Chapter III: Part 3

[Sidenote: James's hopes upheld by the treason of the ministry]

[Sidenote: and of Marlborough.]

The causes which led James still to cherish hope, and which induced him to persuade Louis to contemplate that invasion of England to which the battle of La Hogue put an end, are to be found in the conduct of the Jacobite party in England: for while William's attention was constantly turned to the Continent, treason found its way among his own immediate ministers. Uncertain even yet of the stability of the new Government, three of the greatest among them determined to be safe on either issue. Admiral Russell, and Godolphin, head of the Treasury, succeeded in obtaining written pardons from James; and Marlborough, whose previous treachery might have been supposed unpardonable, made such a show of repentance, that he obtained the same favour, promising in exchange, when he should be in command of the English troops, to bring them over to the enemy. But even the treachery of Marlborough partook of the greatness of his character. His views reached far beyond this commonplace act of treason. He was already devising plans by which the fate of England and of Europe should be in his own hands. As his schemes were not yet ready, though the opportunity he had mentioned to James arose in Flanders, he contrived to excuse himself from performing his promise. But before long circumstances led him to believe that he might carry out his treacherous plans in a way more in accordance with his own wishes. The session of Parliament had been a somewhat stormy one. The immense emoluments of place-holders had excited the anger of the Opposition, and although the extreme measures suggested, which went so far as to cut down all official salaries to £500, had destroyed all attempts at wholesome reform, there was much continued discontent against the Court. There had been bitter quarrels also between the Upper and Lower Houses upon new arrangements of the Treason Law which had been suggested, and all parties seemed to be combined in mistrust and dislike of the favours lavished on foreigners. This state of affairs seemed to open the way for Marlborough's intrigues. In fact, years of rivalry and several bloody wars, coupled with constant outrages on one side or the other on distant colonies, had rendered the Dutch at least as hateful to the English as the French; nor was the feeling diminished by seeing many of the greater and more lucrative offices in the hands of members of the hated nation. By working on this feeling, Marlborough hoped to induce Parliament to petition the King to discharge all foreign troops, a line of conduct which at a subsequent period was actually followed. Once rid of these troops (and he thought it impossible that William, situated as he was, could withstand a formal Parliamentary request), Marlborough relied on his own ability to induce the English army, which was very jealous of William's liking for his own Dutch troops, to further his views. The absolute authority which his wife exercised over the Princess Anne enabled him to secure her adhesion to his plans. She wrote friendly and repentant letters to her father. With the army at his command, and with the Protestant heiress inclined to favour his projects, Marlborough would declare for James, and secure his return without the danger of foreign invasion, without the shedding of a drop of blood. Such at least was the story he told the Jacobites. Men who knew his character mistrusted him. It was more likely, they thought, and this seems to have been his real plan, that he would declare not for King James, but for Princess Anne herself. He would thus become indirectly the ruler of England, and as such the head of the European coalition, and the arbiter of Europe.

[Sidenote: Marlborough is deprived of his offices. Jan. 10, 1692.]

[Sidenote: The Queen's quarrel with the Princess Anne.]

Luckily for William, even the Jacobites looked with suspicion on the scheme; Bentinck received information of Marlborough's treachery. The King, placed on his guard, stripped him of all his offices; and when Anne, who knew well the reason of his disgrace, persisted in ignoring it and in bringing the Duchess of Marlborough to Court, the spirit of the Queen was roused, and a bitter quarrel broke out between the sisters. The full details of the plot were not at the time known, and a false plot, invented and brought to light by a wretched informer of the name of Fuller, gave Marlborough an opportunity of ostentatiously clearing his character. He was thus regarded as a martyr to the jealousy of William, and to an unreasonable dislike of her sister on the part of the Queen.

Although for the time the danger of Marlborough's treason seemed to have been escaped, it was undoubtedly the knowledge of its existence, and of the feeling prevalent among William's other ministers, that encouraged James still to retain hopes of success in England.

[Sidenote: Massacre of Glencoe. Feb. 13.]

Before passing to the events to which those hopes gave rise, an incident must be mentioned which, though it had but little effect at the moment, has been always considered as a blot on William's character, and added point to the bitter attacks directed against him towards the close of his reign. Melville had proved unequal to the task of governing Scotland, and the management of the affairs of that country had passed almost entirely into the hands of the Dalrymples, father and son, the elder of whom was President of the Court of Session, having been lately raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair. The son, known as the Master of Stair, was appointed Secretary for Scotland, resident in London. To him now fell the duty of pacifying the Highlands, where the civil war continued to smoulder. Unable to give the Highlanders any effectual support, James had told them that they were at liberty to make peace with the conqueror. It has been already mentioned that local politics had more to do with the conduct of the Highlanders than any question as to the reigning dynasty, and that their hatred directed against the head of the Campbell clan arose largely from the condition of dependence to him in which they found themselves, and which was due in a great degree to unpaid arrears of rent. It was determined now to adopt a plan which had been formerly suggested, and to expend some £15,000 in relieving them from their difficulties. The distribution of this money was unwisely intrusted to Breadalbane, himself a Campbell, and too much interested in the encroachments of that house not to be unpopular. He was profoundly and justly mistrusted by the Highlanders, and the negotiations for the distribution of the money proceeded but slowly, the chief leader of the opposition to the settlement being Macdonald of Glencoe, one of that tribe which had suffered most from the growth of the Campbells. Pressure was put upon the Highlanders to bring the negotiation to a conclusion. A proclamation was issued, promising pardon to all who, before the 31st of December 1691, should swear to live peaceably under the existing Government. All who refused to take this oath were to be regarded as public enemies. As the Government appeared to be in earnest, the chiefs yielded, making it a sort of point of honour to yield as slowly as possible. In this foolish contest of honour Mac Ian of Glencoe was unfortunately the victor. Not till the very day named did he appear at Fort William to take the oaths. When he arrived there he found to his dismay that there was no magistrate to receive them, and he was compelled forthwith to set out through the winter snow to Inverary to find a magistrate. The journey was so difficult that it was not till the 6th of January that he reached Inverary. Under the circumstances, the sheriff there consented, though after the prescribed date, to receive the oath, and sent it, with a certificate stating the circumstances to Edinburgh. The slowness of Macdonald had played into the hands of his enemies the Campbells. Breadalbane and Argyle were at one in their determination to use their advantage, and they found a ready assistant in the Master of Stair, whose views, free from all local feeling, were of the sternest description, and who thought the Highlanders should be treated as uncivilized barbarians. He had been disappointed at the submission of the clans, and rejoiced at the opportunity of making one example. By his means the certificate granted by the sheriff appears to have been suppressed, and an order was drawn up and laid before William, in which, along with other instructions to the commander of the army in Scotland, were these words with regard to the clan of Glencoe: "It will be proper, for the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of thieves." William signed the order, probably without carefully reading it, almost certainly without understanding what Dalrymple meant by extirpation. His scheme was one of the utmost barbarity. A detachment of soldiers was sent into the glen as though on a friendly mission. They were kindly received and hospitably kept for more than a week. Then, at a fixed date, when other troops were to have stopped all the passes, they suddenly fell upon their kindly hosts and cruelly murdered them. The plan was but partially carried out. The passes had not been stopped, and not more than thirty-eight of the Highlanders were actually killed. But the villages were destroyed, the cattle driven off, and it is unknown how many more perished as they fled in the dead of winter in the wild mountains which surrounded their glen.

[Sidenote: Threatened invasion of England.]

It was just after this event, in March, that William went abroad to resume the Continental war. As usual, his absence was the time of danger for England. An invasion from France had long been planned, and was on the point of taking place. Excited by the constant untruthful account of his agents in England, encouraged by the artful and well-planned treachery of Marlborough and William's other ministers, James had never ceased to press upon Louis the wisdom of an assault upon England. His urgent instances had always been met by the opposition of the war minister Louvois. Conscious that his superiority lay in the organization of large disciplined armies in the field, and led by the experience of his life to look to the great operations of regular warfare on the Rhine and in Italy as the real sources of greatness for France, that minister had always set his face against little wars. He was moreover jealous of the influence of Lauzun at the Court of St. Germains, and had repeatedly pointed out what was very true, the falseness of the Jacobite accounts, the weak character of James, the total untrustworthiness of his resources, and the consequent necessity which would be laid upon France of carrying out such an invasion, in fact, entirely unaided. He had dwelt also upon the strong national feeling of the English, repeatedly exhibited when an invasion was threatened, and the uncertainty, even were the attempt successful, of the continued assistance and alliance of a Prince so ignorant and selfish as James. Nevertheless, in this instance James was right, not that all and more than all that Louvois urged was not true, but that the separation of England from the coalition, the command of the sea, and the blow which would be dealt to William's influence, were worth any sacrifice which France might make. Louvois' arguments, however, had hitherto prevailed; the assistance given to James had been but slight. But Louvois' death (which took place on the 16th of July 1691) opened brighter hopes to the exiled King. Louis was at length persuaded; and a vast plan was made which, had it been carried out as intended, might well have been successful. An army was secretly collected during the winter on the coast of Normandy. Two fleets were assembled at Brest and at Toulon, numbering together 80 ships of the line, and placed under the command of Tourville and D'Estrées, to convoy this army to England. James, misled by his hopes and by the double-dealing of Russell, believed, and made Louis believe, that the English fleet was thoroughly disaffected. Secure in this belief, it was without much anxiety that the invaders found the spring far advanced, while still the weather prevented the junction of the fleets.

[Sidenote: Battle of La Hogue. May 19.]

But meanwhile all secresy had been lost. The Queen in England, and William in Holland, had put forth all their energy, and a combined Dutch and English fleet of 90 ships was in the Channel under command of Russell. At last one French squadron, that of Tourville, consisting of 44 ships, made its appearance. It was supposed that, weak as it was, it was sufficient for all necessary purposes; it could probably beat the Dutch contingent, and the English fleet was of no account, for neither Russell nor his men were likely to fight. Relying on this false belief, Louis issued peremptory orders to his admiral to cover the invasion, and fight the enemy wherever he met them. But James's folly had already gone far to thwart any hopes based upon the temper of the English. He had issued a Declaration, the work of his counsellor Melfort, excepting from all hope of pardon, not only a long list of gentlemen by name, but whole classes of Englishmen, all judges, jurymen, and lawyers who had been employed in any of the prosecutions of Jacobites, all magistrates who did not instantly (regardless of where they might be) make common cause with him upon his appearance, all spies and informers who had divulged his secrets, even the insignificant fishermen of Sheerness who had hindered him on his first attempt to escape from England. So ridiculous, so ill-judged was the Declaration, that, far from suppressing it, the English Council reprinted it, and distributed it largely, with a few pungent criticisms of their own. Even Jacobites had to confess that at least 500 men were excepted. It is easy to conceive the effect of such a Declaration, when contrasted with William's noble Act of Grace of the preceding year. What James's folly had thus half done the Queen's sagacity completed. Urged on all sides to apprehend known Jacobites, with the denunciations of a plot, perfectly fictitious indeed, but none the less very plausible, the creation of a rascal of the name of Young, just placed in her hands, and fully conscious of the intrigues of Russell her admiral, she wrote a noble letter, expressing her trust and reliance on the patriotism of her fleet, and sent it to Russell, with orders to read it to the captains of his fleet. Russell, at heart a Whig and a devoted lover of his profession, hesitated no longer. He would fight, he said, though King James himself were in the hostile fleet. He went from ship to ship, encouraging the crews, and when Tourville bore down upon him there was no sign of faint-heartedness in the English fleet. Overpowered by numbers, the French fleet fled, broke into fragments, and was destroyed piecemeal. But twelve of the largest ships, with Tourville himself, took refuge under the Forts of La Hogue, under the eyes of James and Marshal Bellefonds, commander of the army. There, as they lay in two divisions in shallow water, they were attacked on two successive days by a flotilla of English boats, under Admiral Rooke; and under the guns of the forts, which were supposed to render them quite secure, they were taken and burnt, while James looked on and saw the destruction of this his last hope.

[Sidenote: Second crisis of the war over.]

[Sidenote: Subsequent ill success of the fleet.]

This great victory over the French, the first which the nation had won for many years, drove the people wild with delight. All the more heavy was their disappointment at the feeble manner in which it was followed up, and at the ill success of the war in the Netherlands in the latter part of the year. An expedition against St. Malo failed through the jealousy of its commanders. The broken fleet of Tourville, unable to keep the sea, assumed a new form. French cruisers and privateers covered the ocean, and hundreds of English merchantmen fell a prey to them. The commercial world suffered more heavily from the individual enterprises of men such as the privateer captains Jean Bart and Dugouay Trouin than from the great united fleets of France, and almost regretted the victory which had called to life such enemies.

[Sidenote: Fall of Namur. June 30.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Steinkirk. Aug. 4.]

The chief incidents of the war in the Netherlands--the fall of the great fortress of Namur, and the battle of Steinkirk--were very characteristic of the art of war at this period. It was a time of slow, methodical, and scientific movement in the field, but of great advance in the art of attacking and defending fortresses, which in the hands of Vauban and Cohorn was so far perfected, that for more than a century no important change was made in the system they advocated. Louis did not press his advantage; after taking Namur his army was diminished by detachments sent to other quarters, and William thought he saw an opportunity of striking a heavy blow against his weakened opponent. A traitor in the English army had habitually informed Marshal Luxemburg of every movement of the allied troops. His correspondence was discovered, and with a pistol at his breast he was forced to write false information which William dictated. Having thus, as he hoped, misdirected the vigilance of his enemy, the King determined upon a surprise. The unexpected difficulties offered by the country prevented its success. Luxemburg got his troops into order with extraordinary rapidity, and the English division under Mackay soon found itself hotly engaged. It was successful in its first efforts, but the household troops of Louis were sent against it, and Count Solmes withheld the supports which should have come to its assistance. The division was nearly destroyed, and the anger of the English blazed up fiercely against the Dutch general, who, set over the head of the English commanders, thus basely deserted their troops.

[Sidenote: Discontented Parliament. Nov. 4.]

It was thus, with many causes of discontent, that, upon the return of William to England, the Parliament assembled. Mismanagement had neutralized the great victory of La Hogue; the discovery of Preston's plot had not been followed by a single act of justice upon the Jacobites, a sharp quarrel had broken out between the Queen and her sister, which, as Marlborough's treachery was unknown, seemed merely capricious and causeless; the war in the Netherlands had been a mere disastrous repetition of the last year's campaign; William's chief misfortune was commonly attributed to the mismanagement, or perhaps the treachery of the Dutch general; the House of Lords had been alienated by the apprehension of two of its members, who had been put to their recognizances, and no further charge brought against them; the harvest in England had failed, so that corn had doubled its natural price; and the police had grown so lax that highwaymen in gangs of twenty and thirty infested the country, and robbed almost within sight of London. Both Lords and Commons consequently entered warmly upon the consideration of the state of the nation. But the continued jealousy which existed between the two Houses brought their inquiries to nothing. As yet neither Ministry nor Opposition was sufficiently organized to secure the advantages either of stable government or of thorough reform. The administration was carried on as before with all the evils of a Ministry divided against itself, in the presence of a factious and disorganized Opposition.

[Sidenote: The Land Tax.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the National Debt. Jan. 20, 1693.]

Some important steps were however taken with regard to finance. There was still a tolerably unanimous feeling in favour of the war, and money had to be procured. In the arrangements for supplying the necessary money, the financial talents of Charles Montague, a young and rising member of the Whig party, first became conspicuous. Early known as a man of letters, and the author in company with Prior of "The Town and Country Mouse," he had been introduced to the King by his patron the Earl of Dorset, and, after strengthening his position by a marriage with the Dowager Countess of Manchester, had entered political life, and had been appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury in 1691. The financial measures recommended consisted of a reorganization of the Land Tax and of the first establishment of Government loans. The extraordinary expenses of Government had in early times been met by subsidies. These subsidies were levied both on moveables and on land, but were chiefly supported by an assessment on the land at the nominal rate of four shillings in the pound. Land had increased greatly in value as the demand for it increased, while gold and silver had fallen greatly in value after the discovery of America. In the assessment for subsidies neither of these circumstances was taken into consideration. The four shilling land tax had come in reality to be less than twopence in the pound. During the Commonwealth, and subsequently, a different method of taxation had been followed. The sum to be raised had been first determined, and each landowner had been called upon to pay a proportional share. In 1692 the Land Tax was reintroduced and reorganized. A new valuation was made, and upon this basis a tax was annually laid upon the land varying from a minimum of one shilling in time of peace to four shillings in times of emergency. Four shillings on this new valuation produced about £2,000,000. This sum fell considerably short of what was required. In addition, therefore, a loan, which is the origin of the National Debt, was raised. Money was plentiful in the country, and was so easily obtained, that bubble companies and stock-jobbing had become rife. Montague determined to turn some of this superfluous wealth to the use of the country, and to spread the payment of the debt over several generations. The plan at first adopted in raising these loans was not exactly the same as our present method of perpetual funding. The lenders were life annuitants, and the interest of the loan was secured on new duties on beer and other liquors. As each annuitant died his annuity was divided among the survivors, till their number was reduced to seven, who would at that time be naturally in receipt of an enormous interest on their original loan. After that, on the death of each of those seven, his annuity lapsed to Government. The whole debt would therefore be extinguished at the death of the longest-lived annuitant.

[Sidenote: Disastrous campaign. 1693.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Landen. July 19.]

The money thus collected was soon spent upon another disastrous campaign. Louis, in spite of the exhausted condition of his country, made extraordinary efforts in all directions. As far as the English only were concerned, the two great events of the campaign were the battle of Landen and the destruction of the Smyrna fleet. Louis, using his late conquest, Namur, for his point of departure, had formed two armies, one under Boufflers, the other under Luxemburg, and hoped to repeat the triumph of former years by the capture of either Liège or Brussels. But he found it was impossible to take either of those cities without fighting a pitched battle with William. In spite of the earnest request of his generals, he withdrew to Versailles, and removed the army of Boufflers to the Rhine. Though thus weakened, Luxemburg, by a threatened attack upon Liège, induced William to reduce his forces to save that town, and then falling upon him at Landen, defeated him after a battle, the stubbornest and bloodiest of the war. William's skill somewhat neutralized the effect of his defeat, and Charleroi was the only new acquisition of the French in the Low Countries.

[Sidenote: Loss of the Smyrna fleet. June.]

The loss of the Smyrna fleet made perhaps even greater impression upon the English than the defeat of Landen. The fleet, in which was accumulated more than a year's supply for the Eastern markets, and which numbered 400 ships, was to be convoyed in safety from London through the Straits of Gibraltar. After passing the Channel unopposed, the English admirals, supposing that the danger was over, withdrew towards England with their ships of war, and the trading fleet passed onward, guarded only by Rooke with about twenty men of war. Off St. Vincent it fell in with the whole combined navy of France, for the squadrons of Toulon and Brest had joined, and were lying in wait for their rich prey off the coast of Spain. The convoy was completely broken up, many vessels destroyed, while the others fled for safety in all directions. The loss of the English was estimated at many millions. The disaster would certainly have been much worse had not two Dutch ships which formed part of the convoy gallantly sacrificed themselves, and engaged no less than eighteen of the enemy's fleet.

In other parts of Europe the armies of France were equally successful. Catalonia had been invaded and Rosas taken. Catinat had defeated the Duke of Savoy in the great battle of Marsiglia (Oct. 3). The Turks had compelled the Germans to raise the siege of Belgrade. Yet, in spite of these successes, France was so worn out, that hints of a desire for peace began to reach the English King.

[Sidenote: William's difficulty with regard to his Parliament.]

[Sidenote: He forms a united Whig ministry.]

The possibility of being called upon to settle this great point, and the necessity of taking speedy advantage of his enemy's weakness, brought more clearly home to William the great difficulty which had beset his reign. For the position which was necessary to enable him to engage authoritatively in the affairs of Europe, for the money required for the pay of his army, and for the subsidies by which alone the allies were kept true to their engagements, he was dependent upon Parliament. For at the Revolution the Parliament had taken upon itself the supreme authority of the nation. Yet upon that Parliament he was unable to rely; for the representative body, though conscious of its power, had not yet learnt to use it advantageously. It was that worst of all forms of supreme power, a large disorganized assembly. Well aware that, both as head of a confederacy and as a general, freedom of action was necessary for him, William had kept as far as possible the management of foreign affairs in his own hands, and had sought to win the favour of all parties by a judicious impartiality. In the main he had been well supported in his foreign policy; but faction was so rife, the increasing divergence of opinion so great, and the capricious character of the Lower House so evident, that he could take no important step with confidence. He could not answer for a year's continuance of the war spirit, nor be certain that any steps he might take with regard to peace would be acknowledged even by his own ministers. It became necessary, if possible, to introduce some order and organization into this uncertain body. It would be better to risk a formal opposition of a certain number, and be sure of unanimity in his own administration, than to be at the caprice of a popular assembly. William therefore listened to the suggestions of Sunderland, and determined to place himself entirely in the hands of the Whig party, that party to which he owed his elevation to the throne, and which was pledged to the continuation of the war. During the next two years a change in ministry was gradually carried out, which ended by the establishment in 1696 of the first united ministry in English history. It was led by the chiefs of the Whig party, of which the leaders were Somers, Halifax, Russell and Wharton (known afterwards as the Junto).

[Sidenote: Party struggles.]

Parliament during these years was occupied in financial arrangements to meet the constant drain of the war, and in perpetual party struggles which terminated in the complete triumph of the Whigs, and in the substitution of the leaders of that party for their Tory rivals in all the chief offices of the administration. The first trial of strength between the parties arose upon the question of the naval administration of the former year. The whole nation smarted under the disasters which had followed on the great victory of La Hogue, which the Whigs had attributed not only to the maladministration of the two Tory admirals to whom the fleet had been intrusted, but also to treachery. It was impossible, they argued, that Louis could have denuded the Channel of his fleet, and allowed a junction of his admirals so far south as St. Vincent, unless he had had good reason to believe that the rich prey he desired would fall into his hands but weakly guarded. The Tories, who were unable to deny the maladministration, were anxious to exclude the word "treacherous" from the motion. The Whig party was however triumphant, and by a considerable majority the word was retained. But though the general assertion of treason was thus made, the Commons, as was not unusual, shrunk from fixing the treason upon any particular person, and each individual accused was acquitted by a small majority. Enough had been done, however, to give the King a fair opportunity of re-establishing Russell, the great enemy of Nottingham the Secretary, at the head of the Admiralty, and thus taking one step towards his Whig ministry. It was impossible for Nottingham to remain in office with Russell; he was consequently removed from the Secretaryship, and a fresh vacancy thus created, which, after some delay, caused by the conscientious scruples of Shrewsbury, who felt keenly the fault he had once committed in tampering with the Jacobites, was filled by that nobleman, one of the Whig chiefs. At the close of the session, therefore, William found himself with most of his chief officers belonging to the Whig party. Trenchard and Shrewsbury were Secretaries. Russell was the head of the Admiralty. Somers was Lord Keeper, and Montague Chancellor of the Exchequer. The only two Tories of importance left were Caermarthen, Lord President, and Godolphin, at the head of the Treasury. But the character of the latter minister led him to devote himself almost exclusively to his official business, of which he was master. Caermarthen was therefore, in fact, the only important element of discord in the administration.

[Sidenote: Establishment of the Bank of England.]

[Sidenote: The Triennial Act passed. Dec. 1694.]

Montague owed his elevation to the continued success of his financial plans. A fresh loan, known as the Lottery Loan--because though the whole rate of interest was low, in exceptional cases chosen by lottery it was very high--was successfully negotiated, and more important than this, the Bank of England was triumphantly established. Banking with private goldsmiths had come into fashion within the last two reigns, when the convenience of cheques in the place of ready-money payments had become obvious, while the advantage to the banker who had the use of the ready money was also plain. The fault of the system was its insecurity, which had been proved by the not unfrequent bankruptcy of one or other of the banking goldsmiths. A Scotchman of the name of Paterson had some years previously suggested the plan of a national bank, by which the Government should obtain some of the advantages of the banker, and the public, while gaining the convenience of cheques, should have a better security than private goldsmiths offered. This scheme Montague now adopted. He borrowed rather upwards of a million, and formed the lenders into a banking company, allowing them to treat the loan to Government as part of their capital, the interest of which, secured upon taxes, gave them the requisite supply of ready money. They were bound to pursue no other business except banking, yet, even with this restriction, so desirable did the plan seem, that it was at once triumphantly carried through. As a contingent advantage to Government, it is to be observed that the company, which included many of the chiefs of the moneyed interest, were pledged, for their own preservation, to support the present settlement of the throne. Their existence depended upon the regular payment of the interest upon their loan, which it was scarcely possible that the Jacobites, if successful, would pay. The importance of this point became very obvious afterwards, when, in more than one crisis, the credit of Government was saved by advances from the Bank. One other important measure was carried by this Parliament, and that also was in accordance with the principles of the Whigs. This was the Triennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament to three years. The King, always jealous of his prerogative, had already once refused his assent to this Bill; but now, having placed himself in Whig hands, he withdrew his opposition, and the Bill was passed.

[Sidenote: Death of Queen Mary. Dec. 20.]

He was indeed in no position to enter into a struggle with his Parliament. A great blow was falling on him, which unhinged him more than any difficulties or defeats had yet done. This was the death of his wife, who had sickened of the smallpox, and, after a short illness, died on the 20th of December 1694. Her death caused universal sorrow in England and among the Protestant interest on the Continent, while it raised the hopes of James and his friends, who believed, not without a show of reason, that William succeeded in holding his place chiefly by means of the popularity of his Queen. Their hopes proved ill founded, for though at first the King seemed so broken-hearted that he declared he could never again lead an army, when once he had conquered his first grief, he resumed his old energy, and success such as he had never yet met with attended his efforts both at home and abroad.

[Sidenote: Expulsion of Trevor for venality, March 1695,]

Meanwhile in England there was no cessation in the strife of parties. The Whigs pursued their triumphant course, and combined to remove the last of their opponents from the Government. Trevor, a Tory, had in the early part of the reign been made Speaker of the House, chiefly for the purpose of carrying out Caermarthen's plans of corruption. Employed in corrupting others, it was not likely that he should be himself above corruption. Suspicions of his venality having arisen, the Whigs proceeded to examine the accounts of the City of London and of the East India Company, which, after much contest, had obtained a renewal of its charter. The Committee found that the City had paid Sir John Trevor in the preceding session 1000 guineas for forwarding a local Bill. The proof was too clear to be questioned. Trevor from the chair had to put the question whether he was guilty or not of high crime and misdemeanour, and to declare before all men that "the Ayes had it." He saved himself from the unutterable ignominy of announcing his own expulsion by feigning illness. A new Speaker, Foley, who did not belong clearly to either party, was elected in his place.

[Sidenote: and of Caermarthen. May.]

The accounts of the East India Company afforded the Whigs even greater triumph. Sir Thomas Cook, who was the head of the Company, confessed to having disbursed very large sums to secure the charter, but would give no particular accounts. The Commons, determined not to be thwarted, passed a Bill condemning him to refund all the money thus spent, in addition to a heavy fine, unless he made a full confession. In the Upper House the Bill was strongly opposed by Lord Caermarthen, now Duke of Leeds, who, laying his hand upon his heart, solemnly averred that he had no personal interest in the matter, and was moved by public considerations only. It was finally arranged that a joint Committee of the two Houses should inquire into the expenditure of the money that had been secretly spent, and that if Cook confessed he should be held guiltless. The joint Committee met; the King and the Duke of Portland, whose guilt in the matter had been suggested by the Tories, were proved perfectly innocent. But £5000 were traced, if not to the Duke of Leeds himself, at all events to his confidential man of business. Articles of impeachment were made out against him. They could not, however, be brought forward, because the man of business, who would have supplied necessary evidence, had made his escape to Holland. The Duke of Leeds continued to assert his innocence, but confessed that he had allowed money to be paid to his steward, considering this a very different thing from taking it himself. It also appeared that the money had been refunded the very morning of the first sitting of the joint Committee. Though foiled of their impeachment, the Whigs and the Commons had done their work. Leeds was obliged to retire from active life, and was never afterwards employed in the administration. The sole discordant member of the Government was thus got rid of.

[Sidenote: Success abroad. June 1694.]

Abroad likewise affairs took a turn more favourable to England and the Whigs. Just before the death of Mary the war had entered into a somewhat new phase. The navies of the two great powers had transferred the scene of operations to the Mediterranean. Thither Tourville had gone from Brest, and thither Russell, with the English fleet, had followed him. He had found means to keep the French fleet in harbour, and to do good service to the general cause by the relief of Barcelona, which was on the point of falling into the hands of the French.

[Sidenote: Treachery of Marlborough.]

The absence of the French fleet from Brest, which led to the supposition that the harbour must be unguarded, seemed to afford an opportunity for an attack in that quarter. An expedition was planned; the forces were intrusted to Talmash, while the Duke of Leeds' son Caermarthen commanded the fleet. It gave occasion for a new act of villany on the part of Marlborough; though the plan was kept a profound secret, he contrived to worm it out, and as had happened once or twice before in his career, he used his knowledge only to lay the details of the plan before James, and to secure the destruction of the English expedition. Vauban, the great French engineer, was sent down to re-fortify the place. Every vantage-ground was crowned with batteries, and into the trap thus laid for him Talmash had rushed headlong to meet his death, in company with 700 English soldiers (June 7, 1694). Marlborough's treachery in this instance was rather personal than political. Talmash alone of the English generals could in any way compete with him, and he knew that at his death or failure William, who it must be recollected did not know the full extent of his treachery, would be obliged to restore him to his command. His treacherous plan succeeded. He was again employed, though so thoroughly mistrusted, that William refused when he went abroad to give the regency to Anne, which he well knew would be but to give it to Marlborough. But the death of Mary, which occurred at the close of the year, while it excited the other Jacobites to action, for a time rendered Marlborough true to William; for it was followed by a reconciliation between the King and the Princess Anne, and Marlborough was now content to wait till the King's death for the completion of his designs. The more earnest Jacobites followed a different course, and it was in the midst of a conspiracy aimed against his life by Fenwick, Charnock, and Porter, that William set out for Flanders (May 1695).

[Sidenote: Campaign in Flanders. 1695.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Namur. Aug. 26.]

In that country he had no longer the same formidable enemy with whom to contend. Luxemburg was dead, and his place was ill supplied by Villeroy and Louis' illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, who was sent to learn the art of war under him. As Flanders was expected to be the great seat of war, the bulk of the French army was placed under Villeroy in that country. Boufflers, with 12,000 men, guarded the Sambre. William, however, had set his heart upon regaining Namur. Judicious feints deceived Villeroy as to his intentions, and suddenly his own army, that of the Brandenburgers and that of the Elector of Bavaria, marched straight against the city. Boufflers had just time to throw himself with his troops into the town. A body of troops under the Prince of Vaudemont had been left to watch Villeroy in Flanders. When that general advanced, the Prince could not hold his isolated position, and only succeeded in making good his retreat through the cowardice of the Duke of Maine. Villeroy advanced almost unopposed. He took the towns of Dixmuyde and Deynse, the garrisons of which, contrary to the terms of capitulation, were sent prisoners to France; and hoping by threatening the capital to draw William from Namur, he approached and ruthlessly and uselessly bombarded Brussels. But, undisturbed by Villeroy's manœuvres, William energetically pursued the siege. He was assisted by Cohorn, who had originally fortified the town, and had seen it taken by the skill of his great rival Vauban. Vauban had since much increased the fortifications, and Cohorn was eager to regain his honour by capturing it. At length, after some fierce assaults, in which the English under Lord Cutts, who for his bravery under fire got the nickname of "the Salamander," had greatly distinguished themselves, the town surrendered, but the castle still held out. It became evident to Villeroy that the actual presence of his army could alone raise the siege. Drawing troops from all the neighbouring garrisons, he approached with 80,000 men. But William now felt himself strong enough to give him battle without withdrawing from his operations. For three days the armies remained in presence, and William lay expecting the attack, but Villeroy judged his position too strong to be taken, and withdrew. The fate of the fortress was now sealed, but Boufflers thought that his honour demanded that he should stand an assault; nor was it till the English had succeeded at the cost of 2000 men in making a lodgment in the place that he consented to treat, and for the first time in history a French marshal surrendered a fortress to a victorious enemy. Having gone through the ceremony of surrender, Boufflers was much surprised and enraged at being arrested on his road to France. His angry exclamations against the breach of the terms of capitulation were met by the reply, that William was only following the example of Louis with regard to the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse. He was kept in honourable imprisonment till those garrisons were restored.

[Sidenote: William's triumphant return. Oct. 10.]

[Sidenote: New Whig Parliament. Nov. 22.]

It was thus no longer as a beaten and unfortunate, though skilful general, that William returned to England. The Triennial Bill having come into operation, the present Parliament would have come to a natural conclusion the following year. It had on the whole acted so much in favour of William and the Whigs, that William, could he have prolonged it, would probably have been willing to do so. But he wisely judged that it would be better to call his new Parliament while still popular from his successes, than to wait the chances of the future year. The event proved that he was right. A brilliant triumphant progress through England was followed by the return of a Parliament with an immense majority favourable to the war and to the Whig interests. Four Whigs were returned for London. Westminster followed the example of the neighbouring city, and so great was the enthusiasm that even the great Tory leader Seymour, whose interest in Devonshire was believed to render his return for Exeter sure, was defeated in that town. The Parliament thus assembled had very important work before it, and, acting in unison with the King, his ministry, and the whole country, carried it through to a noble conclusion.

[Sidenote: Re-establishment of the currency.]

This important work was the re-establishment of the currency. The English coin had originally been of hammered metal, it was constantly liable to inequality in weight, and being left with raw edges, easily clipped. In Charles II.'s reign this defect had been partially cured by the use of machinery, and words had been printed round the edges of the coin; but as the bad hammered coinage was allowed to be current side by side with the new milled coinage, the better coinage had either been hoarded or had left the country, as invariably happens, when some part of the coinage of the country is of less intrinsic value than the rest. Consequently the evil became worse. Coin was more constantly clipped, and as it wore out was more easily counterfeited. Its defects at length became so obvious that shopkeepers refused to take it except by weight; thus causing heavy suffering to the lower orders, who generally received their wages by tale, and had to pay by weight, and every little transaction became the occasion of a dispute. So far had the evil gone, that when trials were made in different parts of the country, the coinage had proved on an average to be little more than half its proper weight. A re-issue of coin became absolutely necessary. The arrangements fell into the hands of Somers and Montague, of John Locke the philosopher, and Isaac Newton the mathematician. In devising their plan two great questions met them. By whom should the expense be borne? How could the inconvenience of the short supply of coin which must inevitably follow when the present coinage was called in be best alleviated? A very large minority wished to avoid the difficulty by keeping the present money in circulation, but lowering its nominal value. This plan, which was in fact to perpetrate a fraud upon all creditors, was not likely to find favour with the four sagacious men with whom the question rested. Two schemes recommended themselves chiefly to their attention. Locke proposed that, after a certain fixed date, the coin should be valued by weight only. This prevented any deficiency in the circulating medium, as the present money would not be withdrawn from circulation, but it threw the whole expense of bringing the nominal and real value of the coin into harmony, not on the Government, but on the individual possessors of the coin. It was evidently fairer that, where the evil was a national one, the nation should bear the expense. Somers suggested that, with extreme secresy, a proclamation should be prepared, saying that in three days the hammered coin should pass by weight only, but that those who held it might bring it in parcels to the mint, where it should be counted and weighed, and immediately restored, with a written promise of a future payment of the difference between the nominal and real value of the coin. Thus the money would be withdrawn from circulation only for the short time necessary to count it, while the nation would subsequently pay the difference. But for this plan secresy and suddenness were necessary, or the intervening period would have given opportunity and temptation for unlimited mutilation of the coinage. Secresy would have rendered it impossible to consult Parliament, and Montague, in the existing state of party feeling, shrank from the responsibility this implied. It was therefore determined to act in a perfectly honest, simple and straightforward manner; and immediately on the opening of Parliament, a Bill was framed in accordance with certain resolutions previously taken. By these it was declared that the old standard should be kept up, that milled coin should alone be used, that the loss should fall on the nation, not on individuals, and that the 4th of May following should be the last day on which hammered coin should be allowed to be used. The advantage of the good understanding between the Government and the Bank now became evident. To meet the expense of the new coinage, £1,200,000 was wanted. The Bank advanced it without difficulty on the security of a window tax, which took the place of the much hated hearth tax, and which lasted on almost to our own time. At last the critical day, the 4th of May, drew near. Fortunately the country was in an enthusiastic mood. Two great Jacobite plots, closely connected, which had been concocted during the previous summer, had been discovered. These were Berwick's plot for a general insurrection of the Jacobites and for an invasion from France; and a plot concocted at St. Germains, intrusted to Barclay, for the assassination of William on his road from Kensington to Richmond. Invasion and assassination are the two forms of conspiracy which the English people cannot bear; and the full discovery of these schemes, with the proved certainty that both Louis and James were fully conscious of all their atrocious details, roused the nation for an instant to an unusual unanimity of enthusiasm, and enabled Parliament to set on foot a great association, signed by hundreds of thousands, who pledged themselves to stand by the King, to support the war, and to pursue with vengeance any attempt upon his life. Good tempered and loyal though the people were the crisis was a fearful one. The operations of the mint were very slow. £4,000,000 of the old coinage lay melted in the treasury vaults. As yet scarcely any new silver had appeared. Money was not to be had either for trade or for private payments. Large employers somehow contrived, with a certain quantity of the old coinage which had not been clipped, to pay the wages. But the greater part of England lived on credit; and it is probable that even thus the crisis would scarcely have been got over, had it not been for an expedient of Montague's, who issued Government securities, bearing interest at threepence a day on £100. These are what are known now as Exchequer bills, and form a floating debt due by Government. They were eagerly used, and with the paper issues of the Bank and the free use of cheques and credit by all, the dangerous time was tided over.

[Sidenote: William's want of money.]

But the most alarming feature was not the difficulty in the commercial world, but the difficulty felt by Government and by the King himself in provisioning the troops and carrying on the war. In the midst of the commercial crisis the Bank of England had met with great difficulties; the goldsmiths, who had always hated their great rival, took the opportunity of attempting to destroy it by villanous means, they bought up all the Bank paper on which they could lay hands, and suddenly bringing it forward, demanded immediate payment. The Bank directors with great courage gained time by refusing to pay the nefarious claim, and referring their enemies to the courts of law. By means of calls on their subscribers they continued to pay by far the greater part of the private and just claims upon them, but they did not appear to be in a position to assist the King when he suddenly wrote home to say that £200,000 were absolutely necessary.

[Sidenote: The Land Bank a failure.]