[205] Journals, 11th Dec. 1697; Parl. Hist. 1167.
[206] Journals, 21st Dec. 1697; Parl. Hist. v. 1168. It was carried by 225 to 86.
[207] "The elections fell generally," says Burnet, "on men who were in the interest of government; many of them had indeed some popular notions, which they had drank in under a bad government, and thought this ought to keep them under a good one; so that those who wished well to the public did apprehend great difficulties in managing them." Upon which Speaker Onslow has a very proper note: "They might happen to think," he says, "a good one might become a bad one, or a bad one might succeed to a good one. They were the best men of the age, and were for maintaining the revolution government by its own principles, and not by those of a government it had superseded." "The elections," we read in a letter of Mr. Montague, Aug. 1698, "have made a humour appear in the counties that is not very comfortable to us who are in business. But yet after all, the present members are such as will neither hurt England nor this government, but I believe they must be handled very nicely." Shrewsbury Correspondence, 551. This parliament, however, fell into a great mistake about the reduction of the army; as Bolingbroke in his Letters on History very candidly admits, though connected with those who had voted for it.
[208] Journals, 17th Dec. 1698; Parl. Hist. 1191.
[209] Journals, 10th Jan., 18th, 20th, and 25th March; Lords' Journals, 8th Feb.; Parl. Hist. 1167, 1191; Ralph, 808; Burnet, 219. It is now beyond doubt that William had serious thoughts of quitting the government, and retiring to Holland, sick of the faction and ingratitude of this nation. Shrewsbury Correspondence, 571; Hardwicke Papers, 362. This was in his character, and not like the vulgar story which that retailer of all gossip, Dalrymple, calls a well-authenticated tradition, that the king walked furiously round his room, exclaiming, "If I had a son, by G— the guards should not leave me." It would be vain to ask how this son would have enabled him to keep them against the bent of the parliament and people.
[210] The prodigality of William in grants to his favourites was an undeniable reproach to his reign. Charles II. had, however, with much greater profuseness, though much less blamed for it, given away almost all the Crown lands in a few years after the restoration; and the Commons could not now be prevailed upon to shake those grants, which was urged by the court, in order to defeat the resumption of those in the present reign. The length of time undoubtedly made a considerable difference. An enormous grant of the Crown's domanial rights in North Wales to the Earl of Portland excited much clamour in 1697, and produced a speech from Mr. Price, afterwards a baron of the exchequer, which was much extolled for its boldness, not rather to say, virulence and disaffection. This is printed in Parl. Hist. 978, and many other books. The king, on an address from the House of Commons, revoked the grant, which indeed was not justifiable. His answer on this occasion, it may here be remarked, was by its mildness and courtesy a striking contrast to the insolent rudeness with which the Stuarts, one and all, had invariably treated the house. Yet to this vomit were many wretches eager to return.
[211] Parl. Hist. 1171, 1202, etc.; Ralph; Burnet; Shrewsbury Correspondence. See also Davenant's "Essay on Grants and Resumptions," and sundry pamphlets in Somers Tracts, vol. ii., and State Tracts, temp. W. 3, vol. ii.
[212] In Feb. 1692.
[213] See the same authorities, especially the Shrewsbury Letters, p. 602.
[214] Commons' Journals, June 1, Aug. 12.