FOOTNOTE:
[5] It is true that a large number of courtiers quitted Whitehall at the same time, making the palace, as Ralph says, "like a Desart." But the large majority of them got no further than St. James's.
CHAPTER V
1688-1689
Characteristics of the English Revolution—Views of the various parties—The Convention—Proposal to declare the throne vacant—The Regency question—The resolution of the Commons—Amendment of the Lords—The crisis—Attitude of Mary—Announcement of William—Resolution passed—Declaration of Right—Tender of the crown.
It is significant of the peaceful and, so to speak, constitutional character of our English Revolution that by far its most momentous scenes were enacted within the four walls of the meeting-places of deliberative assemblies, and find their chronicle in the dry record of votes and resolutions. We have no "days," in the French sense of the word, or hardly any, to commemorate. The gradual accomplishment of the political work of 1688-89 is not marked and emphasised like that of 1789-92 at every stage by some out-door event of the picturesque, the stirring, or the terrible kind—such for instance as those by which the 14th of July, the 6th of October, the 10th of August, and in a darker order of memories, the 2d of September, have been made landmarks in the revolutionary history of France. On every one of the days thus singled out for glorious or for shameful remembrance, some irrevocable step was taken—some new position gained by the advancing forces of French democracy from which there was no retreat. We in England have no anniversaries of the kind. We may remember, though we have ceased to celebrate in our churches, the day in which William first set foot on our shores; but we feel that after all it was not an "event" in the sense of that other great Protestant deliverance with which in month-date it so fortunately coincided, and for which the Anglican liturgy economically set apart a common form of thanksgiving. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was an incident having results of the most permanent and unalterable character. It made all the difference between the safety and the destruction of the Sovereign and the three Estates of the Realm. Again, the execution of Charles I. determined something, by committing the country to the military autocracy of Cromwell and the powerful reaction of the Restoration. But this cannot be said of the landing of the Prince of Orange at Torbay—the mere opening of a drama which might have had any one of half a dozen dénoûments; it can hardly even be said of the second and definitive flight of James. The 23d of December 1688 was in one sense no more of an "epoch-making" day than the 5th of November in the same year. It is true that the sovereign's abandonment of his throne and country became something more than a striking dramatic event; it was elevated into an act of profound political import. It had or was invested with inward and most momentous legal significance, in addition to its outward historical prominence. But for all that it determined nothing at the moment of its occurrence but the future of a single man. It is quite conceivable that the mere flight of James II. should have settled no more than his own incapacitation—that it should not even have brought about the exclusion of his son from the succession, still less have led to the formal recognition of a new principle in the English Constitution. True it is that all these consequences were deducible from it as matter of argument, and flowed from it in fact. True it is that, when James stole down the Medway in the early morning of the 23d of December, he was taking a step which was capable of being turned by the friends of liberty and good government, or his own enemies,—and it was difficult to be one without being the other,—to the disherison of his son, and the far-reaching substitution of a statutory for a common-law monarchy. But no less true is it that these results were very far from being necessary or automatic in their character; that, on the contrary, they hung for some critical days in the balance, and that the active co-operation of human qualities in its very conspicuous and not too common forms of courage, foresight, and political dexterity, was needed in the last resort to secure them. It is for this reason that our "days," our anniversaries of such merely external incidents as William's landing or James's departure are, comparatively speaking, so unimportant. No such incident either made or insured the making of our existing English Constitution. The events which really made it passed, as I have said, within the walls of two deliberative assemblies, between January 23 and February 13, 1689, and its making was not actually assured until this period was well-nigh expired.
How important was the political work compressed within these three weeks will be at once apparent if now, having noted how little was settled by the mere flight of James II., we go on to consider how great was the variety of its possible results. James had ceased to be king de facto, that was all; and the English people were pretty unanimous in their determination that he should never be king de facto again. But was he still king de jure? If not, if he was not legally sovereign, was any one? And if so, who? Upon each of these last three questions there was room for difference of opinion, and upon at least two of them opinion was in fact divided. A considerable section of the Tory party were of opinion that James, although he had de facto ceased to reign, was still the only lawful king of England, in whose name, at any rate, all royal authority should be exercised, and all royal acts of state performed. To these men, therefore, the only legal and constitutional solution of the problem appeared to be the creation of a Regency. They were for raising William to the position of Regent, and empowering him to preside over the actual government of the country in this capacity during the life of his father-in-law.
A second section of the Tory party held, on the other hand, that James having by his own act ceased to govern, had also ceased to reign. By deliberately laying aside the sceptre he had brought about a demise of the crown. It had simply devolved upon the person next in succession, and that person was, they declared, the Princess Mary. There was no need therefore for the creation of a Regent, and still less for the more extreme and wholly unprecedented step of appointing a new sovereign. All that was necessary was a mere formal recognition by the country of the bare legal facts of the case. According to this party the Princess Mary was in truth at that moment the lawful Queen of England, and nothing more was needed than a national acknowledgment of her title.