His speech was received with loud acclamations. Thanks were voted for his achievements in Ireland, and to the queen for her able administration during his absence; and the Commons proceeded to vote supplies on a scale which had yet had no example. The army was fixed at sixty-nine thousand men, of whom twelve thousand were to consist of cavalry. The navy was to consist of twenty-eight thousand men; and the cost of the whole, including ordnance, was estimated at four million pounds. In return for this unprecedented force and unprecedented allowance for it, the Commons demanded that they should appoint a commission of nine to examine and bring forward the accounts: the commissioners to be all members of their own House. The proposition was acceded to without opposition by both the peers and the king, and a Bill, including the appointment of the commissioners, was prepared and passed. On the 15th of November a Bill received the royal assent for doubling the excise on beer, ale, and other liquors; and on the 20th of December another Bill passed for granting certain duties upon East India goods, wrought silks, and other merchandise; and a second Bill for increasing the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco.
In considering ways and means, the Commons proposed, as they had laid so many burdens on themselves, that the persons of all those who had been engaged in the rebellion in Ireland should be attainted, and their estates confiscated, and the proceeds be applied to the discharge of the expenses of the war; and they brought in and passed a Bill for that purpose. But the Lords did not appear inclined to sanction so wholesale a confiscation of the estates of all the Catholics of Ireland, as this would have amounted to; nor could it be very acceptable to the king, though they proposed to place a considerable portion of the forfeitures at his disposal. The Lords allowed the Bill to lie on their table, notwithstanding several urgent reminders from the Commons, and so at last it dropped. This must have been what William particularly desired, for it was contrary to his natural clemency to let loose the fiends of party fury after the sufficiently deadly evils of war, and it was contrary to his promises to many who had submitted on assurances of impunity; and having got the chief supplies which he wanted, he sought to shorten the Session as much as possible, by telling Parliament that, by a certain day, it was necessary for him to leave for Holland on important affairs. Yet, after the liberal votes of the Commons, still keeping in memory the disgrace of the navy, he added that, if some annual provision could be made for augmenting the navy, and building some new men-of-war, "it would be a very necessary care for that time, both for the honour and safety of the nation." The Commons thought so much the same that they voted an additional five hundred thousand pounds expressly for building new ships of war.
The last proceeding which marked this Session was the discovery of a fresh Jacobite plot. The Tory minister Caermarthen had long been the object of the particular enmity of the Whigs, and they were doing everything possible to undermine his influence. At last their efforts appeared to be growing perceptible. The king had introduced into the ministry, one after another, men to whom Caermarthen had a particular aversion, or who were particularly hostile to his power. Godolphin was made First Lord of the Treasury; Marlborough was rising fast in the military department; and Sidney was sent for by William from Ireland, without consulting Caermarthen, and appointed Secretary of State. His enemies were eagerly watching for the favourable moment to come down on the declining minister and complete his ruin, when he suddenly, at the very close of the year and the Session, laid before William all the particulars of a desperate plot of the Jacobites, which showed plainly enough that a minister of such vigilance was not to be lightly dispensed with. Fortune, however, rather than his own sagacity, had favoured the Prime Minister.
The anticipated absence of William from England in the spring appeared to offer a favourable conjuncture for James making another attempt for the recovery of the throne. The Jacobites, therefore, had met and concluded to send three of their number to St. Germains to consult with the Court there on the best means of effecting this object. It was proposed that James should make great protestations of his determination to allow of and secure the political and religious rights of all his subjects, and that he should come attended only by so moderate a force that it should not look like a French invasion. The opinions of the leading Jacobites were to be conveyed by these messengers in a packet of letters to be carefully concealed; and amongst the writers of these letters were the Earl of Dartmouth, Viscount Preston—so-called—and the Earl of Clarendon. This weak man, whom William had warned through Rochester of his knowledge of his practices, and who had declared that he would never again meddle with treason, was again as busy as ever. A vessel was engaged, called the James and Elizabeth, to carry over the three agents, namely, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott, who were to come on board on the last night of the year. The skipper of the James and Elizabeth, though offered extraordinary pay for the trip, suspecting what was the nature of his passengers, gave notice of the fact to Caermarthen, who sent and boarded the vessel at midnight, when the traitors were secured along with their papers, which were conveyed to the Secretary of State's office at Whitehall, where Caermarthen and Nottingham passed the night in examining the contents of the fatal packet, and the next morning laid them before the king.
This great discovery, which fell like a thunderbolt on the Jacobites, was scarcely less disconcerting to the Whigs. It was hopeless after this to attempt anything against so alert and trusty a minister. William, relieved from all apprehensions of danger by this timely discovery, left the three traitors in the custody of his Government, and the leaders yet at large under their eye, and hastened to get over to Holland. On the 5th of January he prorogued Parliament till the 31st of March; and in his farewell speech he said that he thought it proper to assure them that he should make no grants of the forfeited lands in England or Ireland; that those matters could be settled in Parliament in such a manner as should be thought most expedient. Unfortunately, this was a promise which William failed to keep, and which brought upon him no lack of trouble in the future. On the 6th, whilst his English subjects were indulging in all the festivities of the season, William set out, attended by a splendid train of courtiers, for the Hague, where a great Congress was appointed to consider the best means of resisting the aggressions of Louis of France. He was received by his subjects, after a dangerous voyage, with shouts of joy.
William's spirit and sound sense seemed to reanimate the drooping energies of the Allies. The quota of troops to be furnished by every prince was determined; it was agreed to bring two hundred and twenty thousand men into the field in spring, and never to rest till they had not only driven Louis from the territories of his neighbours, but had compelled him to give toleration to his Protestant subjects. These matters arranged, William made use of the influence which the new alliance with the Duke of Savoy gave him, to procure a cessation of the persecutions of the duke's Protestant subjects, the Waldenses. To him these simple mountain shepherds—Christians of a Church remaining independent of Rome from the earliest times—owed it that they could once more live in peace; that numbers of them were released from dungeons, and their children, who had been torn from them to be educated in Popery, were restored.
All being thus favourably settled, the princes dispersed to their several States, and William retired to obtain a short period of relaxation at Loo. But he was speedily roused from his repose. The proceedings of the Congress had been closely and anxiously watched by Louis of France. He saw that its deliberations were certain to produce a profound impression on Europe, and he resolved to neutralise this by one of his sudden and telling blows. At once all his available means and forces were put in motion. A hundred thousand soldiers were in rapid march on Mons, one of the most important fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands. Louis did not even trust the operations of this assault to his famous general, Luxemburg, and the greatest military genius of the age, Vauban; but he hurried to the scene of action himself, early as the season was—in March. Five days after the siege commenced Louis was there, accompanied by the Dauphin, the Dukes of Orleans and of Chartres. He pushed on the attack with vigour, to have it over before any assistance could arrive. Though suffering from the gout, he went about amongst the soldiers, encouraging them by the blandest and most familiar addresses; helped personally to bind up their wounds in the hospitals, and partook of the broth prepared for them. With his quick perception of the dangers from his adversaries, he had noticed the diversion which it was intended that the Duke of Savoy should make, by taking the field on that side; and he had suddenly thrown an army into Savoy, captured Nice, and provided the duke with enough to do to hold his own. By this means he had been able to bring from the Maritime Alps a large body of troops to this siege.
William was sensible of the disastrous effect which the fall of Mons would have on the spirits of his Allies, and on the Courts of Sweden and Denmark which had been brought to the point of joining the confederation; he therefore rushed from his place of temporary retirement, mustered the forces of the States-General, sent dispatches after the German princes, urging them to bring up all the troops they could collect to the rescue of Mons, and to the generals of the Spanish troops in Flanders. By forced marches he advanced towards the devoted city; but all the vices of confederations were now glaringly apparent in contrast to the single and prompt action of a despot. The German princes, naturally slow, were already far off; the Spanish generals were utterly unprepared for such an emergency; and William found it almost impossible to procure even horses to drag his artillery and stores. He sent on, however, hasty messengers to apprise the people of Mons of his approach; but the vigilance of the French prevented them from reaching the city. An immense quantity of artillery was thundering against the walls of Mons; breaches were made in them; a redoubt was carried, sword in hand; shells fell in showers on the roofs and streets of the town, which was burning in ten places. The inhabitants, appalled by the terrible destruction awaiting them, threatened to murder the garrison if they did not surrender; and the garrison, ignorant of the relief which William was bringing, surrendered on the 20th of April. William, deeply chagrined, returned to the Hague, and thence hastened back to London; whilst Louis, in proud triumph, returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations of his courtiers on his splendid coup-de-main.
On William's return to London, he found his Government had tried the traitors, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott. Preston and Ashton were found guilty, and sentenced to death; Elliott was not brought to trial. By some it has been asserted that the evidence of his being admitted into the real interior of the plot was not clear; by others, that he purchased his escape by disclosures. Ashton was hanged on the 18th of January—the very day on which William had embarked at Gravesend for Holland. Preston, after much vacillation between the desire to accept a proffered pardon and repugnance to the conditions attached to it—that of making a full disclosure of his accomplices—at length chose life and dishonour, and made charges against Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner Bishop of Ely, and William Penn. Clarendon was sent for a time to the Tower; Dartmouth, who was accused, as an admiral, of the heinous crime of intending to betray Portsmouth to the French, indignantly repelled the accusation, and died in the Tower without having been brought to trial. Turner escaped to France. Penn was accused of writing to James to assure him that, with thirty thousand men, he might command England. But this message to James rested on the evidence of the lying and infamous Melfort, who was totally unworthy of all belief; and Penn, so far from shrinking from the charge, went straight to Sidney, the Secretary of State, and denied the whole allegation. That he had a friendly feeling for and commiseration of James, he did not deny; but he declared himself a faithful subject of William and Mary, and, so far from being willing to aid any design against them, if he became aware of any such he would at once disclose it. Instead of clapping Penn in the Tower—which the Government would have done, had they any such letters inviting James to come over with thirty thousand men,—he was suffered to depart in full freedom. He afterwards made a religious journey on the Continent as a minister of the Society of Friends, and then he returned to England; but without any attempt on the part of Government to molest him.
But there were deeper and more real traitors than any of these around William—namely, Admiral Russell, Sidney Godolphin, and Marlborough. These men, encouraged by the fall of Mons and the triumphant aspect of Louis's affairs, renewed with fresh activity their intrigues with the Court of James. It was in vain that William heaped riches, honours, and places of confidence upon them; they were ready to receive any amount of favours, but still kept an eye open to the possible return of James, and made themselves secure of pardon from him, and kept him duly informed of all the intended movements of William both at home and on the Continent. Russell was made High Admiral in place of Torrington. He was Treasurer of the Navy, enjoyed a pension of three thousand pounds a year, and a grant from the Crown of property of great and increasing value near Charing Cross. But, with an insatiable greediness, he still complained of unrequited services; and, having a shoal of poor and hungry relatives badgering him for places and pensions, he complained that their incessant demands could not be gratified; and he cherished the hope that he could sell his treason at a favourable crisis to King James at no mean price. Godolphin was First Commissioner of the Treasury, sat in the Privy Council, and enjoyed the confidence of the sovereign; his former conduct in being one of the most pliant tools of James, ready to vote for his Act of Indulgence, being overlooked. Yet he was sworn, through the agency of a Mr. Bulkeley, to serve the interests of James. Hand in hand with him went Marlborough, who—though he was now fast overcoming the long-retained prejudices of William, and had been honoured by his commission in the expedition to Ireland, and by his warm approbation on his return, and had the prospect of a brilliant command of the army in Flanders, where he could indulge his highest ambition—was yet a most thorough traitor, making a hypocritical pretence of great sorrow to James for his desertion of him, and, through Colonel Sackville, and Lloyd, the non-juring Bishop of Norwich, offering, on a good opportunity, to carry over the whole army to James.