[178] Parl. Hist. 575; Ralph, 194; Burnet, 41. Two remarkable protests were entered on the journals of the Lords on occasion of this bill; one by the whigs, who were outnumbered on a particular division, and another by the tories on the passing of the bill. They are both vehemently expressed, and are among the not very numerous instances wherein the original whig and tory principles have been opposed to each other. The tory protest was expunged by order of the house. It is signed by eleven peers and six bishops, among whom were Stillingfleet and Lloyd. The whig protest has but ten signatures. The convention had already passed an act for preventing doubts concerning their own authority (1 W. & M. stat. 1, c. 1), which could of course have no more validity than they were able to give it. This bill had been much opposed by the tories. Parl. Hist. v. 122.
In order to make this clearer, it should be observed that the convention which restored Charles II. not having been summoned by his writ, was not reckoned by some royalist lawyers capable of passing valid acts; and consequently all the statutes enacted by it were confirmed by the authority of the next. Clarendon lays it down as undeniable that such confirmation was necessary. Nevertheless, this objection having been made in the court of King's Bench to one of their acts, the judges would not admit it to be disputed; and said, that the act being made by King, Lords, and Commons, they ought not now to pry into any defects of the circumstances of calling them together, neither would they suffer a point to be stirred, wherein the estates of so many were concerned. Heath v. Pryn, 1 Ventris, 15.
[179] Great indulgence was shown to the assertors of indefeasible right. The Lords resolved, that there should be no penalty in the bill to disable any person from sitting and voting in either house of parliament. Journals, May 5, 1690. The bill was rejected in the Commons by 192 to 178. Journals, April 26; Parl. Hist. 594; Burnet, 41, ibid.
[180] Some English subjects took James's commission, and fitted out privateers which attacked our ships. They were taken, and it was resolved to try them as pirates; when Dr. Oldys, the king's advocate, had the assurance to object that this could not be done, as if James had still the prerogatives of a sovereign prince by the law of nations. He was of course turned out, and the men hanged; but this is one instance among many of the difficulty under which the government laboured through the unfortunate distinction of facto and jure. Ralph, 423. The boards of customs and excise were filled by Godolphin with Jacobites. Shrewsb. Corresp. 51.
[181] The name of Carmarthen is perpetually mentioned among those whom the late king reckoned his friends. Macpherson's Papers, i. 457, etc. Yet this conduct was so evidently against his interest that we may perhaps believe him insincere. William was certainly well aware that an extensive conspiracy had been formed against his throne. It was of great importance to learn the persons involved in it and their schemes. May we not presume that Lord Carmarthen's return to his ancient allegiance was feigned, in order to get an insight into the secrets of that party? This has already been conjectured by Somerville (p. 395) of Lord Sunderland, who is also implicated by Macpherson's publication, and doubtless with higher probability; for Sunderland, always a favourite of William, could not without insanity have plotted the restoration of a prince he was supposed to have betrayed. It is evident that William was perfectly master of the cabals of St. Germain's. That little court knew it was betrayed; and the suspicion fell on Lord Godolphin. Dalrymple, 189. But I think Sunderland and Carmarthen more likely.
I should be inclined to suspect that by some of this double treachery the secret of Princess Anne's repentant letter to her father reached William's ears. She had come readily, or at least without opposition, into that part of the settlement which postponed her succession after the death of Mary, for the remainder of the king's life. It would indeed have been absurd to expect that William was to descend from his throne in her favour; and her opposition could not have been of much avail. But, when the civil list and revenue came to be settled, the tories made a violent effort to secure an income of £70,000 a year to her and her husband. Parl. Hist. 492. As this on one hand seemed beyond all fair proportion to the income of the Crown, so the whigs were hardly less unreasonable in contending that she should depend altogether on the king's generosity; especially as by letters patent in the late reign, which they affected to call in question, she had a revenue of about £30,000. In the end, the house resolved to address the king, that he would make the princess's income £50,000 in the whole. This, however, left an irreconcilable enmity, which the artifices of Marlborough and his wife were employed to aggravate. They were accustomed, in the younger sister's little court, to speak of the queen with severity, and of the king with rude and odious epithets. Marlborough, however, went much farther. He brought that narrow and foolish woman into his own dark intrigues with St. Germain's. She wrote to her father, whom she had grossly, and almost openly, charged with imposing a spurious child as Prince of Wales, supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken. Life of James, 476; Macpherson's Papers, i. 241.
If this letter, as cannot seem improbable, became known to William, we shall have a more satisfactory explanation of the queen's invincible resentment toward her sister than can be found in any other part of their history. Mary refused to see the princess on her death-bed; which shows more bitterness than suited her mild and religious temper, if we look only to the public squabbles about the Churchills as its motive. Burnet, 90; Conduct of Duchess of Marlborough, 41. But the queen must have deeply felt the unhappy, though necessary, state of enmity in which she was placed towards her father. She had borne a part in a great and glorious enterprise, obedient to a woman's highest duty; and had admirably performed those of the station to which she was called; but still with some violation of natural sentiments, and some liability to the reproach of those who do not fairly estimate the circumstances of her situation:
Infelix! utcunque ferant ea facta minores.
Her sister, who had voluntarily trod the same path, who had misled her into belief of her brother's illegitimacy, had now, from no real sense of duty, but out of pique and weak compliance with cunning favourites, solicited in a clandestine manner the late king's pardon, while his malediction resounded in the ears of the queen. This feebleness and duplicity made a sisterly friendship impossible.
As for Lord Marlborough, he was among the first, if we except some Scots renegades, who abandoned the cause of the revolution. He had so signally broken the ties of personal gratitude in his desertion of the king on that occasion, that, according to the severe remark of Hume, his conduct required for ever afterwards the most upright, the most disinterested, and most public-spirited behaviour to render it justifiable. What then must we think of it, if we find in the whole of this great man's political life nothing but ambition and rapacity in his motives, nothing but treachery and intrigue in his means! He betrayed and abandoned James, because he could not rise in his favour without a sacrifice that he did not care to make; he abandoned William and betrayed England, because some obstacles stood yet in the way of his ambition. I do not mean only, when I say that he betrayed England, that he was ready to lay her independence and liberty at the feet of James II. and Louis XIV.; but that in one memorable instance he communicated to the court of St. Germain's, and through that to the court of Versailles, the secret of an expedition against Brest, which failed in consequence with the loss of the commander and eight hundred men. Dalrymple, iii. 13; Life of James, 522; Macpherson, i. 487. In short, his whole life was such a picture of meanness and treachery that one must rate military services very high indeed to preserve any esteem for his memory.