Chapter III: The Fall of the Stuarts (3)

But though James had fled in despair, and though the beaten army was forced by William's pursuit to abandon the capital, it was still resolute to fight. The incapacity of the Stuart sovereign moved the scorn even of his followers. "Change kings with us," an Irish officer replied to an Englishman who taunted him with the panic of the Boyne, "change kings with us and we will fight you again." They did better in fighting without a king. The French indeed withdrew scornfully from the routed army as it turned at bay beneath the walls of Limerick. "Do you call these ramparts?" sneered Lauzun: "the English will need no cannon; they may batter them down with roasted apples." But twenty thousand Irish soldiers remained with Sarsfield, a brave and skilful officer who had seen service in England and abroad; and his daring surprise of the English ammunition train, his repulse of a desperate attempt to storm the town, and the approach of winter forced William to raise the siege. The course of the war abroad recalled him to England, but he was hardly gone when a new turn was given to the struggle by one who was quietly proving himself a master in the art of war. Churchill, rewarded for his opportune desertion of James with the earldom of Marlborough, had been recalled from Flanders to command a division which landed in the south of Ireland. Only a few days remained before the operations were interrupted by the coming of winter, but the few days were turned to good account. The two ports by which alone Ireland could receive supplies from France fell into English hands. Cork, with five thousand men behind its walls, was taken in forty-eight hours. Kinsale a few days later shared the fate of Cork. Winter indeed left Connaught and the greater part of Munster in Irish hands, the French force remained untouched, and the coming of a new French general, St. Ruth, with arms and supplies encouraged the insurgents. But the summer of 1691 had hardly begun when Ginkell, the new English general, by his seizure of Athlone forced on a battle with the combined French and Irish forces at Aughrim, in which St. Ruth fell on the field and his army was utterly broken.

[Sidenote: Ireland conquered.]

The defeat at Aughrim left Limerick alone in its revolt, and in October Sarsfield bowed to the necessity of surrender. Two treaties were drawn up between the Irish and English generals. By the first it was stipulated that the Catholics of Ireland should enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consistent with law, or as they had enjoyed in the reign of Charles the Second. The Crown pledged itself also to summon a Parliament as soon as possible, and to endeavour to procure to the good Roman Catholics such further security in that particular as "may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of the said religion." By the military treaty those of Sarsfield's soldiers who would were suffered to follow him to France; and ten thousand men, the whole of his force, chose exile rather than life in a land where all hope of national freedom was lost. When the wild cry of the women who stood watching their departure was hushed the silence of death settled down upon Ireland. For a hundred years the country remained at peace. But the peace was a peace of despair. No Englishman who loves what is noble in the English temper can tell without sorrow and shame the story of that time of guilt. The work of oppression, it is true, was done not directly by England but by the English settlers in Ireland; and the cruelty of their rule sprang in great measure from the sense of danger and the atmosphere of panic in which the Protestants lived. But if thoughts such as these relieve the guilt of those who oppressed they leave the fact of oppression as dark as before. The most terrible legal tyranny under which a nation has ever groaned avenged the rising under Tyrconnell. The conquered people, in Swift's bitter words of contempt, became "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to their conquerors. Such as the work was, however, it was thoroughly done. Though local risings of these serfs perpetually spread terror among the English settlers in Ireland, all dream of a national revolt passed away. Till the very eve of the French Revolution Ireland ceased to be a source of political danger and anxiety to England.

[Sidenote: French Descent on England.]

Short as the struggle of Ireland had been it had served Lewis well, for while William was busy at the Boyne a series of brilliant successes was restoring the fortunes of France. In Flanders the Duke of Luxembourg won the victory of Fleurus. In Italy Marshal Catinat defeated the Duke of Savoy. A success of even greater moment, the last victory which France was fated to win at sea, placed for an instant the very throne of William in peril. William never showed a cooler courage than in quitting England to fight James in Ireland at a moment when the Jacobites were only looking for the appearance of a French fleet on the coast to rise in revolt. The French minister in fact hurried the fleet to sea in the hope of detaining William in England by a danger at home; and he had hardly set out for Ireland when Tourville, the French admiral, appeared in the Channel with strict orders to fight. Orders as strict had been sent to the allied fleets to engage even at the risk of defeat; and when Tourville was met on the 30th of June 1690 by the English and Dutch fleet at Beachy Head the Dutch division at once engaged. Though utterly outnumbered it fought stubbornly in hope of Herbert's aid; but Herbert, whether from cowardice or treason, looked idly on while his allies were crushed, and withdrew with the English ships at nightfall to seek shelter in the Thames. The danger was as great as the shame, for Tourville's victory left him master of the Channel and his presence off the coast of Devon invited the Jacobites to revolt. But whatever the discontent of Tories and Nonjurors against William might be all signs of it vanished with the landing of the French. The burning of Teignmouth by Tourville's sailors called the whole coast to arms; and the news of the Boyne put an end to all dreams of a rising in favour of James.

[Sidenote: Intrigues in England.]

The natural reaction against a cause which looked for foreign aid gave a new strength for the moment to William in England; but ill luck still hung around the Grand Alliance. So urgent was the need for his presence abroad that William left as we have seen his work in Ireland undone, and crossed in the spring of 1691 to Flanders. It was the first time since the days of Henry the Eighth that an English king had appeared on the Continent at the head of an English army. But the slowness of the allies again baffled William's hopes. He was forced to look on with a small army while a hundred thousand Frenchmen closed suddenly around Mons, the strongest fortress of the Netherlands, and made themselves masters of it in the presence of Lewis. The humiliation was great, and for the moment all trust in William's fortune faded away. In England the blow was felt more heavily than elsewhere. The Jacobite hopes which had been crushed by the indignation at Tourville's descent woke up to a fresh life. Leading Tories, such as Lord Clarendon and Lord Dartmouth, opened communications with James; and some of the leading Whigs with the Earl of Shrewsbury at their head, angered at what they regarded as William's ingratitude, followed them in their course. In Lord Marlborough's mind the state of affairs raised hopes of a double treason. His design was to bring about a revolt which would drive William from the throne without replacing James on it, a revolt which would in fact give the crown to his daughter Anne whose affection for Marlborough's wife would place the real government of England in Churchill's hands. A yet greater danger lay in the treason of Admiral Russell who had succeeded Torrington in command of the fleet.

[Sidenote: Battle of La Hogue.]

Russell's defection would have removed the one obstacle to a new attempt which James was resolved to make for the recovery of his throne and which Lewis had been brought to support. James had never wavered from his design of returning to England at the head of a foreign force. He abandoned Ireland as soon as his hopes of finding such a force there vanished at the Boyne; and from that moment he had sought a base of invasion in France. Lewis was the more willing to make the trial that the pressure of the war had left few troops in England. So certain was he of success that the future ambassador to the court of James was already nominated, and a treaty of commerce sketched between France and England. In the beginning of 1692 an army of thirty thousand troops was quartered in Normandy in readiness for a descent on the English coast. Nearly a half of this force was composed of the Irish regiments who had followed Sarsfield into exile after the surrender of Limerick. Transports were provided for their passage, and Tourville was ordered to cover it with the French fleet at Brest. Though Russell had twice as many ships as his opponent the belief in his purpose of betraying William's cause was so strong that Lewis ordered Tourville to engage the allied fleets at any disadvantage. But whatever Russell's intrigues may have meant he was no Herbert. All he would promise was to keep his fleet out of the way of hindering a landing. But should Tourville engage, he would promise nothing. "Do not think I will let the French triumph over us in our own seas," he warned his Jacobite correspondents. "If I meet them I will fight them, even though King James were on board." When the allied fleet, which had been ordered to the Norman coast, met the French off the heights of Barfleur his fierce attack proved Russell true to his word. Tourville's fifty vessels were no match for the ninety ships of the allies, and after five hours of a brave struggle the French were forced to fly along the rocky coast of the Cotentin. Twenty-two of their vessels reached St. Malo; thirteen anchored with Tourville in the bays of Cherbourg and La Hogue; but their pursuers were soon upon them, and in a bold attack the English boats burned ship after ship under the eyes of the French army.

[Sidenote: The turn of the War.]

All dread of the invasion was at once at an end; and the throne of William was secured by the detection and suppression of the Jacobite conspiracy at home which the invasion was intended to support. The battle of La Hogue was a death-blow to the project of a Stuart restoration by help of foreign arms. Henceforth English Jacobitism would have to battle unaided against the throne of the Revolution. But the overthrow of the Jacobite hopes was the least result of the victory. France ceased from that moment to exist as a great naval power; for though her fleet was soon recruited to its former strength the confidence of her sailors was lost, and not even Tourville ventured again to tempt in battle the fortune of the seas. A new hope too dawned on the Grand Alliance. The spell of French triumph was broken. On land indeed the French still held their old mastery. Namur, one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, surrendered to Lewis a few days after the battle of La Hogue. An inroad into Dauphine failed to rouse the Huguenots to revolt, and the Duke of Luxembourg maintained the glory of the French arms by a victory over William at Steinkirk. But the battle was a useless butchery in which the conquerors lost as many men as the conquered. From that moment France felt herself disheartened and exhausted by the vastness of her efforts. The public misery was extreme. "The country," Fenelon wrote frankly to Lewis, "is a vast hospital." The tide too of the war began to turn. In 1693 the campaign of Lewis in the Netherlands proved a fruitless one, and Luxembourg was hardly able to beat off the fierce attack of William at Neerwinden. For the first time in his long career of prosperity therefore Lewis bent his pride to seek peace at the sacrifice of his conquests, and though the effort was a vain one it told that the daring hopes of French ambition were at an end and that the work of the Grand Alliance was practically done.

[Sidenote: The Sovereignty of the Commons.]

Its final triumph however was in great measure brought about by a change which now passed over the face of English politics. In outer seeming the Revolution of 1688 had only transferred the sovereignty over England from James to William and Mary. In actual fact it had given a powerful and decisive impulse to the great constitutional progress which was transferring the sovereignty from the king to the House of Commons. From the moment when its sole right to tax the nation was established by the Bill of Rights, and when its own resolve settled the practice of granting none but annual supplies to the Crown, the House of Commons became the supreme power in the State. It was impossible permanently to suspend its sittings or in the long run to oppose its will when either course must end in leaving the Government penniless, in breaking up the army and navy, and in suspending the public service. But though the constitutional change was complete the machinery of government was far from having adapted itself to the new conditions of political life which such a change brought about. However powerful the will of the House of Commons might be it had no means of bringing its will directly to bear upon the conduct of public affairs. The Ministers who had charge of them were not its servants, but the servants of the Crown; it was from the king that they looked for direction, and to the king that they held themselves responsible. By impeachment or more indirect means the Commons could force a king to remove a Minister who contradicted their will; but they had no constitutional power to replace the fallen statesman by a Minister who would carry out their will.

[Sidenote: Lord Sunderland.]

The result was the growth of a temper in the Lower House which drove William and his Ministers to despair. It became as corrupt, as jealous of power, as fickle in its resolves and factious in spirit as bodies always become whose consciousness of the possession of power is untempered by a corresponding consciousness of the practical difficulties or the moral responsibilities of the power which they possess. It grumbled at the ill-success of the war, at the suffering of the merchants, at the discontent of the Churchmen; and it blamed the Crown and its Ministers for all at which it grumbled. But it was hard to find out what policy or measures it would have preferred. Its mood changed, as William bitterly complained, with every hour. His own hold over it grew less day by day. It was only through great pressure that he succeeded in defeating by a majority of two a Place Bill which would have rendered all his servants and Ministers incapable of sitting in the Commons. He was obliged to use his veto to defeat a Triennial Bill which, as he believed, would have destroyed what little stability of purpose there was in the present Parliament. The Houses were in fact without the guidance of recognized leaders, without adequate information, and destitute of that organization out of which alone a definite policy can come. Nothing better proves the inborn political capacity of the English mind than that it should at once have found a simple and effective solution of such a difficulty as this. The credit of the solution belongs to a man whose political character was of the lowest type. Robert, Earl of Sunderland, had been a Minister in the later days of Charles the Second; and he had remained Minister through almost all the reign of James. He had held office at last only by compliance with the worst tyranny of his master and by a feigned conversion to the Roman Catholic faith; but the ruin of James was no sooner certain than he had secured pardon and protection from William by the betrayal of the master to whom he had sacrificed his conscience and his honour. Since the Revolution Sunderland had striven only to escape public observation in a country retirement, but at this crisis he came secretly forward to bring his unequalled sagacity to the aid of the king. His counsel was to recognize practically the new power of the Commons by choosing the Ministers of the Crown exclusively from among the members of the party which was strongest in the Lower House.

[Sidenote: The New Ministerial System.]

As yet no Ministry in the modern sense of the term had existed. Each great officer of State, Treasurer or Secretary or Lord Privy Seal, had in theory been independent of his fellow-officers; each was the "King's servant" and responsible for the discharge of his special duties to the king alone. From time to time one Minister, like Clarendon, might tower above the rest and give a general direction to the whole course of government, but the predominance was merely personal and never permanent; and even in such a case there were colleagues who were ready to oppose or even impeach the statesman who overshadowed them. It was common for a king to choose or dismiss a single Minister without any communication with the rest; and so far was even William from aiming at ministerial unity that he had striven to reproduce in the Cabinet itself the balance of parties which prevailed outside it. Sunderland's plan aimed at replacing these independent Ministers by a homogeneous Ministry, chosen from the same party, representing the same sentiments, and bound together for common action by a sense of responsibility and loyalty to the party to which it belonged. Not only was such a plan likely to secure a unity of administration which had been unknown till then, but it gave an organization to the House of Commons which it had never had before. The Ministers who were representatives of the majority of its members became the natural leaders of the House. Small factions were drawn together into the two great parties which supported or opposed the Ministry of the Crown. Above all it brought about in the simplest possible way the solution of the problem which had so long vexed both Kings and Commons. The new Ministers ceased in all but name to be the king's servants. They became simply an Executive Committee representing the will of the majority of the House of Commons, and capable of being easily set aside by it and replaced by a similar Committee whenever the balance of power shifted from one side of the House to the other.

[Sidenote: The Junto.]

Such was the origin of that system of representative government which has gone on from Sunderland's day to our own. But though William showed his own political genius in understanding and adopting Sunderland's plan, it was only slowly and tentatively that he ventured to carry it out in practice. In spite of the temporary reaction Sunderland believed that the balance of political power was really on the side of the Whigs. Not only were they the natural representatives of the principles of the Revolution, and the supporters of the war, but they stood far above their opponents in parliamentary and administrative talent. At their head stood a group of statesmen whose close union in thought and action gained them the name of the Junto. Russell, as yet the most prominent of these, was the victor of La Hogue; John Somers was an advocate who had sprung into fame by his defence of the Seven Bishops; Lord Wharton was known as the most dexterous and unscrupulous of party managers; and Montague was fast making a reputation as the ablest of English financiers. In spite of such considerations however it is doubtful whether William would have thrown himself into the hands of a purely Whig Ministry but for the attitude which the Tories took towards the war. Exhausted as France was the war still languished and the allies still failed to win a single victory. Meanwhile English trade was all but ruined by the French privateers and the nation stood aghast at the growth of taxation. The Tories, always cold in their support of the Grand Alliance, now became eager for peace. The Whigs on the other hand remained resolute in their support of the war.

[Sidenote: Bank of England.]

William, in whose mind the contest with France was the first object, was thus driven slowly to follow Sunderland's advice. Already in 1694 indeed Montague established his political position and weakened that of the Tory Ministers by his success in a great financial measure which at once relieved the pressure of taxation and added strength to the new monarchy. The war could be kept up only by loans: and loans were still raised in England by personal appeal to a few London goldsmiths in whose hands men placed money for investment. But the bankruptcies which followed the closing of the Exchequer by the Cabal had shaken public confidence in the goldsmiths, while the dread of a restoration of James made these capitalists appear shy of the Ministers' appeals for aid. Money therefore could only be raised in scanty quantities and at a heavy loss. In this emergency Montague came forward with a plan which had been previously suggested by a Scotchman, William Paterson, for the creation of a National Bank such as already existed in Holland and in Genoa. While serving as an ordinary bank for the supply of capital to commercial enterprises the Bank of England, as the new institution was called, was in reality an instrument for procuring loans from the people at large by the formal pledge of the State to repay the money advanced on the demand of the lender. For this purpose a loan of L1,200,000 was thrown open to public subscription; and the subscribers to it were formed into a chartered company in whose hands the negotiation of all after loans was placed. The plan turned out a perfect success. In ten days the list of subscribers was full. A new source of power revealed itself in this discovery of the resources afforded by the national credit and the national wealth; and the rapid growth of the National Debt, as the mass of these loans to the State came to be called, gave a new security against the return of the Stuarts whose first work would have been the repudiation of the claims of the lenders or as they were termed the "fundholders."

[Sidenote: The Whig Ministry.]

The evidence of the public credit gave strength to William abroad as at home. In 1694 indeed the army of 90,000 men which he commanded in the Netherlands did no more than hold the French successfully at bay; but the English fleet rode triumphant in the Channel, ravaged and alarmed the coast of France, and foiled by its pressure the attack of a French army on Barcelona. The brighter aspect of affairs abroad coincided with a new unity of action at home. The change which Sunderland counselled was quietly carried out. One by one the Tory Ministers had been replaced by members of the Junto. Russell went to the Admiralty; Somers was named Lord Keeper; Shrewsbury, Secretary of State; Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Even before this change was completed its effect was felt. The House of Commons took a new tone. The Whig majority of its members, united and disciplined, moved quietly under the direction of their natural leaders, the Whig Ministers of the Crown. It was this which enabled William to face the shock which was given to his position by the death of Queen Mary at the end of 1694. It had been provided indeed that on the death of either sovereign the survivor should retain the throne; but the renewed attacks of the Tories under Nottingham and Halifax on the war and the Bank showed what fresh hopes had been raised by William's lonely position. The Parliament however, whom the king had just conciliated by assenting at last to the Triennial Bill, went steadily with the Ministry; and its fidelity was rewarded by triumph abroad. In September 1695 the Alliance succeeded for the first time in winning a great triumph over France in the capture of Namur. The king skilfully took advantage of his victory to call a new Parliament, and its members at once showed their temper by a vigorous support of the measures necessary for the prosecution of the war. The Houses indeed were no mere tools in William's hands. They forced him to resume the prodigal grants of lands which he had made to his Dutch favourites, and to remove his Ministers in Scotland who had aided in a wild project for a Scotch colony on the Isthmus of Darien. They claimed a right to name members of the new Board of Trade which was established in 1696 for the regulation of commercial matters. They rejected a proposal, never henceforth to be revived, for a censorship of the Press. But there was no factious opposition. So strong was the Ministry that Montague was enabled to face the general distress which was caused for the moment by a reform of the currency, which had been reduced by clipping to far less than its nominal value, and although the financial embarrassments created by the currency reform hindered any vigorous measures abroad William was able to hold the French at bay.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Succession.]

But the war was fast drawing to a close. The Catholic powers in the Grand Alliance were already in revolt against William's supremacy as they had been in revolt against that of Lewis. In 1696 the Pope succeeded in detaching Savoy from the league and Lewis was enabled to transfer his Italian army to the Low Countries. But France was now simply fighting to secure more favourable terms, and William, though he held that "the only way of treating with France is with our swords in our hands," was almost as eager as Lewis for a peace. The defection of Savoy made it impossible to carry out the original aim of the Alliance, that of forcing France back to its position at the Treaty of Westphalia, and a new question was drawing every day nearer, the question of the succession to the Spanish throne. The death of the King of Spain, Charles the Second, was now known to be at hand. With him ended the male line of the Austrian princes who for two hundred years had occupied the Spanish throne. How strangely Spain had fallen from its high estate in Europe the wars of Lewis had abundantly shown, but so vast was the extent of its empire, so enormous the resources which still remained to it, that under a vigorous ruler men believed its old power would at once return. Its sovereign was still master of some of the noblest provinces of the Old World and the New, of Spain itself, of the Milanese, of Naples and Sicily, of the Netherlands, of Southern America, of the noble islands of the Spanish Main. To add such a dominion as this to the dominion either of Lewis or of the Emperor would be to undo at a blow the work of European independence which William had wrought; and it was with a view to prevent either of these results that William resolved to free his hands by a conclusion of the war.

[Sidenote: Peace of Ryswick.]

In May negotiations were opened at Ryswick; the obstacles thrown in the way of an accommodation by Spain and the Empire were set aside in a private negotiation between William and Lewis; and peace was finally signed in October 1697. In spite of failure and defeat in the field William's policy had won. The victories of France remained barren in the face of a united Europe; and her exhaustion forced her for the first time since Richelieu's day to consent to a disadvantageous peace. On the side of the Empire France withdrew from every annexation save that of Strassburg which she had made since the Treaty of Nimeguen, and Strassburg would have been restored but for the unhappy delays of the German negotiators. To Spain Lewis restored Luxemburg and all the conquests he had made during the war in the Netherlands. The Duke of Lorraine was replaced in his dominions. A far more important provision of the peace pledged Lewis to an abandonment of the Stuart cause and a recognition of William as King of England. For Europe in general the peace of Ryswick was little more than a truce. But for England it was the close of a long and obstinate struggle and the opening of a new aera of political history. It was the final and decisive defeat of the conspiracy which had gone on between Lewis and the Stuarts ever since the Treaty of Dover, the conspiracy to turn England into a Roman Catholic country and into a dependency of France. But it was even more than this. It was the definite establishment of England as the centre of European resistance against all attempts to overthrow the balance of power.

[Sidenote: William's aims.]

In leaving England face to face with France the Treaty of Ryswick gave a new turn to the policy of William. Hitherto he had aimed at saving the balance of European power by the joint action of England and the rest of the European states against France. He now saw a means of securing what that action had saved by the co-operation of France and the two great naval powers. In his new course we see the first indication of that triple alliance of France, England, and Holland, which formed the base of Walpole's foreign policy, as well as of that common action of England and France which since the fall of Holland has so constantly recurred to the dreams of English statesmen. Peace therefore was no sooner signed than William by stately embassies and a series of secret negotiations drew nearer to France. It was in direct negotiation and co-operation with Lewis that he aimed at bringing about a peaceful settlement of the question which threatened Europe with war. At this moment the claimants of the Spanish succession were three: the French Dauphin, a son of the Spanish king's elder sister; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, a grandson of his younger sister; and the Emperor, who was a son of Charles's aunt. In strict law--if there had been any law really applicable to the matter--the claim of the last was the strongest of the three; for the claim of the Dauphin was barred by an express renunciation of all right to the succession at his mother's marriage with Lewis XIV., a renunciation which had been ratified at the Treaty of the Pyrenees; and a similar renunciation barred the claim of the Bavarian candidate. The claim of the Emperor was more remote in blood, but it was barred by no renunciation at all. William however was as resolute in the interests of Europe to repulse the claim of the Emperor as to repulse that of Lewis; and it was the consciousness that the Austrian succession was inevitable if the war continued and Spain remained a member of the Grand Alliance, in arms against France and leagued with the Emperor, which made him suddenly conclude the Peace of Ryswick.

[Sidenote: The first Partition Treaty.]

Had England and Holland shared William's temper he would have insisted on the succession of the Electoral Prince to the whole Spanish dominions. But both were weary of war, and of the financial distress which war had brought with it. In England the peace of Ryswick was at once followed by the reduction of the army at the demand of the House of Commons to ten thousand men; and a clamour had already begun for the disbanding even of these. It was necessary therefore to bribe the two rival claimants to a waiver of their claims; and Lewis after some hesitation yielded to the counsels of his Ministers, and consented to waive his son's claims for such a bribe. The secret treaty between the three powers, which was concluded in the summer of 1698, thus became necessarily a Partition Treaty. The succession of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria was recognized on condition of the cession by Spain of its Italian possessions to his two rivals. The Milanese was to pass to the Emperor; the Two Sicilies, with the border province of Guipuzcoa, to France. But the arrangement was hardly concluded when the death of the Bavarian prince in February 1699 made the Treaty waste paper. Austria and France were left face to face; and a terrible struggle, in which the success of either would be equally fatal to the independence of Europe, seemed unavoidable. The peril was the greater that the temper of both England and Holland left William without the means of backing his policy by arms. The suffering which the war had caused to the merchant class and the pressure of the debt and taxation it entailed were waking every day a more bitter resentment in the people of both countries. While the struggle lasted the value of English exports had fallen from four millions a year to less than three, and the losses of ships and goods at sea had been enormous. Nor had the stress been less felt within the realm. The revenue from the post-office, a fair index to the general wealth of the country, had fallen from seventy-six thousand to fifty-eight. With the restoration of peace indeed the energies of the country had quickly recovered from the shock. In the five years after the Peace of Ryswick the exports doubled themselves; the merchant-shipping was quadrupled; and the revenue of the post-office rose to eighty-two thousand pounds. But such a recovery only produced a greater disinclination to face again the sufferings of a renewed state of war.

[Sidenote: The second Partition Treaty.]

The general discontent at the course of the war, the general anxiety to preserve the new gains of the peace, told alike on William and on the party which had backed his policy. In England almost every one was set on two objects, the reduction of taxes and the disbanding of the standing army. The war had raised the taxes from two millions a year to four. It had bequeathed twenty millions of debt and a fresh six millions of deficit. The standing army was still held to be the enemy of liberty, as it had been held under the Stuarts; and hardly any one realized the new conditions of political life which had robbed its existence of danger to the State. The king however resisted desperately the proposals for its disbanding; for the maintenance of the army was all-important for the success of the negotiations he was carrying on. But his stubborn opposition only told against himself. Personally indeed the king still remained an object of national gratitude; but his natural partiality to his Dutch favourites, the confidence he gave to Sunderland, his cold and sullen demeanour, above all his endeavours to maintain the standing army, robbed him of popularity and of the strength which comes from popularity. The negotiations too which he was carrying on were a secret he could not reveal; and his prayers failed to turn the Parliament from its purpose. The army and navy were ruthlessly cut down. How much William's hands were weakened by this reduction of forces and by the peace-temper of England was shown by the Second Partition Treaty which was concluded in 1700 between the two maritime powers and France. The demand of Lewis that the Netherlands should be given to the Elector of Bavaria, whose political position would always leave him a puppet in the French king's hands, was indeed successfully resisted. Spain, the Netherlands, and the Indies were assigned to the second son of the Emperor, the Archduke Charles of Austria. But the whole of the Spanish territories in Italy were now granted to France; and it was provided that Milan should be exchanged for Lorraine, whose Duke was to be summarily transferred to the new Duchy. If the Emperor persisted in his refusal to come into the Treaty the share of his son was to pass to another unnamed prince, who was probably the Duke of Savoy.

[Sidenote: Fall of the Junto.]

The Emperor, indifferent to the Archduke's personal interest, and anxious only to gain a new dominion in Italy for the House of Austria, stubbornly protested against this arrangement; but his protest was of little moment so long as Lewis and the two maritime powers held firmly together. The new Western Alliance indeed showed how wide its power was from the first. The mediation of England and Holland, no longer counteracted by France, secured peace between the Emperor and the Turks in the Treaty of Carlowitz. The common action of the three powers stifled a strife between Holstein and Denmark which would have set North Germany on fire. William's European position indeed was more commanding than ever. But his difficulties at home were increasing every day. In spite of the defection of their supporters on the question of a standing army the Whig Ministry for some time retained fairly its hold on the Houses. But the elections for a new Parliament at the close of 1698 showed the growth of a new temper in the nation. A Tory majority, pledged to peace as to a reduction of taxation and indifferent to foreign affairs, was returned to the House of Commons. The fourteen thousand men still retained in the army were at once cut down to seven. It was voted that William's Dutch guards should return to Holland. It was in vain that William begged for their retention as a personal favour, that he threatened to leave England with them, and that the ill effect of this strife on his negotiations threw him into a fever. Even before the elections he had warned the Dutch Pensionary that in any fresh struggle England could be relied on only for naval aid. He was forced to give way; and, as he expected, this open display of the peace-temper of England told fatally on the resistance he had attempted to the pretensions of France. He strove indeed to appease the Parliament by calling for the resignation of Russell and Montague, the two ministers most hated by the Tories. But all seemed in vain. The Houses no sooner met in 1699 than the Tory majority attacked the Crown, passed a Bill for resuming estates granted to the Dutch favourites, and condemned the Ministers as responsible for these grants. Again Sunderland had to intervene, and to press William to carry out the policy which had produced the Whig Ministry by its entire dismissal. Somers and his friends withdrew, and a new administration composed of moderate Tories, with Lords Rochester and Godolphin as its leading members, took their place.

[Sidenote: Accession of the Duke of Anjou.]

The moment indeed was one in which the king needed at any price the co-operation of the Parliament. Spain had been stirred to bitter resentment as news of the Partition Treaty crept abroad. The Spaniards cared little whether a French or an Austrian prince sat on the throne of Charles the Second, but their pride revolted against the dismemberment of the monarchy by the loss of its Italian dependencies. The nobles too dreaded the loss of their vast estates in Italy and of the lucrative posts they held as governors of these dependencies. Even the dying king shared the anger of his subjects. He hesitated only whether to leave his dominions to the House of Austria or the House of Bourbon; but in either case he was resolved to leave the whole. A will wrested from him by the factions which wrangled over his deathbed bequeathed at last the whole monarchy of Spain to a grandson of Lewis, the Duke of Anjou, the second son of the Dauphin. It was doubtful indeed whether Lewis would suffer his grandson to receive the crown. He was still a member of that Triple Alliance on which for the last three years the peace of Europe had depended. The Treaty of Partition was so recent and the risk of accepting this bequest so great that Lewis would have hardly resolved on it but for his belief that the temper of England must necessarily render William's opposition a fruitless one. Never in fact had England been so averse from war. So strong was the antipathy to William's policy that men openly approved the French king's course. Hardly any one in England dreaded the succession of a boy who, French as he was, would as they believed soon be turned into a Spaniard by the natural course of events. The succession of the Duke of Anjou was generally looked upon as far better than the increase of power which France would have derived from the cessions of the last treaty of Partition. The cession of the Sicilies would have turned the Mediterranean, it was said, into a French lake, and have ruined the English trade with the Levant, while the cession of Guipuzcoa and the annexation of the west coast of Spain, which was looked on as certain to follow, would have imperilled the American trade and again raised France into a formidable power at sea. Backing all these considerations was the dread of losing by a contest with Spain and its new king the lucrative trade with the Spanish colonies. "It grieves me to the heart," William wrote bitterly, "that almost every one rejoices that France has preferred the Will to the Treaty." Astonished and angered as he was at his rival's breach of faith, he had no means of punishing it. In the opening of 1701 the Duke of Anjou entered Madrid, and Lewis proudly boasted that henceforth there were no Pyrenees.

[Sidenote: Seizure of the Dutch Barrier.]

The life-work of William seemed undone. He knew himself to be dying. His cough was incessant, his eyes sunk and dead, his frame so weak that he could hardly get into his coach. But never had he shown himself so great. His courage rose with every difficulty. His temper, which had been heated by the personal affronts lavished on him through English faction, was hushed by a supreme effort of his will. His large and clear-sighted intellect looked through the temporary embarrassments of French diplomacy and English party strife to the great interests which he knew must in the end determine the course of European politics. Abroad and at home all seemed to go against him. For the moment he had no ally save Holland, for Spain was now united with Lewis, while the attitude of Bavaria divided Germany and held the House of Austria in check. The Bavarian Elector indeed, who had charge of the Spanish Netherlands and on whom William had counted, openly joined the French side from the first and proclaimed the Duke of Anjou as king in Brussels. In England a new Parliament, which had been called by way of testing public opinion, was crowded with Tories who were resolute against war. The Tory Ministry pressed him to acknowledge the new king of Spain; and as even Holland did this, William was forced to submit. He could only count on the greed of Lewis to help him, and he did not count in vain. The general approval of the French king's action had sprung from a belief that he intended honestly to leave Spain to the Spaniards under their new boy-king. Bitter too as the strife of Whig and Tory might be in England, there were two things on which Whig and Tory were agreed. Neither would suffer France to occupy the Spanish Netherlands. Neither would endure a French attack on the Protestant succession which the Revolution of 1688 had established. But the arrogance of Lewis blinded him to the need of moderation in his hour of good-luck. The wretched defence made by the strong places of the Netherlands in the former war had brought about an agreement between Spain and Holland at its close, by which seven fortresses, including Luxemburg, Mons, and Charleroi, were garrisoned with Dutch in the place of Spanish troops. The seven were named the Dutch barrier, and the first anxiety both of Holland and of William was to maintain this arrangement under the new state of things. William laid down the maintenance of the barrier in his negotiations at Madrid as a matter of peace or war. But Lewis was too eager to wait even for the refusal of William's demand which the pride of the Spanish Court prompted. In February 1701 his troops appeared at the gates of the seven fortresses; and a secret convention with the Elector, who remained in charge of the Netherlands, delivered them into his hands to hold in trust for his grandson. Other French garrisons took possession at the same time of Ostend and the coast towns of Flanders.

[Sidenote: The Act of Settlement.]

The Parliament of 1701, a Parliament mainly of Tories, and in which the leader of the moderate Tories, Robert Harley, came for the first time to the front, met amidst the general panic and suspension of trade which followed this seizure of the barrier fortresses. Peace-Parliament as it was and bitterly as it condemned the Partition Treaties, it at once supported William in his demand for a withdrawal of the French troops, and authorized him to conclude a defensive alliance with Holland, which would give that State courage to join in the demand. The disclosure of a new Jacobite plot strengthened William's position. The hopes of the Jacobites had been raised in the preceding year by the death of the young Duke of Gloucester, the only living child of the Princess Anne, and who as William was childless ranked, after his mother, as heir-presumptive of the throne. William was dying, the health of Anne herself was known to be precarious; and to the partisans of James it seemed as if the succession of his son, the boy who was known in later life as the Old Pretender, was all but secure. But Tory as the Parliament was, it had no mind to undo the work of the Revolution. When a new Act of Succession was laid before the Houses in 1701 not a voice was raised for James or his son. By the ordinary rules of heritage the descendants of the daughter of Charles the First, Henrietta of Orleans, whose only child had married the Duke of Savoy, would come next as claimants; but the house of Savoy was Catholic and its pretensions were passed over in the same silence. No other descendants of Charles the First remained, and the Parliament fell back on his father's line. Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First, had married the Elector Palatine; but of her twelve children all had died save one. This was Sophia, the wife of the late and the mother of the present Elector of Hanover. It was in Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestants, that the Act of Settlement vested the Crown. But the jealousy of a foreign ruler accompanied this settlement with remarkable provisions. It was enacted that every English sovereign must be in communion with the Church of England as by law established. All future kings were forbidden to leave England without consent of Parliament, and foreigners were excluded from all public posts, military or civil. The independence of justice, which had been inadequately secured by the Bill of Rights, was now established by a clause which provided that no judge should be removed from office save on an address from Parliament to the Crown. The two principles that the king acts only through his ministers and that these ministers are responsible to Parliament were asserted by a requirement that all public business should be formally done in the Privy Council and all its decisions signed by its members. These two last provisions went far to complete the parliamentary Constitution which had been drawn by the Bill of Rights.

[Sidenote: The Country and the War.]

But, firm as it was in its loyalty to the Revolution, and in its resolve to maintain the independence of the Netherlands, the Parliament had still no purpose of war. It assented indeed to the alliance with Holland in the belief that the pressure of the two powers would bring Lewis to a peaceful settlement of the question. Its aim was still to avoid a standing army and to reduce taxation; and its bitterness against the Partition Treaties sprang from a belief that William had entailed on England by their means a contest which must bring back again the army and the debt. The king was bitterly blamed, while the late ministers, Somers, Russell, and Montague (now become peers), were impeached for their share in the treaties; and the Commons prayed the king to exclude the three from his counsels for ever. But a counter-prayer from the Lords gave the first sign of a reaction of opinion. Outside the House of Commons indeed the tide of national feeling rose as the designs of Lewis grew clearer. He refused to allow the Dutch barrier to be re-established; and a great French fleet gathered in the Channel to support, it was believed, a fresh Jacobite descent which was proposed by the ministers of James in a letter intercepted and laid before Parliament. Even the House of Commons took fire at this, and the fleet was raised to thirty thousand men, the army to ten thousand. But the country moved faster than the Parliament. Kent sent up a remonstrance against the factious measures by which the Tories still struggled against the king's policy, with a prayer "that addresses might be turned into Bills of Supply"; and William was encouraged by these signs of a change of temper to despatch an English force to Holland, and to conclude a secret treaty with the United Provinces for the recovery of the Netherlands from Lewis and for their transfer with the Milanese to the house of Austria as a means of counterbalancing the new power added to France.

[Sidenote: The Grand Alliance.]

England however still clung desperately to a hope of peace; and even in the Treaty with the Emperor, which followed on the French refusal to negotiate on a basis of compensation, William was far from disputing the right of Philip of Anjou to the Spanish throne. Hostilities had indeed already broken out in Italy between the French and Austrian armies; but the king had not abandoned the dream of a peaceful settlement when France by a sudden act forced him into war. Lewis had acknowledged William as king in the Peace of Ryswick and pledged himself to oppose all attacks on his throne; but in September 1701 he entered the bedchamber at St. Germain where James the Second was breathing his last, and promised to acknowledge his son at his death as king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The promise which was thus made was in fact a declaration of war, and in a moment all England was at one in accepting the challenge. The issue Lewis had raised was no longer a matter of European politics, but a question whether the work of the Revolution should be undone, and whether Catholicism and despotism should be replaced on the throne of England by the arms of France. On such a question as this there was no difference between Tory and Whig. Every Englishman backed William in his open resentment of the insult and in the recall of his ambassador. The national union showed itself in the warm welcome given to the king on his return from the Hague, where the conclusion of a new Grand Alliance in September between the Empire, Holland, and the United Provinces had rewarded William's patience and skill. The Alliance was soon joined by Denmark, Sweden, the Palatinate, and the bulk of the German States. William seized the moment of enthusiasm to dissolve the Houses whose action had hitherto embarrassed him; and though the new Parliament which met in 1702 was still Tory in the main, its Tory members were now as much for war as the Whigs, and the House of Commons replied to the king's stirring appeal by voting forty thousand soldiers and as many sailors for the coming struggle. As a telling reply to the recognition of the young James by Lewis, a Bill of Attainder was passed against the new Pretender, and correspondence with him or maintenance of his title was made treason. At the same time all members of either House and all public officials were sworn to uphold the succession of the House of Hanover as established by law.

[Sidenote: Marlborough.]