333
First Treaty of Paris, 1334
Visit of the monarchs to England, 1335
=Congress at Vienna=, 1335

1815 Compromise agreed upon, 1338
=Escape of Napoleon from Elba=, 1339
Military preparations against Napoleon, 1339
Battle of Ligny, 1340
Battle of Quatre Bras, 1341
=Battle of Waterloo=, 1342
The allies enter Paris, 1346
=Napoleon banished to St. Helena=, 1346
The second Treaty of Paris, 1346

1816 Battle of Algiers, 1347
Opposition in Parliament, 1348
Extravagance of the Government, 1349
=Agricultural and commercial depression=, 1350
=Riots and political meetings=, 1351
Meeting in Spa Fields, 1352
Petition from the Corporation of London, 1353

1817 Attack on the Regent, 1353
=Repressive measures of the Government=, 1354
Secret political meetings, 1354
Suppression of seditious writings, 1355
Mr. Hone's trial, 1355
Strength of the Opposition, 1356

1818 Condition of the royal family, 1357
Dissolution of Parliament, 1358
Evacuation of France by the allies, 1359

1819 Resumption of cash payments, 1359
Rejection of Catholic emancipation, 1360
Reform of Scotch burghs, 1360
The Manchester Massacre, 1362
The Six Acts, 1363

1820 Death of George III., 1363

GEORGE IV. 1820-1830.

1820 Precarious position of the ministry, 1364
Cato Street conspiracy, 1365
=The Queen's trial=, 1366

1821 Consequent alienation between ministry and people, 1368

1822 Peel and Wellesley join the ministry, 1369
=Death of Castlereagh. Canning Foreign Secretary=, 1369
Retrospect of the affairs of Europe, 1370

1816 Position of England abroad, 1370
Effect of Castlereagh's policy, 1371

1820 Insurrections in Spain, Portugal, Naples, 1371
Arbitrary action of the Holy Alliance, 1372
England refuses to join the Congress at Troppau, 1373

1821 Popular anger at Castlereagh's weak policy, 1373
Insurrection in Greece, 1374
Complications between France and Spain, 1374

1822 Congress at Verona, 1375
=Canning's policy=, 1375
Partial success of his diplomacy in Spain, 1375

1823 =Changes in commercial policy effected by Huskisson=, 1376
Change of the Navigation Act, 1379

1824 Improvement in the silk trade, 1380
Improvement in the wool trade, 1381

1823 Discussion on slavery, 1382
Effect of Canning's circular in Jamaica, 1382

1824 Persecution of Mr. Smith, 1383

1825 Disastrous effects of wild speculations, 1383
Success of the healing measures of Government, 1384

1826 Temporary change in the corn laws, 1385
Canning's vigorous policy in Portugal, 1386
Division in the ministry, 1387

1827 =Illness of Lord Liverpool=, 1388
=Difficulties attending the formation of a new
ministry=, 1388
Disturbances in Ireland, 1389
Wellesley's administration, 1389

1823 The Catholic Association, 1390

1826 Rejection of the Catholic Relief Bill, 1390

1827 Rejection of Burdett's resolution, 1391
=Canning Prime Minister=, 1391
Canning's death, 1393
His character and policy, 1393
=Goderich's ministry=, 1394

1828 =Wellington's ministry=, 1395
=Difficulty of the Turkish question=, 1395

1824 Canning's diplomacy on the subject, 1396

1826 Protocol between England and Russia, 1397
Enthusiasm for Greek independence in England, 1397

1827 Turkey refuses the armistice, 1398
The Treaty of London, 1398
Attempt to enforce the armistice, 1399
=Battle of Navarino=, 1399
Goderich's inaction renders the victory nugatory, 1400

1828 Wellington refuses to coerce Turkey by arms, 1400
=Character of Wellington's Government=, 1401
Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 1401
The Corn Bill passed, 1402
Huskisson and his friends resign, 1402
=The Catholic Emancipation question=, 1402
Renewed agitation in Ireland, 1403
Election of O'Connell for Clare, 1403
Influence of the Association, 1404

1829 Resignation of Lord Anglesey, 1406
Peel and Wellington see the urgency of Catholic
emancipation, 1406
Opposition of the King, 1407
=The Catholic Emancipation Bill passed=, 1408
O'Connell's agitation for repeal, 1409
=Wellington's foreign policy=, 1410

1826 Affairs of Portugal, 1410

1828 Miguel usurps the throne, 1411
Maria acknowledged in England, 1411

1829 Wellington's neutrality, 1411
Non-intervention in the affairs of Greece, 1412
The Revolution in France, 1413
Supposed influence of Wellington in Polignac's
appointment, 1413
Increasing opposition to the French ministry, 1414

1830 Abdication of Charles X., 1416
Death of George IV., 1416

WILLIAM IV. 1830-1837.

1830 Character of the King, 1418
=Effects of the July Revolution=, 1419
=Position of Wellington's ministry=, 1420
Danger from O'Connell's agitations, 1421
And from rick-burning, etc., 1421
Death of Huskisson, 1421
Anxiety felt in Parliament, 1422
=Wellington resigns=, 1422
=Grey's ministry=, 1423
Difficulties attending reform, 1423

1831 =The first Reform Bill=, 1425
The second reading, 1426
Dissolution of Parliament, 1426
The Bill passes in the Commons, 1427
=The Bill rejected in the Lords=, 1427
Consequent riots in the country, 1428
Organized action of the political unions, 1428
Opposition of the King, 1429

1832 The second Bill passes second reading in the Lords, 1429
Preparations during the recess, 1429
The Bill again rejected in the Lords, 1430
The ministers resign, 1430
They return to office, 1430
=The Reform Bill passes=, 1430
Description of the Bill, 1430
Importance of the change, 1432
Anxiety as to the effect of the change, 1433

1833 =Character of the reformed Parliament=, 1434
Critical questions to be settled, 1434
Condition of Ireland, 1434
=Position of the Irish Church=, 1435
Irish Tithe Composition Bill passed, 1436
Althorp's Irish Church Bill, 1436
The Coercion Bill, 1438
Changes in the ministry, 1439
Weakness of the ministry, 1440
Renewal of the Bank charter, 1441
Settlement of the East India Company, 1442
Emancipation of the Slaves, 1442
Condition of trade in the West Indies, 1443

1831 Opposition of planters to the orders in Council, 1444

1833 The Bill passed, 1445

1834 Weakness of the ministry shown in Parliament, 1445
Split in the Cabinet on Ward's motion on the Irish
Church, 1446
Resignation of Stanley, Graham, Richmond, and Ripon, 1447
Difficulties of Grey's position, 1447
=Grey resigns. Lord Melbourne's ministry=, 1449
His Church policy, 1450
=Reform of the Poor Law=, 1451
Discontent and misery of the poor, 1453
Increase of trades unions, 1454
Dispute between Brougham and Durham, 1455
=Dismissal of the Melbourne ministry=, 1455
=Peel's ministry=, 1456

1835 The Tamworth Manifesto, 1456
Irish appropriation clause again introduced, 1457
=Peel resigns. Melbourne's ministry reconstituted=, 1457
Condition of municipal corporations, 1459
=The Municipal Reform Bill=, 1460
=Foreign diplomacy of Palmerston=, 1461

1831 Absorption of Poland, 1461
Formation of Belgium, 1462
Affairs of Portugal, 1463

1832 Affairs of Spain, 1463

1834 The Quadruple Alliance, 1464
=Retrospect of affairs in India=, 1465

1805 Cornwallis Governor-General, 1466
Sir George Barlow, 1466

1807 Lord Minto, 1466

1813 Marquis of Hastings, 1467

1814 War with Nepaul, 1467

1815 War with the Pindaries and Mahrattas, 1468

1823 Lord Amherst, 1471
War with Burmah, 1471

1826 Capture of Bhurtpore, 1472

LIST OF MAPS.

1. COUNTRIES TO THE NORTH OF FRANCE, At end of Book.

2. NORTH AMERICA, " "

3. SPAIN, " "

4. PORTUGAL, " "

5. EUROPE, " "

6. INDIA, " "

7. ENGLISH POSSESSIONS IN INDIA, " "

WILLIAM AND MARY.

1689-1702.

James I.
|
-----------------------------------
| |
Charles I. Elizabeth = Frederick V.,
| | Elector Palatine.
------------------------------------- \
| | | \
Charles II. | | \
| | \
2. Mary of = James II. = 1. Anne Hyde Mary = William Sophia = Ernest
Modena. | | | of Nassau. | Augustus,
| | | | Elector
| | | | of
| ------------- | | Hanover.
| | | | |
James Edward, Anne, Mary = William III. George I.
the old Pretender. b. 1665. b. 1662. b. 1650.
b. 1688, |
d. 1765. |
|
Charles Edward,
the young Pretender, born 1721, died 1788.

CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.

POPES.--Alexander VIII., 1689. Innocent XII., 1691. Clement XI., 1700.

_Archbishops._ | _Chancellors._
William Sancroft, 1678. | (In Commission, 1689.)
John Tillotson, 1691. | Sir John Somers, 1693.
Thomas Tenison, 1694. | Sir Nathan Wright, 1700.

_Secretaries of State._
1689 { Nottingham | 1697 { Shrewsbury
{ Shrewsbury | { Vernon
|
1690 { Nottingham | 1699 { Jersey
{ Sidney | { Vernon
|
1693 { Shrewsbury | 1700 { Hedges
{ Trenchard | { Vernon
|
1695 { Shrewsbury | 1702 { Manchester
{ Trumbal | { Vernon

[Sidenote: The Declaration of Right.]

[Sidenote: Crown accepted by William and Mary.]

Before the Crown was absolutely offered to William, the Convention was
eager to reform a number of the most prominent abuses of the last reign.
It was shown by the wiser leaders among them that such reforms would
entail a mass of legislation which, to be done well, must occupy several
years. It was therefore determined that, for the present, a solemn
declaration of principles only should be drawn up. This is known as the
Declaration of Right. In it, after enumerating the evils from which the
country had suffered, the Lords and Commons declared that the dispensing
power does not exist, that without grant or consent of Parliament no
money can be exacted by the sovereign, and no army kept up in time of
peace. They also affirmed the right of petition, the right of free
choice of representatives, the right of Parliament to freedom of debate,
the right of the nation to a pure administration of justice, and the
necessity, in order to secure these things, of frequent Parliaments.
This Declaration having been read to William and Mary, the Crown was
solemnly offered them by Halifax, and by them accepted. They were
immediately proclaimed amid general plaudits.

[Sidenote: Character of the Revolution.]

Thus was consummated, with scarcely any bloodshed, and by what appeared
an almost unanimous action on the part of the nation, a complete
revolution. It was not the less a revolution because it was held that
the whole Constitution of England passed on in its minutest detail
unchanged. By it was overthrown for ever the theory which came into
existence under the Tudors, and was brought to perfection under the
Stuarts; henceforward it was impossible that the King should be regarded
either as the proprietor of the country, or as a ruler by divine right,
the representative of God upon earth. In the place of this theory was
substituted that great Whig theory, which, arising among the Puritans,
had enjoyed a brief triumph in the successes of the Great Rebellion,
and, violently overthrown at the Restoration, had succeeded in making
good its position during the reigns of the two last Stuarts,--the theory
which regarded the King as reigning by the will of the people and in
virtue of an implied contract with them. As a natural consequence of the
position thus taken by the nation as the supreme power in the State,
Parliament, its representative, became in its turn supreme, and although
the change was not yet fully understood, the representatives of the
people were gradually taking to themselves not only the duties of
legislation, but also the executive. The ministry, therefore, however
much they may have been still regarded as the King's ministers, became
by degrees the national ministers, answerable for their conduct in
Parliament, and before long became in fact little else than the
executive Committee of the majority in Parliament.

[Sidenote: Personal unpopularity of William.]

[Sidenote: Discontent of the clergy]

[Sidenote: and the army.]

The unanimity of parties which had secured the triumph of William was of
short duration, nor was his personal popularity long-lived. The apparent
coldness of his demeanour, his carelessness of the pomps of the Court,
his wretched health, which obliged him to withdraw from London and
establish his Court at Kensington, speedily rendered him personally
unpopular; while, as soon as the general danger which had caused their
union was removed, the fundamental differences which divided political
parties at once made themselves obvious. Moreover, the tendency to
reaction, visible after all political excitements, began to show itself.
Two classes were by no means ready to accept kindly the revolution which
had been wrought. These were the clergy and the army. The greater part
of the clergy had spent their lives in inculcating the duty of passive
obedience. Although that theory had broken down in practice when the
attacks of the Crown were directed against themselves, they could not
bring themselves to submit without difficulty to a complete reversal of
their political creed, nor could they help seeing that the success of
William implied nothing short of the substitution of the Whig doctrine
for that of monarchy by divine right. A very large portion of them were
therefore disaffected. The army, though it had disliked the introduction
of Catholics and of Irish among its ranks, and was not prejudiced in
favour of any theory of monarchy, felt its professional honour injured
by the sorry part it had played in the late events. So deep was the
disaffection that one regiment quartered at Ipswich broke out into open
mutiny, marched northward in arms, and was only brought to obedience
after a skirmish with some Dutch troops under Ginkel, which had been
rapidly sent in pursuit. The signs of general disaffection at the same
time were so obvious that it was thought necessary to suspend the Habeas
Corpus Act.

[Sidenote: The Convention changed into a Parliament.]

Before this happened, William had had to form a ministry and to furnish
himself with a Parliament. For this latter purpose, in spite of the
opposition of many of the old Tories, who regarded a Parliament not
summoned by the King's writ as no Parliament at all, the Convention was
changed into a Parliament, and proceeded to act in that capacity. It was
not indeed reasonable that a freely elected body, whose choice of a king
both sides were willing to allow, should still be regarded upon
technical grounds as incapable of settling matters of much less
importance. The choice of ministers was a matter of more difficulty.

[Sidenote: William's difficulties in forming a ministry.]

[Sidenote: Ignorance of the constitutional change.]

[Sidenote: The Whigs' desire for vengeance.]

At the present time the choice of ministers is tolerably simple. The
House of Commons having obtained the position of both legislature and
executive, the administration is placed in the hands of a Committee of
that party which is predominant in the Commons; the Crown, in fact,
having but little choice in the matter. This theory of government, which
is a necessary consequence of the Parliamentary triumph at the
Revolution, was in the years immediately succeeding that event not
understood. The notion of a king whose duties are rather ornamental than
real had scarcely entered men's minds. The King was still expected to
have the direction of the executive, to be, in fact, his own Prime
Minister, and to nominate as heads of departments such statesmen as he
thought best fitted for the employment, without exact regard to their
political views. The effect of this was to make the King responsible for
the Government; and though the right of impeachment, as exercised in the
case of Danby, rested upon the supposition that ministers were
responsible to Parliament, the fact was not yet fully recognized. It was
this responsibility of the king which had produced the disasters of the
Great Rebellion and the late Revolution. The gradual substitution of
Parliamentary ministry, which should serve as an intermediate body
between the Commons and the Crown, and save the Crown from direct
responsibility, is the great constitutional change which was completed
on the accession of the Hanoverian house. Such a change becomes
absolutely necessary when Parliament has once secured a complete control
of the executive; otherwise it is plain that the acts or proposals of
the executive, constantly met by a hostile majority in Parliament,
could never be brought to a completion. It also of necessity implies a
mutual responsibility among the ministers, who upon essential points
must all agree with the Parliamentary majority. These necessary
consequences of the triumph of the Whig theory of the sovereignty of the
people were little understood even by the best English politicians; and
William, able as he was as a foreign statesman, had never a clear
insight into the working of the English Constitution. Nor was his
character such as to fit him to occupy the place of an ornamental king.
Thus he both himself intended and was expected by the nation to exercise
a supreme influence in the Government, at the same time that the newly
won powers of the Parliament were liable constantly to thwart his
schemes. Besides the difficulty which this general ignorance of
constitutional principles caused, peculiar difficulties, arising from
the manner in which he had obtained the Crown, beset William. He had
been brought to the throne by the Whigs. By the Whigs he was expected to
become a party leader. They looked forward, under his guidance, to a
triumphant revenge on the party at whose hands they had suffered so
much. On the other hand, William's own wish was to hush the storm of
faction, to become King of the whole English nation, not of one party,
and to be able to use the resources of England for his great European
measures; he therefore had no intention of becoming a mere party leader.
Again, his view of the duties and responsibilities of a king was a high
one, whereas the Whigs, on whom he might be expected to rely, were
pledged to give greater prominence to the influence of Parliament.
William's natural tendencies, therefore, when once safeguards for a just
Government and personal liberty were secured, inclined him rather to the
Tories, whose view of the prerogative was higher.

[Sidenote: William's ministry.]

It was in the midst of these difficulties that William had to select his
ministry. He attempted to conciliate all parties, with the exception of
the extreme Jacobites, and his ministry was a mixed one. Danby had been
mainly instrumental in bringing William to England. He had indeed in the
Convention thrown some obstacles in the way of the Parliamentary change
of dynasty, but might fairly look for a high reward. He was displeased
at being appointed President of the Council, a post of high honour, but
not of great political activity. Halifax was appointed Privy Seal. His
intellect, which always saw two sides of a question, was not such as to
fit him for decided statesmanship. The places of real importance, the
Secretaryships, were shared between the Tories and the Whigs;
Nottingham, the leader of that class who expressed with perfect honesty
their willingness to acknowledge any King _de facto_, and Shrewsbury, a
young man of great ability and as yet a consistent Whig, were appointed
to those places. Neither Treasury nor Admiralty were intrusted to any
single individual, but were placed in Commission, both Whigs and Tories
sitting at the Boards. At the Treasury, though only third on the
Commission, Godolphin, by his superior skill and knowledge, soon became
pre-eminent. The purity of the judgment-seat was secured by a careful
selection of the ablest lawyers from a list supplied by the Privy
Council, while the great places of the Household, where personal rather
than political influence was wanted, were chiefly given to William's
personal friends from Holland, the most prominent being Overkirk, Master
of the Horse, and Bentinck, subsequently Earl of Portland.

[Sidenote: Settlement of the revenue.]

[Sidenote: Settlement of the Church.]

By the appointment of his ministers, and by the conversion of the
Convention into a Parliament, the apparatus of Government was complete.
The Whigs were for a time triumphant. The revenue was settled on a peace
footing at £1,200,000 a year; the hereditary taxes being given to
William for the support of his Crown (a grant which forms the origin of
the Civil List), while the Parliamentary taxes intended for the support
of Government were granted only for limited periods. The hearth tax, the
most obnoxious and unjust of taxes, as it is at once inquisitorial in
its action and presses with undue severity upon the poor in comparison
with the rich, was abolished. The settlement of the Church, and of the
oaths to be taken by the holders of places, at once rendered obvious the
strength of faction which still existed, and the difficulties which must
beset all attempt at impartial government. Three Bills were produced, a
Toleration Bill, a Comprehension Bill, for the purpose of so changing
the construction of the Church and its Liturgy as to admit numerous
Protestant Dissenters, and a Bill for the removal of the Test Act, for
the purpose of enabling the King to employ, as he was most desirous of
doing, all Protestants in his service. Of these three, one only, the
Toleration Act, was carried. In fact the Comprehension Bill, which was
introduced by Nottingham, was no doubt intended, after admitting a
certain number of Dissenters, to render the exclusion of the rest more
absolute. Fear of this rendered the Dissenters themselves hostile to it,
and William's personal efforts to produce at once comprehension and
relaxation of the Test Act were in vain; both Bills were thrown out.

[Sidenote: Oaths of allegiance and supremacy.]

There yet remained the question of the oaths of allegiance and
supremacy. It was acknowledged on all hands that all lay place-holders
and all newly-appointed holders of ecclesiastical preferments should be
obliged to take these oaths, slightly altered to suit existing
circumstances. The case of the clergy already holding benefices was not
so clear. Many were willing to accept the new Government peaceably, and
it seemed hard that they should be required to take oaths which gave the
lie to all their former political views. With regard to the Bishops too,
the High Church Party advanced the doctrine that the Episcopal
ordination was indelible, and that it was impossible for any Act either
of King or Parliament to prevent a man who had once been a Bishop from
being so always. Against the King's wish the party who were for the most
stringent application of the oaths carried the day. All the clergy were
required to take them by August 1689; if they had not been taken by
February 1690, those clergy and Bishops who refused them were to be
deprived. Between 300 and 400 refused the oath, and there thus sprang up
that section of the clergy known as Nonjurors. The settlement of the
country was completed by the Coronation Oath, which declared that the
King would uphold the Protestant religion as settled by law. It was a
foolish miscomprehension of these words, which obviously did not prevent
a Parliamentary change in the arrangements of religion, which
subsequently led George III. into his obstinate opposition to Catholic
emancipation. When the oath had been arranged, the coronation took place
(April 11), and some new titles were given; thus Danby became Lord
Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, Bentinck Earl of Portland,
and Mordaunt, First Lord of the Treasury, Earl of Monmouth.

[Sidenote: The European war breaks out.]

[Sidenote: Devastation of the Palatinate.]

When the Government of the country was fairly settled it was time for
William to receive his reward. Parliament gratified him by a strong
declaration against the policy of Louis abroad, and assurance of hearty
support should he find it necessary to have recourse to arms. On the
13th of May war with France was therefore declared. William stated that
he had no choice in the matter as France had already begun war upon
England. This was an allusion to the action of France in Ireland; for
Louis, though unable to trust James and his English and Irish friends in
that implicit manner which would have rendered his assistance
irresistible, was yet so far convinced that the real key to success
against the coalition was the neutralization of England, that he had
allowed James some assistance in troops. The other great countries of
the coalition had already declared war with France. Louis found himself
with one ally only, who did him, if possible, more harm than
good,--this was the Porte. He succeeded in inducing that power to
continue its attacks upon Hungary, which was a constant source of
weakness to Austria; but the unnatural alliance between the most
Christian King and the great enemies of Christendom gave an opening for
the invective of his enemies, which received still further point from
his subsequent behaviour. Unable to sustain the forward position which
his armies had assumed in Germany the preceding year, especially when
some of his forces were required in Ireland, he ordered a retreat. What
he could not keep he determined to destroy, and the Palatinate was laid
waste with a reckless, unsparing fury, which enabled each country, as it
declared war with him, to point out that his conduct was more cruel than
even that of his Turkish ally. It had such an effect on the Continent,
that war was declared at intervals of about a month by Austria, the
Empire, Spain, Brandenburg and Holland. William's primary object was
attained; Europe was combined against France. The resources of England
were placed in his hands to support that coalition, but there was yet
much to be done before he was free to act.

[Sidenote: State of Ireland.]

It has been already related that, on his flight, James stated his
intention of finding if possible a new centre of action in Ireland. The
view was a natural one, for he had throughout his reign been preparing
that island as a refuge in case of danger. He had there acted with more
freedom than was possible in England, and gone far to carry out his
plans for re-establishing Catholicism. Talbot, Lord Tyrconnel, a
perfectly unscrupulous man, was at the head of the Government. Almost
all the other important offices were in Romanist hands. Rice, chief
Baron of the Exchequer, made the law courts subserve the same policy; he
openly asserted his intention of assaulting the Act of Settlement; all
who had or thought they had claims against the actual possessors of
land, brought their claims into his court, and no proof was held too
weak, no witness too untrustworthy, for the purpose of re-establishing
the old Catholics in their possession of the soil. From private acts he
proceeded to public. Charter after charter was forfeited; municipal
corporations re-established, with reckless indifference to all forms of
right, on a Roman Catholic basis. While aldermen in the boroughs thus
became Roman Catholic, sheriffs of the same religion were appointed, and
in their hands lay the choice of juries, so that the whole legal
apparatus was directed against Protestantism. The army meanwhile had
been similarly reorganized; 6000 Protestant veterans had been disbanded
and their places occupied by vehement and disorderly Catholics, who
lived, we are told, constantly at free quarters on the Protestant
inhabitants.

[Sidenote: Panic among the Englishry.]

[Sidenote: Londonderry and Enniskillen garrisoned.]

The arrival of William in England had brought matters to a crisis. The
Papists thought their time was at length come. The whole country was
full of panic and rumours of a coming massacre. Many of the English
fled. The gentry and yeomen gathered themselves together to the towns
and strong houses, to attempt if possible to make good for themselves
that security which the Government would not give them. The two most
important of these centres were Enniskillen and Londonderry. At the
former, early in 1689, the Protestant population refused admittance to
two companies of Popish infantry which had been ordered to be quartered
on them. The gentry collected, drove the soldiers away, appointed
Gustavus Hamilton governor, garrisoned the houses round Lough Erne, and
held the district for King William. At Londonderry the same process took
place. A regiment of 1200 Papists, under the Earl of Antrim, was sent to
the city, and the mayor and sheriffs, who by the new charters were
Papists, were proceeding to admit them, when thirteen young apprentices
of Scotch birth took upon themselves to close the gates, and the
Protestant gentry were summoned from the neighbouring country to defend
the city. In two days it was strongly garrisoned, and the troops
withdrew. It was in vain that Lord Mountjoy, a Protestant, who still
remained faithful to James, attempted a compromise. Some few troops
under Lundy were indeed admitted, but the country was still held for the
Protestants, and Lundy was obliged, in appearance at all events, to
accept the new Government.

[Sidenote: William's negotiation with Tyrconnel.]

[Sidenote: Tyrconnel's object Irish independence.]

[Sidenote: His temporary success.]

Meanwhile William had attempted to enter into negotiations with
Tyrconnel. For this purpose he had employed as his agent Richard
Hamilton, who had once held a commission in James's army, but who now
professed to have changed his allegiance. Hamilton pledged his word
that, if he failed in his commission, he would come back in three weeks;
but, forfeiting his promise, he returned to his old allegiance, and
became a chief leader on the side of James. But the character of the
quarrel was already changing, the real object of Tyrconnel, in common
with the greater part of the Irish Catholics, was to uphold neither
James nor William, but to destroy for ever the English supremacy. For
this purpose he was willing to use the name of James, trusting in fact
to the assistance of Louis, to whom he opened his real design. He
succeeded in ridding himself of Mountjoy, whose loyal influence was
likely to thwart his plans, by sending him on a mission to St. Germains,
where James now held his Court, and where he was at once apprehended. He
then summoned the Irish to arms. An army of 50,000 Papists was
collected, and many thousands more took arms on their own behalf, and
ravaged the Protestant settlements around them. To complete the Irish
supremacy, Tyrconnel ordered the Protestants to be disarmed. The
destruction wrought is inconceivable. Property which has been estimated
at £5,000,000 was destroyed. Whole herds of cattle were killed and left
to rot in the fields; 50,000 are said to have been thus killed in six
weeks, while about 400,000 sheep were similarly slain. Unable to
withstand this general movement, the Protestants in the south and west
were overpowered, or retreated if possible to the strongholds of
Londonderry and Enniskillen. In those two places the flower of the
English settlers stood at bay, surrounded on all sides by hordes of
liberated serfs now in mutiny against their former masters. An army was
ordered to march northwards under the traitor Richard Hamilton. The
Protestants fled before it; 30,000 of them collected as a last asylum
behind the walls of Londonderry.

[Sidenote: He gets James over.]

The country was in this condition when James, in answer to the messages
which Tyrconnel had sent him, determined, with the assent of Louis, and
with considerable assistance in officers and arms, himself to visit
Ireland. He landed at Cork, and soon appeared in the capital, while
William, unable to act with energy on account of the difficulties which
surrounded him, was assailed by unthinking men with violent abuse for
not taking stronger measures to prevent those disasters which he was
really watching with the greatest dismay.

[Sidenote: Character of Irish Jacobites.]

On his arrival in Dublin it was gradually brought home to James that it
was no feeling of passionate loyalty which was exciting the Irish
population. Among those who attended his Court there were two distinct
factions. Some Englishmen, with the loyal feelings which animated
English Jacobites, were anxious to re-establish James and to retain the
English influence in Ireland. Another party, which included Tyrconnel
and almost all the Irish Papists, were fighting to destroy the English
supremacy, they cared not how, and intriguing to secure the assistance
of France. James would naturally have inclined to the former party, but
soon learnt that the power of his partisans was entirely gone.

[Sidenote: Siege of Londonderry.]

He made a feeble struggle, and, contrary to the wish of the French and
Irish, proceeded himself to the siege of Londonderry. On his march he
found that the Protestants, as they retired, had destroyed all the crops
and houses behind them. He journeyed through a desert, and when he found
that the inhabitants of the city had got rid of their treacherous
governor Lundy, had taken matters into their own hands, and appointed
Walker, a clergyman, and Major Henry Baker, joint governors, he
determined to return instantly to Dublin, there to hold a Parliament.
The prosecution of the siege was intrusted to a French general, Maumont,
and Richard Hamilton. The defence was so vigorous that the siege was
soon turned into a blockade; and while the gallant city was holding out
to the last extremity, the Parliament at Dublin met.

[Sidenote: Wild legislation of the Irish Parliament.]

As a matter of course, considering the circumstances under which it was
collected, it consisted entirely of Catholics. It proceeded to act with
a recklessness which might be expected from an enslaved nation suddenly
called to power, and from men who for years had been unused to public
life. The great Act of Settlement, that compromise which in Charles
II.'s reign had settled the share of land to be held by the Protestant
emigrants who had followed Cromwell's victorious arms, was repealed.
Many thousands of square miles were at a single blow transferred from
English to Celtic landlords. The Act itself may have been unjust, but
for years it had been the basis of society, and men had acted as though
their titles were secure. Its repeal was therefore a violent act of
unjust confiscation. Moreover, as far as James was concerned, nothing
could be more disastrous, nothing could more surely destroy any
influence he might yet keep in England, where it seemed to foreshadow
the justice Protestants might expect from his hands were his reign
re-established. Such slight opposition as James offered (for he had the
wisdom to see some of the disastrous consequences of the measure) had no
effect but to cause profound distrust of himself. Other legislation even
more disastrous met with no opposition at his hands. In his want of
money he issued false coinage of copper and brass, intrinsically worth
perhaps a sixtieth of its nominal value. Thus of course all creditors
and mortgagees, who were pretty certain to be Protestants, were ruined.
The money was rendered current by threats of punishment against those
who refused it. Prices were kept down by law; and to complete this wild
legislation, the great Act of Attainder was passed, containing between
2000 or 3000 names. No inquiry was instituted as to the grounds of
accusation against those who were attainted, and opportunities were
thus afforded for any man who had a personal enemy to introduce his name
in the Bill. A limit of time was set within which all those named were
bound to surrender themselves to justice or be liable to execution
without trial; while, to prevent the King's mercy from interfering with
their vengeance, the Commons passed a law that after November the right
of pardon should cease.

[Sidenote: Its effect on English Jacobites.]

[Sidenote: Londonderry saved.]

Such legislation, sanctioned by James, while it failed to give him real
popularity in Ireland, checked the reaction which was beginning in
England. The feeling there grew constantly stronger against the inaction
of the Government. The fate of Londonderry and Enniskillen were watched
with absorbing interest. A fleet, with some troops under command of
Kirke, was at length despatched, but Kirke refused to risk the passage
of the river which led from Lough Foyle, and which was now guarded by
forts and a boom, and the starving population of Londonderry had the
misery of watching the ships as they lay idly in the Lough. But they
still held out with astonishing constancy. Their friends in Enniskillen
fared somewhat better. They did not confine themselves to defence; but,
issuing from the little island in Lough Erne which surrounded their
city, they collected from their enemies a considerable quantity of
cattle and ammunition, and lived in comparative comfort and security. At
length, in July, the fate of Londonderry seemed sealed. Nearly
everything eatable had been devoured,--horse-flesh, rats, salt hides,
all that could possibly be converted even into the most objectionable
food. It seemed impossible to feed the population in any way for two
days longer. At last a peremptory order reached Kirke to relieve the
city at all hazards. On the 30th of July, three vessels, two transports
and a frigate, sailed up the river, and, after a few minutes of
difficulty, broke the boom, and in the evening, at ten o'clock, were
anchored at the quay. The city was saved after 105 days of siege and
blockade.

[Sidenote: Battle of Newton Butler.]

The Irish army immediately broke up from its camp and retreated. As it
reached Strabane, on its backward course, it received the news of
another disaster. A great effort had been determined on against
Enniskillen, but Colonel Wolseley had been sent to take the command by
Kirke, and was successful in defeating at Newton Butler the approaching
Irish, of whom nearly 2000 were put to the sword or drowned in a
neighbouring lough. The news of this defeat hastened the steps of the
retreating army as it returned from Londonderry, and it fled in
confusion to Charlemont.

[Sidenote: Violent character of the Revolution in Scotland.]

[Sidenote: Opposition to a union.]

The same week which saw the relief of Londonderry and the battle of
Newton Butler was remarkable also for the great defeat of William's army
at Killiecrankie. In accordance with the character of the Scotch people,
and in some proportion to the cruelty which had been exercised upon
them, the Revolution in Scotland took a more violent form than it had
assumed in England, for in the North James had been able to carry out
more completely those plans which had produced his fall in the southern
kingdom. A Church repugnant to the majority of the people had been
forced upon them by law; in defiance of the opposition of a subservient
Parliament, all the high places had been filled with Papists;
nonconformity had been punished with an arbitrary severity and a
ferocious cruelty of which England showed no counterpart; the electoral
laws also, by requiring from all electors abjuration of the Covenant and
an assertion of the King's ecclesiastical supremacy, excluded all but
Prelatists from the right of election. Before collecting a national
Convention, to consider the state of the nation under the present
circumstances, it was necessary to dispense with the Act which excluded
Presbyterians from the franchise. The Convention consequently consisted
almost exclusively of Whigs, and the change of Government was marked by
grave disorders in many parts of the country; nor, though William
disliked these excesses, was he able to repress them, and the Episcopal
clergy were in many instances most roughly used. There was at first some
talk of a union with England, for the national feeling of the Scotch was
beginning to yield to the increasing belief that in most points,
especially of a financial and commercial character, such a union was
very desirable; while many even of the Whigs in England wished for a
union of the Churches and the establishment of Episcopacy on some broad
and general basis. But the religious feeling of the country was quite
averse to such a course, and William was too tolerant a man to wish to
apply any coercion to men's consciences. He therefore wrote a letter, in
which he did little else than profess his attachment to Protestantism,
and his wish if possible to establish the Union. The arrangements he
left in their own hands.

[Sidenote: Letters from James and William.]

[Sidenote: Dundee tries to secede.]

[Sidenote: Edinburgh arms.]

Unable himself to be present in Scotland, he intrusted the business to
the two Dalrymples, father and son, and to Lord Melville, a prudent man,
who, though he had retired abroad during the storm which succeeded the
Rye-House Plot, had never committed himself warmly to either party.
James's agents were Graham of Claverhouse, now Earl of Dundee, and
Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras. The Castle of Edinburgh, was in the hands of
Gordon, a Jacobite; and James's agents hoped that, by their own vigour
and by means of the dread inspired by the castle which commanded the
town, they might yet obtain a predominant influence in the Convention.
The first trial of strength was the election of a President, and before
long it became evident that the Whigs would certainly have the upper
hand. They elected the Duke of Hamilton, and about the middle of March
the regular sittings of the Convention began. At the first meeting,
letters from both King James and King William were produced; that of
James, the production of Melfort, was fitted, like most of the
productions of that statesman, to injure his master's cause as much as
possible. There was no word of repentance, no word of conciliation;
every line breathed an obstinate determination to continue in the old
course, and threats of vengeance on his enemies. Dundee and Balcarras
felt that all hope of maintaining a majority was lost, and having thus
failed in their first object, determined to pursue, in accordance with a
plan they had already arranged, a second line of policy, to secede with
their adherents to Stirling, and there establish a rival Convention. The
movement was thwarted by the premature retreat of Dundee. Edinburgh was
full of fierce Western Cameronians, and feeling that his life was
endangered, he hastily withdrew. The news that, with a party of his old
troopers, he had set out for Stirling, holding on his way a conference
with the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, excited the fears and hatred of
the Presbyterians in the Convention. They at once proceeded to rouse the
people of Edinburgh to arms, and to place the town in an attitude of
defence, and thus thwart the idea of secession. They then went on to
consider the state of the nation, and declaring that the late King had
forfeited the throne by misconduct, offered the Crown to William and
Mary. The offer was accompanied, as in the case of England, with a
Declaration of Right,--here in Scotland called the Claim of Right,--in
which, without discussing the question, they declared that Episcopacy
was abolished. The Crown was then solemnly offered and accepted.

[Sidenote: The Club.]

[Sidenote: Dundee escapes.]

Yet the difficulties of William were still most severe. The bigoted
Covenanters held aloof from a tolerant King who had not taken the
Covenant; and a number of extreme Whigs, who were attached to a monarchy
so limited as to be really a republic, put themselves at the head of a
factious opposition, forming among themselves an organization known by
the name of the Club. While this powerful opposition was being formed in
the Lowlands, war in behalf of the fugitive King actually broke out in
the Highlands. Dundee, on his flight from Edinburgh, had remained for
some time peaceably in his own house. But letters passing between him
and Melfort, James's minister in Ireland, were intercepted. An order was
issued to arrest him, with his colleague Balcarras. Balcarras was
secured, but Dundee fled towards Inverness, where he found a state of
affairs which he was able to turn to the advantage of James.

[Sidenote: Highland politics.]

The politics of the Highland clans bore little relation to the general
politics of the nation. The Highlanders were as yet a half savage race,
devoted to their patriarchal form of society, and with political
attachments which seldom went beyond the head of their tribe. It
mattered but little to them whether James or William were upon the
Scottish throne. They were equally ready to oppose by violence any
Government which interfered with their wild freedom. But among
themselves they had bitter tribal jealousies and feuds, and the partial
introduction of the feudal system had complicated their relations one
with the other. Great chiefs, combining the character of feudal lords
and clan patriarchs, had contrived to extend their power, and render
other clans besides their own dependent or tributary. The Earl or
Marquis of Argyle, Mac Callum More, as the Highlanders called him, head
of the great clan of Campbell in Argyleshire, had thus extended his
pre-eminence at the expense of his neighbours. The power of this chief
was great. He could bring 5000 men into the field, and his jurisdiction
was so independent as to be hardly second to that of the Crown;
consequently all his neighbours looked upon him with jealousy and
hatred. That the politics of the head of the Campbell clan were
consistently Whig was enough to make all his rivals and enemies
Jacobites. But of late years the power of the Campbells had decayed;
during the triumph of the Stuart Kings the Marquis of Argyle had been
beheaded, and the Earl, his son, had been driven into exile. As the
Campbells sunk, the Macdonalds, the chief rivals of their clan, on whose
property they had encroached, had risen. But the Macdonalds had a
constant feud with the Mackintoshes in the neighbourhood of Inverness,
in pursuance of which Macdonald of Keppoch was at this moment engaged in
the siege of Inverness, which had made common cause with the
Mackintoshes.

[Sidenote: Dundee in the Highlands.]

When therefore Dundee came into that neighbourhood he found the clans
already in arms on quarrels of their own. It occurred to him that, by
taking advantage of the general enmity against the Campbells, he might
form a union of the clans, nominally at all events in favour of King
James. His plan met with a partial success. He could not indeed induce
the Mackintoshes to join with the Macdonalds, but he secured their
neutrality. The eastern clans as a rule followed the same course; but
those of the west, more immediate sufferers from the power and
encroachments of the Campbells, eagerly leapt at the opportunity of
attacking the party of which Argyle was one of the chiefs. Mackay was
sent to take the command of the English troops. With his regular
soldiers he could do nothing against the rapid Highlanders in the
mountains, and urged the plan, subsequently followed, of building a line
of forts across the country. The campaign produced no event of
importance. A cessation of arms occurred in June, spent by Dundee in
obtaining succour from James in Ireland, by Mackay in raising troops
with some difficulty among the Western Cameronians.

[Sidenote: Battle of Killiecrankie. July 27.]

[Sidenote: Mackay concludes the war.]

A fresh dispute among the clans renewed the war. The Murrays, of whom
Athol was the chief, had not as yet declared for either side. The
Marquis of Athol himself withdrew for safety to England, but his eldest
son declared for King William, while his steward, who was believed to be
in his confidence, declared for James. The two sections of the clan
disputed the possession of the castle of Blair Athol, the seat of the
chief. It was felt by both parties that the adhesion of this large clan
was of great importance, and Dundee on one side and Mackay on the other
hurried to support their friends at Blair Athol. The castle lies a
little beyond the northern end of the pass of Killiecrankie, a ravine
through which the river Garry rushes, and which leads from the lowlands
of Perthshire to the mountains. The armies were not ill-matched in
numbers. Mackay's troops were suffered by the Highlanders to get clear
of the difficult pass, and then found themselves in a little valley,
with the Highlanders occupying the hills around. As long as it was an
affair of musketry, the Lowland troops, many of whom were veterans, held
their ground, but when the clans suddenly threw their firelocks from
them and rushed with a wild yell on their lines, they broke and fled,
with the exception of one regiment, and rushed in helpless flight down
the narrow pass. It was the difference in the weapons which caused this
strange victory of undisciplined over disciplined troops. When he had
fired his volley, the Highlander threw away his firelock, and was ready
in an instant to rush forward with his broadsword. The bayonet at that
time in use was so constructed that, when fixed, it filled up the mouth
of the barrel. It took some minutes to arrange the clumsy contrivance
which turned the musket into a pike. While the regulars were still
fumbling with their weapons, the Highlanders were upon them.[1] Mackay
brought off such troops as were left with rare coolness, and the death
of Dundee neutralized the effects of the defeat. The Highland army
passed under the command of General Cannon, who had brought over the
Irish auxiliaries, a man of no particular ability. Mackay succeeded in
rapidly re-establishing his army. He destroyed the prestige of the
Highlanders by defeating a detachment at St. Johnstone's, near Perth;
and when a newly raised regiment of Cameronian recruits beat off the
mountaineers at Dunkeld, no longer held together by a leader of ability,
they broke up and retired to their own glens, and the war was
practically over.

[Sidenote: Factions of the English Parliament.]

[Sidenote: Bill of Indemnity dropped.]

[Sidenote: Attack on Halifax.]

Though William's measures had thus been tolerably successful, although
the Revolution was acknowledged in two portions of the Empire, and
likely soon to become so in the third, his position in London was most
difficult and trying. Success had dissolved the union between the Whigs
and Tories, and the triumphant Whigs had time to remember their
sufferings in the last reign and to form plans of vengeance. The King
desired above all things the cessation of faction and the union of
parties, but on every question which arose the Commons displayed a most
passionate temper. A certain number of attainders were reversed, and
this was well enough; but when a Bill of Indemnity was brought in, so
many exceptions were made to it, that it became in fact rather a Bill of
vengeance than a Bill of oblivion. The discussion of these exceptions
lasted so long that the Bill had to be dropped for that session. But the
intemperate Whig leaders, such men as Howe, Sacheverell, and the younger
Hampden, were not contented to be thus balked of their revenge. Fierce
attacks were brought against the Lord President Caermarthen, and
Halifax, the Privy Seal. The position of Caermarthen was so strong that
his enemies were afraid to divide the House against him. Halifax had
made more enemies, and was not so firmly supported by the King's
influence. The practical mind of William found little to like in the
subtle and questioning intellect of Halifax; and as the affairs in
Ireland had been virtually entirely in that nobleman's control, the
wretched condition of the Protestants, the lengthened misery of
Londonderry, and the temporary success of James and Tyrconnel, were all
laid to his charge. It was said that he even purposely neglected Ireland
in order to render a new Government indispensable. However, he contrived
to escape impeachment by a narrow majority of sixteen; and the relief of
Londonderry, and the immediate despatch of Schomberg at the head of a
considerable body of troops to support the Protestant interest, tended
to check the vehemence of the popular anger which was directed against
him.

[Sidenote: Misery of the English army in Ireland.]

Late in August, the Parliament broke up till October, and all eyes were
turned towards the fate of Schomberg's expedition. His troops consisted
for the most part of raw recruits, scarcely able to discharge their
firelocks. He could not venture to fight with such an army, but
displayed great skill and determination in the manner in which he
overcame overwhelming difficulties; for, while encamped in the
neighbourhood of Dundalk, treason was discovered in the camp of some
French Protestant refugees, some regiments of which accompanied him. The
refugees themselves were trustworthy, but a certain number of other
foreigners had found their way into their regiments, and opened
correspondence with the Irish. Sharp vengeance fell upon the chief
conspirators. But a more terrible enemy than treason attacked the
English troops. A deadly pestilence arose and carried them off by
hundreds: their misery was unspeakable; the ties of morality and decorum
were relaxed, the men got drunk sitting on the corpses of their dead
comrades, and the horror of the time is well shown by the fact, that
several ships lay in Carrickfergus Bay filled with carcases, and not a
live man on board. The blame of the wretched condition of the army was
traceable to the general maladministration which existed in the
Government. The Chief Commissary was a man named Shales, who supplied
the army with quite uneatable food, drew money largely for supplies
which never reached the troops, and let out the troop horses, when
collected, to English farmers. But it was not only in the army that this
maladministration was visible. Admiral Herbert, now Lord Torrington,
sunk in debauchery, allowed the same offences to be perpetrated in the
navy. It would be unfair to lay this to the charge of William. The
deeprooted mismanagement of the last twenty years rendered it almost
impossible for him to introduce reforms with any rapidity, nor, with all
the weight of foreign affairs on his hands, could he personally
supervise every department. His own department was well and
successfully managed, and the English troops abroad won some honour in a
skirmish against the French at Walcourt.

[Sidenote: Parliament meets. Oct. 19, 1689.]

[Sidenote: The violence of the Whigs.]

[Sidenote: The Tories throw out the Corporation Act.]

[Sidenote: William threatens to leave England.]

[Sidenote: Dissolves Parliament, Jan. 27, 1690, and undertakes Irish
war.]

Still it was not to be expected that Parliament, on its reassembling,
should be in a better temper than when it separated. It again renewed
its violent courses. The necessary supplies were indeed voted; The Bill
of Rights, by which the Declaration of Right was to be formed into a
statute, and which in the last session had been thrown aside because the
Lords wished to introduce the name of the Electress Sophia in the
succession to the throne, was passed without that amendment; but besides
this scarcely any other work was done. On the other hand, the Whig
majority proceeded on their course of vengeance. The Earls of Salisbury
and Peterborough, Sir Edward Hales and Obadiah Walker were impeached; a
Committee to inquire into the death of Russell and Sidney, known as the
Murder Committee, was appointed, and the attack upon Halifax renewed. At
length the Whigs, conscious that the King was not well pleased with
their vindictive temper, attempted to secure their own permanent
supremacy in Parliament. They introduced a Corporation Bill, for
restoring all the charters which had been forfeited in the reign of
James; and to this, at the suggestion of Sacheverell and Howard, were
appended two clauses, the one providing that all who had taken part in
the surrender of the charters should be incapable of holding office for
seven years, the other adding that all who, in spite of being thus
incapacitated, presumed to hold office should be fined £500, and be
debarred for life from public employment. These clauses, which would
have in fact disfranchized the Tory party in every borough, they
attempted to pass through the House by a surprise, when the greater part
of the Tory party had returned home for Christmas. But so violent and
factious a measure called out all the energies of the Opposition. The
country gentlemen came crowding back to town, and, after a violent
debate, the Whigs were defeated by a small majority. The Tories thought
to improve their triumph by reintroducing the Bill of Indemnity without
the exceptions, but they quite overrated their strength. Their attempt
was defeated by an enormous majority, and a Bill of Pains and Penalties
incorporated with the Indemnity Act, which rendered it a mere measure of
proscription. But this violent measure was not destined to pass the
House. The fierce struggle of parties was so repugnant to the King, any
attempt at firm national government appeared to him so hopeless, that,
having secretly arranged means of retiring to Holland, he sent for his
ministers, and told them it was his intention to withdraw from England,
leaving the Queen upon the throne. The threat stupefied the Whigs. To
whatever excesses their passion may have led them, they felt that their
safety was bound up with the prudent chief they had elected. A
passionate scene ensued, in which the Tory Nottingham and the Whig
Shrewsbury vied with each other in intreating William to forego his
plan. At length he yielded, but determined that he would escape from the
atmosphere of faction which surrounded him, and himself go to carry on
the war in Ireland. Having stated that such was his unalterable
intention, he prorogued and dissolved the factious Parliament which he
had been unable to bring to reason.

[Sidenote: Tory reaction in new Parliament.]

[Sidenote: Venality of Parliament.]

The dissolution brought with it a reaction. The Tories in the New
Parliament were as strong as the Whigs had lately been. Even London
returned four opponents to the obnoxious clauses of the Corporation Act.
As yet the theory of a ministry not having been established, there was
no great change, yet the balance among the ministers was somewhat
altered. Halifax withdrew from the Government; the Board of Treasury and
the Board of Admiralty were both reconstituted, with a larger proportion
of Tories, and Caermarthen attained such an amount of power as to make
him virtually Prime Minister. Sir John Lowther was put at the head of
the Treasury, while the purchase of votes, an art at which Caermarthen
was an adept, and which for many years to come was constantly employed
by the Government, was intrusted to Sir John Trevor, who became Speaker.
William had hitherto tried to act without bribery; he had found his
efforts futile, and his influence in Parliament neutralized by the
passion of faction. He now, against his own feelings, allowed
Caermarthen to have his way. The strange venality of Parliament at this
time, and for many years afterwards, may probably be traced to the fact
that the secrecy with which debates in Parliament were shrouded
prevented the exercise of any wholesome popular opinion upon the vote of
the representatives, while the Crown had lost that power of coercing the
Opposition which it had enjoyed in the time of the Tudors. It became
necessary to purchase what could not be procured by violence, while
there was no pressure from without to restrain the cupidity of
unprincipled members. With his new Parliament William found himself more
free to act.

[Sidenote: The revenue settled.]

Its first duty was the settlement of the revenue. This had hitherto been
chiefly collected under Acts passed for short terms only. It was now put
on a permanent basis. The hereditary revenues, consisting of the rents
of royal domains, fees and fines, post office and ecclesiastical dues,
together with that portion of the excise which had been paid to Charles
II. as the price for the abolition of feudal services, were given to
William and Mary. These revenues amounted to about £400,000 or £500,000
a year. The King had hoped to obtain a grant for life of the other
excise and custom duties which had been granted to James, and had
amounted to £900,000 a year; but the Tory majority felt as distinctly as
their opponents that an income which set the Crown free from the
necessity of consulting Parliament might prove a source of evils similar
to those of the last reign. They therefore gave William for life only
£300,000 a year from the excise, the remaining £600,000, which arose
from customs, they granted for four years only.

[Sidenote: Act of Grace, May 20.]

On other points the Parliament now acted more in accordance with the
King's wishes, although the Whigs produced several embarrassing
measures, and attempted to compel all place-holders to take an oath
abjuring King James. But William was determined to check the course of
vengeance; the known wish of the King enabled the Tories to throw out
the obnoxious measure, and the revenge of the Whigs was finally balked
by an Act of Grace from the Crown, which took the place of the
unfinished Bill of Indemnity. This declared a perfect oblivion for all
political offences up to that moment, excepting from the benefits of the
Act only such of the regicides as were still alive, and about thirty
others; of whom some were either dead or in safety abroad, while the
rest, though in England, were suffered to live unharmed. It is a noble
addition to the glory of William that, through his firmness and
generosity, no blood was shed at the Great Revolution.

[Sidenote: Preparation for war.]

[Sidenote: Jacobite plot discovered.]

Meanwhile the King had been hastening preparations for his war. The
number of the troops in Ireland had been raised to 30,000, at length
well armed and well provisioned; a fleet, with still more provisions and
equipments, was ready to receive the King at Chester. But at that moment
it became very difficult for him to leave the country, for the Jacobites
had determined to seize the opportunity of his absence for a great
effort. Clarendon the Queen's uncle, Dartmouth commander of the fleet
which should have opposed William's landing, and Preston James's last
Secretary of State, were the leaders of the scheme. Fortunately their
secrets were intrusted to a man named Fuller, who at once determined to
turn traitor. He gave over to the Privy Council the despatches from the
Queen in France, which had been sewn into his buttons. His
fellow-messenger was apprehended; when convicted and condemned to death,
he too confessed, and the chiefs of the conspiracy were in the hands of
the Government. Nevertheless it was a terrible time to be absent from
home. An insurrection might break out at any moment, and an invasion was
threatened from France.

[Sidenote: William goes to Ireland.]

[Sidenote: Threatened invasion and insurrection.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Beachy Head.]

[Sidenote: Spirited behaviour of England.]

William was determined that, come what would, he would put an end to the
disgraceful state of affairs in Ireland. He placed the Government in the
hands of the Queen, assisted by a Council of nine, with Danby for her
chief minister, Admiral Russell to advise her on naval, and Marlborough
on military affairs, and then crossed to Belfast. Fortunately the two
objects of the Jacobites proved incompatible; the threatened invasion so
roused the national spirit, that domestic insurrection became
impossible. While William advanced southward, and the Irish army,
reinforced by a considerable number of French under Lauzun, fell back
behind the Boyne, a great French fleet under Tourville appeared off the
Needles. Torrington, the English commander, had been reinforced by a
Dutch squadron, yet shrunk from the encounter, and retreated towards the
Straits of Dover. The Queen and her Council sent peremptory orders to
fight. Jealous of Russell, afraid of risking a great battle with
superior numbers, Torrington unwillingly obeyed. With shameful policy,
he sent the Dutch squadron forward to bear the brunt of the danger, and
left it almost unsupported, till, after exhibiting their usual stubborn
bravery, the Dutch were compelled to fall back with their shattered
ships, and Tourville swept the Channel unopposed. Almost at the same
time as the news of this disgraceful defeat reached London, tidings
arrived that the allies, under the Prince of Waldeck, had been beaten by
Luxemburg at the battle of Fleurus. But the very misfortunes which
seemed falling upon the nation roused its spirit. The Lord Mayor offered
the Queen at once £100,000, 10,000 Londoners, well armed for immediate
purposes, and six regiments of foot and two regiments of horse, to be
raised at once, without cost to the Crown. The same temper was visible
throughout England, and suddenly, after three days of depression, hope
was again raised in the national mind by the news of the battle of the
Boyne.

[Sidenote: Battle of the Boyne. July 1, 1690.]

James had determined to make a stand behind that river, which separates
the counties of Louth and Meath, falling into the sea at Drogheda. The
position was a fairly strong one; the ground rose immediately from the
river, and some of William's generals scarcely liked to venture upon an
attack. But he felt that some great blow was necessary to retrieve the
disasters of the last year, and he gave orders for crossing the river at
once. Early in the morning of the 1st of July the English began to
advance. Young Schomberg was sent some miles up the river, to cross at
the bridge of Slane, and thus turn the left flank of the Irish army. His
success in this movement alarmed Lauzun. There was a narrow passage at
Duleek, four miles south of the Boyne, where two carriages could
scarcely pass between impassable bogs. If Schomberg could secure this
pass the Irish would be enclosed in a trap. It was necessary at any
price to avoid this danger; Lauzun therefore marched to oppose him,
taking with him all the French troops, leaving the Irish alone to hold
the river. William commanded the left wing, formed entirely of horse. He
fought his way across the river not far above Drogheda. In the centre
Schomberg led the main body of the infantry across the fords of Old
Bridge. The Irish infantry which should have opposed him, thoroughly
demoralized by a year spent under lax discipline and in habits of
plunder, fled at the first onset. The cavalry, who had been more
carefully drilled under command of the traitor Richard Hamilton, strove
in vain to restore the day. For half an hour the struggle in the bed of
the river was fierce. The leader of the Protestant refugees was killed,
and Schomberg himself, while rallying these troops, and calling out to
them, "Come on, gentlemen, there are your persecutors," also fell. But
William, having crossed with the left wing, now came up on the flank of
the Irish, and the passage was secured. The Irish cavalry were left
entirely unsupported by the infantry. Fighting bravely, and with
considerable loss, they were slowly driven from the ground. Their leader
Richard Hamilton was taken prisoner. James, whose personal courage it
had been usual to praise, turned early from the fight and fled towards
Dublin. The rout of fugitives hurried through the pass of Duleek,
covered by the French infantry, who had been resisting young Schomberg's
flank attack all the day. William is said to have been slack in the
pursuit; Schomberg's death, and his own exhaustion, after having been
thirty-five hours out of the last forty on horseback, may have been the
cause of this. On neither side was the loss very great. Of the English
about 500 are said to have been killed, of the Irish 1500; but they
were chiefly cavalry, the only trustworthy Irish troops.

[Sidenote: James's final flight.]

James, having reached Dublin, summoned the Lord Mayor and principal
Catholic citizens to the castle. Forgetful of his own speedy flight, he
upbraided the Irish for cowardice, and vowed he would never more command
an Irish army. He then at once took flight again, hurried to Waterford,
and thence by Kinsale to France. Lauzun and Tyrconnel, with the remains
of their army, also thought it desirable to evacuate the capital, which
William entered in triumph. For a short time he thought of returning to
England, for news of the defeat of Beachy Head and of the battle of
Fleurus had reached him, and his presence in London seemed necessary.
But when he heard of the courageous spirit showed by the nation, and
knew that the only use Tourville had made of his victory was to attack
and burn Teignmouth, thus still further exasperating the people, he felt
that the crisis was over, that he might remain to complete his victory.

[Sidenote: Siege of Limerick.]

[Sidenote: William returns to England. Sept. 6.]

[Sidenote: Marlborough's success in the south.]

He gradually conquered the country as far as Limerick. There the Irish
stood at bay. In the eyes of the French commander nothing could be more
useless than the attempt to defend the city. "The walls could be knocked
down with roasted apples," said Lauzun. He consequently withdrew his
troops, and the Irish were left to themselves, under the command of
Sarsfield, the only Irish general who seems to have possessed any
military character, and vain though their hopes seemed to Lauzun, the
defence of the city was successful. The want of artillery at first
checked the proceedings of the besiegers. A daring raid, headed by
Sarsfield, destroyed the convoy which was bringing up the siege train.
The artillery was buried and exploded, and Sarsfield's party returned
unhurt. Then came the heavy rains which occur at this season in Ireland;
the country around the town became a marsh. A final vigorous assault
proved unsuccessful, and the siege was raised. This check was somewhat
balanced by the success of an expedition planned and commanded by
Marlborough, which had landed in the south, and in five weeks had
conquered both Cork and Kinsale. William returned to England in
September, intrusting the government to three Lords Justices, and the
management of the war to Ginkel. But no further military operation of
importance took place till May in the following year.

[Sidenote: St. Ruth comes from France.]

[Sidenote: Siege of Athlone.]

The northern and eastern part of the island was in the hands of the
English, and brought under some sort of government by the Lords
Justices. In that part trade and industry had revived. In the Irish
portion of the island, into which the Celtic inhabitants had crowded,
there was wild confusion and much distress. Gangs of robbers infested
the country, the soldiers were little better themselves than robbers.
The currency of James's brass money entirely ruined trade. As usual in
Ireland, jealousy of race began to show itself. In the Councils of
Regency and of War, to whom the management of James's affairs were
intrusted, men not of Irish blood had considerable influence; they were
therefore involved in constant quarrels with the purely Irish party.
Some order however began to show itself when Tyrconnel returned from
France, accompanied by a French general of ability called St. Ruth. St.
Ruth devoted himself with extreme energy to discipline the crowd of
disorderly bandits whom he had to command, and prepared as well as he
could to oppose the advance of Ginkel, who, seconded by Tollemache and
Mackay, moved in the beginning of June from their headquarters at
Mullingar. The French generals, both now and before, had been of opinion
that Athlone was the right spot for the Irish to make a stand. It lay
almost in the middle of the island, half on one side, half on the other
of the Shannon, separating the provinces of Leinster and Connaught.
Ginkel determined that he would take this place, which seemed to him to
be the key of the Irish frontier. It was a work of no common difficulty.
St. Ruth thought the attempt absolutely hopeless. "His master," he said
of Ginkel, "ought to hang him for attempting to take the town, mine
ought to hang me if I lose it." The half of the town upon the English
side of the river was taken on the 19th, but the real difficulty yet
remained. The narrow bridge which joined the two towns was gallantly
defended. There was a ford lower down, but it was almost impassable.
During the rest of the month the efforts of the besiegers were in vain.
At last want of supplies compelled them either to succeed or to retreat.
A gallant assault on the ford, which was almost up to the necks of the
men, proved successful; to the astonishment and anger of St. Ruth the
town was taken (June 30).

[Sidenote: Battle of Aghrim. July 12, 1691.]

In spite of the advice of Sarsfield and the rest of the Irish generals,
who wisely wished to employ their undisciplined troops in a partisan
warfare, St. Ruth determined to fight. He fell back about thirty miles
from Athlone, to the hill of Aghrim, where his troops occupied rising
ground, covered along its whole front by a deep bog; while along the
bottom of the firm ground ran enclosures, which were turned into
breastworks. Against these difficulties Ginkel marched. But the Irish,
now well posted and well commanded, showed such firmness, that it seemed
probable they would make good their position, and evening was already
drawing on, when at length Mackay, with the English and Huguenot
cavalry, succeeded in passing the bog, and placing his troops on the
flank of the Irish army. At this critical moment St. Ruth was killed.
With singular folly, his friends concealed his death, not only from his
men, but also from his generals. Sarsfield had been ordered to remain
immoveable with reserves till St. Ruth ordered his advance, as the order
did not come Sarsfield did not move, and the victory of the English thus
became complete. The Irish army broke up, and was pursued with
relentless cruelty; 6000 or 7000 Irish are said to have been put to
death as they fled. The plain beyond the field of battle was so studded
with white corpses, that it was described as looking like a pasture
covered with flocks of sheep.

[Sidenote: Second siege and capitulation of Limerick. Oct. 3.]

[Sidenote: End of the Irish war.]

This battle completed the conquest of Ireland. The fall of Galway
immediately followed, and Ginkel proceeded to attack for a second time
the city of Limerick. The chances were now all in favour of the English,
while the Irish were thoroughly disheartened by their late defeat.
Ginkel's army was well supplied, and all hope of succour was cut off
from the besieged by an English squadron which occupied the Shannon.
Under these circumstances a capitulation was granted, the terms of which
were fairly favourable to the Irish. By the military treaty, all
officers and soldiers who desired it were conveyed to France, under
command of their own generals. By the civil treaty, the Roman Catholics
were promised the enjoyment of such privileges as they had enjoyed in
the reign of Charles II. To all who took the oath of allegiance a
perfect amnesty was promised. It is to the disgrace of England that this
treaty with regard to the Catholics was not kept. For the time, however,
Ireland was completely subdued, and the English supremacy established so
firmly, that for more than a century, in spite of the difficulties which
more than once beset the English Government, no outbreak of the Irishry
against the Englishry was even suggested.

[Sidenote: Revolution completed in Scotland.]

In Scotland, at length, the establishment of the Government was equally
complete. The members of the factious Club had gone so far as to make
common cause with the Jacobites. But in the Parliament which met in
1690, under the management of Melville as Lord High Commissioner, the
Government succeeded in obtaining a majority. The union among its
opponents was at once dissolved. A general acquiescence met the
re-establishment of the Presbyterian form of Church government, and no
further difficulties of importance were to be apprehended. William could
now turn his attention to the affairs of England and of the Continent.

[Sidenote: Jacobite plots in England.]

[Sidenote: Preston's plot thwarted.]

In England, from the middle of 1690, the Jacobite intrigues continued.
The lenity shown by William, after the abortive efforts of the Jacobites
during the threatened French invasion, encouraged further conspiracies.
It seemed certain that William's presence would be required abroad, and
that again during his absence an opportunity would be offered for
striking a blow against the Government. In December 1690, a meeting was
held of the leading Jacobites, and it was determined that Preston should
be sent to St. Germains. He was to beg James to return to England,
bringing with him a sufficient French force to secure his success, but
at the same time, in the name of the Jacobites, he was to intreat him to
allow the Protestant religion to remain undisturbed, and to rule in
strict accordance with law. Besides this general letter, separate papers
were intrusted to Preston, especially one from the nonjuring Bishop
Turner, apparently in the name of Sancroft and his brother Bishops. He
also took with him notes as to the most vulnerable points of the coast.
But the captain of the ship which was engaged to take him over thought
it wiser to inform Lord Caermarthen what he was doing, and just as the
messengers thought they were safe out of the river, a vessel of
remarkable swiftness belonging to Lord Caermarthen's son suddenly
appeared alongside, and they were discovered hidden among the gravel
which formed the ballast of their vessel.

[Sidenote: William's successful policy abroad.]

[Sidenote: First crisis of the war over.]

The capture of Preston, and the disclosure of the Jacobite plot, allowed
William to go abroad, leaving the complete investigation of the treason
to his ministers in England. On the Continent his diplomacy had been
singularly successful. He had brought together a great coalition, and
had succeeded in winning the Duke of Savoy, whom the King of France had
reckoned among his allies, and whose territory closed the passage of the
French to the Spanish dominions in Italy. Success would have cemented
the coalition, and induced Denmark and Sweden, which were still
wavering, to join it. But in rapidity of action a coalition is seldom a
match for a single power, and Louis was able to forestall the action of
the allies, and capture the important fortress of Mons, in spite of all
William's efforts to relieve it. But this first success, though damaging
to the coalition, produced no very important military events; the
advantages of the French both in Spain and Italy were counterbalanced by
the disasters which befell their allies the Turks in Hungary, and the
main armies in Flanders under William and Luxemburg were content merely
to watch each other. The first crisis of the war was in fact over. The
centre of the coalition was William; his strength was derived from his
position as King of England; deprived of that position, he would have
lost most of his influence, and the only chance of depriving him of it
had been the success of the Irish. It was in Ireland, therefore, that
the real crisis of the war had arrived. The defeat of James at the Boyne
in 1690, and of St. Ruth at Aghrim almost exactly a year after, had thus
rendered all hopes of destroying William's position futile. Once again,
in the following year, the same critical situation of affairs arose.
With the battle of La Hogue the success of James became hopeless, and
though the war continued for many years, there is no other point in it
which can really be called critical.

[Sidenote: James's hopes upheld by the treason of the ministry]

[Sidenote: and of Marlborough.]

The causes which led James still to cherish hope, and which induced him
to persuade Louis to contemplate that invasion of England to which the
battle of La Hogue put an end, are to be found in the conduct of the
Jacobite party in England: for while William's attention was constantly
turned to the Continent, treason found its way among his own immediate
ministers. Uncertain even yet of the stability of the new Government,
three of the greatest among them determined to be safe on either issue.
Admiral Russell, and Godolphin, head of the Treasury, succeeded in
obtaining written pardons from James; and Marlborough, whose previous
treachery might have been supposed unpardonable, made such a show of
repentance, that he obtained the same favour, promising in exchange,
when he should be in command of the English troops, to bring them over
to the enemy. But even the treachery of Marlborough partook of the
greatness of his character. His views reached far beyond this
commonplace act of treason. He was already devising plans by which the
fate of England and of Europe should be in his own hands. As his schemes
were not yet ready, though the opportunity he had mentioned to James
arose in Flanders, he contrived to excuse himself from performing his
promise. But before long circumstances led him to believe that he might
carry out his treacherous plans in a way more in accordance with his
own wishes. The session of Parliament had been a somewhat stormy one.
The immense emoluments of place-holders had excited the anger of the
Opposition, and although the extreme measures suggested, which went so
far as to cut down all official salaries to £500, had destroyed all
attempts at wholesome reform, there was much continued discontent
against the Court. There had been bitter quarrels also between the Upper
and Lower Houses upon new arrangements of the Treason Law which had been
suggested, and all parties seemed to be combined in mistrust and dislike
of the favours lavished on foreigners. This state of affairs seemed to
open the way for Marlborough's intrigues. In fact, years of rivalry and
several bloody wars, coupled with constant outrages on one side or the
other on distant colonies, had rendered the Dutch at least as hateful to
the English as the French; nor was the feeling diminished by seeing many
of the greater and more lucrative offices in the hands of members of the
hated nation. By working on this feeling, Marlborough hoped to induce
Parliament to petition the King to discharge all foreign troops, a line
of conduct which at a subsequent period was actually followed. Once rid
of these troops (and he thought it impossible that William, situated as
he was, could withstand a formal Parliamentary request), Marlborough
relied on his own ability to induce the English army, which was very
jealous of William's liking for his own Dutch troops, to further his
views. The absolute authority which his wife exercised over the Princess
Anne enabled him to secure her adhesion to his plans. She wrote friendly
and repentant letters to her father. With the army at his command, and
with the Protestant heiress inclined to favour his projects, Marlborough
would declare for James, and secure his return without the danger of
foreign invasion, without the shedding of a drop of blood. Such at least
was the story he told the Jacobites. Men who knew his character
mistrusted him. It was more likely, they thought, and this seems to have
been his real plan, that he would declare not for King James, but for
Princess Anne herself. He would thus become indirectly the ruler of
England, and as such the head of the European coalition, and the arbiter
of Europe.

[Sidenote: Marlborough is deprived of his offices. Jan. 10, 1692.]

[Sidenote: The Queen's quarrel with the Princess Anne.]

Luckily for William, even the Jacobites looked with suspicion on the
scheme; Bentinck received information of Marlborough's treachery. The
King, placed on his guard, stripped him of all his offices; and when
Anne, who knew well the reason of his disgrace, persisted in ignoring it
and in bringing the Duchess of Marlborough to Court, the spirit of the
Queen was roused, and a bitter quarrel broke out between the sisters.
The full details of the plot were not at the time known, and a false
plot, invented and brought to light by a wretched informer of the name
of Fuller, gave Marlborough an opportunity of ostentatiously clearing
his character. He was thus regarded as a martyr to the jealousy of
William, and to an unreasonable dislike of her sister on the part of the
Queen.

Although for the time the danger of Marlborough's treason seemed to have
been escaped, it was undoubtedly the knowledge of its existence, and of
the feeling prevalent among William's other ministers, that encouraged
James still to retain hopes of success in England.

[Sidenote: Massacre of Glencoe. Feb. 13.]

Before passing to the events to which those hopes gave rise, an incident
must be mentioned which, though it had but little effect at the moment,
has been always considered as a blot on William's character, and added
point to the bitter attacks directed against him towards the close of
his reign. Melville had proved unequal to the task of governing
Scotland, and the management of the affairs of that country had passed
almost entirely into the hands of the Dalrymples, father and son, the
elder of whom was President of the Court of Session, having been lately
raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair. The son, known as
the Master of Stair, was appointed Secretary for Scotland, resident in
London. To him now fell the duty of pacifying the Highlands, where the
civil war continued to smoulder. Unable to give the Highlanders any
effectual support, James had told them that they were at liberty to make
peace with the conqueror. It has been already mentioned that local
politics had more to do with the conduct of the Highlanders than any
question as to the reigning dynasty, and that their hatred directed
against the head of the Campbell clan arose largely from the condition
of dependence to him in which they found themselves, and which was due
in a great degree to unpaid arrears of rent. It was determined now to
adopt a plan which had been formerly suggested, and to expend some
£15,000 in relieving them from their difficulties. The distribution of
this money was unwisely intrusted to Breadalbane, himself a Campbell,
and too much interested in the encroachments of that house not to be
unpopular. He was profoundly and justly mistrusted by the Highlanders,
and the negotiations for the distribution of the money proceeded but
slowly, the chief leader of the opposition to the settlement being
Macdonald of Glencoe, one of that tribe which had suffered most from the
growth of the Campbells. Pressure was put upon the Highlanders to bring
the negotiation to a conclusion. A proclamation was issued, promising
pardon to all who, before the 31st of December 1691, should swear to
live peaceably under the existing Government. All who refused to take
this oath were to be regarded as public enemies. As the Government
appeared to be in earnest, the chiefs yielded, making it a sort of point
of honour to yield as slowly as possible. In this foolish contest of
honour Mac Ian of Glencoe was unfortunately the victor. Not till the
very day named did he appear at Fort William to take the oaths. When he
arrived there he found to his dismay that there was no magistrate to
receive them, and he was compelled forthwith to set out through the
winter snow to Inverary to find a magistrate. The journey was so
difficult that it was not till the 6th of January that he reached
Inverary. Under the circumstances, the sheriff there consented, though
after the prescribed date, to receive the oath, and sent it, with a
certificate stating the circumstances to Edinburgh. The slowness of
Macdonald had played into the hands of his enemies the Campbells.
Breadalbane and Argyle were at one in their determination to use their
advantage, and they found a ready assistant in the Master of Stair,
whose views, free from all local feeling, were of the sternest
description, and who thought the Highlanders should be treated as
uncivilized barbarians. He had been disappointed at the submission of
the clans, and rejoiced at the opportunity of making one example. By his
means the certificate granted by the sheriff appears to have been
suppressed, and an order was drawn up and laid before William, in which,
along with other instructions to the commander of the army in Scotland,
were these words with regard to the clan of Glencoe: "It will be proper,
for the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of
thieves." William signed the order, probably without carefully reading
it, almost certainly without understanding what Dalrymple meant by
extirpation. His scheme was one of the utmost barbarity. A detachment of
soldiers was sent into the glen as though on a friendly mission. They
were kindly received and hospitably kept for more than a week. Then, at
a fixed date, when other troops were to have stopped all the passes,
they suddenly fell upon their kindly hosts and cruelly murdered them.
The plan was but partially carried out. The passes had not been stopped,
and not more than thirty-eight of the Highlanders were actually killed.
But the villages were destroyed, the cattle driven off, and it is
unknown how many more perished as they fled in the dead of winter in
the wild mountains which surrounded their glen.

[Sidenote: Threatened invasion of England.]

It was just after this event, in March, that William went abroad to
resume the Continental war. As usual, his absence was the time of danger
for England. An invasion from France had long been planned, and was on
the point of taking place. Excited by the constant untruthful account of
his agents in England, encouraged by the artful and well-planned
treachery of Marlborough and William's other ministers, James had never
ceased to press upon Louis the wisdom of an assault upon England. His
urgent instances had always been met by the opposition of the war
minister Louvois. Conscious that his superiority lay in the organization
of large disciplined armies in the field, and led by the experience of
his life to look to the great operations of regular warfare on the Rhine
and in Italy as the real sources of greatness for France, that minister
had always set his face against little wars. He was moreover jealous of
the influence of Lauzun at the Court of St. Germains, and had repeatedly
pointed out what was very true, the falseness of the Jacobite accounts,
the weak character of James, the total untrustworthiness of his
resources, and the consequent necessity which would be laid upon France
of carrying out such an invasion, in fact, entirely unaided. He had
dwelt also upon the strong national feeling of the English, repeatedly
exhibited when an invasion was threatened, and the uncertainty, even
were the attempt successful, of the continued assistance and alliance of
a Prince so ignorant and selfish as James. Nevertheless, in this
instance James was right, not that all and more than all that Louvois
urged was not true, but that the separation of England from the
coalition, the command of the sea, and the blow which would be dealt to
William's influence, were worth any sacrifice which France might make.
Louvois' arguments, however, had hitherto prevailed; the assistance
given to James had been but slight. But Louvois' death (which took place
on the 16th of July 1691) opened brighter hopes to the exiled King.
Louis was at length persuaded; and a vast plan was made which, had it
been carried out as intended, might well have been successful. An army
was secretly collected during the winter on the coast of Normandy. Two
fleets were assembled at Brest and at Toulon, numbering together 80
ships of the line, and placed under the command of Tourville and
D'Estrées, to convoy this army to England. James, misled by his hopes
and by the double-dealing of Russell, believed, and made Louis believe,
that the English fleet was thoroughly disaffected. Secure in this
belief, it was without much anxiety that the invaders found the spring
far advanced, while still the weather prevented the junction of the
fleets.

[Sidenote: Battle of La Hogue. May 19.]

But meanwhile all secresy had been lost. The Queen in England, and
William in Holland, had put forth all their energy, and a combined Dutch
and English fleet of 90 ships was in the Channel under command of
Russell. At last one French squadron, that of Tourville, consisting of
44 ships, made its appearance. It was supposed that, weak as it was, it
was sufficient for all necessary purposes; it could probably beat the
Dutch contingent, and the English fleet was of no account, for neither
Russell nor his men were likely to fight. Relying on this false belief,
Louis issued peremptory orders to his admiral to cover the invasion, and
fight the enemy wherever he met them. But James's folly had already gone
far to thwart any hopes based upon the temper of the English. He had
issued a Declaration, the work of his counsellor Melfort, excepting from
all hope of pardon, not only a long list of gentlemen by name, but whole
classes of Englishmen, all judges, jurymen, and lawyers who had been
employed in any of the prosecutions of Jacobites, all magistrates who
did not instantly (regardless of where they might be) make common cause
with him upon his appearance, all spies and informers who had divulged
his secrets, even the insignificant fishermen of Sheerness who had
hindered him on his first attempt to escape from England. So ridiculous,
so ill-judged was the Declaration, that, far from suppressing it, the
English Council reprinted it, and distributed it largely, with a few
pungent criticisms of their own. Even Jacobites had to confess that at
least 500 men were excepted. It is easy to conceive the effect of such a
Declaration, when contrasted with William's noble Act of Grace of the
preceding year. What James's folly had thus half done the Queen's
sagacity completed. Urged on all sides to apprehend known Jacobites,
with the denunciations of a plot, perfectly fictitious indeed, but none
the less very plausible, the creation of a rascal of the name of Young,
just placed in her hands, and fully conscious of the intrigues of
Russell her admiral, she wrote a noble letter, expressing her trust and
reliance on the patriotism of her fleet, and sent it to Russell, with
orders to read it to the captains of his fleet. Russell, at heart a Whig
and a devoted lover of his profession, hesitated no longer. He would
fight, he said, though King James himself were in the hostile fleet. He
went from ship to ship, encouraging the crews, and when Tourville bore
down upon him there was no sign of faint-heartedness in the English
fleet. Overpowered by numbers, the French fleet fled, broke into
fragments, and was destroyed piecemeal. But twelve of the largest ships,
with Tourville himself, took refuge under the Forts of La Hogue, under
the eyes of James and Marshal Bellefonds, commander of the army. There,
as they lay in two divisions in shallow water, they were attacked on two
successive days by a flotilla of English boats, under Admiral Rooke; and
under the guns of the forts, which were supposed to render them quite
secure, they were taken and burnt, while James looked on and saw the
destruction of this his last hope.

[Sidenote: Second crisis of the war over.]

[Sidenote: Subsequent ill success of the fleet.]

This great victory over the French, the first which the nation had won
for many years, drove the people wild with delight. All the more heavy
was their disappointment at the feeble manner in which it was followed
up, and at the ill success of the war in the Netherlands in the latter
part of the year. An expedition against St. Malo failed through the
jealousy of its commanders. The broken fleet of Tourville, unable to
keep the sea, assumed a new form. French cruisers and privateers covered
the ocean, and hundreds of English merchantmen fell a prey to them. The
commercial world suffered more heavily from the individual enterprises
of men such as the privateer captains Jean Bart and Dugouay Trouin than
from the great united fleets of France, and almost regretted the victory
which had called to life such enemies.

[Sidenote: Fall of Namur. June 30.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Steinkirk. Aug. 4.]

The chief incidents of the war in the Netherlands--the fall of the great
fortress of Namur, and the battle of Steinkirk--were very characteristic
of the art of war at this period. It was a time of slow, methodical, and
scientific movement in the field, but of great advance in the art of
attacking and defending fortresses, which in the hands of Vauban and
Cohorn was so far perfected, that for more than a century no important
change was made in the system they advocated. Louis did not press his
advantage; after taking Namur his army was diminished by detachments
sent to other quarters, and William thought he saw an opportunity of
striking a heavy blow against his weakened opponent. A traitor in the
English army had habitually informed Marshal Luxemburg of every movement
of the allied troops. His correspondence was discovered, and with a
pistol at his breast he was forced to write false information which
William dictated. Having thus, as he hoped, misdirected the vigilance of
his enemy, the King determined upon a surprise. The unexpected
difficulties offered by the country prevented its success. Luxemburg
got his troops into order with extraordinary rapidity, and the English
division under Mackay soon found itself hotly engaged. It was successful
in its first efforts, but the household troops of Louis were sent
against it, and Count Solmes withheld the supports which should have
come to its assistance. The division was nearly destroyed, and the anger
of the English blazed up fiercely against the Dutch general, who, set
over the head of the English commanders, thus basely deserted their
troops.

[Sidenote: Discontented Parliament. Nov. 4.]

It was thus, with many causes of discontent, that, upon the return of
William to England, the Parliament assembled. Mismanagement had
neutralized the great victory of La Hogue; the discovery of Preston's
plot had not been followed by a single act of justice upon the
Jacobites, a sharp quarrel had broken out between the Queen and her
sister, which, as Marlborough's treachery was unknown, seemed merely
capricious and causeless; the war in the Netherlands had been a mere
disastrous repetition of the last year's campaign; William's chief
misfortune was commonly attributed to the mismanagement, or perhaps the
treachery of the Dutch general; the House of Lords had been alienated by
the apprehension of two of its members, who had been put to their
recognizances, and no further charge brought against them; the harvest
in England had failed, so that corn had doubled its natural price; and
the police had grown so lax that highwaymen in gangs of twenty and
thirty infested the country, and robbed almost within sight of London.
Both Lords and Commons consequently entered warmly upon the
consideration of the state of the nation. But the continued jealousy
which existed between the two Houses brought their inquiries to nothing.
As yet neither Ministry nor Opposition was sufficiently organized to
secure the advantages either of stable government or of thorough reform.
The administration was carried on as before with all the evils of a
Ministry divided against itself, in the presence of a factious and
disorganized Opposition.

[Sidenote: The Land Tax.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the National Debt. Jan. 20, 1693.]

Some important steps were however taken with regard to finance. There
was still a tolerably unanimous feeling in favour of the war, and money
had to be procured. In the arrangements for supplying the necessary
money, the financial talents of Charles Montague, a young and rising
member of the Whig party, first became conspicuous. Early known as a man
of letters, and the author in company with Prior of "The Town and
Country Mouse," he had been introduced to the King by his patron the
Earl of Dorset, and, after strengthening his position by a marriage with
the Dowager Countess of Manchester, had entered political life, and had
been appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury in 1691. The financial
measures recommended consisted of a reorganization of the Land Tax and
of the first establishment of Government loans. The extraordinary
expenses of Government had in early times been met by subsidies. These
subsidies were levied both on moveables and on land, but were chiefly
supported by an assessment on the land at the nominal rate of four
shillings in the pound. Land had increased greatly in value as the
demand for it increased, while gold and silver had fallen greatly in
value after the discovery of America. In the assessment for subsidies
neither of these circumstances was taken into consideration. The four
shilling land tax had come in reality to be less than twopence in the
pound. During the Commonwealth, and subsequently, a different method of
taxation had been followed. The sum to be raised had been first
determined, and each landowner had been called upon to pay a
proportional share. In 1692 the Land Tax was reintroduced and
reorganized. A new valuation was made, and upon this basis a tax was
annually laid upon the land varying from a minimum of one shilling in
time of peace to four shillings in times of emergency. Four shillings on
this new valuation produced about £2,000,000. This sum fell considerably
short of what was required. In addition, therefore, a loan, which is the
origin of the National Debt, was raised. Money was plentiful in the
country, and was so easily obtained, that bubble companies and
stock-jobbing had become rife. Montague determined to turn some of this
superfluous wealth to the use of the country, and to spread the payment
of the debt over several generations. The plan at first adopted in
raising these loans was not exactly the same as our present method of
perpetual funding. The lenders were life annuitants, and the interest of
the loan was secured on new duties on beer and other liquors. As each
annuitant died his annuity was divided among the survivors, till their
number was reduced to seven, who would at that time be naturally in
receipt of an enormous interest on their original loan. After that, on
the death of each of those seven, his annuity lapsed to Government. The
whole debt would therefore be extinguished at the death of the
longest-lived annuitant.

[Sidenote: Disastrous campaign. 1693.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Landen. July 19.]

The money thus collected was soon spent upon another disastrous
campaign. Louis, in spite of the exhausted condition of his country,
made extraordinary efforts in all directions. As far as the English only
were concerned, the two great events of the campaign were the battle of
Landen and the destruction of the Smyrna fleet. Louis, using his late
conquest, Namur, for his point of departure, had formed two armies, one
under Boufflers, the other under Luxemburg, and hoped to repeat the
triumph of former years by the capture of either Liège or Brussels. But
he found it was impossible to take either of those cities without
fighting a pitched battle with William. In spite of the earnest request
of his generals, he withdrew to Versailles, and removed the army of
Boufflers to the Rhine. Though thus weakened, Luxemburg, by a threatened
attack upon Liège, induced William to reduce his forces to save that
town, and then falling upon him at Landen, defeated him after a battle,
the stubbornest and bloodiest of the war. William's skill somewhat
neutralized the effect of his defeat, and Charleroi was the only new
acquisition of the French in the Low Countries.

[Sidenote: Loss of the Smyrna fleet. June.]

The loss of the Smyrna fleet made perhaps even greater impression upon
the English than the defeat of Landen. The fleet, in which was
accumulated more than a year's supply for the Eastern markets, and which
numbered 400 ships, was to be convoyed in safety from London through the
Straits of Gibraltar. After passing the Channel unopposed, the English
admirals, supposing that the danger was over, withdrew towards England
with their ships of war, and the trading fleet passed onward, guarded
only by Rooke with about twenty men of war. Off St. Vincent it fell in
with the whole combined navy of France, for the squadrons of Toulon and
Brest had joined, and were lying in wait for their rich prey off the
coast of Spain. The convoy was completely broken up, many vessels
destroyed, while the others fled for safety in all directions. The loss
of the English was estimated at many millions. The disaster would
certainly have been much worse had not two Dutch ships which formed part
of the convoy gallantly sacrificed themselves, and engaged no less than
eighteen of the enemy's fleet.

In other parts of Europe the armies of France were equally successful.
Catalonia had been invaded and Rosas taken. Catinat had defeated the
Duke of Savoy in the great battle of Marsiglia (Oct. 3). The Turks had
compelled the Germans to raise the siege of Belgrade. Yet, in spite of
these successes, France was so worn out, that hints of a desire for
peace began to reach the English King.

[Sidenote: William's difficulty with regard to his Parliament.]

[Sidenote: He forms a united Whig ministry.]

The possibility of being called upon to settle this great point, and the
necessity of taking speedy advantage of his enemy's weakness, brought
more clearly home to William the great difficulty which had beset his
reign. For the position which was necessary to enable him to engage
authoritatively in the affairs of Europe, for the money required for the
pay of his army, and for the subsidies by which alone the allies were
kept true to their engagements, he was dependent upon Parliament. For at
the Revolution the Parliament had taken upon itself the supreme
authority of the nation. Yet upon that Parliament he was unable to rely;
for the representative body, though conscious of its power, had not yet
learnt to use it advantageously. It was that worst of all forms of
supreme power, a large disorganized assembly. Well aware that, both as
head of a confederacy and as a general, freedom of action was necessary
for him, William had kept as far as possible the management of foreign
affairs in his own hands, and had sought to win the favour of all
parties by a judicious impartiality. In the main he had been well
supported in his foreign policy; but faction was so rife, the increasing
divergence of opinion so great, and the capricious character of the
Lower House so evident, that he could take no important step with
confidence. He could not answer for a year's continuance of the war
spirit, nor be certain that any steps he might take with regard to peace
would be acknowledged even by his own ministers. It became necessary, if
possible, to introduce some order and organization into this uncertain
body. It would be better to risk a formal opposition of a certain
number, and be sure of unanimity in his own administration, than to be
at the caprice of a popular assembly. William therefore listened to the
suggestions of Sunderland, and determined to place himself entirely in
the hands of the Whig party, that party to which he owed his elevation
to the throne, and which was pledged to the continuation of the war.
During the next two years a change in ministry was gradually carried
out, which ended by the establishment in 1696 of the first united
ministry in English history. It was led by the chiefs of the Whig party,
of which the leaders were Somers, Halifax, Russell and Wharton (known
afterwards as the Junto).

[Sidenote: Party struggles.]

Parliament during these years was occupied in financial arrangements to
meet the constant drain of the war, and in perpetual party struggles
which terminated in the complete triumph of the Whigs, and in the
substitution of the leaders of that party for their Tory rivals in all
the chief offices of the administration. The first trial of strength
between the parties arose upon the question of the naval administration
of the former year. The whole nation smarted under the disasters which
had followed on the great victory of La Hogue, which the Whigs had
attributed not only to the maladministration of the two Tory admirals to
whom the fleet had been intrusted, but also to treachery. It was
impossible, they argued, that Louis could have denuded the Channel of
his fleet, and allowed a junction of his admirals so far south as St.
Vincent, unless he had had good reason to believe that the rich prey he
desired would fall into his hands but weakly guarded. The Tories, who
were unable to deny the maladministration, were anxious to exclude the
word "treacherous" from the motion. The Whig party was however
triumphant, and by a considerable majority the word was retained. But
though the general assertion of treason was thus made, the Commons, as
was not unusual, shrunk from fixing the treason upon any particular
person, and each individual accused was acquitted by a small majority.
Enough had been done, however, to give the King a fair opportunity of
re-establishing Russell, the great enemy of Nottingham the Secretary, at
the head of the Admiralty, and thus taking one step towards his Whig
ministry. It was impossible for Nottingham to remain in office with
Russell; he was consequently removed from the Secretaryship, and a fresh
vacancy thus created, which, after some delay, caused by the
conscientious scruples of Shrewsbury, who felt keenly the fault he had
once committed in tampering with the Jacobites, was filled by that
nobleman, one of the Whig chiefs. At the close of the session,
therefore, William found himself with most of his chief officers
belonging to the Whig party. Trenchard and Shrewsbury were Secretaries.
Russell was the head of the Admiralty. Somers was Lord Keeper, and
Montague Chancellor of the Exchequer. The only two Tories of importance
left were Caermarthen, Lord President, and Godolphin, at the head of the
Treasury. But the character of the latter minister led him to devote
himself almost exclusively to his official business, of which he was
master. Caermarthen was therefore, in fact, the only important element
of discord in the administration.

[Sidenote: Establishment of the Bank of England.]

[Sidenote: The Triennial Act passed. Dec. 1694.]

Montague owed his elevation to the continued success of his financial
plans. A fresh loan, known as the Lottery Loan--because though the whole
rate of interest was low, in exceptional cases chosen by lottery it was
very high--was successfully negotiated, and more important than this,
the Bank of England was triumphantly established. Banking with private
goldsmiths had come into fashion within the last two reigns, when the
convenience of cheques in the place of ready-money payments had become
obvious, while the advantage to the banker who had the use of the ready
money was also plain. The fault of the system was its insecurity, which
had been proved by the not unfrequent bankruptcy of one or other of the
banking goldsmiths. A Scotchman of the name of Paterson had some years
previously suggested the plan of a national bank, by which the
Government should obtain some of the advantages of the banker, and the
public, while gaining the convenience of cheques, should have a better
security than private goldsmiths offered. This scheme Montague now
adopted. He borrowed rather upwards of a million, and formed the lenders
into a banking company, allowing them to treat the loan to Government as
part of their capital, the interest of which, secured upon taxes, gave
them the requisite supply of ready money. They were bound to pursue no
other business except banking, yet, even with this restriction, so
desirable did the plan seem, that it was at once triumphantly carried
through. As a contingent advantage to Government, it is to be observed
that the company, which included many of the chiefs of the moneyed
interest, were pledged, for their own preservation, to support the
present settlement of the throne. Their existence depended upon the
regular payment of the interest upon their loan, which it was scarcely
possible that the Jacobites, if successful, would pay. The importance of
this point became very obvious afterwards, when, in more than one
crisis, the credit of Government was saved by advances from the Bank.
One other important measure was carried by this Parliament, and that
also was in accordance with the principles of the Whigs. This was the
Triennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament to three years. The
King, always jealous of his prerogative, had already once refused his
assent to this Bill; but now, having placed himself in Whig hands, he
withdrew his opposition, and the Bill was passed.

[Sidenote: Death of Queen Mary. Dec. 20.]

He was indeed in no position to enter into a struggle with his
Parliament. A great blow was falling on him, which unhinged him more
than any difficulties or defeats had yet done. This was the death of his
wife, who had sickened of the smallpox, and, after a short illness, died
on the 20th of December 1694. Her death caused universal sorrow in
England and among the Protestant interest on the Continent, while it
raised the hopes of James and his friends, who believed, not without a
show of reason, that William succeeded in holding his place chiefly by
means of the popularity of his Queen. Their hopes proved ill founded,
for though at first the King seemed so broken-hearted that he declared
he could never again lead an army, when once he had conquered his first
grief, he resumed his old energy, and success such as he had never yet
met with attended his efforts both at home and abroad.

[Sidenote: Expulsion of Trevor for venality, March 1695,]

Meanwhile in England there was no cessation in the strife of parties.
The Whigs pursued their triumphant course, and combined to remove the
last of their opponents from the Government. Trevor, a Tory, had in the
early part of the reign been made Speaker of the House, chiefly for the
purpose of carrying out Caermarthen's plans of corruption. Employed in
corrupting others, it was not likely that he should be himself above
corruption. Suspicions of his venality having arisen, the Whigs
proceeded to examine the accounts of the City of London and of the East
India Company, which, after much contest, had obtained a renewal of its
charter. The Committee found that the City had paid Sir John Trevor in
the preceding session 1000 guineas for forwarding a local Bill. The
proof was too clear to be questioned. Trevor from the chair had to put
the question whether he was guilty or not of high crime and
misdemeanour, and to declare before all men that "the Ayes had it." He
saved himself from the unutterable ignominy of announcing his own
expulsion by feigning illness. A new Speaker, Foley, who did not belong
clearly to either party, was elected in his place.

[Sidenote: and of Caermarthen. May.]

The accounts of the East India Company afforded the Whigs even greater
triumph. Sir Thomas Cook, who was the head of the Company, confessed to
having disbursed very large sums to secure the charter, but would give
no particular accounts. The Commons, determined not to be thwarted,
passed a Bill condemning him to refund all the money thus spent, in
addition to a heavy fine, unless he made a full confession. In the Upper
House the Bill was strongly opposed by Lord Caermarthen, now Duke of
Leeds, who, laying his hand upon his heart, solemnly averred that he had
no personal interest in the matter, and was moved by public
considerations only. It was finally arranged that a joint Committee of
the two Houses should inquire into the expenditure of the money that had
been secretly spent, and that if Cook confessed he should be held
guiltless. The joint Committee met; the King and the Duke of Portland,
whose guilt in the matter had been suggested by the Tories, were proved
perfectly innocent. But £5000 were traced, if not to the Duke of Leeds
himself, at all events to his confidential man of business. Articles of
impeachment were made out against him. They could not, however, be
brought forward, because the man of business, who would have supplied
necessary evidence, had made his escape to Holland. The Duke of Leeds
continued to assert his innocence, but confessed that he had allowed
money to be paid to his steward, considering this a very different thing
from taking it himself. It also appeared that the money had been
refunded the very morning of the first sitting of the joint Committee.
Though foiled of their impeachment, the Whigs and the Commons had done
their work. Leeds was obliged to retire from active life, and was never
afterwards employed in the administration. The sole discordant member of
the Government was thus got rid of.

[Sidenote: Success abroad. June 1694.]

Abroad likewise affairs took a turn more favourable to England and the
Whigs. Just before the death of Mary the war had entered into a somewhat
new phase. The navies of the two great powers had transferred the scene
of operations to the Mediterranean. Thither Tourville had gone from
Brest, and thither Russell, with the English fleet, had followed him. He
had found means to keep the French fleet in harbour, and to do good
service to the general cause by the relief of Barcelona, which was on
the point of falling into the hands of the French.

[Sidenote: Treachery of Marlborough.]

The absence of the French fleet from Brest, which led to the supposition
that the harbour must be unguarded, seemed to afford an opportunity for
an attack in that quarter. An expedition was planned; the forces were
intrusted to Talmash, while the Duke of Leeds' son Caermarthen commanded
the fleet. It gave occasion for a new act of villany on the part of
Marlborough; though the plan was kept a profound secret, he contrived to
worm it out, and as had happened once or twice before in his career, he
used his knowledge only to lay the details of the plan before James, and
to secure the destruction of the English expedition. Vauban, the great
French engineer, was sent down to re-fortify the place. Every
vantage-ground was crowned with batteries, and into the trap thus laid
for him Talmash had rushed headlong to meet his death, in company with
700 English soldiers (June 7, 1694). Marlborough's treachery in this
instance was rather personal than political. Talmash alone of the
English generals could in any way compete with him, and he knew that at
his death or failure William, who it must be recollected did not know
the full extent of his treachery, would be obliged to restore him to his
command. His treacherous plan succeeded. He was again employed, though
so thoroughly mistrusted, that William refused when he went abroad to
give the regency to Anne, which he well knew would be but to give it to
Marlborough. But the death of Mary, which occurred at the close of the
year, while it excited the other Jacobites to action, for a time
rendered Marlborough true to William; for it was followed by a
reconciliation between the King and the Princess Anne, and Marlborough
was now content to wait till the King's death for the completion of his
designs. The more earnest Jacobites followed a different course, and it
was in the midst of a conspiracy aimed against his life by Fenwick,
Charnock, and Porter, that William set out for Flanders (May 1695).

[Sidenote: Campaign in Flanders. 1695.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Namur. Aug. 26.]

In that country he had no longer the same formidable enemy with whom to
contend. Luxemburg was dead, and his place was ill supplied by Villeroy
and Louis' illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, who was sent to learn
the art of war under him. As Flanders was expected to be the great seat
of war, the bulk of the French army was placed under Villeroy in that
country. Boufflers, with 12,000 men, guarded the Sambre. William,
however, had set his heart upon regaining Namur. Judicious feints
deceived Villeroy as to his intentions, and suddenly his own army, that
of the Brandenburgers and that of the Elector of Bavaria, marched
straight against the city. Boufflers had just time to throw himself with
his troops into the town. A body of troops under the Prince of Vaudemont
had been left to watch Villeroy in Flanders. When that general advanced,
the Prince could not hold his isolated position, and only succeeded in
making good his retreat through the cowardice of the Duke of Maine.
Villeroy advanced almost unopposed. He took the towns of Dixmuyde and
Deynse, the garrisons of which, contrary to the terms of capitulation,
were sent prisoners to France; and hoping by threatening the capital to
draw William from Namur, he approached and ruthlessly and uselessly
bombarded Brussels. But, undisturbed by Villeroy's manœuvres, William
energetically pursued the siege. He was assisted by Cohorn, who had
originally fortified the town, and had seen it taken by the skill of his
great rival Vauban. Vauban had since much increased the fortifications,
and Cohorn was eager to regain his honour by capturing it. At length,
after some fierce assaults, in which the English under Lord Cutts, who
for his bravery under fire got the nickname of "the Salamander," had
greatly distinguished themselves, the town surrendered, but the castle
still held out. It became evident to Villeroy that the actual presence
of his army could alone raise the siege. Drawing troops from all the
neighbouring garrisons, he approached with 80,000 men. But William now
felt himself strong enough to give him battle without withdrawing from
his operations. For three days the armies remained in presence, and
William lay expecting the attack, but Villeroy judged his position too
strong to be taken, and withdrew. The fate of the fortress was now
sealed, but Boufflers thought that his honour demanded that he should
stand an assault; nor was it till the English had succeeded at the cost
of 2000 men in making a lodgment in the place that he consented to
treat, and for the first time in history a French marshal surrendered a
fortress to a victorious enemy. Having gone through the ceremony of
surrender, Boufflers was much surprised and enraged at being arrested on
his road to France. His angry exclamations against the breach of the
terms of capitulation were met by the reply, that William was only
following the example of Louis with regard to the garrisons of Dixmuyde
and Deynse. He was kept in honourable imprisonment till those garrisons
were restored.

[Sidenote: William's triumphant return. Oct. 10.]

[Sidenote: New Whig Parliament. Nov. 22.]

It was thus no longer as a beaten and unfortunate, though skilful
general, that William returned to England. The Triennial Bill having
come into operation, the present Parliament would have come to a natural
conclusion the following year. It had on the whole acted so much in
favour of William and the Whigs, that William, could he have prolonged
it, would probably have been willing to do so. But he wisely judged that
it would be better to call his new Parliament while still popular from
his successes, than to wait the chances of the future year. The event
proved that he was right. A brilliant triumphant progress through
England was followed by the return of a Parliament with an immense
majority favourable to the war and to the Whig interests. Four Whigs
were returned for London. Westminster followed the example of the
neighbouring city, and so great was the enthusiasm that even the great
Tory leader Seymour, whose interest in Devonshire was believed to render
his return for Exeter sure, was defeated in that town. The Parliament
thus assembled had very important work before it, and, acting in unison
with the King, his ministry, and the whole country, carried it through
to a noble conclusion.

[Sidenote: Re-establishment of the currency.]

This important work was the re-establishment of the currency. The
English coin had originally been of hammered metal, it was constantly
liable to inequality in weight, and being left with raw edges, easily
clipped. In Charles II.'s reign this defect had been partially cured by
the use of machinery, and words had been printed round the edges of the
coin; but as the bad hammered coinage was allowed to be current side by
side with the new milled coinage, the better coinage had either been
hoarded or had left the country, as invariably happens, when some part
of the coinage of the country is of less intrinsic value than the rest.
Consequently the evil became worse. Coin was more constantly clipped,
and as it wore out was more easily counterfeited. Its defects at length
became so obvious that shopkeepers refused to take it except by weight;
thus causing heavy suffering to the lower orders, who generally received
their wages by tale, and had to pay by weight, and every little
transaction became the occasion of a dispute. So far had the evil gone,
that when trials were made in different parts of the country, the
coinage had proved on an average to be little more than half its proper
weight. A re-issue of coin became absolutely necessary. The arrangements
fell into the hands of Somers and Montague, of John Locke the
philosopher, and Isaac Newton the mathematician. In devising their plan
two great questions met them. By whom should the expense be borne? How
could the inconvenience of the short supply of coin which must
inevitably follow when the present coinage was called in be best
alleviated? A very large minority wished to avoid the difficulty by
keeping the present money in circulation, but lowering its nominal
value. This plan, which was in fact to perpetrate a fraud upon all
creditors, was not likely to find favour with the four sagacious men
with whom the question rested. Two schemes recommended themselves
chiefly to their attention. Locke proposed that, after a certain fixed
date, the coin should be valued by weight only. This prevented any
deficiency in the circulating medium, as the present money would not be
withdrawn from circulation, but it threw the whole expense of bringing
the nominal and real value of the coin into harmony, not on the
Government, but on the individual possessors of the coin. It was
evidently fairer that, where the evil was a national one, the nation
should bear the expense. Somers suggested that, with extreme secresy, a
proclamation should be prepared, saying that in three days the hammered
coin should pass by weight only, but that those who held it might bring
it in parcels to the mint, where it should be counted and weighed, and
immediately restored, with a written promise of a future payment of the
difference between the nominal and real value of the coin. Thus the
money would be withdrawn from circulation only for the short time
necessary to count it, while the nation would subsequently pay the
difference. But for this plan secresy and suddenness were necessary, or
the intervening period would have given opportunity and temptation for
unlimited mutilation of the coinage. Secresy would have rendered it
impossible to consult Parliament, and Montague, in the existing state of
party feeling, shrank from the responsibility this implied. It was
therefore determined to act in a perfectly honest, simple and
straightforward manner; and immediately on the opening of Parliament, a
Bill was framed in accordance with certain resolutions previously taken.
By these it was declared that the old standard should be kept up, that
milled coin should alone be used, that the loss should fall on the
nation, not on individuals, and that the 4th of May following should be
the last day on which hammered coin should be allowed to be used. The
advantage of the good understanding between the Government and the Bank
now became evident. To meet the expense of the new coinage, £1,200,000
was wanted. The Bank advanced it without difficulty on the security of a
window tax, which took the place of the much hated hearth tax, and which
lasted on almost to our own time. At last the critical day, the 4th of
May, drew near. Fortunately the country was in an enthusiastic mood. Two
great Jacobite plots, closely connected, which had been concocted during
the previous summer, had been discovered. These were Berwick's plot for
a general insurrection of the Jacobites and for an invasion from France;
and a plot concocted at St. Germains, intrusted to Barclay, for the
assassination of William on his road from Kensington to Richmond.
Invasion and assassination are the two forms of conspiracy which the
English people cannot bear; and the full discovery of these schemes,
with the proved certainty that both Louis and James were fully conscious
of all their atrocious details, roused the nation for an instant to an
unusual unanimity of enthusiasm, and enabled Parliament to set on foot a
great association, signed by hundreds of thousands, who pledged
themselves to stand by the King, to support the war, and to pursue with
vengeance any attempt upon his life. Good tempered and loyal though the
people were the crisis was a fearful one. The operations of the mint
were very slow. £4,000,000 of the old coinage lay melted in the treasury
vaults. As yet scarcely any new silver had appeared. Money was not to be
had either for trade or for private payments. Large employers somehow
contrived, with a certain quantity of the old coinage which had not been
clipped, to pay the wages. But the greater part of England lived on
credit; and it is probable that even thus the crisis would scarcely
have been got over, had it not been for an expedient of Montague's, who
issued Government securities, bearing interest at threepence a day on
£100. These are what are known now as Exchequer bills, and form a
floating debt due by Government. They were eagerly used, and with the
paper issues of the Bank and the free use of cheques and credit by all,
the dangerous time was tided over.

[Sidenote: William's want of money.]

But the most alarming feature was not the difficulty in the commercial
world, but the difficulty felt by Government and by the King himself in
provisioning the troops and carrying on the war. In the midst of the
commercial crisis the Bank of England had met with great difficulties;
the goldsmiths, who had always hated their great rival, took the
opportunity of attempting to destroy it by villanous means, they bought
up all the Bank paper on which they could lay hands, and suddenly
bringing it forward, demanded immediate payment. The Bank directors with
great courage gained time by refusing to pay the nefarious claim, and
referring their enemies to the courts of law. By means of calls on their
subscribers they continued to pay by far the greater part of the private
and just claims upon them, but they did not appear to be in a position
to assist the King when he suddenly wrote home to say that £200,000 were
absolutely necessary.

[Sidenote: The Land Bank a failure.]

William had hoped that his wants would have been met by the
establishment, in accordance with a favourite plan of the Tories, of a
Land Bank, as a rival to the Bank of England. This somewhat absurd
scheme had been invented by a projector of the name of Chamberlain, who
supposed that every proprietor of land possessing that security ought to
have the disposal of at least as much money as his land was worth, and
therefore suggested a bank which should lend money entirely upon landed
security, overlooking the difficulty that land is not always at hand and
payable on demand as money is. Harley, the representative of the Tories,
now offered to advance the Government £2,500,000 at 7 per cent. The
payment of his interest was to be secured by a tax upon salt. If half
that sum should be subscribed before August, and half of that half paid
up, the subscribers were to be incorporated as the Land Bank. This Bank
was expressly intended to suit the wants of the country gentry, and to
injure the moneyed interest. The company was therefore bound to lend no
money but on mortgage, and to lend on mortgage at least half a million a
year. It was not allowed to receive more than 3½ per cent. interest on
these mortgages. Now, as the ordinary rate of interest on mortgages was
nearly 7 per cent. it was plain that no capitalist would lend his money
at half of the ordinary profits. It might have been plain also that the
landed gentry whose chief object was to borrow were not likely to lend.
It was not therefore very obvious where the capital was to come from.
The King, however, hoping to obtain money on easy terms, headed the list
of subscribers with £5000. When the Land Bank was called upon to advance
its promised loan, it was found that the whole subscriptions consisted
of no more than £6200. So eager was the Government for money, that it
offered to give the Bank its charter in exchange for a loan of £40,000
only, but the subscriptions never rose beyond £7500, and the scheme
proved completely abortive.

[Sidenote: The Bank of England supplies the money. Aug. 15.]

The King was compelled therefore to apply to the Bank of England, which
by his patronage of the Land Bank he had done his best to injure. True
to their political creed, a full court of subscribers consented to
advance the necessary £200,000, without one dissentient voice. The
Government was saved, and the connection between the Bank of England and
the Whig party sealed for ever. Meanwhile, Newton's efforts as Master of
the Mint had been ultimately successful. Provincial mints had been
established, and from them and from the mint in London £120,000 of coin
was turned out every day. By August the crisis was over, and a period of
unbroken commercial prosperity began.

[Sidenote: Credit of England restored.]

But although marks of commercial prosperity were already visible, the
financial difficulty was not entirely over. When William, who had been
abroad during the worst of the difficulty, opened Parliament upon his
return (Oct. 20), he had to confess that, although the crisis had passed
without disturbance in England or great disaster abroad, there was still
need for some exhibition of continued firmness on the part of
Parliament. In fact, the plan of reducing the standard of the coin was
so plausible, and had impressed itself so deeply on the ignorance of the
masses, that a very large party both in and out of Parliament were still
anxious to have recourse to that step, and till all chance of such a
measure was gone no speculators were willing to put the new money in
circulation, and it was constantly hoarded. Consequently a scarcity of
money still prevailed; and not only in England, but throughout Europe,
there was a very general feeling that England was ruined, that the
source of wealth which had hitherto supplied the European coalition with
the means of war was dried up, and that peace was inevitable. But in the
midst of these difficulties the triumph of the Whigs was complete. The
Parliament stood firm, and carried by a triumphant majority three
resolutions, which destroyed all the hopes of the enemies of England.
First, that the Commons would assist the King to prosecute the war with
vigour; secondly, that under no circumstances should the standard of
money be changed; thirdly, the Parliament pledged itself to make good
the deficiencies in Parliamentary funds established since the King's
accession. The first promise was at once abundantly fulfilled by
munificent grants for the war; the second caused the immediate
production of the hoarded coin; while upon the third was framed
Montague's plan known by the name of the General Mortgage. Taxes set
apart to meet the interest of various loans had proved insufficient. The
deficit was no less than £5,160,000. It was now ordered that, should the
proceeds of the old funds and new taxes now set aside for the purpose
prove insufficient, the general funds of the country should be charged
with the liquidation of the debts. By such means as these the credit of
the country was finally re-established.

[Sidenote: The Assassi

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