A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

The unanimity of parties which had secured the triumph of William Personal unpopularity of William. was of short duration, nor was his personal popularity long-lived. The apparent coldness of his demeanour, his carelessness of the pomps of the Court, his wretched health, which obliged him to withdraw from London and establish his Court at Kensington, speedily rendered him personally unpopular; while, as soon as the general danger which had caused their union was removed, the fundamental differences which divided political parties at once made themselves obvious. Moreover, the tendency to reaction, visible after all political excitements, began to show itself. Two classes were by no means ready to accept kindly the revolution which had been wrought. These were the clergy Discontent of the clergy and the army. The greater part of the clergy had spent their lives in inculcating the duty of passive obedience. Although that theory had broken down in practice when the attacks of the Crown were directed against themselves, they could not bring themselves to submit without difficulty to a complete reversal of their political creed, nor could they help seeing that the success of William implied nothing short of the substitution of the Whig doctrine for that of monarchy by divine right. A very large portion of them were therefore disaffected. The and the army. army, though it had disliked the introduction of Catholics and of Irish among its ranks, and was not prejudiced in favour of any theory of monarchy, felt its professional honour injured by the sorry part it had played in the late events. So deep was the disaffection that one regiment quartered at Ipswich broke out into open mutiny, marched northward in arms, and was only brought to obedience after a skirmish with some Dutch troops under Ginkel, which had been rapidly sent in pursuit. The signs of general disaffection at the same time were so obvious that it was thought necessary to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act.

The Convention changed into a Parliament.

Before this happened, William had had to form a ministry and to furnish himself with a Parliament. For this latter purpose, in spite of the opposition of many of the old Tories, who regarded a Parliament not summoned by the King's writ as no Parliament at all, the Convention was changed into a Parliament, and proceeded to act in that capacity. It was not indeed reasonable that a freely elected body, whose choice of a king both sides were willing to allow, should still be regarded upon technical grounds as incapable of settling matters of much less importance. The choice of ministers was a matter of more difficulty.

William's difficulties in forming a ministry.

At the present time the choice of ministers is tolerably simple. The House of Commons having obtained the position of both legislature and executive, the administration is placed in the hands of a Committee of that party which is predominant in the Commons; the Crown, in fact, having but little choice in the matter. This theory of government, which is a necessary consequence of the Parliamentary triumph at the Revolution, was in the years immediately succeeding that event not understood. The notion of a king whose duties are rather ornamental than real had scarcely entered men's minds. The King was still expected to have the direction of the executive, to be, in fact, his own Prime Minister, and to nominate as heads of departments such statesmen as he thought Ignorance of the constitutional change. best fitted for the employment, without exact regard to their political views. The effect of this was to make the King responsible for the Government; and though the right of impeachment, as exercised in the case of Danby, rested upon the supposition that ministers were responsible to Parliament, the fact was not yet fully recognized. It was this responsibility of the king which had produced the disasters of the Great Rebellion and the late Revolution. The gradual substitution of Parliamentary ministry, which should serve as an intermediate body between the Commons and the Crown, and save the Crown from direct responsibility, is the great constitutional change which was completed on the accession of the Hanoverian house. Such a change becomes absolutely necessary when Parliament has once secured a complete control of the executive; otherwise it is plain that the acts or proposals of the executive, constantly met by a hostile majority in Parliament, could never be brought to a completion. It also of necessity implies a mutual responsibility among the ministers, who upon essential points must all agree with the Parliamentary majority. These necessary consequences of the triumph of the Whig theory of the sovereignty of the people were little understood even by the best English politicians; and William, able as he was as a foreign statesman, had never a clear insight into the working of the English Constitution. Nor was his character such as to fit him to occupy the place of an ornamental king. Thus he both himself intended and was expected by the nation to exercise a supreme influence in the Government, at the same time that the newly won powers of the Parliament were liable constantly to thwart his schemes. Besides the difficulty which this general ignorance of constitutional principles caused, peculiar difficulties, arising from the manner in which he had obtained the Crown, beset William. He had been brought to the throne by the The Whigs' desire for vengeance. Whigs. By the Whigs he was expected to become a party leader. They looked forward, under his guidance, to a triumphant revenge on the party at whose hands they had suffered so much. On the other hand, William's own wish was to hush the storm of faction, to become King of the whole English nation, not of one party, and to be able to use the resources of England for his great European measures; he therefore had no intention of becoming a mere party leader. Again, his view of the duties and responsibilities of a king was a high one, whereas the Whigs, on whom he might be expected to rely, were pledged to give greater prominence to the influence of Parliament. William's natural tendencies, therefore, when once safeguards for a just Government and personal liberty were secured, inclined him rather to the Tories, whose view of the prerogative was higher.

William's ministry.

It was in the midst of these difficulties that William had to select his ministry. He attempted to conciliate all parties, with the exception of the extreme Jacobites, and his ministry was a mixed one. Danby had been mainly instrumental in bringing William to England. He had indeed in the Convention thrown some obstacles in the way of the Parliamentary change of dynasty, but might fairly look for a high reward. He was displeased at being appointed President of the Council, a post of high honour, but not of great political activity. Halifax was appointed Privy Seal. His intellect, which always saw two sides of a question, was not such as to fit him for decided statesmanship. The places of real importance, the Secretaryships, were shared between the Tories and the Whigs; Nottingham, the leader of that class who expressed with perfect honesty their willingness to acknowledge any King de facto, and Shrewsbury, a young man of great ability and as yet a consistent Whig, were appointed to those places. Neither Treasury nor Admiralty were intrusted to any single individual, but were placed in Commission, both Whigs and Tories sitting at the Boards. At the Treasury, though only third on the Commission, Godolphin, by his superior skill and knowledge, soon became pre-eminent. The purity of the judgment-seat was secured by a careful selection of the ablest lawyers from a list supplied by the Privy Council, while the great places of the Household, where personal rather than political influence was wanted, were chiefly given to William's personal friends from Holland, the most prominent being Overkirk, Master of the Horse, and Bentinck, subsequently Earl of Portland.

By the appointment of his ministers, and by the conversion of the Convention into a Parliament, the apparatus of Government was complete. Settlement of the revenue. The Whigs were for a time triumphant. The revenue was settled on a peace footing at £1,200,000 a year; the hereditary taxes being given to William for the support of his Crown (a grant which forms the origin of the Civil List), while the Parliamentary taxes intended for the support of Government were granted only for limited periods. The hearth tax, the most obnoxious and unjust of taxes, as it is at once inquisitorial in its action and presses with undue severity upon the poor in comparison with the rich, was abolished. The settlement of the Settlement of the Church. Church, and of the oaths to be taken by the holders of places, at once rendered obvious the strength of faction which still existed, and the difficulties which must beset all attempt at impartial government. Three Bills were produced, a Toleration Bill, a Comprehension Bill, for the purpose of so changing the construction of the Church and its Liturgy as to admit numerous Protestant Dissenters, and a Bill for the removal of the Test Act, for the purpose of enabling the King to employ, as he was most desirous of doing, all Protestants in his service. Of these three, one only, the Toleration Act, was carried. In fact the Comprehension Bill, which was introduced by Nottingham, was no doubt intended, after admitting a certain number of Dissenters, to render the exclusion of the rest more absolute. Fear of this rendered the Dissenters themselves hostile to it, and William's personal efforts to produce at once comprehension and relaxation of the Test Act were in vain; both Bills were thrown out.

There yet remained the question of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. It was acknowledged on all hands that all lay place-holders and all Oaths of allegiance and supremacy. newly-appointed holders of ecclesiastical preferments should be obliged to take these oaths, slightly altered to suit existing circumstances. The case of the clergy already holding benefices was not so clear. Many were willing to accept the new Government peaceably, and it seemed hard that they should be required to take oaths which gave the lie to all their former political views. With regard to the Bishops too, the High Church Party advanced the doctrine that the Episcopal ordination was indelible, and that it was impossible for any Act either of King or Parliament to prevent a man who had once been a Bishop from being so always. Against the King's wish the party who were for the most stringent application of the oaths carried the day. All the clergy were required to take them by August 1689; if they had not been taken by February 1690, those clergy and Bishops who refused them were to be deprived. Between 300 and 400 refused the oath, and there thus sprang up that section of the clergy known as Nonjurors. The settlement of the country was completed by the Coronation Oath, which declared that the King would uphold the Protestant religion as settled by law. It was a foolish miscomprehension of these words, which obviously did not prevent a Parliamentary change in the arrangements of religion, which subsequently led George III. into his obstinate opposition to Catholic emancipation. When the oath had been arranged, the coronation took place (April 11), and some new titles were given; thus Danby became Lord Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, Bentinck Earl of Portland, and Mordaunt, First Lord of the Treasury, Earl of Monmouth.

When the Government of the country was fairly settled it was time for William to receive his reward. Parliament gratified him by a strong declaration against the policy of Louis abroad, and assurance of hearty support should he find it necessary to have recourse to arms. On the The European war breaks out. 13th of May war with France was therefore declared. William stated that he had no choice in the matter as France had already begun war upon England. This was an allusion to the action of France in Ireland; for Louis, though unable to trust James and his English and Irish friends in that implicit manner which would have rendered his assistance irresistible, was yet so far convinced that the real key to success against the coalition was the neutralization of England, that he had allowed James some assistance in troops. The other great countries of the coalition had already declared war with France. Louis found himself with one ally only, who did him, if possible, more harm than good,—this was the Porte. He succeeded in inducing that power to continue its attacks upon Hungary, which was a constant source of weakness to Austria; but the unnatural alliance between the most Christian King and the great enemies of Christendom gave an opening for the invective of his enemies, which received still further point from his subsequent behaviour. Unable to sustain the forward position which his armies had assumed in Germany the preceding year, especially when some of his forces were required in Ireland, he ordered a retreat. Devastation of the Palatinate. What he could not keep he determined to destroy, and the Palatinate was laid waste with a reckless, unsparing fury, which enabled each country, as it declared war with him, to point out that his conduct was more cruel than even that of his Turkish ally. It had such an effect on the Continent, that war was declared at intervals of about a month by Austria, the Empire, Spain, Brandenburg and Holland. William's primary object was attained; Europe was combined against France. The resources of England were placed in his hands to support that coalition, but there was yet much to be done before he was free to act.