Advice to others to act boldly is not uncommon. But James was ready on occasion to act on his own behalf. In May 1679 there appeared at Brussels one Colonel Fitzpatrick, a man of brave counsel and of great repute among his countrymen the Irish. He had come to arrange a rising in Ireland. The Catholics were groaning under an intolerable yoke and would follow him. By a small amount of assistance from foreign powers the coasts could be seized, arms and munitions landed, and success assured. Fitzpatrick was said to have for his project the consent of the Irish Catholic clergy and to have carried letters of recommendation into France before coming to Flanders. But French policy was opposed to assisting James in the formation of a strong party and the money was not to be obtained. Rather than run the risk of increasing hostility in England by the Colonel’s presence near him, James dismissed him. With much murmuring Fitzpatrick left Brussels.[396] Though this proposal had to be refused, James kept the idea constantly before his mind. The more certain that the king’s refusal to accept his violent advice became, the more his thoughts turned to the possibility of violence without the king’s participation. With the approach of Parliament in the winter of 1680 the notion became further developed. James believed that open force alone could re-establish the royal authority, on the security of which he felt his own safety to rest. If he could compel his brother to act, a final rupture might be precipitated. His enemies would be forestalled, and out of the civil war that would ensue the power of the throne might issue triumphant. It was his policy to push matters to the point of extremity. When he was ordered from London to avoid the session he took northwards with him the intention to see to his own interest. Should the attack on him be pushed further, he thought to unite parties in Scotland in the royal cause and by exciting trouble there and in Ireland to bring the struggle to a head. Then he believed that a larger party than many imagined would be on his side in England.[397]
On the success of the Duke of York depended all the hopes of Roman Catholics for the future of their religion in the English realm. He was their secular head and the turning-point of their plans. His movements were watched with the keenest interest by the authorities of the church. Patience, prudence, and persistence was the policy they advocated. Exhortations to obedience, expressions of attachment and submission passed continually between him and his spiritual patrons. The papal nuncio at Brussels informed him of the deep concern that the Catholic religion had in his cause, and received the gratifying assurance that he would make it his first care to propagate the true faith by every means at his disposal.[398] How James fulfilled that promise is well known. However much devotion he expressed to the wishes of the Holy Father, his heart was more at one with the Society of Jesus than with the court of Rome. He chose Jesuits for his confessors, begged emoluments for them, took their policy for his guide. While his course drew from the Jesuits inexhaustible and still unexhausted praise, it was met by a series of remonstrances waxing in indignation from the pontiff. In the year 1687 fifty candidates for orders in the society were being prepared for work in the English province. King James, it is said, informed Father John Keynes, the provincial, that double or treble that number would be necessary to accomplish what he destined for Jesuit hands.[399] The result declared his wisdom. The mystery of the Revolution was that William of Orange, a Protestant invading the realm of a Catholic monarch, had the support of the Catholic emperor at the instigation of the pope. From the fierce battle of the Popish Plot Charles II tore a prize to deliver to the man by whose ill-judged efforts he had most nearly been robbed of it. At his death he left a kingdom compact, loyal, prosperous, ready to carry on the traditions that had been built up with labour and in the teeth of disaster. When that day came James behaved in perfect accord with his character. Within four years he had thrown away the fruits of a struggle that had lasted for a quarter of a century, and paid the penalty of folly and invincible obstinacy by the dragging existence of a pretender, an exile, a dependent, and a criminal.
CHAPTER III
SHAFTESBURY AND CHARLES
Of all men whose reputation was made or raised by the Popish Plot, none have since maintained their fame at so even a height as John Dryden. His person but not his name suffered from the changes of fortune, and at a distance of more than two centuries the sum of continuous investigation has little to add to the judgments passed on his times by the greatest of satirists. The flashes of Dryden’s insight illumine more than the light shed by many records. In politics, no less than in society, his genius had ample room. The Plot gave him a subject worthy of a master:—
Some truth there was, but dashed and brewed with lies
To please the fools and puzzle all the wise:
Succeeding times did equal folly call
Believing nothing or believing all.
This plot, which failed for want of common sense,