When the countryman who carried the messages from Lord Winchelsea arrived at Whitehall, the news of the king's detention occasioned the greatest embarrassment. The lords had sent for William, and hoped that they were well rid of the foolish king. Nothing could have been easier than their course if James had got over to the Continent. The throne would be declared vacant, and the Prince and Princess of Orange invited to occupy it, on giving the necessary guarantees for the maintenance of the Constitution. But now the whole question was involved in difficulties. If James persisted in his right to the throne, in what capacity was William to be received? Could any safe measures be arranged with a man like James? Was he to be deposed, and his son-in-law and daughter forcibly placed on his throne? The dilemma was equally embarrassing to the lords and prelates, and to the prince himself. When the messenger was introduced, and delivered a letter from James, but without any address, Halifax moved that they should instantly adjourn, and thus leave the letter unnoticed. Halifax was deeply incensed at the trick which James had played off upon him in sending him to negotiate with William merely that he might get away, and was now resolved to adhere to the prince; but Lord Mulgrave prevailed on the lords to retain their seats, and obtained from them an order that Lord Feversham should take two hundred Life Guards, and protect the king from insult. Feversham demanded the precise powers of his order, and was told that he must defend the king from insult, but by no means impede the freest exercise of his personal freedom. This meant that they would be glad if he facilitated his escape. Halifax immediately left London, and joined the Prince of Orange, who was now at Henley-on-Thames. Sancroft and the clergy, as soon as they were aware that the king had not left the country, retired from any further participation in the Council. William and his adherents were extremely chagrined at this untoward turn of affairs. When the messenger arrived at Henley he was referred to Burnet, who said, "Why did you not let the king go?"
But when Feversham arrived at the town whose name he bore, the king was no longer disposed to escape. His friends who had gathered about him, Middleton and Lord Winchelsea especially, had endeavoured to show him that his strength lay in remaining. Had he vacated the throne by quitting the kingdom, it had been lost for ever; but now he was king, and might challenge his right; and the prince could not dispossess him without incurring the character of a usurper, and throwing a heavy odium of unnatural severity on himself and his wife. James had sufficient mind left to perceive the strength thus pointed out to him. He resolved to return to his capital, and from Rochester despatched Feversham with a letter to William, whom he found advanced to Windsor, proposing a conference in London, where St. James's should be prepared for the prince. By this time William and his Council had determined on the plan to be pursued in the great difficulty. He had calculated on James's being gone, and had issued orders to the king's army and to the lords at Whitehall in the style of a sovereign. His leading adherents had settled amongst themselves the different offices that they were to occupy as the reward of their adhesion. It was resolved, therefore, if possible, to frighten James into a second flight. No sooner had Feversham delivered his despatch than he was arrested, and thrown into the Round Tower on the charge of having disbanded the army without proper orders, to the danger of the capital, and of having entered the prince's camp without a passport. Zulestein was despatched to inform James that William declined the proposed conference, and recommended him to remain at Rochester.
James, however, was now bent on returning to London. He had not waited for the prince's answer, but on Sunday, the 16th of December, he entered his capital in a sort of triumphal procession. He was preceded by a number of gentlemen, bareheaded. Immense crowds assembled as if to welcome him back again. They cheered him as he rode along. The bells were rung, and bonfires were lit in the streets. Elated by these signs, as he imagined them, of returning popularity, he no sooner reached Whitehall than he called around him the Jesuits who had hidden themselves, stationed Irish soldiers as guards around his palace, had grace said at his table by a Jesuit priest, and expressed his high indignation at the lords and prelates who had presumed to usurp his functions in his absence—who had, in fact, saved the capital from destruction when he had abandoned it. His folly, however, received an abrupt check. Zulestein was announced, and delivered the stern message of William. James was confounded, but again repeated his invitation for his nephew to come to town, that they might settle all differences in a personal conference. Zulestein coldly assured him that William would not enter London whilst it contained troops not under his orders. "Then," said James, "let him bring his own guards, and I will dismiss mine, for I am as well without any as such that I dare not trust." Zulestein, however, retired without further discussion, and the moment he was gone, James was informed of the arrest of Feversham.
Alarmed at these proofs of the stern spirit of William, James sent in haste to Stamps and Lewis, the leading members of the City Council—the Lord Mayor had never recovered his terror of Jeffreys' presence,—to offer to place himself under their protection till all necessary guarantees for the public liberties had been given and accepted. But the Common Council had not had time to forget his seizure of their charter, and they prudently declined to enter into an engagement which, they said, they might not be able to fulfil. Whilst James was thus learning that though the City acclamations might be proofs of regret for his misfortunes, they were by no means proofs of a desire for his continuing to reign, William, on the same day, the 17th, bade all his leading adherents hold a solemn council, to consider what steps should be taken in this crisis. It was understood that he would never consent to enter London whilst James was there, and it was resolved that he should be removed to Ham House, near Richmond, which the brutal Lauderdale had built out of the bribes of Louis XIV. and the money wrung from the ravaged people of Scotland. Halifax, Shrewsbury, and Delamere were despatched to James with this intimation, though Clarendon had done all in his power to have James seized and confined in some foreign fortress till Tyrconnel surrendered Ireland to the prince's party.
Simultaneously with the three lords, William ordered his forces to advance towards London. In the evening of the 17th James heard that the Dutch soldiers had occupied Chelsea and Kennington. By ten o'clock at night Solmes, at the head of three battalions of infantry, was already making across St. James's Park, and sent word that his orders were to occupy Whitehall, and he advised the Earl of Craven, who commanded the Coldstream Guards, to retire. Craven—though now in his eightieth year, was still possessed of the courage and chivalry which he had displayed in the wars of Germany, and which had won him the heart of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was said to be married to him—declared that, so long as he retained life, no foreign prince should make a King of England a prisoner in his own palace. James, however, ordered him to retire. The Coldstream Guards withdrew, and the Dutch guards surrounded the palace. James, as if there were no danger to his person, went composedly to bed, but only to be roused out of his first sleep to receive the deputation from the prince. On reading the letter proposing his removal to Ham, which Halifax informed him must be done before ten o'clock in the morning, James seems to have taken a final resolve to get away. He protested against going to Ham, as a low, damp place in winter, but offered to retire to Rochester. This was a pretty clear indication of his intention to flee—the very object desired. A messenger was despatched in all speed to the prince, who returned with his full approbation before daybreak.
The morning of the 18th was miserably wet and stormy, but a barge was brought to Whitehall Stairs, and the wretched monarch went on board, attended by the Lords Arran, Dumbarton, Dundee, Lichfield, and Aylesbury. The spectators could not behold this melancholy abdication—for such it was—of the last potentate of a most unwise line, who had lost a great empire by his incurable infatuation, without tears. Even Shrewsbury and Delamere showed much emotion, and endeavoured to soothe the fallen king; but Halifax, incurably wounded in his diplomatic pride by the hollow mission to the prince at Hungerford, stood coldly apart. Boats containing a hundred Dutch soldiers surrounded his barge as it dropped down the river. James landed and slept at Gravesend, and then proceeded to Rochester, where he remained four days.
Though his advisers entreated him not to fly, James had now sunk the last manly feeling of a monarch who would dare much and sacrifice more to retain a noble empire for his family. A dastardly fear that if he remained he would be put to death like his father took possession of him. He made a last offer to the bishops, through the Bishop of Winchester, as he had done to the City of London, to put himself into their hands for safety, but they also declined the responsibility, and he then gave all over as lost. On the evening of the 22nd of December he sat down before supper, and wrote a declaration of his motives for quitting the kingdom. About midnight he stole quietly away with the Duke of Berwick, his natural son, and, after much difficulty, through storm and darkness, reached a fishing smack hired for the purpose, which, on Christmas Day, landed him at Ambleteuse, on the coast of France. Thence he hastened to the castle of St. Germains, which Louis had appointed for his residence, and where, on the 28th, he found his wife and child awaiting him. Louis also was there to receive him, had settled on him a revenue of forty-five thousand pounds sterling yearly, besides giving him ten thousand pounds for immediate wants. The conduct of Louis was truly princely, not only in thus conferring on the fallen monarch a noble and delightful residence, with an ample income, but in making it felt by his courtiers and all France, that he expected the exiled family to be treated with the respect due to the sovereigns of England.
The flight of James had removed the great difficulty of William—that of having recourse to some measure of harshness towards him, as imprisonment, or forcible deposition and banishment, which would have greatly lowered his popularity. The adherents of James felt all this, and were confounded at the advantage which the impolitic monarch had given to his enemies. The joy of William's partisans was great and unconcealed. In France the success of William was beheld with intense mortification, for it was the death-blow to the ascendency of Louis in Europe, which had been the great object of all his wars, and the expensive policy of his whole life. In Holland the elevation of their Stadtholder to the head of the English realm was beheld as the greatest triumph of their nation; and Dykvelt and Nicholas Witsen were deputed to wait on him in London and congratulate him on his brilliant success. But, notwithstanding all these favourable circumstances, there were many knotty questions to be settled before William could be recognised as sovereign. The country was divided into various parties, one of which, including the Tories and the Church, contended that no power or law could affect the divine right of kings; and that although a king by his infamy, imbecility, or open violation of the laws might be restrained from exercising the regal functions personally, those rights remained untouched, and must be invested for the time in a regent chosen by the united Parliament of the nation. Others contended that James's unconstitutional conduct and subsequent flight amounted to an abdication, and that the royal rights had passed on to the next heir; and the only question was, which was the true heir—the daughter of James, the wife of William, or the child called the Prince of Wales? The more determined Whigs contended that the arbitrary conduct of the House of Stuart, and especially of James, who attempted to destroy both the Constitution and the Church, had abrogated the original compact between prince and people, and returned the right of electing a new monarch into the hands of the people; and the only question was, who should that choice be? There were not wanting some who advised William boldly to assume the crown by right of conquest; but he was much too wise to adopt this counsel, having already pledged himself to the contrary in his Declaration, and also knowing how repugnant such an assumption would be to the proud spirit of the nation.
To settle these points he called together, on the 23rd of December, the peers, all the members of any Parliament summoned in the reign of Charles II. who happened to be in town, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen, with fifty other citizens of London, at St. James's, to advise him as to the best mode of fulfilling the terms of his Declaration. The two Houses, thus singularly constituted, proceeded to deliberate on the great question in their own separate apartments. The Lords chose Halifax as their Speaker; the Commons, Henry Powle. The Lords came to the conclusion that a Convention was the only authority which could determine the necessary measures; that in the absence of Charles II. a Convention had called him back to the throne, and therefore a Convention in the absence of James might exercise the same legitimate function. When the Lords presented an address to this effect on the 25th, William received it, but said it would be necessary to receive the conclusion of the Commons before any act could take place. On the 27th the Commons came to the same decision, and William was requested to exercise the powers of the executive till the Convention should assemble.
In issuing orders for the election of the members of the Convention, William displayed a most politic attention to the spirit of the Constitution. He gave direction that no compulsion or acts of undue persuasion should be exercised for the return of candidates; no soldiers should be allowed to be present in the boroughs where the elections were proceeding; for, unlike James, William knew that he had the sense of the majority of the people with him. The same measure was adopted with regard to Scotland. There, no sooner had William arrived in England, than the people rose against James's Popish ministers, who were glad to flee or conceal themselves. Perth, the miserable renegade and tyrant, endeavoured to escape by sea; he was overtaken, brought ignominiously back, and flung into the prison of Kirkcaldy. The Papists were everywhere disarmed, the Popish chapels were attacked and ransacked. Holyrood House, which swarmed with Jesuits, and with their printing presses, was not exempt from this summary visitation; and bonfires were made of all sorts of Popish paraphernalia—crosses, books, images, and pictures. William now called together such Scottish noblemen and gentlemen as were in London, who adopted a resolution requesting him to call a Convention of the Estates of Scotland, to meet on the 14th of March, and in the meantime to take on himself the same executive authority as in England. William was, therefore, the elected ruler of the whole kingdom for the time. This power he proceeded to exercise with a prudence and wisdom which were in striking contrast to the antagonism of James. All parties and religions were protected as subjects; Feversham was released, and the administration of justice proceeded with a sense of firmness and personal security which gave general confidence.