Lectures on Modern history

by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

It was no secret that James was resolved to be master, and to abolish the restraints and safeguards of the constitution. Penn, reporting his intentions to William of Orange, declared that he would have all or nothing. He had repeatedly avowed that he meant to do it by a standing army and by claiming the right to dispense with laws. Monmouth's rebellion gave him the standing army. Although it was unsupported either by the exclusionists or the limitationists, and although it was contemptibly managed, there had been a moment of serious danger. It was the general opinion that the night attack at Sedgemoor would have succeeded, and that the royal army would have been destroyed, if the rebels, instead of betraying their approach with musketry, had come to close quarters with axe and scythe. The king took advantage of what had happened, and he had the means of paying a force which amounted to 14,000 men.

Charles had been in perpetual want of money through the expensive scandals of his court. There were half a dozen ducal titles needing to be provided with ducal incomes, and obliging the king to become a dependent pensionary of the liberal paymaster in France. At his death all this was changed, and Catharine Sedley disappeared from Whitehall. It is true that her absence was not prolonged, and that she had obscurer rivals. But a decorous economy was observed in a branch of expenditure which had been profuse. Nevertheless Lewis XIV hastened to make offers of pecuniary aid to the frugal James as to the extravagant Charles. He sent over a sum of L60,000 or L70,000, consisting partly of arrears already due. This was to be paid only if James found himself in difficulties after having proclaimed liberty of conscience. If there was no disturbance, there was to be no payment. And when the session ended without any measure of the kind, Lewis gave orders that the money should be returned to him. In the autumn of 1685 James proceeded to adopt his advice. He had been victorious. His birthday, in October, was celebrated more heartily than his brother's had ever been, and the atrocities of the Western Assize did not affect opinion to his disadvantage.

He made known his plans. Besides the standing army and the recall of the Habeas Corpus, he demanded the dispensing power. Nobody supposed that the head of the executive was to persecute his own religion. To admit his right of succession was to admit that the Elizabethan Code was to be practically dormant. The Catholic desired no more. It was enough that they ceased to suffer oppression. Halifax, the ablest though not the strongest of James's ministers, agreed to that, and did not object to a moderate number of Catholic officers. The Prince of Orange was of the same opinion. Toleration was therefore assured, and the era of persecution had passed away. That was of no use to Lewis XIV, who in that month of October suppressed the Protestant religion in France. And it was of little use to James himself, as it added nothing to his power. He insisted on introducing toleration by dispensing with the laws, by right of his prerogative, and on abolishing the Test Act. But the Test Act was a security against arbitrary power, by depriving him of the assistance of Catholics in office. His desire for arbitrary power was notorious, and the country did not believe that his zeal for the liberty of conscience was sincere. They believed, and they believed rightly, that he demanded more than that which would satisfy the just and obvious necessities of his Church in order to strengthen his prerogative, and that he was tolerant in order that he might be absolute. He professed openly the maxim that toleration was the necessary condition of absolutism. He urged Lewis, secretly, to pursue the work of the revocation, and was reluctant to allow collections to be made for the Huguenot fugitives.

Later, when he was himself an exile, and nothing could be more inopportune than the profession of tolerant sympathies at the French court, he seriously and consistently proclaimed them. And it is very possible that he was then sincere, and that a change had taken place. Another change took place when he became acquainted with the famous Rance, who had made the abbey of La Trappe the most edifying seat of religion in France, and a favourite retreat for men like Bossuet and St. Simon. James also visited him and corresponded with him, and sixty of their letters are extant. At Versailles people did not understand how so much devotion could be combined with so much tolerance in religion. The letters to Rance show that the religion of James, when he was on the throne, was very near the surface. Whether it was different afterwards, as they believed in France, is not quite certain. And in this connection it will be convenient to mention the assassination plot.

There was an Irish divine, Martin of Connemara, who suggested that, in time of war, it would be well that a chosen band should devote themselves to the task of falling upon the Prince of Orange and putting him to death. It would, he said, be a legitimate act of warfare. Lewis XIV required no such arguments, and sent a miscreant named Grandval to rid him of the obnoxious prince. Berwick preferred the advice of the theologian, and, at the battle of Landen, he led a troop of 200 horsemen to the place where his kinsman stood, crying out to them to kill him. Three years later, in 1696, he was in London, communicating with the managers of the plot, who thought that it would be no murder to shoot the king on the road to Hampton Court, when surrounded by his guards. A beacon fire on Shakespeare's Cliff was to send the news across the sea, and at that signal James was to come over, in French ships. When the plot thickened, Berwick made his escape, and met his father changing horses at Clermont. Having learnt how matters stood, James pursued his way to Calais, and there, while he watched the northern horizon for the desired signal, he wrote edifying letters to the Abbe de Rance. When the plot was betrayed he showed the deepest sympathy with the assassins, and never lamented their crime.

The series of measures by which he lost the crown form a drama in three acts. First, he tried to obtain the co-operation of the Established Church. When that failed, he turned against the Church and worked through the Dissenters. And then he brought on that quarrel with the clergy which proved fatal to him. James did not believe in the reality of Protestant religion. Sunderland assured him that in two years not a Protestant would be left in England, if compulsion ceased, and his mind was bewildered by two very remarkable facts. One of these was the theology of recent Caroline divines. Archbishop Bramhall could hardly be distinguished from a Gallican. Archbishop Leighton was in close touch with Jansenists. One Roman doctrine was adopted by Montagu, another by Thomdike, a third by Isaac Barrow. Bull received the thanks of the French clergy for his vindication of the early fathers against the most learned of the Jesuits. To an ignorant and narrow-minded man all these things pointed to one conclusion, the instability and want of solidity in the Anglican system. Then there was the astounding collapse of the French Huguenots. Lewis boasted that, in a few months, without real violence, he had effected 800,000 conversions. And James was eager to believe it. He asked himself, says Barillon, why he could not do as much in England. He desired the Roman congregations to examine the question, whether the English bishops might retain their sees. Some said they would be better than the Catholic clergy, who were accused of Jansenism. One thing he considered absolutely certain. The Church would never resist his authority. The Bishop of Winchester entreated him not to rely on the passive obedience of Churchmen. James replied that the bishop had lost his nerve.

Having decided to risk a quarrel with loyal Anglicans, he assumed the dispensing power. The judges approved. There was a precedent in his favour. He had support not only in the past but in the future, for William III followed his example. He could claim that he was acting for the reason of State against shameful prejudice and sordid passion. The greatest historic figure of the age, William Penn, was on his side, and went over to explain the principle of his policy to the Prince of Orange. Lewis XIV urged him on. And although the body of English Catholics were much opposed, his immediate advisers, who were men in the French interest, or survivors of the Dover Treaty, Arundel, Bellasis, Dover, Tyrconnel, encouraged his fixed design. A few men in high office, he said, would do more for Catholicism than many hearing mass without impediment.

We must imagine not a sinister tyrant brooding schemes of oppression, but an unintelligent absolutist, in the hands of men, some of whom were able and some sincere, plying him with plausible arguments. Therefore, when the primate and six bishops protested against the Declaration of Indulgence, James sent them to the Tower. Sunderland advised caution. The time for extreme measures, he said, had not come. The violent members of the council thought that they had their enemies at their mercy and they prevailed.

James thought that he was triumphing, for just then the Prince of Wales was born. The future of his policy was assured. The crown was not to pass to the head of the Protestant interest in Europe. James's enemies, says the imperial envoy, gave up their cause for lost. In their despair they at once invented the lie about the warming pan. James's opportunity had come. He could declare an amnesty for the event which had so profoundly changed his fortunes. The seven bishops could be released without a trial, and the impending catastrophe could be averted. The king, disagreeing with his advisers, with Sunderland, with the nuncio, even with Jeffreys, determined to go on. He intended that the bishops should be tried, condemned, and pardoned. With that, his victory would be complete. Instead of which, the bishops were acquitted, and the king's attack on the Church ended in defeat.

On that day Admiral Herbert, disguised as a blue-jacket, left with the invitation to the Prince of Orange to come over. It was written by Algernon Sidney's brother, and bore the signatures of seven considerable men, who were prepared to risk their lives. Several others acquiesced, and it was not the act of one party. The thing had become inevitable when the prince was born. It was delayed until the issue was decided between the crown and the Church. The associates assured William that the Prince of Wales was an imposture, and that he must come, in order to secure his own birthright, as well as the liberties of England. William of Orange had not intrigued that the crown should pass to his wife before the time, and had given his uncle much good advice. For him it was everything that England should not be against him in the struggle with Lewis XIV. For that, he had the Habsburgs on his side, and it was essential that they should still be with him if he obeyed the call of his friends. He had been preparing for it ever since he sent Dykvelt over in 1687, and had asked the States of Holland to hold twenty-five men-of-war and 9000 sailors in readiness, to meet the danger which threatened from France.