On the 11th of March, Charnock and two others were placed at the bar of the Old Bailey before Lord Chief Justice Holt and other judges. The prisoners demanded that their trials should be postponed till after the 25th of the month, when the new Act for trials for treason came into force, and which allowed counsel to the accused; but the counsel for the Crown would not consent to it—a circumstance which does no honour to William and his ministers, for from them the order to proceed must now have been given. All the accused denied that James knew of or had done anything to sanction the attempt to assassinate the king; but this assertion neither agrees with the depositions made by the other conspirators admitted as evidence, nor with the facts of the case; and, indeed, Charnock left a paper, still in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, in which he declares that the attempt would not have been justifiable had it not been sanctioned by James; that his Majesty's commission did fully justify it, and that it was just as proper to attempt to kill the Prince of Orange at the head of his Guards, serving as they did the king whose throne he had usurped, and who was at war with him, as if he had been at the head of twenty thousand men. They had their king's commission for it, and their king being at declared war, it was quite legitimate to attack and kill William wherever they could meet with him. Despite this high assumption, Charnock, after conviction, offered, if they would pardon him, to reveal the whole particulars of the plot, and the names of every one concerned in it; but there was evidence enough; his offer was not accepted, and the three were executed at Tyburn on the 24th.

The Association into which the Commons had entered for the defence of the king had not yet been made law, but a Bill was now brought in for that purpose. Out of the five hundred and thirteen members of the Commons, four hundred had signed it; but on its reaching the Lords exception was made by the Tories to the words "rightful and lawful sovereign" as applied to William. Even Nottingham, who had so long and faithfully served William, declared that he could not accept them; that William was king de facto he admitted, but not king by rightful succession. He was supported by Rochester, Normanby, and others; but on the Duke of Leeds proposing that the words "rightful and lawful" should be altered to "having right by law," and no other person having such right, singularly enough the Tories acquiesced in the change, though it would not be easy for minds in general to perceive a distinction between being a rightful and lawful sovereign and a sovereign who had a full and, indeed, exclusive right by law. The Commons retained their own form and the Lords theirs. The Bill of the Commons was passed on the 4th of April. It provided that all such persons as refused the oaths to his Majesty should be liable to the forfeitures and penalties of Papist recusants; that all who questioned William's being "a lawful and rightful sovereign" should be subject to heavy penalties; that no person refusing to sign this Association should be capable of holding any office, civil or military, of sitting in Parliament, or being admitted into the service of the Prince or Princess of Denmark. All magistrates, of course, were included in the requirements, and some who refused to sign were dismissed. The Lords were to use their own form, and with this understanding it passed their House without delay. The bishops drew up a form for themselves, and, according to Burnet, not above a hundred clergymen all over England refused to sign. The people everywhere signed the bond with almost universal enthusiasm, even in the most Papist districts, as Lancashire and Cheshire.

BISHOP BURNET.

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Before this remarkable session closed, a Bill was brought in to check the corruption of elections. It had now become common for moneyed men to go down to country boroughs and buy their way into Parliament by liberal distribution of their gold. It was, therefore, proposed to introduce a property qualification for members of Parliament; that a member for a county should be required to possess five hundred pounds a year in land, and a member for a town three hundred pounds a year in land. It was even proposed to adopt the ballot, but that was rejected. The Bill itself was carried through both Houses, but William declined to ratify it. The towns abounded with Whigs, and had stood stoutly by him, and it appeared to be a sweeping infringement on their privileges to debar them from electing men in whom they had confidence because they were not landed proprietors, though they might otherwise be wealthy as well as duly qualified for such duties.

He ratified, however, another Bill intended for the benefit of the landed gentry. This was for the establishment of Hugh Chamberlayne's Land Bank. Unsound and delusive as the principles of this scheme were, it had the great attraction to the landowners of offering them extensive accommodation and a fancied accession of wealth, and to William the further advance of a large sum for his wars. The Bank of England had only furnished him with one million at eight per cent.; this Land Bank was to lend him two millions and a half at seven per cent. It was ratified by William, and the Parliament was prorogued the same day, April the 27th.

At home the confusion and distress were indescribable, and lasted all the year. In the spring and till autumn it was a complete national agony. The last day for the payment of the clipped coin into the Treasury was the 4th of May. As that day approached there was a violent rush to the Exchequer to pay in the old coin and get new. But there was very little new ready, and all old coin that was not clipped was compelled to be allowed to remain out some time longer. Notwithstanding this, the deficiency of circulating medium was so great that even men of large estate had to give promissory notes for paying old debts, and take credit for procuring the necessaries of life. The notes of the new Bank of England and of the Lombard Street money-changers gave also considerable relief; but the whole amount of notes and coin did not suffice to carry on the business of the nation. Numbers of work-people of all kinds were turned off because their employers had not money to pay them with. The shopkeepers could not afford to give credit to every one, and, as their trade stagnated in consequence, they were compelled to sacrifice their commodities to raise the necessary sums to satisfy their own creditors. There was a heavy demand on the poor rates, and the magistrates had orders to have sufficient force in readiness to keep down rioting. This distress was aggravated by those who had new milled money, hoarding it up lest they should get no more of it, or in expectation that its scarcity would raise its value enormously, and that they could pay their debts to a great advantage, or purchase what they wanted at still greater advantage.

The Jacobites were delighted with this state of things, and did all they could to inflame the people against the Government, which they said had thus needlessly plunged the nation in such extreme suffering. There were numbers of exciting tracts issued for this purpose, and especially by a depraved priest named Grascombe, who urged the people to kill the members of Parliament who had advocated the calling in of the silver coin. To make the calamity perfect, the Land Bank had proved as complete a bubble as Montague and other men of discernment had declared it would. The landed gentry wanted to borrow from it, not to invest in it; its shares remained untaken; and it found, when the Government demanded the two million six hundred thousand pounds which it had pledged itself to advance, that its coffers were empty; and it ceased to exist, or rather to pretend to have any life.

The bursting of the Land Bank bubble was severely trying to the new Bank of England. The failure of the one alarmed the public as to the stability of the other, and the Jacobites and the Lombard Street rival money-lenders lent their cordial aid to increase the panic. The Lombard Street bankers made a vigorous run upon the bank. They collected all its paper that they could lay hands on, and demanded instant payment in hard cash. Immediately after the 4th of May, when the Government had taken in the bulk of the money, and had issued out very little, they made a dead set against the bank. One goldsmith alone presented thirty thousand pounds in notes. The bank resolved to refuse the payment of the notes thus obviously presented in order to ruin it, and then the Lombard Street bankers exultingly announced everywhere that the boasted new institution was insolvent. But the bank, leaving the Lombard Street goldsmiths to seek a remedy at law, continued to give cash for all notes presented by the fair creditors, and the public steadily supported them in this system, and condemned the selfish money-dealers. Montague also contrived to relieve the tightness to a considerable extent by availing himself of a clause in the Act of the Land Bank, empowering Government to issue a new species of promissory notes, bearing interest on security of the annual taxes. These bills, called now and henceforward Exchequer Bills, were issued from a hundred pounds to five pounds, and were everywhere received with avidity. They also urged on the mints in the production of the new coinage, and to facilitate this they made Sir Isaac Newton Master of the Mint, who exerted himself in his important office with extraordinary zeal and patriotism.