CHAPTER XV
1701-1702
English indifference on the Spanish question—Death of James II. and Louis's recognition of the Pretender—Reaction in England—Dissolution of Parliament—Support of William's policy by its successor—The Treaties—Accident to William—His illness and death—Character—The Whig legend examined—His great qualities as man and ruler—Our debt to him.
The insensibility of Englishmen to a danger which weighed heavily on the mind of William was exactly matched by his own indifference to one which appeared extremely serious to them. William dreaded the idea of a Bourbon reigning at Madrid, but he saw no very grave objection, as the two treaties showed, to Naples and Sicily passing into French hands. With his English subjects the exact converse was the case. They strongly deprecated the assignment of the Mediterranean possessions of the Spaniard to the Dauphin; but they were undisturbed by the sight of the Duke of Anjou seating himself on the Spanish throne. It has been said that on their own principles they ought to have disliked the will even more than the Partition Treaties, because the former document, in devising all the possessions of Spain to the Duke of Anjou, "gave precisely the same advantages to France on the Mediterranean" as she would have obtained under the Treaties. But this argument obviously begs the whole question against the English view by assigning to the word "France" a meaning which it was of the essence of that view to repudiate. The very gist of the English case was that "France" and "the second son of the French Dauphin barred from the succession to the French Crown" were not convertible terms. Had Englishmen in general so regarded them, they would perhaps have been as jealous of the Duke of Anjou's succession to the Spanish throne as was William himself. They held, however,—whether rightly or wrongly, and I have already stated my reason for thinking that at the time and in the circumstances they were wrong—that the elevation of Louis's grandson to the Spanish throne did not mean the "solidarity" of France and Spain.[23] But while the Duke of Anjou, considered as the owner of the two Sicilies, did not in their opinion stand for "France," the Dauphin, who was to have had them under the Partition Treaties, undeniably did. The heir to the Crown of France of course is France, not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of fact. The English view therefore, however mistaken on the point of policy, was unassailable on the ground of logic; and its inherent plausibility, in addition to the national dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Treaties had been negotiated, would, in all probability, have made it impossible for William to carry the country with him in a war policy directed against France.
But just as, under a discharge from an electric battery, two repugnant chemical compounds will sometimes rush into sudden combination, so at this juncture the King and the nation were instantaneously united by the shock of a gross affront. The hand that liberated the uniting fluid was that of the Christian king. On the 16th of September 1701 James II. breathed his last at St. Germains, and, obedient to one of those impulses, half-chivalrous, half-arrogant, which so often determined his policy, Louis XIV. declared his recognition of the Prince of Wales as de jure King of England. No more timely and effective assistance to the policy of its de facto king could possibly have been rendered. Its effect upon English public opinion was instantaneous; and when William returned from Holland on the 4th of November, he found the country in the temper in which he could most have wished it to be. Still he hesitated for a while as to whether or not he should dissolve Parliament. Sunderland, for whose astuteness and profound knowledge of English politics William entertained a respect unqualified, as was usual with that cool and cynical observer of men, by any repugnance he might have felt for the ex-Minister's political profligacy, had been consulted by him on this point through Somers both before and since the death of James; and this sagacious counsellor had urgently recommended a dissolution, predicting that it would result in a signal triumph of the Whigs. On the 7th of November William laid the question before his Privy Council, who were divided in opinion, and, acting on his own judgment, he then determined to dissolve. On the 11th of the month the royal proclamation to that effect was issued, and the new Parliament summoned to meet on the 31st of December. The result did not, indeed, completely bear out Sunderland's prediction, but it proved that a marked change had taken place in the opinion of the country; for, though the Tories managed still to hold their own in the smaller boroughs, the Whigs carried most of the counties and great towns. Their opponents, however, were strong enough to re-elect Harley to the Speakership, his nomination being seconded by his afterwards yet more famous political ally, Henry St. John, the future Lord Bolingbroke. William addressed the Houses in a speech of unusual length and earnestness, in which he recalled the "high indignity" offered to himself and the nation by Louis's recognition of the pretended Prince of Wales as King of England, and the dangers with which England and Europe were threatened by the elevation of his grandson to the Spanish throne. To obviate these dangers he had, he told them, concluded several alliances, and treaties for the conclusion of others were still pending. He went on to remind them that the eyes of all Europe were upon this Parliament, and "all matters at a standstill until their resolution was known. Therefore," said he, "no time ought to be lost; you have an opportunity, by God's blessing, to secure to you and your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your religion and liberties, if you are not wanting to yourselves, but will exert the ancient vigour of the English nation; but I tell you plainly my opinion is, if you do not lay hold on this occasion you have no reason to hope for another." He concluded with an exhortation, almost passionate for him, to lay aside "the unhappy fatal animosities" which divided and weakened them. "Let me conjure you to disappoint the only hopes of our enemies by your unanimity. I have shown, and will always show, how desirous I am to be the common father of my people; do you in like manner lay aside parties and divisions; let there be no other distinction heard of among us in future but of those who are for the Protestant religion and the present Establishment, and of those who mean a Popish prince and a French Government."
This stirring speech produced its due effect. Opposition in Parliament—in the country it was already inaudible—was completely silenced. The two Houses sent up addresses assuring the King of their firm resolve to defend the succession against the pretended Prince of Wales and all other pretenders whatsoever. The Commons declared independently—in those days addresses from the two Houses were not as now identical in terms—that they would to the utmost of their power enable his Majesty to make good all such alliances as he had made—an omission from the address of the Upper House which their Lordships subsequently supplied. Nor did the goodwill of Parliament expend itself in words. The Commons accepted without a word of protest the four treaties constituting the new Grand Alliance, though the inequality of some of their conditions as regarded England, and the self-seeking motives which actuated one at least of their continental signatories, were apparent on the face of them. The votes of supply were passed unanimously, and ere the Parliament had well completed the first fortnight of its existence a Bill of Attainder against the Prince of Wales—in which the Lords endeavoured, but in vain, to include Mary of Modena—had passed both Houses. But the King's assent to this, as also to an Abjuration Bill directed to the same object, had to be given by commission; for William was now already sickening to his death. His always feeble health had become feebler during the winter; his constant asthma had told heavily upon the condition of his lungs; his legs had swollen to an extent which led his doctors, though erroneously it would seem, to suspect dropsy; he had, in fact, arrived at that state of body in which any accident might be fatal. On Saturday, the 21st of February, he set out from Kensington on horseback to hunt, according to his weekly custom, at Hampton Court. On the road his horse stumbled over a molehill,[24] and fell with his rider, who fractured his right collar-bone. William was taken to Hampton Court, where the bone was set, and the surgeon, finding him feverish, recommended bleeding. This he declined, and, contrary to advice, insisted on returning that evening to Kensington, where it appeared that the setting of the bone had been displaced by the motion of the carriage, and the operation had to be repeated. William slept well, and for a few days no signs of mischief appeared. But, as was afterwards shown by the autopsy, the fall from his horse had violently detached a diseased portion of his lungs from its adhesion to the walls of the thoracic cavity, and this had set up pulmonary inflammation. On the 28th of February he found himself unable to attend Parliament in person, and accordingly conveyed to the Houses by way of message his last recommendation of a project which, ever since the beginning of his reign, he had had much at heart—that, namely, of effecting a legislative union between England and Scotland. On the next day alarming symptoms appeared. The assent to the Prince of Wales's Attainder Bill was given by commission, and a week later, on the 7th of March, when it became necessary to issue another commission for a similar purpose, William was past the power of subscribing the sign-manual, which had to be affixed by a stamp. "Je tire vers ma fin," he murmured to Albemarle, who had arrived from Holland the same night; and, as the perversity of fate had willed it, he who had from boyhood sought death everywhere, had not for years perhaps been so little prepared to meet it. "Sometimes he would have been glad, he told Portland, to have been delivered out of all his troubles, but he confessed now he saw another scene, and could wish to live a little longer." It was another scene indeed—the whole web of his Spanish policy unravelled, his great enemy once more powerful for mischief, the whole work of his life to do again!
He lived through the night, but that was all. Burnet and Tillotson had gone to him that morning and did not quit him till he died. The Archbishop prayed with him some time, but he was then so weak that he could scarcely articulate. "About five o'clock on Saturday morning he desired the Sacrament, and went through the office with great appearance of seriousness, but could not express himself; when this was done he called for the Earl of Albemarle and gave him a charge to take care of his papers. He thanked M. Auverquerque for his long and faithful services. He took leave of the Duke of Ormond, and called for the Earl of Portland, but before he came his voice quite failed; so he took him by the hand and carried it to his heart with great tenderness. Between seven and eight o'clock the rattle began; the commendatory prayer was said for him, and as it ended he died."
More than one hundred and eighty years have passed since that morning; but though the fierce political controversies which raged around the person and character of the dead man, leaving, perhaps, no quality but his courage unassailed, have long since subsided, some into utter silence, others into moderation, it is impossible to say that their disturbing force is altogether spent. A faint echo from those furious clamours may still be heard mingling with the voice of History; a ripple from those distant billows still breaks the mirror of her judgment. It could hardly be otherwise. The principles of which William was in part the voluntary and in part the unchoosing champion have triumphed so completely that they find nowadays no avowed opponent, and scarcely even any secret enemy; but it was William's destiny to have been identified in the promotion and defence of them with an English political party whose many excellent qualities as statesmen and citizens have been always associated with a moral and intellectual temper which, for a century and a half, has offered a standing provocation to men of every other political school. Fate made William of Orange a Whig hero, and in arranging his preliminary condition ordained also by inevitable sequence his exposure to some measure of the polemical resentments which his votaries have never failed to concentrate upon themselves. That the Whigs of his own day should have behaved as they did, on many occasions exceedingly ill to him, is no more unnatural than that they should have unduly exaggerated his virtues after his death. Both their ill-treatment and their excessive eulogy of him were, in different ways, the expression of the same modest confidence in their own civil deserts. The Whigs believed themselves entitled not only to an exclusive interest in a living Whig-made king, but also to as much capital as could be made out of his posthumous renown. If they behaved ill to him at times during his life, it was to assert the just claims of the Whig party; if they over-praised him when dead, it was by way of just tribute to the Whig virtues.