These suggestions were every where spread abroad, and tended to augment the discontents of which both the fleet and army, as well as the people, betrayed every day the most evident symptoms. The fleet had begun to mutiny; because Stricland, the admiral, a Roman Catholic, introduced the mass aboard his ship, and dismissed the Protestant chaplain. It was with some difficulty the seamen could be appeased; and they still persisted in declaring that they would not fight against the Dutch, whom they called friends and brethren; but would willingly give battle to the French, whom they regarded as national enemies. The king had intended to augment his army with Irish recruits; and he resolved to try the experiment on the regiment of the duke of Berwick, his natural son: but Beaumont, the lieutenant-colonel, refused to admit them; and to this opposition five captains steadily adhered. They were all cashiered; and had not the discontents of the army on this occasion become very apparent, it was resolved to have punished those officers for mutiny.

The king made a trial of the dispositions of his army, in a manner still more undisguised. Finding opposition from all the civil and ecclesiastical orders of the kingdom, he resolved to appeal to the military, who, if unanimous, were able alone to serve all his purposes, and to enforce universal obedience. His intention was to engage all the regiments, one after another, to give their consent to the repeal of the test and penal statutes; and accordingly, the major of Litchfield’s drew out the battalion before the king, and told them, that they were required either to enter into his majesty’s views in these particulars, or to lay down their arms. James was surprised to find that, two captains and a few Popish soldiers excepted, the whole battalion immediately embraced the latter part of the alternative. For some time he remained speechless; but having recovered from his astonishment, he commanded them to take up their arms; adding with a sullen, discontented air, “That for the future, he would not do them the honor to apply for their approbation.”

While the king was dismayed with these symptoms of general disaffection, he received a letter from the marquis of Albeville, his minister at the Hague, which informed him with certainty, that he was soon to look for a powerful invasion from Holland; and that Pensionary Fagel had at length acknowledged, that the scope of all the Dutch naval preparations was to transport forces into England. Though James could reasonably expect no other intelligence, he was astonished at the news: he grew pale, and the letter dropped from his hand: his eyes were now opened, and he found himself on the brink of a frightful precipice, which his delusions had hitherto concealed from him. His ministers and counsellors, equally astonished, saw no resource but in a sudden and precipitate retraction of all those fatal measures by which he had created to himself so many enemies, foreign and domestic. He paid court to the Dutch, and offered to enter into any alliance with them for common security: he replaced in all the counties the deputy lieutenants and justices who had been deprived of their commissions for their adherence to the test and the penal laws: he restored the charters of London, and of all the corporations: he annulled the court of ecclesiastical commission: he took off the bishop of London’s suspension: he reinstated the expelled president and fellows of Magdalen College: and he was even reduced to caress those bishops whom he had so lately prosecuted and insulted. All these measures were regarded as symptoms of fear, not of repentance. The bishops, instead of promising succor or suggesting comfort, recapitulated to him all the instances of his maleadministration, and advised him thenceforwards to follow more salutary counsel. And as intelligence arrived of a great disaster which had befallen the Dutch fleet, it is commonly believed, that the king recalled, for some time, the concessions which he had made to Magdalen College; a bad sign of his sincerity in his other concessions. Nay, so prevalent were his unfortunate prepossessions, that amidst all his present distresses, he could not forbear, at the baptism of the young prince, appointing the pope to be one of the god-fathers.

The report that a supposititious child was to be imposed on the nation, had been widely spread, and greedily received, before the birth of the prince of Wales: but the king, who, without seeming to take notice of the matter, might easily have quashed that ridiculous rumor, had, from an ill-timed haughtiness, totally neglected it. He disdained, he said, to satisfy those who could deem him capable of so base and villanous an action. Finding that the calumny gained ground, and had made deep impression on his subjects, he was now obliged to submit to the mortifying task of ascertaining the reality of the birth. Though no particular attention had been beforehand given to insure proof, the evidence both of the queen’s pregnancy and delivery was rendered indisputable and so much the more, as no argument or proof of any importance, nothing but popular rumor and surmise, could be thrown into the opposite scale.

Meanwhile the prince of Orange’s declaration was dispersed over the kingdom, and met with universal approbation. All the grievances of the nation were there enumerated: the dispensing and suspending power; the court of ecclesiastical commission; the filling of all offices with Catholics, and the raising of a Jesuit to be privy counsellor; the open encouragement given to Popery, by building every where churches, colleges, and seminaries for that sect; the displacing of judges, if they refused to give sentence according to orders received from court; the annulling of the charters of all the corporations, and the subjecting of elections to arbitrary will and pleasure; the treating of petitions, even the most modest, and from persons of the highest rank, as criminal and seditious; the committing of the whole authority of Ireland, civil and military, into the hands of Papists; the assuming of an absolute power over the religion and laws of Scotland, and openly exacting in that kingdom an obedience without reserve; and the violent presumptions against the legitimacy of the prince of Wales. In order to redress all these grievances, the prince said, that he intended to come over to England with an armed force, which might protect him from the king’s evil counsellors; and that his sole aim was to have a legal and free parliament assembled, who might provide for the safety and liberty of the nation, as well as examine the proofs of the prince of Wales’s legitimacy. No one, he added, could entertain such hard thoughts of him as to imagine, that he had formed any other design than to procure the full and lasting settlement of religion, liberty, and property. The force which he meant to bring with him, was totally disproportioned to any views of conquest; and it were absurd to suspect, that so many persons of high rank, both in church and state, would have given him so many solemn invitations for such a pernicious purpose. Though the English ministers, terrified with his enterprise, had pretended to redress some of the grievances complained of, there still remained the foundation of all grievances, that upon which they could in an instant be again erected, an arbitrary and despotic power in the crown. And for this usurpation there was no possible remedy, but by a full declaration of all the rights of the subject in a free parliament.

So well concerted were the prince’s measures, that, in three days, above four hundred transports were hired; the army quickly fell down the rivers and canals from Nimeguen; the artillery, arms, stores, and horses, were embarked; and the prince set sail from Helvoet-Sluice, with a fleet of near five hundred vessels, and an army of above fourteen thousand men. He first encountered a storm, which drove him back: but his loss being soon repaired, the fleet put to sea under the command of Admiral Herbert, and made sail with a fair wind towards the west of England. The same wind detained the king’s fleet in their station near Harwich, and enabled the Dutch to pass the Straits of Dover without opposition. Both shores were covered with multitudes of people, who, besides admiring the grandeur of the spectacle, were held in anxious suspense by the prospect of an enterprise, the most important which, during some ages, had been undertaken in Europe. The prince had a prosperous voyage, and landed his army safely in Torbay on the fifth of November, the anniversary of the gunpowder treason.

The Dutch army marched first to Exeter; and the prince’s declaration was there published. That whole county was so terrified with the executions which had ensued upon Monmouth’s rebellion, that no one for several days joined the prince. The bishop of Exeter in a fright fled to London and carried to court intelligence of the invasion. As a reward of his zeal, he received the archbishopric of York, which had long been kept vacant, with an intention, as was universally believed, of bestowing it on some Catholic. The first person who joined the prince, was Major Burrington; and he was quickly followed by the gentry of the counties of Devon and Somerset. Sir Edward Seymour made proposals for an association, which every one signed. By degrees, the earl of Abingdon, Mr. Russel, son of the earl of Bedford, Mr. Wharton, Godfrey, Howe, came to Exeter. All England was in commotion. Lord Delamere took arms in Cheshire, the earl of Danby seized York, the earl of Bath, governor of Plymouth, declared for the prince, the earl of Devonshire made a like declaration in Derby. The nobility and gentry of Nottinghamshire embraced the same cause; and every day there appeared some effect of that universal combination into which the nation had entered against the measures of the king. Even those who took not the field against him, were able to embarrass and confound his counsels. A petition for a free parliament was signed by twenty-four bishops and peers of the greatest distinction, and was presented to the king. No one thought of opposing or resisting the invader.

But the most dangerous symptom was the disaffection which, from the general spirit of the nation, not from any particular reason, had crept into the army. The officers seemed ill disposed to prefer the interests of their country and of their religion, to those principles of honor and fidelity which are commonly esteemed the most sacred ties by men of that profession. Lord Colchester, son of the earl of Rivers, was the first officer that deserted to the prince; and he was attended by a few of his troops. Lord Lovelace made a like effort: but was intercepted by the militia under the duke of Beaufort, and taken prisoner; Lord Cornbury, son of the earl of Clarendon, was more successful. He attempted to carry over three regiments of cavalry; and he actually brought a considerable part of them to the prince’s quarters. Several officers of distinction informed Feversham, the general, that they could not in conscience fight against the prince of Orange.

Lord Churchill had been raised from the rank of a page had been invested with a high command in the army, had been created a peer, and had owed his whole fortune to the king’s favor: yet even he could resolve, during the present extremity, to desert his unhappy master, who had ever reposed entire confidence in him. He carried with him the duke of Grafton, natural son of the late king, Colonel Berkeley, and some troops of dragoons. This conduct was a signal sacrifice to public virtue of every duty in private life; and required ever after, the most upright, disinterested, and public-spirited behavior to render it justifiable.

The king had arrived at Salisbury, the head-quarters of his army, when he received this fatal intelligence. That prince, though a severe enemy, had ever appeared a warm, steady, and sincere friend; and he was extremely shocked with this, as with many other instances of ingratitude to which he was now exposed. There remained none in whom he could confide. As the whole army had discovered symptoms of discontent, he concluded it full of treachery; and being deserted by those whom he had most favored and obliged, he no longer expected that others would hazard their lives in his service. During this distraction and perplexity, he embraced a sudden resolution of drawing off his army, and retiring towards London; a measure which could only serve to betray his fears, and provoke further treachery.