James took alarm, and warned William that the succession was not absolutely safe. Lewis, who much dreaded the prospect of having his ablest and most formidable enemy at Whitehall, wished the Princess Anne to precede her elder sister. To strengthen her claim with her father he proposed that she should become a Catholic, and sent over books of controversy for that purpose. James, on the other hand, told William that there would be no crown to inherit, but a commonwealth in England, if he did not succeed in his endeavour to make himself master. Dykvelt had conducted the secret negotiation which ended in the invitation of 30th June.
A still more delicate negotiation was pursued on the Continent. William could not allow it to appear that his expedition implied a war of religion. He would forfeit the alliance of the Emperor, which was the very pivot of his policy. Leopold was a devout and scrupulous man, and it was uncertain how he would regard an enterprise which was to substitute a Protestant dynasty for a Catholic dynasty in England. There was only one way of ensuring his assistance. In order to have the support of the Empire it was requisite to obtain the support of the Papacy. In a religious question Leopold would follow the pope. William sent one of his generals, the Prince de Vaudemont, to Rome; and, through Count Dohna, he opened a correspondence with the Vatican. He represented that the Catholics would obtain from him the toleration which they could never be sure of under James. There would be not only a serious political advantage gained by the detachment of England from the French interest, but also a positive and measurable benefit for the Church of Rome. The pope understood and assented, and took the Habsburgs with him into the camp of the Great Deliverer. This is the touch of mystery in the Revolution of 1688. James, the champion of the Church, had alienated Rome.
The pope, Innocent XI, Odescalchi, is a rare and original figure, and James said truly that no man like him had sat on the see of Rome for centuries. He began the reform of the court, which consisted in the abolition of nepotism. All through the century his predecessors had founded great princely families—Borghese, Ludovisi, Barberini, Pamphili, Chigi, Rospigliosi, Altieri. These great houses grew wealthy out of the spoils of the Church, and, as their founders died without making restitution, opponents of nepotism affirmed that they died unrepentant, and might be found in those regions of the other world where Dante delighted to exhibit the pontiffs of his time. In his zeal for a strict morality Innocent tried to rectify the teaching of the Casuists, and was involved in trouble with the Jesuits. In France he was spoken of as a Jansenist, and in England Oldmixon called him a Protestant pope. He endeavoured, as nobody had done since the Reformation, to find a remedy for the divisions of Western Christendom. The movement had not ceased since Richelieu was minister and Grotius ambassador at Paris, and it became active on both sides. Innocent sanctioned a scheme of concessions which was deemed satisfactory in the universities of Protestant Germany.
When Lewis revoked the Edict of Toleration the pope did not conceal his displeasure. He was compelled at last to allow Te Deums and illuminations; but he made no secret of his disbelief in the armed apostolate of missionaries in jackboots. He was bitterly opposed to the Gallican system, out of which the persecution proceeded. James II was odious to him for many reasons. First as a promoter of French tendencies, both in politics and in religion. For James, like Lewis, was a Gallican in Church questions. When an Englishman defended ultramontane propositions in a disputation at Louvain, he expressed his indignation that such an attack should have been permitted in his presence on the plenary authority of kings. He offended the pope by sending as his ambassador Lord Castlemaine, who was ridiculous not only as the Duchess of Cleveland's husband, but as the author of a book in which he pleaded for toleration on the ground that Catholics should be as well treated in England as Protestants in France. With great reluctance the pope consented that his agent, D'Adda, should be appointed a nuncio; but when James made the Jesuit Petre a privy councillor, giving him his own apartment at Whitehall, and represented that he would be fitter for such a position if he was made a bishop or a cardinal, Innocent refused.
Petre laid the blame on the nuncio, and the Jesuits asked that he should be sent out of the country. He would be forced, said the king, to do without the Court of Rome. D'Adda gave the same advice as the Prince of Orange, that the Penal Laws should not be executed, but the Test Acts retained; and he was one of those who, when the crisis came, maintained that there was nothing to fear from William. After Innocent's death in 1689 there was a change, but Rome declared in favour of taking the oath to William III. Perth wrote from Rome in 1695: "The Prince of Orange has more friends here than either in England or Holland, and the king is universally hated. It's scandalous to hear what is said every day, publicly, when they make comparisons betwixt an heretical, unnatural, usurping tyrant and His Majesty."
On this state of feeling, far stronger in 1688 than in 1695, William built his plan. It was in the power of Lewis at any moment to prevent the expedition. He had an army ready for war, and could have held William fast by sending it against the Netherlands. He preferred to attack the empire on the Upper Rhine. For twenty years it had been his desire to neutralise England by internal broils, and he was glad to have the Dutch out of the way while he dealt a blow at Leopold. It was impossible that the conflict between James and William should not yield him an opportunity. For the beginning he stood carefully aside, letting things take their course. There was no resistance, by land or sea, and it proved almost as easy to dethrone the Stuarts as it had been to restore them. The balance of parties, the lack of energetic conviction in England, had allowed things to settle down, when the real struggle began, in Ireland, in Scotland, and in the Channel. The Scots rising did not postpone the issue, but it is valuable to us for the sake of one transaction.
The deed that was done in Glencoe is familiar to us all, by a patch of Tyrian purple in the most splendid of our histories. It affords a basis for judging the character of William and of his government. They desired that some of the Highlanders should stand out, that an example might be made; and they hoped that it might be the one Catholic clan, as they were likely to be the most dangerous Jacobites. "Who knows," wrote Stair, "but, by God's providence, they are permitted to fall into this delusion that they may only be extirpat." Four days later another writes: "The king does not care that some do it, that he may make examples of them." Accordingly, by his orders, one branch of the Macdonalds was destroyed by Campbell of Glenlyon. There is no doubt about the order. But it is not certain that William knew that the chieftain had taken the oath. The people concerned were rewarded in due proportion. One became a colonel, another a knight, a third a peer, and a fourth an earl. It was a way King William had. When the murder of De Witt made him supreme, he kept away from The Hague, but then saw that the murderers were recompensed. Eighty years later a deserter from one of our regiments was under sentence to be shot. The officer commanding the firing party, another Captain Campbell of Glenlyon, had received a reprieve, with secret orders not to produce it until the culprit stood facing the levelled muskets. At that moment, as he drew the reprieve from his pocket, his handkerchief, coming with it, fell to the ground. The soldiers took it for their signal and fired. Glenlyon exclaimed, "It is the curse of Glencoe!" and at once left the service.
When James escaped to France, he at once went over to Ireland, with a French army, while a French fleet covered the expedition and swept the Channel. James had long intended to make Ireland independent of England, that, under his Protestant successors, it might be an impregnable refuge for persecuted Catholics. He estimated that it would take five years of preparation. Tyrconnel also contemplated separation, and arranged for a French invasion, if James died. When James came over Tyrconnel thought him hopelessly incompetent, and offered his country to Lewis XIV. Sarsfield detested his treachery, and invited Berwick to undertake the government. Of James's French counsellors, one was Lauzun, who commanded the auxiliary army, and proposed to burn Dublin to the ground and ravage the open country. The other was the ambassador D'Avaux, who wished him to make short work of all the Protestants in the island.
James rejected the advice with indignation. Lewis also rejected it, but without the indignation you would expect in a most Christian king, and without thinking the adviser unworthy of his service. D'Avaux relates it all, without reserve, in his despatches, which are among the curiosities of History. They were printed at the Foreign Office, and never published. The only copy I ever saw was uncut when it came into my hands.
In spite of these discordant counsels, the Jacobite prospects in Ireland brightened when a fleet of seventy-eight ships sailed from Brest. "If they were only commanded by De Ruyter," said Louvois, whose control stopped with the shore, "there would be something to hope for." Instead of De Ruyter, Tourville defeated the combined Dutch and English at Beachy Head. The allies lost sixteen ships out of fifty-eight; the French not one. Tourville was master of the Channel. Torrington left the Dutch to do the fighting, and kept as far as he could from the scene of danger. He had to lament the death of his favourite dog. They said that the dog died the death of an admiral, and the admiral lived the life of a dog. That 30th of June is the most disgraceful date in our naval annals.