A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second

by Charles James Fox

It had for some time been Louis’s favourite object to annex to his dominion what remained of the Spanish Netherlands, as well on account of their own intrinsic value, as to enable him to destroy the United Provinces and the Prince of Orange; and this object Charles had bound himself, by treaty with Spain, to oppose. In the joy, therefore, occasioned by this noble manner of proceeding (for such it was called by all the parties concerned), the first step was to agree, without hesitation, that Charles’s treaty with Spain determined with his life, a decision which, if the disregard that had been shown to it did not render the question concerning it nugatory, it would be difficult to support upon any principles of national law or justice. The manner in which the late king had conducted himself upon the subject of this treaty, that is to say, the violation of it, without formally renouncing it, was gravely commended, and stated to be no more than what might justly be expected from him; but the present king was declared to be still more free, and in no way bound by a treaty, from the execution of which his brother had judged himself to be sufficiently dispensed. This appears to be a nice distinction, and what that degree of obligation was, from which James was exempt, but which had lain upon Charles, who neither thought himself bound, nor was expected by others to execute the treaty, it is difficult to conceive.

This preliminary being adjusted, the meaning of which, through all this contemptible shuffling, was, that James, by giving up all concern for the Spanish Netherlands, should be at liberty to acquiesce in, or to second, whatever might be the ambitious projects of the court of Versailles, it was determined that Lord Churchill should be sent to Paris to obtain further pecuniary aids. But such was the impression made by the frankness and generosity of Louis, that there was no question of discussing or capitulating, but everything was remitted to that prince, and to the information his ministers might give him, respecting the exigency of affairs in England. He who had so handsomely been beforehand, in granting the assistance of five hundred thousand livres, was only to be thanked for past, not importuned for future, munificence. Thus ended, for the present, this disgusting scene of iniquity and nonsense, in which all the actors seemed to vie with each other in prostituting the sacred names of friendship, generosity, and gratitude, in one of the meanest and most criminal transactions which history records.

The principal parties in the business, besides the king himself, to whose capacity, at least, if not to his situation it was more suitable, and Lord Churchill, who acted as an inferior agent, were Sunderland, Rochester, and Godolphin, all men of high rank and considerable abilities, but whose understandings, as well as their principles, seem to have been corrupted by the pernicious schemes in which they were engaged. With respect to the last-mentioned nobleman in particular, it is impossible, without pain, to see him engaged in such transactions. With what self-humiliation must he not have reflected upon them in subsequent periods of his life! How little could Barillon guess that he was negotiating with one who was destined to be at the head of an administration which, in a few years, would send the same Lord Churchill not to Paris, to implore Louis for succours towards enslaving England, or to thank him for pensions to her monarch, but to combine all Europe against him in the cause of liberty, to rout his armies, to take his towns, to humble his pride, and to shake to the foundation that fabric of power which it had been the business of a long life to raise, at the expense of every sentiment of tenderness to his subjects, and of justice and good faith to foreign nations. It is with difficulty the reader can persuade himself that the Godolphin and Churchill here mentioned are the same persons who were afterwards one in the cabinet, one in the field, the great conductors of the war of the succession. How little do they appear in one instance! how great in the other! And the investigation of the cause to which this excessive difference is principally owing, will produce a most useful lesson. Is the difference to be attributed to any superiority of genius in the prince whom they served in the latter period of their lives? Queen Anne’s capacity appears to have been inferior even to her father’s. Did they enjoy in a greater degree her favour and confidence? The very reverse is the fact. But in one case they were the tools of a king plotting against his people; in the other, the ministers of a free government acting upon enlarged principles, and with energies which no state that is not in some degree republican can supply. How forcibly must the contemplation of these men, in such opposite situations, teach persons engaged in political life that a free and popular government is desirable, not only for the public good, but for their own greatness and consideration, for every object of generous ambition!

The king having, as has been related, first privately communicated his intentions to the French ambassador, issued proclamations for the meeting of parliament, and for levying, upon his sole authority, the customs and other duties which had constituted part of the late king’s revenue, but to which, the acts granting them having expired with the prince, James was not legally entitled. He was advised by Lord Guildford, whom he had continued in the office of keeper of the great seal, and who upon such a subject, therefore, was a person likely to have the greatest weight, to satisfy himself with directing the money to be kept in the exchequer for the disposal of parliament, which was shortly to meet; and by others, to take bonds from the merchants for the duties, to be paid when parliament should legalise them. But these expedients were not suited to the king’s views, who, as well on account of his engagement with France, as from his own disposition, was determined to take no step that might indicate an intention of governing by parliaments, or a consciousness of his being dependent upon them for his revenue, he adopted, therefore, the advice of Jeffreys, advice not resulting so much, probably, either from ignorance or violence of disposition, as from his knowledge that it would be most agreeable to his master, and directed the duties to be paid as in the former reign. It was pretended, that an interruption in levying some of the duties might be hurtful to trade; but as every difficulty of that kind was obviated by the expedients proposed, this arbitrary and violent measure can with no colour be ascribed to a regard to public convenience, nor to any other motive than to a desire of reviving Charles I.’s claims to the power of taxation, and of furnishing a most intelligible comment upon his speech to the council on the day of his accession. It became evident what the king’s notions were, with respect to that regal prerogative from which he professed himself determined never to depart, and to that property which he would never invade. What were the remaining rights and liberties of the nation, which he was to preserve, might be more difficult to discover; but that the laws of England, in the royal interpretation of them, were sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as he, or, indeed, any prince could desire, was a point that could not be disputed. This violation of law was in itself most flagrant; it was applied to a point well understood, and thought to have been so completely settled by repeated and most explicit declarations of the legislature, that it must have been doubtful whether even the most corrupt judges, if the question had been tried, would have had the audacity to decide it against the subject. But no resistance was made; nor did the example of Hampden, which a half century before had been so successful, and rendered that patriot’s name so illustrious, tempt any one to emulate his fame, so completely had the crafty and sanguinary measures of the late reign attained the object to which they were directed, and rendered all men either afraid or unwilling to exert themselves in the cause of liberty.

On the other hand, addresses the most servile were daily sent to the throne. That of the University of Oxford stated that the religion which they professed bound them to unconditional obedience to their sovereign without restrictions or limitations; and the Society of Barristers and Students of the Middle Temple thanked his majesty for the attention he had shown to the trade of the kingdom, concerning which, and its balance (and upon this last article they laid particular stress), they seemed to think themselves peculiarly called upon to deliver their opinion. But whatever might be their knowledge in matters of trade, it was at least equal to that which these addressers showed in the laws and constitution of their country, since they boldly affirmed the king’s right to levy the duties, and declared that it had never been disputed but by persons engaged, in what they were pleased to call rebellion against his royal father. The address concluded with a sort of prayer that all his majesty’s subjects might be as good lawyers as themselves, and disposed to acknowledge the royal prerogative in all its extent.

If these addresses are remarkable for their servility, that of the gentlemen and freeholders of the county of Suffolk was no less so for the spirit of party violence that was displayed in it. They would take care, they said, to choose representatives who should no more endure those who had been for the Exclusion Bill, than the last parliament had the abhorrers of the association; and thus not only endeavoured to keep up his majesty’s resentment against a part of their fellow-subjects, but engaged themselves to imitate, for the purpose of retaliation, that part of the conduct of their adversaries which they considered as most illegal and oppressive.

It is a remarkable circumstance, that among all the adulatory addresses of this time, there is not to be found, in any one of them, any declaration of disbelief in the popish plot, or any charge upon the late parliament for having prosecuted it, though it could not but be well known that such topics would, of all others, be most agreeable to the court. Hence we may collect that the delusion on this subject was by no means at an end, and that they who, out of a desire to render history conformable to the principles of poetical justice, attribute the unpopularity and downfall of the Whigs to the indignation excited by their furious and sanguinary prosecution of the plot, are egregiously mistaken. If this had been in any degree the prevailing sentiment, it is utterly unaccountable that, so far from its appearing in any of the addresses of these times, this most just ground of reproach upon the Whig party, and the parliament in which they had had the superiority, was the only one omitted in them. The fact appears to have been the very reverse of what such historians suppose, and that the activity of the late parliamentary leaders, in prosecuting the popish plot, was the principal circumstance which reconciled the nation, for a time, to their other proceedings; that their conduct in that business (now so justly condemned) was the grand engine of their power, and that when that failed, they were soon overpowered by the united forces of bigotry and corruption. They were hated by a great part of the nation, not for their crimes, but for their virtues. To be above corruption is always odious to the corrupt, and to entertain more enlarged and juster notions of philosophy and government, is often a cause of alarm to the narrow-minded and superstitious. In those days particularly it was obvious to refer to the confusion, greatly exaggerated of the times of the commonwealth; and it was an excellent watchword of alarm, to accuse every lover of law and liberty of designs to revive the tragical scene which had closed the life of the first Charles. In this spirit, therefore, the Exclusion Bill, and the alleged conspiracies of Sidney and Russell, were, as might naturally be expected, the chief charges urged against the Whigs; but their conduct on the subject of the popish plot was so far from being the cause of the hatred born to them, that it was not even used as a topic of accusation against them.

In order to keep up that spirit in the nation, which was thought to be manifested in the addresses, his majesty ordered the declaration, to which allusion was made in the last chapter, to be published, interwoven with a history of the Rye House Plot, which is said to have been drawn by Dr. Spratt, Bishop of Rochester. The principal drift of this publication was, to load the memory of Sidney and Russell, and to blacken the character of the Duke of Monmouth, by wickedly confounding the consultations holden by them with the plot for assassinating the late king, and in this object it seems in a great measure to have succeeded. He also caused to be published an attestation of his brother’s having died a Roman Catholic, together with two papers, drawn up by him, in favour of that persuasion. This is generally considered to have been a very ill-advised instance of zeal; but probably James thought, that at a time when people seemed to be so in love with his power, he might safely venture to indulge himself in a display of his attachment to his religion; and perhaps, too, it might be thought good policy to show that a prince, who had been so highly complimented as Charles had been, for the restoration and protection of the Church, had, in truth, been a Catholic, and thus to inculcate an opinion that the Church of England might not only be safe, but highly favoured, under the reign of a popish prince.

Partly from similar motives, and partly to gratify the natural vindictiveness of his temper, he persevered in a most cruel persecution of the Protestant dissenters, upon the most frivolous pretences. The courts of justice, as in Charles’s days, were instruments equally ready, either for seconding the policy or for gratifying the bad passions of the monarch; and Jeffreys, whom the late king had appointed chief justice of England a little before Sidney’s trial, was a man entirely agreeable to the temper, and suitable to the purposes, of the present government. He was thought not to be very learned in his profession; but what might be wanting in knowledge he made up in positiveness; and, indeed, whatever might be the difficulties in questions between one subject and another, the fashionable doctrine, which prevailed at that time, of supporting the king’s prerogative in its full extent, and without restriction or limitation, rendered, to such as espoused it, all that branch of law which is called constitutional extremely easy and simple. He was as submissive and mean to those above him as he was haughty and insolent to those who were in any degree in his power; and if in his own conduct he did not exhibit a very nice regard for morality, or even for decency, he never failed to animadvert upon, and to punish, the most slight deviation in others with the utmost severity, especially if they were persons whom he suspected to be no favourites of the court.

Before this magistrate was brought for trial, by a jury sufficiently prepossessed in favour of Tory politics, the Rev. Richard Baxter, a dissenting minister, a pious and learned man, of exemplary character, always remarkable for his attachment to monarchy, and for leaning to moderate measures in the differences between the Church and those of his persuasion. The pretence for this prosecution was a supposed reference of some passages in one of his works to the bishops of the Church of England; a reference which was certainly not intended by him, and which could not have been made out to any jury that had been less prejudiced, or under any other direction than that of Jeffreys. The real motive was, the desire of punishing an eminent dissenting teacher, whose reputation was high among his sect, and who was supposed to favour the political opinions of the Whigs. He was found guilty, and Jeffreys, in passing sentence upon him, loaded him with the coarsest reproaches and bitterest taunts. He called him sometimes, by way of derision, a saint, sometimes, in plainer terms, an old rogue; and classed this respectable divine, to whom the only crime imputed was the having spoken disrespectfully of the bishops of a communion to which he did not belong, with the infamous Oates, who had been lately convicted of perjury. He finished with declaring, that it was a matter of public notoriety that there was a formed design to ruin the king and the nation, in which this old man was the principal incendiary. Nor is it improbable that this declaration, absurd as it was, might gain belief at a time when the credulity of the triumphant party was at its height.