Charles, Earl of Middleton, took an active part in Jacobite intrigues, and he is worth notice here as an example of Jacobitism in alliance with Protestantism, or rather in alliance with views anti-Catholic. He married into a Popish family, but did not adopt their religion. Indeed, his principles on that score were very loose, although he knew how, with a clever stroke, to repel the onsets of Jesuitical sophistry. A priest one day tried to prove to him the doctrine of Transubstantiation. “Your Lordship,” said he, “believes in the Trinity;” Middleton stopped him by asking, “Who told you so?” The priest felt amazed, upon which the Peer added, it was the priest’s business to prove that his own belief was true, and not to question another man about his.[290] In one of the Earl’s furtive missions to England upon the business of the exiled Prince, he had met with Shrewsbury, and had evidently tried, in an underhand way, to work his mind into a Jacobite direction. Fenwick had got hold of this, and had made the most of it against the Duke, who now occupied the office of Secretary of State,[291] and had, during William’s absence, discharged, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and others, the high function of a Lord Justice. The letter which Shrewsbury wrote to William is worth insertion, as illustrative of what went on behind the scenes, of the scrapes men fell into, of the way they got out of them, of the generosity and forgiving spirit of the King, and of the rickety condition of English Protestantism, if it had rested upon nothing better than the character of politicians.
JACOBITES.
“I want words,” says Shrewsbury, addressing William, “to express my surprise at the impudent and unaccountable accusation of Sir John Fenwick; I will, with all the sincerity imaginable, give your Majesty an account of the only thing I can recollect, that should give the least pretence to such an invention, and I am confident you will judge there are few men in the kingdom, that have not so far transgressed the law.
“After your Majesty was pleased to allow me to lay down my employment, it was more than a year before I once saw my Lord Middleton; then he came and stayed in town awhile, and returned to the country; but a little before the La Hogue business he came up again, and upon that alarm, being put in the Tower, where people were permitted to see him, I visited him as often as I thought decent for the nearness of our alliance. Upon his enlargement, one night at supper, when he was pretty well in drink, he told me he intended to go beyond seas, and asked if I would command him no service. I then told him by the course he was taking it would never be in his power to do himself or his friends service, and if the time should come that he expected, I looked upon myself as an offender not to be forgiven, and therefore he should never find me asking it. In the condition he was then, he seemed shocked at my answer, and it being some months after before he went, he never mentioned his own going, or anything else to me, but left a message with my aunt, that he thought it better to say nothing to me, but that I might depend upon his good offices upon any occasion, and in the same manner, he relied upon mine here, and had left me trustee for the small concern he had in England. I only bowed and told her I should always be ready to serve her or him or their children.
1696.
“Your Majesty now knows the extent of my crime, and, if I do not flatter myself, it is not more than a king may forgive.
“I am sure, when I consider with what reason, justice, and generosity, your Majesty has weighed this man’s information, I have little cause to apprehend your ill-opinion upon his malice. I wish it were as easy to answer for the reasonableness of the generality of the world. When such a base invention shall be made public, they may perhaps make me incapable of serving you, but if till now I had had neither interest nor inclination, the noble and frank manner with which your Majesty has used me upon this occasion shall ever be owned with all gratitude in my power.
“My Lord Steward being at the Baths, nothing was resolved as to Sir John Fenwick’s trial till his answer returns.
“I am, with all imaginable submission, your Majesty’s most faithful, dutiful, and obedient subject and servant,
“Shrewsbury.”[292]