105656
JAMES II
BY
F. C. TURNER
M.A." (Oxon)
EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE
LONDON
First published 1948
Reprinted 1950
This book is printed in Great Britain for Byre &? Spottiswoode
(Publishers) ltd., 15 Bedford Street, London, W.C.z, by
Richard Clay and Company, Ltd., JBungay, Suffolk
JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
(from the picture by Lely at St. James's Puluccj
PREFACE
IN writing this book I have been very much indebted to Mr. Esmond
de Beer, who has throughout my work on both parts of the subject
given me invaluable advice in my search for authorities; he has also,
at great cost of time, read through the whole of the first part and
annotated it with great minuteness, enabling me to remove a host of
minor errors and causing me to re-examine many of my conclusions.
I am also very grateful to Mr. Alan Fremantle, who read my book at an
early stage and made many suggestions which I have adopted; he has also
given me valuable help in correcting proofs. On particular points I have
had the expert assistance of Mr. E. D. Cuming and Mr. Francis Colmer.
My thanks are due also to the secretary and staff of the London
Library, without whose assistance I could have done very little, in
particular to the late Mr. G. E. Manwaring, who placed his great
knowledge of historical literature at my disposal and was an unfailing
and patient guide.
I have based my work entirely on original authorities. I have, however,
derived great assistance both in sources and in interpretation of them
from a number of modern works. I have also occasionally taken
from them quotations from documents not accessible to me. Chief
among these are :
Osmond Airy, Charles II.
Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts.
Miss Barbour, Arlington.
Arthur Bryant, Charles //; Pepys, the Saviour of the Navy.
Julia Cartwright, Sacharissa.
Ruth Clark, Sir William Trumbull in Paris.
Keith Feiling, English Foreign Policy, 1660-1667; History of
the Tory Party, 1660-1702.
Miss H. C. Foxcroft, Halifax.
M. and S. Grew, The English Court in Exile.
F. M. G. Higham, King James II.
Lodge, History of England from the Restoration to the Death of
William III.
W. L. Mathieson, Politics and Religion in Scotland.
Ogg, The Reign of Charles IL
R. S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland.
Leopold von Ranke, History of England, principally in the XVIIth
century.
Eva Scott, The King in Exile ; The Travels of the King.
Tedder, The Navy of the Restoration.
VI PREFACE
In the few cases in which I have used particular references which I
have found in modern books I have made due acknowledgement. If
I have anywhere omitted to do so it is by inadvertence, for which I
apologise. All writers on this period must acknowledge their debt to
Macaulay, "robust rather than subtle" (in Miss Foxcroft's phrase),
complacent in his Victorianism and with all the prejudices of his period,
especially those of the Whig party, completely unjudicial in his treat-
ment of individuals, but amazingly accurate in the realm of fact and
suceeding, in spite of his faults, in giving a balanced and very readable
account of the events which led up to the Revolution of 1688.
F. C. TURNER.
Newick, Sussex.
AUTHOR'S NOTE ON THE SECOND IMPRESSION
I TAKE the opportunity afforded by reprinting to make certain corrections
in detail to the necessity for which my attention has very kindly been
drawn by correspondents and reviewers. In this connection I wish to
convey my very grateful thanks to: Mr. Andrew Sparkes of Corpus
Christi College, Oxford (various errors in the text); Mr. Trevor Roper,
tutor of Christchurch, Oxford, and reviewer in the New Statesman and
Nation (for the substitution throughout of " Christ Church " for " Christ-
church"); Mr. L. Pettit of Hove (p. 169, note); Mr. J. J. Dwyer, reviewer
in the Tablet (pp. 116 and 280); Mr. R. W. Lee of Oxford (p. 428, note);
Mr. J. B, Whitmore, F.S.A. (p. 429, note 2); and Mr. J. A. Chapman of
Glasgow (p. 474).
F. C, TURNER.
Henfield, Sussex, February 1950.
CONTENTS
PART I
JAMES, DUKE OF YORK, 1633-1685
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE CIVIL WAR 9
II. EARLY YEARS OF EXILE, 164871651 20
III. THE MILITARY CAREER 38
IV. THE RESTORATION 60
V. THE CONVERSION 87
VI. THE SECOND MARRIAGE 107
VII. WILLIAM AND MARY 128
VIII. THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY 144
IX. THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 155
X. THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND 171
XL THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND 183
XII. THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 197
XIIL CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 212
PART II
KING JAMES II, 1685-1701
I. THE ACCESSION 233
IL THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 266
III. THE MIDDLE YEARS 303
IV. SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 366
V. THE REVOLUTION 395
VI. THE FINAL EXILE 456
REFERENCES 504
INDEX
PART I
JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
1633-1685
His brother, though oppressed with vulgar spite,
Yet dauntless and secure of native right,
Of every royal virtue stands possessed,
Still dear to all the bravest and the best.
His courage foes, his friends his truth proclaim,
His loyalty the King, the world his fame.
His mercy even the offending crowd will find,
For sure he comes of a forgiving kind.
Dryden: "Absalom and Achitophel",
CHAPTER I
THE CIVIL WAR
JAMES, Duke of York and Albany, was born at St. James's Palace on
October 14, 1633, the third of the six children of the King and Queen. At
the time of his birth his father, King Charles I, was thirty-three, and his
mother, Henrietta Maria, twenty-four; his brother Charles was his
senior by three years, and his sister Mary, who was to marry William II
of Orange and to become the mother of William III, by two years;
Elizabeth, who died in 1650 a prisoner of the Parliament, was born in
1635 ; Henry, Duke of Gloucester, in 1639, and Henrietta, who married
Philip, Duke of Orleans, and negotiated the Treaty of Dover, in 1644.
Of his near relatives by far the most important was his maternal uncle,
the French King, Louis XIII. Louis died in 1642, and James never
saw him; his son, who succeeded him as Louis XIV, was born in 1638,
and was thus James's first cousin, and his junior by five years ; another
maternal uncle was the older Louis's brother, Gaston, Duke of Orleans,
and two maternal aunts were married to Philip IV of Spain and
to the Duke of Savoy. On his father's side the relatives were fewer
and less distinguished, but the brother of James's grandmother, Anne
of Denmark, was King of that country, and James's widowed aunt,
Elizabeth, who had been Queen of Bohemia, was the mother of Charles
Lewis, the Elector Palatine.
James's ancestry was on his father's side mainly Scotch, and on his
mother's side French and Italian. His nearest English relations came to
him through Margaret Tudor, who five generations before him had
married James IV of Scotland; and Margaret herself was not of pure
English blood of her four grandparents, three were English and one
Welsh. But at no time of his life did James admit that he was anything
but an Englishman, and in this he resembled George III, who also
boasted English nationality, though for nine generations no ancestor
of his had been born on English soil. James spent little more than
eighteen months of his life in Scotland, and there is no sign in any of his
numerous letters from that country of any pride in, or affection for it.
At two periods of his life he vaguely dreamed of mastering England by
Scottish arms, but he never, like his brother, signed the Covenant, or,
like his grandson, donned the kilt, in furtherance of such an enterprise.
10 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
In one of their despatches the French ambassadors report a conversation
they had had with James :
He replied that we could not change his mind, though we were
always trying to do so ; that he was English and consequently very
stubborn. "But," we rejoined, "you are French on one side, you
ought to make allowance for that/' He replied, "The English are
stubborn when they are in the right, and when they are not, then
the French can be obstinate too." And on that he left the room and
went to his prayers.
As a young man he conceived a considerable affection for his mother's
country, and it seems probable that, had the course of events taken a
different turn, he would have settled down quite happily as a naturalised
Frenchman, he would have found congenial occupation in the French
Army, and he would have been more at home in the political atmosphere
of France than he ever was in that of England. But even in such circum-
stances it is difficult to imagine James commanding troops in a war
against the country of his birth ; in later life, when, from his own point
of view, he had much to complain of in the behaviour of the English,
he did not in his heart want them to be beaten even when they were
fighting against him. One of the chief elements in the tragedy of his life
was the lack of mutual understanding between him and the people he
loved so well.
James was christened on November 24, and his sponsors were
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, his aunt, the unfortunate Elizabeth,
Queen of Bohemia, and her son, Charles Lewis, the Prince Palatine.
The immediate attendants, whom he shared with his older brother and
sister, were of three grades : nurses, the cofferess (an occupation which
the Oxford English Dictionary has overlooked) and rockers, on behalf of
whom payment was made in April 1635 by the Exchequer of 610, for
what period it is not stated ; and it is also recorded that one Mary
Godbolt, a rocker, received on retirement from service a gift of 3^150.
The Countess of Dorset was governess to the two boys, and she dis-
bursed about 1500 a year to tradesmen for wares delivered for their
use. The purchasing power of money was immensely greater than it is
at the present day perhaps five times as great and we may conclude
that the young Princes were very well done and that their little Court
was well paid. James was destined for the post of Lord High Admiral
of England before he was three, when he was four and a half he was
formally appointed to that office. At the age of ten he was also a colonel
in the Royal Army. In January 1644 he received a writ of summons to
the House of Lords, sitting at Oxford.
THE CIVIL WAR II
In January 1642 Charles found the London mob an impossible
neighbour, and took his wife and family to Hampton Court and
then to Windsor. From Windsor the King made a journey to Dover,
avoiding London, to see the Queen and Princess Mary embark for
Holland. James and his younger brother and sister were meanwhile
sent to St. James's. When in March Charles went north and made
York his headquarters, James was for a time at Richmond, but
the King very soon sent the Marquess of Hertford to fetch him, a
service which was performed against the express prohibition of
Parliament.
Not long after James's arrival at York his father very injudiciously
employed him in what is generally recognised as the first incident of the
Civil War. Hull at that time was a great magazine of arms and ammuni-
tion, the Governor, Sir John Hotham, had been appointed by the King,
and no one at that time doubted his loyalty. The Parliament had already
directed their attention to the magazine and had ordered its removal to
the Tower, in case Charles should attempt to seize it. It is probable
that had the King ridden straight into the town with a body of attend-
ants he would have met with no resistance. He chose, however, to send
James with his tutors and equerries as for a party of pleasure, conveying
at the same time to the Governor his own intention of dining with Sir
John next day. Sir John had time to consider where he stood, and when
next day the King appeared at the gates he found them shut and the
garrison standing to arms. Charles was compelled to swallow this rebuff,
and it was only with difficulty that he persuaded Hotham to release
James and his attendants.
Both James and his brother Charles were at the Battle of Edgehill,
which was fought a few days after James's ninth birthday. The two
royal children had an exciting time. The King started with the boys
beside him in the rear-guard ; but early in the action he found it neces-
sary to take charge of the leading troops, and looked round for someone
to conduct the Princes to a place of safety. The Duke of Richmond
refused, and the Earl of Dorset when he was given the order "answered
with an oath, that he would not be thought a coward for the sake of any
king's son in Christendom and therefore humbly desired His Majesty
to commit that charge to some other man", a remark that made such an
impression on James that he quoted it forty years later. Finally Sir
William Howard yielded to the royal command, collected an escort and
conducted the boys to some sort of shelter in farm buildings near the
field. Here they were discovered by a part of the enemy's horse, but
fortunately the number of the Princes' escort appeared greater than it
actually was, and they escaped capture.
12 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
From Edgehill Charles and James accompanied their father to Ban-
bury and then to Oxford, which they reached on October 29. From this
date until the capture of the city by Fairfax on June 24, 1646, Oxford
was the Royalist headquarters, and except for a few weeks in the late
summer of 1643, when he accompanied his father to Bristol and to the
abortive siege of Gloucester, James lived continuously there. His father
was with him in the intervals of his campaigns and his mother paid a
visit of nine months, July 1643 to April 1644. James was thus deprived
of the continuous influence of both his parents at the formative age of
nine to twelve, and he was to be still less in their company in the succeed-
ing years. There is nothing that is known of the character of Henrietta
Maria which suggests that she was a good mother to her sons, but
Charles I was steady and upright in his private life and was devoted to
his children; at the same time, unfortunately, he was completely
dominated by his wife, and he would not have been allowed much control
over them. Neither Charles nor Henrietta was a competent instructor
in statecraft (Charles IFs shrewdness derived in part from his grand-
father) ; but possibly his father's example might have kept James, at any
rate, steadier in his resistance to carnal temptation and preserved him
in later life from many hours of bitter remorse. A pleasant story of
King Charles's way with his sons has survived: "The old King was
always very severe in the education of his present majesty : insomuch
that at St. Mary's in Oxford he did once hit him on the head with his
staff when he did observe him to laugh (at sermon time) upon the ladies
that sat against him."
Of James's education in the narrow sense of the word we know
practically nothing directly. He had as tutors when he was at Oxford,
Broughton, Brian Duppa and Croucher, who were all three Fellows of
colleges ; one Massonett taught him writing, and the same man was his
sub-tutor in the spring of 1646 and his "sub-lector" at The Hague in
1648 ; he also taught both Princes French. During the exile Massonett
showed an intriguing spirit : he allowed himself to be made a tool by
Hyde's enemies and concocted evidence against that counsellor; he also
worked as a spy for Thurloe; in this last capacity he evidently escaped
detection, for in 1664 we find Massonett physician to James's household
on a salary of 40 a year clearly a man of many accomplishments but
no great virtue. No doubt, like most royal children, James had plenty
of tutors and obeyed none. An injunction conveyed from his father
early in 1647, that he should "ply his book more and his gun less", tells
us nothing; such advice is common form among fathers. But he was
probably from early boyhood fond of the open air. At the time of the
Restoration a little panegyric on James appeared which shows in its
THE CIVIL WAR 13
muddled style evidence of hurried composition; from this work we
learn that :
his ingenious towardliness was not ignorant how much learning
adds to nature, which made him eager after that accomplishment,
though I cannot say he ever minded to make study his business,
being so averse from prying upon his book, that he cared not to
plod upon his games ; for his active soul was more delighted with
quick and nimble recreations, as running, leaping, riding.
Certainly James in later life showed few signs of a liberal or exact
education : he had, as far as we know, no interest in literature, and he was
not a patron of the arts; nor does it appear that, in spite of the appear-
ance of his name as a vice-president of the Royal Society, he had even
Charles's superficial curiosity about science ; he did, however, pay the
expenses of Thomas Smith ("Rabbi" or "Tograi" Smith, who figured
prominently in the affair of Magdalen College in 1687) in his journey to
the Levant "for the advance of learning", and this may not have been
an isolated act. In Brussels, at the age of seventeen, he was taken to
Masses "in order to hear good music", but it was suspected that this was
a mere pretext, and that the real object was his conversion. At the same
time it is quite possible that James had a real interest in music. As a
young man he took some pains to learn the guitar (he used his talent on
one occasion as an excuse for obtaining access to a lady's boudoir), and
he is said to have played accompaniments on that instrument to his
brother's vocal duets with the celebrated bass singer John Gostling ; he
was probably a considerable patron of Henry Purcell: in 1685 he paid
up his arrears of salary as organist of the Chapel Royal and composer of
the King's Music, 1 and commissioned him in 1688 to write an anthem
in celebration of the Queen's pregnancy; Purcell composed several of
his most famous works for other special occasions in James's reign.
The English of James's letters is undistinguished and pedestrian,
and it is often difficult to catch his meaning at a first reading; and good
letter- writing was then one of the ordinary accomplishments of a gentle-
man. Such parts of his memoirs as have survived furnish evidence of
confusion of mind in the frequent repetitions in similar words of
accounts of the same incidents. In the whole of his writings, of which a
tremendous bulk has survived, there are very few of those turns of
1 So says PurcelFs biographer (A. K. Holland, Henry Purcell, 1932), but he
furnishes no references and there is no record of such payments in the Calendar
of Treasury Books: an entry in this Calendar for April 14, 1685, gives the name
of thirty-six musicians who were to perform at the coronation with Dr.
Staggins as Master of the King's Music, and Henry Purcell is mentioned last
but one.
14 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
expression which indicate that a writer is interested in writing as an
art; "like so many young spaniels that run and bark at every lark that
springs" (a description of the Exclusionists) is almost a unique flight of
fancy. Part of these defects was no doubt personal and ineradicable
by education. James had no humour if we except a very occasional
sardonic grimness in his description of the misfortunes of someone he
disliked and no gift of intimacy; and this last deficiency is closely
associated with a quality of which all his letters give evidence a narrow
egotism which makes no pretence whatever at being interested in the
concerns of his correspondent. But over and above all this there remains
an irreducible minimum of bad writing which would not have been
there if the writer, however unintelligent, had had a good grounding in
such education as was at that time available. He was, however, as we
shall see, a good linguist, and was able to chatter fluently in French after
very little practice.
On April 27, 1646, King Charles left Oxford on that journey which
he concluded as a prisoner of the Scotch Army, and four days later
Oxford was besieged by Fairfax. It was not until June 20 that the city
surrendered, and by one article of the terms of capitulation it was pro-
vided that James should be placed at the disposal of Parliament. He
was treated with some deference by the Parliamentary officers, who all
kissed his hand (as he notes) except Fairfax, and none kneeled, as was
proper, except Cromwell. For the few days he remained in Oxford Sir
George Radcliffe was made responsible for his safe custody. James him-
self says that Sir George received an order from the Queen to take his
charge to Ireland or France, but that he refused to obey any order of
that sort without direct instructions from the King, but the story seems
unlikely: there was no time for Henrietta Maria in Paris to receive news
of Radcliffe's appointment and to send instructions before they were
on the road to London, and moreover there was no means of making
an escape, with the whole country in Parliamentary hands. In December
1645 Charles had had the intention to send James to Ireland, but the
loss of Hereford and the siege of Chester had made the route to Ireland
unsafe, and the plan was adopted, but not fulfilled, of sending him to
his mother in France, 1 Sir George accompanied James and his personal
staff to the suburbs of London, where the Earl of Northumberland met
him by order of the Parliament, relieved Radcliffe of his charge and
dismissed all James's servants, "not so much as excepting a dwarf whom
His Royal Highness was desirous to have retained with him*'.
1 James, from faulty recollection, no doubt, placed these projects after,
instead of before, the capitulation of Oxford.
THE CIVIL WAR 15
This Earl of Northumberland was Algernon Percy, the tenth Earl,
a very moderate Parliamentarian; he had held chief command in the
Navy and a very high command in the Army under Charles ; in 1642 he
took the popular side, but he was always in favour of settlement by
negotiation, and in the House of Lords he headed the opposition to the
trial of the King. He was already custodian of James's sister and
brother, Elizabeth and Henry, and James was taken to join them at
St. James's Palace. The three children (James says) received from
Northumberland the treatment they would have expected if the King
himself had confided them to his care ; in a letter of intelligence of the
time we read :
The Earl of Northumberland hath presented His Highness with
a very rich French embroidered coach and six excellent coach
horses, wherewith His Highness and the rest of the King's children
here have appeared en princes like themselves in Hyde Park.
One incident only seems to have marred the good relations of James and
his custodian: a letter written in January 1648 relates:
The imprisonment of the King had been concealed from the
Duke of York. But two or three days since, one of his attendants,
a servant of the Earl of Northumberland, told him of it: to which
he replied, "How durst any rogues to use his father after that
manner". The man told him he would inform his Lord what had
been said; whereupon the Duke took a long bow then in the place,
to have shot him, had not another behind him held his hand. For
this, it is reported, the Earl of Northumberland will have the Duke
whipped; but whether it has yet been done I know not.
Shortly after James's removal to London the King at Newcastle heard
of a proposal to induce him to abdicate in favour of his second son ; no
doubt the Parliamentary leaders, having James in their power at a
tender age, hoped to be able to mould him into a king to their liking.
On June 2, 1647, Cornet Joyce, acting for the Army against the
Parliament, seized the King at Holmby House and conducted him to
Newmarket. Later in the month he was taken to Hampton Court, and
James was sent under escort to Maidenhead to meet him on his journey.
From that time until Charles's escape to Carisbrooke in the following
November father and son had several interviews at Hampton Court;
Northumberland was very accommodating in this respect, and he even
planned to move the children to his own house, Sion House, so that they
should be nearer their father, but this the authorities would not permit.
These interviews were overshadowed in the King's mind by the thought
l6 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
of his present condition and by the apprehension that his liberty would
be more and more restricted and that he might never again be a free
man. In these circumstances the conversations assumed the nature of
death-bed valedictions and advice. To all the children he counselled
loyalty and obedience to their oldest brother Charles, and James in
particular he advised to take what opportunity he could to escape, and
to find a refuge in Holland with his sister Mary, the Princess of Orange.
This last advice was superfluous. Within six months of his arrival in
London, James had begun scheming to escape, and his father's friends
had been scheming for him; the House of Lords in December 1646
took notice of the first attempt that was made and appointed a Com-
mittee to inquire into it. In February 1647 a letter to James from his
mother was intercepted, and about the same time he was found to have
written a letter to his father in cipher under pretence of writing to his
brother-in-law, the Prince of Orange. What followed is described in
a news-letter of the time :
Upon discovery of this, my Lord of Northumberland, Sir
William Ermyn and another of the house were appointed by the
Parliament to examine the Duke who would confess nothing but
that he wrote to the King to let him know the Queen and his
brothers and sisters were in health ; they demanded the key of the
cipher which he told them was burnt as soon as he write the letter,
which was all they could get out of him. Whereupon the House of
Commons, taking the quickest and readiest way, fell upon the
debate of sending him to the Tower, which he having notice of
(wisely) wrote a letter of submission and sent it to the Parliament
with the key of the cipher, confessing the whole truth, and begged
that he might be continued with my Lord of Northumberland and
not sent to the Tower, which was granted; though some of the
House being very much incensed against him opposed it saying,
"You see what a brood there is of them, like father, like sons, there
is no truth in any of them" ;
and the vlriter concludes his narrative with a suggestion that James had
been trapped by a woman agent provocateur into writing the letter and
had been betrayed by her. (James's biographer gives the same story,
except that he makes no mention of the letter of submission, in which no
doubt he considered that James had compromised his dignity.) A year
later a Committee of both Houses considered various attempts at escape
that had been made, and James was constrained to write letters to the
two Speakers "by which he engaged his honour and faith never to
engage in such businesses". After his successful escape he was excused
THE CIVIL WAR IJ
for his breach of faith on the ground that he was under age and should
not have been put on oath; but Parliament took his promise seriously
and made it a ground for exculpating Northumberland.
It was not, however, until April 1648 that success was achieved, and
by an excellent piece of staff work on the part of one Colonel Bampfield.
James was instructed to prepare for the attempt by playing hide and
seek at dusk with his sister and brother, and this game he played with
them every evening for a fortnight; so expert did he become at hiding
himself that it was often half-an-hour before he was found. On this
particular night he went off on pretence at hiding, and slipped down a
back stair. Unfortunately he struck his foot violently against a door and
made a clatter; no one took notice of the noise, but James retired to his
bedchamber and pretended to be reading. When he found all was quiet
he slipped down the stair again and across the grounds to "the door by
the tiltyard-end" which opened on St. James's Park and of which he
had previously obtained the key. Outside this door he found Colonel
Bampfield, who provided him with the temporary disguise of a periwig
and patches, and they made their way no doubt at a leisurely pace so
as to avoid notice to Spring Gardens, "as gallants come to hear the
nightingale". At the exit from Spring Gardens they found a hackney
coach which had been engaged by a friend of Bampfield's of the name
of Tripp. In this coach the three of them went along the causeway
which is now the Strand as far as Ivy Lane, and there the coach was
stopped, James and the Colonel got out on pretence of paying a call,
and Tripp went on in the coach, so as to lay a false scent in case the
chase was up. The other two slipped down to the river and went by
boat to the neighbourhood of London Bridge, where they entered the
house of a surgeon of the name of Low; there they found Bampfield's
fiancee, Anne Murray; she had had a costume made to James's measure-
ments by a woman's tailor, and she reports the tailor's remark, "that he
had never seen a woman of so low a stature have so big a waist". Anne
has left a very vivid (though ungrammatical) account of her part in the
escape : Colonel Bampfield had told her that if they were not at Surgeon
Low's house by ten she would know they had failed and must shift for
herself. But they came a little later :
The first that came in was the Duke, who with much joy I took
in my arms. His Highness called "Quickly, quickly, dress me,"
and putting off his clothes I dressed him in the woman's habit that
was prepared which fitted His Highness very well, and was very
pretty in it. After he had eaten something I had made ready while
I was idle lest His Highness should be hungry, and having sent for
l8 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
a Woodstreet cake (which I knew he loved) to take in the barge,
with as much haste as could be His Highness went cross the bridge
to the stairs where the barge lay.
At Billingsgate they engaged a barge to take them to Tilbury-Hope,
where a Dutch pink was cleared and only waiting for "Mr. Andrews and
his sister", who was going to join her husband in Holland. The barge-
master was not quite satisfied with his passengers from the first for
one thing, no fewer than five persons had embarked with them to see
them off, and for another, they appear to have had no luggage and
when they were under way, "peeping through a cranny of the door into
the barge room, where there was a candle burning before the Duke, he
perceived his Royal Highness laying his leg upon the table, and plucking
up his stocking in so unwomanish a manner, that he concluded his
former surmises of him were undoubted truths." (Another account says
that Mr. Andrews was tying his sister's garter.) This was a bad break
on the part of Master James: he was only fourteen-and-a-half, and no
doubt was very self-conscious and uncomfortable in his unaccustomed
costume. There was nothing to do but to take the barge-master into their
confidence, and for a little time there was fear that the scheme had mis-
carried. The barge-master had no scruples of conscience; on general
grounds he was quite willing, though by no means eager, to help James
to escape; but he was a family man, and if he were detected as an
accomplice as he was likely to be by the guard-boats at Gravesend he
would be ruined. He yielded at last to James's promises to provide for
him if he got into trouble, and without lights or oars the barge drifted
on the tide undetected in the dark by the guard-boats and found the
pink without mishap. The crossing to Flushing was uneventful, but
their troubles were not quite over, for a vessel which they erroneously
took for an English frigate followed them into the harbour, and the
captain of the pink decided to proceed to Middelburg, a journey which
was risky, with the tide as it then was. However, James's luck held,
and "at Middleburg the Duke slept that night, and gave much wonder
to the hostess, that a young gentlewoman would not let the maids help
her to the bed, but be served by a pretended brother, in the same
chamber in another bed". James finally arrived at the I lague on April 30.
Thus James's early boyhood had been spent in the atmosphere of the
Civil War* He was a spectator at its two earliest episodes, and at
Oxford, where he spent almost four years, he was at the centre of the
resistance to the insurgents. There the talk of his seniors was entirely
of the war and of the means to bring it to a successful conclusion. This
atmosphere was, there can be no doubt, charged with an intense hatred
THE CIVIL WAR 1$
of the Parliamentary leaders, coupled with an eagerness to swallow any
sort of gossip against them. As in all civil wars, both sides claimed to be
the national and patriotic party, and at Oxford it was treason to admit
any virtues in the enemy : he would have been a courageous man who
hinted that there was the least tincture of justice in the Parliamentary
point of view. Later he was to see his father a prisoner in the hands of
the Army a father with whose moral and religious ideals he was in
later life to have little sympathy, but for whom at that time, as we may
assume from the scanty records, he had a deep affection. Later again he
was to hear in Paris that his father had met his death on the scaffold.
The impressions received in those years persisted in his mind through
life. In maturity his outlook on life became fixed, immutable; these
early impressions became fundamental truths which no experience or
contemplation could modify; the subsequent twelve years, spent as
they were among the exiled cavaliers, served only to deepen these early
impressions, and we shall find James forty years and more later, still
voicing the ideas, ideals and aspirations of the Cavalier party of 1642,
and expecting a repetition of the events of that year.
CHAPTER II
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE, 1648-1651
JAMES spent the remainder of the year 1648 with his sister Mary and her
husband, William II, Prince of Orange, at their mansion at Honslaer-
dyke, near the Hague. The position of William requires some notice.
He was the grandson of the famous William the Silent, who had been
the mainspring of the resistance of the Dutch to Philip II of Spain and
of the establishment of the United Provinces as an independent State ;
this independence, however, had not been effectively recognised until
the Twelve Years' Truce of 1609, twenty-five years after the death of
William the Silent, and it was not legally accomplished until the Peace
of Miinster in 1648. The office of Stadtholder, or Governor, in several
provinces had been held by William under the King of Spain, and, by
a curious anomaly, he retained the title after the provinces had broken
away from Spain. Actually no Prince of Orange was Stadtholder in all
of the seven provinces, and there was no Stadtholder for the United
Provinces as a whole; his chief strength lay in the fact that he was
Captain-General and Admiral-General of the forces of the State and
was also Stadtholder of the province of Holland, by far the most
important of the provinces; for it contained both the commercial
capital, Amsterdam, and the meeting-place of the States-General, The
Hague, and contributed to the central revenues more than the other
six provinces combined. Already in the middle of the seventeenth
century the State as a whole was beginning to be known by the name of
this single province.
In 1631, by the Acte de Survivance, the Stadtholdership had been
made hereditary, and William IPs father, Frederick Henry, had become
virtually a constitutional monarch, though he did not assume royal
state and his powers were closely limited under a republican, but by no
means democratic, constitution. The seven provinces which had
successfully revolted against Spain had been part of the seventeen
provinces which had constituted the Spanish Netherlands, and they
formed in essence a military league of independent States; each province
clung to the privileges which it had enjoyed under Burgundian and
Hapsburg rule and which Philip II had attempted to destroy. In the
result the States-General, the body in which, according to unenlightened
foreign opinion, sovereignty resided, more closely resembled the League
of Nations than the central government of a federal State like Canada
20
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 21
or the United States of America. Each province had a single vote in the
States- General, and its delegate had to refer every fresh question back
to the provincial estates, and to vote as directed by them; moreover, the
States-General could take action only on a unanimous vote, and a single
province could prevent action by the other six.
In the provinces there was a similar obstacle to decision, for the
provincial estates consisted of a delegate of the nobles and one delegate
each from a number of municipalities, and the municipalities, with
rare exceptions, were in the hands of a few families ; so that in theory in
the last resort the representatives of these families in any one munici-
pality could paralyse the States-General. In practice the constitution
did not work so badly as that : the Dutch were strongly united in national
sentiment, and they were in general inclined to accept the leadership of
the province of Holland and its Stadtholder, and, during the minority
of William III, that of John de Witt.
James was very soon brought into active interest in the Civil War.
In June 1648 a mutiny on board some of the Parliamentary ships in the
Downs, who put their officers ashore, provided the Royalists with a
small fleet which was moored at Helvoetsluys. James, for whom the sea
had an instinctive attraction and who had rights as Lord High Admiral,
went on board the fleet and sent a messenger to Charles at Saint- Germain
suggesting that he should join him. Charles accordingly arrived early
in July via Calais, where a warship had been sent to meet him. He found
the fleet in a state of faction in default of officers' and through the
intrigues of James's servants, acting nominally under James's orders.
He decided that the only way to restore discipline was to give the sea-
men something to do and to take them away from pernicious influences
ashore; he accordingly took the fleet for a cruise in the Downs, but
left James, to his intense disgust, ashore. Charles returned to
Helvoetsluys about the middle of September, where the fleet was
threatened by the Parliamentary fleet under the Earl of Warwick. The
attack was prevented by the action of Van Tromp, the Dutch Admiral,
but the Parliament men were able to come ashore and to fraternise
with the Royalist seamen; the result was that several of Charles's ships
passed voluntarily over to the enemy, while others were allowed to be
captured after a show of resistance. In October Charles went down with
an attack of smallpox, and James, to avoid infection, had been moved to
Mr. Henflet's house at Tylling. Charles recovered in time to super-
intend the refitting of what ships remained to him after the Parlia-
mentary fleet had left on November 21, and to make the necessary
appointments of admiral and captains. Prince Rupert was the obvious
22 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
choice for admiral, but the seamen were prejudiced against him and
would have preferred James, as the only other available person of
sufficient rank. But James as admiral at the age of fifteen would have
been a ridiculous choice, and Rupert was appointed. It was arranged
that James should sail with the fleet, but when he heard that its destina-
tion was Ireland he refused to go. Thus early had he conceived a
prejudice against that country.
King Charles had placed his younger children under the guardianship
of the Queen, Henrietta Maria, and early in January 1649, in obedience
to her commands, James set out from The Hague to join her in Paris.
He passed through Brussels to Cambray, and there he received fresh
instructions: his mother wrote that disorders had broken out in Paris
and that her nephew, the King of France, had had to go to Saint-
Germain; she advised him to remain where he was. A timely invitation
enabled him to avail himself of the hospitality of the Benedictine
monastery of St. Armand, where "he was nobly entertained by the
Monks" for the space of three or four weeks; this was James's first
serious contact with Roman Catholic discipline and practice. In the
middle of February he was able to join his mother in Paris, and a few
days after his arrival there he heard of his father's execution. In the
course of the summer his brother Charles, who was now titular King of
England, arrived from Holland, and the widowed Queen and her two
sons took up their residence at Saint-Germain. James had previously
been received with royal honours at the French Court.
We have a picture of James in the spring of this year from the pen of
Henrietta Maria's niece Mademoiselle, the daughter of the Duke of
Orleans:
I have found staying with the Queen of England her second son,
the Duke of York. . . . He is a young prince of thirteen or fourteen
years of age, extremely good-looking and well made, and of fair
complexion; he speaks French well and this gives him an advantage
over the King his brother, for nothing in my opinion goes more
against a man than lack of words. The Duke spoke to the point and
I was much edified by the conversation I had with him;
and the young lady goes on to say how much she has enjoyed taking
walks with James.
Charles was now nineteen years of age, and while he was at The
Hague he had evidently decided that the time had come to dispense with
petticoat government. Accordingly within a few days of his arrival at
Saint-Germain he made it clear to his mother that as long as his father
was alive and he himself was under age she had rightly been in a
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 23
position to control his actions ; but that now that he was King and grown
up, the situation had entirely altered: for the future he was willing to be
a good son to her, but he would not consult her on matters of policy.
Poor Henrietta Maria had hoped to be able to play the same havoc with
her son's plans as she had played with her husband's, and it was with no
good grace that she outwardly accepted the situation: she continued
until the Restoration to intrigue for a return to power, and she made a
party for herself, with Lord Jermyn at its head, which added consider-
ably to Charles's troubles by its incessant quarrels with his own servants.
Charles's journey to Paris was only en route for Ireland. During the
early spring after the news had arrived of his father's execution,
Charles's council had been divided between two schemes for the
recovery of his kingdoms, one via Scotland and the other via Ireland.
In March Charles wrote to Ormonde congratulating him on the peace
he had recently made with the Catholic Irish, which had considerably
brightened the Royalist prospects in Ireland, and announcing his inten-
tion of proceeding there without delay. In the same month arrived
commissioners from Scotland making offers of assistance, but on
condition that he should take the Covenant and "entertain no other
persons about him but such as were godly men"; but Charles was not
yet reduced to such extremities as to submit to this humiliation, and he
had no hesitation in holding to his plan. But much time was wasted in
raising funds and making other arrangements, and before everything
was ready there was bad news from Ireland : in confirmation of previous
rumours, Ormonde wrote that he had been defeated on August 2 by
General Michael Jones at Rathmines, and he advised Charles to delay
his voyage until the seas had been cleared by the autumn storms of the
Parliamentary ships which were blockading Rupert's fleet in Kinsale
Harbour.
The advice was excellent, but where was Charles to spend the inter-
vening time? He was very unhappy in Paris; his mother made their
relations impossible by offering him advice on his affairs, and he was
forced in self-defence to make a practice of rising and leaving her
abruptly when she ventured on forbidden topics ; besides, the French
Government were passively hostile: since one splendid entertainment
which they had given him at Comptegne on his way from Holland they
had entirely ignored his existence. The only part of his dominions
which was still in his possession were the Channel Islands; he had spent
two months in Jersey in 1646, he had most pleasant recollections of the
loyalty and hospitality of the islanders, and it was conveniently situated
as a base for the projected expedition to Ireland. It is not surprising there-
fore that he decided to make it his headquarters for the next few months.
24 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
On September 2 Charles and James left Saint-Germain for Coutain-
ville, the port on the French coast nearest to Jersey. They passed
through Caen, where they saw the Marchioness of Ormonde, and they
were magnificently entertained by the Bishop of Coutances at the
headquarters of his diocese. They embarked at Coutainville at noon on
the 27th, in "the Prince's own pinnace" of eighteen oars, which he had
had built during his previous visit, and which had provided him with a
great deal of diversion. Charles was at the helm, the place which he
always reserved for himself, and at about four o'clock the little flotilla
arrived at Elizabeth Castle. At Coutainville James had given, in the
eyes of his admirers, a proof of his natural flair for the sea: for when it
was proposed to put off the departure until it was ascertained whether
or not the passage was clear of enemy craft, he pointed out that as the
wind then lay the enemy ships off Guernsey were wind-bound and could
not intercept them. After some discussion his advice was followed, and
it was justified by the complete safety of their passage, and by the fact
that the baggage-ships, which followed them next day, when the wind
had shifted, narrowly escaped capture.
Charles and James took up their residence at Elizabeth Castle, built
on a rock and connected with St. Heliers by a causeway which was
covered by the sea at high tide. They were accompanied by a train of
no fewer than three hundred persons; among those who accompanied
Charles or joined him later in Jersey we may notice Lord Byron, the
Duke of Buckingham, Sir John Berkeley, Sir Edward Nicholas, Sir
Edward Herbert, Sir Bernard Gascoigne, Sir Marmaduke Langdale,
Stephen Fox, James's secretary, Henry Bennet, and his chaplain, Dr.
Richard Stuart. The castle could hardly accommodate them all, and
subsequent arrivals had to be accommodated in St. Heliers and else-
where. Considerable state was maintained : Charles and James had each
six well-matched horses for his coach, and there was a third coach-and-
six for the Privy Council. There was some activity in strengthening the
defences of the island, notably by an addition to Elizabeth Castle, and
in increasing and training the militia, and there were many public
ceremonies to attend; but mostly the royal brothers devoted themselves
to such amusements as the island afforded, shooting, and sailing about
in Charles's pinnace. Charles, however, was not allowed to feel at ease
in Jersey; his servants were perpetually squabbling, and their squabbles
led to duels, and there was an increasing fear that the Parliamentary
fleet might blockade Jersey and take him in a trap, Ormonde, indeed,
wrote from Ireland on September 27 urging him to go there, in a last
desperate hope that his presence might put heart into his followers and
regain that kingdom; but the letter arrived too late to determine his
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 2$
plans, and when, in October, the Scots commissioners followed him to
his retreat and renewed their offers, Charles had to swallow his pride
and what scruples he had about signing the Covenant and dismissing
his "godless" servants that is to say, all his servants except such as
were prepared to assume godliness; he made an appointment to meet
the commissioners in Breda in the following March. He accordingly
left Jersey on February 13, after a parting with James (tearful on the
part of both the brothers), and met his mother at Beauvais on the 2ist.
They parted on March 5, Henrietta to return to Paris, Charles to con-
tinue his journey to Breda and thence to Scotland on the quest which
was to end at Worcester.
Charles's apostasy from Cavalier principles caused dismay among the
Cavaliers both in England and Scotland; Lord Hatton reported that
"the sweet Princess Elizabeth" away at Carisbrooke Castle "hath wept
daily ever since". Sir Edward Hyde's letters from Madrid at this time
express in admirable literary form the views of the best among the
Cavaliers ; they provide an abiding testimony to the moral integrity of
the writer. He reproved Berkeley's flippancy in saying that Charles
could not be cheated by the Scots because he had nothing to lose :
It is no wonder if men are shy of trusting those who have not the
reputation of being honest, and we can never be so low but we may
again be deceived. When all is lost we may be cozened out of our
innocence and misled into a partnership of mischief; therefore let
us not think that we ought not to stand at guard, how undone soever
we are.
And to the Countess of Morton he wrote:
I pray God this treaty may prove prosperous to the King; the
Scots methinks deal with him like honest men and tell him plainly
that they will never do him good, and yet we are so mad as to believe
that they will do better than they promise. . . It is an excellent
expedient to draw God's blessing upon us to have no other excuse
for taking an oath than that they resolve not to keep it at the same
time they take it. 1
It was asserted in after years that the "jure divino episcopacy" were so
incensed against Charles that there was a movement, connected with
the name of Dr. Morley, for deposing him and substituting James as
titular King, and that James knew of the movement and did not dis-
1 It may be remarked in passing that the pretence of accepting Charles as a
sincere Covenanter was as disgraceful to the Kirk as was Charles's hypocritical
assumption of "godliness" to himself.
2 6 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
courage it. It is certain that he disapproved of the negotiations with the
Scots and vehemently opposed Charles's journey to Breda; but he was
not of the enlarged council which decided the matter and had no official
right to express an opinion. Sir John Berkeley and Lord Byron were,
however, consulted (though Berkeley was not of the Council), and James
took revenge on them for the favour they had shown to the Scots by
dismissing them from his household. Berkeley wrote to Hyde:
My Lord Byron and myself as we were put into my master's
bedchamber without our desires so we are put out at His Highness's
instance without our consents ; we could guess at no other reason
but that we were lately for that treaty which our master passion-
ately opposed and voted against it when His majesty voted for it.
But a very few months brought a change of mind : on August 24 James
wrote from Jersey to the Earl of Argyll :
MY LORD
I have sent this gentleman to congratulate to His Majesty the
hopeful condition his affairs are put into now in his kingdom of
Scotland, which I cannot remember without making some acknow-
ledgements to you for that part you have contributed thereunto,
which knowing to be a very considerable one, you may assure
yourself of a proportionable share in my affection and friendship,
and that I am always ready to give you the best proofs I can thereof
as
Your affectionate cousin
JAMES.
This is the third letter of James of which we still have the text. The
two earlier letters, one written from The Hague in September 1648 and
the other from Saint-Germain in July 1649, are letters of compliment
addressed to the Marquis of Montrose when the Scottish cavalier party,
of which he was the leader, was in favour with Charles. Within a year
the two brothers had pledged themselves to Montrose's bitterest enemy.
Lord Jermyn held the office of Governor of Jersey and was entitled
to the revenues of that position, though he rarely if ever visited the
island; Sir George Carteret resided there as Lieutenant-Governor and
carried out all the duties of the Government an expensive but not
uncommon arrangement in that and the following century. When
Charles left for France he bought the governorship from Jermyn for
3000 (it is unlikely that the money was paid before the Restoration),
and conferred it upon James. The circumstances are thus interpreted
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 27
by the agent of the Parliament, who had been in Jersey and had followed
Charles to Beauvais :
He hath also done it to lay some obligation on the Duke to con-
tinue in the Island, where indeed he is no better than a prisoner
to his brother's jealousy, which is very great towards him. Before
our coming from thence he gave Sir George Carteret (in whom he
reposeth very great trust), a very great charge to have a very strict
eye, but withal secretly, over his person and actions, very much
fearing that, being very active and of a stirring nature and good
parts, and withal being more plausible, may be like enough at one
time or another to create him trouble enough.
This is the first of several records of Charles's jealousy of James, and in
this instance at any rate the evidence appears inconclusive. Charles
clearly did not want James at Breda because he would have complicated
matters by opposing the treaty, and in pure kindness and to lessen his
disappointment at being left behind there could have been no other
reason he made James governor; Charles's instructions to Carteret
were, from their nature, secret, so that the latter part of the information
is pure conjecture. Charles certainly on two or three occasions before
the Restoration showed a jealousy of his brother, but it is not necessary
to believe that this jealousy developed into a settled habit of mind.
Three years before Charles died James wrote :
The King was far from being jealous, for besides that the Duke
had never given the least occasion for such a mistrust, it was not
in the Bong's temper to be so ;
and from what we know of the character of Charles we must agree with
this verdict.
James was not at all satisfied with his situation in Jersey: he naturally
felt that he was being left out of all the schemes that were on foot to
restore his brother. No sooner had Charles left than he sent Berkeley
(not yet dismissed) after him to suggest various alternatives: that he
should join the fleet under Prince Rupert, that (for some obscure reason)
he should go either to the Duke of Lorraine or the Queen of Sweden,
or that he should return to his mother in Paris. But Charles did not
approve of any of these plans, "so that (as Berkeley put it) my master
seems to me to have the full liberty of the Island". There were rumours
that the Scots would compel Charles to command James's attendance
on him in Scotland, and would thus make him an additional hostage for
his brother's good behaviour, but they proved to be without foundation.
28 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
There is a brief sketch of James as he appeared to a Jersey diarist,
too slight, perhaps, to be worth reviving:
The Duke of York, who had completed his fifteenth year (stc\
was tall for his age and slight in figure but remarkably lively and
pleasant in his manner. His Highness was attired in an entire suit
of black, without any other ornament or decoration than the silver
star displayed upon his mantle. He also wore a purple scarf across
his shoulders.
The costume was, of course, that appropriate for the period of mourning
for his royal father.
The Cavaliers who accompanied or followed Prince Charles in his
flight from England were not on the whole the best of their class. They
were soldiers without troops, squires without lands, lawyers without
occupation, courtiers without more than the semblance of a Court, all
without money, and they carried with them to the Continent the
jealousies and animosities that had wrecked what chances they had had
of defeating the Parliamentarians. A very few of them rose above their
dismal surroundings. Of such was Edward Hyde, Charles's trusted
counsellor, whose character at this time of his life shines singularly
clear; he was hated by the courtiers both on account of his lack of claim
to gentle birth, and for the favour which his devotion had won from
Charles, but his disinterestedness and loyalty were in eminent contrast
to their self-seeking. But many years before the Restoration Hyde had
contracted the habit of ungraciousness which was so great a factor in
his ultimate downfall: he was well aware that he was the intellectual
superior of everyone who could compete with him in giving advice to
the King, and he was at no pains to conceal this knowledge or to gain
popularity by affecting to take advice; Lord Hatton said that he was
aiming at "a viziership in Christendom to the height of that in Turkey",
and it is easy to imagine how galling such an attitude must have been to
the cavaliers of the Court, even if we make some allowance for exaggera-
tion by one whose information was not always so accurate as his friends
desired.
Of a very different hereditary and social background, but with the
same political outlook, was the Marquis of Ormonde to be known to
history as the "great" Duke of Ormonde owner of ancestral acres,
accustomed to command, a great gentleman, a true Church-and-King
man. He was perhaps a little inclined to dramatise himself: "as I am
most clear from an itch to be meddling and from the faction of siding
with parties, so I would be thought to aim at serving the King honestly
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 29
and plainly without crotchets or lies"; in the same letter he complains
of those "that reject advices barely upon dislike of those that give them".
In another letter he wrote, "Though it hath pleased God to lay us flat
upon the ground for our sins, he hath not forbidden us to look about
how we may rise. I depend much upon your belief of my constancy to
myself and the principles of our late blessed master. I hope I shall be
found as little to swerve from them as anybody." Nearly thirty years
later he was to write to the King that he would continue to serve him
"with all the vigour time hath left me, and with all the faithfulness no
time can alter or take from me". Unfortunately Ormonde was not at first
at the centre of things: Charles apparently did not require his presence,
and the rival Court of the Queen at the Louvre was too poor to support
him. He and Hyde agreed in all things ; they were much of an age
about twenty years older than Charles and from their correspondence
it is clear that they took a semi-paternal view of the young Princes and
of the bickerings of their entourage. From his dignified poverty at
Caen, from which he made only very rare visits to Paris, Ormonde
exerted what influence he could in favour of sanity and decent living.
His high station made it possible for him to speak to royal persons with
a candour and freedom which were forbidden to Hyde, and there is
envy as well as amused admiration in a passage in one of Hyde's letters
to him:
I am very glad you have made that journey to the Queen
[Henrietta Maria] in which the King hath discharged his obligation,
though methinks Her Majesty was sharper in her reflections than
she had reason to be ; however you were not a very good courtier
in your reply, when she said that if she had been trusted the King
had now been in England, that if she had never been trusted he
had never been out of England.
With Hyde and Ormonde we may perhaps associate "Secretary"
Nicholas, who was for four years Charles's representative at The Hague.
He had served Charles's father with steady faithfulness for many years
before the Rebellion and had incurred the violent animosity of the
Parliamentary party; he was not a man of brilliant gifts, but his industry
and common-sense made him a valuable public servant.
Henrietta Maria's counsels at the Louvre were ruled by Henry, Lord
Jermyn, who had an infinite capacity for intrigue, but no other ability.
So closely did he identify his interests with those of his royal mistress
that it was confidently asserted that he was married to her; he con-
trived to live in affluence and splendour when the rest of the exiled
cavaliers were near starvation. Before the expedition to Scotland in
3O JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
1650 he had been a rival to Hyde in Charles's confidence, and his advice
to accept the terms of the Scottish commissioners at Breda had been
followed when Hyde was absent on a mission to Spain. But after
Charles's escape from Worcester, Hyde became his chief adviser, and
Jermyn, jealous on account of his loss of influence, became Hyde's
implacable enemy. The Queen Mother took Jermyn's side, and the
antipathy which she showed on all occasions for Charles's Minister
seriously widened the breach which had appeared between mother and
son. In this animosity against Charles's advisers Nicholas was included ;
he was accused of encouraging Charles in his resistance to his mother's
influence ; but Ormonde was too safely entrenched in rank and dignity
to be attacked.
Henrietta's first duty after James's arrival at The Hague was to
provide him with servants. She had no sense of economy, and there
were plenty of people about her with nothing to do, so she appointed
them all to various posts about James's person and sent them off to
The Hague; and James, without money, had to provide for a staff in
excess of what his father would have provided for him if he had been
at liberty and in full possession of the royal revenues. The result was as
could have been anticipated : a number of courtiers surrounded the boy
prince; they had no money to procure such amusements as the place
afforded, and they commenced a competition for James's favour and a
series of squabbles among themselves ; these squabbles lasted for nine
years, and at certain periods became the chief topic of the letters which
passed between the exiled Royalists.
An excellent choice had been made for the post of governor to James
Lord Byron, a distinguished soldier, well educated, and a thoroughly
loyal and disinterested man; unfortunately he was not immediately
available, and he was not able to impose discipline upon the household
before the factions had got entirely out of hand. Sir John Berkeley was
appointed to hold the post during Byron's absence. The accounts of
Berkeley all agree: he was a hectoring, self-assertive, domineering man
of moderate abilities and no real strength of character; he had fought
well in the Civil War, but he over- valued himself and could not endure
to be in any but the first place; when he had gained James's favour he
fomented jealousies between him and Charles in order to increase his
own importance. He had at first Bampfield to reckon with. Like many
successful plotters, Bampfield could not cease plotting even when his
plots had achieved success. It was natural that James should be grateful
to him for the assistance he had given him in his escape, and he wanted
him to have the governor's place ; but when Bampfield had attempted to
get up a Presbyterian faction in the household, and also to promote a
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 3!
sort of mutiny in the Royalist flotilla, it was clear even to James that he
was impossible. He was dismissed with such pecuniary gratifications
as funds would allow. He returned to England, and was there arrested
and examined by the Council, but he escaped from the Gatehouse prison
the night before he was to have been brought to trial for his share in
James's escape. He subsequently, after the manner of his kind, passed
over to the enemy; when next he visited the Continent it was as a spy
in Cromwell's pay, and a number of his letters written in that capacity
are to be found among the Thurloe State Papers. 1
James's household not only bickered among themselves, but made
trouble in the establishment of their host, the Prince of Orange, who
had to bear "the reproaches to which his council was every day made
liable by the impertinence and insolence of that train" the old story
of untravelled, aristocratic Englishmen treating foreigners as they
thought they ought to be treated and he was not sorry when James
set out for Paris with his "uneasy family". There and in Jersey the
presence of Charles seems to have driven faction underground he had
insisted on the dismissal of no fewer than twenty- two of James's servants
in November but no sooner had James returned to Paris (in September
1650) than the bluster and ineffectiveness of Berkeley and Henrietta
Maria's open hostility to certain of James's other advisers produced a
crisis. A faction consisting of Sir George Radcliffe, Sir Edward Herbert,
the Attorney-General, Dr. Stuart, the chaplain, and Dr. Henry Killi-
grew, another divine, acquired an ascendancy over James and convinced
him that he ought to strike out a line for himself. Charles IV, Duke of
Lorraine, had been driven from his duchy by Richelieu: he was now at
Brussels as a soldier of fortune fighting against France in the service
of Spain. The conspirators filled James's mind with stories of this
Duke's virtues and grievances, and prevailed on him to go to him at
Brussels "as a pattern and example for all unfortunate princes to follow".
They also told him that Charles had arranged for money to be paid to
him at Brussels. There was no suggestion whatever that the Duke had
expressed a wish to see James, and only James's youth can excuse his
readiness to fall in with the scheme. Nor in fact could Lorraine claim
to be "a pattern and example" for James to follow: he was a man
notoriously unstable and fickle; his one steady ambition was to obtain
from the Pope a blessing on the "marriage" which he had contracted
during his own wife's lifetime and the legitimation of his children by
1 At the Restoration Bampfield went into exile, and at the end of Charles's
reign he was still repeatedly writing to Ormonde protesting that he had never
betrayed the King and begging Ormonde to use his influence to obtain a
pardon.
j2 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
that "marriage". There can be little question that the ultimate object of
James's advisers was to get the chief posts about his person in case
Charles's expedition ended fatally to himself and James succeeded to
the titular crown. In fact, there were rumours that Charles was already
dead.
Henrietta Maria was strongly opposed to the plan. She had no
intention of relaxing the hold she had over James as the sole source of
his means of support, and she was also in a strong position, in that she
had been appointed his guardian by his brother Charles. Radcliffe and
the others had managed to raise funds from somewhere, and James was
able to show his mother Charles's letter ordering him to leave Jersey, in
which were "some ambiguous expressions which seemed to intimate
that he desired that he would go to Holland' '. The Queen enlisted the
assistance of her son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, and he wrote to
James offering him an annual pension of 2000 pistoles if he would
remain in Paris, and informing him that if he came to The Hague he
must inevitably be shipped off to Scotland under a treaty which the
Prince had made with the Scots.
But Henrietta Maria had very little influence with or control over
James. She appears to have antagonised him from the time of his first
arrival in Paris. She made to her ladies damaging comparisons between
his character and that of Charles, and these remarks were repeated to
him. He was probably already at this early age more stubborn and
intractable than Charles, and she on her side maintained an "austere
carriage" towards both her sons. Some instinct of family honour
(which, however, he subdued later) may also have made him resent the
intimate relations that existed between his mother and Lord Jermyn.
In the present case she was helpless. She might storm and rage, as no
doubt she did, but James had the means of disobeying her, and he used
them. The best she could do was to prevail upon him to attach Lord
Byron and Henry Bennet to his party as a measure of control over the
hotheads into whose hands he had delivered himself (Berkeley char-
acteristically declined a part in the act when he realised that he could
not play the lead).
James left Paris on October 4 and arrived at Brussels on October 13,
1650. The Duke of Lorraine received him with courtesy, and even gave
him small sums of money towards his expenses, but James's presence
was an embarrassment: James was only a younger son of the English
royal line, that line had small hopes of being restored, and even if it
were restored, Charles was only twenty, and it was very unlikely that
he would die without direct heirs* There were negotiations conducted
by Viscount Taaffe, apparently without authority from Charles, for the
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 33
marriage of James to the Duke's illegitimate daughter and for the
provision of a jointure out of Irish revenues ; but these and other more
direct negotiations for Lorraine's assistance in the reconquest of Ireland
came to nothing, nor does it appear that Lorraine on his side entered
into them seriously.
After two months in Brussels without tangible results, James's advisers
began to quarrel among themselves. The Spanish authorities were
passively hostile, for they were anxious to remain on good terms with
the revolutionary government in England; funds were so low that
James ceased to have formal dinners and had to be content with "two
dishes a meal in his chamber" ; Henrietta Maria in Paris refused to send
supplies. She was determined to get James back to Paris, not because
she wanted him near her, but in order to vindicate her authority: as
Nicholas put it, "that they may have the new modelling of him and teach
him to bow to the Baal of the Louvre, which is the Idol which hath
ruined our Israel". In these circumstances James determined to try
The Hague again. Lord Byron had already been there to persuade the
Prince and Princess to receive him, but the Prince died early in
November, and his posthumous son, William, who was to play so
disastrous a part in James's life, was born on December 4. Further-
more, Henrietta, though James had written to her asking her to use her
good offices with the Prince and Princess, laid her positive commands
on her daughter not to receive him. Consequently when in the first days
of December the party sent a messenger in advance to announce that
they were on the way, the Princess, "who was wholly governed by the
Queen", replied that the visit was inconvenient ("which unkindness
these Boers do wonder at", says Nicholas). They therefore turned east
and spent a month at Rhenen, where James's aunt, the unfortunate
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, had a house.
Meanwhile Henrietta Maria had invoked the aid of Charles, and from
Scotland Charles sent Henry Rainsford to James with a letter scolding
him for leaving France without orders and commanding him to return
to Paris and to reduce his household; these instructions end, however,
on a kindlier note, expressing sympathy for James chafing at a life of
inaction and admitting his right to choose his own servants, but at the
same time they threatened with dire penalties any of those servants
who should dare to advise James not to obey Charles's present orders.
James did not obey them, but sent Richard Fanshaw to his brother and *
excused himself on the ground that his conduct had been misrepresented
by his mother, who, indeed, had no great reputation for truthfulness.
About the same time or a little earlier Jermyn, without the Queen
Mother's knowledge, paid a flying visit to Rhenen, staying only one
34 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
night, and vainly tried to effect by personal negotiation what other
methods had failed to achieve; he might have been more successful if
he had stood higher in James's favour.
Henrietta Maria now changed her tactics. Thinking, no doubt, that
the Princess of Orange, who was entirely in her interest, might ease
the situation, she withdrew the prohibition of James's visit to The
Hague and he arrived there in the middle of January. This plan very
nearly succeeded, for after only a fortnight at The Hague James was
reported to be preparing to return to Paris; but unhappily Paris was
again in an unrestful state, and his mother could not advise him to
pursue his journey. Late in March a great reception to the new English
ambassadors was announced at The Hague, and James retreated to
Breda for a time to avoid being present ; he returned to his sister when
the festivities were over. Finally, however, his presence at The Hague
was resented by the English ambassadors, and he had to shift his head-
quarters permanently to Breda. In May James had abandoned hope of
profiting by his expedition and was begging his mother to recall him to
Paris.
Now there was nothing to be done; no one had anything to suggest,
and everyone cast the blame on everyone else all except Sir Edward
Herbert, who sulked solemnly by himself. At the beginning of June a
further peremptory message came from Charles ordering immediate
return to the Queen Mother, and Hyde arrived from Paris ; there was a
general feeling of relief, and the return journey was made without delay.
Henrietta Maria controlled herself and confounded the prophets by
refraining from undue heat at the first interviews. But there was conflict
between them on the religious question : it was generally supposed in
later years that the conversion of James to Rome had been due to his
mother's influence, and as late as 1680 in the debates on the second
Exclusion Bill there was mention of this widely held opinion, but she
appears to have made no direct effort to convert him to her own faith.
Of this fact there is almost conclusive proof in the postscript to a
letter from Charles to his mother written in his own hand in December
1654 the subject of the letter itself is connected with Henrietta's
attempt to convert Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Charles says:
Your Majesty cannot forget how often you have pressed the
keeping your promise to the King my father concerning myself
and my brother the Duke of York as an argument to me not to fear
any attempt would be made by Your Majesty to change my
brother Henry.
These words constitute an admission that Henrietta had kept her promise
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 35
as far as Charles and James were concerned, and that she had made
no attempt to convert James up to the end of the year 1654, when he
was twenty-one years of age. The words also dispose of the rumours
that reached Nicholas at The Hague shortly after Charles's return to
Paris after the Battle of Worcester that there was a plan afoot at the
Louvre to convert both Charles and James; at that time Charles was
more inclined to listen to his mother's advice on public matters than he
had previously been, and this change may have given rise to these
rumours. 1
But if Henrietta did not try to convert James, she placed difficulties
in the way of his exercise of the Protestant rites, and he had to appeal
to the Queen Mother of France for permission to set up a private chapel
in the Louvre. Henrietta also treated him with such systematic contempt
that Nicholas, writing to Ormonde, expressed a fear lest, strong as was
James's loyalty to his brother, such conduct would undermine it:
I see already that whatever the Duke doth that is not suitable
to the Queen's mind and to the little designs of those about her is
presently interpreted and reported to be a factious plot. And I
may tell your Excellency I am very sorry to find so great and cause-
less jealousies endeavoured to be raised of the Duke, who (I assure
you) hath in my opinion most dutiful affections for the King, but
I cannot say that I believe he doth conceive that the Queen or any
about her esteems him or hath much kindness for him. I do not
discern any disposition or inclination in the Duke of York to do
anything that may in the least manner distaste the King, but I
very much apprehend that if he shall find that his great desire to
merit by his obedience shall be still misrepresented, and that his
person (being now past a child) shall be by the Queen and her
sycophants rendered contemptible in their table discourses, it may
(I doubt) make him give ear to counsels and persons that may put
other things into his head than his natural good disposition
inclines him to.
1 In the compilation known as the Memoirs of Sir Stephen Fox occurs the
passage :
no sooner was the Royal Family arrived in France but Her Majesty by the
means of her confessor and other priests, her domestics, was not only
urgent with the King for the education of the Duke of Gloucester but
were (sic) assiduous with the Duke of York to embrace their communion.
But this was written long after the event, when it had become an article of
popular belief that Henrietta had influenced James in his religion; and so
inaccurate is the work that in the passage from which this extract is quoted it is
implied that the Duke of Gloucester had arrived in France with "the
Royal Family", and not, as was actually the case, six years after James and
nearly eight years after Charles.
36 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Moreover, she strongly objected to certain members of his household,
and in the last letter James had received from Charles there had been a
definite command to dismiss Dr. Killigrew, and to reduce Sir George
Radcliffe, as it were, to the ranks, so that James would be in no danger
of following his advice. Henrietta Maria would have liked to dismiss
Herbert, who at this time undoubtedly began to exercise an undue
influence on James's mind, and she was so furious with Dr. Stuart that
she sent word that if he came to Paris with James she would consider
his action as a personal affront and "would use him accordingly". In
this little quarrel she herself was not entirely blameless. She snubbed
Herbert heavily, and then objected that he avoided her presence. James
was closeted for long hours with Herbert, and though the conversations
were not and could not be of any importance, his mother was itching to
know what they had been talking about. The matter was brought to a
head by James's pecuniary necessities. At the end of July 1651, when
the royal apartments had been made uncomfortable for everyone during
the five weeks since James's return, Byron wrote to Ormonde :
Not long since the Duke went to Chaillot (where the Queen
continues still) to desire Her Majesty's advice how he might better
his condition here, his pension being so small that he was not able
to live of it; to which she replied that she would not at all meddle
in his business, nor advise him in anything, so long as he suffered
himself to be so governed by the Attorney [Herbert], and that she
could not any longer conceal the offence she took at his so frequent
repair to him, without even acquainting Her Majesty or anybody
else entrusted by the King in His Highness's affairs with the
subject of his long discourses, and that she took the entertainment
of such a person (who seemed to stand in open defiance with her)
as a great disrespect and affront. . . . The Duke had little to
answer to this so true a reproach and made what haste he could
away, being much discontented for a day or two after; neither does
the Attorney come so frequently to him, but so long as my Lord
Gerrard does it is still the same thing.
To this humiliation followed a contest between Herbert and Gerrard
on one side and a new alliance between Berkeley and Jermyn on the
other for the chief place in the counsels of the young Prince. The best
man on the spot for this position was probably Lord Byron, but he was
too large-minded to fight for his own hand, and there was no body of
disinterested opinion to support him. As will appear later, victory lay
with Berkeley and Jermyn. Radcliffe was unable to reinstate himself,
and it appears that the chaplaincy was taken away from Stuart and given
EARLY YEARS OF EXILE 37
to James Crowther, who continued with James until after the Restora-
tion and who conducted the marriage service with Anne Hyde.
James had heard at Brussels of two tragedies in the family, the defeat
of the Scots at Dunbar on September 3, 1650, and the death at Caris-
brooke in October of his sister Elizabeth. In the autumn of 1651 it was
proposed that he should be attached to the French Court, as part of his
education, but the news arrived of the Battle of Worcester, and no one
knew what had become of Charles until he had actually landed in
France. In this state of uncertainty Henrietta Maria preferred to keep
James with her. However, Charles landed at Fecamp on October 16,
and James went as far as Magny to meet him.
We get a glimpse at this time of James a few weeks before his
eighteenth birthday as he appeared to Sir Richard Browne: "The
sweet Duke of York doth here subsist upon the allowance of one
thousand crowns a month paid him from this State, being esteemed
by all for his comeliness and personal dexterity, in behaviour and
exercises."
In the winter of 1 65 1 to 1 652 there was a scheme to negotiate a marriage
between James and the daughter of the Duke of Longueville, one of the
greatest heiresses of the time. Berkeley apparently originated the
scheme, at any rate he took a keen and unauthorised interest in it and
intrigued with the women who were about the young lady's person. But
when the matter came to the notice of higher authorities, Henrietta
Maria linked it up with a scheme which had long been on foot for the
marriage of Charles to his cousin, la Grande Mademoiselle, daughter
of the Duke of Orleans ; and when this other scheme failed to materialise
she vetoed James's marriage on the general ground that it was not
fitting that he should be married before his brother, the King. On the
other hand, James's marriage project seems to have been looked upon
with little favour by the French Court, for they thought it preferable
that the heiress should marry a Frenchman and keep her money in the
country.
CHAPTER III
THE MILITARY CAREER
THE actual circumstances in which James joined the French Army are a
little obscure. He was negotiating for a troop of horse as early as July
1651, at the time of crisis in his relations with his mother, as an alter-
native plan to that of joining the French Court, and it is asserted that he
was in action on Christmas Day of that year, when he distinguished him-
self by leading a forlorn hope against Cond6V troops and having a horse
shot under him. 1 He says in his memoirs, and he is supported by
Clarendon, that the question of his joining the Army was a matter of
keen debate in the royal counsels in the spring of 1652, that he himself
was very anxious to go and that his only ally at first was Sir John
Berkeley, but that in time he persuaded both Charles and his mother to
give consent. Possibly the earlier adventure was undertaken without
their previous knowledge. Even in 1652 he joined only as a volunteer,
though soon after joining he was given a regular commission in command
of the Switzers. He had great difficulty in raising funds for equipment,
and when he left Paris it was with very few attendants, the faithful
Berkeley being one, and "without so much as a led-horse in case of
necessity".
It is not possible to give here more than the briefest outline of the
circumstances in which the French Government and people were in
the spring of 1652. Richelieu, who had been virtually dictator, had died
over nine years earlier, when France was still engaged in the final stages
of the Thirty Years' War. Richelieu, like many dictators, had lived
too much in the present, he had made no provision for the continuance
of his system of government after his death, he had neither trained able
subordinates to succeed him nor created permanent institutions through
which the royal will could operate. His successor, Cardinal Mazarin, an
Italian, and for that reason unpopular with the French nobles, was a
very able diplomatist, but he entirely lacked the necessary ruthlessness
in home affairs; Mazarin's two great assets were the possession of the
person of the boy King and of the entire confidence of the Queen
Mother, Anne of Austria. In 1648 the Thirty Years' War ended in the
Peace of Westphalia, and the French nobles, whose power it had been
* According to Aumale (Les Princes de Condi, VI, zi6), Cond6 was not in
action on Christmas Day 1651, but was manoeuvring in the valley of the
Charente.
38
THE MILITARY CAREER 39
Richelieu's life-work to curb, were set free to look after their own
interests and to attempt to recover the ground they had lost in the
previous thirty years; by 1652, after several minor movements had been
suppressed, the country was in a state of civil war. This war was known
as the Fronde, a name which it derived from the Frondeurs, the gamins
of Paris who amused themselves by throwing stones at passers-by from
the disused moats and who ran away when the authorities appeared;
and the name aptly describes the frivolity of the combatants. For they
were fighting for no political principle unless a common dislike of
Mazarin can be considered a principle ; every leader fought for his own
local independence or for a share of power in the central government,
and there were frequent changes of side. The Civil War was compli-
cated by the continuance of the war with Spain, for France and Spain
had not come to terms at the time of the general pacification of Europe
in 1648, and the opponents of Mazarin did not hesitate to ally themselves
with the national enemy. In 1654 the war of the Fronde came to an end,
but the war with Spain went on, and the Prince of Conde, one of the
most famous of French generals, fought for Spain against his own
country.
No attempt can be made to trace the course of the war or the particu-
lar experiences of James. He himself has left a long and somewhat dull
record of the movements and actions in which he took part, a record so
unboastful that we have to look elsewhere for the high esteem in which
he was held by his brother officers, and there is an illuminating aside at
one point by his biographer when describing the action before fitampes :
"His Royal Highness (though he never mentions his own danger) was
present in the places where the service was hottest." James had to leave
Paris secretly, and did not bid farewell to his and the King's uncle, the
Duke of Orleans, for the Duke was a Frondeur, and there were plenty
of others in Paris. At first he had considerable difficulty in getting
recognised as a combatant on the royal side he was on one occasion,
turned back by sentries but on April 24 he found himself at head-
quarters at Chartres. His departure for his second campaign was made
publicly and without restriction of expense James had evidently
prospered in the first year of his military life.
The Duke of York parted hence Thursday last with bag and
baggage to the field where Turenne is in Champagne, and said at
his going out of Palais Royal to his brother the King that now
since he is forced to fight for his bread that he hoped soon to fight
for his countries lost by his enemies ; which made his brother very
melancholy and many others. Both his brothers went with him
40 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
two leagues off, as also Ormonde, Inchiquin, Taaffe and three or
four more. He had four mules to carry his baggage and a quantity
of good horses.
From the first and throughout his four campaigns he was on Turenne's
staff and was in constant touch with that great general. No better school
for a young soldier could have been devised; he learnt at first hand the
methods of the greatest captain of that age, possibly of any age. The
high opinion, amounting almost to worship, which he formed of the
Marshal's military capacity and of his thoroughness is testified in very
many passages in James's memoirs, and may here be illustrated by a
single extract:
M. de Turenne went in person to view all the ground about
Mousson, taking with him M. de Castelnau, when as in another
army, I have seen the generals trust a sergent de battaille or some
inferior officer to do it, so that they were wholly guided, and in a
manner governed by the eyes and advice of other men : but M. de
Turenne made use of his own judgment, where he thought it most
proper to break ground, and which way to run the trenches ; when
night came, he himself was present at the opening of them, and
continued there almost till break of day : besides it was his con-
stant method, during the whole siege to go into the trenches both
morning and evening, in the morning to see if the work was well
performed, at evening to resolve what would be the work that
night, having in his company the Lieutenant-General and some of
the chief officers who that night were to command in the trenches,
to instruct them himself what he expected to be done. Again after
supper he went to see them begin their work, and would continue
with them more or less, as he found it necessary for the carrying
on of the present design.
There was, of course, considerable personal risk to the general in
these inspections, and these risks were in all cases shared by James; for
example, at the action of the Barricades in July 1654 Colonel Werden,
who was one of his attendants and was close to him, was severely
wounded; at the siege of Mousson in September 1653 James was struck
on the foot by a spent bullet. The evidence is overwhelming that James
at this time of his life was exceedingly brave so brave as to be out-
standing in an army in which courage was not exceptional : Burnet says
that Turenne "magnified" him for his courage; Sir George Radcliffe
wrote in 1652, "The Duke ventures himself, and chargeth gallantly*
when anything is to be done", and, "The Duke of York hath gotten a
THE MILITARY CAREER 4!
very great reputation and power in the French army, he is bold and
active"; Hyde wrote in May 1652, "In which action [at fitampes] the
Duke of York behaved himself with extraordinary courage and gallantry",
and in December 1653 from Paris, "The Duke of York is returned
hither full of reputation and honour"; and one of Thurloe's spies, a
hostile witness, wrote from Paris in November 1653, "The Duke of
York is much esteemed in the French army". In September 1654
Jermyn wrote to Charles from Paris, in a description of the gallant
feats of both French and English at the relief of Arras:
It is most certain the general officers did all their duties excel-
lently well in their general posts and most undoubtedly none better
than the Duke of York, if any so well.
Bennet wrote from camp at Cateau Cambresis in the following month :
His Royal Highness has an extraordinary esteem and kindness
from this whole country, but most especially here in the army,
where application to learn his profession and his behaviour in it is
everybody's wonder; but I presume you know this already.
Simultaneously Hyde was writing from Cologne:
The Duke of York hath received no wound though in all actions
he hath been so forward that he hath got much honour among the
French and even with the Spaniards.
When in June 1657 James was about to enter the Spanish army,
Ormonde wrote to Hyde :
The Duke of York will take exceedingly in the army, he is brave
and little troublesome as a prince can be.
And Hatton joins this chorus of eulogy with, "The Duke of York is a
most glorious young Prince".
In 1654, when he had served only two years and was still under
twenty-one, James achieved the singular honour of promotion to the
rank of Lieutenant-General; the promotion was no doubt in part due
to his royal birth, but he would not have been promoted if Turenne had
found him incompetent, and we may be confident that he had proved
himself efficient. At the same time it may be noticed that the rank
gives him no certificate of generalship ; he was never tested in an in-
dependent command, and all that can be definitely claimed for him is
that he was a dashing cavalry leader and that he could be trusted to
carry out the Marshal's orders exactly and intelligently. A Grub Street
panegyrist of the time of James's return to popularity in Charles's last
42 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
years does credit to his own inventive powers by relating a story to the
effect that at one time Turenne was ill and not likely to live, and that
Louis (who, by the way, could only have been fifteen or sixteen years of
age) asked him to nominate a successor to command the French Army:
"To which he answered that if His Majesty would have his affairs
prosper, he should make choice of a noble, valorous and fortunate
general ; the which if His Majesty empowered him to choose he could
make choice of no fitter person than the thrice renowned and heroic
Duke of York." As a matter of fact, as he himself records as a sort of
jest, he was once in command of the French Army for about a week,
after the end of the campaign of 1655, when Turenne had to go off to a
consultation with Mazarin and there was no other lieutenant-general
available. During this time he accomplished the feat of marching the
Army from Mouy to Mondecour, a distance of about forty miles a
feat comparable to that attributed in song to a later bearer of his title.
In all this it must be remembered that James was only twenty-two when
he was for the last time in the field with the French Army.
During his service in the French Army, James was away from Paris
for the whole of the summer, and only in the winter was he with his
mother and Charles. Family broils continued incessantly; a period
followed Charles's return to Paris after his escape from England in
which he was so submissive to Henrietta that his counsellors feared
that she would entirely dominate him. But this rapprochement had only
transitory effect, and mother and son resumed their habit of hostility.
James's biographer says that "it was very difficult for the Duke so to
fashion his behaviour, that he might equally perform his duty both to
the King and to his Mother", but we may be certain that it was to
Charles's side that James constantly leaned: his loyalty to his brother
was very steady, and any other attitude would have been inconsistent
with his strong monarchical convictions. But Charles's presence had
had some effect in easing James's position: he had induced him to
moderate his hostility to Lord Jermyn, and though his direct relations
with his mother remained difficult, she was able to keep in touch with
him through this intermediary. Sir John Berkeley was now James's
companion in arms throughout the year, he achieved complete ascend-
ancy over his mind ; Sir Edward Herbert had faded out of the picture and
Berkeley had formed a close alliance with Jermyn. Another important
person in James's household was his secretary, Henry Bennet, who had
been placed on James's staff at Charles's suggestion and at the instance
of his patron, the restless and intriguing George Digby, Earl of Bristol.
In the spring of 1654 Mazarin had entered into negotiations with
THE MILITARY CAREER 43
Cromwell, and in consequence of these negotiations and for many other
reasons Charles left Paris in July, and after a short period of indecision
went to live at Cologne. As long as Charles was at the Louvre, Berkeley
and Jermyn had to conceal their jealousies of Bennet, but as soon as he
had gone they were able to make Bennet's position almost intolerable.
Bennet's abilities were considerable far greater than those of his rivals
in James's favour but they were not in themselves great enough to
have secured for him the very long tenure of high office which as Earl
of Arlington he enjoyed in Charles's reign; this success was due in the
main to his pre-eminence as a courtier. Though he was James's secre-
tary, Bennet's chief object was to give satisfaction to Charles, and he
succeeded so well that Charles, when he left Paris, wrote in his "In-
structions" to James:
You must be very kind to Henry Bennet and communicate
freely with him, for as you are sure he is full of duty and integrity
to you so I must tell you that I shall trust him more than any
that are about you and cause him to be trusted at large in those
businesses of mine which I cannot particularly write to you myself.
In other words, Bennet was more in Charles's confidence than James
was, and it is not surprising that James, though he knew himself to be
innocent of disloyalty, felt that he was being watched. Jermyn was
entirely in Henrietta's interest, and Berkeley desired to exalt James at
Charles's expense, so that each had a separate reason for disliking Bennet,
and between them they encouraged James's distrust of him. Bennet
was so unhappy in his isolation that he wrote to Charles asking to be
allowed to join the King at Cologne, but Charles replied that, glad as
he would be to see him, he was more useful where he was.
At this time Sir George Radcliffe was making a determined effort
to get back into favour, but James had no ears except for Sir John
Berkeley; to him he gave his devotion and subordinated his judgment,
and with him and his close ally Lord Jermyn James spent all his leisure
when he was in Paris. (It is interesting to note that Lord Hatton
already suspected James of an inclination to Romanism and Berkeley
of influencing him in this direction.) In his youth and in late middle
age James was very prone to submit himself to complete domination by
another man, to surrender to him all his freedom of judgment and to
listen to no criticism of his mentor from any source whatever. During
his brother's reign, certainly after the death of Charles Berkeley and
the estrangement of Sir William Coventry, he appears to have had no
such exclusive attachment. At about this time a nephew of each of
these men comes into prominence, Charles Berkeley and Henry Jermyn
44 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
the younger, both of whom were near James in age. The two uncles
and two nephews formed a solid party in the Louvre factions, a party
steadily hostile to Hyde, frowned upon from afar by Charles and
doubtless regarded with complacence by Henrietta.
Before Charles had reached Cologne he received information of a
widespread Royalist plot in England and Scotland (known after its
collapse as Penruddock's Rising), and he conceived the intention of
going to Scotland to lead the movement there, while James took charge
of operations in England. For some time the exiled cavaliers with very
few exceptions did not know where the King was, though Cromwell
through his spies was well aware that he was at Middelburgh preparing
for his descent on Scotland. At this time he sent to James (or perhaps
only drafted) a paper headed ' Instructions for my Brother", bearing
as date July 1654. The Instructions are under seven heads, the most
important being the fourth :
Let nobody persuade you to engage your own person in any
attempt or enterprise without first imparting the whole design to
me, which will be easily done whilst there is no sea between us.
And when that comes to be the case assure yourself I will desire
nothing more than to have you with me or in action in some other
place, but to deal freely with you till I am myself in action in some
part of my dominions which I will endeavour as soon as possible,
I should be sorry to see you engaged before me, and let no man
persuade you to it under what pretence soever.
In short, Charles did not want people to be able to say in after years
that he had been replaced on the throne entirely by his brother's
efforts and, though he trusted James to do nothing of his own volition
which would bring him into prominence at his brother's expense, he
did not trust him to resist the malign influence of Berkeley.
The sixth "instruction" is also of importance, concerning as it does
the very significant attempt by Henrietta Maria to convert her youngest
son, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, to her own faith.
I have told you what my Mother hath promised me concerning
my brother Harry in point of his religion, and I have given him
charge to inform you if any attempt shall be made upon him to the
contrary; in which case you will take the best care you can to
prevent his being wrought upon since you cannot but know how
much you and I are concerned in it.
Henry had been released from imprisonment by Cromwell early in
1653, and had first gone to his sister at The Hague, It had been impos-
THE MILITARY CAREER 45
sible to resist the demands of Henrietta that she should be allowed to
see her son, whom she had last seen as a two-year-old child, though it was
suspected from the first that she would use every endeavour to make
him a Catholic. For more than a year before Charles left France, Henry
had been living with him, his mother and his younger sister Henrietta.
In November 1654 Charles at Cologne heard that Henrietta had broken
all her solemn promises to him and to his father, and was making a
direct attack upon Henry's religious beliefs, with the help of her
attendant priests. Henry showed spirit, surprising in a boy of fifteen,
in opposition to his mother's efforts no doubt he had a good deal of
James's obstinacy. Charles, however, considered that he needed the
backing of the authority of an older brother and of a King; he wrote
Henry a vigorous letter:
Your letters that come from Paris say that it is the Queen's
purpose to do all she can to change your religion, in which if you
do hearken to her or anybody else in that matter, you must never
think to see England or me again, and whatsoever mischief shall
fall on me or my affairs from this time I must lay all upon you as
being the only cause of it. Therefore consider well what it is to be
not only the cause of ruining a brother that loves you so well, but
also of your King and Country.
Charles had already written to James in July on the same subject,
and James took up the matter very strongly, and we are told he wrote
"a very good letter" upholding Charles's attitude; after his return to
Paris in November his mother was so angry at his opposition to her
plans and so apprehensive that he would stiffen Henry's resolution not
to be converted that she forbade him to speak to Henry except in her
presence. Charles ended the matter by summoning Henry to Cologne.
It is not safe, especially as James's "very good letter" has been lost, to
draw the conclusion that he was at this time, and at the age of twenty-
one, a devoted son of the Church of England, backed though that
conclusion is by his own testimony. All we know for certain is that he
was opposed to the conversion of Henry by his mother, and the grounds
of his opposition may have been either the same as Charles's or more
strictly religious.
The following letter written to Charles by James in May 1655 shows
that the writer did not rise above his contemporaries in their approval
of assassination of regicides, at any rate as a political weapon.
There is a proposition has been made to me which is too long to
put into a letter, so that I will as short as I can, let you know the
46 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
heads of them (sic). There are four Roman Catholics that have
bound themselves in a solemn oath to kill Cromwell, and then to
raise all the Catholics in the City and the Army, which they
pretend to be a number so considerable as may give a rise for your
recovery, they being all warned to be ready for something that is
to be done, without knowing what it is. They demand 10,000
livres in hand, and, when the business is ended, some recompense
for themselves, according to their several qualities, and the same
liberty for Catholics in England as the Protestants have in France.
I thought not fit to reject this proposition, but to acquaint you with
it, because the first part of the design seems to me to be better
laid and resolved on than any I have known of that kind ; and for
the defects of the second, it may be supplied by some designs you
may have to join it. If you approve it, one of the four entrusted by
the rest will repair to you, his charges being borne, and give you a
full account of the whole matter. In the meantime he desires in his
own name and theirs that you would let but one or two whom you
most trust know it and enjoin them secrecy.
This plot was one of many against Cromwell's life, and James was
willing to be in it without scruple. We do not know how Charles
received this letter, but it was generally understood that it was unwise
to communicate such plots to him, and in particular that he would not
offer a reward to a would-be assassin.
From the spring of 1654 there had been signs that Cromwell and
Mazarin were seeking for an accommodation, and the prospect of a
definite alliance with the revolutionary Government on the part of
France contributed largely to Charles's determination to leave that
country and to seek another asylum. The negotiations were slow, and
it was not until October 24, 1655, that a treaty was signed. Under that
treaty France bound herself not to permit Charles and James and
seventeen of their adherents, specified by name, to reside within her
borders. This provision was a serious blow to James; 1 his position in
the French Army suited him perfectly, and he had excellent prospects :
Madame de S6vign stated in after years, on the authority of a dis-
tinguished brother-officer of James, that if he had continued as he had
begun he would soon have been a Marshal of France; he was probably
1 At the same time James had the breadth of mind to see that Mazarin could
not have acted otherwise: "I cannot but do the memory of the Cardinal that
right to affirm that he had been a very ill minister if he had not made the
treaty with Cromwell in such a juncture of affairs : and the King of France
would have had just reason to be ill-satisfied with him if he had missed that
opportunity."
THE MILITARY CAREER 47
happier and more popular than he was at any other period of his life.
Mazarin was anxious not to lose him, for apart from his own military
prowess he had been able to attract to the French Army a number of
Irish troops who had formerly served with Spain, and there was a
probability that these men, as well as the English cavaliers fighting with
France, would follow him if he joined the Spanish Army. Cromwell,
on his side, was very willing to encourage dissension between the Stuart
brothers and to wink at the continued employment of James by France
when there was every prospect of Charles's allying himself with Spain.
There was, however, the difficulty that it was not possible to send an
English ambassador to Paris as long as James was there, for there was a
fear that he might be assassinated by James's friends, as Dorislaus at
The Hague and Ascham at Madrid had been assassinated by English
royalists a few years earlier. In these circumstances no step was taken
during the ten months that James remained in France after the treaty
to remove him from French soil ; he was treated with courtesy by the
Court, but the people of Paris naturally regarded him as an enemy
alien, and made his residence there uncomfortable. He took no part
in the campaign of 1655 ; when the negotiations with Cromwell were in
an advanced state it was clear that he could not continue indefinitely
to fight for France in Flanders. A compromise was suggested: Charles
Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, was the ally of France, and it was pro-
posed that James should command the joint forces of France, Savoy and
Modena in North Italy; an additional consideration that attracted James
to the scheme was that Charles Emmanuel was his first cousin, for his
mother, Christina, was Henrietta Maria's sister. But nothing came of it.
The proposal received no encouragement from Savoy; in fact Bennet
wrote to Charles as early as April 1655 that it was "flatly refused".
In March 1656 Charles left Cologne for Brussels with very few
attendants. There he was an embarrassment to the Spaniards, and he
was forced to withdraw to the neighbouring village of Vilvorde. How-
ever, on April 2 he was able to induce the Spaniards to sign a treaty
promising military aid for his restoration to the English throne as soon
as he could secure a port in England at which they could be landed, he
on his side promising, in the event of his restoration, naval aid to
Spain against Portugal and, in secret clauses, great concessions to the
English and Irish Catholics. Charles had specifically refused to allow
James's name to be mentioned in the treaty, in the hope that he would
be able to secure better terms for him after the treaty was signed. A
week later he established himself at Bruges, where he was joined by his
tatterdemalion Court or rather such of them as could evade their
creditors at Cologne and by Henry Bennet.
48 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
But though Charles had kept James's name out of the treaty and
possibly had not even made a verbal promise of his services to the
Spaniards, he had no intention of allowing James to remain in the
French Army, for clearly his transfer to the Spanish side would con-
solidate Charles's relations with his new allies. James failed to appre-
ciate his brother's interests at this time, he was anxious above all things
that his promising military career should not be interrupted, and he was
piqued by the absence (as far as he knew) of any demand on the Spanish
side for his services; he proposed to Charles a fantastic secret plan,
which he had discussed with Turenne, that Charles should publicly
send him an order to join him in Flanders, and, while privately conniv-
ing at his disobedience, should satisfy the Spaniards by pretended
anger at it. But Charles had few enough people to command as it was,
and it was not likely that he would wish to advertise to the world his
lack of control over his own younger brother.
Charles began to demand James's presence with him as soon as the
treaty between England and France had been signed and before his
departure from Cologne. As early as December 21, 1655, Jermyn
wrote that James would be back in Paris in a few days and would make
speedy preparations for the journey ; but a fortnight later James in a
letter to Charles said that he was not being pressed to leave France and
did not expect such pressure for some time, that the arrival of the
Princess of Orange on a visit to her mother would delay him, that
Mazarin had promised to continue his pension after he left France but
had not given him a definite contract, and that all things considered it
would probably be the end of February before he could be with his
brother. At the end of January and again in the middle of February he
wrote saying that his plans were unsettled and that Mazarin was detain-
ing him by dilatoriness over the pension. Meanwhile, as he wrote, he
was having a very gay time in Paris:
This place is full of divertissements, there being no night that
there is not some good ball up and down the town. I believe you
have heard of that at the Chancellor's on Sunday last where there
was the greatest supper I have ever seen since I have been in this
country and the best collation at the ball ; and ever since we have
not gone to bed till four in the morning.
During the next months James was evidently playing for time, for in
May Charles wrote to Ormonde that his brother was pleading "that if
it consists with my affairs it will be as much for his advantage as over to
go into the field", but that he would reply "as I resolved before you
parted" (from Bruges). There was an absurd rumour at this time that
THE MILITARY CAREER 49
James was to have a command in, or the command of, the English
republican troops which were being landed at Calais to co-operate with
the French Army.
Thurloe's spies reported in the middle of June that James had told
Charles that unless he could give him a definite offer from the Spaniards
he would go to the French Army, as he had been very much pressed to
do. At this Charles lost patience; he sent Bennet forthwith to Paris
with a peremptory order to his brother to lose no time in setting out
for Bruges. But still James did not hurry in August Charles was still
sending orders ; but by this time James had given up hope of remaining
in France, and was only troubled by the necessity of paying his debts
before he left. He had now a reason of his own for wanting to see
Charles : he had been accused, no doubt by Bristol or one of the other
mischief-makers, of conducting a correspondence without Charles's
knowledge with one Tuke, 1 a royalist agent in England, and he was
anxious to clear himself of that charge. Bampfield reported to Thurloe
that he had tried to get into touch with James, but that James had told
him that Charles had strictly forbidden him to have anything to do
with him; Bampfield said that he did not believe that James had any
correspondence with people in England, and he added unkindly,
"neither his humour nor his parts rendering him capable of the manage-
ment of it himself".
Charles had suggested that, in order to expedite his journey, James
should leave Berkeley behind to make what other arrangements had
still to be made consequent on his final departure from Paris.
James saw in this suggestion a plan to remove Berkeley permanently
from his service, and he determined to frustrate it; he disregarded all
hints that Berkeley would not be persona grata at Bruges, made a great
effort to clear up his affairs in Paris, sent off most of his servants with
his baggage in advance, and left for Bruges on September 10, with
Berkeley and one or two more. His journey was marked by one pleasant
incident : at Clermont, where he had proposed to make a halt, he found
the English ambassador, Lockhart, installed in the best inn. James drove
up to the front door of the inn in his coach, got out, put on his boots,
mounted a led horse and rode off on the Abbeville road, all under the
eye of Lockhart, who was standing at a window. He was "very civilly
entertained", no doubt under instructions from Mazarin, until he crossed
the Flemish frontier, and Charles and Henry came as far as Fumes to
meet him. Of the part of his journey which lay through the Spanish
Netherlands Thurloe's spy at Bruges wrote on September 19, "The
1 No doubt Sir Samuel Tuke, a colonel of horse in the rising in Essex in the
Second Civil War.
50 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Duke of York is come accompanied with 120 horse and 3 coaches as
they say and special order was given in all places for his reception as if
the King of Spain (forsooth) had been there in person."
At Bruges James found himself at a disadvantage. He was no longer,
as he had been in Paris, a considerable person, smiled on by the Court
and with the prestige of military command. Charles treated him kindly,
but kindness was second nature to Charles ; it did not extend to pro-
tecting his brother from the insolence of his servants, nor does it appear
that James was admitted to the inner council of Charles's advisers.
Moreover, Charles had long harboured an antipathy for Berkeley, and
his servants, with the connivance of Bennet, found a favourable oppor-
tunity for making his position in James's household untenable. The
motives of the conspirators were mixed. Bristol, who was most promi-
nent in the intrigue, was impulsive and irresponsible, 1 Bennet had a
long score of slights and snubs to repay, and others, like Radcliffe, had
an ambition to succeed Berkeley and his nephew and the younger
Jermyn in their posts in James's "family". Charles could not openly
take part in the contest, for James had admittedly a clear right to choose
his own servants: he was in the position of Queen Mary in 1692 with
regard to Princess Anne and the Countess of Marlborough he could
only hint that James, in employing a confidential servant who was
strongly disliked by himself, was acting disloyally.
The contest raged furiously for three months, and all James's latent
obstinacy was roused by the persistence of Berkeley's enemies. He
found himself in a dilemma of conflicting loyalties loyalty to Charles
and loyalty to the man with whom he had lived for five years. For the
one and only time in his life he decided to act in direct opposition to the
King, his brother, a decision which must have cost him serious pain.
He pretended to bow before the storm, he ostensibly dismissed Berkeley,
but told him privately to wait for him at Flushing. Two days after he
had gone, James arranged to go shooting with a party including
Gloucester, Charles Berkeley and Henry Jermyn; when they were near
Sluys he told Gloucester that he had a private call to make there, and
said that if he did not return by a certain time he should make his way
back to Bruges. From Sluys he crossed to Flushing with his two friends,
and rejoined Sir John Berkeley.
The breach between Charles and James was for the moment complete.
Cromwell was delighted; he hoped that James's well-known obstinacy
would prevent a reconciliation and that the quarrel would still further
1 Hyde's mature judgement on Bristol was that he "always concluded that
that was fit to be done which his first thoughts suggested to him, and never
doubted the execution of anything which he once thought fit to be attempted"*
THE MILITARY CAREER 51
lessen the Stuarts in public estimation. He attributed it entirely to the
influence which Mazarin at his instigation had brought to bear on
Berkeley and which, as he thought, had made that self-confident,
blundering man unwittingly the tool of his intrigues. He wrote to
Mazarin:
I did fear that Berkeley would not have been able to go through
and carry on that work, that either the Duke had cooled in his suit
or condescended to his brother. ... If I am not mistaken in
his [James's] character, as I received it from Your Eminency, that
fire which is kindled between them will not ask bellows to blow it
and keep it burning. ... I distrust not but that party which
is already forsaken of God as to outward dispensations of mercy
and noisome to his countrymen will grow lower in the opinions
of all the world.
At Bruges meanwhile the royal Court were in dismay: they learnt,
to their astonishment, that even the most fervent loyalty is not proof
against strains such as those to which James had been subjected, and
clearly it was not to Charles's interest to be permanently alienated from
James : if for no other reason, he was valuable to Charles as a skilled
and popular leader, whose services and whose influence with the English
and Irish volunteers were a valuable asset in his relations with the
Spanish Government. But James was quite unrepentant. His first
intention was to return to France, but the sea passage was obstructed
by ice, and the route through Flanders was for obvious reasons impossi-
ble. The States General, however, consented to wink at his residence
incognito at Swillistine. 1 Charles sent Ormonde after him to try to
induce him to return, but instead of complying, he addressed to Charles
a dignified letter of remonstrance in which it is difficult to trace the
hand of James, so high does it rise above any other of James's letters
that are preserved for us.
SIR,
This is the first time that I have had any need to make an
apology to your Majesty, having concurred absolutely and
implicitly hitherto in all your commands and desires ; and if some
violent persons had not induced your Majesty to press that upon
me that was never proposed to anybody else, I had still remained
without the necessity of any; nevertheless I beseech your Majesty
to believe that though they be able to disturb my peace, they shall
never shake my zeal and affection to your person and service, nor
1 Possibly this is James's corruption of Vlissingen (Flushing).
52 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
hinder me from sacrificing all interest but that of my honour to
your Majesty, and I hope you will excuse me if I am somewhat
tender therein, since I have little else left, and that without it I
shall never be able to be of use and service to your Majesty, which
is the greatest ambition I have in the world ; and whatever ill men
shall tell you to the contrary, I can and do assure your Majesty,
that as I have the honour to be the first, so I have affected nothing
more than the glory of being the best of your subjects; and God
that knows my heart, discerns that if I had never so many lives,
I would throw them all at your Majesty's feet, as I do myself,
begging that you would believe me to be what I truly am.
Sir, your Majesty's most obedient Brother and most humble
Subject and Servant,
JAMES.
Charles's reply to this letter was an offer of conciliation, in spite of
Bristol's demands that James should have no quarter. Tie sent a Mr.
Blague 1 to James offering to receive him back with all his servants
except Sir John Berkeley, and proposing, alternatively, that he should
state his grievances by letter or in a personal interview at any place near
Bruges or Brussels. James replied in a portentous document 'The
Duke of York's Instructions by Mr. Blague " in which, in descending
to particulars, many of them trivial, he also falls below his previous
dignity of style. James's complaints are arranged under ten heads, and
the first five are devoted to the misdeeds of Bennct : Bennet had accused
him, pretending instructions from Charles, of carrying on a clandestine
correspondence with Tuke in essence, of making a party for himself
in opposition to the King ; he was so lacking in respect that he seemed
to be a spy rather than a servant; he was for ever grumbling about the
meanness of his allowance, though he got more than twice as much as
anyone else; that Charles had ordered James to employ Bennet on a
mission to the Spanish commander, Don Juan, " which I knew he would
not execute well", that Bennet had induced James to leave Paris by
gross misrepresentations of Charles's intentions with regard to his
employment in the Spanish service. James next turns on the Earl of
Bristol, who had been instrumental in getting him out of France, but
had provided no money for the journey, so that Sir John Berkeley had
"procured his friends to be engaged for near 40,000,2 upon his assur-
ance of having it paid out of my allowances either in France or in
1 Probably to be identified with Colonel Thomas Blagge, who xvas at this
time in Charles's employment as a sort of King's Messenger.
2 So printed but the meaning intended may be 40,000 livres i.e* t about
3000.
THE MILITARY CAREER 53
Flanders, which debt he will be liable to if his enemies can prevail over
him" ; further stating "that the Lord of Bristol said to Sir John Berkeley
in my presence that if I concurred not with His Majesty's sense in all
things it would be imputed to him, which was to tell me fairly in my
face that I had no sense of my own", and that Bristol had falsely
accused Berkeley of having disclosed confidential information to James.
So far there is little that can be classed as worse than petty annoyance,
though the implications of the last two complaints are serious enough;
but two of James's grievances deserve more than a passing mention: he
objects strongly and with reason to being placed in such a position that
he may be compelled to fight against Turenne, "who is one of the men
in the world I am the most obliged to and have the greatest value for",
and finally, if a servant who is truly loyal to Charles is to be torn from
James's side, he has little credit with the King, and if he does not "pro-
tect so faithful, so eminent and so innocent a servant", then there is
"little sense of justice or honour" in him. The paper concludes with
proposals of accommodation to the effect that Berkeley shall continue
on James's staff and that he and the others shall be granted an indemnity
for helping James to escape, that Charles shall endeavour to control
the relations of his and James's servants, and that, if in future he finds
anything to complain of, he will speak to James directly, and not thro;ugh
intermediaries.
The effect of this memorial was surprising. Charles gave way on all
points that concerned James's household, and Ormonde was again sent
to James, this time to bring him back to Bruges on his own terms. One
cause of complaint had been removed before James's flight by the
appointment of Bennet as Charles's envoy at Madrid, and Charles set
himself to remove another by being so gracious and affable to Berkeley
that he ceased to swagger and bluster; in fact, so high did he rise in his
sovereign's esteem that in the following year he was raised to the peerage
as Lord Berkeley of Stratton. Radcliffe, with his aspirations still
unsatisfied, died in 1657, an( i B & months after James's return Bristol
was able to write to Ormonde :
The Duke of York's gracious usage of me continues and improves
daily so far as to have removed all shyness of employing me in
business of his particular interest, and truly Sir John Berkeley
carries himself towards me very handsomely and generously.
And to the King he wrote about the same time in similar terms. The
incessant skirmishes of nine years round the person of James had
suddenly terminated in a general amnesty. James, on his side, when he
had time for reflection, was filled with remorse at having disobeyed
54 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Charles; nine years later he was reported still to have so kept the
incident in mind that he held off from any communications that might
"lessen his awe for the King".
But nothing could save James from swallowing the very bitter pill
of selling his sword to Spain. The Spaniards, it is true, were at war
with his father's executioners, and in serving with them he was contri-
buting something to his brother's chance of restoration ; but these con-
siderations weighed little against what he felt to be a betrayal of his
honour. In France he had been among his mother's people, he had been
accepted by his brother officers as one of themselves ; in Flanders he
was a foreigner and compelled to fight against his friends, and in
particular against Turenne, by whose side he had fought four campaigns
and from whom he had learnt all he knew of war.
Nor did his early experience in the Spanish service serve to mitigate
his distress. He found himself in difficulties at once: he was surrounded
by jealousies the Spaniards jealous of the number of his English and
Irish troops, and therefore not paying them regularly; Conde jealous
on his own account; Bristol, not yet reconciled to him, interfering in
appointments on his staff. Moreover, the Spaniards observed strict
ceremonial in their army : the co-generals Don Juan and the Marquis
of Caracena kept themselves carefully aloof from any sort of operation
not amounting to a pitched battle or a siege; Don Juan in particular
could never forget that he was a "son of Spain" he was, in fact, an
illegitimate son of King Philip IV and "he observed the same forms
of gravity and retiredness in the field as he used when he was at Brussels,
and it was fully as difficult to get access to him abroad as at home".
It was his habit when he arrived at a new camp to go straight to his
tent, and generally to bed, whatever time of day it was, and he stayed
there for days perhaps, leaving to his under-officcrs the inspection of the
ground, the placing of sentinels and, if they were close to the enemy,
the viewing of his lines ; so that if the camp was unexpectedly attacked
he had no knowledge, except at second hand, of the disposition either
of his own army or the enemy's. Nevertheless he kept the command
rigidly in his own hand and allowed no one under him to take advantage
of unexpected opportunities. On two occasions on reconnaissance
James found himself in a position to cut off a French convoy, but his
next superior officer both times refused to move without orders from
Don Juan or Caracena, and in one case further informed him that if
anyone was to make the attack it was his own Spaniards, as having the
precedence, and not James's men.
The only military episode worthy of record in the two campaigns
which James served in the Spanish army was also his last the famous
THE MILITARY CAREER 55
Battle of the Dunes, fought on June 3, 1658 which was also his last
land battle until his final disaster at the Boyne more than thirty years
later. In this battle, which was fought by the Spaniards to cover
Dunkirk, James was in command of the right wing, and found himself
opposed by the French left wing, consisting of Cromwell's troops.
With his brother Gloucester at his side he charged the English infantry,
and was beaten off, and then charged again with greater success; but,
when he looked for his own infantry to make good this second attack,
he found that they had followed the example of the Spanish troops on
their left and were in full retreat. The two royal Princes did not join
in the sauve gui peut, but with a small body of horse continued on the
field to see if there was anything still to be done, and when they found
the rout was complete they went off in good order.
After the battle York and Gloucester found themselves heroes : paeans
of praise rose on all sides. From three separate quarters Nicholas
received glowing accounts of their exploits. "I have heard and rejoiced
at the gallantry of our brave dukes." "Their Royal Highnesses gave so
brisk a charge that had they been seconded with one hundred horse that
wing (which consisted entirely of English) had been totally routed"
(this from Captain Peter Mews, of whom we shall hear again as Bishop
of Winchester at Sedgemoor), and, "The Dutch speak very honourably
of our dukes, especially the Duke of York, who, they say, did wonders
in rallying the broken forces several times when the army was very much
broken". In after years Sir William Coventry told Pepys that "no man
ever did braver things, or was in hotter service at the close of that day".
Our Grub Street biographer is here again at hand with his inventive-
ness: he describes either James or Henry (for his English is obscure)
"exposing his Royal Person to the greatest hazard imaginable, in fighting
among the thickest squadrons, where leaden thunderbolts like hail sung
round his princely head, and heaps of slain like ramparts hemmed him
in, whilst all the field was covered with the slain".
When the Spanish were in retreat a rumour spread among the
French officers that James had been taken prisoner by the English.
They at once determined to set him at liberty and, forming themselves
into a troop, they demanded to see the prisoners the English had taken.
James was not among them; had he been, they were determined if
necessary to deliver him by force. A curious testimony to James's
popularity with the French Army three years after he had left it.
The Spanish Army had not remained long enough on the field to have
sustained heavy casualties. Dunkirk passed to the French, to be by
them handed over to Cromwell ; but Don Juan was able to rally his army
and to take up a line of defence a few miles to the north-east. James was
56 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
in command at Nieuport when he heard of the death of Cromwell on
September 3. He at once arranged with Don Juan to be relieved of his
command, and joined Charles at Brussels, where the brothers discussed
new plans in view of the altered situation.
In the early summer of 1659 there was a plot in England, of which
the details are obscure, to pass over Charles and to place James on the
throne. There appears to be no evidence that James either counten-
anced this plot or was given any opportunity of discountenancing it.
The longest reference to this affair is in a letter to Charles from Sir
Allen Broderick, a royalist agent in England.
I have been long since commanded by those for whom I did first
negotiate to signify to your Majesty their joint resentments of the
injuries your Majesty receives by the Duke of York's agents, and
boldly to declare to your Majesty that, though they honour him
as the best and worthiest of their fellow subjects, yet will they
rather be traitors in abetting these people than any other who shall
presume to stand in competition with your Majesty. , . . There
is great opportunity used to procure some public invitation of
the Duke of York hither, which I humbly refer to your Majesty's
well-weighed considerations, since his arrival without your Majesty
will give some colour of truth to the unequal character they have
delivered.
The obscurity of parts of this passage (due no doubt partly to the fact
that it was written in cipher) does not seriously matter, its general
meaning is clear: that, while the general body of the active royalists in
England are sound for Charles, there are certain "agents" of James who
are trying to promote his candidature for the throne. The use of the
word "agents" is unfortunate, for it implies that these men were acting
for James with his knowledge; if that had been the case there would
have been direct references to James's guilt in the nine or ten letters
on the subject which have been preserved. The nearest to such an
accusation is in a letter to Hyde from a royalist agent: "I have no other
motive than my duty to the King in reporting anything that may have
reflection on the Duke of York", which leaves the matter as open as it
behoves us to leave it.
In these letters the chief name mentioned is that of Father Peter
Talbot, the older brother of Richard Talbot, James's friend, whom he
was to create Earl and subsequently Duke of Tyrconnel; Father Peter
was a Jesuit who in James's reign became titular Archbishop of Dublin.
It was, in fact, a Catholic plot, and it is very significant that even before
THE MILITARY CAREER 57
the Restoration the English Catholics looked to James as a patron, if
not something more; one of Hyde's correspondents refers to "that
foolish generation of priests and Catholics", and continues, "I hope you
do not think any man of that religion so kind to the King as to the Duke
of York and his servants." It seems also to have been the work of a very
few hot-heads and to have died from lack of support. 1 In any case, in
August Father Talbot was in Paris and Fuentarrabia, protesting his
loyalty to Charles and trying to induce everyone to believe that he had
never wavered in that loyalty. Charles was very angry with Talbot, who
had already annoyed him by officious intervention in the negotiation
with the Spaniards when Charles was about to leave Cologne, but he
does not appear to have suspected James of complicity in any of Talbot's
intrigues.
In the confused politics of the eighteen months preceding the
Restoration, Charles and James took no effective part, though the failure
of all alternative governments produced for them a favurable and
unexpected result. During this period there were two projects for
achieving the Restoration by the help of foreign arms, both of which
happily failed, and the Restoration, when it came, was not complicated
and embittered by the presence of foreign troops, but was the result of
an almost unanimous revulsion of feeling on the part of the English
people. In August 1659 Sir George Booth attempted a Royalist rising
in Cheshire, and Charles planned a descent on the south coast of
England if the attempt should succeed and be followed by a general
rising. James was on a visit to his sister Mary when he received a
sudden summons to Brussels. When he arrived there Charles had
already started for Calais. James followed him, and caught him up at
St. Omer; they were on enemy territory, and disguise was necessary,
and it was arranged, for greater safety in avoiding detection, that
Charles should make his plans to start from Calais, while James operated
from Boulogne. Charles from the first had no illusions about Booth, but
for some reason known to himself he completely hoodwinked James ;
he passed through Boulogne, pretending to choose a new base of opera-
tions further west; for some time no one knew where he was, and he
was supposed to be in Wales or the west of England. Actually he had
determined to go to Fuentarrabia, on the Franco- Spanish border,
where Mazarin was negotiating the Treaty of the Pyrenees with the
1 This plot is typical of the turbulent and sanguine spirit of a small minority
of Catholics, who thus rendered a very great disservice to the main body of
their fellow-churchmen. This tendency to plot on the part of a few added
considerably to the odium with which the Catholics were regarded and may
easily have been a considerable factor in the belief accorded to Oates's Plot.
S 8 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Spaniards, and where he vainly hoped to be able to get some promise
of joint assistance from France and Spain, and he had travelled there
incognito via St. Malo, Toulouse and Saragossa.
Meanwhile James was very busy. So certain was he that the expedi-
tion would take place that he arranged for transport for himself, Charles
Berkeley and a handful of devoted followers. At this point his mother
in Paris sent to tell him that Turenne had expressed a desire to see him.
Not wishing to assume undue responsibility, he searched the coast for
Charles, but, failing to find him, he went to Turenne at Amiens,
Turenne accepted him as Charles's plenipotentiary, and with or without
the connivance of the French Government made him a liberal offer of
assistance namely, Turenne's own infantry regiment to be made up
to twelve hundred men, and the Scottish gendarmes, spare arms for
three or four thousand, six field-pieces with ammunition, a liberal pro-
vision of meal, shipping to convey the force to England and, in addition,
money personally raised by himself by pledging his plate and his credit.
But this scheme was short-lived; Booth was defeated and taken prisoner
by Lambert at Warrington on August 19; early in September James's
principal officers were back in Brussels, and he himself followed a few
days later. In November we still find him corresponding with John
Mordaunt in England about the state of public feeling there and
the possibility of a fresh descent, and declaring, "I will venture myself
with the same readiness and alacrity as if the King were here, having
authority from His Majesty so to do", but inclining to the view that the
King at Fuentarrabia "is like in a short time to procure such an assist-
ance and declaration from the two crowns as may make the work at
least less difficult", and that it is better to wait on events.
But Charles had not only not gained anything by his journey to Spain,
but had been subjected to humiliation. Mazarin regarded his presence
in his neighbourhood as an embarrassment, and refused to see him,
and from the Spanish side he achieved nothing better than fair words.
He was no longer even a pawn in the game of international politics, and
the Royalist cause was at its lowest ebb. He returned to Brussels, but
he had no longer an assurance of a permanent asylum on Spanish soil
The winter passed miserably; news from England was eagerly scanned,
but all men of influence there appeared to be as determinedly republican
as ever. Early in the new year James was offered and accepted the post
of High Admiral of Spain, a post of high dignity and (on paper) con-
siderable emoluments. It was evident that he contemplated permanent
exile.
Then suddenly in March General George Monck, who had been
Cromwell's right-hand man in Ireland and in Scotland, who had until
THE MILITARY CAREER 59
six months previously been ruling Scotland for the Parliament and who
was regarded as the staunchest of Commonwealth men, opened a secret
negotiation with Charles by means of Sir John Grenville. Monck advised
a transfer of the Court to Breda, where he could not be suspected of
being under French or Spanish influence (nor a great deal of Dutch),
and the issue of a Declaration setting forth Charles's intentions in the
event of his restoration to the Crown of England. The transfer to Breda
was made, and the Declaration was dated April 4. Events now moved
rapidly. The Long Parliament had dissolved itself on March 16, after
an existence of nearly twenty years, and a new "free" parliament was
summoned for April 25 ; the House of Lords reconstituted itself, and
on May i received Grenville with deference as the King's representa-
tive, and the Commons followed suit and voted unanimously an address
of loyalty and duty to His Majesty.
There remained only the business of preparing for a return to England
on an adequate scale. On May 14 the English fleet under Admiral
Montagu cast anchor off Schevingen and received James as Lord High
Admiral, and on the i6th Charles gave audience to a deputation from
the Parliament with a formal request for his return. Almost as important
was the arrival of Sir John Grenville with 50,000 for Charles, 10,000
for James and 7000 for Henry. They had none of them seen so much
money before, and Charles called in his sister and James to gloat over
his share as it lay in a portmanteau. The money was badly needed, if
only to enable the royal persons and their entourage to make a decent
public appearance, for they had fallen so low that they were literally in
rags, "their clothes not being worth forty shillings the best of them".
But the local tailors, who no doubt had not previously allowed the exiles
to run up accounts, were so stirred to activity by the prospect of ready
money, that James and Henry when they went on board the fleet
appeared to be "very fine gentlemen", less than a week after the money
arrived. In the triumphant journey to London, first in command of the
fleet, then in the progress to London and finally in the feasts and
demonstrations in the capital, James's place was second only to that of
his brother, the restored King.
CHAPTER IV
THE RESTORATION
THE years following the Restoration were the most disjointed in James's
life. In a general survey of the condition of England furnished by the
Venetian Senate his occupations are given small space :
This prince applies himself but little to the affairs of the country
and attends to nothing but his pleasures ; but he is a young man of
good spirit, loving and beloved by the King, his brother, and he dis-
charges the office of Lord High Admiral.
In short, he lived the easy life of a prince of the Blood. If we are
to believe Antony Hamilton, his sole occupation was the seduction
of the wives of the nobility and gentry ; but the Count de Grammont
was a very old man when he gave Hamilton the materials for his
memoirs, he had forgotten a great deal, he was chiefly anxious to place
on record the amorous exploits of the gay companions of his youth,
and there can be little doubt that he allowed himself considerable
latitude of exaggeration in detail. Our other chief authority for James's
life at this period is Pepysr, and caution is no less necessary in accepting
his testimony; Pepys had an enormous appetite for scandal about his
betters, but he was mainly dependent for his information about
the great upon his gossips his Pierces and Poveys, who had only
backstairs knowledge of what went on and it is in the nature of such
men to make their stories worth the telling; moreover, they themselves
were for the most part only repeating what they had heard from others.
Where Pepys reports what has come under his own eye, however, or
what he has heard from Lord Sandwich, who moved in courtly circles,
he is a good authority. But though we may reject most of the un-
savoury and unedifying details as unsubstantiated, there is sufficient
agreement between de Grammont and Pepys, as well as corroboration
from other authorities, notably his own confessions in his Memoirs
and in his Advice to his Son, to warrant the conclusion that at this period
of his life James sowed a plentiful, if late, crop of wild oats* Apart from
transitory amours, he had in succession three mistresses Goditha
Price, the Countess of Southesk and Lady Denham. His pursuit of the
Countess of Chesterfield was so open and flagrant that her husband
the Earl remonstrated with him; James in reply "fell to commending
the lady", presumably not comprehending that the Earl was justly
aggrieved; in consequence Lady Chesterfield was packed off to the
60
THE RESTORATION 6l
country and kept there out of harm's way. There can be little question
that his reputation in the matter of women was as low as that of his
brother Charles "that known enemy to virginity and chastity, the
monarch of Great Britain' ', as his friends described him but whereas
Charles was a gourmet, James was a gourmand: he was "very amorous,
and more out of a natural temper than for the genteel part of making
love, which he was much a stranger to" ; "perpetually in one amour or
another, without being very nice in his choice, so that the King said once
he believed his brother had his mistresses given him by his priests to do
penance"; in 1677 Charles said to Courtin, the French ambassador,
"I do not believe there are two men who love women more than you
and I do, but my brother, devout as he is, loves them still more."
James had nothing in common with the literary rakes Rochester,
Sedley, Buckhurst, Etherege and the others his chief companions
were Charles Berkeley and Dick Talbot.
From other vices James appears to have been free. He was reputed
to be parsimonious, he was certainly careful of money; in the only case
in which his debts became a matter of common knowledge the fault was
imputed not to him but to his wife, and there is no evidence that he
squandered money on his mistresses the two who are best known,
Arabella Churchill, perhaps, and Catherine Sedley, certainly, had money
of their own. Gambling and thrift rarely exist in the same person,
and it is unlikely that James was a gambler: there is no record of his
playing cards except in the family circle during the period of enforced
idleness in Scotland ; and his interest in horse-racing if indeed he had
any interest and did not attend races merely because Charles was there
did not apparently extend beyond small bets. He was not a hard drinker.
There was one occasion on a hunting expedition when the Court was
entertained at Cranbourne by Sir George Carteret and there was
a drunken orgy, "being all maudlin and kissing one another, the
King the Duke of York and the Duke of York the King, and in such a
maudlin pickle as never people were"; but such a lapse was very
exceptional. Burnet in his earlier (and more reliable) account of James's
character says that "he abhors drunkenness, he never swears or talks
irreligiously"; there is nothing in the records to suggest that James
was ever the care-free boon-companion, the midnight roysterer; and
when he came to the throne he declared that anyone who was drunk
at Court should be excluded from it and should lose his post if he had
one. 1 It is a remarkable fact that at Faversham in December 1688,
1 Ailesbury says that when in 1685 there was discussion on the best sources
62 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
when James was under more acute mental strain than at any other
peiiod of his life, and in circumstances in which even the most temperate
man might be expected to take liquor to fortify his courage, the seamen
who were his captors were astounded at his abstemiousness; they
supplied him plentifully with drink, for their experience of the quality
(which was no doubt local and unfortunate) gave them to understand
that all gentlemen drank hard, but James would not drink except
with his meals, and very little then. In connection with James's
temperate habits it is interesting to note that he (or perhaps his Duchess)
was a tea-drinker barely twenty years after the leaf had been introduced
into this country and when its use first became fashionable.
One obsession James had which amounted almost to a vice, and that
was hunting an obsession which, together with an autocratic temper,
was one of the few qualities which he shared with his nephew and son-
in-law William. In the late years of his brother's reign hunting no doubt
furnished James with an escape from his troubles of mind at a time when
he was excluded from public activity and when nothing he could
do could serve to improve his position in the country; and people who
suspected him of subversive intent could hardly believe that he was
plotting with France for the overthrow of the English Constitution
in Church and State on the two or three days a week on which he hunted.
But before the Test Act of 1673 excluded him from employment,
and when he held important administrative posts, there is clear evidence
that he neglected business to satisfy his craving for the chase, and
even in later years he frequently failed to interview Charles on im-
portant matters for the same reason.
In this connection it is interesting to find that James was one of the
earliest, if not the earliest, aristocratic fox-hunter. The quarry for
gentlemen up to his time, and for many years afterwards, had been
stags and hares, though foxes had been hunted on horseback by yeomen
and lesser gentry for a hundred years. 1 James appears to have taken to
* * r ^ <*# 1781 a writer of a letter found it necessary TO staie tnat "fox-
hunting is now become the amusement of gentlemen; nor need any gentleman
be ashamed of it".
It is generally accepted that fox-hunting began among yeomen and farmers in
Elizabethan tunes; the first use given by O.E.D. of the word fox-hunter is
1692; but the name William le foxhunte appears in Patent Rolls, 1258-66
(quoted by Weekly, Adjectives and Other Words, p. 127). But William was
almost certainly not a sportsman, but a destroyer of foxes as vermin: he was
m a A l : 2 dhm ^ r ( i see The Romanc * f Words by the same author, p. 112).
Mr. Aldous Huxley states (Grey Eminence, p. 154) that Louis XIII was
addicted to fox-hunting; possibly James was made familiar with the sport
during his sojourn in France.
THE RESTORATION 63
fox-hunting soon after the Restoration, for in 1664 he already had two
separate packs of hounds ; in July of that year there is an entry in the
book of his household showing that James Carlile, gentleman, Serjeant
of the Hounds of His Royal Highness, was in receipt of a salary of
250 a year, "for the maintenance of the Duke's foxhounds and also for
the maintenance of the same James Carlile and horses suitable for him
as a huntsman*' ; in the same year there is mention of a Mr. Edward
Sanders, foot-huntsman, who was given 25 a year for attendance on
the buckhounds and 30 for attendance on the foxhounds. Fifteen
years later a Mr. Hilliard was Master of the Foxhounds, and a number of
huntsmen were employed to whom particular horses were assigned.
The locality in which the hounds were usually kept is unknown, but
James ordered the whole hunt to be sent on two occasions to his
temporary place of residence in 1679 to Brussels and in 1682 to New-
market. Simultaneously the Duke of Monmouth and his friend Lord
Grey of Werk each had a pack of foxhounds at Charlton near Good-
wood. No doubt when Monmouth told the Prince of Strassburg in
December 1674 that he had been "for some days hunting with the Duke
of York in Sussex", it was at Charlton as the guest of Monmouth that
James hunted and the fox was the quarry. James, as we have seen, had a
pack of foxhounds 1 when Monmouth was only fifteen years of age,
so that Monmouth must have learnt fox-hunting from his uncle. After
the Revolution the Charlton hounds passed to the Duke of Bolton,
and from him early in the eighteenth century to the second Duke of
Richmond, and thus the aristocratic tradition of fox-hunting was pre-
served unbroken to our own day. What became of James's hounds
is not known.
Whether pursuing stag or fox there can be no doubt that, as became
a distinguished and intrepid cavalry officer, James was a hard rider to
hounds. At a buck-hunt in 1663 in Enfield Chase no one but James,
Sir John Reresby and one of James's equerries was in at the death;
in 1684 a deer gave the Duke of York and his suite a tremendous run
through Beaconsfield and Amersham well into Oxfordshire, the Duke
and Colonel James Graham being among the few who were in at the
death; and in May 1686, when he was nearly fifty-three and in popular
estimation had lost his great physical courage, he outrode everyone in a
two days' stag hunt in Essex: "His Majesty kept pretty near the dogs,
though the ditches were broad and deep, the hedges high, and the way
and the fields dirty and deep ; but most of the lords were cast out again,
and amongst them the Duke of Albemarle."
1 It seems unlikely that James's foxhounds were of the same breed as that
of the foxhounds of the present day.
64 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Burnet's estimate of James's character, written at a time before he had
fallen under James's displeasure, is very near the truth. (When Burnet
revised his history and gave it the form in which it was published he cut
this character down to the barest outline. 1 )
The Duke would pass for an extraordinary civil and sweet-
tempered man if the King were not much above him in it, who
is more naturally and universally civil than the Duke. . . . He
has not the King's quickness but that is made up by great applica-
tion and industry, insomuch that he keeps a journal of all that
passes of which he shewed me a great deal. . . . He has naturally
a candour and a justice in his temper very great, and is a firm
friend but a heavy enemy, and will keep things long in his mind
and wait for a fit opportunity. He has a strange notion of govern-
ment, that everything is to be carried on in a high way and that
no regard is to be had to the pleasing the people, and he has an
ill opinion of any that proposes soft methods and thinks that is
popularity; but at the same time he always talks of law and justice.
Other characteristics are, that "he receives enemies that submit,
but tries to ruin those that stand out and cannot tolerate half sub-
mission"; that "he thinks everyone a rebel that opposes the King in
parliament" ; and "that he is very brave and abhors a coward".
Before the Restoration James's "inclination to the sex" had involved
him in serious trouble. His roving eye had fallen on Anne Hyde, the
only daughter of Sir Edward Hyde, Charles's trusted counsellor and
Lord Chancellor. She was a maid of honour to James's sister, Mary,
Princess of Orange, and he probably met her first at Breda in the winter
of 1657-8. In the spring of 1659 he paid his sister a visit of considerable
length, and it was then perhaps that Anne "indeed showed both her
wit and her virtue in managing the affair so dexterously that the Duke was
overmastered by his passion and gave her a promise of marriage some
time before the Restoration". This is James's own story (or his bio-
grapher's), but there was more than a promise: both James and Anne
after they were married subscribed formal declarations to the effect
that they were contracted on November 24, 1659; Sir Edward Hyde
had the matter fully investigated by the judges, and it was decided that
though they were not fully married they were so strictly contracted that
1 It has been frequently asserted that Burnet revised his draft for publication
particularly the passages dealing with the characters of persons from
interested and not quite honest motives. But in the interval between the draft
and the revision it is not possible that he should not have modified his views
on the characters of persons with whom he had been in contact.
THE RESTORATION 65,
any child of the union would be legitimate under English law without
further marriage ceremony.
As long as James was a penniless exile the question of the propriety
of his marriage to a girl without claim to noble birth did not seriously
arise though such a match could not bear comparison with the
alliances previously suggested with the daughters of the Dukes of
Lorraine and Longueville and if there had been no restoration the
marriage would no doubt have been acknowledged without hesitation
or delay. But the return to England made James the first subject of the
King, a grandee whose suit would be welcomed in any Court in Europe.
James seems to have been genuinely attached to Anne, but, in spite of
his subsequent denial of it, the fact appears to be that he determined
to listen to the advice of his cynical friends and to repudiate her.
Charles Berkeley 1 showed his friendship in a peculiar way: he in-
vented a story of his own successful intrigue with Anne and urged
James not to ally himself with a woman of loose morals. (He sub-
sequently had the grace to apologise to her father for having perjured
himself and slandered Anne.) Anne's father, the Lord Chancellor,
entirely lost his head: he was overwhelmed simultaneously by the
thoughts of his daughter's frailty for she was obviously with child
and of her aspirations to greatness, and he roundly declared that he would
rather she were James's mistress than his wife. But Charles took a
line of his own: in any other case he would no doubt have conformed to
the conventions observed at the time, under which it was undesirable
that men should marry their mistresses, shrugged his shoulders, ignored
the previous contract and found a subservient courtier who would be
willing to take James's place as Anne's husband. But Charles was well
aware of his dependence upon Hyde, and would do nothing to weaken
his loyalty to his service. He therefore gave James his orders in private
(though he still thought that his brother had "played the fool"), and
James, as at many other times, obeyed him without question and with a
public appearance of alacrity. He was married to Anne very late at
night on September 5 by his chaplain, Dr. James Crowther, and in the
presence only of Ormonde's son, Lord Ossory, and one of Anne's
maids the circumstances were peculiar, and in any case a royal
marriage was not at that time made an opportunity for pageantry.
Their first child, one of many that died in infancy, was born on October
22. The marriage was registered by the Privy Council on February 18,
1 Grammont says that Lord Arran, Richard Talbot, Henry Jermyn and Henry
Killigrew conspired with Berkeley to give each his own fantastic story of a dis-
graceful personal incident in which Anne Hyde was concerned ; but Clarendon
is the better authority here.
O
66 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
1 66 1, after the evidence of Crowther, Ossory and Anne's maid, Ellen
Stroud, had been taken.
Thus was Anne Hyde, daughter of a lawyer of outstanding abilities
but of no pretensions to gentle birth, raised to be the first lady in the
kingdom, a position which she relinquished to Queen Catherine eighteen
months later. Precedents might be adduced in the marriages of Anne
Boleyn and Elizabeth Woodville among others, but in more recent
years it had been the invariable rule for princes of the blood royal to
ally themselves with the near relations of ruling princes. The social
distance in those days both between the royal family and the nobility
and between the nobility and the people was far greater than it is at the
present time, and at once the new Duchess was forced into a very
peculiar position with regard to her nearest relatives. The Earl of Ailes-
bury, whose testimony on other matters is of uncertain value, is here a
high authority:
It is well known that when Kings and Princes of the Blood make
an alliance with a subject, their arms are not put into the royal
escutcheon, nor did ever the late Duchess of York call the Lord
Chancellor Clarendon father, nor did ever the late King James
call the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester [Edward Hyde's sons]
brothers, nor the Princess Mary and Anne term them as uncles.
Indeed the late Chancellor, when he wrote letters of advice to the
late Duchess in relation to her changing her religion, made use
of the style of Daughter which in truth he ought not to have
done.
Pepys, five years after the marriage, had an illuminating experience
which corroborates Ailesbury's account :
And so walked to Whitehall and there I showed my cousin
Roger the Duchess of York sitting in state while her own mother
stands by her.
And John Locke, the philosopher, relates that Sir Anthony Ashley
Cooper (later Lord Ashley and still later famous as Earl of Shaftesbury),
whose secretary he then was, even before the marriage was announced,
was certain that it was a fact because "a concealed respect, however
suppressed, showed itself so plainly in the looks, voice and manner
wherewith her mother carved to her, or offered her of every dish".
But Anne's father did not so easily forget the parental relation: he
"always with the respect that was due to her quality preserved the dignity
of a father very entire", and in the letter of remonstrance on the subject
THE RESTORATION 67
of religion which Ailesbury mentions, the Earl of Clarendon (as he
became in April 1661), writing from his exile in France, says :
No distance of place that is between us, in respect of our residence,
or the greater distance in respect of the high condition you are m,
can make me less your Father or absolve me from performing
those obligations which that relation requires from me;
and Pepys was amused to notice that the Lord Chancellor when he
inquired for his grandchildren,
did ask not how the Princes or the Dukes do, as other people do,
but "How do the children?" Which methought was mighty great,
and like a great man and grandfather. 1
The new Duchess of York had suddenly to accommodate herself to
her exalted position. Charles, who was above all things a realist, and
it may be added a gentleman, treated his sister-in-law kindly and with
deference; but matters were not so easy with James's other near rela-
tives. The graceless Duke of Gloucester declared that he could not
bear her; she always carried about with her the smell of her father's
green bag. James's mother was furious: apart from the unsuitability
of the match on grounds of birth, she had a long-standing grievance
against Anne Hyde: for in 1654 the Princess of Orange had taken Anne
into her household at a time when Henrietta was hating Anne's father
even more than usual, and the appointment had occasioned a violent
quarrel between mother and daughter. In one of the little intimate
notes which Charles in the early years of the Restoration was in the
habit of writing to Hyde we find:
My brother hath spoken with the Queen yesterday morning
concerning the owning his son, and in . much passion she told
him from the time he did any such thing she would never see his
face more
and he adds, "My brother tells me he will do anything I please." The
Princess of Orange, too, had her special grievance in that she had to yield
precedence to her former maid of honour. But Gloucester died a week
after the marriage and the Princess before the end of the year; and
Henrietta Maria was reconciled to her daughter-in-law before she went
1 The social distance between the Hydes and their royal relatives did not (in
spite of what Ailesbury says) extend to the second generation. Mary and Anne
were both more intimate with their uncles Clarendon and Rochester than they
were with other noblemen.
68 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
to France in January I66I, 1 and when she returned seven months later
she found a new outlet for her energies in instructing her in the deport-
ment suitable to royal princesses. In this voluntary task she succeeded
in the opinion of most people only too well, and there were complaints
of haughtiness unbecoming one who had had little time in which to
forget her humble origin. But more discriminating persons gave Duchess
Anne credit for playing well the big part for which she had been cast:
the courtiers whom James brought to present to her as soon as a decision
had been made about the marriage, were amazed to find her already
lofty and gracious; and three years later the French Ambassador was
able to tell his master that she "is a woman as gallant the word 'genteel*
is not strong enough as I have seen in my life ; she holds her position
with as much dignity and certainty as if she had been of royal blood,
or at least of that of a Guzman or a Mendoza".
Only a single voice proclaimed that Anne Hyde was handsome;
the others agree with Pepys that she was a plain woman ("and like her
mother, my Lady Chancellor", he adds maliciously); her portraits
provide a conflict of evidence; 2 but she had wit and vivacity. She had
some pretensions to literary ability, and she devoted some time to
putting James's memoirs into narrative form, and after her death
Gilbert Burnet refused James's invitation to continue her work. It seems
probable that some papers of her writing were kept with the memoirs
and were used by the compiler of the Life of James, but it is idle to
attempt to ascribe particular passages to* her. 3 Anne was much given
to the exercises of religion, and passed for something of a prude in the
gay Court, but she did not, as James's second wife did, look askance at
the royal mistress of the time, for she was on easy terms with Lady
Castlemaine. Of the marital relations of James and his first Duchess
we know very little. The Life of James indeed says, "It must be con-
1 Beresford (Gossip of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, p. 118)
states without giving reference that Mazarin made reconciliation with Anne
a condition of Henrietta's welcome back to France. Evelyn (October 7, 1660)
says that Clarendon mollified her by offering to arrange a composition with her
creditors.
2 The best-known portrait of Duchess Anne is that in the National Portrait
Gallery (ascribed to the school of Lely) ; it represents her as somnolent, sensuous,
rather fat and entirely unattractive. The portrait by Lely at Hampton Court,
on the other hand, is very charming indeed. A group at Ditchley with
James and the two Princesses, however (or so it seems from the reproduction),
was not so kind, for she appears as moderately handsome but with a grim and
determined mouth.
8 Cf. Mr. Godfrey Davies (Introduction to Papers of Devotion of James II,
p. xy), It is obvious from the comments that it [i.e., the undocumented
portion of the Life of James] was composed some time after the events narrated".
It is not easy to believe, for example, that the account of her marriage was
written by Duchess Anne herself.
THE RESTORATION 6$
fessed that what she wanted in birth was so well made up by other
endowments that her carriage afterwards did not misbecome her
acquired dignity." Such a statement, however, is of no value even if it
originated from James himself, and there is always the possibility that
Anne wrote it. But it was quite impossible for James to be technically
faithful to any wife ; and the first years of their marriage tried her very
sorely; she complained to the King and to her father, and by constant
nagging reduced James to such a state of obedience that Charles nick-
named him Tom Otter of whom it was said in the play, "Mistress Otter
corrects her husband so he dares not speak but under correction "
and mentally compared her to his own poor Queen, who had made one
vain stand against the appointment of Lady Castlemaine to a post about
her person, and had then sunk into silent acquiescence in whatever
affront or neglect Charles cared to inflict upon her. 1 Unfortunately
Anne's own married life was not entirely free from scandal: at Oxford
(or perhaps York) in 1665 she developed an attachment, probably
quite innocent, for Algernon Sidney's brother Henry "handsome
Sidney", her Master of the Horse. James either believed or affected to
believe his friends' comments on the relationship, saw the advantage
to himself as excusing his own irregularities, and dismissed Sidney.
Perhaps the least pleasing side of Anne's character lay in her extrava-
gance, a natural outcome of her desire to be adequate to her position,
but carried, as people thought, to immoderate lengths. James himself
had few expensive tastes, none that his ample income could not have
easily covered, but in 1667 he and Anne were said to be spending
60,000 a year on an income of 4o,ooo. 2 This is the only occasion
1 In the last year of Charles's life it is reported: "This day the Queen being
at dinner the Duchess of Portsmouth as a lady of the bedchamber came to wait
on her (which was not usual), which put the Queen into that disorder that
tears came into her eyes, whilst the other laughed and turned it into jest."
2 It is not easy to determine James's income even approximately, but there
can be no question that he was one of the richest, if not the richest, subject of his
brother. Two contemporary guesses are 100,000 and 150,000: roughly
equivalent in purchasing power to a half and three-quarters of a million re-
spectively of our money. We know that he received 16,000 from the Post
Office and 24,000 from the Excise and the duties and licences on wines. But
Pepys, when he gave the figure of 40,000 as his income, took no account
either of the investment value of the two grants to him by Parliament (10,000
in 1660 and 120,000 in 1665) or of his landed property. Charles settled on him
a portion of those estates, both in England and Ireland, of the regicides and of
other men convicted of treason. A transcript of uncertain authority in the
Bodleian gives the names of his English manors and states their annual value
at 13,000. In Ireland his agents, acting by all accounts very unscrupulously,
made good his claim to no less than 100,653 plantation acres, the equivalent of
163,038 acres English statute measure. In addition, he was relieved of certain
expenses e.g., his lodgings at Whitehall were repaired at public expense and
some of his servants were paid out of the grant for the royal household.
70 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
after the Restoration when we hear of James's running into debt, and
the fault may probably be justly imputed to Anne. Another serious
accusation mentioned by Pepys may have a basis in fact:
Mr. Povey do tell me how he is like to lose his 400 a year
pension of the Duke of York. He tells me the Duchess is a devil
against him. And do now come like Queen Elizabeth, and sits
with the Duke of York's council, and sees what they do ; and she
crosses out this man's wages and prices as she sees fit for saving
money: but yet, he tells me she reserves 5000 a year for her own
spending; and my Lady Peterborough by and by tells me that the
Duchess do lay up mightily jewels.
Povey had been removed three months earlier from the post of
Treasurer and Receiver-General to the Duke of York and had been
succeeded by Sir Allen Apsley. 1 Povey found a patron in Henrietta
Maria, and by her intercession he was able to compound for the loss
of his place for 2000. His evidence against Duchess Anne is suspect
as that of a man who had by his own admission fallen under her dis-
pleasure ; but she was a masterful woman, and we may be sure that, if
she wanted to come to James's council (which was merely a meeting
of the administrators of his private estate), nothing he could do would
keep her away.
In general politics the early years of the Restoration were for James a
period of apprenticeship, and for his instructor he took his father-in-law,
the Earl of Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor. Clarendon relates that
James used to sit beside him in the House of Lords on the Woolsack
"that he might the more easily confer with him upon the matters that
were debated and receive his advice how to behave himself". James
was from the first a very firm supporter of Clarendon his loyalty to
the King would naturally lay on him an obligation to support the first
Minister, and his personal connection with the Minister and his agree-
ment with his father-in-law's points of view were contributing factors
"the Duke did not only profess a very great affection for the Chancellor,
but gave all the demonstration of it that was possible, and desired
nothing more than that it should be manifest to all men that he had an
entire trust from the King in all his affairs, and that he would employ
all his interest to support that trust"; and it was remarked that James
was always eager to concur with the Chancellor when motions in the
1 Sir Allen Apsley was of better social standing than Povey: he had served
the King throughout the Civil War and was to prove a very faithful adherent
to James.
THE RESTORATION 71
House of Lords were put to the vote, and that "all parties that are sure
of the Chancellor are sure of the Duke of York". James's attendances
in the House of Lords were very regular, though it does not appear
(of course) from the Journals whether or no he sat through the debates
on all occasions when he put in an appearance.
He had been a Privy Councillor before he was sixteen ; he does not
appear ever to have been sworn, but he attended his first Council on
August 31, 1649, at Saint-Germain, and he was present at meetings
subsequently in Jersey and at intervals when he was not on campaign
down to the Restoration; for some reason neither his name nor that of
the Duke of Gloucester appears in a list of councillors inserted in the
register in 1658. After the Restoration he took his duties as Privy
Councillor for some time very lightly: in the year 1660 his absences
largely outnumber his attendances, in 1661 he was more assiduous,
and from December of that year he missed very few meetings except
those at which Charles himself was not present. The most important
matters were not, however, discussed in the Privy Council, but in the
Committee for Foreign Affairs, which in the first years of the reign was
an informal body summoned at need by the King, and of which no
minutes were kept. It does not appear whether or no James was
summoned as a matter of course to that Committee in the early months
of the reign. 1
To these years belong the most important part of James's activities
in connection with the Navy. It cannot be doubted that his interest
1 Miss Barbour, Life of Arlington^ and Christie, Life of Shaftesbury, say that
James was not at first summoned, but they quote no authority.
C. M. Andrews (British Committees, Commissions and Councils of Trade and
Plantations, 1622-1675- Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1908) supplies a
good deal of information regarding James's public activities in the first half of
Charles's reign. He was not on the Committee for Trade and Plantations
constituted under Order in Council of July 4, 1660 (Cal. S.P. Col. 1514-1660,
pp. 82, 483; P.C. Reg. Charles II, Vol. II, p. 63; New York Colonial Docu-
ments, III, 30), nor on the Council of Trade, the Council of Foreign Plantations
or the African Company. On January 31, 1668, regulations were issued for four
standing Committees : for Foreign Affairs, naval and military affairs, trade and
plantations and petitions and grievances, and it was stated that "His Royal
Highness ... is understood to be of all Committees where he pleases to be"
(we may safely conjecture that this proviso was not a complete innovation,
but that it was to some extent a recognition of existing practice, and that
James had for some time had a seat on these Committees). Under the regula-
tions for the Committee for naval and military affairs it was provided that "His
Royal Highness may preside if he so please, or else the Lord General" (Egerton
MSS. 2543 ff., 205-205^. A commission issued on April 13, 1669, established
a Council of Trade, and the Duke of York was the first member named (Rawlin-
son MSS. A 478 f. 77; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1668-1669, pp. 224-225). A Commission
issued on July 30, 1670, constituted a Council for Plantations; of this Council
James was not an original member, but he was appointed to it the following year.
72 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
in the Navy, as was that of Charles, was great and persistent ; he has
given himself, and he has been given, great credit for this work, but it is
doubtful if he took the initiative in any of the reforms which have been
connected with his name. At the same time, he deserves full credit for
giving effect to these reforms; for without the support of his great
position, and without also his decision of character, the vested interests
and the conservatism inherent in all public services would have defied
all attempts at reform. A typical instance is given by Pepys : on July 24,
1668, Pepys called James's attention to "the weakness of our office",
due apparently to lack of definition of the duties and responsibilities
of individual functionaries, and James asked him to put his proposals
in writing; on August 14 James reminded Pepys about these proposals;
on August 23 Pepys read over to James the letter which he had prepared
for him to address to the Board, and James "did hear it all over with
extraordinary content"; on August 27 James had had the letter copied
by his Secretary and had signed it "in my very words without the
alteration of a syllable"; on August 28 James read the letter to the
Privy Council as his own. Pepys claims to have taken the same initiative
in, and in detail to have been to the same extent responsible for, the
Instructions to Commanders, the basis of modern naval discipline;
there is good reason to believe that the Duke of York's Sailing and
Fighting Instructions were the work of Sir William Penn. Now, it is a
matter of common knowledge that in all Government offices documents
for which heads of departments and Ministers of the Crown assume
credit and responsibility have been prepared for them by subordinate
officers. But there is a degree observed in these matters: the documents
have in most cases, originated with instructions from above, and,
even when the first suggestion has come from a subordinate officer,
his superior generally makes at least verbal alterations.
It is clear from the Diary due allowance being made for the diarist's
own interest to make it appear so that the administration of the Navy
in the seven years following the Restoration was in the hands of Pepys
and Sir William Coventry, and that when in 1667 Coventry was re-
placed by Matthew Wren as James's secretary the same sort of control
continued in one place Pepys mentions "the Duke of York and
his master Mr. Wren". Thus James may be regarded as a royal patron
whose chief merit was that he appreciated ability and industry when he
found them and used the authority of his rank to uphold his best
subordinates against the intrigues of interested parties. One of the very
few surviving letters of James which has any subject but his own
interests was written to Charles in May 1679, when James was in exile
at Brussels, urging the appointment of Pepys to the Admiralty Com-
THE RESTORATION 73
mission. James can therefore claim no credit at first hand for the
reforms which made the British Navy during two hundred and fifty years
the greatest single factor in international affairs. But he showed both
intelligence and steady loyalty in recognising the outstanding genius
of Pepys and in consistently supporting him. Without this recognition
and support the Navy would undoubtedly have fallen into the deplorable
condition in which Pepys found it on his return to official duty in 1684.
From the inefficiency and corruption which prevailed at the Ad-
miralty Pepys only, with the support of the King and James, could save
the Navy, and had not this combination of powers been in operation
it is difficult to see how Britain could have survived the wars of
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. James was undoubtedly
devoted to the Navy, and he showed his devotion in his very frequent
visits to naval dockyards, but his administrative work extended little
beyond presiding at a weekly meeting of the Navy Board, and even there
his attendance was irregular; early in his career as Lord High Admiral
there was a proposal to appoint a Vice- Admiral of England so that he
might be relieved of these light duties. Out of twenty-two meetings
mentioned by Pepys, six only were held quite regularly; on five oc-
casions James kept the meeting waiting while he rose and was dressed ;
twice he had shifted the venue without previous notice; and nine times
the other members of the Board arrived to find that there was no meet-
ing five times James had had other public engagements and four times
he had gone hunting. But once in the chair, there was nothing per-
functory in the performance of his duties; he was most anxious to
understand the business before the meeting and very patient in
listening to all sides, even when his advisers, Sandwich and Coventry,
thought they had made up his mind for him beforehand. Curiously
enough, in spite of his merits, Sir William Coventry thought meanly
of James's usefulness to the Navy, and in the autumn of 1665 urged him
to retire when he was at the height of his popularity after the Battle of
Lowestoft and when retirement would give no appearance of disappoint-
ment or pique. 1
Macaulay's statement that James "loved the details of naval business
and would have made a respectable clerk in the dockyard at Chatham"
is very wide of the mark. Quite apart from the fact that he disliked
above all things being kept indoors and had no capacity for sedulous
1 J. R. Tanner (E.H.R., XII, 19) has adduced a number of examples of the
interest taken by both Charles and James in details of naval administration,
but he fails to prove that this interest was more than spasmodic; as regards
James, the important part of his article is his insistence (pp. 2 in, 44-45) on the
value to the Navy of having a Lord High Admiral with the authority of high
rank.
74 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
and detailed office work, he had no exact knowledge. D'Usson de
Bonrepaus, who had spent his life in the office of the French Admiralty
and had risen to be Intendant-General, was in 1686 and I687 1 sent
by Louis to settle certain outstanding colonial and commercial questions
and to report on the condition of the English Navy. During his first
visit he reported that he learnt more in detail about the English Navy
from conversations with James than he would have learnt by spending
three months at Chatham. But eighteen months later he accompanied
James on a visit to Portsmouth Dockyard and his report is more
discriminating :
It appears to me that the King of England is very ill-informed
on the subject of the management of, and of the details of work
in, naval arsenals. He was very much astonished at what we saw
of the forging of the arms and flukes of anchors. I gave him my
estimate of what a certain anchor weighed, he had it weighed
at once and I was only six pounds out. Then he asked me several
questions about cables and pieces of wood which we saw lying
about. He told me laughing that I must have sat 'up all night
weighing anchors, counting the ply of cables and measuring up
wood. But if the King is ignorant about such things he is by no
means ignorant about navigation. He often talks to me and enjoys
talking, and I have an infinity of things to learn from him.
The inference from these reports appears to be that James, apart
from the few months he had spent at sea acquiring personal experience,
had lost no opportunity of conversing with practical seamen indeed,
he wrote to Sandwich (Sir Edward Montagu as he then was) before the
Restoration "offering to learn the seaman's trade of him" and by this
means acquired at second hand a thorough knowledge of the practice
of navigation; but that his many visits to ports and dockyards had been
partly ceremonial and partly to receive verbal reports of the progress
of work, and no doubt also to hear complaints and to use his authority
to restore discipline where friction had arisen, and that he had made no
effort to study the details of the building and equipment of ships.
The most pressing problem in connection with the Restoration
Navy lay in the appointment of officers. The best captains of ships
were unquestionably the men who had served under Blake and had
ample sea experience. But although these men had made their submisson
at the Restoration, James found in them "a deep tincture of their educa-
tion: they both hated popery and loved liberty"; at the same time,
1 Bonrepaus made a third visit to England in the autumn of 1688.
THE RESTORATION 75
"they were men of severe tempers, and kept good discipline". It was
natural that both Charles and James should prefer to appoint men who
had always been loyal to the Crown; it was an easy way of rewarding
service and it was important, in the state of perpetual fear of revolution
in which the Court lived, that the Navy should be in the hands of men
who could be trusted to support the monarchy if an outbreak occurred.
Charles was not, however, at first of this mind: in November 1664
he took the French ambassador down to the fleet, introduced him to a
number of Cromwellian officers and told him in their hearing that
"these gentlemen had all had the plague, but they were entirely cured
and were now less susceptible to the malady than the others".
In Cavalier officers, both military and naval, there were grave defects
of character, defects which persisted in the Army until English troops
were employed side by side with Continental troops in the wars in
Flanders, and in the Navy to a much later date. These officers firmly
held the opinion that they fulfilled the whole of their duty in getting them-
selves killed in action ; and it may be admitted that in support of this
opinion they gave many striking proofs of personal courage. But they
were far from thinking that their duties included any preparation for
war in time of peace : in their view, an officer when not actually fighting
was free to enjoy himself. As late as 1689 Schomberg in Ireland bitterly
complained of the lack of a sense of responsibility of English military
officers; they would neither instruct their men in the art of war nor
provide against sickness by looking after their bodily needs. The
introduction into the Navy of men of this temper and of very short
sea-experience engendered a plentiful lack of discipline in the ships they
commanded, for no sooner was a ship in harbour than her captain left
her, and it was frequently difficult to get him on board again in time for
her to proceed to another destination with the rest of the fleet. In the
higher command also endless difficulties occurred because of the
jealousies between the "old" and the "new" officers. James in 1667
admitted that discipline was bad, but he claimed that as long as he had
been in command at sea he had been able to preserve it and that he would
find means to restore it. But he persisted in the policy of appointing
Cavalier captains, without, however, entirely discarding the "tar-
paulins", lest they should form themselves into a discontented party,
and he made no secret of his intentions : for Pepys, in answer to an
inquiry, said openly that "both the King and Duke were for com-
manding ships of war by gentlemen", a view which Pepys himself did
not share. James, however, appears never to have been quite satisfied
with the policy he was pursuing, for when he was King he had a con-
versation with Bonrepaus in which he expressed his admiration for the
j6 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
French system of training naval officers and a desire to inaugurate
a similar system in this country.
The work of naval administration was interrupted in 1665 by the
Second Dutch War. The cause of this war was the deep jealousy which
had long existed between two nations competing for commercial
supremacy. Its occasion was a number of high-handed acts committed
in distant seas by Dutch seamen and merchants. Possibly if we knew
more of the Dutch case, it would be found that the English were not
entirely blameless, but complaints appear to have been made only from
the English side, and these complaints were ignored by the States-
General; it was currently reported that their opinion was that this
country was far weaker than it had been under Cromwell and that
Charles would not dare to resort to war.
James was of the war party from the first; he thought, however, that
there would be no war and that the Dutch would give way as soon as
they realised that the English were in earnest. His sentiments at that
time were strongly unfavourable to the Dutch, his name for them in
moments of heat was "insolent republicans"; he had a strong aversion
from their form of government, he had a personal grievance in the
treatment he had received in the Netherlands during his exile, and the
States-General, in spite of their repeal of the Act of Seclusion, by which
his young nephew William had been deprived of the stadtholdership
which was hereditary in his family, had refused to reinstate William
in the civil and military posts which were the perquisites of that office.
Moreover, both he and Charles had financial interests in the two
companies which had suffered most from the depredations of the
Dutch, the East India Company and the Royal African Company.
It is safe to conjecture that, in addition to these overt excuses for his
warlike attitude, James looked forward to some advantage to himself
in being in command of the English fleet: directly he could gratify
his desire for glory, particularly naval glory, indirectly he hoped to
reinstate himself in favour with the English people by a great naval
victory and to overcome his increasing unpopularity an unpopularity
for which it is not easy to account, but to which contributed his wife's
haughtiness and his own close association with his unpopular father-in-
law; in this hope he was justified by the event. James was already
gaining influence in Charles's inner councils, and there he was supported
by the Duke of Albemarle against the peaceful counsels of his father-
in-law Clarendon, Lord Treasurer Southampton and the Duke of
Ormonde. In September 1664 he had a conversation with the Dutch
ambassador, Van Gogh, in which he conducted himself in a character-
THE RESTORATION 77
istically truculent manner; he told the ambassador that if the Dutch
did not cease their provocation the King would not be able to resist the
national desire for war, and that if war came he himself at the head
of the English would show them that we were in earnest and that
"he did not doubt but to live to see the Dutch as fearful of provoking
the English under the government of a King, as he remembers them to
have been under that of a Coquin".
When in October war became inevitable, James displayed great
activity. He visited the dockyards of Chatham and Portsmouth and
spent the whole of his days and the greater part of his nights with that
part of the fleet which was being equipped in the Thames. Early in
November the ships which were ready, forty-one in number, were
assembled at Spithead, and on the Qth James travelled down to Ports-
mouth. Further delays occurred, and it was not until the 27th that the
fleet set sail. The voyage was only in the nature of a trial trip, a few
inconsiderable prizes were taken 1 one of several acts of piracy com-
mitted by the English navy in this year no Dutch men-of-war were
seen, and after a voyage of only three days, in which the farthest point
reached was Cape de la Hague, James and Rupert, who was second in
command, returned to St. Helens and left four days later for London.
This was the total extent of James's sea experience before the com-
mencement of the Second Dutch War. As a boy in Jersey he had had a
good deal of desultory sailing in Charles's pinnace, an excellent prepara-
tion for serious training; but during his exile he never sailed with the
royalist fleet, and when he crossed the Channel it was as a passenger.
Since the Restoration he had had a pleasure boat of his own on the
lower Thames, and he had twice been a few miles to sea to meet his
sister in 1660 and Queen Catherine in 1662. The fleet was not in those
days kept "in being" in time of peace, but was laid up and the men
were paid off; the only naval operations were unofficial and in distant
seas, and we know too much of James's life from day to day to admit
that any cruise extending beyond a few days has escaped us in which he
took part.
War was declared on March 4, 1665, and on March 31 James,
"attended by several eminent persons and volunteers of the first
quality", left London for the Gunfleet where the fleet was assembled.
He travelled as far as The Hope with Charles and the Duchess of York
on Sandwich's ship, the Prince, and finished the journey in his own yacht.
In spite of his exertions of the previous autumn it was more than five
1 Meanwhile, however, Rear-Admiral Tyddeman with a small squadron
had been patrolling the Channel and had captured the greater part of the Dutch
fleet from Bordeaux, and one estimate gives a total of 150 sail of all sizes brought
into ports between Dover and Plymouth before December 10.
78 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
weeks before he was ready for sea. The fleet consisted of ninety-eight
ships of forty guns and upwards, besides fireships and minor craft;
James on the Royal Charles led the Red Squadron, Prince Rupert as
Vice- Admiral was Admiral of the White, and the Earl of Sandwich was
Rear-Admiral and Admiral of the Blue. On James's ship as Great
Captain Commander (a title which afterwards became First Captain
and still later, Captain of the Fleet) was the veteran Admiral Sir William
Penn. This appointment bred jealousies in two quarters : the crowd of
courtiers on the flagship, led by the Earl of Falmouth (James's old
friend Charles Berkeley), despised Penn as a "tarpaulin", or perhaps
rather as a Commonwealth man, and strongly resented having to submit
to his orders ; while the other admirals in the fleet, notably Sandwich,
realised that whatever orders James gave them would be virtually
dictated by Penn, whose seniority to themselves they did not admit.
For over a fortnight the English fleet hung about the Dutch coast;
they succeeded in capturing a convoy of ten merchant ships, but the
enemy refused to leave their harbours ; then a storm disabled a number
of ships and James had to put back to the Gunfleet to refit. On May 29
they were at sea again, and on June i they were lying in Southwold Bay
when the Dutch fleet hove in sight. James had detached some ships to
make up their complement of men from a fleet of colliers in the neigh-
bourhood ; but the Dutch did not take advantage of the dispersal, not-
withstanding their superiority in numbers 113 men-of-war with
eleven fireships and seven yachts and it was not until the dawn of
June 3 that the fleets got into touch with one another; they were then
some eight leagues east of Lowestoft. Manoeuvres and counter-
manoeuvres followed until ten o'clock, when the wind changed favourably
for the English and the battle was fairly joined. James's own ship, as
was proper, engaged that of Opdam, who commanded the Dutch in
chief, and the two ships pounded one another for no less than four
hours. Then the Dutch flagship blew up. The battle elsewhere had
been going against the Dutch, and this fatality was the signal for a
general retreat on their part; they crowded on sail and made for the
Texel. James collected his fleet, made arrangements for the safety of
such as were disabled and followed in pursuit.
He remained on deck until nightfall, and at about eleven o'clock he
gave orders that the chase should be kept up at full stretch through
the night, and lay down fully dressed in his cabin to snatch a few hours'
sleep. During the night occurred a mysterious incident. Henry
Brouncker, an officer of James's household, appeared on deck, re-
presented to the officer of the watch the risk to James's person if they
overran the Dutch in the night and were surrounded, and ordered him
THE RESTORATION 79
to shorten sail. The officer properly refused to admit the right of a
volunteer to vary the orders of the Duke. Brouncker then went below
for some minutes, and when he reappeared on deck he reported that
he had seen the Duke and explained the situation to him and that his
orders were to shorten sail. These orders were carried out, the speed
of the English fleet was reduced and the Dutch were able to increase
their lead. At dawn, when it was found that the enemy were several
leagues ahead, sail was crowded on again, and James when he came on
deck had had no information about Brouncker's action and concluded
that he had been out-sailed. The delay enabled the Dutch to reach
their own waters, and the English ships, which drew more water,
were unable to follow them or so it appeared from the English
fleet, for, had James but known, the Dutch had to wait outside the Texel
for four hours before the tide served to allow them to enter; a few
stragglers were picked up, but the opportunity of destroying at a blow
the naval power of the United Provinces was lost. There appears to
have been no plausible motive for Brouncker's conduct; he himself
was a man of vile reputation it was said that his sole virtue was that
he was a good chess-player and it is quite possible that he was actuated
by fears for his own personal safety; popular opinion was that the
Duchess of York had convinced the Duke's household that their
paramount duty in the action was to preserve the Duke, and that
Brouncker interpreted her orders in his own way. This view was expressed
by Sir John Denham in a passage describing the farewells at The Hope
in his satire, Instructions to a Painter concerning the Dutch War, com-
mencing:
O Duchess ! if thy Nuptial Pomp was mean
'Tis paid with interest in thy Naval Scene
and concluding:
She therefore the Duke's person recommends
To Brouncker, Perm and Coventry, her friends.
When James heard how Brouncker had betrayed him he was for having
him tried by court-martial, but though Brouncker had to endure the
humiliation of expulsion from the House of Commons, he managed to
abscond to the Continent.
Though the English fleet had been robbed of further success on the
second day of the battle, the victory on the first day had been complete :
the Dutch had lost over twenty ships, sunk or taken, and upwards
of 5000 men; the loss on the English side was under 1000 men and one
small ship. The Dutch lost Opdam, their Commander-in-Chief, and
three other admirals, the English lost two distinguished seamen in Sir
8o JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
John Lawson, Vice-Admiral of the Red, and Robert Sansum, Rear-
Admiral of the White. But James had to suffer a bitter personal loss :
the Earl of Falmouth was killed on the quarter-deck when he was stand-
ing so near to James that James was bespattered with his blood (the
cannon-ball which carried him off killed also the Earl of Muskerry, an
old companion of arms with James in Flanders, and Richard Boyle, a
younger son of the Earl of Burlington). As Charles Berkeley, Falmouth
had been a close friend of James in France and Flanders, and after the
Restoration James's devotion to Lord Berkeley was transferred from
the uncle to the nephew and developed into a strong personal affection.
Charles, too, showed an unwonted strength of sentiment towards
Falmouth, and there had been a contest between the brothers for his
services, marked on James's side by an abject expression of his submission
to the royal will and of his love for Falmouth. Both Charles and
James were more genuinely affected by Falmouth's death than by
any other bereavement in either of their lives. James had a very high
opinion of his abilities, particularly as a soldier, and held that once he
had shed the follies of youth for he was a notorious libertine he
would have developed all the qualities of a statesman ; the general view
was that James was in this instance merely giving additional proof of his
lack of knowledge of men. But Sir William Coventry, who as James's
private secretary had been in close touch with Falmouth for five years,
who had taken the side of Sir William Penn against Falmouth's faction
and must be regarded as an impartial witness, told Pepys three years
after Falmouth's death of his "generosity, good-nature, desire of public
good, and low thoughts of his own wisdom; his employing his interest
in the King to do good offices to all people, without any other fault than
the freedom he do learn in France of thinking himself obliged to serve
his King in his pleasures". So that James and Charles may not have
been at fault in their extraordinary aff ection for him. Falmouth's virtues
were, however, known only to a few. Sir John Denham was expressing
what was generally thought of him when he wrote :
Falmouth was there, I know not what to act;
Some say 'twas to grow Duke too by contract:
An untaught bullet in its wanton scope,
Dashes him all to pieces and his hope.
Such was his rise, such was his fall, unpraised ;
A chance-shot sooner took him than chance raised:
His shattered head the fearless Duke distains,
And gave the last first proof that he had brains.
The victory put new heart into the English people; James had one
of his fleeting moments of popularity and was acclaimed as a hero.
Dryden addressed to the Duchess of York a fulsome ode which ranks
THE RESTORATION 8l
far below his best work: it contains the absurd lines,
How powerful are chaste vows ! the wind and tide
You bribed to combat on the English side.
How far James deserved everything that was said and done is another
matter. It is not easily conceivable that a young man not yet thirty-
two years of age, trained it is true in the best available school of land
warfare, but with next to no sea experience, and it may be added not a
genius, can have done more than to have been lucky in the seasoned
seamen whose advice he took. Of his personal bravery there can be no
question, the death of his friends by his side is proof of the risks he
himself ran. In his memoirs he claims to have been the inventor of the
"line ahead" formation and to have used it for the first time in this
battle; but he makes no mention of Sir William Perm.
In connection with the Battle of Lowestoft an incident occurred
which shows James's character in a favourable light. The captain of an
English ship on scouting duty had sighted two Dutch vessels which
were bearing down upon him; he called his crew together, represented
to them the unequal nature of the contest and signified his intention
of taking action which "showed discretion, the best part of valour".
Instead of obeying his orders, however, the crew mutinied, put him in
irons, attacked the Dutch and captured one ship and put the other to
flight. The Council of War to which the matter was referred overlooked
the mutiny (as a modern Naval Court-martial would hardly have done),
and condemned the captain to death for cowardice. When the matter
was brought to James's notice he sent for the captain and pardoned
him, but gave him a musket and made him a soldier, saying that English
captains were "obliged to resist several enemies", but "seeing that he
had not the courage to fight more than one", he might pass the rest of
his life in the ranks. Such incidents (and, as will be seen, there were
several of the kind in Scotland) give some ground for the contention
on the part of Ailesbury and others that James was by nature inclined
to mercy. By far the greater body of testimony is on the other side :
"he was not born under a pardoning planet"; "though it was in his
power, it was not in his nature to pardon". The explanation of this
conflict of evidence lies in James's political views: James was the most
complete Royalist that it is possible to conceive; he regarded rebellion
as a crime so heinous as to be past forgiveness, and he not only denied
mercy to traitors, but was disinclined to allow justice to persons accused
of treason. On the other hand, where his worship of royalty and his fear
of a repetition of the events of the Civil War were not concerned, he
did sometimes pardon people whom his friends would have condemned.
Such clemency was not, however, exercised on a fixed principle, but
82 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
uncertainly and whimsically, after the manner of an Oriental potentate
his chief regret (as we shall see) after the loss of the Gloucester in 1682
was that he had missed the opportunity of hanging the pilot who had
run her on to a sandbank.
The tangible result of the victory as far as James was personally
concerned was the vote by Parliament of a gift to him of the princely
sum of j 1 20,000, "in token of the great sense they had of his conduct
and bravery in the late engagement". They followed up this vote,
however, by a humble address to the King asking him not to allow
James to risk his life again. To this appeal Charles readily acceded:
the death of Falmouth at James's side had brought home to everyone
the risks the monarchy would have run if the cannon-ball had taken a
slightly different course; Charles had been married for three years,
there was no sign of a direct heir, and the probability that James would
succeed had very much increased; in default of James, his daughter
Mary, a child of three, would be heir presumptive. Henrietta Maria
added solicitations that James should not be separated from her during
the short time that she could expect to be with him, for she was con-
templating a return to France, and no doubt James's Duchess thought
that he had done enough for glory. To James's dismay, Charles
ordered him ashore, and it was nearly seven years before he went to
sea again. He retained his post of Lord High Admiral and he was very
active in visiting ports and dockyards. For the disaster at Sheerness in
June 1667, when the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway, burned three
ships at their moorings and carried off the Royal Charles, James was
only in part responsible. He had strongly opposed the foolish policy
of laying up the great ships and carrying on a defensive war by means
of the third- and fourth-rates ; but what he should have ensured, and did
not, was that the land defences of Chatham were of adequate strength
and in good repair.
James claimed to have been a great patron of trade, but this claim
does not rest on very firm foundations. As early as October 1660
he was in consultation with the Earl of Pembroke with a view to form-
ing a company to dig for gold "somewhere in Africa" ; this idea may have
been the germ of the Royal African Company, of which he claimed to
be the founder. He also claimed to have furthered the interests of the
East India, Turkey, Hamburg, and Canary Companies, and it is prob-
able that he invested money in all of them; in the autumn of 1663
James fitted out a frigate at his own expense and for his own profit
to trade with Guinea; he also had a financial interest in the Hudson
Bay Company. In March 1664 Charles made a grant to him of a large
THE RESTORATION 83
tract of land in North America between Connecticut and the Delaware ;
James borrowed two men-of-war and sent them under the command of
Colonel Richard Nicolls to take possession of his own territory and to
make terms with or to dispossess the Dutch who had established
trading-stations on the Hudson River. This expedition, with the assist-
ance of local contingents, captured in August 1664 the Dutch settle-
ment of the New Netherlands with its capital, New Amsterdam,
and in James's honour both the captured province and the town were
renamed New York. To him also was given the credit of refounding
the Royal African Company after it had been dissolved at the end of the
Third Dutch War. But, on the other hand, James appears to have taken
no part in the long negotiations which resulted in the treaty with
France of February 14, 1677, a treaty of vital importance to English
merchants, as defining the rights of English ships in the war between
England and France; nor did the deputation of sixty merchants which
waited on Charles in June 1676 to represent to him the hardships
inflicted on them by the French Navy seek James's mediation, as they
certainly would have done if they had regarded him as a patron of
trade. From the rather meagre evidence at our disposal it seems
probable that James's interest in foreign trade was that of a director
and shareholder rather than that of a statesman, and that it was his
own (quite legitimate) financial advantage that he had in mind, and not
the prosperity of the country as a whole.
Domestic matters occupied James's attention in these early years of
the Restoration. In September 1660 his sister Mary, Princess of Orange,
started on a visit to the English Court. James went in a ketch to meet
her, but he was recalled to London by the news of the death of the Duke
of Gloucester. He was said, after his death, to have been a prince of
great promise, but he was only twenty-one, and it is idle to speculate
on the sort of character he would have developed. Certainly if he had
lived out the century with James he would have altered the whole
course of English history especially if he had remained a Protestant:
he was by birth a far less exceptionable candidate for the throne than
was Monmouth, and it is not probable that he would have proved less
adequate to a distinguished position. In December 1660 James's
sister, Mary, Princess of Orange, died of that prevalent scourge small-
pox; and in February 1662 a remarkable cycle of deaths in the royal
family was completed by the death of his aunt, Elizabeth, Queen of
Bohemia, mother of the Electress Sophia and grandmother of George I.
In the winter of 1661-1662 Henrietta Maria, accompanied by her
daughter Henrietta, paid a short visit to England. She returned from
84 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
France for a longer stay in August 1662. In May of that year there had
been a ceremonial reception of a still more exalted lady, Catherine
of Braganza, Charles's new Queen. James, as Lord High Admiral,
with a crowd of courtiers, took ship at Portsmouth, met the English
squadron which had brought her from Lisbon a few miles out at sea
and escorted it back to Portsmouth.
In June 1665, immediately after his return from his victory over the
Dutch, James assisted Charles in the duty of speeding their mother
on her way back to France. It is unlikely that Henrietta Maria was
happy during her residence in this country. She had no voice whatever
in public affairs, and to a woman of her temperament that was an
unbearable deprivation. Among those whose memories went back to
the previous reign she was for opposite reasons unpopular both with the
old Cavaliers and the old Roundheads, and her religion was offensive
to the growing anti-Catholic sentiment. The ostensible reason for her
departure was fear of the plague; what she really feared was popular
tumult against her, "which conceit of Her Majesty is the more con-
firmed of late by certain libels thrown out on Christmas Eve [1664],
menacing the extirpation of Popery and Mass in her chapel".
When Charles and James returned to London they found the Great
Plague raging there, and the Court took fright and moved to Hampton
Court; but even there they did not feel themselves safe, and after a few
days they transferred themselves to Salisbury. In August Charles found
it expedient to send James to York; there was a rumour of trouble in
the North, and the Court were still under the apprehension of a re-
currence of the civil war; there was also in Charles's mind the same
consideration which had actuated Charles I, when in 1646 he sent the
heir to the throne to Bristol if Charles and James were together they
might both succumb to the plague, and the monarchy would have been
in jeopardy.
Fresh from the glory of the naval victory, the Duke with the Duchess
made a triumphant progress through the Midlands; Sir George Savile
gave them splendid entertainment at Rufford Abbey, and when next
he saw Charles at Oxford, James in requital vainly endeavoured to get
Savile made a viscount an honour he achieved three years later, when
he became Viscount Halifax. The reception at York left nothing to be
desired: all the nobility and gentry were present, there was a good
display of troops, and the Mayor, after making a very long and courtly
speech with all due emphasis on James's heroic exploits, presented each
of the royal visitors with a purse containing a hundred pounds in gold.
The seven weeks' stay in York was devoid of public duties, and James
THE RESTORATION 85
occupied himself with outdoor sports ; he appears not to have found the
neighbourhood suitable for hunting, and shooting and "flying" (that
is to say, contests of speed and dexterity between falcons and other
birds of the chase) had to take the place of his favourite diversion.
At York occurred the well-known incident of the riding accident to
Arabella Churchill. James had amused himself by teaching this plain
seventeen-year-old maid of honour to ride, and had found her an awk-
ward and inapt pupil ; but one day her horse ran away with her and she
fell off in a position which she no doubt considered ungainly; not so
James, for he at once fell in love with her, and, after a period of court-
ship which from the date of the birth of her eldest child 1 appears to have
extended over some years, she became his mistress. Very little is known
of Arabella Churchill, but she has two claims to notice by the historian
and biographer: she was no doubt the means of giving her younger
brother, John Churchill, the great Duke of Marlborough, his first
step, as page in James's household, on the ladder by which he climbed
to eminence, and she also provided the chief argument against those of
James's contemporaries who held that the sexual excesses of his youth
had rendered him incapable of begetting healthy children; for four of
her children by James grew up in normal health: James Fitzjames,
Duke of Berwick, who rose to be a Marshal of France, Henry Fitz-
james, the Grand Prior, Henrietta, who married Sir Henry Walde-
grave and became the ancestress of all the famous Waldegraves of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and another daughter who became
a nun.
In the middle of September 1665 James was suddenly summoned to
Oxford, where the Court was then assembling and whither Charles had
prorogued parliament. James travelled post, leaving the Duchess to
follow at her leisure; he arrived at Oxford on September 25, almost
simultaneously with the arrival from Salisbury of Charles and his
stripling son Monmouth; the King and his brother took up their
residence at Christ Church, and Monmouth and his wife were lodged
next door at Corpus; the following day the Queen arrived, and set up
her Court close by at Merton, and on October 5 the Duchess of York
joined her husband at Christ Church. Every arrival was made by the
dons an excuse for a fresh outburst of loyalty, and odes distinguished
alike by their lack of originality and inspiration, and by their correctness
in metre, diction and sentiment, were recited in the posture of homage
to the royal visitors. The session of Parliament was short October 10
1 James Fitzjames, afterwards Duke of Berwick, born in 1670. There may,
however, have been older children who died in infancy.
ri
86 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
to 31 but the Court stayed on over the New Year, busy, after the
manner of the "best people" of all ages, in entertaining one another,
but giving great offence to their hosts by the insolence of their manners,
an offence which was not lessened when they departed and it was
found that they had left their lodgings in a filthy and insanitary condition.
In September 1666 occurred the fire which destroyed the greater
part of London. Charles and James laboured incessantly and directed
operations to prevent the fire from spreading. As one observer stated:
All that is left is wholly due to the King and the Duke of York,
who, when the citizens had abandoned further care except to
preserve their goods undertook the work, and rode up and down,
blowing up houses with gunpowder, to make void spaces for the
fire to die in, and standing to see their orders executed; exposing
themselves to the multitudes, the flames and the falling buildings,
and sometimes labouring with their own hands to give example
to others, for which the people now pay them all reverence and
admiration.
Charles's conduct earned universal praise, but among the public
some, who entertained the double suspicion that the Catholics had
started the fire and that James was "a favourer of the papists", affected
to see a certain levity in James's demeanour.
At the beginning of September 1669 Charles and James went to the
New Forest to hunt, and there they had news of the death in Paris
of their mother. James's obituary notice of her, "She excelled in all
the good qualities of a good wife, a good mother and a good Christian",
does credit to his filial piety, but (as Dr. Johnson says) "in lapidary
inscriptions a man is not upon oath".
CHAPTER V
THE CONVERSION
DURING the year 1668 an entire change took place in the character of
James. In the autumn of 1667 the fall of Clarendon and its attendant
circumstances had brought him suddenly into prominence in public
life, and his almost simultaneous conversion to the Church of Rome
introduced a new seriousness into his outlook, gave him a higher sense
of his political responsibilities, and in his private life (though it would be
dangerous to be dogmatic on a question on which the evidence is
scanty) introduced a certain modified regularity: he ceased, except for
occasional lapses, to make the pursuit of women one of the main
activities of his life and was content with a single mistress ; this new
strictness of life and its cause, as also James's liability to fall from grace,
were evidently matters of common talk, for we find in a lampoon of a
few years later the remark, "Though devotion has given his Highness a
new turn, the bowls will still to their bias".
Clarendon's long service to the royal cause. weighed as little with
James as it did with Charles gratitude of this description was not a
Stuart characteristic but James was always plus royaliste que le roi,
and it was Clarendon's high sense of the royal prerogative which made
James his consistent, almost blind, supporter during his ministry and
which kept him faithful to him when Charles had abandoned him.
Quite certainly also James was too much under the thumb of his Duchess
to do other than to give her father his fullest support even if his political
views and his personal predilections had run counter to those of the
Lord Chancellor. There had been a party forming against Clarendon
for five years before his fall : at first the leaders of the opposition were
the irresponsible Earl of Bristol and James's own secretary, Sir William
Coventry. Coventry always maintained that he had no personal animus
against the Chancellor, but that he regarded him as an incapable
minister, and James appears to have been unaware of his attitude until
as late as the autumn of 1665. In July 1663 Bristol had launched in the
House of Lords a premature attack on Clarendon, in spite of James's
attempt, at Charles's instigation, to head him off; but Clarendon's
unpopularity grew with the years possibly the support of his princely
son-in-law was disadvantageous as tending to increase his haughtiness
and aloofness until he had no friends left except James. He was
8?
88 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
attacked simultaneously from three sides, by serious statesmen like Sir
William Coventry because he failed to recognise the changed conditions
since the Civil War; by ambitious politicians because he snubbed them
and stood in the way of their advancement ; and by the riff-raff of the
Court, including Lady Castlemaine, because he disapproved of them.
Two politicians whose mutual rivalry vexed the politics of the reign
Henry Bennet, James* old bete noire, now Earl of Arlington, and George
Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham temporarily joined forces, and
with the reigning mistress, Lady Castlemaine, made a concerted attack
on the Chancellor. At last Charles himself turned against the trusted
Minister of twenty years, and Clarendon had not only to give up the
Great Seal, but to go into voluntary exile to escape the malice of his
enemies. In the final eclipse of the Chancellor James was given the
unwelcome task of breaking to him the news of Charles's decision,
and later he wrote to his father-in-law strongly advising him to
abscond.
When the blow fell James was laid up with a mild attack of small-pox,
and except for a single speech in the House of Lords he was unable to
vindicate his father-in-law in public. But he had previously talked
freely in private, and Clarendon made no secret of his gratitude to him
for his sympathy when "I have not many other friends to brag of".
This sympathy was strongly manifested in James's purging of his own
household of declared enemies of his father-in-law : at the end of August
he dismissed Colonel Werden, a very old servant of his, who had
fought at his side in the French Army and who was to live to be recon-
ciled with James and to re-enter his service as private secretary; and a
few days later James's secretary, Sir William Coventry, left his service.
This last severance had been for some time in contemplation, and
Coventry's activities against Clarendon had so much exasperated James
that on one occasion he fairly lost his temper, he refused to sign papers
that Coventry had brought him and told him that he could not bear the
sight of him. A few days later, however, the incident was forgotten,
and the parting was on good terms; in any case, it is unlikely that
Coventry could have kept his post for long: he was a man of principle
and ability, he would have seen through James's equivocations on the
subject of religion and he would not have assisted him in his pro-
Catholic plans. Sir William Coventry was succeeded as James's secre-
tary by Matthew Wren, who had been one of Clarendon's secretaries,
and who served James until he was killed in James's second sea battle
in 1672.
In public James made many enemies by his devotion to Clarendon.
Against Arlington James had a long account, and Buckingham was at
THE CONVERSION 09
once too clever and too unstable for James's taste. 1 They, with many
others, sought to undermine James's influence with the King, for they
feared that it might be used to procure the recall of Clarendon, and the
return of Clarendon would mean their own ruin. Charles himself
strongly resented James's opposition in a matter on which he had made
up his mind. Up to this time the influence of James in the counsels of
the King had been steadily growing. As early as April 1664 the French
ambassador had been able to write that intrigues were afoot to create a
breach between the brothers, but that these intrigues had merely
recoiled on the heads of the plotters; for "I can assure your Majesty
that I have never seen a union so close between two brothers : the King
never comes to a decision on the most unimportant matter unless he has
the approval of the Duke, whom he has consulted together with the
Chancellor'*; and Clarendon, after an account similar to that of the
ambassador of the intrigues against James's influence, says that two
years later Charles "had in truth a just affection for the Duke and
confidence in him, without thinking better of his natural parts than he
thought there was cause for; and yet, which made it the more wondered
at, he did very often depart in matters of the highest moment from his
own judgement to comply with his brother".
Charles had already shown resentment in public at James's presump-
tion in aspiring to the favours of "La Belle Stuart", with whom he
himself was infatuated, and the coolness which resulted had not been
lessened when she escaped them both by marrying the Duke of Rich-
mond. And now James's open opposition in the matter of Clarendon's
dismissal created a very serious breach between the brothers, and it was
nearly two years before a full reconciliation was effected; possibly
Charles's anger was increased by some misgiving regarding his own
behaviour. James was now more completely isolated than at any other
time in his life: in the dark three years 1679-1681 he could rely, except-
for brief periods of pessimism, on the steady support of Charles, and
in December 1688 a few sturdy royalists disdained to forsake him and
many more would have rallied to his side if he had asserted himself;
but in the year 1668 James had no support whatever among the courtiers
and politicians who surrounded the King. Charles even encroached
upon James's preserve of the Admiralty, for without consulting him he
appointed Sir Thomas Osborne and Sir Thomas Littleton treasurers of
1 Dryden's character of Buckingham which begins
A man so various that he seems to be
Not one but all mankind's epitome,
is too well known to require quotation in full. King Louis described him
admirably in few words as "filling the air with the smoke of multiple plans,
always unrealisable, which he supports with his loquacity and his grand airs".
go JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
the Navy, a slight which James felt so bitterly that he was reluctant to
make recommendations to the King for the filling up of vacancies in
the Navy office.
At this time appears the first movement to prevent the succession
of James to the throne. The exclusion movement ten years later was a
national expression of hatred of Catholicism and of fear of a Catholic
sovereign. Buckingham and Arlington could pretend to no general and
patriotic pretext for excluding James ; they were actuated by the narrow-
est personal motives: rightly or wrongly they regarded him as utterly
implacable, and they feared that once on the throne he would take his
revenge upon them. They had two alternative schemes: to induce
Charles to divorce Queen Catherine and to marry some other Princess
who might give birth to an heir; and to get the Duke of Monmouth
declared legitimate and heir apparent. 1 There was then pending in
the House of Lords a Bill for re-marriage of the divorced Lord de
Roos, and the promoters of Charles's divorce saw, or pretended to see,
a resemblance between the two cases ; they strongly supported the Bill,
and made a major issue of what was a matter of private interest in the
hope that the one divorce might form a precedent for the other a
striking and amusing example of the lengths to which Court intrigues
were carried. But Charles could not be moved on either point : he would
not inflict this last ignominy on the Queen whom he had already so
grossly injured and insulted, and fond as he was of Monmouth, he knew
he was a bastard, and his high sense of monarchy forbade him to tolerate
the occupation of the throne by anyone labouring under that dis-
ability; moreover, angry as he was with James, he would not lend his
ear to plots to deprive him of his birthright. Indeed, it seems probable
that the intrigues to undermine James produced the same results that
previous intrigues had produced, and caused a reaction in Charles's
mind in James's favour. In any case, the attacks on James ceased as
suddenly as they began: in November 1668 Arlington was asserting
that James should not succeed to the throne, and less than three months
later the Duke and the Minister were in solemn and secret conclave
with the King and only two others, where they heard Charles's declara-
tion of his adhesion to the Faith of Rome and agreed to adopt the
Grand Design, whose purpose was the re-conversion of England to her
ancient beliefs by the help of the money and if necessary the forces of
France.
Thenceforward, for the next four years James took his place as the
1 Evidence is not lacking that the legitimisation of Monmouth was in the air:
Pepys, Oct. 27,1663; May 4, 14, 15, 1663; Dec. 16, 1666; Sept. n, 14, 1667;
H.M.C. Rep. X. App. Pt. 4, 114.
THE CONVERSION QI
sixth member of the Cabal, 1 the inner circle of Charles's advisers, and
Arlington was his constant ally, with Clifford as a third against the
Protestantism of Ashley, Buckingham and Lauderdale. In 1674, how-
ever, when Arlington seemed to be unduly regardful of Monmouth,
James's antipathy for Arlington revived, and he was not sorry to see him
relieved of the seals and relegated to the post of Lord Chamberlain; in
retrospect James wrote of him as a timorous Minister whose counsels
had been the chief cause of the troubles of the middle years of Charles's
reign* It is remarkable that James worked so long as he did in harmony
with Arlington, for Arlington was an uncertain upholder of the royal
prerogative and in foreign politics his long embassy in Spain had imbued
him with strong anti-French prejudices.
The reconciliation with Charles was a slower business, but when
once interested parties ceased to apply irritants the relations of the
brothers gradually became easier, until in September 1669 James was
able to tell his sister, the Duchess of Orleans, that "the King is much
kinder to him than he used to be and uses him very well". From that
time they lived together without serious difference, and it seems likely
that if a day-to-day calendar were made of their movements, it would
be found that when James was in England that is to say, when he was
not at sea or in exile they saw and spoke to one another on five or six
days a week. James drew more advantage from the relationship than
did Charles; his pose was that of Charles's good angel, always at his
elbow, urging him to forsake his pleasures and to adopt the strenuous
life, the sort of life most repellant to him. It is difficult to see why
Charles submitted to this persecution; he certainly writhed under it.
James's second wife might boast that "he never leaves the King's
side", and James's eulogist that Charles was "awaked by the daily
admonitions of his brother" ; but less partial observers were able to say
that Charles feared and hated James though he was wholly governed by
him, and there came a time when he complained to some of his intimates
of James's "being so busy and giving him no rest".
James's steadfastness (or obstinacy) in the matter of religion was at the
root of the major portion of Charles's difficulties, and Charles fully
recognised this fact, and made no pretence at sympathy with or approval
of such an attitude he himself if he had found himself in James's
situation would have known what to do. But though he showed great
1 The word Cabal was applied to this quintet of advisers because the initials
of their names, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale, happened
to make it up. But the word is of older origin, and it is unfortunate that it was
used in this connection, for it conveys a suggestion of cohesion, which did not
exist. There was almost complete political anarchy from the fall of Clarendon
to the appointment of Danby as Lord Treasurer.
Q2 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
impatience with James, threatened to abandon him, and even offered
concessions to James's enemies which appalled James, he never came
near abandoning him, and the offers of concessions may easily have
been a further example of Stuart promises, to be withdrawn or ignored
when a favourable opportunity should occur. The whole situation
presents a remarkable example of brotherly loyalty in a character in
which loyalty was otherwise no conspicuous feature. The explanation
is that Charles's loyalty was not entirely disinterested; he probably
believed sincerely in James's rights the right divine but he also saw
clearly that to abandon James to his enemies would be to remove one
of the chief props of his own security. Two leading statesmen of the
time expressed their views of Charles's sentiments towards James:
Danby in May 1677, when he was still outwardly at any rate in James's
confidence, told Sir John Reresby that though the King "denied almost
nothing to the Duke, yet he did not really love him"; and Halifax, the
most detached and the shrewdest observer of the time, wrote in his
character of Charles, "His brother was a minister and he had his
jealousies of him. At the same time that he raised him, he was not
displeased to have him lowered." 1
The foreign ambassadors, particularly the French ambassadors, had
no doubt whatever about the special position which James enjoyed in
his brother's counsels: from 1668 onwards they constantly employ in
their despatches the words, "The King of England and the Duke of
York", or, more shortly, "The King and Duke", and very often English
ministers and ambassadors fall into the same phraseology; for example,
the French ambassador writes to Louis in May 1668, "The King of
England and the Duke of York continue to assure me that they will be
glad to make a close union with Your Majesty" ; in March 1675 we fi n ^
in a letter to an English envoy, "I asked the King and Duke what com-
mands they had for you" ; Shaftesbury in March 1675 wrote:
Besides there are none so likely as us ... to give the only
advice I know truly serviceable to the King, affectionate to the Duke,
and secure to the country ... no kind of usage shall put me out
of that duty and respect I owe to the King and Duke.
In December 1677 Danby wrote to William of Orange that the news of
the capture by the French of a town in Flanders "did so alarm us here
(I mean the King and Duke themselves as well as others)" ; and in July
1683 Jenkins, the Secretary of State, wrote to the same Prince bracketing
1 A significant detail concerning the personal relations of Charles and James
is that James made a practice of standing in the royal presence whenever affairs
of state were under discussion, even when they were alone,
THE CONVERSION 93
the names of Charles and James as holding a certain opinion. In January
1673 the French ambassador was much concerned because he feared
that James and Arlington would be justly annoyed at not having earlier
been taken into a discussion which had been held in secret with Charles ;
Sir William Temple in December 1677 wrote to William, "I hope your
Highness will think fit to write particularly to the Duke, as well as to
the King, in acknowledgement and applause of these late resolutions";
Sunderland in March 1680 advised William "to write kindly and sub-
missively to the King and the Duke". These constitute a very small
fraction of the instances which can be adduced of the prevalent belief in
the very close association of James with Charles in foreign, and to some
extent in domestic, affairs. The implication of those quotations, and of
the many others for which space cannot be found, is clear: decisions in
matters of foreign policy were an integral part of the royal prerogative,
but Charles's decisions could not be regarded as final until James had
signified his acquiescence in them and could be relied on not to use his
influence to have them withdrawn. There is no parallel in English
history to this tacit admission of dual responsibility in foreign affairs ;
the nearest is probably Wolsey's "ego et rex meus", but that was an
encroachment by a powerful Minister, and not an association freely
entered into by the King with the heir-presumptive to the throne.
But the opinions of observers, however numerous and however well
informed, do not always represent the whole truth, and it is quite certan
that James did not exercise in his brother's reign in home politics,
at any rate the predominating influence which he was supposed by his
contemporaries to exercise. A mere list of the measures which were
taken by Charles in opposition to James's counsels, as we either know
by the records or may justifiably infer, is very impressive. Among them
are the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, the giving
of the royal assent to the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act (if James
had been king he would never have given his assent to these two Acts
he would rather have faced a revolution), the various proclamations
putting into force the penal laws against the Catholics, for removing
them from London and the suburbs and for expelling Jesuits and
priests from the country there were no less than twenty of these
proclamations between 1663 and 1680 the recall of Sunderland to
favour in 1682, and the refusal to dissolve Parliament in 1675 and 1676
(it may be doubted whether James had any influence whatever with
Charles in the important matter of the regulation of meetings of Parlia-
ment). In matters of home policy, though their ends were identical,
Charles and James differed entirely in method James was always for
taking the line of greatest resistance, and Charles made concessions
Q4 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
which James considered confessions of weakness. Moreover, Charles's
profuseness and negligence in money matters were a constant source of
pain to James. Charles surrounded himself with a crowd of parasites,
men and women, "who put great sums of money into his imagination" ;
and, as Ruvigny, the French ambassador, said, James saw the situation
clearly, but did not dare to speak to his brother about it for fear of losing,
through the intrigues of Arlington and others, such credit with him as
he could still command. What probably misled contemporary opinion
was the degree to which Charles gave way to him in the matter of ap-
pointments: in lesser appointments his patronage was certainly very
great, and there were complaints from time to time that the Court was
filled with his creatures; in major appointments also he claimed, and
probably with justice, to have nominated two successive lords treasurer
and a secretary of state, Clifford, Danby and Jenkins; and in 1677 he
was successful in getting Bancroft, whom he supported against his
stronger competitor, Compton, Bishop of London, appointed Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. If it were necessary to sum up the relation of
James to Charles in an analogy, it would be that of a nagging wife to a
husband who loves quietness : she gets her way in lesser matters, and
wastes her energy on them only to find that important decisions have
been made without her knowledge. The analogy still holds for occasions
when Charles and James were in agreement, for then James's constancy
served to stiffen Charles's feeble resolution, an aspect of their mutual
relations of which Louis and his ambassadors were fully aware. On the
other hand, the nagging wife is very often a staunch upholder of her
husband's interests against the world outside the family, and there is
no lack of evidence that Charles appreciated James's unswerving
loyalty and regarded him as a firm rock among the shifting sands of
intrigue and corruption.
More extraordinary are the occasional extravagant outbursts in which
he revealed a strong personal affection for his brother no man ever
kept his emotions more under control than Charles, and to James these
outbursts must have brought a keen and almost painful joy. The most
striking is reported by the Venetian ambassador in December 1674,
when Charles was becoming increasingly aware of the trouble James was
causing him in public affairs :
I was at a dinner when His Majesty, divesting himself of all
reserve, tenderly embraced the Duke several times, declaring that
those men who sought their separation were rebels and that never
would he do so great a wrong to himself as not to place full con-
fidence in his dear brother; these expressions being accompanied
THE CONVERSION 95
by tears of tenderness might have been attributed in others to
weakness of head (debolezza di testa), but this free expression of
heart was caused solely by the cheerfulness of the company, nor
does anyone doubt the sincerity of the demonstration. 1
By far the most important change which came into James's life in his
middle thirties arose from his decision to abandon the State religion,
for to that decision were due a new seriousness of outlook and a deter-
mination to lead a life more worthy of his new religious professions. In
discussing James's conversion we are faced by a preliminary difficulty :
he was a man of stubborn, fixed opinions who never yielded to argument
on any subject on which he had made up his mind; how did he, on the
threshold of middle age, when even men of more supple mind have
ceased to speculate on religion, begin to listen to arguments against
Protestantism? The answer is, though the evidence must be largely
conjectural, that the change in James took place many years earlier than
was generally supposed, and that what convictions he had held about
religion he had held very lightly. Had Charles I lived and been in close
touch with James while he was growing up to manhood it is probable
that the father's influence would have kept the son in the Church of
England ; but he never saw his father after he was fourteen years of age,
and his religious instruction in his early years on the Continent was
entrusted to his chaplain, Dr. Richard Stuart, Dean of the Chapel
Royal. This divine, from such letters of his as have come down to us,
appears to have behaved more as a courtier than as a spiritual guide, and
he gave James no impression of religion or example of the saintly life;
moreover, he encouraged James, as did Radcliffe and other members of
the household, to attend as spectator, when he was still a boy, at cele-
brations of the Mass. James's own accounts of the religious experiences
of his boyhood are very vague : he mentions a nun who talked to him
about religion, and who, when he said he was too young to enter into
controversy with her, urged him to keep an open mind and to seek
divine direction; 2 he records in an entirely different connection the
solemn impression left on his mind by the religious exercises of the
French Army before going into action; indeed, the atmosphere of the
French Army, though Turenne himself was at that time a Huguenot,
1 The Venetian ambassadors are not always first-rate evidence : it is unlikely
that they knew any English or much French, and most of their information
came from interpreters, probably priests. This anecdote may therefore be taken
as accurate as regards the gestures, but not the words used by Charles.
a When he was asked if he had been in love with this nun he replied that "she
was no desirable object" five words which aptly illustrate James's coarseness of
mind where women were concerned.
96 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
was entirely Catholic, and cannot but have had its effect in those
impressionable years. The only evidence that James adduces, or has
been given on his behalf, that before the Restoration he was a devoted
son of the Church of England is his behaviour in the matter of the
attempt by his mother to convert the Duke of Gloucester; and that, as
we have seen, may easily have been inspired by the same secular motives
as was Charles's behaviour at the same time. If we can safely generalise
from a single incident observed by Pepys, when James and Lady Castle-
maine "talked very wantonly" through the curtains of the royal pew at
Whitehall Chapel, we should judge that he was during his Protestant
days neither so devout nor so decorous a worshipper as he was in Roman
chapels after his conversion.
He himself says categorically that he was a Protestant at the time of
the Restoration, but in England he was reputed to be a Papist long
before that. The "delight and glory" he took in hearing Mass was
reported there as early as 1653 a report no doubt sedulously spread by
the persons in power and growing in significance as the years went on
and the offence was repeated. In the early summer of 1659, as we have
seen, Father Peter Talbot and his fellow-Catholics thought that the
substitution of James for Charles as King would be to the advantage of
their Faith, In the spring of that year Dr. Morley, who later made other
attempts to redeem James for his own Church, had an interview with
James in which he frankly told him that he had fallen under suspicion
of attachment to Rome and that the number of Romanists in his house-
hold gave excuse for the rumour; Morley put the matter on no higher
ground than policy; he said that James's father had lost his head
because he had been suspected of Papistry and that the rumours of
James's conversion were very bad for the prospects of Charles's restora-
tion. James replied that such of his servants as were Roman Catholics
had been Protestants when they first entered his service, and that he had
not encouraged them to change their religion, and added that he was
resolved to continue in. profession and practice a Protestant; it is very
significant that he said nothing about his beliefs, as he did in later years
when he was defending his attachment to the Church of Rome.
There can be little doubt, therefore, that at the Restoration the firm-
ness of James's attachment to the Church of England was with reason
under almost universal suspicion; shortly after the Restoration Pepys
described James as "a professed friend of the Catholics", in 1663 a man
was put on trial for having said that "the Duke of York had nothing but
Irish rogues about him", and in the House of Commons in February
1671 a member spoke more truthfully than he knew when he said "that
notwithstanding His Majesty's sincerity in the Protestant religion there
THE CONVERSION 97
were some eminent persons whose example gave encouragement to the
contrary". It also appears to be a fact that he was early beginning to be
unpopular; how far that unpopularity was due to suspicions about his
religion and how far to other causes cannot be determined, but the
sudden change from popularity in France and Flanders to unpopularity
in England is very striking.
The distrust and hatred of the English people of the seventeenth
century for the Roman Church and its priests was a very real and potent
force. It has its origins long before the Reformation: in essence it was
political, patriotic and anti-clerical rather than religious, and was
based on an intense repugnance to the claim of the Papacy to the power
to depose kings, and on the consequent belief that no Catholic could
be a loyal subject without reservations in favour of the Pope. Incidentally
this repugnance created the theory of the Divine Right of Kings as a
counterblast to the Divine Right of the Papacy; but in the latter half
of the century those who were at best lukewarm on the subject of the
Divine Right of Kings held the papal claims even more strongly in
abhorrence than their political opponents. It was this national senti-
ment which had made possible the severance by Henry VIII of the
connection between the Church of England and the Papacy, and it had
been intensified by the Marian attempt to reintroduce papal influence,
by the excommunication of Elizabeth, by the long naval struggle with
Spain, and, latterly, by the indiscretions of Queen Henrietta Maria.
The Gordon Riots of 1780 showed how that spirit persisted long after
there was any danger to the Protestant Churches, and even now it is
a potent weapon in the hands of unscrupulous persons who wish to
discredit those of the Church of England whose attachment to the
ceremonial side of worship offends them. By a strange paradox the
most ferocious opponents of the Church of Rome were frequently, in
the seventeenth century as now, not very conscientious or reputable
adherents of their own churches.
Very soon after the tumult and the shouting of the Restoration had
died down, thoughtful men in Parliament and elsewhere began to have
misgivings about several public matters, and among them Popery was
the chief. Time after time the question was raised in the House of
Commons. Charles himself fell under some suspicion, which his attempt
at toleration in 1662 did nothing to allay; but gradually all the latent
Protestant fury fastened itself on James ; he became the embodiment of
the menace of Popery, and it is hardly too much to say that, from about
the year 1670, whenever Popery was mentioned either in or out of
Parliament James's name was brought to mind. There can be no
doubt that James himself was aware of what was going on and of the
D
98 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
need for caution. When in I668 1 he told Father Simon that he wished
to be admitted to the Roman Communion, he asked him for a dispensa-
tion to enable him to make public appearances at the services and
sacraments of the Church of England, and when Simon refused the
dispensation he appealed to Rome. This appeal was refused, and
James was with difficulty restrained from openly declaring himself a
Catholic ; but he continued for four years to take the Sacrament at the
public celebration at Christmas and Easter, and it was seven years
before he ceased to attend the services of the Church of England.
The crucial date was January 25, 1669, when Charles met in James's
apartments a select gathering consisting of James himself, the Catholic
Lord Arundel of Wardour, Sir Thomas Clifford, the Comptroller of the
Household, soon to be a convert to Rome, and Arlington, the Secretary
of State, who, like Charles, was to find Romanism a good religion to die
in but was unwilling to make the sacrifices which would be involved in
an immediate public confession of faith. To these four men Charles
made a declaration of his adherence in principle to the Roman Church,
and he asked them to advise him as to the time and manner of making
his conversion public and the best means of "settling the Catholic
religion" in England. This last question was the germ of the "Grand
Design", the secret scheme for the redemption of England from her
heresies and for her reconciliation to Rome. To what extent Charles
believed in the "Grand Design" does not concern us here; but from
now onwards James regarded the wholesale conversion of his country-
men as not only highly desirable and worth any effort or sacrifices that
he could make, but, with divine assistance, by no means impossible of
accomplishment. At that secret meeting, or at any rate about the time
of that meeting, James found his mission in life; to that mission he
devoted twenty years of unremitting toil, and for that mission he lost
his throne. 2
1 The dates in the Life of James are inexact, for no allowance is made for
the time necessary to communicate with Rome and for the delays of the Roman
curia.
2 Lord John Russell's conjecture regarding the attraction for James of the
Roman Faith is probably near the mark:
"He tells us himself that he was converted by reading Hooker's Ecclesi-
astical Polity. But, in fact, he could not fail to perceive that the Protestant
religion was closely connected with freedom of opinion on other subjects,
and that the Reformation was an example of resistance to ancient authority.
Hence his preference for the Roman Catholic Faith. Passive obedience
was, in his opinion, the simple and sole duty of a subject of a sovereign.
Such a political doctrine was the fit counterpart of a religious creed which
acknowledged the infallibility of a living head. His opinions, formed from
books, were confirmed by experience. He observed when at Paris that
the English Catholics were generally royalists, whilst the Protestants were
friends of Cromwell."
THE CONVERSION 99
James had to recognise from the outset that Charles was far from
sharing his obsession. No doubt he would have preferred to see England
Catholic, it is possible that he was experiencing a genuine religious
crisis, and he was probably honest in launching the "Grand Design" at
the private meeting, but when it came to a matter of action, of making
his own public declaration, of altering the established religion and of
commencing a campaign of wholesale conversion, he saw what an
impossible task he had undertaken. To him "divine assistance" was a
mere phrase, part of the jargon of the priests, and he saw that what
would be needed would be the carnal weapons of military force. In
such a contest there would necessarily be much expenditure of energy
on his part, and he had no great store of energy; besides, there was more
than a possibility that he would be defeated and sent again "on his
travels", and that fate above all things he dreaded. Charles wavered and
procrastinated, and whatever religious zeal he had had lost its intensity.
At this same secret meeting it was agreed in general that the chief
need in promoting the "Grand Design" was the adherence to it of King
Louis, and immediately what was in essence a purely domestic matter
became involved in Charles's foreign policy. Chiefly Louis was to
provide money, but in the last resort French troops might be needed to
support the royal forces. Whatever was in the minds of the other men
at the meeting, there can be no doubt that what James contemplated
was a coup f&at, a spectacular announcement that the King had decided
on an alteration in the State religion, with armed forces in readiness to
suppress any sign of opposition. Already the strong places of the king-
dom were in the hands of men in whom the King might confide Fitz-
gerald at Yarmouth, Bath at Plymouth, Bellasyse at Hull, Widdrington at
Berwick while 'he himself was Governor of Portsmouth (here it is easy
to recognise one of the earliest recollections of his own childhood, when
Sir John Hotham refused his father entrance to Hull) ; above all things
there were to be no concessions to the rebels as he was constantly to
say later, his father had lost his head through making concessions.
James was fairly launched on his fatal voyage.
Charles had always had a desire for a close friendship with his cousin
Louis. In October 1662 he had written to his sister, Henrietta Anne,
Duchess of Orleans, "I consider nothing of greater value than the
James, who failed conspicuously in all secular undertakings, did not ap-
parently succeed even in making himself a good Catholic; for Mr. Belloc alleges
that there was "some tincture [of Protestantism] left in his mind after he had
accepted the Catholic Faith", and adduces as proof that in his Papers of De-
votion there is "no devotion of his to the Mother of God". Indeed, except for
a single sentence (giving a list of objects of veneration, including the Virgin
Mary), those papers contain nothing offensive to Protestant sentiment.
100 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
intimate friendship between my brother and myself", and from that
time there had been continuous but desultory attempts to arrive at a
satisfactory basis for a treaty. His conversion to Rome gave Charles a
motive to revive these negotiations, for the interests of his religion were
foremost in Louis's mind, and Charles would need his support if, as
was confidently expected, the English people made their Sovereign's
change of faith a pretext for rebellion. So afraid, indeed, was Charles
at the opposition he might anticipate that he was at great pains to con-
ceal not only the subject-matter of the negotiations, but also the fact
that negotiations of any sort were in progress. His intermediaries were
wisely chosen: LordArundel of Wardour, a Catholic, had been Master
of the Horse to Queen Henrietta Maria, and he could carry despatches
to France on the pretext of visiting his late mistress, while on the other
side of the water Charles's sister, "Madame", Duchess of Orleans, with
whom he had always corresponded, could have private interviews with
her brother-in-law, Louis, without exciting remark. The intention was
to prevent the organisation of opposition by presenting the nation with
a fait accompli in the shape of a definite treaty, though in the event it
was found possible to keep the treaty a secret.
In Louis's mind the necessity for an early attack on the United
Provinces took priority over every other consideration. Charles was
anxious that Louis should not employ the occasion by making such
additions to his naval strength as to challenge English supremacy in the
English Channel. He also had a desire to persuade Louis to bear the
entire cost of the war, so that there would be no reason either to ask
Parliament for money to further the ends of an alliance of which they
did not approve, or to give them an opportunity to discuss that alliance.
He made the proposal that he should publicly declare his change of faith
before entering on the war with Holland. Louis was probably far more
deeply interested in Charles's conversion than was Charles himself, but
he realised the inexpediency of this plan and strongly opposed it; for
anything which could create internal discord in England on the eve of a
war was clearly to be avoided. It is difficult to account for Charles's
attitude on any other ground than that he was using this plan merely as
a lever to extract better terms for himself from Louis, for there is no
evidence in his subsequent conduct that he had any intention of publicly
declaring himself a Catholic either then or at any other time.
To what extent Louis was deceived by this manoeuvre is doubtful,
but James was completely hoodwinked. He had been admitted to the
secret discussions almost from their commencement. He was valuable
to Charles not indeed on account of any advice he had to furnish in
the whole series of letters which passed between Charles and his sister
THE CONVERSION IOI
James's name is barely mentioned but because he was as anxious as
Charles himself to prevent an increase in the French Navy and only too
ready to take risks on behalf of the Catholic Faith. According to the
French ambassador, however, James contributed little to the success
of the negotiations : "Le Due d'York . . . contribue d'autant plus a
la ruine de 1'alliance franjaise qu'il temoigne plus de chaleur a la
soutenir." James's temperament fitted him ill for delicate diplomatic
exchanges. Ralph Montagu, Charles's envoy in Paris, had no inkling
of what was going on, and it was only in October 1669 that Colbert de
Croissy, the French ambassador in London, was let into the secret and
was instructed to draft a treaty. On the English side Arlington and
Clifford were the Ministers employed by Charles; Shaftesbury and
Buckingham were kept carefully and successfully in ignorance.
The terms of the treaty were agreed upon early in 1670, but for
reasons which are a little obscure it was decided to make the signature
a formal occasion and to send Madame to England as Louis's repre-
sentative. Whoever first proposed this visit, it was strongly favoured by
both monarchs : by Charles because he was very much attached to his
sister and had not seen her for a number of years, and by Louis because
he hoped, through her influence over her brother, to persuade him to a
strict adherence to the French interest. The visit was vetoed by
Henrietta's husband, that very queer man Philip, Duke of Orleans,
and Louis had to invoke the royal prerogative to obtain his consent.
Even then the Duke was able to stipulate that Madame should pro-
ceed no farther than Dover, and that she should remain there only
three days, a period which was subsequently, however, extended to
nine days.
James's recollections of the circumstances of the treaty, as recorded
in his memoirs, are very muddled. He says he was averse to the terms
because the war with the United Provinces was given precedence to the
declaration on religion, whereas up to Madame's arrival the contrary
had been agreed. As a matter of fact the text of the treaty remained
exactly as previously, and by the second Article the time of the declara-
tion was left entirely to Charles's discretion. The key to James's dislike
of the treaty may perhaps be found in the jealousy which he confesses
of Henrietta's influence over Charles; there was a danger, he said, that
she might decide to settle in England, in which case her aim would be
"to govern all things here", and, we may add, keep James out of his
brother's inmost counsels. Behind these objections there was a latent
antipathy between James and his sister: she had lived with her mother
up to her marriage and from time to time after it, and had probably
imbibed a good deal of that lady's dislike of James ; certainly in March
102 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
1669, at the very beginning of the negotiations, Charles had found it
necessary to apologise to Henrietta for making James a party to them,
Nor would it be a wild conjecture to ascribe to James the wider principle
that he objected to the intrusion of women into public affairs; such
anti-feminism would have been in accord with his amorousness. That
James wrote to Monsieur asking him to allow Madame to make the
journey is of small importance, for the letter may easily have been
written at Charles's command. 1
A year later James appears to have taken the opposite view on the
relative importance of the Dutch war and the declaration on religion,
for he told the French ambassador that nothing should be allowed to
stand in the way of a war with Holland. In that same conversation he
revealed an attitude of mind which persisted throughout his political
life. He said that the affairs of the country had reached such a crisis
that he did not believe that a king and a parliament could exist together,
and that he was opposed to the summoning of Parliament until both the
Dutch war had been brought to a successful conclusion and the Catholic
Faith had been established in England; when that happy consummation
arrived "they would be in a condition to obtain by force, what they
could not obtain by mildness".
In the summer of 1670 James fell ill and went to Richmond for a
change of air. His biographer (who for this period may have been
Duchess Anne) says that "it showed signs of turning to consumption"
(a word of comprehensive meaning in those days) and that "he did not
recover until almost the end of the summer". But one independent
witness described him in the middle of July as being "well and at
Richmond", and stated that he had not had "anything to confine himself
to his chamber except a cold", and the Venetian ambassador called the
complaint merely a low fever. The matter is important in a biography
of James, for this is the only illness apart from trouble with his eyes in
France, the attack of small-pox in 1667 and a couple of hunting accidents
from which he suffered after his childhood. 2 The opponents of
1 According to James's biographer he did not arrive at Dover until Madame
had been there three or four days, during which time agreement on the pro-
visions of the treaty had been reached; but the facts are otherwise. May 15
was the first Sunday on which the meeting-houses were to be closed under the
second Conventicle Act; riots were feared, and Charles ordered James to remain
in London with the troops which were held in readiness at the Tower. But he
was able to be in Dover in time to put out to sea at dawn the following day, in
company with Charles, Prince Rupert and Monmouth, in order to meet the
flotilla which was accompanying Madame. He was again in London for several
days the following week-end, and that fact may account for the confusion in the
biographer's mind.
2 Long after James's death his widow, Mary Beatrice, told the nuns of
THE CONVERSION *3
Exclusion sometimes hinted that Charles was the better life and was
likely to survive James, but facts were against them, for Charles had
had at least two illnesses which had been considered dangerous.
James claimed to have been opposed to the Third Dutch War on the
grounds that it would unavoidably run Charles into debt, that to
recoup himself he would have to appeal to Parliament and that Parlia-
ment would not be likely to be in a good humour or to provide funds for
a war entered into without their advice and in alliance with France.
But the evidence to the contrary is sufficient. He certainly accelerated
the declaration of war by his action in despatching Sir Robert Holmes
in 1672 to intercept the Dutch Smyrna Fleet. This act of piracy which
achieved only a partial success perpetrated in European waters and in
time of peace, naturally exasperated the Dutch, and in March 1672 war
was declared.
Again James was placed in command of the English fleet, 1 but this
time he had the assistance of a French squadron under D'Estrdes. For
a second time he allowed himself to be taken by surprise in Southwold
Bay, and this time he blames his flag-captain, Cox, for advising him
against his own better judgement an admission which seems to
strengthen the view that James was not in effective command, but had
to submit to the advice of men with more experience. De Ruyter, who
was in command of the Dutch fleet, did not commit Opdam's mistake
by giving James time to form line and to get out to sea, but attacked at
once. The result was a confused battle which left neither fleet in a
condition to pursue the other back to its ports, but the general view
abroad inclined to the belief that De Ruyter had the better of the day.
English opinion concentrated on the behaviour of the French squadron,
which, for reasons that must remain obscure, took no active part in the
battle. This apparent betrayal of the alliance seriously increased the
hatred of the opposition in Parliament and their supporters for the
French alliance and decreased the popularity of the war; but in favour
of D'Estrees it may be urged that he was successful in neutralising part
of the Dutch fleet, for De Ruyter detached the Zeeland Squadron to
watch the French, and moreover James in his account of the battle lays
no blame on D'Estr6es.
James himself was again in the thick of the battle. He fought his
flagship, the Prince, until "her main-top-mast was shot by the board,
Chaillot "that during the twenty-eight years of their married life he had always
been in perfect health, that nothing upset him and that he was proof against
every sort of fatigue".
1 He again showed commendable activity in getting the fleet fitted out.
104 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
her fore topsail, her starboard main shrouds and all the rest of her
rigging and fighting sails shot and torn to pieces and above two hundred
of her men killed and wounded". He took boat and shifted his flag to
the St. Michael and fought his new ship till she had so much water in the
hold that she became unmanageable: then finally he transferred his flag
to the London. There were murmurs that James had been too careful of
his own life in leaving ships that were sorely pressed by the enemy; but
the general opinion in England was that he had acquitted himself well
and that if he had been properly supported by the French he would
have achieved a signal victory. A year later, after Rupert's unsuccessful
battle of June 7, it was said.that if James had been there things would
have gone better. Later again he had the high honour of a compliment
from Van Tromp (son of Blake's famous antagonist), who is said to have
told Charles in addition that "if the French had fought like the English
the Dutch fleet had been wholly ruined".
James returned with his fleet to the Nore, refitted it and vainly hung
about the Dutch coast in stormy weather, daring De Ruyter to renew
the engagement; then in August, sadly battered and with much sickness
on board, he returned to the River and hauled down his flag for the last
time. In the following January Charles sent Arlington to the French
ambassador to inform him that he had decided to appoint Prince Rupert
to the command of the fleet, adding with regard to James "that he has
no better nor more affectionate subject, that the close union which exists
between them is sufficient to smother any factions or cabals that may
break out in the kingdom", that if anything happened to James he would
be exposed to great risks, and that if both brothers died the next heir
would be William of Orange, "taking no account of the Duke's two
daughters". 1
The Test Act prevented James from taking part in the naval campaign
of 1673. But he was still in control at the Admiralty, and he cannot
escape all blame for the dispersion of the fleet which gave victory to the
Dutch.
But now affairs at home became for James even more important than
the war. In March 1672, during a parliamentary recess, tactically pro-
longed to keep opposition silent, Charles had issued his Declaration
of Indulgence, suspending all penal laws against Protestant Dissenters
and Popish Recusants and providing for the licensing of places of
worship for the former, and for the latter the celebration of their rites
in private houses. When in February 1673 Parliament reassembled they
1 In some quarters James was thought to have been dissatisfied with his
achievement in this battle and to have been anxious for an opportunity to
retrieve his reputation.
THE CONVERSION I0 5
were naturally incensed: only eighteen months previously they had re-
enacted the Conventicle Act and stiffened its terms, and the growth
of Popery they had made it their business to watch and to frustrate
by every means in their power. Charles put up a good fight, but
Arlington saw that if the King persisted there would be no supply,
while Louis feared that the dispute would endanger the success of the
Dutch War. They advised Charles to give way, and the Declaration
was accordingly withdrawn on March 7, in spite of James's advice to
adhere to it even at the risk of civil war. But Parliament were not content
with this partial victory; they proceeded immediately to make the
position both of the Protestant Dissenters and of the Catholics worse
even than it had hitherto been by passing before the end of the month
the famous Test Act, an Act which was not repealed until 1828, and
which, by imposing on all holders of office the duty of taking the Sacra-
ment according to the rites of the Church of England and of making a
declaration against transubstantiation, kept the administration in the
hands of churchmen or of Protestant Dissenters whose scruples did not
inhibit them from occasionally taking the Sacrament, for a hundred and
fifty years. Immediately after the passing of the Test Act, and as a com-
pensation for what the Protestant Dissenters had lost by that Act, a
Bill passed the House of Commons to grant them freedom of worship ;
this Bill was, however, lost in the Lords by the action of the bishops.
James took an active part in the debates on the Test Bill in the House.
For him the Act was a major disaster: he was not yet a professed
Catholic indeed, during the reign of his brother he never made such
open profession but he had, on grounds of conscience, ceased to take
the Sacrament in the English Church, and he could certainly not sub-
scribe to a declaration against transubstantiation. He had perforce to
lay down all his offices Lord High Admiral, Governor of Portsmouth
and Warden of the Cinque Ports and not only that, he was compelled
to make a tacit admission of his change of faith. He wept when in June
he returned his commissions to the King, but Charles betrayed no
emotion; he also ceased to attend Council, affected to be so disgusted
with public life that he had resolved to take no further part in it, hunted
frequently, and was so often seen displaying his melancholy visage in
St. James's Park that people flocked to see him there. He was popularly
known as Squire James, and there were rumours that he had taken a
house in Suffolk and was going to live there in seclusion with a company
of priests and fellow-papists. Actually he was biding his time: there
was no interruption in his attendance at Charles's inmost councils;
Clifford, the Lord Treasurer, had resigned with James in obedience to
the Test Act, but James had a great deal to do with the appointment of
IO6 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
his successor, Sir Thomas Osborne j 1 within seven months of the de-
livery of his commissions he was openly summoned to consultations by
the King; and a new Board of Admiralty was appointed consisting
entirely of his friends, so that his control of the Navy was in practice
undiminished. In the interlude of enforced abstention from public
activity he was engaged on a personal enterprise which decreased still
further his depleted stock of popularity his second marriage*
1 Sir Thomas Osborne was immediately given the Scottish peerage of Lord
Osborne of Aunblane, entered the English peerage as Lord Latimer, and very
shortly afterwards became Earl of Danby.
CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND MARRIAGE
ON March 31, 1671, died Anne Hyde, Duchess of York. She had
been in poor health for a considerable time, and her death appears to
have been due to the not uncommon cause that, feeling temporarily
better, she gave her appetite full rein. The most circumstantial account
of the pathetic deathbed scene is as follows :
By the best and truest intelligence she did not die as a Papalina,
but she made no profession or confession either way. Her last
acts were here: She dined heartily at Burlington House on
Thursday before, and that night according to custom she was
about three-quarters of an hour at her own accustomed devotions,
and at her return from Burlington House she called for her chap-
lam, Dr. Turner, to pray by her. The Queen and Duke were
private with her an hour or more on Friday morning and no
priest, but Father Howard and Father Patrick were attending to
their duty on the Queen in the next room. The Duke sent for the
Bishop of Oxford out of the chapel, who came, but her senses
were first gone. In the meantime the Duke called, "Dame, do you
know me?" twice or thrice; then with much stirring she said,
"I" (sic). After a little respite she took a little courage, and,
with what vehemency and tenderness she could, she said, "Duke,
Duke, death is terrible, death is very terrible," which were her last
words. I am well assured she was never without three or four
of her women, so that it was impossible a priest should come to
her.
Such an account in a private letter and with no motive for deception
demands respect, but there is ample evidence elsewhere that Anne
died a Catholic, and had been a Catholic for a year or more before her
death; and that Charles, when he heard of her conversion, was troubled
for the reputation of the royal family for sound churchmanship, and
demanded that she should keep it a secret. She also set the precedent
which Charles followed of leaving behind her a paper giving her reasons
for preferring the Church of Rome to the Church of England. Her
conversion was of later date than James's, but it is not necessary to con-
clude that she yielded to his influence, though such was the contemporary
belief: she had always been a religious woman, and there is slight evidence
107
IOS JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
that up to the time of his conversion James had felt strongly the claims
of religion; in these circumstances, and apart from Anne's undoubted
independence of mind, she would not have been inclined to listen to the
little that he would have to say he himself admitted his incompetence
in religious argument. It is probable that Anne took the step from
Anglicanism to Rome of her own volition. 1 Such a conjecture is in
accordance with her own statement, in the paper on religion which
she left behind her, that no one had attempted to induce her to change
her religion; but, on the other hand, that statement has small value,
for "to withdraw any subject to the Romish religion" was high treason,
and she would naturally have been anxious that James (or some other
person) should not suffer on this account.
In spite of the attempts at secrecy the air was full of rumours, and
Anne's father and her two brothers, all three stout Churchmen, were
dismayed: Clarendon wrote expostulatory letters both to James (whose
own conversion to Rome he did not suspect!) and to his daughter;
Henry, Lord Cornbury, was so upset that he refused to visit his sister
on her deathbed, and Laurence Hyde brought an Anglican divine with
him and vainly tried to have him admitted to the death-chamber.
It was now James's clear duty to marry again, and reasons of state
may be held to excuse the haste which was shown in providing Anne
Hyde with a successor. There was no prospect of issue by Catharine
of Braganza. James's only surviving children were Mary and Anne,
and it was to the public interest that there should be a male heir.
James's first flight of fancy showed that he had forgotten the troubles
and scandals of his first marriage, for he made his addresses to the
widowed daughter of Lord Belasyse, and actually proposed marriage
to her. The lady seems to have been like Anne Hyde in every way
a suitable match except in the important matter of her birth; the great
point in her favour was that she was a strong Protestant, though her
first marriage had been into a Catholic family. Charles made short
work of this match : he sent for James and told him that he had played
the fool once and was not going to be allowed to do it a second time.
James sighed as a lover and obeyed as a subject; he had loved Lady
Belasyse well enough to endow her with an annuity of 2000 a year
out of his Irish estate, but he promised Charles to submit "his fancy
and liberty in the choice of a wife to His Majesty's judgement and
election".
To supply details of the negotiations for a bride for James throughout
1 At the same time anxiety to consolidate her influence over James may have
been, if not, as Burnet asserts, the main reason, at least a contributory cause of
Anne's conversion.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE
the Courts of Europe would require more space than their historical
importance warrants. They provided a comedy whose richness was not
lost on Charles, though James preserved entire seriousness he was not
given to laughing at himself. The quest is admirably summed up by a
modern French historian:
The despatches of Croissy on the choice of the future Queen of
England are like the chapters of Rabelais on the marriage of
Panurge. The Duke decides, draws back, changes his mind;
shall it be a German, a French woman or an Italian? This princess
is suitable but she is very ugly; another is accepted but he suddenly
learns that she had red hair, and he hates red hair; the Princess
of Wurtemburg might have been chosen, but she has a harridan
of a mother, and "it would have been necessary to obtain a promise
that her mother would go into a monastery and never come to
England, very rough conditions to make with a mother-in-law ..."
Charles had no tolerance for James's insistence on beauty (perhaps
he felt that James was taking the sting out of his famous bon mot);
he told him that :
the more or less of beauty that a wife has, contributes nothing to,
and takes nothing from, the happiness of marriage, and in a week
one gets so accustomed to her face that it neither pleases nor dis-
pleases one.
But he was very anxious to get James safely married to someone
of suitable rank; he did not know what sort of new sister-in-law James
would produce for him if left to himself. He delivered himself at great
length to the French ambassador, he told him that he recognised two
prominent weaknesses in his brother on religion and on marriage that
the first had already produced effects enough, and that he had reason to
fear worse effects from it in the future; that he had found him since
Anne's death strongly inclined to a second marriage, and that he had
proposed to him all the princesses whom he believed to be friendly
to Louis's interests, knowing well that his brother's temperament
would inevitably lead him to a complete subordination to whatever
lady he might take for his wife. The Duchess of Portsmouth was also
very active; she was for a French match; this would please Louis,
and she supported successively a Guise and an Eljpeuf princess: but
James thought his cousin of Guise ugly and begged Louis not to
compel him to take a wife for whom he had an aversion, and the Elbeuf
heiress was of the Lorraine faction, and also too poor and too young
the last objection appears inconsistent with his final choice. The lady
110 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
whose name was for a long time at the head of the list was Claudia
Felicitas, Archduchess of Inspriick, and protracted negotiations
were carried on in regard to her with the imperial Court, for the
Emperor was her feudal superior and had the disposal of her hand;
orders were actually issued for the completion of the proxy marriage.
But these negotiations came to an unsatisfactory end through the dila-
toriness of Hapsburg diplomatic methods, and eventually the Emperor
lost his own wife and married Claudia Felicitas himself; so near was this
country to having a queen of that euphonious name.
At last the choice of Louis, with the acquiescence of Charles and
James, fell on Maria Beatrice, sister of the young Duke of Modena.
The Earl of Peterborough, who had been causing amusement by his
activities on the Continent as James's matrimonial agent, furnishing
him from time to time with reports on the personal qualities of the
candidates for his hand, was ordered to proceed to Modena and to
make a proposal in due form. But there were unforeseen difficulties :
the Princess was averse to marriage and wished to take religious vows
and to become a nun; she was then "but fifteen years old, and so
innocently bred that till then she had never heard of such a place as
England, nor of such a person as the Duke of York", and she was
scared at the prospect of great place; she was also apprehensive lest in
Protestant England she would not have full facilities for worshipping
God in the manner to which she was accustomed and which she be-
lieved to be the only acceptable manner. From Rome also came the
objection that James had not yet been received into the Church, and
Louis was asked to use his good offices with the Pope to procure the
necessary dispensation, and also with the dowager Duchess of Modena
to convince her that the dispensation was a mere matter of form and
need not delay the completion of the marriage contract. But the personal
objections were over-ruled and a promise was made to the bride that
she would have a public chapel in which she could arrange everything
to her liking; it was also decided to proceed with the marriage, in which
Peterborough acted as James's proxy, without waiting for a formal
dispensation from the Pope, who had, however, sent a "hortatory
breve" (elsewhere called an "honorific breve"), which we may under-
stand as a permission to proceed in anticipation of formal sanction. 1
1 The secret was well kept, for Lady Russell, who was in a position to get
the latest news, wrote to her husband on September 23, 1672 : "I will tell you the
news came on Sunday night to the Duke of York, that he was a married man;
he was talking in the drawing-room when the French ambassador brought the
letters in and told the news; the Duke turned about and said, 'Then I am a
married man.' It proved to be the Princess of Modena; for it was rather ex-
pected to be Canaples' niece."
THE SECOND MARRIAGE III
Immediately on Mary's arrival at Dover on November 21, 1673,
Nathaniel Crewe, the Bishop of Oxford, conducted what is surely
the most casual ceremony that has ever been dignified by the title of
marriage service under the laws of England.
The Bishop of Oxford first asked His Royal Highness if he had
the Bang's consent to marry Mary d'Este, Princess of Modena,
to which the Duke answered, "Yes". The Bishop then asked
Lord Peterborough if he had authority from His Majesty and power
from the Duke to contract the said marriage, and if his lordship
had observed all the instructions given him in that behalf. His
lordship answered, "Yes". The Bishop then asked the Duke if he
were content to marry Mary d'Este, Princess of Modena. The
Duke answered, "Yes". The Bishop then asked the Duchess if
she were content to marry James, Duke of York; she said "Yes"
(in French). The Bishop then declared them Man and Wife in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
In effect the pliant Bishop was content to recognise the proxy marriage
in a Catholic church as a true marriage; his reward was the rich See
of Durham, where he continued to serve James faithfully as long as
James was able to be of use to him; he was among the first to go over
to William after James's flight. Objections were made to the inadequacy
of the ceremonial, but there were few alternatives : Mary would possibly
have refused to be married in an English church, and a private, indeed
a secret, wedding in one of the authorised Catholic chapels that,
for instance, of the Queen at Somerset House would hardly have been
of sufficient dignity for the occasion. Moreover, there was need for
haste: it had been intended to get the marriage completed before
Parliament assembled and could raise objections; this plan had been
foiled by an indisposition in Paris which had delayed Mary's arrival,
but it was important that no more time should be lost.
The news of the proxy marriage was received with dismay through-
out England. Not only was the bride a Catholic, but it was suspected
that French influence had brought about the match and that the dowry
and jointure were to be furnished by Louis. On October 30, while
Mary Beatrice was on her journey through France, the marriage was
taken into consideration by the House of Commons. Charles tried to
cut short the debate by a sudden prorogation; but either by accident or
design proceedings were delayed in the Lords, and the Commons
were enabled, before they were summoned by Black Rod, to agree
on an address ;to the King against the consummation of the marriage.
To this address Charles's answer was inevitably that things had gone too
112 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
far for withdrawal. The Commons, on their reassembly, unabashed by
Charles's reply, presented a second address in much the same terms as
the first; to this Charles gave no answer. The behaviour both of
Charles and of Parliament in the matter of this marriage requires
explanation. The marriage of James to a Catholic was contrary to
Charles's policy of providing for the ultimate succession of Protestants
to the throne; 1 in pursuit of this policy he had forbidden James to
influence the religious education of Mary and Anne, under a threat
that they would be taken away from him, and was later to insist on
the baptism in an English church of Mary Beatrice's children as children
of the State. The dilatoriness of the House of Commons can be ac-
counted for only by the lack of co-operation between individual members
when the organisation of parties was in its infancy and there were no
recognised leaders. At any time during the two and a half years in
which James's remarriage was discussed, and when it was clear that
none but Catholic candidates would be considered for instance during
the session February 4 to March 29, 1673 it was open to the Commons
to address the King in general terms against a Catholic marriage. It is
possible that Charles would have rejected their address, but he could
hardly have had so good an answer to give them as he had when it was
obviously impossible to control events.
To James, now a man of forty, this marriage with a girl of fifteen
appeared, in view of her personal attractions, entirely suitable; 2 Peter-
borough, who was nearly fifty, was more than half in love with Mary
Beatrice himself. In his memoirs he wrote:
She was tall and admirably shaped; her complexion was of the
last degree of fairness, her hair black as jet, so were her eyebrows
and her eyes, but the latter so full of light and sweetness, as they
did dazzle and charm too. There seemed given to them by nature
a power to kill and a power to save ; and in the whole turn of her
face, which was of the most graceful oval, there were all the features,
all the beauty, that could be great and charming in any human
creature.
This is the language of infatuation, but others more critical found
little in her person that was displeasing, except certain gaucheries to be
expected in so young a girl and one who had spent most of her life in a
convent; and she was found to be intelligent. Nor are later opinions
less favourable: her chief fault was religious bigotry, and we may be
1 Charles's own marriage was, of course, at variance with this policy.
8 But Mary told the nuns of Chaillot that at first she could not love the Duke
of York: she wept whenever she saw him.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE 113
certain that on religious questions she never exercised her influence over
James in the direction of restraint and caution. The expressed doctrines
of the Church of Rome with regard to members of other churches are on
paper hostile and uncompromising; but some Catholics (regarded with
disfavour by their stricter Brethren) are, and always have been, far more
tolerant than they profess to be, and in practice they no more subscribe
to those doctrines than do members of the Church of England to the
implications of (for example) the Baptismal and Coronation Services;
but Mary Beatrice, and it may be added James also, gave a literal
interpretation to the doctrines of their Church and regarded Protestants
of all denominations as heretics who were in open defiance of God.
Danby once said that when the Archbishop of Rheims was in England
he went into our churches and knelt during the time of divine service,
but that James would not be persuaded so much as to come to the door.
Mary was generally held to be arrogant and imperious during the four
years in which she was Queen-Consort; she was prone also to the bour-
geois solecism of making public "scenes'* to achieve her private ends
and to reprove James's infidelities. But her bigotry proceeded from a
very real piety, and her haughtiness as Queen from her entire lack of
understanding of English society and politics a deficiency as marked
in her as it had been in her mother-in-law, Henrietta Maria. She was
at her best in adversity: during the troublous eight years which followed
her marriage she showed admirable spirit, achieving a great degree of
personal popularity by her wit and her gracious manners, and sharing
her husband's exile and the long journeys involved by land it was bad
enough, jolting over the execrable roads and in constant danger of being
held up by floods; but a sea voyage was torture to her, she was in-
variably sick, and a rough sea meant haemorrhage and actual risk to
life ; during the final exile her pride and constancy provide a welcome
contrast to the lethargy and imbecility to which James was reduced by
the shock of the Revolution.
The reception by Charles and Queen Catharine of the new Duchess
was all that she could have desired. Some of the ladies of the Court
were affronted at the distinguished civility extended to her mother,
Duchess Laura, in giving her a chair in the royal presence, and refused
to attend functions at which she was present so long as she was accorded
precedence to them. The poor woman had to keep her chamber during
the remaining festivities. James and Mary failed at first to secure the
favour of the reigning mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, who thought
they did not treat her with sufficient respect; later on Queen Catharine
objected that they showed too much respect to the Duchess. With
James's daughter Mary, her junior by four years, Mary Beatrice struck
114 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
up a warm friendship in this instance she kept her religious fervour
well in check and this friendship survived Mary's marriage four years
later with William of Orange; in October 1678, in charge of Lord
Ossory and accompanied by the Princess Anne and the Duchess of
Monmouth, she paid the Princess of Orange a visit at The Hague. 1
Outside Court circles, however, the marriage was not popular:
the Lord Mayor neglected to attend on the newly married couple with
the customary compliments of the citizens of London and there were
no bonfires. There was a spate of scurrilous lampoons which were issued
secretly and were passed from hand to hand Madame East was the
vulgar Anglicanism of the name of Mary d'Este as Madame Carwell
had been of that of Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth.
In such an atmosphere it would have been madness to have observed
the article of the marriage treaty which gave to the new Duchess the right
to a public chapel, it would have been impossible to prevent the mob
from disturbing the celebration of the Mass; Mary worshipped in
the private chapel at St. James's Palace, far from the eyes of zealous
Protestants, and she and James nursed a grievance at what they con-
sidered to be the perfidy of Charles.
James was undoubtedly fond of his new wife and shared this griev-
ance of hers; but it was out of his power to be faithful to her: within a
month of the marriage he was said to have renewed his relations with
Arabella Churchill. It says much for Mary Beatrice's forbearance
that James's lapses, which were not unknown to her, did not embitter
their habitual relations; two years later the Modenese envoy wrote to
his Court:
The Duke her husband loves her tenderly, and does nothing
without informing her. The King recognises her great spirit and
esteems it highly;
the French ambassador found it wise to keep on good terms with her
because of the power she wielded over James; and three years after
the marriage it is recorded:
The Duchess is much delighted with making and throwing of
snow-balls, and pelted the Duke soundly with one the other day
and ran away quickly into her closet and he after her, but she durst
not open the door.
Such games are not played by couples who are living in strained
relations.
1 The Duchess was accused of undertaking this journey in order to cover
the escape of "many priests, Jesuits and plotters", who had been concerned in
the Popish Plot.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE US
The second marriage of James was an outstanding event in the
growth of the national frenzy against the Catholics which was to find
satisfaction five years later in the death of the victims of the plot of
Titus Gates. Rumours of conspiracies by Catholics had been current
not long after the Restoration : in October 1666 Pepys wrote in his diary :
Some ugly knives like poignards, to stab people with, about
two or three hundred of them were brought in yesterday to the
House, found in one of the houses' rubbish that was burned, and
said to be the house of a Catholic. This and several letters out of
the country, saying how high the Catholics are everywhere and bold
in the owning of their religion, hath made the Commons mad,
and they presently voted that the King be desired to put all
Catholics out of employment and other high things.
The following month he relates that James had himself told him that
there were apprehensions at Court and elsewhere "that a fatal day is to
be expected shortly, of some great mischief; whether by the Papists,
or what, they are not certain", and simultaneously at Oxford Anthony
Wood wrote in his diary that "the papists are very insolent in most
parts of the nation; appear in public; contrive the massacring of many
. . . frequent at Oxford, frequenting scholars' company at the coffee-
house; I have mentioned their frequency here a year or more"; and
in May 1668 Pepys mentions that "all the town is full of talk of a meteor,
or some fire, that did on Saturday last fly over the City at night",
and that "the world do make much discourse of it, their apprehensions
being mighty full of the rest of the City to be burned, and the Papists
to cut our throats".
Through all these rumours run two common characteristics: the
flimsy evidence which in the popular belief connected the Catholics
with anything that seemed dangerous or ominous we have already
seen them accused of the Great Fire they even apparently went so
far as to ascribe the Dutch raid on the Medway to Catholic machina-
tions; the second point to be noticed is the dual accusation against
the Catholics: they were insolent in owning their faith, and at the same
time they were secretly plotting if they showed themselves and made
no secret of their religion, objection was raised that they were insolent,
boasting of something of which they ought to have been ashamed;
if they were not heard of, then they must be "working underground like
moles". The anti-Catholics would have found great difficulty in pro-
ducing a Manual of Behaviour suitable to Catholics; it was much easier
to take exception to anything the Catholics did than to indicate a line
of conduct which would give no offence to good Protestants. This
Il6 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
phenomenon has had a parallel at many times and in many countries
the nearest is probably the Jews in Nazi Germany where a religious or
political creed is so obnoxious to the Government or the people, or to
both, that the lives of the holders of it are rendered intolerable. The
penal laws against the Catholics then in force, in addition to the pro-
hibition of Catholic rites, can be summed up under four heads: to
attribute jurisdiction to the Pope was praemunire in the first offence,
high treason in the second; to harbour any Jesuit or priest was felony
without benefit of clergy; to withdraw any subject to the Romish re-
ligion was high treason both in the withdrawer and the withdrawn,
and a concealment of such withdrawal by a third party was misprision
of treason; and to send a child abroad for education by papists, or to
send money for this purpose, disabled the sender from any suit at
law and from holding property.
Such were the inhuman laws which were still unrepealed and which
were actually summarised in a royal proclamation on December 21,
1679. But there is no evidence that they were ever anything but a dead
letter, and even the periodical royal proclamation that they should be
put into force had no practical effect: Ruvigny, the Huguenot French
ambassador, told Pomponne, "Such orders are often given but not
carried out" ; and Sir William Temple expressed the opinion that it
would be an injustice to leave "priests to the law upon the accusation
of being priests only . . . since the connivance had lasted now through
three Kings' reigns" that is to say, since the death of Elizabeth. 1 Nor is
there any record that of the many priests who were known to the
authorities to be in England during the reign of Charles II a single
one was put to death merely for being a priest; indeed, during the trials
of Oates's Plot the courts did not proceed against them under the
penal laws, as they might have done with a great saving of trouble,
but condemned them on other grounds. Nevertheless the continued
existence of the Penal Laws and the reminder of their existence by royal
proclamation placed the Catholics before the law in a position inferior
to their fellow-countrymen and constituted a strong and legitimate
grievance. Furthermore, and in part arising from their inferior legal
position, there was a feeling in the courts that the testimony of Catholics
was unreliable, so much so that Gates in his trial for perjury in 1685
contented himself with making the one point against each of the prose-
1 There can be no doubt that the object of the Penal Laws was a general
prescription of the Old Faith. But when the Queen died they fell to a great
extent into desuetude. (See Clarendon's History* I 107, II 98, IV 353, V 56,
57.) Nevertheless, they were not entirely a dead letter. There were twenty-four
executions of priests (qua priests) before the Restoration and a number of
persons suffered death for harbouring priests.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE
cution witnesses that he was a Catholic and expected (though in this
he was disappointed) that the jury would ignore their evidence. Sir
Thomas Clifford wrote in his Commonplace Book :
There is generally such a prejudice against Catholics that they
are never heard : everyone from the cutpurse to the traitor speaks
for himself, but they are not permitted, and when any fault was
to be found with the Government in all revolutions the running
verse was they endeavoured to bring in popery. If there be a storm
they are likely to be thrown overboard and bear all blame, as Nero
burnt Rome and put it on the Christians.
Even before James's second marriage the fear of the Catholics and the
resentment against them had increased enormously. In May 1673 t ' ie
Duke of Buckingham conducted a recruiting campaign in Yorkshire
for the expeditionary force which was to be used against the Dutch.
So jealous were the commonalty there of Popery that a man
scarce would come into his Grace till he had gone and publicly
took the sacrament at York. The whole town do nothing but
pretend to jealousies of the growth of Popery, and have straight
reports from divers parts of Wales of their numerous meetings and
nightly trainings, and furnishing themselves with arms.
Shaftesbury in January 1674 tried to rouse the House of Lords by
telling them that there were in London and its neighbourhood more than
sixteen thousand Catholics ready to make a blow of despair and that
no one could be safe as long as these men were at liberty, and urged the
Lords seriously to take into consideration means to prevent a massacre
which might happen any day. This appears to have been Shaftesbury's
first venture into the field of anti-Catholic agitation ; a year earlier he
had been willing to support the King's Declaration of Indulgence which
accorded to the Catholics a modified toleration, from 1674 onward he
was their declared enemy, and he exploited the popular fears and
antipathies as a means towards the exclusion of James from the suc-
cession to the throne. At one time he was, or affected to be, in such
apprehension of assassination by the Catholics that he "caused his family
.to be armed, and kept constant watch all the summer, resolving to
sell his life at the dearest rate' ' . One symptom of the excitement prevalent
in the month of the marriage was a great increase of activity on Guy
Fawkes' Day, and on the birthday of Queen Elizabeth, when many
"Popes" were burned.
At this distance of time it is easy to see that there was no real ground
for these apprehensions : there were only about twelve thousand adult
Il8 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Catholics in a population of over five million, 1 and most of them were
desirous of nothing except to live quietly and in the full exercise of their
religion, and those who were prepared to support even the most peace-
ful agitation against the penal laws were extremely few. Their numbers
were negligible, but they were regarded as the spearhead of a great
propagandist power overseas whose expressed intention was the
subversion of the existing polity of the country: "If the Pope gets his
great toe into England," said Sir John Knight in the House of Commons,
"all his body will follow." The strength of the existing order rested on
the strong anti-Catholic bias of the English people; without such
a bias the incoming tide would have been irresistible. But in England
in the 1670*8 not only were the Catholics socially important in pro-
portion to their numbers they were enormously over-represented
in the House of Lords but the King's brother and intimate adviser,
who was also heir to the throne, was to the public eye a declared
Catholic, as were the King's public mistress and a number of the
habituees of the Court. The most prominent of these last notably
Richard Talbot and Father Patrick yielded to popular clamour and
went into obscurity in the autumn of 1673. But James and the Duchess
of Portsmouth remained, James by his presence keeping alive the
dread of danger from Rome, the Duchess personifying another and
more real danger from the immense growth of the power of France.
James, and Charles still more, realised the dangers of the situation.
James affected not to understand what all the fuss was about ; he declared
that his conversion was his own affair and that he had no intention of
interfering with the religion of anybody else the Grand Design was
momentarily out of his mind; and he was suddenly alive to his own
unpopularity, which, hidden under forms and ceremonies, had hitherto
escaped his notice:
Before that time he was looked upon as the darling of the nation,
for having so freely and so often ventured his life for the honour
and interest of the King and Country, and for having been always
1 Courtin says 12,000 Catholics, but it seems probable he meant adult
males, see A. Browning, Life and Letters of . . Dariby, Ch. x, quoted by Ogg.
Brian Magee (The English Recusants, pp. 169 et seq.) states that from the Parlia-
mentary Lists of Papists for 1680 that Catholic gentlemen were 7j per cent, of
the total number of gentlemen; but he has found so many omissions among the
lists of peers, baronets and knights that he conjectures that 10 per cent, would
be a more accurate figure. It would be impossible to accept either percentage
without careful scrutiny of his sources, and his further contention that the
percentage for the whole nation was the same as that for the gentry is totally
inadmissible. Amongst the gentry family tradition operated far more strongly
than among the middle and lower classes to keep people staunch to their
old faith.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE IIQ
so active and industrious in carrying on everything either as to
trade or as to navigation that might tend to their advantage:
but no sooner was the alarm given of his being turned Papist, when
all these merits were blotted out of their memory, and he set
upon on every side as the common enemy.
After James had begun to absent himself from the public celebration
of the Sacrament and had resigned his offices rather than declare against
transubstantiation, his unpopularity had, as he says, greatly increased
(though he never had been "the darling of the nation"), and it was with
difficulty that he was restrained at this very time from reducing himself
to extremity by making a public declaration of his change of faith; 1
the signatories of the Treaty of Dover agreed that he had ruined the
Grand Design by his premature zeal.
To Charles James's adhesion to the hated Faith was a great nuisance,
a frustration of his dreams of a time when the country would be quiet
and contented, and he himself relieved of external control and free to
live his own life in his own way. Already he had heard the first rumblings
of the storm which was to rage so violently six years later the demand
for James's exclusion from the succession. To Colbert de Croissy,
the French ambassador, Charles said in the presence of James and
Arlington,
that all that has happened from time past has so embittered every
one against the Duke of York that there will be furious resolutions
against him in the coming parliament, unless the peace [with the
Dutch] is concluded before the time at which they must assemble ;
and that in all appearance they would go so far as to demand the
exile of the Duke of York and an act which should exclude for ever
all Catholic princes from the English crown ;
and the ambassador goes on to say that he had already heard similar
forecasts from other sources. Charles knew his brother too well to
hope that he could be brought to conform to the National Church:
two foreign Protestants who were in England about this time pressed
Charles to do what he himself most desired to do, and received replies
memorably phrased : to Schomberg, who was in command of the troops
which had been raised for the Dutch war, Charles said, "You know my
brother long ago, that he is as stiff as a mulct" ; to Ruvigny, Colbert's
successor, "if it were not for my brother's folly (la sottise de monfrkref
1 He had been barely dissuaded from this course of action two years earlier.
2 An expression, according to Bolingbroke, used by Charles on many
occasions.
120 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
I could get out of all my difficulties." This view of the situation was
becoming increasingly obvious to everyone and it was frequently
expressed by Charles to the French ambassador, the sole repository
for confidences of this kind. About this time commenced the series of
attempts by well-meaning persons to persuade James again to become
a Protestant. The first attempt was made by Shaftesbury (not yet
alienated from James), and among others who took up the vain quest
were Burnet and Stillingfleet. Others of his friends advised him to
withdraw from the Court and to live for a time in the country. But he
felt himself unsafe from insult anywhere in England away from the
King's protection; besides, the country was dull, there was nothing
to do there except "to hunt and to pray", and he enjoyed his activities
at the centre of government and regarded them as valuable to the
State.
In the month of the completion of James's marriage, almost exactly
in the middle of Charles's reign, occurred an event of tremendous
importance the dismissal from the Lord Chancellorship of the Earl
of Shaftesbury. Thenceforward he was in opposition to the Court,
an opposition which was based on a widespread hostility to James and
the Catholics and which increased in intensity as time went on, and the
troubles of the following years, in which James was the chief victim,
were due almost entirely to Shaftesbury's skilful leadership of the anti-
Court party. 1 As members of the Cabal administration James and
Shaftesbury were in opposite camps ; but their personal relations were,
as far as we know, cordial, and as late as January 1673 Shaftesbury
had, in order to oblige James, gone out of his way to support Colonel
Werden's parliamentary candidature for the City of Chester. But since
the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence Shaftesbury had
found himself increasingly at variance with the royal policy; a man of
his acute intelligence could not but be aware that the King's real
intention in pressing for toleration was to favour the Catholics and
whatever may be thought of Shaftesbury as a man of principle, he was
at any rate a strong and unwavering Protestant ; it was further alleged
(on doubtful authority, however) that Arlington, to serve his own ends,
had divulged to him the terms of the real Treaty of Dover, and if this
allegation has good foundation, the resentment which Shaftesbury
1 For a few months in 1679 Shaftesbury was President of the Council
which Charles set up to take the place of the Privy Council, but in October
of that year he was finally dismissed from public office. There is nothing new
to be said on the subject of Shaftesbury's character. It is certain that he was a
man of principle, especially on the subject of toleration to Protestant dissenters ;
it is equally true that he was unscrupulous in the means he employed to attain
worthy ends.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE 121
felt at the deception which had been practised on him sufficiently
accounts for, and to a great extent excuses, his subsequent conduct.
There is a story almost certainly invented in the years in which
James and Shaftesbury were declared enemies, and when James had
outlived his reputation for physical courage to the effect that on one
occasion when Charles was to appear officially in the House of Lords,
Shaftesbury found his place as Lord Chancellor on the Bang's right
usurped by James; there was some discussion, and "at length the Duke
was obliged to submit, but said in a passion, 'My Lord, you are a rascal
and a villain.' He with great composure replied, 'I am much obliged to
Your Royal Highness for not calling me likewise a coward and a
Papist.' " The story is very ingenious, hitting off exactly the characters
of the two men, for James was liable to sudden bursts of anger, and
Shaftesbury's reply accords with his reputation for self-command
and ready wit; unfortunately it depends upon the fact that Shaftesbury
was still Lord Chancellor, and the relations between the two men did
not become strained until a later date. It seems not improbable that the
story had its rise in an incident in the House of Lords mentioned by the
Venetian Ambassador in January 1674:
The Duke of York has been deeply hurt by the declaration of
the peers that as heir presumptive to the Crown he must take the
oath of allegiance like the rest; to which the ex-Lord Chancellor
added that His Royal Highness must sit on the Duke's bench and
not in the chair on the King's left hand, the place destined for the
Prince of Wales.
On James's side Shaftesbury's steady Protestantism must have become
increasingly irksome, and no doubt he felt Shaftesbury's unexpressed
disapproval of his marriage. The cleavage between the two sections
of Charles's inner council had grown so wide that the King called them
together with the purpose of not listening to them and Ministers gave
their opinion with the purpose of not being understood. Charles spoke
to James of gaining time by these methods; James retorted that he was
not gaining but losing time, and urged him to dismiss the Opposition
leaders; James is also said to have sent for Shaftesbury and to have told
him to his face that he was a madman. However, Charles was at last
prevailed on to dismiss Shaftesbury.
When Clifford resigned the office of Lord Treasurer, because he could
not take the oaths prescribed by the Test Act, James had a good deal
to do with the appointment of his successor, Sir Thomas Osborne.
He claimed to have raised Osborne "from insignificance to the height of
power" an extravagant claim when we remember that his first appoint-
122 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
ment as Treasurer of the Navy had been generally regarded as a snub
to James but it is probable that at the beginning of his career as Lord
Treasurer he considered James as his patron and looked to him for support.
At that time there was close association between the new Minister,
James and the Duke of Lauderdale, who formed a triumvirate which
governed Charles's counsels during the four years 1674-1677. They
were all three ardent royalists, but Danby's royalism was of a very
different stamp from James's: James was averse to parliaments of any
kind. Danby's aim was to strengthen the monarchy by a parliament
predominantly Anglican and Cavalier.
The two Ministers knew they were unpopular in Parliament an
address asking Charles to dismiss Lauderdale was presented by the
House of Commons in January 1674 and that they derived their only
support from the King; and James was by this time well aware that he
had no party except in the Court. In foreign politics Lauderdale did
not play a large part and, as far as can be known, had no settled con-
victions; but Danby, though he kept it in abeyance, had strong anti-
pathy to the French. Both Ministers were at variance with James on the
question of religion, for their sympathies were entirely Protestant.
The triumvirate was, for purposes of foreign policy at any rate, in effect
a council of four; for successive French ambassadors had constant
access to the King, the Duke and the Ministers, and, as is evident
from their despatches, were in possession of all the secrets of Govern-
ment, even of those which Charles thought fit to keep from his other
counsellors. This fact was not unknown to the party in opposition,
and was one of their most legitimate grievances.
The divergence of principle on the question of religion threatened to
break up the alliance when it had been in existence for little more than
a year. In 1 674 Charles issued one of his periodical proclamations putting
into strict operation the penal laws against the Catholics. Immediately
after the Council meeting at which it had been decided to issue the
proclamation Danby and Lauderdale waited on James, and were
given a hot reception : the two Ministers declared that they had done
their best to prevent the proclamation from being issued, but James
refused to believe them ; he treated them to a harangue on the principles
of toleration and the crime of persecuting persons of tender conscience,
and told them that they had committed this crime for the sake of gain-
ing favour in Parliament and that they had "so violently furthered a plan
which placed the King among rocks and himself in the midst of preci-
pices" ; then, "with reproaches for their ingratitude and insincerity",
he dismissed them. Ruvigny, the French ambassador, similarly re-
ported to Louis that Danby and Lauderdale had been the chief pro-
THE SECOND MARRIAGE 123
moters of this proclamation, that their action had given small satisfaction
to James, and that the enemies of the Ministers, who had hitherto been
James's enemies as well, were now courting him in the hope of de-
priving the Ministers of his support. Ruvigny was afraid that these
intrigues would be successful, though he was not slow to remind James
of his own principles to depend upon the King and not upon Parlia-
ment, and to leave to the King the prerogative of dismissing Ministers ;
but, he says :
It is to be feared that the resentment of this Prince, who cannot
endure insults, will oblige him to revenge himself on these two
lords and to abandon them to the passions of the parliament. . . .
This Highness cannot disown this principle [the King's right to
dismiss ministers] but he is so excited with the pleasure of vengeance
that there is reason to fear that he will give his support to the plan
to renew the accusations which have been made against Lauderdale
and to commence them against Danby.
Towards the end of the following year there was a further breach
between James and Danby (Lauderdale meanwhile having apparently
lost importance) over the question of. the dissolution of Parliament.
James was strongly of opinion that Parliament should be dissolved,
in the hope, perhaps, that a new Parliament would be more amenable
than the present one, and, backed by Ruvigny's successor, Courtin,
worked hard to that end. In opposition to him Danby was advising
Charles to summon Parliament at an early date. 1 This time it was the
ambassador, fearful lest a Parliament would force Charles to break
with France, who was advising James to break with Danby; he told
James that he should try to persuade Danby to his own way of thinking,
and that if he did not succeed he should tell Danby frankly that he
would not only cease to be known as his friend and to bear part of the
hatred he had incurred, but would make use against him of the Parlia-
ment he was so anxious to have assembled by putting himself at the head
of Danby's enemies ; Courtin further advised James, if this threat was
insufficient to frighten Danby, to communicate with "the chiefs of
those who were known as the Confederates that is to say, Shaftesbury
and Hollis and with all Danby's enemies, who were eager for a dissolu-
tion and for the election of a new Parliament" and to let them know
what he had said to Danby.
But James's mind moved incredibly slowly: eighteen months earlier
Ruvigny had, at great labour, convinced him of the unwisdom and dis-
1 Burnet says that Shaftesbury was at this time endeavouring to widen the
breach between James and Danby,
124 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
loyalty of the very same course of action as that to which Courtin was
now urging him; at first, indeed, he promised Courtin to take his advice,
but in spite of repeated reminders he failed to implement his promise,
and after the scheme had been under discussion for over two months he
told the ambassador that he would not enter into any intrigue contrary
to the King's interests and intentions, adding, however, that he had no
particular understanding with Danby and that he would always be
ready to give the King the advice he thought best for his service. He
continued until late in the year 1677 to work against Danby for the
dissolution, but by February of that year he was no longer contemplat-
ing adopting Courtin's plan and was working with Danby in the manage-
ment of Parliament, and in October Barrillon, Courtin's successor, said
that James had several times spoken to him of Danby with esteem,
and had said that Danby was exposed to the intrigues of Arlington,
the most adroit courtier in England, and of others who had the King's
ear, but that he was an able man, and if he were not crossed he would be
an eminently successful Minister.
Courtin's plan, however, simmered in James's mind, and he attempted
to put it into operation in April 1678 that is to say, he approached
the leaders of the opposition to the Court behind Danby's back and
without, as Courtin had proposed, trying to gain his ends by privately
threatening the Minister. Danby had exasperated James in the late
autumn of 1677 by promoting the marriage of Princess Mary to William
of Orange, but what his fresh offence was does not appear; possibly he
had continued to advocate war against France when James had already
advised Charles to accept Louis's terms. By that time, however, there
was evidence of a personal estrangement; Louis in his instructions
to Courtin, when he took up his Embassy in the spring of 1676, noted
signs in Danby of a desire to be independent of James, whose slow-
moving mind must constantly have galled the Minister's quick intelli-
gence; and towards the end of the same year Danby and Lauderdale
began to be frightened at their own unpopularity: they began to realise
that James as an ally was a liability rather than an asset, for he loaded
them with the imputation of being lukewarm on the subject of religion.
Courtin certainly thought they were looking for an opportunity to show
themselves zealous Protestants, and even to save themselves by taking
the lead in the coming parliamentary attack on James; in May 1677
Sir John Reresby had had a conversation with Danby in which Danby
had spoken of James in disparaging terms, and in September 1677
it was said that "the Duke and the Lord Treasurer are far from being
friends". There are two mutually contradictory accounts of the
abortive negotiations between James and the opposition leaders.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE 125
Shaftesbury left among his papers a long confidential memorandum
on the condition of public affairs in the spring of 1679 ; in the memoran-
dum it is stated that James sent Sir Thomas Littleton and Sir John
Baber to Shaftesbury and two of his associates (probably Lord Russell
and Lord Hollis), offering to "procure the dissolution of this Parliament
and the calling of a new one and the removal of the Treasurer, and
thereupon desired to know what the King and he might expect in
return for so great a benefit by him obtained unto the whole kingdom" ;
and that the reply was to the effect that the three lords agreed that what
was proposed was eminently desirable, but that they could not fetter
their liberty by entering into any engagement as to their future conduct.
James's own version is preserved in his memoirs: he says that Lord
Russell and others proposed to him that in return for his assistance in
prosecuting Danby and getting him dismissed, "they would undertake
to remove the incapacity under which he lay of being High Admiral
or exercising any public office, and do anything else that might be for his
satisfaction" ; and that he replied in a lofty tone scorning the possibility
of his "falling upon the King's Minister without the King's consent,
unless he were visibly guilty of some great misbehaviour". The former
account is contemporary and not, as far as we know, composed for
publication, the latter is what James wished posterity to believe. It is
very improbable that Lord Russell ever contemplated absolving
James from the penalties of the Test Act, and quite impossible that
Shaftesbury could believe that he could put such a proposition before
his followers without breaking up the party. On the other hand, we
shall see that a year later James thought that Shaftesbury might be won
back to the Court party, and he was quite capable of believing that the
principles of the country party were rooted little deeper than in personal
animosity against Danby. 1
In 1676 James, yielding no doubt to steady pressure exerted for over
two years by Mary Beatrice, decided to cease to attend the services
of the Church of England, as from 1672 he had absented himself from
the Sacrament. He made a semi-public declaration that "he would
never more come under the roof of Whitehall Chapel", and it was
1 Osmond Airy, however (Charles II, pp. 305-306), without giving references,
states that in the late summer of 1675 Shaftesbury and James had entered into
a close alliance, which included Louis, to counteract Danby*s scheme of
Cavalier Anglicanism, and that James had received 20,000 from France for
distribution at the end of the session, on condition that Parliament took no
action hostile to France. "Louis had tricked both Charles and the Commons
by this intrigue, which was carried out in the profoundest secrecy/' In spite of
this weighty opinion to the contrary, I hold that it was not in James's nature to
pursue a line of policy secret from Charles and hostile to his interests.
126 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
generally known that at Easter he had taken the Sacrament in accord-
ance with Roman rites. This action raised a fresh storm about James's
ears: whatever slight doubt there had lingered in the public mind
as to his change of faith had now vanished; nothing was discussed
but the new situation, parsons all over the kingdom preached that the
Church was in danger and that it was Louis's aim to ruin it ; the prevalent
sentiment was one of fear of what James might do if he came to the
throne: "the whole of England apprehends that a Prince who is capable
of exposing himself to the risk of losing a crown for the sake of his zeal
for the Catholic religion, will carry things to all lengths in order to
establish it". To Charles James's virtual declaration of his conversion
was a severe blow: he showed his exasperation by telling his friends
that James had ruined all his plans and that his misfortunes were
entirely due to him; in an interview with Courtin he exclaimed with
unwonted heat that his brother had got himself into a mess from which
it would be a great trouble to extract him, and he repeated an opinion
that he had previously expressed, that if he were to die James would not
be able to remain a week in England. 1
The suggestion was revived that James should voluntarily withdraw
from the Court until the excitement had subsided, and Danby sent the
Earl of Bristol to him to try to persuade him to that course. James
was unwilling to go, and he received strong support from Charles in his
refusal. In spite of his anger against his brother he could not do without
him: he said that the religious question was only a pretext, and that the
real object of Parliament was to separate him from James, "who is
the only person in England in whom I can have entire confidence"
no one but James knew the whole of Charles's commitments with Louis,
even Danby, who, Charles said, was a thoroughly honest man and who
served him faithfully, and was in these respects "alone in England with
the Duke of York", was not in complete possession of the secret. The
ambassador strove to strengthen Charles in his resolution to keep
James at his side, for James, besides being "the firmest support the
King had within his kingdom", was very valuable to the French
interest, he was as much attached to Louis as Charles was and had more
firmness and application to business ; Charles was ready to listen to his
advice and was by him confirmed and maintained in the resolutions
he had taken; moreover James was bound to France by his interests
as a Catholic: "Nothing is so important for Your Majesty's interests,"
wrote Courtin to Louis, "as to prevent the withdrawal from public
1 A considered judgement of Charles is reported that James would not be
able to keep his crown for more than four years ; but authority appears to be
lacking. It is possibly a prophecy invented after the Revolution.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE 127
business of the Duke of York; if such an event took place the King of
England surrounded on all sides by the enemies of France will be
forced to follow the advice of his minister in order to get money from
parliament and at the same time to please his subjects/'
Meanwhile Danby was constant in his advice that Parliament should
be summoned ; the treasury was empty and the Navy had been allowed
to fall into decay and must be refitted. "In order to shut his mouth",
James, with equal constancy, urged on the ambassador the necessity
of subsidies from France. Charles up to this time at any rate had visions
of a day when he should come to that point of agreement with Parlia-
ment in which they would supply him with money sufficient for his
needs, but experience had only hardened James in his conviction
that Monarchy and Parliament could not exist together. The basis
of government was to him (as far as he considered the matter on broad
lines) that Louis should provide sufficient funds to supplement the
King's hereditary income and the revenues granted to him for life;
but it is difficult to believe that he was of opinion that such a temporary
expedient could ever form part of a permanent system. Perhaps he
did not look so far ahead.
CHAPTER VII
WILLIAM AND MARY
THE marriage of James's elder daughter Mary to his nephew William
of Orange, son of his sister Mary, was the outcome of protracted
negotiations. The first hint of the possibility of the match was made
in the winter of 1670-1671, when William was twenty and Mary in her
ninth year. By the autumn of 1673, when England was still at war with
Holland, it had become a matter of common talk, and the anti-popish
party had made it an object of policy. In February 1674 the Third
Dutch War came to an end, and it was expected that negotiations
for the marriage would immediately commence. Charles from the
first regarded the match favourably; he had a high opinion of William
and he thought that such a matrimonial alliance would tend to the
stability of affairs in Europe; more particularly he hoped to render
James less unpopular and so to diminish his own troubles and "to
regain the authority he had lost and to reign peaceably for the remainder
of his life". But he did not take Louis's point of view into account
neither Charles nor James appears to have come near to realising
Louis's obsession with the northern frontier of France and the thought
that Louis hated William as an obstacle to his dreams of territorial
expansion never entered their heads. James, however, saw that if the
marriage took place while the French were still at war with the Dutch,
Charles might be regarded as taking a side hostile to Louis, and he
stipulated that peace should be concluded before there was any definite
contract of marriage.
But James had another reason for wishing for delay. In 1 673 Canaples,
an attache at the French Embassy, had hinted to him that a marriage
might be arranged between Mary and the Dauphin of France ; how far
this suggestion was made seriously and how far it was merely a cynical
attempt to play on James's feelings does not appear. But James seized
on the plan eagerly : nothing could more fully satisfy his ambition than
to see his daughter married to the heir to the crown of France, and the
fact that she would of necessity become a Catholic no doubt added to
the attractiveness of the project. In April 1674 Ruvigny, the French
ambassador, had a conversation with James which he reported to
Louis. James told the ambassador that he had not thought of the marriage
with the Dauphin until Canaples had made the first overture, but it
was clear to Ruvigny that he had since thought of it a great deal. James
128
WILLIAM AND MARY I2Q
said that Charles had spoken to him of the match with William on the
way to Newmarket and that there was a party at Court, headed by
Arlington and Ormonde, who were trying to press it on ; but he was doing
all he could to prevent a decision so as to keep open the scheme for the
French match. Ruvigny told James
that he had other strong reasons to fear the conclusion of this
marriage as he feared death, that he should regard the Prince of
Orange as the idol of the English people, and that such a son-in-law
would inevitably prove his ruin.
He said further, and James agreed with him, that Arlington in sup-
porting the match was governed by ulterior motives, among them, no
doubt, a desire to steal a march on Danby. James said that it would
not be difficult to postpone decision, as Mary was not yet twelve years
old. "But," says Ruvigny, "I knew that what he said to me was always
in the hope of having the Dauphin, for he mentioned him from time to
time." Ruvigny said he saw no reason for undeceiving James about the
French match; indeed, it would have been difficult to undeceive him,
so fixed was the idea in his mind ; he did, however, go so far as to tell
James that the match would be so unpopular in England as to lead to a
revolution, "for the English would never expose themselves to the risk
of seeing the heir to the throne of France reigning over them". 1 The
ambassador concludes his letter with words of satisfaction at what he
has done to counteract the persuasions of Charles. What seems clear
from this account is that James had kept his ambition for his daughter
as a secret locked in his own heart and known to no one except the
French diplomatists, and that in particular he had not discussed it with
Charles; he probably knew all about it, saw through the artifice and was
convinced that James had been played with. On receipt of Ruvigny's
report the French Court suggested a match between Mary and Francis
Louis, Prince of Conti, Conde's nephew, but Ruvigny dared not broach
the project to James, for he knew that he would have rejected it in a
rage as a poor substitute for what he had hoped for.
In November 1674 Arlington, with Ossory as his companion, was
sent on a special mission to The Hague. The object of the mission
was the settlement of a number of questions arising out of the peace
which had been concluded at the beginning of the year, but Charles
1 As late as the eve of the marriage of William and Mary, Charles said that
certain opposition members of Parliament had made their peace with him on
the news of the marriage, "for they had been persuaded that a resolution had
been taken to marry the Dauphin to Princess Mary" and that England would
become a province of France.
130 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
was aware that the question of the marriage might arise. He said that he
was willing to do anything to secure William to his interests, that the
marriage was "the only thing capable of helping the Duke" and that he
had spoken to James, who, as became one "who professed to be his
brother's first and most obedient subject", had given his consent
"upon the Prince of Orange's desiring it". When Arlington .and Ossory
had returned to England, James, through a misreading of Ossory's
report, concluded that he had been over-eager and had made an offer
of Mary's hand; Ossory was able to point out the error, but James
refused to be convinced. William had mentioned the scheme of the
marriage only to lay it aside; he was at that time in no haste to take it
up: he had been captain-general of the United Provinces since the
early spring of 1672 and became Stadtholder of the province of Holland
four months later, and the assassination of the brothers De Witt in
August of that year had left him in a predominant position in the country ;
the English Court was known by the Dutch to be in friendly relations
with Louis, with whom the Dutch were still at war, and William no
doubt felt that the proposed matrimonial alliance would create mis-
understandings in the minds of his fellow-countrymen.
The next move in the projected marriage was made by Sir William
Temple, who had a rather cryptic exchange of remarks with James on
the subject when he was starting for The Hague in the spring of 1675
and a year later had a two hours' conversation with William in the
gardens of Honslaerdyck. William stated his public objection to the
match, which was that as things were in England he hesitated to ally
himself with Charles and James lest he should be thought to support
their domestic policy and should incur unpopularity; on the personal
side he said that he himself might be difficult to live with, but he could
not contemplate marriage with "one to give him trouble at home",
in view of the immense public troubles that he saw ahead of him.
Temple reassured him on both points: he said that Charles was very
safely seated on the throne and that it was necessary only to satisfy the
Court (Temple had no great understanding or facility in home affairs),
but that if circumstances should alter, "the most seditious man in
England would be hard put to it to find an ill side in such a match".
And he could give perfect reassurance with regard to Mary's character:
his wife and sister knew Mary's governess intimately, and, from what
they had learned from her and from what he had himself observed, he
had formed the highest opinion of the young Princess.
These arguments seem to have sunk into William's mind, for when,
in the autumn of the following year, he paid a visit to England, he was
fully determined to marry Mary if he could get her on his own terms,
WILLIAM AND MARY 13!
a determination which was strengthened by seeing her for the first
time since she had left the nursery. William's position in the United
Provinces had altered for the worse in the three years which had elapsed
since the embassy of Arlington and Ossory. The lack of striking success
in his struggle with Louis had disappointed the Dutch, and he had
offended their republican susceptibility by ill-judged and premature
action to improve his political status, which had been suspected as an
attempt at monarchy. He was yet far from the position he achieved at
the end of his life, when it could be said of him (with, however, only
an approximation to the truth) that though he was only Stadtholder in
England, he was King in Holland. He was more inclined than formerly,
therefore, to any course which might strengthen the Dutch externally
and raise his prestige at home.
James was suspected of a strong dislike to the match, but there can
be no doubt that he liked William ; when his visit was determined on he
sent him a very cordial letter of welcome, and when he arrived he in-
stalled him in his own lodgings at Whitehall. He had also probably
rid himself of the illusion that he could marry Mary to a Catholic,
and if she was to have a Protestant husband he was quite content that
William should be the man. Louis was strong in opposition to William's
visit; he was anxious to secure an advantageous peace with the Dutch,
but he did not think that a personal discussion between the Stadtholder
and his uncles would serve that end, and under his instructions Barrillon
did what he could to have the invitation cancelled. The ambassador
also tried in vain to sound James as to his personal views : James told
him that he would take no important step without consulting Louis,
but he avoided saying that he had any aversion to the match.
William arrived at Newmarket on October 9, and it was nine days
before he began to discuss the marriage or any other business ; but he
paid great court to James and was present regularly at his coucher
and very often at his levde. Barrillon began to think that his object in
coining was not the marriage but an alliance with England to provide
for the future, though he could hardly expect to engage the King and
Duke to declare against Louis. But on the i8th William abruptly
approached James on the subject of the marriage ; James was shocked,
as was Charles also, at William's brusque methods, and told him that
there were many things to be discussed before the question of the
marriage could be raised. To Barrillon James declared with heat that
his nephew was "a self-opinionated man, who took advice from no one
and had been badly brought up", and that there could be no question
of the marriage until peace had been concluded; James also reiterated
his promise to take no step without Louis's advice. But the ambassador
132 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
was again disappointed that James had not taken the opportunity to
state a personal view against the marriage.
Charles and James had hoped to use the marriage as a bribe to induce
William to accept Louis's terms of peace. William had no motive for
conciliating Louis, he knew nothing of the secret treaty of the previous
year, and he wanted the marriage to take place at once so that his de-
clared friendship with the English Court should give him an ad-
vantage in the negotiations for peace. Temple was called in to mediate:
he found William rigid in his determination to marry Mary before the
peace or not at all, and in despair when he learnt that the royal brothers
were equally determined on the other side, Temple said, "He was in the
worst humour ever I saw". But Danby saw in the marriage a great
opportunity to diminish his own unpopularity, on grounds of policy
he was attracted by a project adverse to the French interest, and he
advised Charles to give way; there was also a danger, amounting almost
to a certainty, that, if William were allowed to return home without
at least a contract of marriage, Charles would be forced into it by
popular clamour, and so lose the access of popularity that would follow
action on his own initiative. Charles sent Temple to James to inform
him that he had decided to accept William's terms ; James was shocked,
but he recovered himself sufficiently to say, "The King shall be obeyed,
and I would be glad all his subjects would learn of me to obey him:
I do tell him my mind freely upon any thing; but when that is done,
and I know his pleasure upon it, I obey him." Temple returned to the
Prince, who at first refused to believe him, but when he was convinced
that he was speaking the truth he embraced him "and said I had made
him a very happy man".
This was on October 20, 1677, and the following afternoon James
took Mary aside and told her what Fate had in store for her, "where-
upon her Highness wept all that afternoon and the following day".
In the evening the Privy Council were informed of the decision, James
made them a little speech to the effect that his chief end in all his actions
was the security of the kingdom and that he would never interfere in
the religious education of his children, and the news and the speech
were well received; a few days later he made a similar speech in the
House of Lords. The marriage was solemnised on November 4 at nine
o'clock at night in Mary's bedchamber, only James, Mary Beatrice and
the King being present; Charles punctuated the service with small
jests, and "at eleven o'clock they went to bed, and His Majesty came and
drew the curtains, and said to the Prince, 'Now, nephew, to your work !
Hey! St. George for England.' "
The marriage, which in the long run was to turn out happily, and
WILLIAM AND MARY ' 133
incidentally was to be fatal to James, commenced under the shadow of
William's boorishness. Once married, he saw no necessity for behaving
to his bride in public kindly, or even with courtesy; he thought only
of getting back to Holland and to the business of his life, and he chafed
bitterly at the contrary winds that delayed him. In the end he insisted
on putting to sea when it was almost impossible to beat up against the
wind. There is an amusing contemporary description of the farewell
scene and of William's reaction to it:
There was a very sad parting between the Princess and her father,
but especially the Duchess and her, who wept both with that
excess of sorrow that the Prince, though the wind still is so bad that
they can tug but eight miles a day, will not return again as he says
to make a second scene of grief.
And he held to his resolution in spite of cordial letters from Charles
and James begging him to come to them to wait in London for a change
of wind.
James could make capital in England out of his daughter's marriage,
but placating Louis was a more difficult matter. Barrillon was shocked
to learn on October 22 that negotiations for the marriage were far
advanced, and when Charles had unburdened his mind to him he saw
that it was "a matter resolved on". Charles said :
I consider it very useful to my interests, and I believe I shall
get very considerable advantage from it immediately and still
more advantage in the future. This alliance will put a stop to my
subjects' suspicion that the close touch I keep with France is
based on a change of religion. It is my brother's conduct that has
given rise to all these suspicions. All the jealousy and animosity
that there is in this country against the prosperity of France springs
from what he has done.
James when he next saw Barrillon was much embarrassed: he said
that Charles had insisted on his submission against his will and that
Danby had worked for the marriage behind the scenes in order to fortify
himself against his enemies; he hoped that Louis would excuse him,
"for he valued his esteem more than anything in the world". Three
days later James told Barrillon that the marriage would bring the peace
nearer because the anti-Orange faction would suspect that it was part
of a plot to make William absolute in the United Provinces by English
help and they would work for peace in order that William's army
might be disbanded a curiously accurate forecast.
Louis was furious; he had no knowledge of the course of the negotia-
134 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
tions in England and he was unwittingly unjust to James: "he spoke
of the King's part in it more decently, but expostulated severely on the
Duke's part, who had now given his daughter to the greatest enemy
he had in the world", and to Ralph Montagu, the English ambassador
in Paris, the French King "spoke very hardly of the Duke for con-
senting to it, and not at least acquainting him with it". It was rumoured
in Paris that as soon as he realised the danger of the conclusion of the
marriage contract, Louis formed the project of reviving the plan for a
French husband for Mary, but Danby heard the rumour after the
decision had been made in favour of William, and it does not appear that
even tentative proposals were ever received by the English Court.
In England there was general rejoicing at the marriage; in London
"the whole night was spent in the ringing of bells and bonfires and the
greatest expressions of joy which I believe were ever in England, except
at the King's Restoration", and in many provincial towns there were
similar demonstrations of joy. It was said that in England only Barrillon
and Arlington were dissatisfied at the news, Arlington because he had
professed to be deeper in William's confidence than any other English-
man, had failed to rob Danby of the credit of the match, and had been
totally unaware of what was going on. From Holland masters of ships
brought the news that the generality of the people of Holland received
the news of the intended marriage joyfully ; but the marriage did William
no good with the ruling classes, for the Stuarts were not popular with
them, and they dreaded, as James had said they would, a family compact
to subvert the liberties of the English and Dutch. A Dutch pamphlet
alluded to "the ambitious spirit of the Prince of Orange supported by
his future father-in-law the Duke of York"; and the Danish Resident
at The Hague wrote to his Court: "The joy here at the marriage is
neither complete nor universal, and the celebrations are for the most
part conducted in a hypocritical spirit."
William during his short stay in England did more than acquire a
wife : he used his great diplomatic talents to such purpose that he suc-
ceeded in undermining the fervent and blind loyalty with which
Charles and James had for the previous seven or eight years served
Louis, and in making them, for a few months only, it is true, critical
and distrustful of French policy; incidentally he achieved a signal
triumph by leaving James with the impression that the honours of the
diplomatic exchanges had remained on the English side, and that
Charles and he had persuaded William to accept their proposals for a
peace. There can be little doubt that it was William who convinced
Charles and James that Louis's conquests in the Spanish Netherlands
WILLIAM AND MARY 135
were a threat to the security of England, thus bringing them into line
with the traditional English policy of keeping Antwerp and Ostend out
of the possession of a first-class Power. "He who holds Antwerp",
said Napoleon, "holds a pistol levelled at the heart of England," and this
maxim was part of our political creed in the time of Elizabeth and earlier,
and still underlay British strategy in the wars of the present century.
On his return to the United Provinces after his marriage, William
announced to the States-General that, either a speedy peace would be
concluded on reasonable terms through the good offices of the King
of England, or a close union would be formed with that Prince; and
the hope of English assistance reanimated the Dutch war-party. On
November 22 the Earl of Feversham was sent to Paris on a mission to
Louis to propose certain terms of peace which had been formulated by
Charles at William's instigation; these terms would, it was thought,
by the restoration to Spain of a number of Flemish fortresses which
the French had taken, provide a sufficient barrier to protect the United
Provinces against aggression, and at the same time satisfy English
susceptibilities regarding the Flemish ports. But William had over-
rated Louis's dependence on Charles's goodwill; Louis was indignant
that Charles should have had the effrontery to propose such terms as
would (he wrote to Barrillon) "rob me not only of a great part of the
conquests I have made in a war declared against me by Spain, but of the
chief places which I acquired under the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle".
He did not condescend even to consider or discuss Charles's sug-
gested terms, but told Feversham in his first interview that he might
tell the King of England "how surprised he had been at receiving such
proposals and how little inclined he was to accept them".
Charles was now embarrassed to find himself at the head of a nation
bent on a war with France of which he himself, from long habit of mind,
strongly disapproved. But for the moment his fear of popular tumult
outweighed his fe^r of Louis's displeasure, and to Barrillon he made no
secret of the unpleasantness of the dilemma in which he was ; the news
that Parliament was to meet, coming so soon after the long-desired
marriage, caused an Outbreak of enthusiasm, and it was believed that
war had already been declared against France. Charles was forced to
assume a bellicose attitude, and in his speech on January 28, 1678,
at the opening of Parliament he stated that he had failed to make an
honourable and safe peace by negotiation, and had been driven to make
war in alliance with the Dutch, and he demanded supplies sufficient to
equip ninety ships and thirty or forty thousand soldiers.
The House of Commons replied to the Bang's speech by an address
in which they urged him not to agree to any treaty of peace with France
136 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
which did not reduce the boundaries of that kingdom to the limits
prescribed by the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659 that is to say, that
Louis should be compelled to renounce the gains made by the Peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1668 as well as his conquests since 1672. Charles
whispered to Barrillon, "They seem to have lost heart: you must have
bribed them into making such an extravagant proposal"; to which the
ambassador replied drily, "I do not think that money would have been
well employed in making them pass a resolution of this sort." Later
Charles told Barrillon,
that this demonstration had been indispensible to appease the
English, where fears had outrun all reason; that in his heart he did
not want war and that he would do anything he could do avoid it;
and when Barrillon called attention to the activities of James and to his
proposed departure for Flanders to take command of the English troops,
Charles replied :
I tell you frankly that my brother's talk pains me. We have not
yet a penny for the raising of troops and he speaks as if we had an
army. The idea of being a general has gone to his head, but
for my part I have no belief in these war plans. I am not persuaded
that anything can be done in alliance with the Spaniards.
Charles sent a few troops to Ostend sufficient to alarm the Dutch
but not enough to cause disquiet to Louis but he did not declare
war on France, and the continued residence in England of Barrillon,
and the close touch which he kept with Charles and James, contributed
more than any other single cause to the preservation of peace between ,
the two countries.
But William had been more successful with James : he was a whole-
hearted convert to the war-party, and in concert with Danby he drove
on the preparations with all the great zeal of which he was capable.
The motives of Danby were simple : his natural bias was anti-French,
and that bias had not been weakened by long suppression in the course
of serving Charles's pro-French policy ; he was also anxious, by heading
the popular movement against France, to avoid the attack which the
opposition in Parliament were preparing to launch against him. James's
motives were more complex and doubtful: as a patriotic Englishman
(as he undoubtedly was), he had been impressed by William's argu-
ments and alarmed at the situation which would be created by a French
occupation of the Spanish Netherlands even before Louis had re-
jected the terms conveyed to Louis by the hand of Feversham, Danby
WILLIAM AND MARY 137
wrote to William that, at a discussion with 6harles and James on the
situation in Flanders,
to my great admiration the Duke said very briskly that in case they
do not agree to the propositions sent by my Lord Feversham,
the King ought to let the King of France know that, unless he would
forbear any further conquests in Flanders, he could not hinder
England from coming into the war;
and a few days later James told Barrillon that Charles could not possibly
have done otherwise than to enter the war; had he not prevented the
occupation of Flanders, all his subjects, with no exception but James him-
self, would have rebelled. James had quite as much reason as Danby
for attempting to reinstate himself in popular favour by taking the lead
in a popular movement; and he certainly had an aspiration (in spite of
the Test Act) to command the English army which was being raised or
even, it was hinted, the whole allied army.
What is doubtful is his ultimate intention with regard to that army :
did he intend to allow it to be disbanded at the end of the war, or to do
his best to persuade Charles to keep it in being as a standing army,
and to use it for the abolition of parliamentary government and for the
accomplishment of the Grand Design? Barrillon at any rate had no
illusions about his intentions; on April 18, 1678, he wrote to Louis:
The Duke of York believes himself lost because of his religion,
if the present opportunity does not serve to bring England into
subjection ; it is a very bold enterprise and the success very doubtful.
I believe they have persuaded this Prince that a war is more proper
to accomplish his design than peace. He thinks that by declaring
strongly against France he will diminish the animosity against him-
self. This does not appease his enemies; he is more suspected
than ever and not less hated; his change with regard to your
Majesty does not add to his reputation; many persons believe he
will return to his former engagements with the same lightness with
which he has quitted them. The King of England still wavers upon
carrying things to extremity; his humour is very repugnant
to the design of changing the government. He is nevertheless
drawn along by the Duke of York and the Lord Treasurer; but at
bottom he would rather choose that a peace should leave him in a
condition to remain in quiet, and re-establish his affairs, that is to
say a good revenue, and I do not believe he cares much for being
more absolute than he is. The Duke and the Treasurer know well
with whom they have to deal, and are afraid of being abandoned by
138 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
the King on the first considerable obstacles they meet with to
the design of enlarging the royal authority in England.
In short, the ambassador believed that James and Danby, acting in
close association, were plotting the overthrow by a coup d'etat of the
historic constitution of the kingdom; it is not easy to believe that Danby
was wholeheartedly in this plot; he was certainly a Tory (to anticipate
a nickname that became current a couple of years later) and worked to
uphold the prerogative, but there is no evidence that he at any time in his
career showed a belief in absolutism on the French model, and he was
not such a fool as to embark on so hazardous an enterprise with James
as his single ally; it is much more likely that for his own purposes he
deceived James, and that Barrillon in his turn was deceived.
But whatever James's motives and intentions, the scheme for a war
with France ended in a complete fiasco. The House of Commons in
great haste and eagerness voted that ninety ships should be put into
commission and a force of thirty thousand men raised, but when they
should have followed up this vote by voting supply and imposing the
necessary taxes they did nothing: the votes for the Army and Navy
were passed on Feburary 6 and 8, but it was not until March 8 that they
passed a poll bill, calculated to bring in 600,000 out of the required
million, and there they stopped; a parliament which had shown such
zest for the war refused to furnish the means for carrying it on. James
showed his impatience in a series of letters to his son-in-law William:
"those who seemed most zealous for a war with France last session
are those who obstruct most the giving of a supply" ; "it is now near a
month that the parliament have sat, and yet not so much as a money
bill got ready" ; "truly the temper of the House seems not to be good,
and looks as if some of them minded more how to get the power from
the King than anything else"; "they have such groundless jealousies in
their heads that they make no advances in providing the rest of the
money."
From the meagre accounts that have come down to us of the debates
in the House of Commons during the Session January 15 to March 8,
1678, we gather no impression of a body representing a nation which
was entering on a life-and-death struggle with the greatest military
Power of the time : there was nothing like the continuity of effort which
was displayed upon the subject of exclusion by the Parliament which
met on October 21, 1680. They discussed many things the irregular
conduct of the Speaker in adjourning the House, the recusancy of a
member, the granting of improper protections by a member to his
servants, the resumptions of Crown lands and only incidentally did
WILLIAM AND MARY 139
they deliberate on the necessities of the war. But French intrigue had
been busy among the members. At the end of January arrived in England
Henri de Ruvigny, son of the late ambassador; he was first cousin of
Rachel, Lady Russell, wife of the eldest son of the Earl of Bedford,
and his visit was ostensibly to his relations; actually his intention was to
get into touch with the leaders of the Opposition. To Russell and his
friends Ruvigny furnished arguments, to less scrupulous members of
the party he gave bribes; the argument which appealed most to his
hearers, since it strengthened suspicions already in their minds, was
that Charles had no intention of making war and that any funds which
Parliament might supply would be used for other purposes ; they may
have been a little sceptical when he told them that Louis had no interest
in making Charles absolute in England and that he had never been in
treaty with him to alter the religion of this country. Russell promised
to help Shaftesbury to prevent any increase in the subsidies voted by
Parliament, and to have such conditions attached to the grants already
made that Charles would rather give up the war than consent to them.
The dilemma in which the Country party was placed was well expressed
in the House of Commons by Sir William Coventry: "If a war really
be, he must be a madman who will not give money ; and if it be a peace
no Englishman will be for keeping up the army" ; for the rule of Crom-
well's major-generals was still fresh in memory, and "No Standing
Army" was second only to "No Popery" as a rallying cry for all except
the extremists of the Court party.
The outburst of popular indignation in England at Louis's threat
to annex the Spanish Netherlands, carrying Charles with it on its flood
and zealously encouraged by James whose fidelity had been the one
certainty in England on which the French interest could rely had no
doubt considerable effect in inclining Louis to peace and in moderating
his demands. The Dutch were financially exhausted by the war and
were thoroughly tired of it, though William's spirit was not curbed, and
he had renewed his courage by his matrimonial alliance with England
and by the treaty which had been signed with that country on December
31, 1677. But it was not to William that Louis made his overtures:
the Dutch people and their representatives, the Municipalities, the
States, and the States-General, had been alarmed at the possible
consequences to their republican institutions of the marriage of William
and Mary, and when they saw English troops landed at Ostend, and
heard that they were forerunners of a large army, they felt that their
worst fears had been confirmed. A situation arose similar to that which
had arisen in England, and it was generally believed, as Danby had
previously warned William that it would be, that the alliance had
140 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
not been made for the purpose of resisting the aggression of Louis,
but "that the King of England and the Prince of Orange had laid their
plans for the subjection of the two countries'*. Modifications of Louis's
demands, and the plea that what he proposed to leave to Spain would
provide an ample barrier to the Dutch, disposed the leaders of the
States-General to an accommodation ; by May William himself was in
favour of peace, at the end of that month full agreement upon all points
appeared to have been reached between the French and Dutch, and
in June letters were exchanged, effusive on William's side, reserved
on Louis's, between the two great antagonists.
Simultaneously the delay in England in the preparations for war
gave Barrillon full opportunity to exert pressure upon Charles and
James. Charles had been ready to be persuaded from the first, and he
must have experienced considerable relief when he realised that the
House of Commons had lost its eagerness for the war and that he was
free to take his own line. James's change of mind is more difficult to
explain: as late as April 16 he wrote to William about "good and
vigorous resolutions for carrying on the war", and "that he did not know
what may happen if the war does not go on, considering the temper of
the nation"; a month later, as a culmination of discussions which must
have occupied several weeks, James helped Barrillon to persuade Charles
to sign a new secret agreement with Louis :
I pressed the King and the Duke of York [says Barrillon on
May 17] very warmly to conclude or to break off the treaty The
Duke of York took up the affair with warmth, and made the
King give me his positive word that the business should be con-
cluded today. The Duke of York appears greatly desirous to
deserve the same share of Your Majesty's good graces which he
had heretofore; he conducted himself in the negotiation as I could
wish.
The terms of the agreement were, in brief, that Charles in exchange
for six million limes (450,000) should prorogue Parliament for four
months, should disband his new army, and should use his influence
with the Dutch to persuade them to accept Louis's terms.
Four days after Barrillon's letter James wrote to William:
You see how little is to be expected from hence by what passed
the other day in the last session. And now they are to meet again
on Thursday, and I fear they will be very disorderly and that it
will be all we can do to keep things quiet here at home ; for now the
ill men in the House strike directly at the King's authority, and
WILLIAM AND MARY 141
should we have been in a war now, they would have so imposed
upon the King as to leave him nothing but the empty name of a
King and no more power than a Duke of Venice. . . .
You see I speak my mind freely to you, I am obliged to do it
out of the kindness and concern I have for you. I know such a
peace as is offered is a very hard one for you and us to submit to ;
however I see no remedy, and do not exasperate France that may
be of use to you. Pray let nobody see this letter, it is only wrote for
you and not fit for anybody else to read or know. I say so much to
you ; 'tis only my kindness has made me write it, and you may be
sure I shall always continue it to you.
This letter is a curious combination of diplomatic craft and family
affection. He and his brother thought that they had sold William to
France, and he was anxious to advise William to do the best for himself
possible under the circumstances of the secret treaty. But William was
already negotiating, or preparing to negotiate, behind the backs of his
uncles.
Louis at the last moment raised a fresh point in the negotiations
with the Dutch: he decided that he would not restore to Spain the
barrier fortresses which he had promised to restore unless and until
the Elector of Brandenburg had restored Bremen and Pomerania to
Sweden. This was a condition which had no bearing on his differences
with the Dutch and which they had no means of fulfilling. The Dutch
resumed the war, and Charles and James were furious. This time
Charles did not dissemble; he genuinely felt that Louis had played him
false. He kept Parliament in session, he did not recall his troops from
Ostend, and on July 16 he concluded a fresh treaty with the Dutch.
To Barrillon he declared "that all he had done went for nothing in
France, that he had persuaded the States-General to make peace, and
that, if he disbanded his army and Louis took considerable fortresses
in Flanders, he would be in danger of being driven from his kingdom
for having betrayed national interests". James was even more violent,
"he expressed himself with great heat, and did all that he could to
persuade everybody that war was inevitable". However, one of the
Swedish ambassadors intervened with a suggestion of a compromise ;
this compromise was accepted by Louis and by the States-General
and peace was signed on July 31. The only result for Charles of his
intervention in the rupture of negotiations was that he lost the six
million limes.
To James the result was even more serious. He had built up a reputa-
tion with Louis as a steadfast adherent of the French interest, and, while
142 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Louis was resigned to Charles's vacillations, he looked to James to keep
his brother loyal to his engagements. On this occasion James had not
only gone astray himself, but had carried Charles with him, and after
having been forgiven he had repeated the offence. Louis was already
angry with James over Mary's marriage, and it was many years before
he fully forgave him; indeed, the distrust with which Louis treated
James after his accession may have had its roots in the resentment of
this time. James on his side made repeated efforts to recover his place
in Louis's good graces, but without success. In September 1679 ^ e
wrote to the French King, "It is from you I expect all, and by you alone
I can attain my re-establishment in this country"; and at the end of
the following year he wrote to Barrillon :
I received your letter with a great deal of satisfaction, because
you give me fresh assurances of the King your master's goodness to
me; I will endeavour to deserve the continuance of it, whereof
I beg you to assure him;
and there are other similar expressions in the correspondence. But
Henry Savile, who succeeded Ralph Montague as envoy in Paris, wrote
in May 1679 to his brother, Lord Halifax:
I am very confident the Duke of York remains under the same
displeasure with this King that he has done ever since the marriage
of the Prince of Orange and the zeal he shewed last year to enter
into the war; but I will not doubt but when you have made him
desperate in England, upon the least application he will make here
he shall be received into favour as a proper instrument to hurt
England with.
This reinstatement actually took place when James was in Scotland
in 1 68 1 ; but it was only temporary then, for in September 1683 Lord
Preston, the new resident, wrote from Paris to Halifax:
I am sorry the Duke thinketh that France is firm to him. If I
see anything, not withstanding all promises, the old rancour
remaineth.
Sometime in the years 1678 to 1680 James severed his relations with
Arabella Churchill and adopted a new mistress in the person of Catherine
Sedley. John Evelyn had met this lady in 1673 and had pronounced
her "none of the most virtuous but a wit" ; in 1677 Catherine was pro-
posed as a wife successively for John Churchill and for Sir Edward
Hungerford, and in April 1678 she became a maid of honour to Mary
WILLIAM AND MARY 143
Beatrice. Two years later the fact that she was James's mistress was
public property; for the Dowager Countess of Sunderland wrote to
Halifax on July i, 1680, "Some say that the Duchess of York is with
child, others that she is melancholy, not for Mrs. Sedley, but greater
matters"; and again on July 8, "The Duchess of York is not with
child. She prays all day almost. She is very melancholy, the women
will have it for Mrs. Sedley. She looks further than that, if she has so
much wit as is thought by some" ; and in October Henry Sidney wrote
to William of Orange, 'The Duchess is very melancholy, but whether
it proceeds from the apprehensions of making another journey, or seeing
the Duke so publicly own Mrs. Sedley, I cannot tell."
From that time until the Revolution, after which, as far as is known,
James and Catherine never saw one another, the mistress exercised
over James a fascination from which from time to time he vainly
attempted to free himself. As a woman she seems to have been a sort of
Nell Gwynne in high life: like Nell Gwynne, her greatest asset was
an impudent wit; especially was she prone, as Nell was, to describe her
own status in a coarse monosyllable. Of both women it is true that they
never had a chance in life : Nell's account of herself was that she was
"brought up in a brothel to fill strong water to the gentlemen";
Catherine's father, one of the minor Restoriation poets, was a byword
among the rakes "worse than Sir Charles Sedley" is the worst that
Pepys can say of another member of the fraternity. Catherine is best
remembered by her sayings or rather the sayings that have been
imputed to her: of James's attachment to her she said, "It cannot be
my beauty because I haven't any, and it cannot be my wit because he
hasn't enough of it himself to know that I have any" ; to Queen Mary she
is said to have retorted, "If I broke one of the Commandments with
your father, you have broke another against him"; and when, after the
accession of George I, she met simultaneously William Ill's mistress
Elizabeth Villiers and the Duchess of Portsmouth, then a very old
woman, she exclaimed, "Fancy we three * * * meeting like this."
CHAPTER VIII
THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY
IN the summer of 1678 James's prospects were not bright. He had done
nothing in two years to mitigate the access of unpopularity which he had
incurred by his abstention from attendance at church. He had hoped
to have gained some credit from the marriage to William of Orange
of his daughter Mary; but the manner in which that marriage had
been brought about had given the impression, not entirely false, that
he had unwillingly acquiesced in it. The only way in which he could
have used the marriage to his advantage would have been to have
appeared beforehand enthusiastically in favour of it; in his speeches to
the Privy Council and to the House of Lords after the marriage agree-
ment had been completed he was naturally held to be trying to acquire
merit for a proceeding which he had opposed. His bellicose attitude
against France in the winter and spring of 1677 to z ^7^ had done him
harm rather than good in the public eye, for no one believed that this
attitude was more than a cloak for designs on the national religion and
liberties.
Any increase in James's unpopularity, and in the certainty of his
conversion to Rome, of necessity brought with it an increase in the
suspicion and hatred with which his fellow-Catholics were regarded, and
by the time that Titus Gates launched his charges against them the
public mind was in a condition to accept without examination the
wildest accusations. Gates did not create the national fear and abhor-
rence of the Catholics : he merely exploited it and raised it to a frenzy.
Though he was the chief criminal, the entire nation must share the blame
in the greatest of our national crimes ; for there were few, except the
Catholics themselves, who had any doubts about the truth of Oates's
stories, and it was the popular ferment that drove on the judges and
juries to inflict death on innocent victims, and not pressure from above
Charles certainly would have stayed the effusion of blood if he could.
James's conduct was thus the indirect cause of Oates's pretended
revelations. He was also directly responsible for bringing them to
public notice. On August 13 Oates's advance guard, Kirkby, informed
Charles that there was a plot against his life; Charles thought so little
about it that he went off to Windsor next day with James, leaving with
Danby instructions to investigate this plot and to keep the matter a
secret even from James. At Windsor Father Bedingfield, James's con-
144
THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY 145
fessor, received a parcel of clumsily forged letters directed to himself
and presumably intended to incriminate him ; he showed these letters to
James, and James took them to Charles, and, not daring to conceal
accusations against the Catholics, and secure, as he thought, in the
innocence of the accused, demanded an investigation by the Council.
The Bedingfield forgeries gave James the first intimation that any-
thing was afoot, and when he showed them to Charles, Charles may well
have told him of Kirkby's warnings and made him realise that an attack
on the Catholics had been organised. He probably learnt at the same
time that one of the persons named by Gates was Edward Coleman, a
man very well known to him. The characteristic of Coleman that most
impressed contemporaries was his vanity, and that characteristic is \cry
prominent in his letters. For example, he writes :
When it happened that what I foresaw came to pass, the good
Father was not a little surprised to see all the great men mistaken
and a little one [Coleman himself] in the right, and was pleased to
desire a continuance of my correspondence;
and his account of affairs of the previous two years, written in September
1675 to Pere la Chaise, Louis's confessor, abounds in claims that if his
advice had been taken fewer mistakes would have been made. Coleman
had been secretary to the Duchess of York, but he had had many other
duties : he had been in close touch with successive French ambassadors
and had been employed by them as a link with the House of Commons,
on the one hand as a reporter of each day's proceedings, and on the
other as a distributor of bribes. He had incurred considerable suspicion
and had had to leave London for a time and to give up his post as secre-
tary. But he had returned, and in the autumn of 1678 he was again
unofficially in the service of Mary Beatrice.
James was well aware that Coleman had been corresponding with
Jesuits and others at home and abroad and that the object of his corre-
spondence was the promotion of the Grand Design the recovery of
England to the True Faith by means of a close alliance with France.
As soon as he knew that Coleman 1 s name appeared in Oates's deposition
he realised that this correspondence would be a dangerous weapon in
the hands of the fabricators of the Plot, and he urged Coleman to destroy
it But Coleman's vanity was too strong for such a sacrifice; without
these letters he had no proof of the important r61e he had played in
international affairs; he destroyed a large number of letters, but he so
ineffectively concealed the remainder that they were discovered when he
was arrested. There was nothing in these letters which could be made
to suggest a plot to assassinate the King, and such a plot was the essence
146 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
of Oates's accusation against Coleman and against the other men who
had been arrested at Oates's instigation. Gates and Bedloe gave evi-
dence that Coleman had been privy to a plot of assassination, but it
was on the evidence of his own letters that he was convicted : according
to the law in force at the time it was treason to endeavour to subvert
the religion of the kingdom, and the sentence was just. James had
before the trial no doubt that the evidence of the letters was sufficient
to bring him to the scaffold and, though he thought that the other
Catholics who suffered the death penalty had all been innocent, he
admitted Coleman's guilt.
For James the discovery of Coleman's letters was extremely awkward.
Coleman had made very free use of his name, and had in many places
stated that he was acting as his agent:
His Royal Highness is at present surrounded with infinite per-
plexities (Southwell wrote to Ormonde), which all good men must
lament. He has been always present at the Committee of the Lords
while the papers of Coleman and Sir William Throgmorton have
been read. Each of them have dared to name and interest His
Highness in their dangerous contrivances, which he hears with
indignation, and appeals to the improbability of his confiding either
to the folly of the one or the madness of the other. And yet this
does not satisfy the warm spirits of that House and much less is it
likely to do that of the Commons.
Another danger to which James was liable was,
if Mr. Coleman finds himself in extremities and has quite abandoned
all hopes of protection from the Duke, that he may then run into
much liberty of discourse in order to save his life.
But though according to one observer Coleman was confidently expect-
ing a reprieve up to the time when he mounted the scaffold or perhaps
because he was expecting it and missed the opportunity he did nothing
to incriminate James.
For there can be no doubt that, though James probably did not see
Coleman's letters before they were sent, he was sufficiently responsible
for their contents to be seriously implicated in Coleman's guilt. The
Commons resolved that the letters should be printed, but in the Lords
James pleaded that they contained many unsupported calumnies
against himself which should not be made public in England and
abroad, and secured the rejection of the resolution. If a certain letter
(which indeed from internal evidence does not appear to be a forgery)
had come to light which James wrote to Pfere la Chaise in September
THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY 147
5 the time at which Coleman was conducting that part of his
correspondence which he allowed to be seized there can be little doubt
that the House of Commons would have made an attempt to impeach
James and that Charles would have had to resort to successive proroga-
tions to save him. In that letter (which is in effect a request for money to
promote the Grand Design) occur such passages as :
All was transacted by the means of Father Ferrier, who made use
of Sir William Throgmorton, who is an honest man and of truth,
who was then in Paris and hath held correspondence with Coleman,
one of my family, in whom I have great confidence ;
and
As to anything more I refer you to Sir William Throgmorton
and Coleman, who I have commanded to give an account of the
whole state of the affair and of the condition of England.
Coleman, in the course of an examination by a Committee sent by the
Lords, said that he had on one occasion gone to Brussels "with the
Duke's allowance" to see the Internuncio, and James in the House of
Lords explained that
poor Father Patrick, bringing over some broken story or message
from the said Internuncio, he had let Coleman go over to know
what it meant;
a sufficiently lame excuse, and one which would naturally have led to a
question as to the nature of James's correspondence with the Inter-
nuncio ; good manners, presumably, restrained the Lords from pressing
a royal duke so closely. The House of Commons, however, ordered an
inquiry by a secret committee on the evidence of the letters into the
part played by James in Coleman's intrigues. But this was so late as the
end of April 1679, anc ^ there is no record that the Committee reported
before the prorogation of May 26. Though James escaped direct attack,
the suspicions which Coleman had aroused added enormously to the
strength of the attack on James in the debates on the two Exclusion
Bills.
The discovery of Coleman's correspondence was very fortunate for
Gates : he had accused Coleman at a venture, and his letters had revealed
a plot of which Dates had been completely unaware; Coleman's plot
bore no relation to the plot which Gates had fabricated, in fact the
letters broke off before the earliest date mentioned inOates's allegations,
but an uncritical public regarded them as a confirmation of Oates's
statements. Another piece of good fortune (it is barely possible that he
148 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
contrived it) was the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey : no sooner
had Gates accused the Catholics than by this murder they provided
evidence against themselves or so the public thought.
It is necessary to enter in some detail into this celebrated murder
mystery, because some years ago a very ingenious attempt was made to
lay it at the door of James or of James's Jesuit friends. Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey, a London magistrate of known probity, left his house
near Charing Cross on the morning of Saturday, October 12, 1678, and
was missing for five days. On Thursday, October 17, his body was found
in a ditch near Primrose Hill, in the open country about three miles
from Charing Cross; his neck was broken, his sword had been driven
through his body (after death, for there was little sign of effusion of
blood), and his money and other valuables on his person were intact.
It is possible to suggest suicide only on the supposition that his relations
had found his body hanging and, in order to prevent the forfeiture of
his estate, had attempted to create a presumption that he had been
murdered.
Godfrey's connection with Gates was in his official capacity as a
magistrate : on September 6, Gates, Tonge and Kirkby had come to his
office for the purpose of registering an oath that certain written informa-
tion was true Godfrey was not at that time allowed to see the informa-
tion ; on September 28 Gates came again with two copies of the informa-
tion which he was laying before the Council; on one of these copies he
caused Godfrey to witness his affidavit and the other he left with God-
frey. On the same day Godfrey had a long interview with Coleman, an
intimate friend of his, who was to be arrested two days later. Several of
his remarks between the dates of his interview with Coleman and his
disappearance show that he was apprehensive of a murderous attack,
an4 he told a Mr. Wynnel that he was in possession of a dangerous
secret which would be fatal to him; "Gates", he said, "is sworn and is
perjured."
Now, Oates's accusation against the Catholics was based on what he
stated he had heard and seen at a meeting of the Jesuits held on April
24, 1678, at the White Horse Tavern in the Strand. It was proved in his
trial for perjury that Gates was at the Jesuit College of St. Omer on this
date and could not have been present at the meeting. As a matter of
fact he had got the date right : there was a provincial meeting of English
Jesuits on April 24, a routine meeting of no political significance, and
Gates could easily have heard of it at St. Omer and made a bad guess
at the venue. For, as James told Sir John Reresby some years later, the
meeting was held at James's official residence, St. James's Palace, and if
that fact had become known a very potent weapon would have been put
THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY 149
into the hands of James's enemies, and it is possible that he would have
had to answer a charge of high treason. The theory of the complicity
of James or his friends in the murder of Godfrey rests on the supposition
that, at his meeting with Godfrey on September 28, Coleman sought
advice as to the best way of meeting Oates's accusations and that he
pointed out Oates's mistake about the place of the Jesuits' meeting
as a possible means of invalidating his testimony, thus inadvertently
putting Godfrey in possession of a secret which he would rather not have
known ; that in the two days remaining before his arrest Coleman made
known his indiscretion to his Jesuit friends ; and that they decided that
it was not safe, considering the risk to James of the secret coming out,
to let Godfrey remain alive : a chain of evidence with several very weak
links. 1
James had been expressly exonerated by Gates in his original deposi-
tion from all suspicion of connection with the Plot, but the revelations
in Coleman's letters, the damaging evidence which was given to the
Commons' Committee, and the apprehension that he might use his
influence with his brother to stifle investigation of the Plot led to a
personal attack upon him in both Houses of Parliament. On November
2 Lord Shaftesbury in the Lords, and on November 4 Lord Russell in
the Commons, moved an address to the King to remove his brother
from his person and counsels. On November 4 James
made a declaration in the House of Peers that he would withdraw
himself from all places where any affairs of the nation were agitated,
and would no more be present at the Committee of Foreign Affairs
or the Admiralty; 2
and in the House of Commons on the same day Henry Coventry, the
Secretary of State, made a similar statement on his behalf. He himself
admits, however, that this withdrawal was not voluntary on his part,
but that "the King could not persuade the Duke to abstain from Council
to prevent an address for removing him from his presence. The Council
was forced to order him to do so." 3 Possibly James's unwillingness
1 For a full discussion of this theory see Sir Chas. Firth's review of Pollock's
Popish Plot in English Historical Review, XIX, 789.
2 According to Barrillon, James said that his withdrawal was in order to
give satisfaction to those who believed that his counsel to the King was harmful.
Shaftesbury moved that James's declaration should be embodied in a royal
proclamation, but the motion was lost, the House was content with James's
verbal promise.
3 James had not been officially a Privy Councillor since the summer of 1673,
nor does his name appear in the Register. It must be inferred that he had been
allowed to attend unofficially. Possibly the "Council" to which James referred
in his memoirs was the Committee of Foreign Affairs.
150 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
became known and there was a fear lest he would return to the inner
counsels of the King as soon as parliamentary pressure was withdrawn ;
whatever the reason, these declarations did not interrupt the course of
the debate.
Nothing has been preserved of what was said in the Lords ; from the
summaries of speeches in the Commons it appears that the supporters
of the motion were very careful to say nothing that could give personal
offence to James. Lord Cavendish (who as Earl of Devonshire was to be
so harshly treated by James as King) said, "I have an extreme veneration
for the Duke, for I think the Duke had not the least hand in the Plot.
I think his loyalty to his brother is without example ; but his being next
of blood to the succession of the crown, and what encouragement that
may give the Papists to take away the King"; Sir Robert Sawyer, "I can
assign no other cause for this dismal attempt that has been discovered,
but the hopes the Papists have of the Duke's religion" ; Mr. Harwood,
"I respect the Duke as Duke, but as he is a Papist let every man lay his
hand upon his heart whether his being a Papist has not given encourage-
ment to the Plot"; and so on throughout the debate: variations on the
theme "if James had not been a Catholic there would have been no
Plot". There is a well-known story to the effect that James, returning
in his coach from hunting with a great train of attendants, met Charles
scantily attended, and remonstrated with him on the risk he ran of
assassination; and that Charles replied, "No kind of danger, James, for
no man in England will take away my life to make you King." Clearly
the opinion of the House of Commons was that Charles's retort might
be true of Protestants, but that many Catholics would be glad of an
opportunity to substitute a Catholic for a Protestant king, and would
not be very scrupulous about the means they employed. 1
Charles bowed before the storm: on November 8 Danby informed
Reresby that "the King would be content that something were enacted
to pare the nails (to use his own phrase) of a popish successor; but that
he would not suffer his brother to be taken away from him nor the right
line of the succession to the Crown interrupted". The following day,
while the debate on the Address was still in progress, Charles addressed
both Houses, saying that he would give them full support in any
measures they found good to take to secure the Protestant religion both
in his own time and after his death, "so they tend not to impeach the
Right of Succession, nor the descent of the crown in the true line; and
so they restrain not my power, nor the just rights of any Protestant
1 There is a sentence in the Life of James on the authority of one of James's
letters which shows that James had taken Charles's mot to heart : "The King was
sensible that his chief security lay in having a successor they liked worse than
himself."
THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY 151
successor"; the suggestion that James should be removed from his
person and counsels he ignored.
On October 28 the Commons had sent up to the Lords a Bill to dis-
able Catholics from sitting in either House of Parliament. Barrillon
reported that James's name came up constantly in this connection, that
Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Essex and Halifax were irreconcilably
opposed to his interests, fearing the revenge he would take on them if
and when he had the power, that some of the Opposition were already
talking of substituting William for James as heir-presumptive, but that
they saw small prospect of making a breach between James and William.
On November 21 the Bill came back from the Lords with an amend-
ment 1 exempting the Duke of York from the necessity of taking the
oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and from making the Declaration
against Transubstantiation. The proviso was thus carefully worded so
as to avoid forcing James to a declaration of his religious beliefs, and in
the debate upon it in the Commons this intention was made very clear ;
and the desire to avoid branding James as a Papist joined to a very real
loyalty to the Crown resulted in agreement with the Lords by two votes.
The House of Commons next fell upon Danby. In the previous
March he had written to Ralph Montagu, the English ambassador at
Paris, regarding the six million livres that Charles was to receive as the
price of his withdrawal from the treaty with Holland and of the post-
ponement of the meeting of Parliament. The draft of his letter had been
personally endorsed by the King, and had contained instructions to
Montagu to refrain from communicating its contents to the Secretary
of State; Montagu, actuated by private pique against Danby, and at the
instigation of Louis, communicated this letter to the House of Com-
mons. The position of Louis in the matter is made quite clear in a
letter addressed to him by Barrillon on October 14, 1678; after giving
details of the intrigues into which he had entered with Montagu, he writes :
As your Majesty has commanded me to do everything that is
possible to raise troubles to the King of England, it does not appear
to me that anything could possibly happen more disagreeable to
him than to see the man accused in parliament in whom he has
reposed the care of affairs, and the government of his kingdom for
two years. The Treasurer's enemies, who are very numerous, will
take courage, and it is not impossible that the Duke of York will
turn against him.
1 According to Barrillon this amendment was passed by a majority of twenty ;
Mazure quotes in oratio recta part of a speech by James, but fails to give the
reference in Barrillon's despatches. Elsewhere Barrillon states that James
achieved the result through his friends.
152 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
This letter is a remarkably frank statement of the attitude of Louis to
Charles at a time when Charles had every confidence in the good will of
the French King; this attitude was constant in the relations of Louis
both to Charles and James, and can be illustrated by a large number of
extracts from the correspondence of the French ambassadors ; it must be
borne in mind throughout the reign of James and in his final exile.
Louis's foreign policy was, of course, entirely concerned with French
interests, and, though on occasion he could show himself disinterested
when the Catholic Church was concerned, he had no motive for inter-
ference in the domestic problems of England except in so far as these
problems affected the relations between the two monarchies. He was
beginning to see in the young William of Orange a formidable obstacle
to the achievement of his main object in the early years of his reign, viz.,
the creation of a strong barrier on his northern frontier for the protection
of Paris. The popularity of the marriage of William with Princess Mary
had taught him that the English people would never be brought to fight
on his side against William, and the events of the spring and summer of
1678 made him apprehensive lest circumstances should arise which
might bring England into alliance with Holland against him. If he
could not have Charles as an ally, the next best thing was to secure his
neutrality, and the obvious way to that end was to keep him in perpetual
conflict with Parliament.
The Opposition in Parliament seized eagerly upon Danby's letter,
and in their factious fury ignored the complicity of Ralph Montagu.
James was by this time completely estranged from Danby: there had
been friction over the marriage of Princess Mary, a matter in which
James thought Danby had shown officiousness and had over-reached
him; but the irritation was momentary, for the Duke and the Minister
fell at once to working in concert in furthering the plans for the war with
France. Indeed, James in February 1678 made in Danby's interest one
of his rare remonstrances to Charles: when it began to appear that
Charles's attachment to his chief Minister was weakening, Nell Gwynne
essayed to amuse the Court by mimicking Danby's personal peculiari-
ties, as Buckingham and Henry Killigrew had mimicked Clarendon
before his fall in 1667; James "with all his power dissuaded and ex-
horted therein", but Charles declared that "he would not deny himself
an hour's divertissement for any man". 1
The chief grievances that James had against Danby were of more
recent date : he had, James thought, shown excessive zeal in the prosecu-
tion of the Popish Plot, and he had advised Charles to deliver to Parlia-
1 Danby was said to have incurred Nelly's enmity by refusing to support
her aspiration to be made a Countess.
THE POPISH PLOT: THE FALL OF DANBY 153
ment the speech of November 9, the speech in which a promise was
given of a restriction of the prerogative of a popish successor. In
November James told Barrillon that Danby was in close alliance with
James's declared enemy, the Bishop of London, and was bent on
ruining him, and Barrillon reported to Louis that Danby had no longer
any fear that James could injure him ; he added that James did not know
which side to take in the attack on Danby in the House of Commons.
But James was well aware that, in spite of the loyal sentiments expressed
by almost all the speakers in the debate on the resolution to impeach
Danby, the attack on the Treasurer was a covert assault upon the King
and his pro-French policy, and he took the side of Danby not on
personal grounds, but because Danby was the King's Minister. On
December 20 he wrote to William:
I believe you will be surprised to hear what Mr. Montagu has
done; for being yesterday accused in council of having had secret
conference with the Pope's nuncio at Paris, he to revenge himself
of that produces letters written to him by the Lord Treasurer by
His Majesty's command when he was ambassador in France, and
shows them to the Commons, who upon it order an impeachment
to be drawn up against the Lord Treasurer upon the matter con-
tained in those letters and other things they had against him. I
am confident there was never so abominable an action as this of
Mr. Montagu's and so offensive to the King, in revealing what he
was trusted with when he was employed by His Majesty; all honest
men abhor him for it, and tomorrow I believe the impeachment will
be brought up to our House, then we shall know what the articles
will be. I make no doubt but that the Lord Treasurer will defend
himself very well ; I am sure His Majesty is bound to stand by him.
In order to save Danby, or at least to give him time to prepare his
defence, the King prorogued Parliament on December 30 and dissolved
it on January 24; it had been in existence since May 8, 1661. The new
Parliament met, after a short prorogation, on March 15, 1679, and
betrayed no less rancour against Danby than its predecessor had done.
Charles had dismissed him from office and granted him a pardon ; the
Commons addressed the King, maintaining that a royal pardon in bar
of an impeachment was illegal, a declaration which was later embodied
in a formal resolution of the House; this resolution affected James
eighteen months later. Danby went to the Tower, where he remained
for five years ; as soon as his interests were separated from those of the
King, James resumed his hostility to him, a hostility which he retained
to the end of his life. Several letters passed between the two men in
154 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
the spring of 1679 by that time Danby had added to his list of crimes
that of advising James's exile and from these it is clear that each
thought the other an unprofitable ally and one whose stock was so low
that the quicker he was dropped the better.
In August 1679 Sir Henry Goodricke reported to Danby from Paris
an interview which he had had with James at Brussels (where he was
then in exile), in which James had recounted various grievances he had
against Danby and had alluded to him as "one that was his friend once" ;
Goodricke concluded from the interview that Danby could expect from
James "nothing save a cold indifference" until misunderstandings were
removed. When in February 1684 Danby was at last released from the
Tower it was in spite of James's opposition; the ex-Minister waited on
James in the hope of regaining his favour, but the result was unsatis-
factory, and thereafter they met no more.
Lord Danby told me [says Sir John Reresby] what had passed
between the Duke of York and him at his late visit to him after he
had been with the King, whereby I found him disgusted with that
prince ; and that upon his telling the Earl that he had something of
slight he should say concerning him, the Earl should reply that it
was true he had often been so unfortunate as to differ from him in
opinion and had not yet found reason to repent of it, but that he
had never said anything against his person, and, if anybody had
told him that, they were but whispers and lies, and should be glad
to know who were his informers (but the Duke avoided that).
CHAPTER IX
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL
BEFORE Danby had been sent to the Tower, James was in exile in
Brussels. There was nothing new in the proposal that he should be
withdrawn from Court ; as long as he was there, though he had no official
status, there was always the suspicion that he was influencing policy and
promoting the interests of the Catholics. In the winter of 1673 to 1674,
as we have seen, certain of the Duke's friends advised him to withdraw
voluntarily, and when it was found that he would not absent himself
without a direct command from Charles, an influential deputation,
including the Duke of Ormonde and the two Secretaries of State,
Arlington and Sir William Coventry's brother Henry, waited on the
King and tried, but failed, to persuade him to banish James from the
Court and from public business until the excitement raised by his
marriage had subsided. In the early spring of 1679 Charles had his back
against the wall : Parliament had forced him to dismiss Danby, the hue
and cry after the Papists started by Gates was gaining strength, and
though he was convinced of their complete innocence, he could do
nothing for the victims; and there could be no doubt that opinion in
favour of the exclusion of James from the succession was hardening and
would at no distant date lead to definite motions in Parliament. James,
as always, was for strong action ; Charles knew well that his only chance
was to wait on events and to hope that there would be a turn for the
better: there is no reason to suppose that he anticipated what eventually
happened he was not master of the situation at this time but he saw
enough to realise that the more conciliatory he could appear without
making any real concessions, the better chance he had of ultimate
victory. The ostensible reasons for sending James away were that his
presence lent colour to the suspicion that the King was following his
popish counsels and that as long as he remained in view he would be a
mark for attack; but Charles had undoubtedly the further motive of
relieving his counsels of an adviser who persisted in giving the wrong
advice. James fought hard against being sent away, but when he
received a direct command he said to his friends, "What can be done,
since it is the King's pleasure?"
Accordingly at very short notice James left for Brussels on March 3,
1679, "not without many tears shed by him at parting, though the King
shed none"; two months later Lord Conway was able to write that
155
156 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Charles was no more concerned for Danby "than for a puppy-dog, nor
for what becomes of the Duke of York neither'*. Before he sailed James
had to repel a strong direct attack on his religious faith by Bancroft, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and Morley, now Bishop of Winchester, who had
in 1659 come to him on a like mission. James received them courteously,
but told them he was very angry with the people who had sent them,
for his failure to comply with their wishes would do him harm in the
debates then pending in Parliament. For the rest, he said he was not
learned enough to argue with them, but that he had made his change
of faith after due deliberation, and could not now change again. He
dismissed the Bishops on the plea of pressure of business, but he took
care to soften this seeming discourtesy by writing to Bancroft as soon as
he got to Brussels, giving him an outline of the experiences that had led
him to embrace the Roman Faith.
James travelled via The Hague; he spent some days there with his
daughter and son-in-law, and on March 17, 1679, he arrived at Brussels
and took up his residence in the house which Charles had occupied
twenty years earlier. During the five months he spent at Brussels
(including a short visit to The Hague at the end of April) he wrote a
vast number of letters. His chief correspondents were Colonel George
Legge, who had been his Lieutenant- Governor when he was Governor
of Portsmouth and is better known by his subsequent title of Lord
Dartmouth; his son-in-law, William of Orange; and his brother-in-law,
Laurence Hyde, who two years later, after a few months as Viscount
Hyde, was to add to the extraordinary confusion of titles of nobility in
this period by assuming that of Earl of Rochester, twelve months after
its extinction at the death of the son of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,
the poet and rake. To Charles also he wrote, but all the letters save one
have been lost; we can guess their contents and, with no great stretch
of imagination, supply Charles's reasons for not considering them to
call for immediate reply. For James had two objects only in his mind:
his own immediate recall, and the restoration of the power and prestige
of the Crown ; he was quite incapable of realising that the two objects
were incompatible and that his best chance of success in his ultimate
object was to remain quiet and out of the public eye. On the larger
issue he was almost in despair:
I wish in England some considered the good of our family so
much as I do. I have but a very dismal prospect of our affairs in
general, and I do not see without a miracle how they can be
mended, for His Majesty has so given up himself into the hands
of his new counsellors, that I can see nothing but the ruin of the
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 157
monarchy; and that which I think is a very bad sign, is, that His
Majesty is not so sensible as he should be of the ill condition he is
in.
And truly the events of the summer of 1679 gave Charles and James
little cause for hope. The new Parliament which assembled on March 6
was overwhelmingly in opposition to the Court. There was an initial
deadlock caused by the refusal of the King to accept the Speaker elected
by the Commons, and Charles had to get out of it by a short proroga-
tion, which wiped out all the previous proceedings. When Parliament
reassembled, the question of the Speakership was settled by a com-
promise. Immediately after Danby had gone to the Tower, Charles
announced to Parliament that he was embarking on a new constitutional
experiment: he was about to appoint a new Council of thirty members
to take the place of the old Privy Council, and when the names of the
new councillors were announced, it was found that not only was Shaftes-
bury, the leader of the party in opposition to the Court, appointed
President of the Council, but that a majority of the members were of
that party. James was dismayed, but he was always ready to clutch at
straws, he seriously thought that the new arrangements might mean that
Shaftesbury had been persuaded to be reconciled to the King, and he
commissioned Legge to prepare the way for an understanding between
Shaftesbury and himself; the French ambassador thought that Charles
had capitulated to the Opposition and that James was ruined. But James
and Barrillon were the only two people deceived : Charles had had no
intention of giving the Council any real power; his private view was
expressed to the Earl of Ailesbury: "God's fish, they have put a set of
men about me, but they shall know nothing"; the House of Commons
saw through the gesture; to them the Council was a Greek gift, and
they even neglected to give Charles the customary address of thanks for
his gracious message, but fell at once on the business for which in their
view they had come together.
On Sunday, April 27, after several attempts had been made by the small
Court party to divert attention in other directions, the House entered
on a general and diffuse discussion about the danger from the Papists
and from the succession of a Papist to the throne. They unanimously
passed the following resolution:
That the Duke of York being a Papist and the hopes of his
coming such to the Crown hath given the greatest countenance and
encouragement to the present conspiracies and designs of the
Papists against the King and the Protestant Religion;
158 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
in other words, "If the Heir-presumptive had not been a Papist there
would have been no Popish Plot". The resolution was carried to the
House of Lords, where it was softened by the addition of the word
"unwittingly" ". . . hath unwittingly given the greatest countenance".
On the 3oth Charles came down to the House; he instructed the Lord
Chancellor to declare the concessions he was willing to make in the
interests of public security. These concessions, if they were honestly
meant, were more than sufficient to satisfy all moderate men: in the
event of a Papist succeeding to the throne, he should have no control
over ecclesiastical preferments; he should be disabled from unreason-
ably preventing Parliament from assembling; privy councillors and
judges should be appointed by Parliament and only Protestants should
be Justices of the Peace ; and all military and naval appointments should
be made either by Parliament or by persons deputed by Parliament to
make them. Charles also promised to take into favourable consideration
any further limitations of royal authority that Parliament might see fit
to suggest.
But the House were in no mood to listen to talk about compromise.
They were determined to exclude James from the throne, and they were
convinced that no statutory limitations of the prerogatives of a Papist
king could prevent him from favouring those of his own faith and from
subverting the Established Church. "For us to go about to tie a Popish
successor with laws for preservation of the Protestant Religion is binding
Sampson with withes; he will break them when he is awake." More-
over, though no one in the House was so impolite as to express it
openly, there was an undercurrent of mistrust of Charles's sincerity; for
his part in the proceedings that had led to Danby's fall his acceptance
of subsidies from Louis on condition that Parliament should not meet
was fresh in everyone's mind. From the extracts from speeches in the
debates on Exclusion that have been preserved it appears that no one
attempted to answer in the negative the constitutional question pro-
pounded by William Sacheverell six months earlier, "whether the King
and the Parliament may not dispose of the succession of the Crown";
nor, except for a half-hearted plea by Sir Leoline Jenkins, promptly
brushed aside by Colonel Birch, did Charles or his advisers raise this
issue. (It must be noted in passing that this issue was very different
from that raised at the Revolution whether Parliament alone may not
dispose of the Crown and dispossess the holder of it; there can be no
doubt that Parliament, in so disposing of the Crown, committed a
revolutionary act,)
On May n, again on a Sunday, the debate was opened on the Lord
Chancellor's speech, and as a fortnight earlier vain attempts were made
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 159
to lead the House into other paths; four days later the First Exclusion
Bill was read a first time, providing that James, Duke of York (by name),
should be declared incapable of inheriting the Crowns of the three
kingdoms; that on Charles's decease the Crown should pass to the next
successor, just as if James were dead; that it should be high treason on
James's part to perform any act of sovereignty after Charles's death,
and on the part of anyone else to take measures calculated to assist him
to the throne; and that James should be perpetually banished from the
kingdom. (It is curious that, though in the preamble to the Bill the
reason for the exclusion is shown to be that James had been traitorously
seduced by the emissaries, priests and agents of the Pope, no provision
was made in the Bill for his succession if he again changed his religion
and became a Protestant; probably, as James was to say later, it would
have been argued that such a reconversion would have been insincere
and under dispensation.) On May 21 the second reading was passed
by the substantial majority of 79, 207 to 128, but further proceedings
upon the Bill were prevented by the prorogation of Parliament on May
26, on the ostensible ground of dispute between the Houses, and by its
subsequent dissolution.
James was not greatly concerned at danger to himself from the
Exclusion Bill; he was confident that the King and the House of Lords
would prevent its passing. But he was distressed to hear from his
correspondents of the growth of what he considered to be the anti-
monarchical temper of the House of Commons. He heard that on May i-i
the Commons had passed a not very worthy resolution that they would
stand by the King with their lives and fortunes, and that if he was
assassinated they would assume that it was by the Catholics and would
take revenge on them, and he at once wrote Charles a letter which
deserves study on other grounds than the matter immediately in hand:
I can never sufficiently acknowledge the sense of gratitude I have
for Your Majesty's goodness to me, I do assure you I can bear any
misfortune with patience so long as you are so kind; I have but one
life to lose and I shall always be ready to lay it down in your service,
and at the rate the things now go there is too great a probability
an occasion may not long [be] wanting. They will never be satisfied
unless Your Majesty unking yourself, and if you deny them any-
thing they ask, I am confident they will fly out, especially if you
permit the militia of London and parts adjacent to draw together.
I know there is danger and hazard in making those steps that are
necessary to keep your Crown, and more than would have been
some months ago, but you are utterly lost if it is any longer deferred.
l6o JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Let not therefore knaves and mean-spirited people flatter you into
an opinion that you may be safe by yielding and temporising, for
nothing less than the destruction of your family and the Monarchy
itself will content them. Now therefore is the time to break in upon
them before they are formed or have a man to head them ; and the
only person capable (I think) of that employment (pardon me for
naming him) is the Duke of Monmouth, for I am sure the same
reasons and persuasions that has prevailed with him to behave to
you and me as he has done will make him stick at nothing that
favours his ambition ; and therefore I beg your Majesty will have a
watchful eye upon his actions for your own security, and that you
will please to give some signal mark of your displeasure to Sir
Thomas Armstrong and young Gerrard, who were such earnest
agitators against me in the House; for unless something of that
nature be done, many will not think you in earnest. Suffer not
Ireland or Scotland to be put in other hands as they are at present;
you may count upon their assistance, and the Prince of Orange
too has given me all imaginable assurance that he will stand and
fall by you. Wherefore I beg Your Majesty to make use of those
parts and courage God has given you, and not rely upon concessions
already made or to make any more. Be pleased to use all possible
diligence in providing your forts and garrisons; and certainly the
speediest way of breaking their measures is to break the parliament
itself and proportion your way of living to your revenue, rather
than to lie any longer at the mercy of those men, who, by that
villainous vote to revenge your death upon the Papists, can have
no other meaning than to expose your life to the bloody hand of any
desperate fanatic who shall think fit to attempt so inhuman an act.
Perhaps the most interesting side-light that this letter throws on James's
character is his conviction that the rebels, as he would have called them,
can only be dangerous if they have a leader of royal blood : clearly here
he is taking his analogy not from the Civil War, but from the Fronde.
James followed up this letter with one to Legge urging him to see the
King and to endeavour to make him see that "now or never is the time
to save the monarchy", and enclosing "Heads you are to discourse with
his Majesty upon, so as to let him know they are reasonable". These
heads add emphasis and point to what James had written to Charles,
especially with regard to Monmouth :
That His Majesty ought not to apprehend but that he is strong
enough to deal with and punish his enemies if he will but be resolute
and stick to himself and countenance his friends. The fleet is yet
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL l6l
his, urge the consequence and advantage of that, the guards and
garrisons are also his, except Hull which might easily be made so.
Scotland and Ireland yet his if he continue Lauderdale and
Ormonde in them, them two kingdoms will make men of estates
consider well before they engage against the King. The Prince of
Orange has given me all the assurances of his serving His Majesty.
... If he will bestir himself now they are not quite prepared,
want a head, he must have a care the Duke of Monmouth does not
head them, for he is the only dangerous man that can do it; if he
does not, no man of quality will dare.
And to William he wrote in the same sense and in very similar words,
with the addition :
Firmness and good husbandry may carry him [Charles] through
all his difficulties, and I am very apt to believe that whensoever he
shows he will no longer be used as he has been and that they see
he will be a King, there will be a rebellion.
But Charles was both wiser and less resolute than his father, and James's
plan of a coup d'6tat was not put to the test.
In addition to the passages just quoted, there is abundant evidence in
the correspondence from Brussels of the strengthening in James of a
sentiment which had been latent for some years, his jealousy of James,
Duke of Monmouth, Charles's eldest son. 1 Of Monmouth it is safe to
say that no man who appeared so attractive to his contemporaries figures
in history as so worthless and contemptible. He had a good reputation
as a soldier, he had won golden opinions fighting at John Churchill's
side at the siege of Maestricht in 1673, and he had no doubt the dash
and courage of his Cavalier relations and associates ; but it has never
been suggested that in the campaign of Sedgemoor he showed any of the
qualities of a general. For the rest, he was so weak as to let himself be
"made the cat's foot" by any politician who thought he could make use
of him, and so vain that he thought that a brave carriage and popular
manners could lead an aristocratic society to overlook the defects of his
birth. "The Booby Duke" he was called by Rochester (the poet, not
James's brother-in-law), and the title fits him so well that it is curious
that it did not pass into common talk; 2 Dryden wrote more politely,
1 If, as seems likely, we can reject the legend of James la Cloche. See
Arthur Bryant, Charles II, p. 47.
* "Rochester's Farewell", in which this appellation occurs, appears not to
have been published for some years after the poet's death in 1680, but it was no
doubt freely circulated in manuscript.
I&2 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
The ambitious youth, too covetous of fame,
Too full of angel's metal in his frame,
Unwarily was led from virtue's ways
Made drunk with honour and debauched with praise.
Charles did not take his paternal duties very seriously, nor during the
first ten years of his son's life, spent as they were in exile, were there
facilities for education and discipline. Monmouth showed some pre-
cocity as a swashbuckler, for before he was fourteen he had conceived
the notion that his bastardy could be annulled by a sufficiently bold
denial of the fact, and he threatened to be the death of anyone who said
that his father and his mother had not been married; at the age of
seventeen he was reputed to be the complete rake. Charles was so fond
of him that there were persistent rumours before he was eighteen that
he would be legitimised, and the King appears to have done nothing to
counteract these rumours or to prevent illusions from taking root in the
boy's mind. James had his jealousies of his nephew at this early period,
but they did not strike very deep, and the intrigue of Buckingham and
Arlington in 1668 to have Monmouth declared legitimate caused no
breach, for James was not aware of it at the time, Monmouth was
married at the age of seventeen to the young heiress of the Earl of
Buccleuch, and James was for a long time in close relations with both
husband and wife. In 1669 occurred the ludicrous incident of the Abbe
Pregnani, which conveys an impression of easy relations between
Charles, James and Monmouth. This French ecclesiastic had a reputa-
tion both in regular science and in the science of forecasting events, and
he was sent over ostensibly to help Charles inTiis hobby of chemistry,
actually to influence him in the French interest. Monmouth, who was
very superstitious, got hold of Pregnani and tried to find out from him
whether he or his Uncle James would be successful in an amorous
intrigue in which they were competitors. Charles was then at New-
market with James, and when he heard of Pregnani's powers he said he was
the very man to help them to back horses, and he told Monmouth to bring
the Abb6 to Newmarket. The result was disastrous for Monmouth: he
put entire faith in Pregnani, who proved to be inefficient as a tipster and
was wrong on every race, and who returned to France entirely discredited.
There is considerable evidence that the good relations between uncle
and nephew continued unbroken until 1674. In July 1673 we read:
Yesterday His Royal Highness dined at the Duke of Monmouth's,
who were together most of the afternoon; it being observed by
those that are near His Royal Highness that he has a particular
kindness and affection for His Grace, upon whom, indeed, all the
world now looks as a rising sun.
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 163
Monmouth was evidently anxious at that time to do nothing to rouse
James's jealousy:
The King proffered my Lord Duke to make him Commissioner
of Scotland in the place of my Lord Lauderdale ; but His Grace
modestly refused it, telling His Majesty that he desired to appear in
action while the war continued, and in a time of peace he feared
that employment would draw upon him the envy of the Duke.
The King commended him for his prudence and told him he was of
the same opinion.
A considerable breach occurred, however, in the summer of 1674.
James relates that on July 17 he had occasion to warn Monmouth that
Arlington was attempting to make trouble between them. Monmouth
replied that "he could not believe he had such evil intentions, else he
would have nothing to do with him". The same evening Monmouth
told James that he was thinking of applying to the King for the post of
General, and asked for his support. Now, James had in 1670, on the
death of George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, advised Charles not to
appoint a successor: the English Army was so small that it did not need
a general. But it is quite clear that in giving this advice James felt
that he was performing an act of self-abnegation, and that he had no
doubt whatever that if a general were appointed there could be no choice
but himself. Monmouth's application was therefore a shock to him,
although since the passing of the Test Act he himself could no longer be
considered eligible. He told Monmouth that his present priority in the
Army as Colonel of the Guards gave him all the powers of General and
that "he was not to expect my friendship if ever he pretended to it or
had it". He was dismayed to learn a few days later that Charles had
appointed Monmouth Lieutenant-General. About the same time Mon-
mouth began to take exception to James's intimacy with his wife
whether he feared that James would seduce her or would convert her to
his own Faith does not appear and by September there was open feud
at Court between uncle and nephew. The majority of the courtiers took
the side of Monmouth Charles was at this time inclined to favour
him at James's expense and James got the worse of a verbal encounter
with Arlington (who made a special study of Charles's mind and knew
who was the favourite of the moment) i 1 he told Arlington that if Mon-
mouth did not desist from interfering in regimental appointments he
would lose his friendship, "to which that dexterous Minister replied
1 The temporary rapprochement between James and Arlington in 1669 had
been ended when in 1672 Arlington and Clifford were candidates for the
Treasurership and James strongly supported Clifford's claims.
164 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
something haughtily, that the Duke of Monmouth could not need his
favour more than His Highness needed the King's, which he might
hazard to lessen by thus crossing his inclination for so beloved a son".
The final alienation of James and Monmouth was, however, delayed
some years; apart from their hunting together in December 1674, there
are several references which show that there was no great mutual an-
tipathy and that each was willing to help the other in little ways. As late
as August 1678 James wrote to William:
I am glad my nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, has been with
you. He has done justice to your troops and gives the highest com-
mendation to your footguards and dragoons which can be and which
they deserve.
As early as November 1678 Barrillon reported that Monmouth had
begun to have hopes of the succession and that he had allowed his
health to be drunk as Prince of Wales ; but his followers were few and
most. people laughed at his pretensions. 1 But when Shaftesbury began
to encourage those pretensions, Monmouth's head was completely
turned, and for the first time he took himself seriously as a politician.
When James went to Brussels, the fact that Monmouth remained behind
basking in the royal favour was a grave addition to his troubles; Charles,
however, the day James left made a formal declaration in Council "that
he was never contracted to any other woman but only to his present wife
Queen Catherine", a gesture calculated to convince James that there was
to be no tampering with the succession. But two months later insurrec-
tion broke out in Scotland, and James was confident that had he been
in England he would have been appointed to the command of the troops
sent to suppress it. Instead, at the very time when James was warning
Charles about Monmouth's political activities, Monmouth was given
the appointment, and he conducted the short campaign with complete
efficiency; not only that, when he returned to London he "left a mighty
reputation behind him in Scotland for the clemency and indulgence
procured by his means". James, who never wasted pity on rebels or on
persons suspected of rebellion regarded Monmouth's mildness after
Bothwell Brigg merely as an effort to gain popularity and a sure way to
encourage the fanatics to another rebellion.
James had little hope of being speedily recalled from Brussels, and he
lost no time in making arrangements for comfort and amusement. One
1 Sprat accuses Shaftesbury of deliberately "inflaming him (Monmouth)
with imaginary suspicions of the Duke of York's irreconcilable hatred of his
person, which was ... far from having any real foundation".
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 165
of the first things he did was to instruct Legge to send over some of his
coaches and coach-horses, "as also two pads and four of the summer
hunters, whereof Windsor and Griffin to be two*' ; the coaches might be
sent direct to Antwerp, but the horses should be embarked at Dover to
avoid a long sea passage. These instructions were supplemented by
others, including a demand for "some of the Hulks spaniel to shoot
withal". Finally, the day before he unexpectedly left for England he
sent orders for Hilliard, the Master of his Foxhounds, to bring with him
the foxhounds and the huntsmen and their horses : "I now begin to have
good sport stag hunting, and the country looks as if the fox-hunting
would be very good."
James and the Duchess kept a small court at Brussels and, in addition
to his large personal staff, visitors from England and elsewhere were
from time to time welcomed, among them the Earl and Countess of
Peterborough and the Duchess's mother, Duchess Laura. James, how-
ever, was not very happy in Brussels : fear of Shaftesbury's spies kept
him from making an open profession of his religion, though he had, no
doubt, his own private oratory, and this abstention made the Spaniards,
not only uneasy, but even scandalised; that instead of seeing him
at Mass (which none of them ever did), there were two ministers
in his family reading prayers constantly twice a day, and sermons
twice on Sundays to the Protestants that belonged to him.
Moreover, James's isolation from the Court left him open to an attack
from which he would otherwise have been protected : at the time when
he and Charles were bent on removing the suspicion that he had designs
on the existing polity of England, Catholic malcontents, mostly Irish,
flocked to him with hare-brained schemes for a rising in Ireland which
should lead to an invasion of England in the Catholic interest; James
was glad to see these people, but they embarrassed him. In particular,
one Colonel Fitzpatrick was sent over by the Irish Catholic bishops to
concert a plan with the tapal Internuncio at Brussels, and expected to be
countenanced by James. James very wisely refused to have anything to
do with him, and he "was forced to remove thence by His Royal High-
ness's commands, which he obeyed not without much regret and
murmuring". These intrigues gave point to the objection raised in the
Exclusion debates that James in exile would be in a position to plan an
invasion. James was unpopular with the Spaniards because he showed
discretion in not appearing publicly at Mass and because he had Protes-
tant clergy in his household for the benefit of his servants; on this
account, and because of the unjust suspicions his conspiratorial visitors
brought upon him, he thought seriously at one time of transferring his
l66 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
residence to the Protestant town of Breda, and made the suggestion to
William that accommodation might be found for him there.
The day James had sent for his foxhounds his stay at Brussels was
suddenly cut short by alarming news from England : Charles at Windsor
had been suddenly laid low by a serious attack of illness (as usual, poison
was suspected). Monmouth was on the spot and at the head of the armed
forces of the kingdom, and the moderate politicians, Viscount Halifax
and the Earl of Essex, who had not followed Shaftesbury's lead in
supporting Monmouth's pretensions to the succession, realised their
responsibility as Charles's Ministers and the danger to the country if
Charles died, and sent an express to Brussels urging James to come over
without delay; at the same time August 27 and 28 he had letters
containing similar advice from Sunderland, Feversham and the Duchess
of Portsmouth. He left Brussels on August 29, his Duchess alone being
informed of his departure. Lord Longford's account of the journey in a
letter to Lord Arran, written four days after James's arrival at Windsor,
contains much illuminating detail.
He left Brussels in a disguise of a black perruque only and a plain
stuff suit without his Star and Garter, rode post to Calais with my
Lord Peterborough, Colonel Churchill, Mr. Doyley and two foot-
men, but not in their livery. He then took ship, and it was so bad
a sail that though he had no ill wind he was nineteen hours at sea
before he landed at Dover. He went immediately to the post house
where Churchill like a French officer in his scarf represented the
best man in the Company, and being known to the postmaster, he
welcomed him, took him by the hand, said he was glad to see him,
but swore by God he should be much gladder to see a better man
than he, and at an instant looked full in the Duke's face, when he
knew it would not seem to take notice of him, because he saw him
in disguise. Churchill was mounting upon the best horse, and just
as the Duke was mounting, another man who belonged to the post
office went to the other side of the Duke, looked full in his face,
and whispered so softly to himself that nobody could have heard
him, but the Duke took no notice, but rode on. These were the only
persons that knew him upon the road, and yet they kept his secret.
My Lord Peterborough and Doyley were outridden so that only
His Highness and Churchill with one footman arrived on Monday,
September i, in the evening at seven of the clock at the Barbican
at Smithfield, where they took a hackney coach and drove to the
law office in Lombard Street, where Churchill alighted and went to
see if Phil Froude was at home, but he being abroad, Churchill left
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 167
a letter for him to follow him to Sir Allen Apsley's when he came
home, not acquainting him that the Duke was come. At Sir Allen's
the Duke supped and went to bed there, and at three in the morning
took coach for Windsor, where he arrived about seven, and came
into the King's withdrawing room at the moment my Lord Sussex,
who was then in waiting in the bedchamber, opened the door; at
which the Duke entered, and when he came to the King's bedside
he with great submission threw himself upon his knees, asking the
Bang's pardon for his coming into England and into his presence
without his leave, saying he was so confounded at the news of His
Majesty's illness that he could have no satisfaction or content in his
mind until he had seen his Majesty. And since that now he had that
happiness to find him past all danger (for which he blessed God) he
was ready to return again that morning if it was His Majesty's
pleasure; for he came with resolutions to be absolutely governed
and disposed of by His Majesty in all things. Upon this His
Majesty cast his arms about him, kissed him and received him with
all kindness imaginable and 'tis said by the standers-by that they
both shed tears of joy at the interview.
Charles was very anxious that no one should know that he had had
any previous knowledge of James's visit to England, and he had stipu-
lated that James should give out that he had come of his own accord and
without an invitation, "so fearful His Majesty was of giving the least
disgust (said James), and that if any fault was found, it might fall upon
the Duke's shoulders which were more accustomed to bear such burdens,
and this he knew would make no great addition to what he already bore".
And the chief thing in the King's mind after the raptures of reunion had
subsided was how best to get James out of the country before public
notice was taken of his presence. James wrote to William four days after
his arrival at Windsor saying that he had more friends in England than
he had thought and that the rebellion which Charles had expected on
his return had not materialised. He was therefore confirmed in his view
that Charles had been unduly apprehensive, and he was quite certain
that now he was back in England he could safely stay there. But Charles
would not yield to his arguments: Parliament had been summoned for
October 7, and there was no time to be lost. Two concessions, however,
James did achieve : Charles was impressed by the occurrences of the past
few days, he had no intention of letting Monmouth take advantage of
James's absence abroad in the event of his own sudden death; and
within ten days of James's arrival Monmouth was deprived of his rank
as Lieutenant-General and ordered abroad ; Charles also reiterated before
l68 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
the Council his declaration that he had not been married to Monmouth's
mother. Charles appears to have made public no reason for this harsh
treatment of his favourite son, but it was c Variously reported" : that he
had incurred displeasure by his own open opposition to James, by his
intimate relations with the Opposition leaders in the City, by an amorous
intrigue with the Duchess of Southampton and, most serious of all,
after his successful campaign in Scotland, by "laying the foundation for
the succession in that kingdom and making himself popular by the
industry of his agents and friends'*. There was apparently open conflict
at Court between the partisans of the two Dukes while Monmouth's
fate was in the balance : Henry Savile (Halifax's brother, whose jests were
sometimes too pointed even for Charles) wrote from Paris that he was so
ignorant of what was passing in England that "I knew not from those I
intend to shout with whether I was to cry 'a York' or 'a Monmouth 1 ".
Monmouth went to The Hague, and James found occasion to remon-
strate with William on the kind reception his nephew was given. The
disgrace of Monmouth was followed on October 15 by the dismissal
of Shaftesbury from the Council.
The second concession which James obtained was permission to
change his place of exile from Brussels to Edinburgh, a change which,
together with other advantages, still further improved his hold on the
succession. Charles allowed him only three weeks in England, and on
September 24 he was on his way back to Brussels to rejoin the Duchess
and to make arrangements for his departure to Scotland. He made the
same time as he had taken on the homeward journey, and he was in
Brussels on the ayth, and he took so short a time over his preparations
there that he was at The Hague with Mary Beatrice five or six days later.
There he found ships to convey his retinue and belongings to Scotland,
and he embarked, after bidding farewell to his daughter and son-in-law
for the last time. His intention was to go to the Downs and wait for
Charles's permission to go to London; but he was driven by stress of
weather to the Norfolk coast, he missed the message Charles had sent to
the Downs, and putting Churchill ashore with a letter to Charles, he
waited for the reply. Poor Mary Beatrice suffered acutely; they eventu-
ally arrived in London on October I4. 1
During the fortnight of this stay in England James was on October 21
entertained at a banquet at Merchant Taylors' Hall by the Artillery
1 Miss Foxcroft (Life of Halifax, I, 191) says, without giving references,
"A treacherous understanding took shape between the Heir-Presumptive
and Sunderland, according to which James, while ostensibly on his way to the
North, should halt with his family in London, his stay being insensibly pro-
longed with a view to his permanent settlement."
THE SECOND EXILE: THE FIRST EXCLUSION BILL 169
Company, 1 as he was frequently entertained throughout the reign.
James chose to regard the occasion as a spontaneous expression of
affection and loyalty to himself; but it was alleged that the Artillery
Company was a close preserve of James's own, that when some years
earlier he had been Chief Leader and Captain of the Company he had
nominated as stewards a number of his friends, such as Lord Ossory, the
Earl of Feversham, Colonel Legge and Sir Robert Holmes, and that it
was these stewards, and not the general body of the Company, who
organised this banquet, paid for it and issued the invitations ; it was also
stated that James himself had to contribute 200 towards the cost, that
the Lord Mayor was present but less than half the aldermen, and that
menbers of the Company who were given tickets in many cases either
tore them up or sold them for what they would fetch. There was great
enthusiasm over the drinking of the healths of the King and James, and
James accepted this enthusiasm as evidence of renewed popularity;
he made a speech in which he said "that he would always maintain the
laws and liberty of the subject, but yet he would not be catechised by
any" ; and as he was leaving the Hall he remarked "that this was pretty
well for a poor banished man, so little while since". But signs were not
absent that the warmth of feeling in the Hall was not reflected outside :
anti-popish bills had been stuck on the doors and in the approaches, and
in Cheapside, when James and his retinue were returning on horseback
to St. James's, there was a large and hostile crowd. At one point where
Gates and some of his friends were in a balcony overlooking the street
"the rabble about them cried, 'a Pope, a Pope', as the Duke passed,
whereat they were threatened by one of the Duke's guard, who cocked a
pistol at them, and the rabble began to cheer, 'James* ".
About this time James received from the Pope a letter which shows
how little James's tactless zeal for his religion was appreciated at Rome :
Most beloved son in Christ, we send greeting. It has been
reported to us that, on the occasion of the illness into which the
King your brother fell, you hastened to visit him and that you
possibly have had thoughts of remaining with him. News of this
nature has filled us with very grave anxiety, for we have considered
that, bearing in mind the state of things in that realm, the hatred of
abandoned persons towards you and the manifest plot against you,
that it was inopportune for you to subject your safety, the hopes of
the Orthodox Faith, and also the welfare of the realm itself, to such
1 Founded under royal charter in the reign of Henry VIII, and since 1770
known as the Honourable Artillery Company, under which name it still flourishes.
170 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
a risk. Wherefore we strongly urge you to consider the matter
seriously and to put off to a time when Divine Providence shall have
shown more clearly a way of success a plan no less dangerous than
courageous. You will acknowledge in these fatherly exhortations
the power of the affection in which we embrace you ; and desiring
that everything will turn out fortunately for you our best beloved
son in Christ, we bestow our apostolic benediction upon you from
the very bottom of our heart.
CHAPTER X
THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND
THE new Parliament met on October 7, 1679, but only to be prorogued
for ten days ; on the i7th it was adjourned until the 30th, and it was then
and afterwards successively prorogued seven times before it met for the
despatch of business on October 21, 1680. Charles II has several parlia-
mentary records to his name, but none more remarkable than this: a
parliament not even permitted to elect a Speaker until more than a year
after the date for which it was summoned. When James arrived in
London on October 12, 1679, Parliament was not sitting, for Charles
had no intention of permitting a continuance of the debate on Exclusion.
The main reason for James's absence from England had therefore dis-
appeared, and he fought hard to be allowed to remain at Court. But
Charles would giv6 way only to the extent of promising that his absence
should be a short one only to the middle of the following January.
James on his long journey on the Great North Road was accompanied
by his Duchess. In his memoirs he commends Mary's constancy in
taking this journey so soon after her sea-sickness and vomiting of blood
and in spite of the short time they were to be in Scotland, "and though
she was not then above twenty years old, chose rather even with the
hazard of her life, to be a constant companion of the Duke her husband's
misfortunes and hardships, than to enjoy her ease in any part of the
world without him" ; but perhaps Mary had other reasons for keeping
him under her eye. They travelled in state, for Charles had arranged
that troops of horse in three relays should accompany them on the road
(it is interesting to read that Captain Piercy Kirke, subsequently to
achieve notoriety at Tangier and after Sedgemoor, commanded the
second troop and was with the Duke and Duchess from Grantham to
York) ; and they had an excellent send-off, for they were entertained by
the City of London at the Artillery Garden, and a very considerable
train of nobility and gentry conducted them to Hatfield, their first
stopping-place.
At Hatfield House there was a setback, for the Earl of Salisbury
absented himself; he sent his son to James with excuses, but he had
made no provision for his entertainment. Progress was slow : the daily
journey was only from twenty to twenty-five miles; the Marquis of
Atholl travelled with James in his coach, and his Marchioness much to
the envy of ladies left behind in London in that of the Duchess. James
171
172 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
was so well satisfied with the company of the Marquis, and of the other
gentleman who no doubt from time to time took his place, that he made
no use of the led horses that had been provided, though occasionally he
stretched his legs in a, walk of a mile or two. The second night was spent
in an inn at Biggleswade, and there he was waited on by the Earl of
Ailesbury and other local gentry. The third stopping-place was Sir
Lionel Waldron's seat at Huntingdon ; then, after sleeping the nights of
October 30 and 31 at Stamford and Grantham, they arrived at Newark,
where they remained for the week-end. The night of Monday, November
3, was spent with the Duke of Newcastle at Welbeck; the following
morning they passed into Yorkshire, and were received on the border
of the county by the High Sheriff and a number of the local magnates ;
others joined the procession on the way to Doncaster. Pontefract was
reached on November 5, the following day between that town and York
they were received at Tadcaster by the Archbishop of York, and five
miles farther on by the Cathedral clergy and by the Lord Mayor, alder-
men and sheriffs of the City. The Deputy Recorder made a speech of
compliment to the Duke and Duchess, and the deputation was honoured
by James, who himself led them to the Duchess to kiss her hands.
At York they spent four days, but their experience there was dis-
appointing. The loyal gentry made a great effort, but they were small
in numbers, and the large following of Shaftesbury conspicuously
absented themselves; the city fathers apparently considered that their
duties had ended with the official reception, for James was so displeased
with their conduct that he moved Charles to send them an official
reprimand. It was possibly chagrin at this neglect that caused James to
omit the most ordinary courtesies to the few gentlemen who had behaved
seemingly: Sir John Reresby, the Governor, reports that, "I had
presented His Highness with venison and wines, and entertained some
of his favourites at my house in York, but it was not worthy of his
notice".
On November 10 the northern progress reached Norton Conyers, the
seat of Sir Richard Graham; then, after a halt at Richmond, they
arrived at Durham, where they had what was probably the most splendid
reception this side of the Border. The obsequious Nathaniel Crewe,
now Bishop of Durham, had been on his way to London, five days on
the road ; as soon as he heard James had left London he turned back and
prepared for his entertainment. For three days the Duke and Duchess
and their train enjoyed the Bishop's hospitality before they set out on
the last bleak stage of their journey to Berwick. Long before the end of
the journey James and Mary were so bored with travelling that even
Mary vowed she would never take that way again, but would travel by
THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND 173
the dreaded, but far quicker, sea route; besides, at sea there were no
stopping-places where one might meet with rebuffs.
James can have had no expectation of the tremendous enthusiasm
of his reception in Scotland. A very full account was sent by a Catholic
priest to a friend in Paris, and this letter is preserved among the remnants
of the Stuart papers at Blairs College, near Aberdeen. James's progress
from Berwick was a veritable triumph; the whole Council met him at
the Border with two thousand nobility and gentry and the King's troop
of horse ; James alighted from his coach, and those of sufficient dignity
kissed his hands and passed on to kiss the Duchess's hands as she sat in
her coach. Claverhouse and his troop of dragoons joined the procession
a few miles on, and a stop of two days was made at Lethington, the
Duke of Lauderdale's mansion, where they were nobly entertained.
There was further hand-kissing at Lethington, and the enthusiasm of
the populace, of which he had recently experienced little in England,
seems to have gone to James's head, for we read that "he remained with
an open table, where all the lords sat with him; his discourses were very
free, especially concerning his own pretensions and the Parliament of
England" the sort of indiscretion to which he became increasingly
liable as he advanced in years.
The progress continued on the same scale to Leith, where James left
his coach for his entry to Edinburgh on horseback; at the water-gate of
the city at three o'clock on Monday, November 24, he was met by the
provost and the bailiffs, "then the cannons of the Castle went off for a
considerable time, and bonfires were made throughout all the town and
the ringing of bells continued until ten o'clock at night". In fact there
there was a reception comparable in spontaneity and good-will, if not in
magnificence, with that of Charles at the Restoration. 1 A good deal of
this enthusiasm may be ascribed to other reasons than that of James's
personal popularity; the Scottish people knew little about James except
that he was of the lineage of their ancient kings, and it was the return
of the dynasty rather than the visit of the individual that they welcomed ;
moreover, they had hopes that the tyranny of Lauderdale, under which
they had groaned for so many years, was at last coming to an end.
James, however, continued popular with the common people throughout
his stay in Scotland. In October 1681, when he had been there alto-
gether a little over a year, he paid a visit to Glasgow, and there he
was welcomed by all the soldiers with volleys and by the townsmen
who went out to meet him with Archbishop Ross with acclamations
of joy, and by the town itself with bonfires and ringing of bells ;
1 The writer of the letter was, of course, biased in James's favour, but it is
unlikely that he would have exaggerated more than a little to a private friend.
174 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
and when he went to Dumbarton the following day there were similar
demonstrations. It is fairly safe to say that in no town in England would
James at that time have been given more than a perfunctory welcome.
Holyrood House was placed by Charles at James's disposal as a
residence ; in the order for the preparation of the palace for his occupa-
tion it is stated that he has allowed James "to reside in Scotland during
his royal pleasure", a clear implication that he held no official position. 1
He had always held the honorary status of Privy Councillor of Scotland,
and he now proposed to take his seat on the Council; but the difficulty
arose that he could not take the necessary oaths. Reference was made
to Charles, and he replied that it was "our pleasure that he continue to
act as a privy councillor, in that our ancient kingdom, without taking
any oath".
All accounts agree that James made a very good first impression in
Scotland. Lauderdale had governed by a faction and had excluded from
office and favour everyone who refused to accept his principles of
administration and to submit to his commands ; James made overtures to
many of the nobility who had been in opposition and established himself
as above party. His own account of his policy is probably very near the
truth.
I live here [he wrote to Legge] as cautiously as I can, and am very
careful to give offence to none and to have no partialities, and
preach to them laying aside all private animosities and securing
the King his own way. None shall have reason to complain of me,
and though some of either party here might have hoped I should
have showed my partiality for them, and some of my friends have
been of opinion it had been best for me to have done so, and by it
have secured one side to me, yet I am convinced it was not fit for
me to do it, it being no way good for His Majesty's service.
The Scottish Constitution, more aristocratic than that of England, and
the absence in the Scottish Parliament of any tradition of opposition
to the monarchy, suited James very well. He appears to have made
some little study of the condition of Scotland and he was able to arrive
at the conclusion, obvious to a newcomer, though obscured by use to
natives of the country, that the state of the Highlands was entirely
unsatisfactory; and before leaving for England at the end of his short
visit he strongly urged the Council "to devise some measure for enforc-
1 Major Hay (Enigma of James II, pp. 11-13) protests against Mr. Winston
Churchill's statement that James was "marooned" in Scotland ; he has apparently
not seen this official statement. Burton and Mr. Ogg say that James went to
Scotland as High Commissioner; apart from the evidence here adduced there
could be no Commissioner when Parliament was not sitting.
THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND 175
ing the law in those disorderly districts, without which he conceived
the King is not entirely King of the whole kingdom". It is odd that he
did not pursue this matter when he returned to Scotland for a longer
stay and with increased powers. Had he done so with success he would,
however, have done much to ruin in advance the Jacobite cause; for,
besides Claverhouse in his own lifetime, his son and grandson, after he
was dead, drew what strength they possessed from districts in which
royal authority had never been made effectual. 1
On January 28, 1680, Charles announced to his Council his intention
of recalling James, saying that his exile had not had the good effects on
public life that had been anticipated and that it was only just that James
should be near at hand when his affairs were being discussed. Leave to
return was accordingly sent to James, and he prepared for his departure
from Edinburgh. His popularity had not waned during his stay there,
and the ceremonies of farewell were on the same scale as those of his
arrival. His private behaviour appears to have given no opportunity for
scandal, for we read (from a Catholic source, however) that "all persons,
even fanatics, are forced to love him because of his virtuous and ex-
emplary life". He left Edinburgh by sea with Mary Beatrice on
February 17, 1680, after a stay of twelve weeks, and arrived at the Privy
Stairs at Whitehall a week later. Charles received him with unwonted
cordiality and declared that they would never be parted again. Part of
his good spirits may have been due to the address he had received from
twenty-eight members of the Scottish Privy Council: in very fulsome
terms this address set forth the great benefits that James's stay among
them had brought to the country, and declared their loyalty to his royal
person and "to your royal successors in the ordinary degrees of succes-
sion according to the unalienable right of blood". More surprising, as
bearing no element of sycophancy or courtly compliment, was the
behaviour of the London (or perhaps only Westminster) mob: on
February 24 Sir Robert Southwell wrote to Ormonde
The Duke and Duchess of York arrives this day at Whitehall,
both very well, and received with all demonstrations of joy. But the
King did forbid any expression to be made in the City by my Lord
Mayor. Yet at this end of the town the bells are ringing and the
bonfires numerous.
Well might the Dutch ambassador write to William at the end of this
year, "Les mouvements de cette nation sont souvent extrfemement
brusques".
But not only was there this unofficial rejoicing at James's return;
1 See Miss Cunningham, The Loyal Clans y passim.
176 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
official bodies also gave him welcome. Two days after his arrival the
Lord Mayor, the Recorder and eighteen aldermen of the City of London
waited on him, and on March 8 he and Charles were entertained in the
City at a great supper, where they stayed until one o'clock (incidentally
it was rumoured that the wine was bad, for some of the retinue had
headaches next day, "though I heard the Duke commend it exceed-
ingly"); in May the Mayor and Corporation of Bath in a loyal address
mentioned the great benefits they had enjoyed, "particularly by the
recall of His Royal Highness".
After the fall of Danby, 1 Charles had entrusted the administration
to three men who, in their subsequent and very diverse careers proved
themselves to be of outstanding ability, though it is doubtful if any one
of them could claim to be a statesman: Robert Spencer, second Earl
of Sunderland; Laurence Hyde, James's brother-in-law, the younger
son of Lord Chancellor Clarendon; and Sidney Godolphin. At the time
of their appointment they were young Sunderland, the oldest, was not
yet forty and unknown; the wits laughed at them and called them "the
Chits"; but Charles had in a supreme degree one quality which was
absolutely denied to James, a knowledge of men and an appreciation of
ability. All three men showed great industry and devotion to business.
Sunderland from the first stood out as the King's chief adviser; he was a
man of great administrative capacity, but entirely lacking in principle, and
so short-sighted that he was unable to recognise at any crisis which
side it would be to his interest to take. Hyde, better known as the Earl
of Rochester, was. the one man of principle of the three, a thorough-
going Church-and-King man, prepared to go to any lengths in defence
of the royal prerogative, but as consistent an opponent of Catholic
aspirations as was his far weaker brother, Henry, second Earl of Claren-
don; he was the only one of the three who remained faithful to James
during the Exclusion crisis. Godolphin, until the reign of Anne, when
events forced him into political prominence, was pre-eminently the
unobtrusive public servant: as Charles said, "never in the way, and never
out of the way". He took small interest in faction fights or even in
dynastic struggles; when they were over he was always ready to place
his first-class financial brain at the disposal of the victor. If he had a
principle it was that the most important consideration was that the work
of the Treasury should be well done. 2
1 There was an interval of some six months in the summer of 1679 in which
the "triumvirate" of Halifax, Sunderland and Essex (with Temple as a timid
and doubtful fourth) had jointly the chief place in the King's counsels.
2 There is an illuminating passage in one of Godolphin' s letters to William,
written in 1694, when faction was at its height and he himself was classed as a
THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND
The summer of 1680 was a very uncomfortable period in James's
life. Of actual events there were few of importance Parliament was
not sitting but there was intense political activity all over the country.
Shaftesbury was now at the height of his power, and through the
organisation of the Green Ribbon Club he kept up the excitement
which had been engendered by the Popish Plot, Both he and the King
realised that the Opposition was helpless as long as the Parliament
elected the previous autumn was in abeyance, and in consequence he
devoted his energies to promoting petitions for an early meeting of
Parliament. These petitions poured in to Charles from all sides, and he
strongly resented what he considered to be an attempt to interfere with
his right to control the meetings of Parliament; he was justified in his
resentment in equity, if not in law, for though subjects have a right to
petition the King, an organised bombardment of petitions comes near
to an attempt at coercion. When Charles's irritation became known,
the Court party presented loyal addresses abhorring the methods of
those who had presented the petitions, and the two contending factions
became known as "Petitioners" and "Abhorrers", names which were
very shortly afterwards exchanged for "Whig" and "Tory", both in
their origins terms of abuse invented by opponents. James underrated
the strength of the support which the petitioners had from public
opinion: he wrote to William:
There has been some endeavours used in several countrys
[counties] by some few gentlemen to have got petitions for the
speedy sitting of the Parliament, but they were rejected everywhere,
and really the generality of the nobility and gentry are very loyal,
and it is but a few, and those not considerable, that make all the
noise.
From the day of his return from Scotland, James, to outward seeming,
took up again the commanding position in the King's counsels which
he had enjoyed a year earlier. Immediately after his arrival the Dutch
ambassador reported to Henry Sidney that "the Duke governs all", and
a month later Reresby writes of him as "having now the application of
all men, being fair with the King". The royal brothers resided for the
most part at Windsor, 1 and went to London every Wednesday for the
Tory : in that letter he expresses himself, as First Commissioner of the Treasury,
delighted with a new Treasury Board which had recently been appointed, be-
cause the new men "love despatch in business as the others did trifling" ; as a
matter of fact a board exclusively composed of Tories had been displaced to
make room for a board exclusively (with one doubtful exception) composed
of Whigs.
1 Where (said Mary Beatrice) Charles "did not care to be spoken to on
business".
178 ' JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
day, Charles to attend a Council meeting, James to amuse himself as
best he could; for he was not a member of the Council and was only
called to its meetings rarely and for particular purposes. James hunted
two or three times a week, and he wrote to William on one occasion
that he had had so long a run that he did not return to the Castle until
midnight.
But James's condition was not happy: he enjoyed neither the
power nor the peace of mind with which he was credited. At first,
indeed, all went well ; there had been some apprehension that he would
make trouble by trying to divert policy from the lines which Charles
and his advisers had followed during his year of exile, but he was in an
accommodating mood, and agreed to everything; he was also in a mood
of optimism, but it was only because he lacked the facility of looking
beneath the surface of things. By April he was beginning to have mis-
givings ; early in that month he told Barrillon that he was in a condition
to maintain himself and could rely on the support of Ministers, but
that he was not free from apprehension that his enemies would prevail;
he added that he was convinced that the monarchy would be in danger
if Parliament were allowed to meet, and that he would do everything
possible to prevent its meeting. A week later he expressed himself
dissatisfied with his influence in affairs, though he still stood fair with
the Ministers; Barrillon's private opinion, which he confided to Louis,
was that James had no power in home or foreign affairs, that he was
unaware what danger he would be in if Parliament met, and that Charles
and his Ministers were deceiving him by simulating optimism. At the
same time James wrote to William
As for the temper of the several countries [counties], the judges
and all that are come to town do say they find, within these two or
three months the greatest alteration for the better that can be
imagined, and what His Majesty hath done in purging the Com-
missions of the peace of all disaffected people to him, has con-
tributed much to it by encouraging his old friends, the Cavalier or
Church party, and truly I am persuaded, if he do but continue
steady to the grounds he has now laid down to himself (as I make
no doubt but he will) that within some time he will be more
master and in a better condition than he has been these many a
year; so that except the Duke of Monmouth do some hot-headed
thing, which I think him capable of, all things are likely to be very
quiet here.
What James did not see was that Monmouth was only part of the
trouble, though a very important part, as providing a rallying-point for
THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND 179
the Opposition. He had returned to England in the previous November
without Charles's permission, and had behaved in his usual self-
confident manner. He went to his lodgings at the Cockpit at Whitehall
and sent across to Charles to ask for an audience; Charles refused to see
him, and ordered him abroad again; Monmouth refused to go, and dared
his father to prosecute him. Charles's prerogative did not extend to
having his son arrested and deported, and he took the only step open to
him and deprived him of his places of profit and trust, "so that the Duke
is like to have little left but his wife's estate to live on". Monmouth left
the Cockpit and went to live at his house in Hedge Lane (now Whitcomb
Street), repeatedly sending vain requests to the King for an audience
and at the same time forming relations with the leaders of the Opposition.
In May a rumour came to light to the effect that Cosin, the late Bishop
of Durham, had had in his possession a Black Box containing papers
which proved that Charles had been married to Lucy Walter, Mon-
mouth's mother, and that the Bishop had bequeathed the box to Sir
Gilbert Gerrard. The Privy Council questioned Gerrard, and he denied
all knowledge of the Bkck Box; Charles told the Council that he knew
how much it was to his interest to have a legitimate son, but
that his conscience and his honour would not permit him to tolerate
such a shameful belief as that he had married or promised to marry
the Duke of Monmouth's mother and that he would do everything
possible to prove its falsity,
and he followed up this statement by making a fresh declaration that
he had never been married to any woman but Queen Catherine, and he
had this declaration registered in the Court of Chancery.
In June occurred an incident which had no immediate results, but
which furnished an indication of the growing audacity of Shaftesbury
and the Exclusionists. Barrillon thought they were going to indict
James for high treason and that James would go to the Tower and never
leave it, but their attack took a different form. The Earl and some of his
friends among the nobility and gentry appeared in the King's Bench
before Chief Justice Scroggs and presented an indictment against James
as a popish recusant if he had been convicted he would under the
existing law have had to forfeit two-thirds of his property and against
the Duchess of Portsmouth as a common nuisance. Scroggs acted with
firmness and deliberation, though with little legality: he put the indict-
ment on the list for the grand jury, proceeded with the other cases for
several days, and then dismissed the jury before it could consider the
cases of James and the Duchess an action for which he was called to
account by the House of Commons at the end of the year. James was
l8o JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
justly indignant at this purely personal attack, but even while the grand
jury was still sitting and no one could foretell the issue, and while
Charles and the Ministers were terribly upset, James showed no
embarrassment; he told Barrillon that he hoped the incident would open
Charles's eyes.
The Duchess of Portsmouth was thoroughly frightened; hitherto
she had been working in close association with James, and it had been
the general opinion that they, with Danby and Barrillon, were in
effectual control of the royal will. She now went over to the Exclusion-
ists, and it is possibly by her influence that Sunderland eventually found
himself in the same camp. The Duchess at this time appears to have
conceived a new idea: with a mother's infatuation, she believed that if
James could be set aside, her own (and Charles's) son, the Duke of
Richmond, now eight years old, might by a declaration of the King be
placed next in the succession. James later described her defection as "a
dog trick" and declared he could no longer rely on her word: at the
time, however, they preserved an outward appearance of amity, though
Barrillon was aware that they were at cross-purposes and he suspected
that for a time James and Hyde tried to set up the Duchess of Mazarin x
as a rival in the favour of Charles to the Duchess of Portsmouth.
James could show courage during the crisis before Scroggs had dis-
missed the grand jury, but there was a reaction as soon as the crisis was
passed ; he had to recognise that Shaftesbury would not have come into
the open as he had done unless he had relied on considerable support in
the country and even had had some hope that Charles might give way
on the subject of Exclusion. Thenceforth until the dissolution of the
Oxford Parliament in the following March, James was, with .occasional
deviations into optimism, in deep trouble of mind; this was not the
despair of eight years later, when he abandoned hope and left everything
he cared for in the hands of his enemies ; but a soldier's feeling of help-
lessness among politicians whose methods he distrusts, and a strong
desire to get to physical grips with his enemies.
The Duke of York's design [wrote Barrillon] is that his affairs
shall be brought to an extremity and produce an open rupture.
He is persuaded that the royal authority cannot be established
except by a civil war. He believes that by that he may escape the
peril with which he is threatened.
1 The Duchess of Mazarin, Hortense Mancini, one of the nieces of Cardinal
Mazarin and a famous beauty, had been domiciled in England since 1676.
She was a great favourite with both Charles and James, though in James's case
the affection was platonic. In May 1676 he and Mary Beatrice jointly bought a
new house in St. James's Park and presented it to her. On his accession James
gave her lodgings at Whitehall.
THE FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND l8l
In this conflict he desired above all things the help of France, he kept
urging Barrillon to convince Louis that without his support the English
monarchy would be lost. He was unaware of Louis's point of view
that he had no motive of kindness or of gratitude to Charles or James
and was quite content to see England in the toils of civil conflict and
innocuous in foreign policy; as Barrillon cynically remarked, Charles
deserved no help from Louis, and James's good intentions could be of
no use to him,
James steadily lost ground in the country. As early as July, Lady
Sunderland informed Sidney that people were more exasperated with
him every day, and Charles about the same time began to be aware of
the fact. Shaftesbury openly boasted that he had the Duke in his power
and that it was too late for him to save himself even by the desperate
expedient of going to church, receiving the Sacrament and abjuring
transubstantiation. This was also Barrillon's opinion: he told Louis that
great efforts were being made to persuade James to change his religion
and that (surprisingly enough) Mary Beatrice was not opposing those
efforts because she dreaded a further period of exile; but that if James
became a Protestant the opposition would have to find some other
pretext for excluding him from the succession a clear implication that
James's unpopularity was due only in part to his religion.
In August Monmouth started on a tour through the Western Counties,
where he was entertained by a number of gentlemen of the country
party and, though the Court party stood aloof, he was everywhere
received by the common people with acclamation, and was met and
accompanied by large troops of horsemen at the entry to all the towns he
visited. As late as October 3, James wrote to William, "His Majesty,
notwithstanding all their endeavours, continues very firm to me, and
yet, if he will be resolute and show favour to his old friends all will do
well". But Charles had in August declared in Council that Parliament
would definitely meet on October 21, and at a Council held ten days
before that date James met with a serious disappointment: there was
numerical support for his plea that he should be allowed to remain at
Court, to face the worst that Parliament could do to him and to rely on
Charles to save him in the last resort by a dissolution or prorogation:
this party included Finch, the Lord Chancellor, the two Hydes and
Jenkins; but on the other side were Sunderland and Godolphin, who
had at that time more influence with the King than any other Minister.
James was particularly angry with these two Councillors, "those whom
I expected to be most my friends are no more so now, for they would
have me go away", a remark which excludes the possibility that such
advice might have been tendered by his friends and for his benefit.
182 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
But he still thought he might avoid exile, he represented to Charles
that those who advised him were either biased in their judgements or
men of depraved character that Halifax, for example, was an atheist
and that, as he constantly maintained in his correspondence, the attacks
on him were in essence attacks on the monarchy.
On October 16 James had a conversation with Barrillon in which he
expressed his hopes and his fears : he said that he did not yet despair of
being able to save himself, that Charles had not definitely decided to
abandon him to his enemies, and that the advice of Sunderland and the
Duchess of Portsmouth that he should be sent away had not yet been
and might not be followed; but that notwithstanding all this he would
not be surprised if the King made him depart in two days. In this
anticipation he was not much at fault, it was actually four days.
Charles would no doubt have preferred that James should go volun-
tarily, but when he found that persuasion was of no avail he gave him a
direct command, softening it, however, with kind expressions of regret.
This time also he was not merely "permitted to reside in Scotland",
he was entrusted with a definite commission : he was to hasten the settle-
ment of the new model of the militia in Scotland, and to use his influence
"for the general settlement of the peace of that our ancient kingdom".
But one grievous disappointment James had to endure: he requested
Charles to give him a public pardon for all his past offences, and Charles
refused. The case of Danby was not forgotten, and to grant a pardon in
existing circumstances would have been merely to invite the House of
Commons to repeat the assertion of their right to overrule royal pardons
and to proceed at once with the impeachment of James.
CHAPTER XI
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND
JAMES embarked at Woolwich with the Duchess on October 20, the day
before the meeting of Parliament, and after a stormy voyage landed at
Kirkcaldy on the 26th. Holyrood House was undergoing repairs, and
they spent three days at Leslie before crossing over to Edinburgh.
There their reception gave them entire satisfaction, though it was
marred by an unfortunate and possibly ominous incident.
A little after their arrival, having visited the Castle of Edinburgh,
and for a testimony of joy the gun called Mons Meg, being charged
by the advice of ane English cannoneer, in the shooting was riven;
which some foolishly called a bad omen. The Scots resented it
extremely, thinking the Englishman might of malice have done it
purposely, they having in England no cannon as big as she.
James was fully aware, as he had been at Brussels, that he could not
be recalled within a short time, and he settled down for a long stay. At
the end of September Charles had decided to make a paper concession
to Lauderdale's enemies and had formally terminated his appointment
as Secretary for Scotland; his successor was the Earl of Moray, but it
was understood that the administration should remain in effect in
Lauderdale's hands. 1 This device could not, however, continue to
operate while James was representing the King in Scotland, and Lauder-
dale's long control of the affairs of that kingdom came to an end ; he was
still a member of the English Privy Council, but he had ceased to have
influence in the royal counsels, he lost one by one all his offices and
when he died in August 1682 he was virtually in disgrace. The Com-
mission which Charles had given James was interpreted in the widest
possible sense and, though he still held no definite post in the administra-
tion, he was from the first for all purposes the King's representative.
The main business of the Scottish Government was the suppression
1 Hume Brown alleges that "in the course of the year 1680 a quarrel had
arisen between Lauderdale and the Duke which had made it impossible for
them to sit at the same board". W. R. Mathieson and Andrew Lang ascribe
this quarrel to the vote which Lauderdale gave in the House of Lords against
Lord Stafford. Lauderdale resigned the Secretaryship in September and gave
this vote on December 7, so that there is a clear discrepancy. In any case the
breach was not final, for the two men corresponded amicably in the following
year.
183
184 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
of rebellion in the south-west, a rebellion which had commenced with
the Restoration and continued ever since, and had been scotched but
not killed by Monmouth's victory at Bothwell Brigg. The rebels, known
as the Covenanters from their adhesion to the Solemn League and
Covenant of 1638, and as Cameronians and Cargillites after successive
leaders, boasted that they were the only people remaining faithful to the
Truth after the numerous defections to the side of the Stuart Govern-
ment; into minds formed by their narrow lives entered no conception
of other people of faith and practice similar to their own, and they con-
ceived themselves to be, like the Children of Israel, the only true
worshippers of God and followers of His rule of life in a world given
over to wickedness and abomination. For their belief they were pre-
pared to die in battle or on the scaffold, or, in the event of victory (in
the true Israelite tradition), to submit their enemies to wholesale
massacre at Bothwell Brigg, for example, they erected gallows behind
the lines for the despatch of prisoners. They refused submission to
Government by "ungodly" men that is to say, by men who did not
share their peculiar views and in effect they declared war without
quarter on the existing Government of Scotland. Nor does it seem
probable that any government to their liking could have been devised,
for they were such thorough-going anti-Erastians that they repudiated
control by government of religion in any of its aspects, and these aspects
were often held by other people to be secular; perhaps their ideal was a
theocracy a rule of the saints in which the State would be controlled
by the Church.
The Government, on their side, tried to keep the Covenanters in
check by a series of harsh laws, and terrible crimes were committed
under these laws both by the high officials who issued orders from
Edinburgh and by soldiers on the spot, like John Graham of Claver-
house. No one can claim that in his dealings with the Covenanters
Charles II through his deputies that is to say, for the greater part of
his reign through Lauderdale displayed either wisdom or modera-
tion; but the problem was one which would have baffled the wisest and
most humane government. Individually these Cameronians and
Cargillites were men of low education, but of keen but narrow intelli-
gence, exemplary in their private lives and selfless in their devotion to
the Cause; but from the point of view of the Government they were
mauvais sujets who could be neither softened by compromise nor tamed
by coercion; their one virtue was that they gave little trouble to the
judges, for when they were on trial for treasonable utterances they made
no defence, but repeated their treasons in open court, or even improved
upon them, Their most voluminous early apologist has prefaced an
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND 185
account of their sufferings in the year 1681 in words whose moderation
is very remarkable :
Against them it was alleged, and indeed it was all that could be
said, that they committed treason in face of the Court before which
they were staged; but if we consider their circumstances, the views
they had of matters, and the hardships they were brought under,
certainly great charity must be exercised towards them; and
although, according to the present laws, they were found guilty of
treason, yet their bloodshed will, by after generations, be reckoned
innocent blood; and the courses taken with, and inhumanities
exercised towards them, must certainly be abominated by all sober
persons.
James's conduct in regard to the Covenanters has no bearing on the
question of his attitude to religious toleration. There is no doubt that
he regarded them as blasphemous fanatical schismatics, but there
appears to be no evidence that this opinion influenced him in the least
in his dealings with them. On the other hand, he did not try to placate
them by measures of moderation and religious tolerance on the lines
suggested by Archbishop Leighton a few years earlier. He dealt with
them as rebels, not, he must have admitted, as immediately dangerous
rebels, but as people who denied in their hearts and by word of mouth
the right of Charles Stuart to reign in Scotland ; such pernicious doctrine
might spread and, lest it should become universal, those who held it
must either repudiate it or be exterminated. There is evidence that
James was not entirely happy about the methods which were being
employed to suppress sedition : those who had appeared in arms against
the Government at Bothwell Brigg and refused to come in and make
submission he pursued with a relentless severity which was a fitting
prelude to the Bloody Assizes four years later; but for those, particularly
women, who were condemned merely for their spoken beliefs he ex-
hibited real compassion ; he claimed (as has been seen) to have converted
many from the error of their ways, and to others he offered reprieve if
only they would pronounce the words, "God save the Kong" it was his
misfortune that he could not understand that such an utterance would
have been a betrayal of the faith for which they were prepared to die, a
faith as dear to them as James's was to him. The year 1681 was one of
the worst in the history of the persecution of the Covenanters, but it
would be unjust to ascribe the increased activity on the part of Govern-
ment entirely to James. He is reported to have said shortly after his
second arrival in Edinburgh that the plotters "deserved a Bedlam rather
than a gallows" ; Burnet, who in this case may be regarded as a hostile
l86 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
witness, says that he made a very real effort to prove himself a just and
clement ruler in Scotland; and Halifax, who was neither biased in
James's favour nor inclined to condone harshness, and who had sup-
ported a movement to remove Lauderdale on the ground of his undue
severity, said that James "did a great deal of good in Scotland by his
influence and watchfulness in that mutinous kingdom".
One of the gravest general charges that has been brought against
James is in connection with his administration of Scotland. It was first
propounded by Burnet in the following words :
When any are to be struck in the boots, it is done in the presence
of the Council and upon that occasion almost all offer to run away.
The sight is so dreadful, that without an order restraining such a
number to stay, the board would be forsaken. But the Duke, while
he had been in England, was so far from withdrawing, that he
looked on all the while with unmoved indifference, and with an
attention, as if he had been to look on some curious experiment.
This gave a terrible idea of him to all that observed it, as of a man
that had no bowels nor humanity in him.
This statement of fact may be true, but it need not bear the implication
that Burnet places on it: James was not a man of acute sensibility, and
he could easily have forgotten the sufferings of the victims in his con-
centration on the evidence. But even that degree of truth is denied by
the annotators of Burnet, who point out that many of James's inveterate
enemies had written accounts of this very period, and had made no
mention of a circumstance which they could hardly have overlooked if
they had known of it.
But Macaulay, ignoring the commentators, although their notes
appear in the edition of Burnet which he habitually used, not only
accepted the story, but gave it currency in an improved form :
The Duke of York, it was remarked, seemed to take pleasure in
the spectacle which some of the worst men then living were unable
to contemplate without pity and horror. He not only came to
Council when the torture was to be inflicted, but watched the
agonies of the sufferers with that sort of interest and complacency
with which men observe a curious experiment in science;
and, as if he felt he had not sufficiently misused his authority, he
improved on his first effort on a later page.
He who had expressed just indignation when the priests of his
own faith were hanged and quartered amused himself with hearing
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND 187
the Covenanters shriek and seeing them writhe while their knees
were beaten flat in the boots;
and in support of this latter statement he adduces as an authority in
addition to Burnet a book in which occurs no statement more damaging
than that James was present in council when a certain prisoner was
tortured. He reverts to the subject again in connection with the con-
demnation of Argyll after the failure of his rebellion.
. . . James, was doubtless sorry that he could not feast his own
eyes with the sight of Argyll in the boots. . . .
Nevertheless there is no doubt that James approved of the Scottish
judicial procedure in which there was provision for the use of torture
in eliciting evidence. 1 Writing to Queensberry in August 1682 after
his return to London, he says, "I find by yours the boots had done no
good upon Spence, and believe him so stubborn he will not own what
he knows"; and again ten days later, "By yours of the 7, I was glad to
find that Spence began to speak. I hope to hear soon he has been
ingenious (sc. ingenuous) and will discover all he knows." These
passages are isolated, but they are in keeping with what we know of the
attitude of James to the law in common with Jeffreys and most of the
judges and Crown lawyers in criminal cases in which the Crown was
concerned : they did not conceive the possibility that the prisoner could
have been wrongly suspected and arrested, and if he did not confess his
crime they held that any method of procuring evidence and any inter-
pretation of the rules of procedure were justified. If James had been
capable of detached thought, the application of this principle in the
Popish Plot trials would have made him less certain of its validity.
After an intermission of nine years Charles decided that it was time
that his third Scottish Parliament should meet; he appointed James
Commissioner, and convened it for July 28. Five weeks before that
date James wrote to Lauderdale, who had been Commissioner in the
previous Parliaments, asking for information and advice. Lauderdale
replied at length; he said that in all the sessions in which he had been
Commissioner he had had to pay particular attention to the means of
getting well-affected members returned, but he added significantly, "I
hope Your Royal Highness shall not need such precautions seeing it
may in reason be thought impossible there should be any opposition
made or storm raised against such things as you shall in your wisdom
1 As Andrew Lang points out (Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, pp. 194-5) the
use of torture was not condemned by the most enlightened of James's
contemporaries.
l88 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
propose"; for the rest, he advised James to consult the Duke of Rothes
and the lawyers on the spot. James took great pains over the opening
ceremony, and he was anxious that his clothes and the housings of his
horse should be correct and that his own coaches should be in order for
the procession to the House; on the opening day he gave a great dinner
to the members.
James was pleased with the political complexion of his Parliament;
indeed, he could hardly have been otherwise when the prevailing circum-
stances of parliamentary elections are taken into account. For the
elections were in no sense free, even to the small degree that they were
in England : the Lord Advocate in course of a debate was able to remark
that "if the burghs had liberty to choose whom they pleased to represent
them, factious and disloyal persons might prevail to get themselves
elected" ; a voter was actually prosecuted for having "voted against the
Duke and the Court faction in the election of the commissioners to
Fife". Moreover, legislation was strictly controlled by the Lords of the
Articles, a Committee of members nominally elected by the House but
actually appointed by the Royal Commissioner; no legislation could be
initiated except by the Lords of the Articles, and they had at command
various devices to prevent discussion, such as rushing controversial
measures through the House late in the evening when members were
tired.
The proceedings opened with the reading of the letter from the King,
in which he urged the members to provide for the security of religion
and recommended to them "our most dear and most entirely beloved
brother, James, Duke of Albany and York", whom he had named as his
Commissioner. James's speech followed; he outlined the programme
of the session : the maintenance of the government of the Church by
archbishops and bishops, the suppression of seditions and rebellious
conventicles, the declaration of the rights of the Crown in its natural
and legal course of descent but he was careful to say nothing about
popery. In their reply the Parliament were not so scrupulous: their
address did indeed affirm in the strongest terms attachment to the
hereditary principle, but it described "the usurpations and disorders
of popery and fanaticism" as the chief dangers against which provision
must be made. Legislation followed on these lines : by the first Act of
the Parliament all existing laws for the protection of the Church were
re-enacted; the second declared the Crown of Scotland to be "trans-
mitted and devolved by a lineal succession, according to the proximity
of blood" and that "no difference of religion, nor no law nor Act of
Parliament, made or to be made, can alter or divert the right of succes-
sion" ; it further declared it to be treason to attempt in any way to vary
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND 189
the succession from the direct line. There was clearly from the start a
confusion of intention in this single-minded and subservient assembly :
the habit of twenty years made them support the Protestant episcopal
Church against the sectaries on the one hand, whom they regarded
historically as typifying the rule of the saints and the Cromwellian
conquest, and personally as rebels and outlaws, and on the other hand
against the papists, dangerous upholders of a faith alien to their national
habits of thought; but at the same time they were not only willing but
anxious for the succession of James to the Scottish throne, in spite of
the patent fact that he was a devout and uncompromising Roman
Catholic.
After granting a supply the Parliament proceeded to pass a very savage
Act by which landowners were forbidden, under very heavy penalties,
to allow Covenanters to be their tenants or servants, or to hold field
Conventicles on their land ; the Covenanters were thus to be deprived
of their livelihood and became for all intents and purposes fugitive
outlaws. But the Act which caused the greatest controversy was the
Test Act. This Act, after commanding all public officers, judges and
magistrates to put to full and vigorous execution all the existing laws
against papists and "fanatic separatists", prescribes an oath which shall
be taken not only by all civil, ecclesiastical and military officers (except-
ing "the King's lawful brother and sons"), but also by all persons
exercising public functions, such as clerks to boroughs, advocates in the
courts and teachers. Two main objections were made to the Act: the
first was that by implication it expelled from their professions large
classes of people who could not conscientiously take the oath, the second
was the wording of the oath itself. The oath was in two sections : by the
first the person sworn affirmed adherence to the Confession of Faith
recorded in the first Parliament of King James VI, 1 and disowned
popish or fanatical doctrines inconsistent with it; by the second he
promised allegiance to "the King's Majesty, his heirs and lawful
successors", and undertook not "to endeavour any change or alteration
in the Government". There was a definite contradiction between the
Confession and the Oath, for the Confession stated that Christ was the
only Head of the Church. Incidentally it was alleged that it was under-
stood between the Government and the magistrates that the Act, as had
been the case with the two previous Acts against popery and fanaticism,
should be put into full force against the Protestant sectaries, but should
be of no effect against the Catholics. Indeed, it was given out among the
1 This phrase was said to have been introduced on the motion of Sir James
Dalrymple in the hope that it might cause misgivings among the bishops and
result in the defeat of the measure. Andrew Lang attributes this statement to
James himself, but I do not find contemporary corroboration.
190 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Catholic priests that if the Papists kept quiet the Church would do them
no harm.
The seventeenth century was the age of oaths ; whatever party was in
favour tried to perpetuate that power by solemn affirmations of loyalty
to itself or to the religious or political principles which it represented.
In the House of Lords in 1690 the Marquis of Wharton said he was a
very old man, that he had taken a multitude of oaths in his time, and
that he hoped God would forgive him if he had not kept them all, for
truly they were more than he could pretend to remember; the Earl of
Macclesfield, an old Cavalier, said he was in much the same case as
Lord Wharton, though they had not always taken the same oaths.
Such must have been the case with almost everyone in public life: if
those only had been employed who had taken no oath inconsistent with
his loyalty to William and Mary, their Government would have been
carried on by men who had previously lived in obscurity. No oath can
bind any but the most scrupulous when entirely new and unforeseen
circumstances arise such, for instance, as those caused by the flight of
James II and it is only the most scrupulous who on grounds of
conscience refuse to take oaths. The unscrupulous take oaths and break
them with equal complacency; the moderately conscientious take them
in good faith, and they have sometimes, perhaps after many years have
passed, to decide whether or not it is in the public interest that they
shall continue to hold themselves bound; and unfortunately it is not
given to man entirely to separate in his mind the public interest from
his own private interest. 1
There was little disturbance of men in office on account of the Scottish
Test Oath: some were, no doubt, honest in their adherence to the
Episcopal Church and a popish succession, others took it as a matter
of course ; some, like the Marquis of Queensberry, hesitated ; but all the
chief officers of State took the oath, with one exception. That exception
was the most powerful noble in Scotland, the Earl of Argyll. He, indeed,
took it, but with a verbal reservation:
I have considered the Test, and am desirous to give obedience
as far as I can. I am confident the Parliament never intended to
impose contradictory oaths, therefore I think no man can explain it
1 Many cavaliers adopted during the Interregnum the principle that paths
taken tinder durance were not binding. One of them is reported to have said, in
reply to an assertion that Parliament had unlimited power and could do anything,
"that they could not make an oath as he could not swallow".
Halifax is reported to have said, "As no man would even sleep with open
doors though all the town should be sworn not to rob, so the state gained no
security by oaths ; and their only effect was to disturb or exclude some honest
conscientious men, who would never have prejudiced the government".
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND IQI
but for himself. Accordingly, I take it as far as it is consistent with
itself, and the Protestant religion; and I do declare I mean not to
bind myself in my station, and in a lawful way to wish and endeavour
any alteration I think to the advantage of the Church or State, not
repugnant to the Protestant religion and my loyalty; and this I
understand as a part of my oath.
He was permitted on November 3 to take the oath before the Privy
Council with this explanation, and after taking it he was admitted to his
usual seat at the Council board. Many of the Councillors had, no
doubt, had the same mental reservations, and regarded him as unneces-
sarily scrupulous in declaring them. But after the Council meeting his
enemies (of whom there were many, for between the Campbells and
most of the other clans feuds had existed for centuries and Argyll
had been very harsh and unscrupulous both with his creditors and his
tenants) thought they saw a chance of laying him in the dust. They
went to James and represented to him that Argyll's criticism of an Act
of Parliament was an offence which might be made to appear treason-
able, James, too, had a grudge against the Earl: he had shown far more
independence of judgment than the other Councillors, and in particular
he had shown himself strongly anti-papist by insisting on the insertion
in Bills which were to be laid before Parliament of phrases which placed
the papists in the same position before the law as the Protestant sectaries ;
in addition, both Charles and James distrusted Argyll: he was an
"over-mighty subject" who might easily turn the balance against the
monarchy in case of civil war. The lawyers when they were consulted
gave the conspirators little hope that a charge of treason could be upheld
on the slender grounds suggested. However, James and his subservient
Council decided to proceed ; the oath was again tendered to the Earl as
Commissioner of the Treasury ; he made the same explanation, but this
time he was held not to have taken the oath, and he was excluded from
the Council. The following day he was arrested on a charge of high
treason and confined in Edinburgh Castle. In the letter which the
Council sent to the King reporting their action, they stated his crime to
be that, when he was commanded to take the oath without equivocation,
he refused to do so, but gave in a paper the only sense in which he
would take it; which paper we all considered as that which had in
it gross reflections upon that excellent act of parliament, making it
to contain things contradictory and inconsistent, and thereby
depraving your Majesty's laws, misrepresenting your parliament and
teaching your subjects to evacuate and disappoint all the laws and
securities that can be enacted for the preservation of the government.
IQ2 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Halifax told Charles, when he consulted him about the matter, that he
knew no Scots law, but that in England one would not hang a dog on
such a charge, and Lauderdale exerted himself on Argyll's behalf.
Charles, however, wrote to the Council approving their procedure,
but ordering that in the event of a conviction the court should not
pronounce sentence until they received a communication from him. It
was not the intention of the royal brothers to bring Argyll to the scaffold :
when it was suggested to James before the trial that "it was hard measure
upon such a foot to threaten such a person with a forfeiture of life and
fortune", he answered "Life and fortune, God forbid!" and he always
maintained that all that was intended was to get the Earl at the mercy
of the Crown so that the power which he exercised through his vast
estates and his hereditary jurisdictions might be reduced. But if this was
the aim, there were methods easier and less open to objection ready to
their hands: the Council need only have declared Argyll not to have
taken the oath within the meaning of the Act, and he would automatically
have been deprived of his jurisdictions ; this was the procedure followed
in the case of twenty-two jurisdictions which were in the hands of
persons who neglected or refused to take the Test. 1
Argyll's trial began on December 5, with long pleadings by the lawyers
on both sides, and it was not until the I2th that he appeared before his
judges. On the i3th James wrote to Colonel Legge,
Lord Argyll's trial began yesterday, and their forms in the
Justice Court are so tedious, that they could not make an end of it
then, but will as I believe this evening, and have reason to believe
the jury will find the bill, and not Ignoramus, and that that Little
Lord will be once again at His Majesty's mercy.
It would not perhaps be unduly straining the meaning of this passage
if it is suggested that James had reason to be satisfied with the com-
position both of the Bench and the jury, and that he was confident that,
in contradiction to the best legal opinion, they would find the verdict
which he desired. Nor was he disappointed : the Earl was found guilty
of the major charge of treasbn, though, to save their faces, the jury
acquitted him of the charges of perjury which had been included in the
indictment. The verdict was communicated to Charles, but before the
royal pleasure could be made known Argyll had escaped from the
Castle; it is possible that it was James's intention that he should escape
and that orders had been given to the guards not to watch him too
1 Ranke (IV, 239) quotes from a letter of Charles who requires an opinion
"how to dispose of those superiorities and offices which he thought too much
for one person".
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND 193
closely; in any case there appears to be no evidence that disciplinary
measures were taken against the guard, as was usual in cases of escape
of important political prisoners. After lurking for a short time in
London, the Earl passed over to Holland, and in his absence the Court
pronounced sentence of death. James had made his first essay in con-
verting a powerful and loyal man into a rebel.
There was one pleasing incident in connection with Argyll's escape.
His step-daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay, had obtained permission to
visit him in the Castle, and he had escaped by changing clothes with her
footman. Some of the Council proposed that she should be whipped
through the streets of Edinburgh; but James replied that they were not
used to dealing so harshly with ladies in his country thus in one
sentence disappointing them of their revenge and disavowing his
Scottish nationality.
James had set out for Edinburgh in a very truculent mood. Barrillon
told Louis that he had had a conversation with him immediately before
embarking: James gave the ambassador an account of the deplorable
condition into which his affairs had fallen:
to this he added, in terms full of rage, -that if he were pushed to
extremity, and saw himself like to be entirely ruined by his enemies,
he would find means to make them repent it, to revenge himself on
them by giving Your Majesty also your revenge for the conduct
they had held here with regard to you ; the meaning of which is
that he hopes to excite troubles in Scotland and Ireland, and he
even alleges that he has a party in England more considerable than
is thought of.
To this letter Louis replied that, if James thought of setting himself up
independently in Scotland, secret supplies would be available from
France, and he followed up this offer by sending an agent to James at
Edinburgh. 1 It appears therefore that James succumbed temporarily
to the Stuart fallacy (he reverted to it in 1689), and had thoughts of the
conquest of England by the assistance of a section of the Scottish nation.
But wiser counsels prevailed, and at the end of January Barrillon re-
ported that Churchill in a conversation in London had frankly admitted
that James could not maintain himself in Scotland without Charles's
support. Meanwhile Shaftesbury had got wind of this intrigue or
1 A newsletter emanating from London reported that the Scottish Council
had permitted James to add 3000 French to his guards. But there is no record
of such a decision in the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, and on
general grounds the statement cannot be believed.
G
194 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
perhaps he had the inspiration to invent a similar plot : on December 23
he made a speech in the House of Lords (the Lords so strongly dis-
approved of it that they had it burnt) in which he said:
In the meantime where is this Duke that the King and both
Houses have declared unanimously thus dangerous? Why, he is in
Scotland, raising forces upon the terra firma that can enter dry-foot
upon us without hazard of winds and seas. . . . We all think the
business is so rife that they have the garrisons, the arms, the
ammunition, the seas and soldiery, all in their hands. They want
but one good sum of money to set up and crown the work.
This project of military action temporarily improved James's rela-
tions with Louis. In the autumn of 1679, just after his sudden appear-
ance at Windsor from Brussels, James had addressed to the French King
a letter in which he had expressed the wannest sentiments to France
and his strong approval of the treaty which was then under discussion
between the two monarchs, and concluded, "It is from you I expect all.
And by you alone I can attain my re-establishment in this country."
A month later Barrillon wrote that James was so anxious for the con-
clusion of the treaty that he was prepared to pledge his personal credit
if the necessary funds could not be obtained elsewhere. (He presumably
meant that he would be surety for any loan that Louis might offer.) In
December 1680 James was in the same posture of a humble suppliant;
he wrote to Barrillon of Louis's goodness to him and of his aspirations
to deserve the continuance of it. In the same month, however, Barrillon
reported that he had told Ralph Montagu with what sincerity we
cannot tell
that to what regards the Duke of York, his past conduct frees Your
Majesty from all you might have done for him, if he had persisted
in the first engagements which he had made; that at present Your
Majesty had too much prudence to charge yourself with the pro-
tection of a prince against whom all England seems to be united.
Louis at the same time was instructing his ambassador to employ all
his energy to supporting whatever faction in England appears to be
weakest:
If you see even that the Duke of York's party is likely to succumb,
let me know at once and advise me how best such a fatality may be
averted;
for, as he said in another letter, he had no interest in the affairs of
England unless the Crown was unable to maintain itself in the pre-
THE SECOND VISIT TO SCOTLAND 195
carious state in which it was, and England did not degenerate into a
republic while preserving the name of a monarchy. Nevertheless, Louis
instructed his ambassador to urge on Charles the necessity of recalling
James to his counsels; and in February Barrillon told Churchill that
Louis considered James's interests and his succession to the throne of
the first importance, and was of opinion that the preservation of the
monarchy was bound up with James's safety. Throughout the year the
ambassador and his master continued to advocate the termination of
James's exile ; in spite of his vacillation of three years earlier, they both
regarded him as the more reliable of the two brothers.
Of James's private life in Scotland during his second and longest stay
there we have glimpses from his letters to his young niece, the Countess
of Litchfield, a natural daughter of Charles by Lady Castlemaine. In
these letters, stilted in style and bald in matter as they are, James appears
in a new and more human guise than he does in other letters of his that
have been preserved. On the whole we find that, though he is longing for
Charles's permission to return to England, he finds Scotland a good
country to live in. In particular the political atmosphere is calmer and
more pleasant there than in England :
Here false witnesses dare not come, perjury being death; if it had
been so in England so many innocent people had not suffered and
things would have been quieter than they are.
And again :
You must wonder if I have not sooner answered yours of the
2nd since I have had so much business upon my hands ever since
I received it, by reason of the sitting of the Parliament, for although
a Parliament here be not so troublesome as the English ones have
been of late, yet it takes up all one's time.
Princess Anne, now fourteen years of age, arrived on July 17, 1681 ;
she and her step-mother settled down to a routine of simple pleasures,
and in these James joined when he had time and inclination. Out of
doors they rode and indoors they played basset, Anne took part in
private theatricals, she and the Duchess danced country dances and
James occasionally condescended to join them; the Duchess unfortu-
nately had a fall from her horse, she escaped serious injury, but it was
some weeks before she could dance again with Anne. A troop of Irish
actors had come to Edinburgh and were "pretty tolerable"; at first
James and the ladies went to the theatre from time to time, later the
players performed twice a week at Holyrood House. James lamented
196 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
that the neighbourhood of Edinburgh was not good hunting country ;
he apparently tried hunting once or twice, but he wrote to William :
I find you hunt almost every day, and that it is a place very
proper for it; this country affords no such kind of hunting, for
where the stags are there are such hills and bogs as 'tis impossible
to follow any hounds, so that hare-hunting and shooting are the
only sports one can have here ; after June is once over there will be
very good shooting at heath-pouts [grouse], of which and partridge
there are great store here.
Apart from shooting when the weather was fair, he was "abroad every
day and playing at 'Goffe' ", and in bad weather he patronised the
Scottish winter sport of curling, but bad weather was "a great mortifica-
tion to me, that love best the diversions without doors than those
within".
The domestic felicity of the household at Holyrood House was sadly
disturbed in March 1681 by the news of the death in London, in her
fifth year, of Isabella, the little daughter of James and Mary. James
wrote to the child's great-uncle, Prince Rinaldo of Este,
The loss which I have sustained by the death of my youngest
daughter Princess Isabella, whom it pleased God to take from me a
few days ago, afflicts me so acutely that I have great need of the
consolation which I expect from your friendship, knowing as I do
that you have enough of that to be with me in spirit in anything of
that nature which touches me. The subject of this letter is too sad
for me to discuss it further.
CHAPTER XII
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY
REACTION
DURING the whole period of his exile, and particularly during his
residence in Scotland from November 1680 to March 1682, more than
half James's attention was devoted to the English political scene. By
his correspondents principally Legge and Laurence Hyde he was
supplied with a constant stream of news, and twice he despatched to
London Colonel John Churchill to intrigue on his behalf and to
report the situation to him on his return.
The proceedings of the Parliament which was elected in September
1679, and met on October 21, 1680, were of supreme interest to James.
They opened with an extraordinary and disgraceful episode: Danger-
field, perhaps the most disreputable of the informers, appeared at the
bar of the House of Commons to make an accusation against James ;
briefly, he alleged that it was at James's instigation that he had engaged
himself in the so-called Meal-Tub Plot a clumsy attempt to fabricate
a Presbyterian conspiracy to assassinate the King. Other informers
followed Dangerfield on similar lines. James's friends were not in a
position, even if they had been given opportunity, to repudiate the
charges, and the House settled down to discuss Exclusion in the atmo-
sphere of prejudice against James for the creation of which this pre-
liminary scene had possibly been staged.
On October 26 Lord Russell moved to take into consideration how to
suppress popery and to prevent a popish succession, and on November 2
Colonel Titus moved for a Committee to draft a new Exclusion Bill, and
from the debates on that motion and on the subsequent stages of the
Bill we can obtain a very clear picture of the state of feeling on both
sides of the House. The supporters of the Bill were on the whole very
scrupulousjn abstaining from anything like a personal attack on James, 1
but there runs through almost all their speeches a strong belief in the
Popish Plot, an impatience of any doubt of its existence, and a sense
that the two questions of the Plot and the Succession were intimately
associated; "I am satisfied that, as long as the Duke has any prospect
left of coming to the Crown, the King cannot be safe" ; "the Duke being
1 E.g., Sir Francis Wilmington said, "When I speak of this great Prince,
whom I have a great respect for, and had once a relation to, I do it with great
reluctance".
197
198 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
looked upon as Heir-apparent to the Crown, the King's life is still in
danger" ; "Can the King be safe as long as the Papists know that there is
nothing but his life stands in their way of having a King to their mind?" ;
such remarks occur with only slight verbal differences in many
speeches, and in many others the same meaning is expressed or implied.
Perhaps the most interesting contribution to the debate was that of Sir
William Pulteney, who prophesied what actually occurred when James
came to the throne.
I cannot foresee how the excluding of one person, who hath a
right to the succession depending upon contingencies upon such an
account as this, should occasion a civil war; but rather do think
there is a great deal more danger, not only of a civil war, but of
our religion and liberty too, if we should not do it, and so have a
popish king. For I do believe that such a king would soon have a
popish council. For if there be eleven to seven now for the interest
of a popish successor what may you not expect when you have a
popish king ? And should you not then soon have popish judges,
justices, deputy-lieutenants, commanders at sea and land ; nay, and
popish bishops too? . . .
But two speakers were not so careful in their language, and no doubt
they expressed the opinions of many members who were too timid or
too decorous to speak out: Henry Booth, who had forsaken the royalist
principles of his father, and as Lord Delamere in James's reign was one
of the most violent opponents of the Court, not only argued that by the
laws of England James had no right to the succession, but accused him
of corresponding "with the Pope and the French King to subvert our
religion and laws"; he absolved him of any inclination to shorten his
brother's days, but continued, "Though he be averse to it, yet in obedi-
ence to the Pope and his Priests, it must be done either by himself or
some other hand, and then how long may we expect His Majesty's life ?"
Booth's peroration is interesting as revealing the enormous gap which
separated at this time the views of the extreme Whigs and the extreme
upholders of passive obedience.
If kings were good men an absolute monarch were the best
government; but we see they are subject to the same infirmities
with other men, and therefore it is necessary to bound their power;
and by reason that they are flesh and blood, and the nation is so
apt to be bad for their example, I believe was that wherefore God
was averse to let the Jews have a king; till they had kings they
never revolted so wholly from him: when their kings were good
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 199
they were obedient to him ; but when they were idolatrous, then the
people went mad for idols. I hope it is no regis exemplum that
makes our nation so lewd and wicked at this day.
Goodwin Wharton, a cadet of a famous Whig house, but an irresponsi-
ble and weak-minded person, went farther: he belittled James's naval
services, hinted that he or his friends had protected the men who had
originated the great fire, and, without actually employing the unparlia-
mentary word, brought several instances forward to show that James
was a liar; so offensive was he that Lord Castleton interrupted him,
"To hear a prince thus spoken of, I am not able to endure it".
The opponents of the Bill for the most part sat silent, and the few who
spoke did so with no apparent conviction. Their chief argument was
that James was being condemned unheard: Laurence Hyde, the best of
them, saw that in the temper the House was in there was no chance of
defeating the Bill except by offering the compromise of limitations,
I am of opinion that the Duke, for deserting his religion, deserves
a great many mortifications from the nation; and I believe the Duke
is convinced that it cannot be reasonable for him to expect to come
to the Crown upon such terms as if he had not given those appre-
hensions and jealousies.
So disheartened were the supporters of hereditary right that they did
not even challenge a division at any stage of the Bill. It was carried by
Lord Russell to the Lords on November 15.
This, as a contemporary describes it, "was one of the greatest days
that was ever known in the House of Lords". The hero of the day was
George Savile, Earl of Halifax; he had hitherto been classed among the
Whigs, and the general temper of his mind inclined him to their
principles. But he was not a party man, he was temperamentally averse
to the violence of faction, he had a hearty contempt for the stupidity
of politicians and he took pride in standing alone against the flowing
tide. He had no sentiment of personal loyalty to James, but he had a
strong conviction that the principle of hereditary monarchy must be
supported. This position he defined in a letter to Sir Thomas Thynne
on October 5 :
For my own part I neither am nor will be under any obligations
that might restrain the freedom of my opinion concerning him
[James] ; but yet if there is any possibility of making ourselves safe
by lower expedients, I had rather use them, than venture on so
strong a remedy, as the disinheriting the next heir to the throne.
200 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
He was also influenced by two apprehensions of a more immediate
nature: that James would not passively accept exclusion but would
involve the country in civil war in defence of his rights ; and that exclu-
sion would affect adversely the interest in the succession of the Prince
of Orange. Nor were personal considerations entirely absent: he dis-
trusted Shaftesbury's principles and methods and could never sink to
being a mere member of his party. It is possible also that he suspected
Shaftesbury of an intention to make Monmouth heir-presumptive; but
though Monmouth undoubtedly had aspirations of that sort, and
though Shaftesbury may have encouraged those aspirations, it is doubt-
ful that he seriously supported his candidature. 1
Halifax had no support in the debate : single-handed he met all the
arguments of Shaftesbury and of his followers, such as Essex and Sunder-
land. The opponents of the Bill had been daunted by its easy passage
through the Commons and were disinclined for a contest with the other
House in which they saw little prospect of victory; but Halifax put new
heart into them; he actually achieved, in the opinion of his contem-
poraries, that rare feat of influencing votes by his oratory, and secured
defeat of the Bill on its first reading by 63 to 30.
James for the moment was saved, but Halifax hastened to show that
his action on the Exclusion Bill did not free him from all apprehensions
regarding the succession of a Catholic to the throne. The day following
that on which the Bill was thrown out he introduced in the Lords a
scheme for stringently limiting the prerogative in the case of the
succession of a papist to the throne, and for the banishment of James
during Charles's lifetime or for a period of five years.
During the few weeks that intervened between the rejection by the
Lords of the Exclusion Bill and the prorogation of Parliament on
January 10, the Whig majority in the House of Commons lost all sense
of moderation and proportion. They addressed the King asking him
to remove Halifax from his counsels for ever, on the pretext that he had
advised the dissolution of the last Parliament, but quite obviously on
account of his opposition to the Exclusion Bill; for the same real
reason, but on a different pretext, they drew up articles of impeachment
against Sir Edward Seymour; they attacked Jeffreys and Chief Justice
North for hindering petitions for a new parliament and Scroggs for dis-
charging the grand jury when Shaftesbury had made his presentment
against James and the Duchess of Portsmouth ; and they concluded their
proceedings with a series of thirteen resolutions in which they bound
themselves not to grant supply until an Exclusion Bill was passed, made
1 For a full discussion of Halifax's attitude to Exclusion before Parliament
met see Foxcroft, I, 233-45.
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 201
a list of persons whom they regarded as James's friends and wished to
have removed the Marquis of Worcester, the two Hydes, Lord Fever-
sham and Sir Edward Seymour and contemplated addressing the
King in favour of Monmouth. Meanwhile they had brought Lord
Stafford to the scaffold, on evidence that would not have convinced an
impartial court, by unscrupulous management of his case in West-
minster Hall. They also discussed at great length limitations as a
substitute for exclusion, and speaker after speaker gave his opinion that
no laws could be sufficient to restrain a popish king. Perhaps the
happiest simile of this debate was that of Colonel Titus
to accept of expedients to secure the Protestant Religion after such
a King had mounted the throne, would be as strange as if there
were a lion in the lobby and we should vote "That we would rather
secure ourselves by letting him in and chaining him than by keeping
him out"
which was versified :
I hear a lion in the lobby roar;
Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door
And keep him out? or shall we let him in,
To try if we can turn him out again.
The stage was set for a conflict between Bang and Parliament which
could hardly have ended except either by the acceptance by the King
of the demands of the Whigs or in civil war, when Charles ordered a
prorogation on January 10, 1681, and a dissolution a few days later.
The progress of the second Exclusion Bill was followed by James with
the greatest anxiety. Unfortunately the earliest letter on the subject
which we have is to Colonel Legge in reply to Legge's letter of November
1 6, which had conveyed the news both of the defeat of the Bill in the
Lords and of Halifax's motion for limitations on the following day :
You will easily believe yours of the i6th was very pleasing to me,
to find by it the bill was thrown out of the Lords' house at the very
first reading, but it was as bad as a stab with a dagger to me to hear,
after Lord Halifax had spoken so handsomely for me, and managed
the whole debate, he should make such a proposition as he did next
day, what shall I say to it? I would willingly not be thought of
of not being very sensible of kindnesses done me, and I am as
sensible as possible of his doing his part so very well at the rejecting
of my bill, but can I or anybody think him really my friend, that
would have me banished from His Majesty's presence, for he
moved it, so that I am in a strait as to him, and know not almost
what to do.
202 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
James was always in "a strait as to" Halifax. The early relations of the
two men had been cordial: Halifax, as we have seen, had entertained
James magnificently on his way to York in 1665, an< i James was in-
fluential in getting Halifax his first step in the peerage. But there could
never have been anything approaching intimacy between them : Halifax
was altogether too intelligent for James's liking; he disliked his "refined
arguing" and said he was "always for cleaving a hair in his advice".
Moreover James had a tidy mind and liked his world divided into those
who were Tories and honest men and those who were Whigs and
scoundrels, and he had no use for a Trimmer a man who might, as far
as James knew, appear on either side on any given question; nor, it must
be admitted, was James alone in this attitude : Halifax was respected for
his intellectual abilities and powers of oratory, but the Whigs, after
what they considered his apostasy on the Exclusion question, hated him
worse than they hated the Tories, and the Tories, though they accepted
his leadership on that occasion, suspected his cleverness much as James
suspected it. By the end of 1675 it was an open secret that James hated
Halifax, 1 and when Halifax was dismissed in January 1676 James was
delighted; when he was in Brussels he wrote that he thought Halifax
was no true friend to the monarchy and admitted that he had once told
him that he looked on him as one of the "dangerust" men he knew.
After the mingled gratitude and resentment that the proceedings in the
House of Lords on November 15 and 16 had produced, James con-
ceived the notion (which was probably well grounded) that Halifax had
been instrumental in getting him sent both times to Scotland and was
advising Charles to keep him there, and the references to Halifax in his
letters during the ensuing winter and spring are invariably hostile.
Then suddenly in June there is a change of attitude, owing apparently
to "the assurances Lord Hyde gives me of Lord Halifax's being my
friend". But the mood was short-lived, for in December James writes:
I never could understand his politics, and I am sure they were
never calculated for the meridian of a monarchy. And though he
be such a hero in a House of Lords, and has a tongue which makes
him to be considered there, he is less than other men out of his
sphere, and will I doubt run the King into those inconveniences
that I fear will be fatal to the Crown, and even to His Lordship too,
though he does not think it
And by February 1682 James was convinced that it was impossible
1 Burnet ascribes the cleavage to two events in 1673: Halifax's opposition to
the Declaration of Indulgence, and a witticism of his in which he played with
the oriental compliment, "O King, live for ever" and hinted that he did not
trust James.
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 203
things could go well if Halifax were at the head of affairs. It is probable
that in the course of these months it dawned on James's slow mind that
Halifax had no personal respect for him.
James was very angry with two lords who had voted for Exclusion,
Sunderland and Essex, and he could not understand why Charles had
not dismissed them immediately after they had recorded their votes.
Godolphin, too, was in temporary disfavour with him, presumably
because he had not spoken in the Commons against the Bill. He en-
visaged an administration composed entirely of anti-exclusionists
Clarendon Secretary of State instead of Sunderland, Finch at the Board
of Treasury instead of Godolphin, and Peterborough and Craven brought
into the Privy Council. These were the men to be at Charles's ear when
James could not be there to urge on him the necessity for strong action,
but it would be far better if James could be recalled to stiffen the Bang's
resolution. Strong action and the necessity for his recall were the
themes of all James's letters from Edinburgh; the majority of these have
been lost, but his biographer mentions a number to the King, to
Laurence Hyde, to Edward Seymour and to a certain mysterious
"Doctor", 1 and there is frequent mention in the letters which have
survived those to Colonel Legge of letters sent and received by
James. But the loss of those letters is no great historical calamity: it is
easy to guess their contents from the extracts given in the Life of James
and from the dreary repetitions in those other letters which have been
preserved. One quotation (from a letter to Legge of January 16, 1681)
will serve as typical of James's persistent attitude to Charles's problem
and of his contempt for the "temporising counsels" of his Ministers:
[Your letter and the one] I had from Mr. Hyde made me resolve
to send Churchill to press my being sent for, which I look on as
essentially necessary for His Majesty's service, as my own good and
satisfaction; now is the time or never, for if I be not called home
now, I shall have little hopes on't, and must expect sooner or later
to be ruined, for absent my friends cannot long support me and
my enemies will be the more encouraged to persecute me. I have
instructed him so fully as to this and what concerns me that I need
not say much more to you about it, having charged him at large to
discourse and advise you upon it, His Majesty must now take bold
and resolute counsels and stick to them, and who dares advise him
to them without I be with him to help to support them.
On March 21 Charles's fourth and last Parliament met at Oxford.
The Whig leaders arrived there in a thoroughly assured and, as the
1 Probably Sir Alexander Fraizer (or Eraser), physician to Charles.
204 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Tories thought, insolent spirit. They were confident that they would
now have no further difficulty with their Exclusion Bill. But recently
one Fitzharris, an Irish Catholic, had been indicted in the King's Bench
for fabricating a story of a plot against the King's life. The Whigs
thought that they could make political capital by transferring the case
to their own jurisdiction, and the House of Commons brought a formal
impeachment against Fitzharris; but the House of Lords refused to
concur in this attempt to interrupt the ordinary course of justice, and a
quarrel arose between the two Houses. The Whig leaders made a gross
error of judgment in prosecuting this quarrel, for they gave Charles the
excuse he had been looking for for dissolving Parliament. Both Houses
fell to discussing a scheme put forward by the Council for allowing
James to succeed to the throne with such severe limitations that he
could hardly be said to retain any legal powers, but this plan was
rejected by the Whigs, and it was clear from the course of the debate
that they would be satisfied with nothing short of Exclusion. Charles,
however, recognised that by their ill-advised persistence in the quarrel
over the Fitzharris case the Whigs had played into his hands ; he was now
confident of victory, and in private he declared that he had no intention
of yielding. Taking pains to conceal his intention, he appeared suddenly
in the House of Lords on March 28, summoned the Commons, and, to
the dismay of the Whigs, dissolved Parliament on the ground that they
were wrangling among themselves and were unlikely to do any good by
sitting longer. James was delighted; quite naturally he drew the moral
that this was what he had been advocating all along, and that if Charles
had acted earlier on his advice he would haved saved himself a great deal
of worry and anxiety. But James saw Legge's point that the Opposition
by raising a quarrel between the two Houses on the Fitzharris case made
a fatal mistake. He wrote on March 31, 1681 :
I am much of your mind in what you say in yours of the 26th,
and think we are very much beholding to the folly of our enemies.
. . . For my part I look on this whole affair of Fitzharris as the
hand of God, for you see what was so cunningly designed and laid
with so great malice, and so securely as they thought and not to be
hindered, is turned upon them, and may prove their ruin if the
right use be made out, but I hope it will.
James had no doubt that now that Parliament was dissolved the
Exclusion question was dead and that there was no longer any reason
for keeping him in Scotland. We now know that not only was the
Exclusion question dead, but that the question of limiting the pre-
rogatives of a popish king had died with it ; but no one in England in the
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 205
summer of 1681 was aware of the revolution that had occurred. Charles,
it is true, had won a considerable tactical success in dissolving the
Oxford Parliament, and the Whig leaders were discredited; but it was
not supposed that they had sustained more than a temporary check or
that they would not be able to rally their forces and to return to the
attack on James with undiminished energy. Charles certainly did not
realise the extent of his victory and he had no intention of giving the
enemy a fresh pretext for attack by bringing James back into personal
contact with himself. In any case, he had no motive for recalling James :
his personal affection for him was at best spasmodic, and he never seems
to have missed him when he was away, James was on bad terms with
the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Charles feared that their bickerings
would disturb his domestic peace, and he did not value his brother's
advice in public matters. Nor were there many among Charles's
advisers to advocate James's recall, probably Laurence Hyde and
Jenkins alone favoured that course.
The two chief events in England of the year 1681 the conclusion of
the secret treaty with France in March, and the visit to England in
July of William of Orange took place in James's absence. Charles had
not seen fit to inform him of the negotiations which were in progress
with France, but independently James instructed Churchill to see
Barrillon and to represent to him the necessity of a fresh treaty, and a
few weeks later he wrote a violent letter to the ambassador urging him
to see Charles immediately and to arrange a treaty.
It is time now or never to conclude this bargain, for otherwise
the King will be obliged to put himself into the hands of parlia-
ment [this, of course, was previous to the dissolution of the Oxford
Parliament] and of the Prince of Orange ; it will then be too late,
and the Duke infallibly ruined. . . . You may be sure the Duke
of York will do his duty to press the King for if it is not concluded
now and without loss of time, the Duke is lost. . . , Let the King
your master know that, if he has any goodness or consideration
for the Duke of York, it is time to show it.
To the visit of William, James's reactions were entirely hostile. Two
years earlier, during the debates which preceded the introduction of the
first Exclusion Bill, and when he was in Brussels, he had advocated a
visit of William to England, presumably as a persona grata to the
Opposition who was also in his interests and whose mediation would be
valuable. In 1681, however, though he still trusted him to do what
he could for him, he had formed the opinion that William had been
206 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
listening too much to Henry Sidney, the English envoy at The Hague,
and had acquired an entirely erroneous view of the condition of affairs
in England, and that he would therefore be inclined to encourage the
Whigs to demand more than James was willing should be granted them;
moreover, that now that the victory was won the presence of a mediator
would be worse than useless.
It would not be out of place in a biography of James to discuss the
vexed question of the date at which William formed the definite inten-
tion of attempting to succeed to the throne of the three kingdoms at
the expense of James. Macaulay's view seems to have been that William
had no ambition for the Crown for its own sake, and that he accepted it
with reluctance as the only means of securing the alliance of England
with Holland in the struggle against Louis XIV* Such a view represents
him as more than human: it is not conceivable that any man could have
placed no value whatever on the prestige of being the second or third
personage in Europe. The other extreme view is more common.
How few have ever heard of the long course of cold-blooded
treachery and intrigue by which, from the very day of his marriage,
William of Orange planned the ruin of his wife's family; . . . how
eight years before the Revolution he was preparing to support an
insurrection in England.
And James's biographer, writing after the event, is of the same opinion.
Certainly James at the time had no suspicions of his son-in-law, but
that is not to say there were no grounds for suspicion. James's mind
was not speculative and he did not harbour vague suspicions; it was not
difficult to deceive him by a pretence of friendship, and he was not on
his guard against a man whom he had considered a friend until that
man had committed a very overt act of hostility.
William never in words gave any encouragement to this second view,
but he was above all things discreet in his conversation and corre-
spondence, and his words by no means conveyed all that was in his
mind. It is more than likely that he allowed his mind to play from a very
early age on his proximity in blood to the royal line and on the chances
of death, and that he was fully aware that the chances had been improved
by his marriage to Mary; such imaginings are a natural outcome of the
hereditary principle, even in matters of less moment than thrones and
crowns. It is also true that at the time of the Exclusion Bills William's
name was freely used by those exclusionists who kept their heads and
realised the impossibility of the substitution of Monmouth for James.
William and Mary were also nominated as regents in the schemes for a
regency, and there is no evidence that William discouraged this use of
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 207
his name. Henry Sidney in November 1679 formed an opinion that
James suspected William of an intention "to set up for himself" ; Charles
during William's visit in 1681 apparently ascribed to him ulterior motives
in wishing to dine with his old friends in the City and took the very
extreme step of commanding his attendance at Windsor; and the
Modenese ambassador reported to his master that "the King of England
has severely reproved the Prince of Orange for having attempted to
supplant the Duke of York in the succession to the Crown". But the
ambassador does not disclose the source of his information about what
was clearly a private conversation, nor does Charles's reprimand, if
indeed it was given, prove William's guilt; it may easily have been
inspired by an indiscretion of one of William's English partisans. In
March 1681 William had written a letter which Laurence Hyde under-
stood to convey the opinion that Charles should agree with Parliament
on the subject of Exclusion; worse than that, he mentioned William's
letter to Charles and gave him the same impression of it; Charles, who
might justifiably have been annoyed at William's supposed officiousness,
remarked mildly that,
there never can be a good accommodation without bringing both
the parties to some tolerable abatement of the demands, but this
that is hinted at by that part of your letter and hath been so long
insisted on here is entirely yielding on one side, and is therefore
not an accommodation but a submission.
William was very angry with Hyde:
I do not know why you put explanations upon my letters when I
do not explain myself on a matter so important and delicate as that
of the Exclusion, on which I have neither explained myself nor
pretended to do it; moreover I am very much surprised that you
have spoken of my letter to the King and had drawn from it the
implication that I was of opinion that His Majesty should submit
to the will of Parliament. The opinion which I expressed to you
and which I still hold is merely that, unless some expedient is found
for bringing together the King and his Parliament, the affairs of the
King, of the Kingdom, and of all his allies, are in a very bad con-
dition. What remedy there may be to escape such great evils, I do
not know; nor if I did know should I take the trouble to write to
you about them, since you draw inferences from my letters.
Hyde's reply was a full and frank apology, and though he was an
anti-exclusionist, it is not necessary to accuse him of an intention to do
injury to William, but only of blundering. But it does not appear that
208 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
he took steps to disabuse Charles, and the impression left on Charles's
mind must have been that William favoured Exclusion as a means to the
satisfaction of his own ambition.
But from William's own recorded remarks it would be difficult to
argue any such intention: for example, he told Sidney in September
1679 that all he desired for the present was that he might be considered
the third (should it not have been fourth?) heir to the Crown; in August
1680 he was said to be giving out that he would not accept the Crown if
Parliament should exclude James; in November he told Sidney that he
regarded excluding the Duke an injustice and that he would not advise
the King to do it for all the world, adding that he would be the first to
be undone if the Exclusion Bill became law ; in the same month he wrote
to Jenkins, "I am vexed to learn with what animosity they proceed
against the Duke. God bless him! and grant that the King and his
parliament may agree" ; in December he again wrote to Jenkins deploring
the proposal to limit the prerogative of a popish king, on the ground
that, once imposed, these limitations would be continued against a
Protestant Successor thus implying that he regarded himself as a
possible successor of James, and not his supplanter; finally, when in
February 1685 James obtained peaceable possession of the Crown,
William wrote in the same month to the Prince of Nassau-Dietz from
whom he could not possibly expect advantage by concealing his real
feelings and expressed his joy at seeing that James had "mounted
the throne in such tranquillity".
Throughout the period of James's second residence in Scotland he was
subjected by his friends to persistent advice that he should abandon the
Catholic Faith and be received again into the Church of England. In
January 1681 Laurence Hyde was sent by Charles to Edinburgh charged
with the special mission of converting his brother-in-law; James was
very indignant at what he considered an attempt to induce him to act
against his conscience, and he was still more indignant when he heard
that there had been a rumour that Charles had written him an ultimatum
saying that if James did not go to church the Exclusion Bill would be
allowed to pass, for he concluded that the only way in which such a
rumour could have started was by a violation of confidence by Charles's
advisers. Had James been able to bring himself to follow the advice of
Hyde and his other friends and to convince the world of his sincerity in
making the change, Charles's troubles would have been at an end; 1
1 Or so Charles thought ; but the conflict between Charles and his parliaments
went far deeper than the Exclusion question, and Parliament would not have
given way until something in the nature of the Revolution Settlement had been
achieved.
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORT REACTION 2OQ
for the question of the succession would have been solved, and with it
nearly all the other differences between Charles and his Parliaments.
James did not realise all the difficulties, he still thought that they could
be overcome by more resolute behaviour on Charles's part; but he did
see that his position was one of extreme danger and that his religion was
the chief, indeed the only, reason for that danger. In these circumstances
he rose to a pitch of moral heroism to which we cannot but pay respect,
and which would have struck a chord of sympathy in the hearts of the
Exclusionists themselves if they had not been blinded by political and
sectarian passion:
Yet I look on my condition as very bad [he wrote to Legge] and
do not flatter myself with the hopes of being sent for in haste and so
am arming myself with as much patience as I can, and shall, as I
have done these many years, prepare myself for the worst that can
happen to me; and, pray, once for all, never say anything to me
again of turning Protestant, do not expect it or flatter yourself that
I shall ever be it, I never shall, and, if occasion were, I hope God
would give me grace to suffer death for the true Catholic Religion
as well as banishment.
This was from Brussels; two and a half years later he wrote from
Edinburgh :
Now, because others have brought things to the pass they are,
I must be pressed to sacrifice my conscience and my honour and
be thought a knave by all the world. . . . You are a man of
conscience as well as honour, do but think what a base mean thing
it would be in me, besides the sin of it, to dissemble and deny my
religion; I have by God's grace never to do so damnable a thing,
and let my friends take their measures accordingly. 1
But, matters of conscience apart, he realised that it was now too late for
him to make the desired change. As he said in his memoirs:
If he should conform they would say it was by virtue of dis-
pensation, 2 and so imagine him a more dangerous enemy, for by
entering into all his employment they would fancy his power greater
and his will the same to do mischief.
1 There is in this passage a distinct echo of the words James's father wrote
from Newcastle in October 1646: "I have long ago resolved rather to ship-
on April 30, 1679:
_> to Church and have
a dispensation from the Pope to do it, there is an end of it.*
2IO JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
When in July 1681 James as Commissioner opened the Scottish
Parliament for the first time for five years he was present when prayers
from the English liturgy were read, for they were part of the ceremony;
he also, as we have seen, concurred in the passing of Acts of Parliament
which imposed penalties upon the Catholics. Hence arose in England
rumours similar to others that had previously arisen that he was waver-
ing in his adhesion to the Catholic Faith. Seeing, as he thought, a new
opportunity, Charles in September again sent Laurence Hyde to make a
still more violent onslaught upon James. James's story is that he and
his brother-in-law discussed the situation in all its bearings for three full
days: we may be sure that Hyde, with his strong attachment to the
Church of England, did not refrain from theological argument, but it
was the interests of James's King and beloved brother that were his
main theme; when he found that all his pleadings were in vain, Hyde
took from his pocket a holograph statement from Charles to the effect
that if James would consent merely to attend the services of the Church
of England, without making any profession of change of faith, he would
be permitted to return to England. Halifax also wrote to him and told
him frankly "that except he became a Protestant his friends would be
obliged to leave him, like a garrison that one could no longer defend'* ;
to which James replied "that then his case was more desperate than he
understood it to be before, for that he could not alter his principles".
These persistent attempts to persuade James to forswear his settled con-
victions in his own interests and in those of Charles and as a condition
of his return from exile "mortified him very much", and he considered
the compulsion under which he continued to reside in Scotland was a
confession of weakness on the part of Charles; he urged also that
Charles should send for him, if only for a short time, so that they could
discuss together the affairs of Scotland. He had for a time the fear that
Charles was jealous of him: he complained that, as Halifax had warned
him, his friends were all slipping away from him, and he had an uneasy
suspicion that his brother was attaching them to himself. But he appears
to have been misinformed, for it was reported that at Court "nobody
hath any credit but the Duke's creatures".
James began to despair of ever returning to England, and his depressed
state of mind may well have been a factor in a decline in will-power and
mental grip which set in about this time. It has been suggested that
there is evidence of this decline in the naivety of the letters which he
wrote to William of Orange from the year 1686 onwards, but it is difficult
to detect a change in this respect, for his letters had always been naive.
What is significant is that about this time James, who, since he emerged
from boyhood, had, apart from his subservient submission to the royal
THE SECOND EXCLUSION BILL AND THE TORY REACTION 211
will, shown great firmness and independence of mind, now for the first
time begins to be accused of submitting to the counsels of worthless
favourites. Halifax told Reresby that James
had a host of hungry servants about him that were still pressing for
his return, and would never let him alone till, out of interest to
themselves, they would put him upon that which would turn to the
prejudice of their master by the ill timing of it
and at another time :
that those which belonged to the Duke of York made him mad
for there were few among them that had common sense.
To this period also belongs Sir John Lauder of FountainhalPs devastat-
ing statement of the impression James gave in Scotland:
Some wise men observed that the Duke of York might have
honesty, justice and courage enough, and his father's peremptori-
ness, but that he had neither great conduct [sc. ability] nor a deep
reach in affairs, but was a silly man. 1
But Halifax's statement of the case was incomplete : it is true that at
this time James's counsellors began to take a more prominent pkce in
his life, but they were counsellors only by courtesy. For James's mind,
by the impetus of its previous energy, kept on its way without deviation,
and the only advice he took (except from his priests) was such as con-
formed to his own intentions. In these circumstances the wisest
counsellor was he who most intelligently anticipated the operations of
James's own mind.
1 The Oxford English Dictionary gives an interesting history of the meaning
of the word "silly" : at this time it had not its full modern significance, but it
was far from being a synonym for "simple**.
CHAPTER XIII
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS
JAMES owed his escape from Scotland to the last person from whom
he could have expected such a boon. The Duchess of Portsmouth,
now completely estranged from James, wanted to take the waters at
Bourbon, and for the expenses of the trip she wanted money, for any
surplus she had had from her ample income had been spent on repeated
demolition and re-erection of her lodgings at Whitehall. She tried to
borrow money on the security of her pension from the hereditary excise,
but found that it was not a negotiable security ; it then occurred to her
that if she could exchange with James 5000 of her income from the
hereditary excise for 5000 of his from the Post Office, she would be
able to give security for the necessary loan. She communicated with
James, who behaved with great astuteness: he had no love for the
Duchess and he had no intention of making her a present by exchanging
5000 on good security for 5000 on not so good security; moreover,
he was well aware that his income from the Post Office was a parlia-
mentary grant and that it could not be alienated except by Act of
Parliament, that Charles was not likely to call a Parliament for such a
purpose and that if the question had been brought up in Parliament
they would be more likely to endeavour to reduce him to a bare sub-
sistence allowance than to do anything to oblige the Duchess of Ports-
mouth. James affected, however, to be agreeable to the mistress's
scheme ; but he pointed out that it would not be possible to complete
the transaction unless he was present in person in London. James's
return to Court was the last thing the Duchess wanted ; but she calculated
from Charles's insensibility to James's requests for recall, that she would
have no difficulty in procuring his return to Scotland as soon as he had
served her purpose. She applied to Charles her well-tried arts, and
Charles, with reluctance, but finding it less trouble to yield than to
resist, sent George Legge's brother William to Edinburgh with letters
permitting James to join him at Newmarket.
James lost no time in making use of this permission; leaving the
Duchess and the Princess Anne at Holyrood House, he took ship on
March 6 at Leith with a small escort of yachts which he had collected
there.
His Royal Highness the Duke of York arrived at Yarmouth in
one of His Majesty's yachts the loth [of March] and was entertained
212
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 213
by the magistrates of the town at dinner; and that afternoon he
went to Norwich, attended with a great number of gentlemen,
where he came that night, and was splendidly entertained by the
Mayor and aldermen; the next morning he parted thence for
Newmarket, accompanied by many gentry, where he arrived
that evening and was received by His Majesty with all the expres-
sions of kindness imaginable, and since his arrival there hath been
waited on by most of the nobility to pay their respects to him.
Another report says that the crowd at Newmarket was great at his
arrival because everyone came to wait on him ; and when Charles and
James arrived in London from Newmarket on April 8 they were visited
by the nobility and gentry and there were public rejoicings. An extra-
ordinary revolution in James's favour had occurred from the time, only
a few months back, when James thought he had no friends in England
except Jenkins and Hyde, and the change must have been as pleasant
and surprising to him as had been his reception at the Artillery Dinner
in September 1679 and the bells and bonfires in London in February
1680. But while those two outbursts of enthusiasm were temporary
and bore a partisan character, the welcome accorded to James at
Yarmouth, Norwich and Newmarket was a prelude to a period of nearly
four years in which James kept his popularity among almost all people
who had the means to express their feelings ; the only exceptions were
those who during the succeeding eighteen months gave Monmouth an
ovation whenever he appeared in public.
In May James paid a flying visit to Edinburgh for the double purpose
of winding up his public affairs there and making appointments in the
highest offices and of bringing back his wife and daughter. On his way
north the Gloucester k , the ship in which he was a passenger, was, by the
negligence of the pilot, wrecked on a sandbank off the Norfolk coast.
James's own account of the occurrence, written to William three days
later from Edinburgh, gives a very painful impression of callousness :
Before this gets to you you will go near to have heard of my
being safely arrived here, though the frigate in which I was in
(sic), was cast away upon a sand called the Lemon, which lies some
eight leagues from the coast of Norfolk. It was on Saturday
morning the ship was lost, and by Sunday night I landed at Leith,
and so was here by nine o'clock that night. We lost a great many
men, and, considering the little time the ship was above water after
she struck first, 'twas well so many were saved; of lords there were
drowned Lord Roxborough and Lord O'Brien; of gentlemen,
Lieutenant Hyde, who was lieutenant of the ship, and Captain
214 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Stuart, a reformade, both English; of Scots, Hopton, Sir Joseph
Douglas and one Levington a physician; several of my under-
servants were drowned, and of 250 seamen, which was the ship's
complement, no were lost; 'twas to the too great presumption
of the pilot and his mistaking both his course and distance that
was the cause of the loss of the ship ; he was esteemed one of the
ablest pilots we had for these northern seas; he was saved among
the rest, by one of the yachts-boats, which had I then known,
I had caused him to have been hanged up immediately, according
to the custom of the sea, but now he must receive his doom by a
court martial, so soon as I shall arrive in England, which I hope
will be some time the next week, for I intend to embark with the
Duchess and my daughter about Monday next on board the Happy
Return, a fourth-rate frigate; 'twas the Gloucester, a third-rate,
was lost.
In short, his regrets were for the escape from sudden death of the
pilot rather than for the death of a number of gentlemen, and of over
a hundred seamen, who (as James says in his memoirs) gave "a great
huzza" when they saw that he was safe.
John Churchill was among those saved, and his account of the
wreck was written down by his wife sixty years later, and is probably
not exactly as he gave it to her. But among a mass of incompatible
details which are given by other eye-witnesses concerning James's con-
duct at this moment of sudden crisis, one point emerges from the story
told by the Duchess of Marlborough which is borne out by all the other
accounts the fatal delay owing to James's fussiness and irresolution.
The clearest of these accounts is one written by the son of Colonel
George Legge to a friend a few months after the accident :
This is only in answer to the last paragraph in yours of the
2ist. My father was on board the Gloucester, but so litte deserved
to have the drowning of 150 men (which the bishop has so liberally
bestowed upon him) laid chiefly to his charge, that it was in great
measure owing to him that any escaped after the ship had struck.
He several times pressed the Duke to get into the boat, who refused
to do it, telling him that if he were gone nobody would take care
of the ship, which he had hopes might be saved if she were not
abandoned. But my father finding she was ready to sink told him
if he stayed any longer they should be obliged to force him out:
upon which the Duke ordered a strong box to be lifted into the
boat, which besides being extremely weighty took a great deal of
time as well as room. My father asked hin^ with some warmth if
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 215
there was anything in it worth a man's life. The Duke answered
that there were things of great consequence both to the King
and himself that he would hazard his own rather than it should be
lost.
There can be no doubt that the James of ten years earlier would have
taken charge of the situation at once, have improvised a plan and have
put it in operation with a few sharp words of command ; the next best
thing he could have done would have been to have allowed himself to
be expeditiously put over the side into a boat for his was to everyone
the most important life, and nothing could be done until it was known
that he was safe so as to leave the ship's officers free to save the rest.
As it was, he hung about and refused to be hurried while valuable
minutes were being wasted. At the last moment his chief thought was
not for his priests and his dogs (as some alleged), but for a great box of
papers, no doubt containing his memoirs a less hidebound and
egotistic man would have left them in London on this short trip
which he insisted on having in the boat with him. The closing picture
which we form in our mind's eye is that of a calm sea with a couple of
yachts standing by and several boats, not daring to approach the
Gloucester for fear of being swamped when she goes down, and James,
with his great box by his side and surrounded by his courtiers, waiting
for the ship to slide off the sandbank and to founder as the tide falls.
James arrived in Edinburgh on May 7, and left again on May 15
with Mary Beatrice and Anne, having in the meantime made fresh
appointments to the chief Scottish offices. They had a tedious voyage,
and did not arrive in London until May 27. The King and Queen
received them at Arlington House, the residence of the Earl of Arlington,
and after dinner set out for Windsor. James and his Duchess went to
St. James's and, to their delight, "at night were ringing of bells and
bonfires in several places and other public expressions of joy". For
more than a year life was uneventful; James remained in close contact
with Charles and went with him on his journeys between London,
Windsor and Newmarket. In July Sunderland's miscalculation in the
matter of Exclusion was forgiven him by Charles at the intercession
of the Duchess of Portsmouth, and in spite of James's opposition he
returned to Court; of this reinstatement James wrote, "Many honest
men are alarmed at it, but not I". Sunderland wrote to William of
Orange:
The King has received me very graciously and so has the Duke,
much beyond what I ought to have expected from His Royal High-
ness, whose proceeding has been such to me in this whole matter
2l6 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
that I must forever acknowledge to owe more to him than I can
hope to deserve, though I will always endeavour it.
Sunderland was reappointed to the Privy Council in September and
resumed his duties as Secretary of State in the following January, a
post which he held continuously for nearly six years. In August James
received a more surprising offer of reconciliation from the Earl of
Shaftesbury:
The Duke made him a wise and no unkind answer, that he had
been an open enemy, and when he had reconciled himself to the
King, he would be the first that would take him by the hand as he
had done my lord Sunderland.
James now felt himself strong enough to take revenge upon his
enemies. He had a weapon ready at his hand in the medieval statute
De Scandatis Magnatum Libel against Great Persons under which
peers of the realm who could prove that words had been spoken against
them by Commoners could demand damages in a criminal action and no
plea of justification could be admitted. During the previous three years
when Exclusion was in the air wild talk about James had been universal,
and there were not wanting informers who were willing to secure James's
favour now that it was worth having. A typical instance is that of a Mr.
Arrowsmith, an apothecary, who had invited to dinner a customer
from the country, which customer brought a friend with him. In the
course of the dinner someone suggested drinking James's health, and
Arrowsmith objected to the toast and gave his reasons. Information
was laid by the customer's friend, and James entered an action for
Scandalum Magnatum against Arrowsmith. Narcissus Luttrell men-
tions in his diary no fewer than eight actions by James under the Act,
and there may well have been more ; the bearer of the honoured name
of Sir Francis Drake, and the anti-Catholic informer Dangerfield,
absconded, Sir Scroope Howe succeeded by submission and apology
in having the action against him withdrawn ; but four of the accused who
stood their trial Alderman Pilkington, John Dutton Colt, Nicholas
Covert, and the notorious Titus Gates were each cast in damages for
the enormous sum of 100,000.
In September 1682 Monmouth started on his second progress.
The visit to the West two years earlier had had no definite political
object, though he visited the Whig gentry and took delight in the
personal popularity which was expressed in his reception by the
people. Now he travelled in state with a retinue of more than a hundred
horsemen. Wherever he stopped he dined in state and the populace
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 217
arere admitted to pass through the dining-room. On the former occasion
le had given no direct provocation to the susceptibilities of the Court
party, but now there was considerable opposition to the displays of
welcome; in particular, attempts more or less successful, were made to
extinguish bonfires. The progress came to an abrupt end at Chester
on September 20 with the arrest of Monmouth by royal warrant.
He was conducted to London, examined by Sir Leoline Jenkins, the
Secretary of State, and released on giving sureties. In February 1683 he
went down to Charlton to hunt with Lord Grey and arranged a demon-
stration at Chichester similar to those of his second progress.
In June 1683 occurred the discovery of the famous Rye House
Plot: a plot to assassinate Charles and James at a farmhouse in Essex
the Rye House on their way to London from Newmarket. Unfor-
tunately for the conspirators a fire occurred at Newmarket, and in con-
sequence the royal brothers returned safely to London a fortnight earlier
than they had intended. A number of the plotters saved themselves
in the manner common at the time by turning King's Evidence. James
was very active in tracking down the fugitives and examining such as
were taken, and he betrayed no regrets when one of the most lovable
personalities and one of the greatest minds of the time Lord Russell
and Algernon Sidney were condemned and executed as accessory to
the conspiracy. 1 Of Russell he wrote:
This day Lord Russell was beheaded. He behaved himself
like a stout man, but not like a good Christian; said little, but left
a most seditious paper signed by himself, to be sent to the king,
which just now is brought to me in print, which has been published
by some of his factious friends. When you see it you will say there
cannot be a greater libel on the Government ;
and,
when the trials are printed all the world will see with what dis-
ingenuity and little Christianity Lord Russell died, and what
damnable designs these conspirators had.
And of Algernon Sidney :
Yesterday Algernon Sidney was beheaded; he died stoutly and
like a true republican. . . . Algernon Sidney's speech is come
1 The impression given by the evidence is that Lord Russell was guilty at
least of misprision of treason ; during the Exclusion crisis Russell advocated
the impeachment of James in the hope of a capital sentence, and this fact may
explain James's personal animosity against him, Sidney was convicted for
private opinions expressed in unpublished writings, and few people, even of his
own time, can be found to uphold the justice of his sentence.
2 i8 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
out in print, and his trial will I believe be out this week; by both
which you will see what a fine principled man he was, and of
the same trampe [sc. temper] are ill those the Duke of Monmouth
was to have headed; and I think 'twas a great mercy he discovered
himself so soon not to be a true penitent.
Even before the trials James had assumed Russell's guilt; in his eyes
a man who confessed to republican that is to say, to liberal principles
was capable of any crime, even of assassination.
On November 24, 1683, the Duke of Monmouth made his last
appearance but one at Whitehall. He had been excluded from the
Court for four years, and had been continuing to live at his house in
Hedge Lane, and his country house, Moor Park in Hertfordshire, in
close touch with Shaftesbury and the other Whigs and Exclusionists.
His objects were variously reported James thought he aimed at a
republic with himself as Stadtholder, for James could not imagine a
King who was at the same time a Whig but he probably had a vague
plan of being ready to take what opportunity might serve to seize the
Crown if Charles died. At the end of June 1683 a proclamation was
issued ordering his arrest, together with a number of Whig leaders,
on suspicion of complicity in the Rye House Plot, and he went into
hiding for five months. On November 24 he suddenly reappeared,
surrendered himself to the Secretary of State, and requested to see the
King and James alone. The request was granted, and Monmouth
made a humble submission to his father and craved James's pardon for
everything he had done against him; he admitted that he had been deep
in all the Whig conspiracies, but denied that he had any knowledge of
the assassination plot. After the interview he was allowed to go to his
own lodgings in Whitehall in custody of a serjeant-at-arms, and next
day he appeared before the Council and was released and received a
royal pardon. He had requested that he should not be called as a
witness against his friends, and Charles promised that he would not
make use of his confession in that way, received him back into favour
and ordered James to be reconciled to him. But as soon as he had got
his pardon Monmouth returned to his old friends (from whom pre-
sumably he had been separated while he was in hiding), and they
convinced him that he had done a base and unmanly thing in making
submission. 1 When Charles demanded that he should sign a confession
confirming his oral statement, he not only refused, but gave out that he
had never made any such statement. He was therefore repudiated by
Charles, who caused a copy of the declaration which he should have
1 There was nothing in the written confession which could incriminate any
of Monmouth's associates.
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 219
signed to be entered in the register of the Privy Council j 1 if he had been
given time he would no doubt have got back into his father's good
graces, for he could never be angry with him long; he remained for a
few weeks at his private residences and then crossed to Holland.
There he was well received by William and Mary; a house was assigned
to him at The Hague and another at Leyden, and he lived in some
state. James wrote two letters to his daughter Mary expostulating with
her at the hospitality given to a man who was under Charles's dis-
pleasure and was his own "mortal enemy".
The discovery of the Rye House Plot was a piece of great good
fortune to Charles and James: nothing could have served better to
complete the discomfiture of the Whigs, to secure to Charles for the
last eighteen months of his life that ease and tranquillity for which
his soul yearned and to confirm to him and to James the popularity
they had recently acquired for assassins have never been popular in
England. No one dared to show opposition to the Court for fear of
being implicated in the Plot; of the Whig leaders, four Shaftesbury,
Russell, Essex and Algernon Sidney were dead, and the rest scattered
and without hope or plans. James in particular benefited exceedingly.
Burnet, after animadverting on "the shedding of so much blood upon
such doubtful evidence", describes
the strange change that appeared over the nation with relation to
the Duke, from such an eager prosecution of the Exclusion to
an indecent courting and magnifying him, not without a visible
coldness to the King;
then, after recording the spate of loyal addresses, he has a dig at his
own cloth:
The clergy struck up a higher note, with such zeal for the
Duke's succession as if a popish king had been a special blessing of
Heaven to be much longed for by a protestant church.
With the Duchess and Princess Anne, James had paid a visit of five
days to Oxford in the previous May, and had been received with great
enthusiasm by the local gentry, the University and the individual
colleges; as an outcome of this visit and of the discovery of the Plot,
the University on July 21 issued a manifesto repudiating a portentous
list of Whig doctrines, among them : "Birthright and proximity of blood
1 The fragment of Monmouth's diary which has been preserved states that
his submission had been arranged beforehand with his father in order to deceive
James.
220 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
give no title to rule or government, and it is lawful to preclude the next
heir from his right and succession to the throne"; on September 9,
which was set apart as a day of thanksgiving for the preservation
of the King and the Duke from the fate which had been prepared for
them,
the smart lads of the city marched down the streets with cudgels
in their hands, crying for the King and the Duke of York, and
all people had "York" in their mouths, and his health was drunk
publicly in most halls at dinner.
James's next visit to Oxford was not so fortunate.
Apart from his personal popularity, James recovered his old position
as Charles's most intimate adviser, and even improved upon it. From
the time of his return from Scotland he had remained in virtual control
of that kingdom. During his second stay in Scotland he had formed
attachments with a number of men, and his second visit in 1682 was
for the purpose of placing the administration in the hands of men he
could trust. The Commission of the Treasury was discontinued,
and William Douglas, Marquis of Queensberry, was appointed Lord
High Treasurer; Sir George Gordon, who as a Scottish Judge held
the title for life of Lord Haddo, was made Chancellor; and James
Dnunmond, Earl of Perth, succeeded Queensberry as Lord Justice-
General. The Earl of Moray remained in his post as Secretary of
State; he resided in London and was in constant attendance upon
James. Perth's brother, John Drummond of Lundin, subsequently
to achieve a sinister reputation as the Earl of Melfort, and the evil
genius of James's later years, was also in London; in August 1682 he
was appointed Treasurer-Depute under Queensberry.
It was said that Lundin had first attracted the favour of Duchess
Mary when she was in Edinburgh by his handsome figure and his grace
and skill as a dancer; throughout his life she remained convinced that
so attractive a man and so assiduous a courtier must be a reliable coun-
sellor. James rated him no less highly, and though he was twice
in 1689 ^d in 1694 compelled by Melfort's detractors to dismiss him,
he submitted with the greatest reluctance. Melfort's career belongs
mainly to the period after the accession of James; here it is sufficient to
say that in character he resembled Sunderland, for he had no principle
except self-interest; he resembled Sunderland also in his method of
dealing with James, always giving the advice which most nearly con-
formed to James's own opinions. In one respect, however, there was a
vast difference between the two men : Sunderland was one of the ablest
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 221
men in public life in his time; Melfort, except in intrigue, was one of
the most incompetent.
No sooner had the new administration been formed than Queens-
berry and Perth commenced a joint intrigue against Lord Haddo.
The Chancellorship had in the past always been given to a great noble,
and the appointment of a Commoner was regarded as an affront; his
elevation in 1682 to the hereditary peerage as Earl of Aberdeen did not
wipe out the obscurity of his birth; there can be little doubt that Perth
coveted his post, though there is nothing in Lundin's letters to Queens-
berry to support such a surmise. In these letters from August to
November 1683 tii ere * s a complete record of the writer's persistent
efforts to poison James's mind against Aberdeen. Never was there less
material on which to build a charge and never was better use made of
such slight material, and the frank avowal of rascality in the letters
for he admits that some of his accusations are false stamps Lundin
as one of the basest of men. Most men in such circumstances are at
pains to convince themselves that they are actuated by zeal for the
public good or the King's service, but no doubt Sunderland, if he had
had an intimate friend as Lundin had in Queensberry, would have
written in similar terms about his intrigues against Rochester in 1685
and 1686. The two points against Aberdeen upon which Lundin
insisted were that, in contrast to Queensberry, he was a poor man
and must therefore strive to advance his relations, and that he was
inclined to leniency to the Covenanters. It was most important to the
conspirators that Aberdeen should not be permitted to come to London
to justify himself, and in due course Aberdeen wrote to James com-
plaining that he was being persistently maligned and was given no
opportunity of refuting his accusers. James showed his letter to Lundin,
but Lundin protested that he had done no more than to answer as truth-
fully as he could questions about Aberdeen and others, and he had
no difficulty in convincing James of his entire disinterestedness.
So easily was he deceived by those to whom he gave his confidence,
the very persistence of the attack on Aberdeen should have put him on
his guard.
Lundin's perseverance was at long last rewarded when on June 23,
1684, Aberdeen was dismissed. The persecution of the Covenanters
had by this time reached the stage known as "the killing time", in
which Queensberry and Perth took an active part and Lundin gave
assistance from Whitehall; it was not difficult to represent Aberdeen's
comparative humanity as lack of zeal in the royal service, and he himself
unwisely courted popularity by gestures of moderation and played into
his enemies' hands. Queensberry and Perth also secured the good
222 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
offices of the Duchess of Portsmouth by a bribe of 27,000, l which
Queensberry had the effrontery to furnish from public funds. Queens-
berry had been made a Duke in the previous February, Perth succeeded
Aberdeen as Chancellor, on July 16 Queensberry and Perth made a
triumphal entry into Edinburgh, and in September Lundin was made
joint Secretary of State with Moray. At the close of the reign Queens-
berry and Perth had the whole Scottish administration in their hands,
and the two secretaries in London, Moray and Lundin, were entirely
in their interest. Charles did not concern himself with Scottish affairs.
James wrote to Queensberry every week; in this correspondence the
phrase "King and Duke*' appears frequently, and in general Burnet
was very near the truth when he said Scotland was so entirely in his
dependence that the King would seldom ask what the papers imported
that the Duke brought to be signed by him.
Burnet's estimate of James's importance in England during the years
after his return from Scotland is also probably fairly accurate, though
Burnet was not in England for the whole of the three years.
In England the application and dependence was visibly on the
Duke. The king had scarce company about him to entertain him,
when the Duke's levees and couchees were so crowded that the
antichambers were full. The King walked about with a small
train of the necessary attendants, when the Duke had a vast follow-
ing; which drew a lively reflection from Waller, the celebrated
wit. He said the House of Commons had resolved that the Duke
should not reign after the King's death; but the King in oppo-
sition to them was resolved he should reign even during his
/> ^
life.
Burnet's information is corroborated by Sir John Reresby, who was
on the spot, and who says in January 1684, "The Duke of York did now
chiefly manage affairs, but with great haughtiness". From July 1683
James had been in constant attendance at the Committee of Foreign
Affairs, or Cabinet Council as Jenkins calls it, and in May 1684 James
was readmitted to the Privy Council, and in the same month he was
virtually reinstated as Lord High Admiral: that is to say the Admiralty
Commission was abolished and Charles signed all papers on James's
advice.
This latter appointment was extremely popular, for the Admiralty
x Perth signed a bond for half the amount in case the payment should be
oisallowed at a subsequent examination of accounts. The matter came up in
July 1686, and the Duke of Hamilton was for disallowing it; it does not appear
whether or no Queensbeny and Perth were made to refund the money to the
Tr^moiiTty
Treasury.
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 223
Commission had justly acquired a reputation for incompetence. Louis
expressed his satisfaction at James's return to the position he had
previously enjoyed:
The King of England could have taken no resolution more
agreeable to his prosperity and reputation than that of reestablish-
ing the Duke of York in all his offices.
James declares in his memoirs that when he returned from Scotland
he promised Charles that when once he had reported on the affairs of
Scotland he would meddle no more in the public business of either
kingdom, great as would be the personal sacrifice involved; James's
biographer, however, having transcribed this passage from the memoirs,
imples a few pages later that the promise was not kept, for he mentions
among the blessings which Charles enjoyed at the end of his life,
the Duke his brother at his side, whose indefatigableness in
business took a great share of that burden off his shoulders, which
his indolent temper made uneasy to him, and this His Royal
Highness performed with such a perfect conformity to His Majesty's
inclinations and obedience to his will, as made his services as free
from jealousy and unsuspected as they were affectionate and useful,
both to confirm his happiness at home and establish his reputation
abroad.
In view of this and other passages in the biography and of the inde-
pendent evidence above quoted, James need not be believed when he
states elsewhere in his memoirs that the long conversations he had
with Charles, and which caused pangs of jealousy to the Duchess of
Portsmouth, were entirely upon the subject of religion. Be that as it
may, the Duchess was undoubtedly jealous of James at this time,
and it was a galling thought to her that she had been the means of
bringing him back to the chief place in Charles's counsels, to be forced
herself into the background. The outcome of her jealousy was a plan
for sending James back to Scotland, and so persistent was she (helped
also by Charles's weariness at James's constant company) that had
Charles lived a few months longer the plan would have succeeded
and James would have found himself again in exile, though this time,
no doubt, on more honourable terms than previously. The decision to
make the journey was taken as early as November 1684, but no date
was fixed; on January 17 James's departure seemed imminent, but a
week later he told Melfort that he would not go until he had been to
Newmarket with Charles, an excursion planned for the first week in
March.
224 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
The last public event of importance of the reign of Charles II was
the marriage on July 28, 1684, of James's younger daughter Anne to
Prince George of Denmark, a marriage, as events were to prove, of no
political or dynastic significance. It is characteristic of the subservience
to France of Charles and James at this late period that they took the
greatest pains not to repeat their error of the marriage of Mary, and
made quite certain that this marriage had Louis's approval. The
secret of their correspondence with the French King was not well kept,
for Burnet was able to say, "The marriage did not at all please the nation,
for we knew that the proposition came from France". James wrote to
Queensberry before the event :
My daughter's being married to the Prince of Denmark will now
be no news to you, and I am the better pleased with it because I
find the loyal party here do like it, and the Whigs are as much
troubled by it;
a significant passage. James was guilty of two errors to which men of his
stamp of mind are liable: he thought that everyone who opposed the
Court on any point in this case the French connection, for no objection
could be taken to Prince George as a husband for Anne was a Whig,
and that not only were the Whigs not to be placated by concessions,
but that there was a virtue in irritating them.
The death of Charles II was very sudden. On February 2, 1685, he
had an apoplectic fit when he was preparing to be shaved, and though
he rallied and gave hopes of a recovery, he had a second fit and died at
mid-day on February 6. The French ambassador Barrillon wrote a long
account of the final scenes to his master, and its reproduction here is
fully justified by the consummate command of narrative style shown
by the ambassador anyone who compares the story as he told it
with Macaulay's paraphrase of it must be struck by the distance the
historian fell below his original. 1
The letter which I have the honour this day to address to Your
Majesty, is solely to transmit to Your Majesty an exact account
of the most important events which took place at the death of the
kte King of England. His illness which began on the morning
of Monday, February 12, took different turns during the following
days ; sometimes he was thought to be out of danger, but afterwards
some circumstance happened which gave reason to believe his dis-
order was mortal; at length, about noon on Thursday, February 15,
1 It must be remembered that Barrillon's dates are new style, so that February
12 should read February 2 according to the old style which we are observing.
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 225
I was informed from a good quarter that there was no longer any
hope and that his physicians did not think he could survive the
night. I immediately after went to Whitehall ; the Duke of York
had given orders to the officers who kept the door of the ante-
chamber to allow me to pass at all hours ; he remained constantly
in the King's chamber, except when he came out to give orders
respecting what was passing in the town. The report was several
times spread during the day that the King was dead. As soon as I
arrived the Duke of York said to me, "The physicians think the
King is in the greatest danger; I beg you will assure your master
that in me he will always find a faithful and a grateful servant". I
remained in the King's antechamber till five o'clock ; the Duke of
York invited me several times into the room and conversed with me
about what was passing without-doors, and of the assurances he
had received from all quarters that everything was very quiet in the
town and that he would be proclaimed King the instant his brother
should expire. I retired for some time to the apartments of the
Duchess of Portsmouth; I found her overwhelmed with grief for
the physicians had deprived her of all hopes. Nevertheless,
instead of speaking to me of her sorrow and of the loss she was
about to sustain, she led me into a closet, and said, "Monsieur
1' Ambassadeur, I am going to tell you one of the greatest secrets in
the world, and if it were known it would cost me my head. At the
bottom of his heart the King is a Catholic, but he is surrounded
by Protestant bishops, and nobody informs him of his situation
or speaks to him of God. I cannot with decency again enter his
room, besides the Queen is always there. The Duke of York is
busied with his affairs, and these are too important to allow him to
take that care which he ought about the conscience of the King.
Go and tell him that I have conjured you to advise him to think on
what can be done to save the King's soul: he is master of the
King's room and he can cause to withdraw whoever he pleases.
Lose no time, for if there be the least hesitation it will be too late."
I immediately returned to the Duke of York. I begged him to
pretend to go to the apartment of the Queen who had quitted the
King's room; she had just been bled because she had fainted;
the room communicates with both the apartments ; I followed him
to the Queen's and told him what the Duchess of Portsmouth had
said to me. He roused himself as it were from a profound lethargy :
"You are right," he said, "there is no time to lose. I would sooner
hazard everything than not do my duty on this occasion." He re-
turned to me an hour after, under pretence of again visiting the
H
226 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
Queen, and told me he had spoken to the King his brother and that
he had found him determined not to receive the sacrament to
which the Protestant bishops were pressing him; that this had
very much surprised them; but that some of them would always
remain in the King's room, unless he found a pretext to cause
everybody to retire in order that he might speak to the King his
brother with more freedom and induce him to make a formal ab-
juration of heresy and to confess himself to a Catholic priest.
We discussed various expedients: the Duke of York proposed
that I should ask to speak with the King his brother, as if to com-
municate something in secret to him from Your Majesty, and that
everybody should be ordered to withdraw. This I offered to do,
but I represented to him that, besides the noise such a proceeding
would make, there was no colourable pretext to justify my re-
maining in private with the King of England and him alone so long
a time as was required for the accomplishment of what we had to do.
The Duke next thought of bringing the Queen, as if to take a last
farewell of the King and to beg his forgiveness if she had dis-
obeyed him in anything, and that he should perform the same
ceremony. At last the Duke of York determined to speak to his
brother before all that were present, but in such a way that no one
should understand what he said, because this would remove all
suspicion and it would be imagined that he was only consulting
him about State affairs and what he wished should be done after
his death; therefore, without any more precaution, the Duke,
after having forbidden anyone to come nigh, stooped down to his
brother's ear; I was in the room, and more than twenty persons
at the door which was open; what the Duke said was not heard,
but the King said aloud from time to time, "Yes, with all my heart."
He made the Duke sometimes repeat his words because he did not
hear very well ; this lasted about a quarter of an hour. The Duke of
York then left the room as if to go to the Queen, and said to me,
"The King has consented to my bringing him a priest; I dare
not send any of the Duchess's, they are too well known ; send quickly
and seek one". I told him I would do it with pleasure but that I
thought too much time would be lost, and that I had just seen all the
Queen's priests in a closet near to her chamber. He replied, "You
are right". He perceived at the same time the Count of Castel-
melhor, who warmly embraced the proposition I made him and
took upon him to speak to the Queen. He returned in an instant
and said "Though I were to endanger my head in this business I
would do it with pleasure, but I know none of the Queen's priests
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 227
who understands and speaks English". Upon this we resolved
to send in search of an English priest to the Venetian Resident's,
but as the time admitted no delay the Count of Castelmelhor went
to the room where the Queen's priests were and found among them
a Scotch priest named Huddlestone, the man who saved the
King after the battle of Worcester and who had been excepted by
Act of Parliament in all the laws enacted against the Roman
Catholics and the priests. They gave him a wig and cassock to
disguise him and led him to the door of an apartment which
communicated by a small flight of steps with that of the King.
The Duke of York whom I had informed that all was ready sent
Chiffinch 1 to receive and conduct Mr. Huddlestone; he said next
aloud, "Gentlemen, it is the King's wish that everybody should
retire except the Earls of Bath and Feversham": the former is
First Lord of the Bedchamber and the latter was this week in
waiting. The physicians withdrew into a closet the door of which
was shut when Chiffinch brought in Mr. Huddlestone. In present-
ing him the Duke of York said, "Sire, here is a man who saved
your life and who comes at this moment to save your soul". The
King replied, "He is welcome". He then confessed himself with
sentiments of great piety and repentance. The Count of Castel-
melhor had taken care to have Huddlestone instructed by a
Portuguese bare-footed Carmelite what he was to say to the King
on such an occasion, for of himself he was a man of no great
acquirements. But the Duke of York told me he acquitted himself
very well and made the King formally promise, in case of his
recovering, to declare himself openly to be a Catholic. The King
next received absolution, the Communion and even the extreme
unction. All this lasted about three-quarters of an hour. The
persons in the ante-chamber looked at one another, but nothing
was expressed except in looks or whispers. The presence of the
Earls of Bath and Feversham, who are Protestants, has somewhat
removed the apprehensions of the bishops, but nevertheless the
Queen's women and the other priests saw so much coming and
going that I do not imagine the secret will be long kept.
After the King had received the Sacrament he had a slight
respite of his illness. It is certain that he spoke more intelligibly
and had more strength; we had already begun to hope that God
was willing to work a miracle in curing him, but it was the opinion
of the physicians that his malady was not diminished and that
1 William Chiffinch had succeeded his father Thomas Chiffinch in 1666
i closet-keeper to Charles II.
228 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
he could not survive the night. However he appeared much easier
and talked with more feeling and understanding than he had yet
done from six o'clock in the evening till eight o'clock next morning.
He spoke several times aloud to the Duke of York in terms full of
affection and friendship, he twice recommended to him the
Duchess of Portsmouth and the Duke of Richmond, as also all his
other children. He made no mention of the Duke of Monmouth,
neither good nor bad; he often testified his confidence in God's
mercy. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, who was his private
chaplain, said some prayers and spoke to him of God; the King
moved his head to show he heard him. The Bishop was not over-
officious in telling him anything particularly nor in proposing to
him to make a confession of his faith: he was apprehensive of a
refusal, and feared still more, as I think, to irritate the Duke of York.
The King retained his senses throughout the whole of the night
and talked of several things with great calmness ; at six o'clock he
asked what hour it was and said, "Open the curtains, that I may
once more see the day". He suffered great pain, and at seven
o'clock was bled under an idea that it would alleviate his sufferings ;
at half-past eight he spoke with great difficulty, about ten was
senseless, and calmly expired at noon without any convulsions.
The new King retired to his chamber, was unanimously acknow-
ledged and afterwards proclaimed.
I have thought it my duty to send Your Majesty an exact account
of what passed on this occasion, and I esteem myself very happy that
God has bestowed upon me the favour of having a part therein.
Barrillon's account contains almost all that it is necessary to know
of Charles's last twenty-four hours except perhaps the two well-
known remarks: "Gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying", 1
and "Don't let poor Nelly starve" (poor Nelly died two years later, leaving
a large fortune to her son, the Duke of St. Albans some people said
a million pounds!). Of James's part there is little more to be said:
all authorities agree that he was very assiduous at the bedside and that
Mary Beatrice was also constantly present. Ten years or so later Mary
Beatrice told the story in James's presence to the nuns of Chaillot, and
James wrote another account for their benefit. In neither of these
accounts, nor in the account in James's memoirs, is there mention of
the part taken by the Duchess of Portsmouth and by Barrillon in the
deathbed conversion of Charles, and in all three of them James is given
1 I am unaware whether or no there is good authority for this oft-quoted
saying.
CHARLES'S LAST YEARS 229
credit for a spontaneous impulse (assisted perhaps by hints from the
Queen and Mary Beatrice) to have a care for Charles's spiritual necessi-
ties. It is not conceivable that Barrillon invented this part of his
account, but it is not necessary to assume that James was consciously
lying: he was in such a state of strain after three days' watching that
Barrillon's intervention may have left no impression on his mind.
Nor from Barrillon's narrative does it appear that James was ever aware
that the original motion came from tie Duchess of Portsmouth he
would in any case have had a delicacy in giving before the nuns such
credit to his brother's mistress. These two accounts, however, fill
one gap left by Barrillon: the whispered conversation between James
and Charles which Barrillon failed to overhear was on the subject of the
risk that James would incur by assisting at his brother's conversion,
Charles very anxious that the risk should be avoided if possible, James
insisting that any risk was negligible when Charles's salvation was
in the balance.
It would be easy to exaggerate James's preoccupation at the death-
bed with his own concerns and with the precautions to be taken to secure
his own peaceful accession. In spite of Shaftesbury's insinuation that
James had for thirty years been looking for an opportunity to supplant
his brother on the throne, there can be no doubt in the mind of anyone
who has studied the evidence that he had a genuine affection for Charles,
and, in addition, that his royalism was of so extreme a type that it cannot
be conceived that he ever allowed a desire for Charles's death to enter
his mind. On these grounds alone, and without noticing the entire
absence of positive evidence on the other side, the Whig libel (or
unjustifiable suspicion) that James poisoned his brother may be
brushed aside. The psychology of succession presents an array of normal
cases : a son unaffectedly grieved at his father's death and at the same
time not a little pleased at coming into his father's estate. There can be
no doubt that James was immensely gratified at being King if for no
other reason than that of finding himself in a position to strike a blow
at heresy and schism but it does not follow that he did not keenly
regret tie fatality which had given him the Crown. James might
in all sincerity have given to the dying Charles (with the alteration of a
single word) the farewell address that Prince Hal gave to his father
Thy due from me
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love and filial tenderness
Shall, O dear father ! pay thee plenteously ;
My due from thee is this imperial crown,
Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,
Derives itself to me.
230 JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
To James's mind his brother's reign had on the whole been a complete
success. The Test Act and the Habeas 'Corpus Act had it is true found
their place in the Statute Book, but Charles had by resolute action
triumphed in the end and now there would be no looking back. We in
our day are accustomed to the "swing of the political pendulum" (a
pendulum so oddly constructed that the movements to the left are
consistently of greater range than the intervening movements to the
right) ; James without our experience was unaware of this phenomenon
and had no apprehension that the next swing would be the most violent
in our history and would sweep him from his throne. He entered upon
his reign under the fixed delusion that there would be no longer any
restriction to arbitrary arrest and no more judges who would refuse to
pronounce judgements which were in effect royal decrees.
In every generation in modern England there has been either an
individual or a group of prominent politicians who have refused to
believe that the advance of constitutional liberty in their own day has
served the highest interests of the country and have nursed the illusion
that a recovery can be made of the ground lost in recent years by con-
servative forces. When the group has thrown up no acknowledged
leader it has been known as "the Old Guard", "the Last Ditchers"
or "the Die-hards" ; if there was an acknowledged leader he was to his
contemporaries "the Last of the Tories". Names which spring to the
mind in the nineteenth century are Lord Eldon, Lord George Bentinck
and Henry Chaplin; in the eighteenth century there was Lord Boling-
broke, but he lacked three important qualifications: he was insuf-
ficiently sincere, he had too much imagination, and he was without
following; in the present century there have been many claimants to
the title. But of all claimants in all generations no one has a better title
than James, Duke of York; in none of his letters and in none of his
reported words can there be found a hint of a liberal idea, in the Exclu-
sion debates no one was found to support his extreme view of the rights
of the Crown, he steadily maintained that any concession to parlia-
mentary demands would reduce the King to the position of a "Duke of
Venice", and when he left England in 1688 he was, except for the
insignificant men who accompanied him, entirely alone in holding those
views. He had no predecessor, but a number of successors; we must
remember always that he specifically and wisely declined to attempt to
form a party, but with that reservation we can accord him the unique
honour of being the first of "the Last of the Tories".
PART II
KING JAMES II
The two brothers, Charles and yames, became . . . infected with popery in such de-
grees as their different characters admitted of. Charles had parts and his good under-
standing served as an antidote to repel the poison. James, the simplest man of his
time, drank the whole chalice. The poison met in his composition with all the fear,
all the credulity, and all the obstinacy of temper proper to increase its virulence and
to strengthen its effect; . . . drunk with superstitious and even enthusiastic zeal, \he\
ran headlong into his own ruin while he endeavoured to precipitate ours. His parlia-
ment and his people did all they could to save themselves by winning him. But all
was in vain: he had no principles on which they could take hold. Even his good
qualities worked against them, and his love for his country went halves with his
bigotry. Bolingbroke.
The most dangerous use which supreme authority can make of law and public
institution is to attempt to make them express consequences contrary to their natural
end. To the scandal to public conscience thus despised is joined the tacit admission of
the artifice which is the refuge of weakness. People respect force, even when used
unjustly, if it is displayed with courage, but they have the sense to give it its true
value when it is only borrowed. They despise it and it falls. Mazure.
[Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery
KING JAMES II
(Studio of John Riley)
CHAPTER I
THE ACCESSION
JAMES II ascended the English throne better equipped by experience for
the task of kingship than any other English monarch. For nearly the
whole of his brother's long reign he had been the most prominent sub-
ject, and though it is easy to over-estimate the influence which he exerted
on policy, he had been, except on rare occasions, in the King's most inti-
mate counsels. It is true that he had spent nearly two years in exile, but
during the greater part of that time he had resided in Scotland, in effect
though not in name Charles's deputy, so that he should have gained an
intimate knowledge of the affairs of that kingdom ; while his six months'
residence at Brussels should have enabled him to correct, by acquaint-
ance with the Spanish point of view, his prepossessions in favour of
France. Charles, partly by natural indolence, partly by an intuitive
knowledge of possibilities, had avoided direct conflict with Parliament
on the constitutional question; he was content with the reality of power
and he was not anxious to have that power exactly defined. James had no
conception of a monarchy which was not absolute ; from a principle of
loyalty, which we must believe to have been perfect and without flaw, he
had obeyed his brother implicitly in everything (except his personal re-
ligion), but he had not approved of his temporising policy; he had re-
peatedly urged him to assert his authority, even at the risk of civil war,
but when Charles had refused to take his advice, James had loyally
preserved silence.
James's mind resembled in many ways that of his father: he desired,
not only that the power of the King should be real, but that it should be
manifestly real ; while, however, the father sought power for its own sake,
the son, in addition, valued power as a means to the accomplishment of
the passionately desired object of his life : the conversion of England to
the Roman Church. As long as his brother was alive James had no hope
of making progress in this ulterior object, and in the ten years between the
popular realisation of his conversion and his return from Scotland in the
spring of 1682 he was fully occupied in defending himself against attacks
of various kinds ; but his endeavours to extend the power of the Crown
were unremitting, and he regarded the Tory reaction which followed the
dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681 as a final triumph for
the monarchy. This misconception is but one of many examples of his
incompetence in political judgement and his inability to gain knowledge
from experience; his political and religious obsessions blinded him to the
234 KING JAMES II
dangers which he had to avoid; he was firmly convinced that Charles's
victory at Oxford might have been achieved many years earlier, and
that if necessity arose it could be repeated at any time and in any
circumstances.
There can be little doubt that at the time of his accession James was
suffering from premature mental decline, a decline which had set in
some four years earlier when he was in Scotland. He had never been
given credit for superior mental equipment, but he would probably
not have been noticeably inferior to his neighbours if he had lived as a
country gentleman the nickname "Squire James' ' which he acquired
at about the age of forty reflects the popular view of his abilities but he
had declined even from that low standard. In February 1685 ^ e wa
little more than fifty-one years of age, and should have been at the
height of his mental powers; and it is difficult to avoid a suggestion that
in the sexual excesses of his youth he had incurred infection which had
resulted in a fairly common mental disease. 1 In recent years this disease
in many cases yields to treatment, but apparently there is no instance
known in which it has cured itself by the passage of time, leaving, as in
James's case in December 1688, the patient's mind in a condition of
extreme senility but his bodily strength unimpaired. 2 JBe the reason
what it may, the chief symptom of this disease was present in James in a
very marked degree : extreme haughtiness and arrogance, an exaggera-
tion of his kingly office which was even more than an application to his
own person of the veneration he had felt for Charles, a total absence
of misgiving, amounting to foolhardiness, in regard to the consequences
of his actions ; the Greeks would have said that he was in the grip of
ujSpis 1 , and the Scotch that he was "fey" ; of no man can it be more
confidently said that the gods made him mad before destroying him.
He did indeed control his natural impatience at the beginning of
his reign, especially in the first three months, but before he had
been on the throne a year he had lost all sense of proportion and
balance.
Barrillon, the French ambassador, and Bonrepaus, whom Louis
sent over on three occasions during the reign on diplomatic missions,
1 It was commonly held by his contemporaries that the death in infancy of so
many of James's children was due to his diseased condition. Modern medical
opinion is contrary to such a conclusion; moreover, infant mortality was
terribly high in the seventeenth century, and the proportion of survivals among
James's children, legitimate and illegitimate being taken together, was low, but
not phenomenal.
* The health and vigour which James had enjoyed before his accession
continued unbroken throughput his reign and to within a few months of his
death. He hunted up to his sixty-sixth year, and his incredulity and annoyance
when he was told he had gout are quite in character with a man who did not
know what it was to be ill.
THE ACCESSION 235
were in the same confidential relations with James as Barrillon had been
both with Charles and James in the previous reign; 1 James told his
Ministers very little about his ultimate aims, but to the French envoys
he opened his mind completely. The reports which these envoys made
to their master werfe strictly confidential and were based on a thorough
knowledge of James's character, and they had no motive for reticence
or dissimulation. 2 The quality of James which is most frequently
mentioned in their despatches is "hauteur", and they found him very
impatient of advice and criticism: "He suffers very impatiently the least
contradiction", wrote Barrillon; and at another time:
The King of England openly expresses his joy at being in a
position to exercise his authority boldly; he is very pleased at being
complimented on these displays of power,
and Bonrepaus thus sums up the King's character:
It is quite certain that this King is neither so self-controlled nor
so great a man as has been supposed. He has all the faults of the
King his father, but he has less sense and he behaves more
haughtily in public.
The Earl of Ailesbury, who suffered forty-five years of exile as a Jaco-
bite, left an almost unqualified panegyric of James's public life, but he
admits that he "had the misfortune to be snappish for the moment, and
wholly resembling his royal father". In a contemporary letter ascribed
to William Penn, but repudiated by him, we find :
Every mechanic knows the temper of his present Majesty, who
will never receive a baffle in anything that he heartily espouseth.
Finally, Roger North in his Life of Lord Guilford relates that the
Lord Keeper
knew the King's humour, that nothing he could say to him would
take place or sink with him. So strong were his prejudices and so
feeble his genius that he took none to have a right understanding
that were not in his measures, and that the counsel given him to the
contrary was for policy of party more than for friendship to him.
These last sentences are very significant: James could not understand
1 Barrillon wrote to Louis on May 28, 1685, "This jjrince treats me exactly
as he did when he was Duke of York, and he has several times told me to address
him with the same openness as previously".
2 It is, however, very important to employ great caution in accepting the
dicta of both ambassadors, and especially those of Barrillon, on any matter
outside the verge of the Court. They both show great ignorance of the English
character and of the political forces which were working beneath the surface.
236 KING JAMES II
that unpalatable counsels might be given him in good faith by Ministers
who were entirely in his interests, and that to advise moderation was
not necessarily to betray Whiggish tendencies; "he accounted every
body disloyal that disputed or demurred at any of his commands".
He told Guilford and Halifax on one occasion that their advice was not
wanted, and that their duty as Ministers was not to turn him from his
fixed purpose, but to find legal justification for his actions. In these
circumstances it is not surprising that James was unable to command the
services of the best and ablest men in his kingdom. His most strenuous
defenders admit that he was a poor judge of men ; he supplemented
this constitutional disability by refusing to employ in the highest offices
of State anyone who did not at least pretend wholeheartedly to support
his policy a policy the success of which no one of sagacity could
desire or expect. In the result he retained in his service two able but
unscrupulous men, Sunderland and Jeffreys, together with the three
Catholic lords who had been acquitted of complicity in the Popish Plot,
Lord Arundell of Wardour, Lord Belasyse and the Marquis of Powis,
men of good character, but all three well past the ordinary age of retire-
ment Lord Arundell was nearly eighty in 1685 and among them
only Belasyse had more than moderate ability, and he was an invalid
and an unwilling co-operator in James's schemes.
It was notorious at the time that James was increasingly throughout
his reign under the influence of zealous and sanguine priests of his
Church, who were wholly lacking in political common sense, and the
statement that a priest-ridden king is an unsuccessful king is one that
needs no reinforcement from anti-religious prejudice. Another in-
fluence hardly less disastrous was that of his cousin, King Louis XIV
of France. For him he had the warmest admiration, and, had he been
able to remould England nearer to his heart's desire, he would have
achieved a polity on the French model and have been in England in all
things what Louis was in France: James never said, "L'etat c'est moi",
but it was his aim to be able to say it. In more personal matters he made
Louis his pattern. It is difficult to believe, indeed, that he ever thought
of rivalling the magnificence of the French Court, for parsimony and
splendour cannot cohabit: Bonrepaus, with less than perfect diplomatic
tact, on one occasion informed him that "there were more candles
burning in a single antechamber at Versailles than there were in the
whole of Whitehall", and on another that Louis had "for his personal
use, his coaches and other conveyances, more than a thousand horses
in his stables". But James no doubt had the French Court in mind
when he reformed in his own Court the easy-going manners of his
brother's time. A typical innovation was in the etiquette of the reception
of foreign envoys: the Tuscan ambassador reported:
THE ACCESSION 237
His Majesty receives all the foreign representatives who come to
compliment him on his accession seated, with his hat on and in a
special room; not, like the late King, standing in his own bed-
chamber and with his hat in his hand.
This procedure was copied from Louis's behaviour to Lord Churchill
when he went to Versailles to announce James's accession; Barrillon's
comment is that the King's intention is "to observe every formality
and to preserve exactly all the externals of the royal dignity", and he
himself, though he retained his confidential relations with the English
King and could in practice choose his own time for an informal con-
versation, received an official order to request an audience whenever he
had business with the King.
James's determination to have a large standing army in April 1685
he told Barrillon that he was determined to raise it to 20,000 men or
more was mainly political, and the fear that it was to be used to support
arbitrary power was justified, but there can be no doubt that James
regarded the possession of a well-equipped army, quite apart from its
practical use, as an addition to his royal splendour; his frequent attend-
ances at reviews, at first in Hyde Park and later at Hounslow, show a
liking for military display for its own sake. In August 1685 he wrote to
William:
On Saturday last I saw some of my troops at Hounslow, they con-
sisted of ten battalions of foot of which three were of the guards and
the other seven new-raised regiments; of horse there were twenty
squadrons, one of grenadiers on horseback and one of dragoons ; and
really the new troops were in very good order and the horse well
mounted. I was glad that the Mareschal d'Humtires saw them for
severed reasons.
In one respect James observed decorum with more strictness than did
his model, Louis, for he had no public mistress. Indeed, within a few
days of his accession he announced his intention of severing his relations
with Catherine Sedley, his mistress of several years' standing ; he ordered
her to vacate her apartments at Whitehall, offered her an additional pen-
sion if she went abroad and vowed he would see her no more. But she
went no farther than St. James's Square, and after a short time her con-
nection with the King was resumed. In other ways also he reformed the
manners of the Court: he declared himself emphatically against duelling
and drunkenness and, what is even more important, he put a stop to the
waste on expensive pleasures of the money of which his brother had been
in such need. James has no claim to financial talent, but he was by nature
parsimonious, and he had one virtue which was not until recent times
common in royal princes, financial morality : he exerted himself through-
238 KING JAMES II
out his reign to pay off Charles's debts and to keep his own expenditure
within the limits of his income.
It is not possible to impute to James any fault in his intention, not
only to remove the disabilities under which the Catholics suffered and
to throw open to them all posts in the public services, but to make
England, Scotland and Ireland Catholic kingdoms. As a convinced
Catholic not only was it excusable to entertain such aspirations, but it
was his clear duty to do all in his power to realise them. In this regard
James's faults were of the head and not of the heart: the methods he
employed brought him in effect no nearer to a permanent improvement
in the position of the Catholic religon in England, but by increasing
the fears, and consequently the antagonism, of the Protestants, he
rendered a reaction certain: and this consummation was anticipated by
almost every Catholic in the country except the Jesuit priests at the
Court. 1 Whether a wise, and above all a patient, Catholic king could
in James's circumstances have done anything for his religion is very
doubtful, so deep was the national prejudice; but it is possible that, by
building up for himself a reputation for justice and moderation and by
removing all suspicion that he had ulterior aims, he might in a period
of years have persuaded Parliament to repeal the more sanguinary of the
penal laws, and even to permit the celebration of Catholic rites in private
chapels by a few licensed priests. But James was neither wise not patient :
he was incapable of taking a detached view of his situation and of
formulating in his own mind the most fitting course of conduct for the
Catholic head of a Protestant State; at his accession he saw clearly the
difficulties he would have to contend with, but as soon as he saw how
easy it was to make the penal laws and Test Act a nullity in particular
cases, he became "an old man in a hurry" ; he set no bounds of dis-
cretion to his actions, took no account of consequences, and as a result
found himself (though he did not know it) politically bankrupt long
before the expedition of William of Orange had been thought of; and he
had done more harm to the cause he had at heart than any Protestant
Ving could have done. 2
In one sense no doubt James, as was said by the Archbishop of
Rheims, "lost three kingdoms for a Mass", but such a statement is an
unwarrantable simplification: James lost his crown not because he was a
Catholic, but because he took unwise measures for the benefit of his
religion and because he gave ample ground for suspicion that he was
1 It was James's "unfortunate destiny" (as Dickens said of Buffer) "to
damage a cause by espousing it".
2 Voltaire alleges that it was a joke among the Cardinals at Rome that James
ought to have been excommunicated for losing for Catholicism the slight
influence which had remained to it in England.
THE ACCCESSION 239
resolved to make it the dominant, if not the only, religion in his kingdoms.
Further, James was regarded by the Catholic Jacobites as a Martyr to the
Faith, as one who, as it were, by definite choice abandoned an earthly
for a heavenly crown. But the facts furnish no support to such a thesis :
up to the time when his earthly crown was irretrievably lost James had
no doubt that he could keep the one and attain the other in fact he
persistently identified his authority as king with the cause of religion
and it was not until, by the Peace of Ryswick, his hopes of regaining the
crown of the three kingdoms were finally dashed, that he devoted
himself unreservedly to the salvation of his soul.
No discussion of James's character as king would be complete with-
out some mention of his conception of loyalty. Like the sentry in
lolanthe, he thought that everyone was born into this world with an
immutable political character; they were either loyal or disloyal at birth,
and so they continued through life: that a man whom he had thought
loyal turned against him was to James merely a proof that his loyalty
had been only a pretence; he could not understand that loyalty, even
when it is a plant of robust growth, cannot survive more than a certain
degree of rough treatment. It is very remarkable that James, who was so
careful about money, should have been so lavish in squandering his
friends. In so doing he added enormously to the number of his personal
enemies and left himself without support in the time of crisis : but he
might have survived as king had he not also squandered the loyalty of
the most powerful institution in the kingdom, the Church of England.
There is a parlour game with affinities to experimental psychology in
which a person is given a word and required to produce another word
associated with it; if James had played that game, and the clue given to
him at any time before July 1688 had been "Church of England", he
would without hesitation have replied "loyalty". It may be broadly
said that never did he mention the Church without either praising it for
its loyalty or upbraiding it for not living up to its own principles of
loyalty. It was his failure to realise that there may be a conflict of loyalties,
and that the men of the Church of England might cease to be loyal to
their King when, as they thought, he was directly attacking their Church,
that in the main cost him his throne.
Immediately after the death of Charles, the Privy Councillors who
happened to be in London assembled in the Council Chamber in order
to agree upon the form of proclamation of the new King and the
ceremonial to be observed in that connection. They had nearly com-
pleted this work when James came into the chamber, and after making
some fitting and no doubt sincere remarks on the loss which he, both as a
240 KING JAMES II
brother and in common with the rest of the kingdom, had just sustained,
he was moved to make the following speech:
MY LORDS,
Before I enter upon any other business I think fit to say some-
thing to you since it hath pleased Almighty God to place me in
this station and I am now to succeed so good and gracious a King
as well as so very kind a brother I think fit to declare to you that I
will endeavour to follow his example and most especially in that
of his great clemency and tenderness to his people. I have been
reported to be a man for arbitrary power but that is not the only
story that has been made of me: and I shall make it my endeavour
to preserve this government in Church and State as it is now by law
established. I know the principles of the Church of England are
for monarchy and the members of it have shewed themselves good
and loyal subjects, therefore I shall always take care to defend and
support it. I know too that the laws of England are sufficient to
make the King as great a monarch as I can wish, and as I shall
never depart from the just rights and prerogative of the Crown, so
I shall never invade any man's property. I have often heretofore
ventured my life in defence of the nation and I shall still go as far
as any man in preserving it in all its just rights and liberties, 1
Vague and non-committal as these words appear on a sober reading,
the Councillors were surprised and delighted at their tone; a cynic
might have detected an implied threat in the terms on which the King
regarded himself as bound to support the Church of England, but it is
most improbable that James had anything of the sort in mind; he had
had very little sleep since Charles's first seizure, and he would have been
wiser to have postponed his declaration until he was in a condition to
weigh his words. However, if he spoke on impulse, it was on a very
good impulse, and it may well be that if he had given himself time to
consider he might have produced a declaration more exactly in accord-
ance with his real intentions, and less calculated to remove apprehensions.
What actually happened was that the Councillors prevailed on him
then and there to authorise the publication of his speech, which among
them they were able to reproduce in the words he had employed, and
thus to silence those whose interest it was to show that there was
danger to religion and law, and to give James and his Ministers a
breathing space in which to prepare their plans. These promises for the
^ 1 According to the Brandenburg resident, James also said that "as regarded
his private opinions no one should ever perceive that he had any", but he
struck these words out of the draft.
THE ACCESSION 241
preservation of the Protestant religion gave very great satisfaction and
were "preached in every pulpit' 5 . After the matter of publication of the
speech had been settled the Councillors present were sworn members
of the new Privy Council and a proclamation was authorised retaining
in office all public servants "until His Majesty's further directions".
The same afternoon the ceremony of the proclamation of the new
Bang was performed at Whitehall, at Temple Bar and at the Royal
Exchange, and subsequently in other parts of London and throughout
England, Scotland and Ireland. Burnet remarks on the occasion:
It was a heavy solemnity: few tears were shed for the former,
nor were there any shouts of joy for the present king. A dead
silence, but without any disorder or tumult, followed it through
the streets.
But Burnet was not in England, and in this instance he was un-
fortunate in his sources of information; for there is ample evidence that
the proclamation was received with applause throughout the three
kingdoms. Thus the Modenese envoy wrote to his master that the
announcement of Charles's death was received with fitting grief and
the proclamation of James "with universal applause and shouts and
demonstrations of joy greater than could have been hoped for"; Bar-
rillon says that in London "the people made the acclamations usual
on such an occasion"; Evelyn was present at the proclamation at
Bromley, and he refers to the "many shouts of the people" ; the Mayor
and Corporation of Newcastle informed Sunderland that "the two
proclamations [the death of Charles and the accession] were proclaimed
in our usual solempnityes with all the demonstrations and expressions
of joy and thankfulness and all matters here are in great peace and quiet
and nothing but gladness in every man's countenance"; at Lincoln,
"after His Majesty was acclaimed as aforesaid, the Mayor, Aldermen,
etc., went to the Guildhall, where a banqueting was provided at the
City's charge, and then they went to some bonfires and drank the Bong's,
Queen's, and royal family's healths, and the night concluded with
bonfires, drums beating, ringing of bells, etc."; at Reading also "the
proclamation was attended by the clergy and abundance of gentry and
the inhabitants, with great acclamations, the bells ringing, drums
beating and trumpets sounding"; Ormonde wrote that the King was
proclaimed with great joy in Dublin, and all other parts of Ireland of
which he had. heard; and the high sheriff of Northumberland assured
the Minister that "there is no county in England would proclaim him
with more acclamation of joy nor express more entire resolution to serve
him with their lives and fortunes".
242 KING JAMES II
The most elaborate account comes from Oxford, where the conduit
at Carfax ran claret, and there were great shouts and acclamations
when the mace-bearer of the city read the proclamation. At night there
were bonfires before all the colleges; at Merton "two barrels of beer
were drunk at the bonfire by the junior scholars and several of the parish
boys and neighbours and servants of the house. The gravest and
greatest seniors of the house were mellow that night as at other colleges."
But perhaps most striking is the reluctant testimony of two zealous
Whigs, James Welwood and Edmund Calamy, the famous dissenting
minister. Welwood says :
All the former heats and animosities against him and even the
very memory of a bill of Exclusion seemed to be now quite forgot
amidst the loud acclamations at his accession to the Crown,
and Calamy as an eye-witness :
Never did I see so universal a concern as was visible in all men's
countenances at that time. I was present upon the spot at the pro-
claiming Bong James II at the upper end of Wood Street in Cheap-
side and my heart ached within me at the acclamations made upon
that occasion, which, as far as I could observe, was very general.
It is not difficult to organise demonstrations of joy, and some of those
mentioned may have been of an artificial character ; in London, however,
the time was too short to allow of preparations, though no doubt the
liquor which was freely distributed in the streets for the purpose of
drinking the King's health was (as three years later when the Prince of
Wales was born) provided out of public funds. But the entire absence
of disturbance in any part of the three kingdoms is very remarkable
and was not anticipated by those who were in the best position to form
a judgement James himself a few days later spoke of the time of
Charles's death as critical, "a time when King Louis did not know
whether or no there would be a rising in London and the Kong would
be driven out". Rochester wrote to Ormonde on February 10, "Every-
thing is calm and quiet to a wonder"; the Tuscan envoy informed the
Grand Duke that James had taken peaceful possession of the Crown to
the extreme astonishment of the disaffected ; that they are living in such
fear that they are hiding their goods and thinking how best to secure their
persons ; and that there appears to be great restraint in political discussion.
The French ambassador wrote that James had been proclaimed in
York and in all the towns of England, in Edinburgh and in Dublin, and
that there was no disturbance anywhere, even in such ill-disposed
towns as Bristol and Chester; Ormonde wrote from Ireland that he had
THE ACCESSION 243
been apprehensive of "endeavour to raise disturbance", but that he had
little doubt that things would continue in the calm in which they were;
and he was later able to say that he had been correct in his judgement.
Sunderland, as principal Secretary of State, had taken elaborate
precautions against disturbance. Peter Shakerley, the Governor of
Chester, wrote on February 7, before he had heard of Charles's death,
that he had taken the precautions Sunderland had instructed him to take
for example, he had stopped all arrivals and departures of shipping
at the port and had arrested all suspected persons; there are letters
from Bristol, Deal, Harwich and Newcastle that all passengers on in-
coming and outgoing ships had been searched and questioned, and it
may safely be surmised that similar steps had been taken at the Secre-
tary's instance at all the ports; in London and York troops were held in
readiness to suppress disorder during and after the proclamation. But
in the event there was no attempt at disturbance and no necessity for all
this activity; there were many thousands of people in England who
looked on James's accession as a national disaster, but they were isolated
in small groups and without organisation. Four years earlier Sir William
Jones in the House of Commons had said without fear of contradiction:
I take it for granted that it is impossible that a Papist should
come to the possession and quiet enjoyment of this Crown without
wading through a sea of blood;
and in the same debate Laurence Hyde, the ablest of James's advocates
and the one most in his confidence, had admitted that James could not
hope to succeed without strict limitations on his prerogative. Perhaps
at no time in the history of England, except at the Restoration, has there
been so sudden and unexpected a victory in so short a time of one school
of political thought over another.
The most urgent business of the Government was the disposal of the
body of Charles, and the new Privy Council on February 6, after making
arrangements for the proclamation, appointed a Committee to consider
this matter and to meet at six o'clock the same evening. The funeral
took place on February 14, and there is an extraordinary divergence of
authority on the degree of pomp attending it. Oldmixon quotes the
Bishop of Salisbury Seth Ward who was probably present (though
advancing to senile decay) as saying :
He did not even lie in state, no mournings were given and
the expense of it was not equal to what an ordinary nobleman's
244 KING JAMES n
funeral will rise to. Many upon this said that he deserved better
from his brother than thus to be ungratefully treated ;
and Evelyn says that Charles was "very obscurely buried under Henry
VIFs chapel at Westminster, without any manner of pomp and soon
forgotten after all this vanity'*. But the body lay in state in the Painted
Chamber for several days, and there is ample evidence that the pro-
cession from the Painted Chamber to the Abbey lacked nothing in
dignity. Luttrell says :
The body was carried under a velvet canopy attended by the
servants of the nobility, their royal highnesses, their present
Majesties, &c. . . . The Prince of Denmark was chief mourner,
the supporters to him were the Dukes of Somerset and Beaufort;
the assistants to the chief mourner were sixteen Earls . . .
And in the Public Record Office there is a draft of "The proceeding
to the private interment of the Most High . . . Most Excellent and
Most Mighty Monarch Charles the Second", which, from the erasures
and interlineations, had evidently been the subject of detailed discussion
by the Committee; this document corroborates LuttrelTs account and
adds the interesting details that the bishops took their place in the
procession as peers and that the Archbishop of Canterbury walked with
Norroy, King of Arms, immediately in front of the coffin. But the
actual interment was private, and for the very good reason that James
and very few others knew Charles had died a Catholic and that it was
not expedient that this fact should be known before the country had
settled down after the accession; it is probable also that James was
anxious not to be under necessity to be present at a Protestant rite.
The coffin was received at the door of the Abbey by the Dean and
prebendaries of Westminster, and after the burial service the officers
of the household (who were probably the only persons present in addition
to the officiating clergy) broke their staves of office over the grave
according to custom.
In the meantime the Council were compelled to consider a very
urgent financial question. By a curious oversight, or possibly by
design, the two chief contributions to the public revenue, the Customs
and the Excise, 1 had been granted to King Charles for life and without
continuance for a specified number of months to his successor. When
Charles died the Commissioners of Customs were in a quandary:
legally the parliamentary grant had lapsed and no duties could be
1 That is to say, that part of the Excise which was not hereditary.
THE ACCESSION 245
levied, but if the law were strictly observed the result would be not only
a loss of revenue, but a flooding of the market with cheap foreign
goods, to the injury of the merchants who had stocks in hand on which
duty had been paid. A little comedy was enacted between the Customs
Commissioners and the Treasury Commissioners, who were asked to
give a ruling in the matter, and who declined to allow themselves to be
drawn into a trap, and replied that the Customs Commissioners could
read the law as well as they could and that they must act on their own
responsibility. The Privy Council quite properly solved the question
by issuing a proclamation that the duties should continue to be levied.
But the wording of the proclamation was disingenuous : when Parlia-
ment is not sitting it is the duty of the Executive to provide for an
emergency such as had arisen, but they are bound to seek indemnity
from Parliament on reassembly ; the proclamation regarding the Customs
mentioned, indeed, that a Parliament was "speedily to be assembled",
but that seems to have been only to deceive the public, for the implica-
tion of the proclamation taken as a whole is that the King was entitled
to the Customs by right, Parliament or no Parliament. There was no
difference between the King's advisers as to the propriety and ex-
pediency of continuing the Customs, but Lord Keeper Guilford made the
puerile suggestion (which was over-ruled) that the duties when levied
should be hoarded pending a decision by the King in Parliament as to
the disposal of the money.
The Excise was on a different footing, for it was not collected by
Government officers, but by farmers, and a new contract for three
years for the farm of that part of the Excise terminable at the King's
death had been signed the day before Charles's death, the amount in
question being about 550,000. The judges were consulted as to the
legality of this contract, and decided by a majority that it was legal,
whereupon the Council authorised the continuance of the collection
of the Excise. Sir Thomas Jones, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,
and Justices Levinz, Montagu and Atkins dissented from the judge-
ment of their brethren, and there was a rumour that they would all be
dismissed for the public accepted the doctrine that judges must not
pronounce judgements unpalatable to the King. No such action was
taken at this time, but they were all, except Atkins, dismissed in the
following year. By the time the farm of the Excise should have been
renewed on February 5, 1688, James had provided his subjects with so
many other grievances that the necessity of this step was overlooked.
In one very important matter James lost no time. He had for nine
years been a Papist recusant that is to say, he had refrained from
246 KING JAMES II
attendance at the services of the Church of England and for thirteen
years it had been known that he had absented himself from public
celebrations of the Sacrament. Suspicions which had arisen long before
the Restoration had by the time of the Popish Plot grown into a certainty
in the public mind that James was a Catholic, and it was only in deference
to Charles's wishes that he had refrained from an open declaration of
adherence to the old faith. Now that he was a free agent he determined,
no doubt with the full approbation of Queen Mary, to make an end of all
concealment. Two days after his accession he attended Mass publicly
in the chapel of St. James's Palace, where the Queen had worshipped,
and he with her, for a dozen years. This was the first public evidence of
his change of religion. 1 The following Sunday he had service at White-
hall. He did not invade the Chapel Royal there Dr. Tenison preached
to the Household but he opened an oratory attached to his own
lodgings as Duke of York, which Charles had closed for fear of scandal,
and this oratory became for all practical purposes the Chapel Royal.
It can have been of no great size, but no expense was spared to make the
services magnificent, and six months later Barrillon told Louis that they
were like those for a cathedral, and that the Protestants observed them
through the open door with respect and reverence. In the following
year James demolished the Privy Gallery near the Banqueting House
at Whitehall and built on its site a range of buildings, including apart-
ments for the Queen, lodgings and offices for public servants and a
magnificent chapel. Wren was the architect, and Grinling Gibbons,
Verrio, German and other artists contributed to the embellishment of
the chapel. It was opened on Christmas Day 1686; at the Revolution
it was dismantled, and it disappeared in the fire which destroyed White-
hall in 1698. All that remains of James's single considerable venture
in building are the organ-case, which went to St. James's, Piccadilly, 2
and some panels of the altar at the church of Burnham, Somerset.
The annual charges of the services amounted to over 2000 and in-
cluded the salaries and wages of twenty-two persons.
Louis thoroughly approved of James's conduct in appearing openly
at Mass; he said it was not fitting that a great king should dissimulate
in so important a matter, and thought this step was more likely to
inspire respect and fear in his subjects than to play into the hands of the
malcontents: King James's Ministers advised him to temporise until
he was more firmly seated on the thone. James himself in a conversation
1 It is only fair to James to state that on two occasions he had determined
to make a declaration of his adherence to the Church of Rome, but had been
restrained by Charles.
a By a very happy accident this valuable organ escaped damage when the
church was destroyed by a bomb.
THE ACCESSION 247
with Barrillon gave grounds for his action which will commend them-
selves to every impartial reader: he contended
that everyone should act according to his own temperament;
that dissimulation in religion was opposed to his way of life;
that if he had shown fear the people ill-disposed to him would
have had him at a disadvantage; that though he took some risk in
his action his conscience obliged him to make open confession of
his religion; . . . that he hoped God would protect him and that
since Louis supported him and bore so sincere a friendship to him
he had nothing to fear.
In the event James and Louis were proved to be right and James's
Ministers wrong. There was a great deal of talk, and the dissenters
murmured that James should have worshipped in private, as they were
compelled to do ; Evelyn, who was in some ways a Victorian born out
of his time and who minded abuses little if they were wrapped up in
decent parcels, was horrified; the London mob was very angry, and
agitators tried to make them believe that the public exercise of the King's
religion was a first step to the establishment of Catholicism, the pro-
scription of Protestantism and a revival of the Marian persecutions.
But men of sense were unmoved : they could not see how the King could
be denied the full performance of the rites of his religion; and, indeed,
it was inconsistent that the people who had so enthusiastically acclaimed
the accession of a Catholic King should make any sort of objection
to his appearing openly as a Catholic. After a very few weeks, when the
novelty of the sight had worn off, opposition was silenced.
As Easter drew near a fresh problem arose. Hitherto James had had
an informal escort of such members of his household as had no strong
prejudices and were even in some cases willing to join in part of the wor-
ship in order to please the King. But he decided that the celebration
on Easter Day must be accompanied by the pomp and ceremony of a full
procession to and from the chapel not only of the officers of the House-
hold, but also of the chief Ministers of State. Rochester, who as Lord
Treasurer held the highest office, was in a quandary: apart from his
religious convictions (which were undoubtedly sincere), he was anxous
not to lose his position as head of the Church party; at the same time
he could not afford to displease the King. He told James that he would
not attend unless he was formally ordered to do so. James behaved
very well in the matter, and told him that he respected his scruples and
that he might spend Easter at his country house. Rochester's was
apparently the only defection, for all the other great lords took then-
places in the procession. In the following year not only Rochester but
248 KING JAMES II
also Sunderland and Jeffreys were out of London during Easter;
so that it appears that James was sincere in his expressions to Rochester,
and that Rochester's abstention fom the Easter procession was not a
factor in his fall from favour.
At the time of Charles's death the chief Ministers were Lord Guil-
ford, Lord Keeper; Rochester, Lord President of the Council; Halifax,
Lord Privy Seal; Sunderland, Principal Secretary of State; and Godol-
phin, First Commissioner of the Treasury. After the fall of Danby,
Rochester, Sunderland and Godolphin had shared the chief place in
Charles's counsels, but latterly Rochester had fallen from favour,
and his place had been taken by the King's mistress, the Duchess of
Portsmouth, whose close alliance with Sunderland was regarded by
James as hostile to himself. Halifax occupied a peculiar position:
Charles enjoyed his society and delighted in his cynical wit, and there
was something like personal friendship between the King and the
Minister. Halifax had been on excellent terms with Rochester, but at his
instigation Rochester had, because of certain irregularities in his ac-
counts, been removed from the Treasury, where he had been First
Commissioner, and made Lord President, and was to be sent into
honourable exile as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in succession to Or-
monde. It is evidence of Rochester's essential goodness of heart that
he bore Halifax no grudge.
The Duchess of Portsmouth by the death of Charles naturally lost
all claim to public importance. James had been very angry with her
at the time of the Second Exclusion Bill, but he had latterly been
outwardly on good terms with her. On James's accession she was in
some apprehension that he would not treat her well, an apprehension
which was confirmed when James took away from the Duke of Rich-
mond, her thirteen-year-old son by King Charles, the post of Master
of the Horse and gave it to Dartmouth, and she appealed to Louis to
intervene on his behalf. But James, as was his habit of mind, was think-
ing more of the recipient of the favour than of the loser by it, and
intended no harm to the boy. As to the Duchess, he was quite in-
different whether she remained in England or took with her to France
the wealth she had accumulated in fifteen years, but he stipulated that
before she went she should pay her debts. 1
Of the others, Rochester was the Minister most deserving of James's
favour. Not only was he the brother of James's first wife, Anne Hyde,
1 It is a curious instance of the presumption of royal mistresses that both
the Duchess of Portsmouth and Nell Gwynne attempted to decorate their
horses and coaches in mourning for Charles in a manner exclusively reserved
to the royal family.
THE ACCESSION 249
but he was by far the most influential man in the kingdom who had been
uniformly a supporter of James's interests; he had spoken strongly
against the Exclusion Bills (though he had admitted that it might be
necessary to limit by Statute the prerogative of a Catholic King), and
he had visited James twice at Edinburgh in an attempt to arrange an
accommodation between Charles and James on the question of James's
religion. When Rochester had been under a cloud at the end of the late
reign, James so clearly identified their interests that he considered that
he himself was involved in the loss of Charles's favour. Rochester cannot
have been a very pleasant man: it was generally agreed that he had a
violent temper, particularly when he had been drinking, that in that
condition he spoke indiscreetly, and that he had the common faults of a
bully of being haughty in prosperity and unduly humble in adversity.
But in those days of lax political principles he was one of the few
prominent men who pursued a consistent line of conduct ; he was a strong
royalist and an equally strong Churchman, and it was probably his
influence which kept the King within the bounds of moderation during
his first four months ; but he was much to blame for remaining in office
when his advice was no longer listened to and when the ultimate aims
of the royal policy were no longer in doubt. Within ten days of his
accession James revived the post of Lord Treasurer and gave it to
Rochester; but, though the Minister had for the time being a pre-
dominant position in the royal counsels and was in effect Foreign
Minister, he was not given a free hand in his own department, but was
subject to close supervision by the King.
Sunderland had every reason to fear that the death of Charles would
put an end to his political career. It is idle to search Sunderland's
actions for any underlying principle : on the Exclusion question he had
made one of his many miscalculations; he had not expected that James
would come to the throne and he had taken a leading position in what
he thought would be the victorious party. James had been very angry
at his desertion. But Sunderland need have been in no apprehension ;
three days after the accession Barrillon wrote to Louis (after recounting
James's favours to Rochester) :
Lord Sunderland has also a large share in the King's confidence ;
he has spoken of him to me in terms of the highest esteem, and as he
regards him as a fitting instrument to serve him in the plans which
he has in mind, His Britannic Majesty has endeavoured both before
and since the death of the late King to establish a close relation
between Lord Rochester and Lord Sunderland;
and he added that recently James had not had much success in this
250 KING JAMES II
endeavour, for Sunderland had allied himself with Godolphin and the
Duchess of Portsmouth in an endeavour to undermine Rochester.
This alliance was broken up by Charles's death and the Duchess's
relegation to obscurity, and for some months the Treasurer and the
Secretary of State worked together without friction, tljpugh Barrillon
noticed that no sooner had Sunderland recovered from his fear of dis-
missal than he began to be jealous of the predominance which his high
office gave to Rochester. Sunderland quickly gained with the King:
already in March the French ambassador formed the opinion that he was
"entirely informed of the plans of the King his master", and in July
James himself told the ambassador that he had spoken to Sunderland
on the subject of religion with less reserve than to other Ministers.
James seems always to have found discretion in conversation a very
irksome discipline, and Sunderland no doubt provided an outlet for
opinions and projects which could not yet be made public. Louis saw
in Sunderland a tool ready to his hand, and he instructed Barrillon to
exert all his influence in Sunderland's favour and even to "let it be known
that his retention in office will be very pleasing to me". Sunderland,
on his part, continued until the Revolution to be faithful to the French
alliance, though there came a titne when Louis found it wiser to pay
him for his services.
Godolphin was another exclusionist who was kept in office at James's
accession; but he lost his position at the head of the Treasury Com-
mission on Rochester's appointment as Lord Treasurer and was
mortified by having to accept the minor post of Chamberlain to the
Queen. This transfer must be accounted a success for Rochester, for
Godolphin kept up his alliance with Sunderland. Godolphin consoled
himself by indulging in a sentimental affection for his royal mistress,
and no doubt contributed, in his unobtrusive manner, to Sunderland's
success in obtaining her favour. Moreover, he was, in these first few
months, very much in the King's confidence; for with Sunderland and
Rochester he made up an inner Cabinet of three which was in almost
permanent session in James's closet, and which either together or singly
conducted the greater part of the long negotiations between James and
the French ambassador.
Henry, Earl of Clarendon, Rochester's elder brother, displaced
Halifax as Lord Privy Seal, and Halifax succeeded Rochester as Lord
President of the Council * position of dignity, but without great
influence on affairs. The second Earl of Clarendon was a man of whom
none of his contemporaries had a high opinion; he was a great friend of
the bishops and a consistent royalist and Churchman; after the Revolu-
tion he was among the very few prominent men who refused to take
THE ACCESSION 251
the oaths to William and Mary; but he was essentially a weak man, and
in the previous reign his relationship to James had secured for him no
higher advancement than that of Privy Councillor. James treated him
very badly, but nothing could lessen his spaniel-like attachment to his
master. Halifax James disliked on both personal and public grounds.
His wit and subtlety of mind, which had commended him to Charles,
were to James a bewilderment; he disagreed with James in the three
cardinal points of his policy, for he was against the French alliance,
he was against unconstitutional and unprecedented extensions of the
royal prerogative, and, if he was not too wise and too tolerant a man to
be in favour of the continuance of the proscription of the Catholics
in its extreme form, he was certainly against the repeal of the Test Act.
He had earned James's gratitude by his stupenduous oratorical effort in
the House of Lords by which he had, single-handed, procured the re-
jection of the Second Exclusion Bill; but he had followed up that effort
by proposing limitations to the powers of a Catholic king which James
had regarded as worse than exclusion. At the accession Halifax expected
immediate dismissal, but the new King received him graciously, and
told him, with truly royal courtesy, that he would remember nothing
with regard to him except his services in the Exclusion debate* But to
Barrillon James used different language; he said that the continuance in
office of Halifax and others was only a gesture of moderation, and
that he knew him and could never trust him, that he let him into
no real secrets of business, and that his post of Lord President
would serve to show him how little credit he had ;
and he added that his chief motive was to avoid frightening his opponents
into a belief that they were entirely ruined and that they could not by
moderate conduct advance in his favour.
The reconstruction of the Ministry, together with a similar discretion
in the distribution of posts in the Household, caused grave disappoint-
ment to Catholics and to others who thought they had a claim upon
James's favour. Richard Talbot and the younger Henry Jermyn
(shortly to l?e known respectively as the Earl of Tyrconnel and Lord
Dover), who had been James's close friends ever since they were young
together, were very much put out at not being made Lords of the Bed-
chamber. But James thought he saw a means to keep the loyalty of
those who were in office and to gain the loyalty of those who sought to
displace them. He told Barrillon
that those who remained in possession of their posts feared to lose
them and the others were in hopes to take their places; that all this
252 KING JAMES II
would produce a good effect when Parliament met ; and that there
would be time to make changes when he saw how the men behaved
whom he had retained in office.
The Earl of Guilford continued to be Lord Keeper, albeit on suffer-
ance, and James did not even displace the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl
of Arlington, with whom, except for a brief period about the time of the
Treaty of Dover, he had been in antagonism for the whole of his life ;
he said (with a magnanimity of which it is difficult to find other ex-
amples) that Arlington was a very old man and that it would be unduly
harsh to deprive him of the short enjoyment of office that remained to
him. 1 Talbot and Jermyn received a sort of compensation for their
disappointment by being made members of a new council which
looked after the interests of the Catholic religion and of its adherents,
the other two members of this council being Lord Arundel of Wardour
and Lord Belasyse.
No sooner had James, two days after his accession, decided to
gratify his people by promising an early election and meeting of Parlia-
ment, than he bethought himself that perhaps Louis would take it
amiss that he had made the promise without previous consultation
with the French King. The same day he saw Barrillon and explained
his action in terms hardly becoming one whose ambition it was to be a
great and independent monarch. He said that he had resolved to call a
Parliament to meet in May, and that he had not thought fit to continue
to collect the Customs duties without the promise of a Parliament.
When Parliament met they would either put him in legal possession
of his brother's revenues and he could dissolve them if he found it
convenient, or they would refuse supplies and he would have to find
other expedients.
Many people tell me I have been too hasty in summoning
Parliament ; but if I waited longer I should lose aU the credit of the
action. I know the English; one must not show them at the start
that one is afraid of them. If I delay I shall give the malcontents
an opening for commencing an agitation in favour of a Parliament
and that would be such a popular cry that they could easily damage
my interests with it.
He added that he was well aware that it would be embarrassing to
Louis if the Parliament took up an attitude hostile to France, but he
would see to it that they did not meddle with foreign politics, and would
dissolve them the moment they showed signs of ill-will.
1 James may, however, have known of Arlington's leanings to the Roman Church,
THE ACCESSION 253
It is for you [he told Barrillon] to explain what I am telling you
to the King your master in order that he may have no cause to
reproach me for having taken this important resolution so promptly
without consulting him as I ought to have done and as I wish to do
in all things ; but I should have ruined everything if I had post-
poned decision even for a week.
Not content with these servile messages to Louis, James sent Rochester
to Barrillon the following day the day of the announcement of the
decision to call a Parliament to reiterate his arguments and excuses
and to add that there had been a danger which it had been necessary to
anticipate, that Halifax and Guilford would have pressed him to call a
Parliament, and that he wished to avoid any imputation that his action
was not spontaneous, but the result of external pressure.
Barrillon himself, in conveying this news to his master, was appre-
hensive that Louis would not be pleased to hear it: he said that he had
not thought fit to protest against a decision which had already been
taken and which could not be revoked, and that he had not wanted to
compromise Louis's dignity by any suggestion that he was afraid of an
English Parliament. To Rochester, Barrillon said that he was not afraid
of the name of Parliament, and that he had every confidence in James's
power and firmness, but that the hopes of the old enemies of the Duke
of York would be raised and that they would use every artifice to prevent
supplies being voted to the Kong except on very hard terms. But Louis
was not annoyed, but, on the contrary, commended James's decision.
He replied to Barrillon :
I approve also of the resolution which he has taken to call a
new Parliament to assemble in May and the reasons which he has
given convince me that he could not have done better: I have too
good an opinion of his wisdom to doubt that nothing can happen
which can loosen the bonds between us.
James expressed to Barrillon the greatest joy at Louis's approval of
his action.
The elections took place in April and early May, and there was no
long time for preparation. Every endeavour was made by the Court to
secure the return of members well affected to the King, and in the whole
history of Parliament it is doubtful whether the Crown on any other
occasion put forth such an effort or interfered so universally and
systematically in a parliamentary election. The organisation of victory
was in Sunderland's hands, and within ten days of the accession 1 he
1 One letter to the Earl of Plymouth went out on February 13, the re-
mainder, as far as can be ascertained, on February 17.
254 KING JAMES II
sent to all corners of the kingdom letters which he had written to local
magnates upon whose influence in the royal interest he could rely.
Only one of these letters appears to have survived, but it is no doubt
typical of the rest ; and there are extant a large number of replies ad-
dressed to Sunderland and mentioning his letter of February 17.
His letter to the Earl of Rutland runs :
His Majesty being well satisfied of your Lordship's zeal for his
service, and not doubting but you will use your utmost endeavours
and employ all your interest that good members may be chosen for
the approaching Parliament, commands me to tell you that he would
have you take care of the Leicestershire elections, so as to prevent
all intrigues and disorders which ill-affected persons may en-
deavour to set on foot : and therefore His Majesty thinks it necessary
you should be present at the County Election and at as many of the
borough elections as you can, and to take all possible care that
persons of approved loyalty and affection to the government be
chosen.
Such a vast body of material exists regarding the details of what
happened in the constituencies that it is difficult to make a representative
selection. From Hull, for example, the Earl of Plymouth wrote that he
had persuaded the Corporation there to oppose the election of anyone
who had voted for the Exclusion Bill and to elect members nominated
by himself; he was also confident that his nine nominees in the county
of Worcester two for the county, the remaining seven for various
boroughs would be successful; the Duke of Newcastle believes that
"the eight that goes from this county (Notts) will be very honest
gentlemen"; the Earl of Winchelsea writes that he is assured that the
county and various boroughs of Kent "will make loyal members their
representatives" (he hopes at the same time that he will not be forgotten
at Court while he is rendering this service in the provinces) ; the Earl
of Derby promises diligence in Lancashire; Sir Charles Holt, Lord
Brooke and Andrew Hacket write long and amusing letters about what
they have been doing in Warwickshire: while Lord Chief Justice
Jeffreys Writes to Sunderland regarding the Bucks County election:
Pardon me (my most honourable Lord) for giving you this
trouble. I thought for His Majesty's service that you should know
that this day I have had several gentlemen of the county hereabout
with me who are resolute in the affair to oppose Wharton and
Hampden. But they have been very industrious to spread false
reports. [It is certain] Hampden will assign his interest to Sir
THE ACCESSION 255
Roger Hill who now sets up a horrid Whig: his father was one of
the murthered Martyr Bang Charles the First judges and this
spark a fierce exclusioner. . . .
In the boroughs the Court had little difficulty, for the corporations
had been, or were in process of being, remodelled in the Church and
Tory interest, or were afraid of royal displeasure and consequent loss
of their charters, 1 and in the counties the local magnates were either
honestly in the King's interest or were timid in declaring themselves
on the other side. So strongly were the constituencies in the Tory
interest that many prominent Whigs declined to stand. 2 Very significant
is the appearance on the Court side in the election of certain names
which in the course of a very few years figured prominently as those of
James's opponents. Sir Cresswell Levinz, who lost his seat on the Bench
in 1686 because he would not support the dispensing power and who
was subsequently one of the Counsel for the seven bishops, was working
for Sunderland at Salisbury, and the Earl of Shrewsbury and Henry
Compton, Bishop of London, who were two of the famous seven who
signed the invitation to William, were very active on the same side;
Shrewsbury, as Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire, managed the elections
in that county together with Sir Francis Lawley, Lord Ferrers and Lord
Dartmouth; 3 while Compton wrote to Strype, the ecclesiastical
historian, who was one of his clergy:
/
You will likewise now have an opportunity to give a real evidence
of your professed fidelity by using your utmost interest among
the gentry and other freeholders where you are acquainted to give
their voices for such sober and prudent men as will seek the peace
of the Church and State by promoting the King's and kingdom's
service. I need not warn you of the great diligence used by the
enemies of both to make choice of factious and turbulent spirits,
and I hope the truth and justice of your cause will make you no
less industrious to prevent such wicked and pernicious designs,
which bear so fatal an aspect upon all honest men. Thus, praying
God to direct you in so good a work, I remain . . .
A King's party which included such leading figures as Shrewsbury
1 The Mayor of Bridgewater, however, wrote, "I am informed that not-
withstanding Sir William Portman and Mr. Samford intended to stand for
Taunton this damnable crew will set up Mr. Trenchard and William Stack;
they are birds of one feather."
2 One conspicuous exception was Charles Gerrard, son of the Earl of
Macclesfield, who had sat for Lancashire in the last parliaments of Charles
II and was nearly to lose his life for complicity with Monmouth. A tremendous
and successful attempt was made to prevent his re-election.
3 James's old friend, George Legge.
256 KING JAMES II
and Compton was indeed comprehensive, and it is not surprising that at
the conclusion of the election James was able to say that there were not
forty members 1 of the House of Commons that he would wish else-
where. But Barrillon was not optimistic: he said that the elections had
indeed gone well for the Court, but no one knew what might happen to
the best-affected members when they got together; they were well
aware that when they had given the King his revenues he might have no
further use for them and that by granting supplies they may be signing
their own death-warrant.
It is true that members of the old factious party have not been
elected; but the elected members may easily become factious
themselves ; they have almost all of them a rooted aversion to the
Catholic religion and the greater number are enemies of France
and are jealous of Your Majesty's glory.
And he doubted if it would be possible for James to propose even a
relaxation of the penal laws.
For some obscure reason James was very anxious to get himself
crowned before the meeting of Parliament. If Barrillon has correctly
reported him, he had a very curious conception of the legal significance
of the coronation. The ambassador says :
It is regarded in England as a ceremony absolutely necessary
for the establishment of the royal authority, for after it has taken
place everything done or said against the King is high treason ;
and a little later he returns to the subject and says that according to a
law dating from the time of the Wars of the Roses the title of a king,
once he is crowned, cannot be disputed, and he refers to the precedent
of Cromwell. Clearly what he has in mind is the distinction in con-
stitutional law between a king de jure and a king de facto. In another
matter connected with the coronation James showed himself an in-
different lawyer: he told Barrillon that the Catholic peers would take
part in the ceremony according to their rank, and that this concession
would be a step towards getting them back into the House of Lords.
He forgot that the Test Act of 1678 deprived Catholics of the capacity
to sit in Parliament but of no other dignity or privilege.
The coronation took place on St. George's Day, April 23 a fitting
date for the installation of a patriot king. Nothing was omitted that
could enhance the splendour of the occasion, except that James and his
Queen spent the previous night at St. James's Palace, and not, as
1 Barrillon said there were only five or six malcontents.
THE ACCESSION 257
was the traditional practice, at the Tower, so that the citizens of London
were deprived of the sight of the procession. It was suggested that
James chose St. James's Palace because there was a Catholic chapel
there and he wished to pass the eve of his coronation in vigil. A Com-
mittee had been appointed two months in advance to regulate the
procedure so as to satisfy the King's conscience without omitting any
essential feature. In the event the entire ceremony was performed by
the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by other bishops, with the single
omission of the Communion. 1 Everyone seems to agree that the
acclamations of those present left nothing to be desired, but there were
two unfortunate incidents which contribute to James's reputation
for lack of dignity in his public appearances : the first was that, by the
awkwardness of die barons of the Cinque Ports, who carried it in pro-
cession, the canopy fell over the King, and the second that he had trouble
with an ill-fitting crown; of this latter there are two contradictory
accounts: Burnet (who was not present) says that the crown was too
large and that it descended over the upper part of James's face; the
Queen (who regarded the incident as an omen of evil) and Henry Sidney
that it slipped sideways and nearly fell to the ground, and Sidney adds
that he himself put a hand to it to steady it, remarking to the King
"that it was not the first time a Sidney had supported the crown".
The religious part of the coronation gave complete satisfaction neither
to Protestant nor Catholic casuits. Some Protestants said that without
the Communion the ceremony was incomplete, others that the Kong
and Queen had taken part in the Protestant forms of prayer with mental
reservations and had been given a dispensation by the priests. With the
Catholics the points at issue provided subject for controversy for
months, and not only in England, whenever two priests met. On the
one hand it was urged that the prayers, with the omission of the Mass,
were merely a translation from the Latin of those which had been in
use since pre-Reformation times, and that James's decision to submit
to receive the crown from the Archbishop was a supreme example of
his respect for the civil rights of the Church of England, and on the
other that everything about the ceremony was heretical, and that the
King and Queen committed mortal sin in giving it countenance.
On May 24, two days after the assembly of Parliament, when James
had been more than three and a half months on the throne, Reresby
wrote in his journal, "All things seemed now to look very auspicious,
1 It appears that the original intention was that James and Mary should
both take the Communion, for provision was made for a silk towel each "to be
held before them at the Communion".
I
258 KING JAMES II
the King not giving the least token to change the religion but much to
the contrary". Reresby moved in Tory circles, and it may well be that
the Church and Bang men, who had no incentive to look below the sur-
face for reasons to suspect the King whom they had done so much to
bring in, were satisfied that their own predominance and the quiet state
of affairs which had existed for the past four years would continue.
Reresby, however, discounted the apprehensions of his friend Halifax,
who was not given to accepting things at their face value and who saw
in James's beginnings in the Irish army, where he had already begun to
give commissions to Catholics, signs of trouble to come. In England,
too, Halifax scented danger in James's indiscreet and repeated statements,
from the first month of his reign, that he would insist on obtaining from
Parliament the revenues for life, and without conditions. A further
event of great significance, though no notice was taken of it at the time,
was the issue on May n of the first of many orders in favour of loyal
(sc. Catholic) recusants.
But meanwhile James, though he was certainly indiscreet about his
aspirations towards arbitrary power, was in other respects successfully
concealing his intentions. Until Sunderland arrived at a full participa-
tion in his secret plans it was to the French ambassador alone that he
could speak freely about his projects for the benefit of his Church. A
few days after his accession he first broached the subject to Barrillon,
and at that time he took a very reasonable view of the situation: he
limited his aspirations to the repeal of the penal laws, and he fully
admitted the necessity for caution and patience ; he showed, however,
characteristic simplicity in expecting the co-operation of the Tories.
This Prince [wrote Barrillon] has thoroughly explained to me
his intentions with regard to the Catholics, which are to grant
them entire liberty of conscience and the free exercise of their
religion; this is a work of time and it can be brought about only
step by step. His Britannic Majesty's plan is to achieve it by the
assistance of the episcopal party which he regards as the royalist
party.
A week later James was more sanguine; he derived confidence from
the fact that even the declaration of his faith had been insufficient to
disturb public calm .or to rouse suspicions of his intentions in the minds
of responsible persons. He persuaded Barrillon to believe that Parlia-
ment would consent immediately to put a stop to the persecution of the
Catholics and to permit them to worship in their own houses, and that
objection would be raised to the employment of Catholics in military
and civil posts (other than those in the royal household) only from fear
THE ACCESSION 259
that eventually none but Catholics would be employed. But before the
end of April his success in the parliamentary elections had gone to
James's head ; he was no longer so insistent on the necessity for caution
nor so moderate in his expectations from Parliament; he told Barrillon
that he was confident that he would obtain in the first session not only
the revenues for life and the abrogation of the penal laws against the
Catholics, but the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act, an Act which he had
consistently held to be incompatible with monarchy.
Foreign affairs was one of the subjects which James kept strictly in
his own hands, and Sunderland in this, as in, other fields, entered
wholeheartedly into his master's plans. There was here no incon-
sistency, for the Vhole of Sunderland's previous ministerial career
had been in an atmosphere of subservience to France; simultaneously,
in common with all the leading politicians of the time, he endeavoured
to insure his future by keeping on good terms with William of Orange,
the husband of the heir-presumptive; thus in effect the Minister's
predilections and interests coincided, and he was able to avoid in foreign
politics the imputation of time-serving which he incurred in other
connections.
In spite of some inconsistencies, we may safely ascribe to James
certain general principles of foreign policy: by temperament he was
haughty, and for that reason he valued his own independence, but he had
long ceased to dream of personal military glory and he had no desire to
extend his dominions by war. He certainly aimed at an extension of
England's prosperity by trade and at an increase of her strength by land
and sea; but this power was desirable merely as an enhancement of
his own regal magnificence and of his security at home, and not as a
pretext for aggression. If he had any ulterior aim, it was to be the
arbiter of Europe. What he failed to realise was that he could not be
respected abroad unless his power at home rested on the strong founda-
tion of the support of his people.
One undisputed principle of the English constitution of the time was
that foreign affairs were exclusively the concern of the King, and
Charles II had been on firm ground when in 1677 he reprimanded
Parliament for addressing him on this subject. But apart from the
general difficulty of pursuing an unpopular foreign policy, the King's
power was in practice limited by the control of Parliament: he could
not enter a war of which Parliament disapproved, for they would refuse
to vote him the supplies necessary for carrying it on. Of this fact James
was well aware: he could deceive himself into thinking that his Tory
Parliament would consent to remove Catholic disabilities, but he knew
260 KING JAMES II
that their prejudice against France was so deep that if England was
involved in a continental war he might be forced to take up arms against
France. At the very least he would find himself in conflict with Parlia-
ment, and if he was to obtain from Parliament the religious measures
which he sought, it was essential that there should be an atmosphere
of conciliation. These considerations were in his mind when he told
Barrillon that he would go to any lengths to prevent any discussion of
foreign politics in Parliament. Sunderland, with characteristic cynicism,
told Barrillon that Parliament was so attached to the interests of Spain
and the Prince of Orange that it would be impossible to separate them,
but that after the revenues had been granted it would be easy to "raise
the mask" but Sunderland was not aware at that time that the revenues
were only part of what James required from Parliament.
In these circumstances it was a profound shock to James to receive a
report five weeks before the date for the meeting of Parliament that
Louis was likely to be involved in war with Spain. It was said that
Spain intended to cede the Spanish Netherlands to the Emperor,
and that Louis, who regarded the Dauphin, through his mother,
Maria Theresa, as heir presumptive of the whole Spanish dominions,
was prepared to defend his son's interests. James said that it would
be disastrous for him if a rupture occurred between France and Spain
when Parliament was sitting, for they would make every endeavour to
force him into taking a side :
His enemies (he said) would take the opportunity either to
embroil him with Louis or to antagonise his subjects, who would
be persuaded to believe that he had abandoned the true interests
of England. '
James was delighted to hear that this rumour was without foundation,
as also he was shortly before the reassembly of Parliament in November
to learn that a difference with regard to the Palatine succession had been
amicably settled.
James was not the chief object in Europe of Louis's attention; that
position was occupied by William, and Louis's relations with James
were important to Louis mainly as they affected James's nephew and
son-in-law. For Louis not only regarded William as his chief public
enemy, but hated him with an intense personal hatred. A more generous
soul would have conceived some respect and admiration for the young
patriot who had for six years withstood with greatly inferior resources
the might of the French armies; but Louis had the common defect of
autocrats, he had no sense of chivalry for his opponents ; to him William's
resistance had been an insult to his personal honour, a sort of Use-
THE ACCESSION a6l
majeste to be expiated only by defeat followed by abject submission. 1
One of his first thoughts when James came to the throne was to oust
William from the succession and to work for that end by persuading
Princess Anne to adopt her father's faith so that she might be preferred
to her elder sister. In this Louis showed his usual lack of understanding
of English politics and of the impossibility of tampering with the suc-
cession in the Catholic interest; James appears to have given little
encouragement to the scheme, though Louis's envoys had hopes from
time to time of persuading him to agree to it.
When Louis and William were not openly at war they were persistently
engaged in creating difficulties for one another; there was no possibility
of cordial relations between them. While William was taking the first
steps for the formation against French aggression of the defensive
alliance which developed into the League of Augsburg, Louis was busy
creating trouble for William by encouraging, through his ambassador,
Avaux, anti-Orange sentiment in the United Provinces, especially in
the city of Amsterdam, and by endeavouring, through Barrillon, to
embitter William's relations with James.
It is true that for a few weeks after his accession James was not at all
pleased with his son-in-law. The trouble was chiefly about Monmouth.
William had known that (notwithstanding the fact that he was officially
in disgrace) hospitality extended to Monmouth would be pleasing to
Charles, and in spite of James's protests Monmouth had lived at The
Hague in intimate relations with William and Mary. When Charles
died the case was entirely altered; for James, not without reason,
nursed an implacable hatred against Monmouth, and regarded him as
the natural leader of any trouble that might arise in England. James
was also aware that Monmouth had influence with some of the officers
in the English regiments in Holland who were suspected of entertaining
sentiments hostile to the English monarchy. A number of letters passed
between James and William in the first month of the reign. James
wrote in an exceedingly arrogant tone. He made three demands:
that William should entirely cut himself off from communication with
Monmouth, that he should dismiss the ill-affected officers, and that he
should improve his relations with Louis. William had already anticipated
the first demand when he had finally parted from Monmouth, after giving
him excellent advice, on the very day on which the news of Charles's
death arrived; and he proceeded to remove from the English regiments
the officers to whom James objected. The submissiveness of William's
1 Louis's unchivalrous attitude to William was not however that of some
of the French people: Mme. de S^vigne", for instance, wrote on March i-n,
1688-89, "What a deuce (diantre) of a man this Prince of Orange is, when one
thinks that he puts the whole of Europe in motion! What a star!"
2&2 KING JAMES II
replies to James's hectoring letters is very remarkable: he avoided the
awkward demand that he should shape his foreign relations accord-
ing to James's will by sheltering himself behind the States-General;
he said that he would satisfy James in all things except what was con-
trary to his oath to the States, but added that he was wholeheartedly
in his interests save only in the matter of religion.
Meanwhile Barrillon was actively engaged in sowing distrust of
William in James's mind:
The King of England knows well, it seems to me (he wrote on
February 12), that the greatest danger he runs originates from the
Prince of Orange ; he says he is strongly on his guard and is pre-
pared to anticipate every move of the party of the Prince.
Four days later he wrote that he was persistently warning James of
William's evil intentions, and in particular advising him not to permit
the visit which William proposed to make. And when later in the
month William decided not to come himself, but sent Overquerque
with very submissive messages, the French ambassador wrote :
I shall miss no opportunity of representing to him (King James)
that the submission and respect of the Prince of Orange are not
sincere and that he will continue to behave in his present manner
only as long as he is forced to do so by circumstances.
Louis commended Barrillon's conduct and told him that he himself
had no faith in William's protestations. 1
James, for his part, fully satisfied Louis that he did not take these
protestations at their face value. When first William's proposed visit
was mentioned he said that if William offered to come it would be
difficult to refuse permission, for such a refusal would give an impression
of fear. A few days later James had changed his .mind; he told Barrillon
that he had determined to disallow the proposed visit, in obedience to
1 It is clear, from Louis's correspondence with his ambassadors at St. James's
and The Hague, that this distrust of William on the part of all three men was
genuine and not a mere diplomatic fiction; Avaux, for instance, wrote to Louis
on February 19:
I am persuaded that the Prince of Orange will act against the King
of England. . . . I have told Mr. Skelton who is going to England that the
submissions which the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Monmouth
have made are not to be trusted. They were surprised by a sudden blow
before they had time to lay their plans; they dare not make any move for
fear of delivering up their most zealous partisans without achieving any-
thing; but there is every indication that when they have had time to look
around they will make trouble for the King of England,
THE ACCESSION 263
Louis's wishes. He also said that he was keeping up an appearance of
friendship with William so as to avoid providing his domestic enemies
with a leader. He gave Barrillon an account of the first audience of
Overquerque, and said that he told him
that he would always be glad to see the Prince of Orange mindful
of his duty and remorseful for his past misdeeds, but that he could
not accept his submission or believe in the sincerity of his professions
unless that submission was complete and without exception;
that he (James) and the late king had established a friendship with
the King of France to which the Prince of Orange had always been
opposed; that it was not enough that he was willing to alter his
attitude to affairs in England, but his behaviour to the King of
France must also be very different from what it had been in the
past; and that this last condition must be fulfilled before he could
place the slightest confidence in what Overquerque had to say on
behalf of the Prince of Orange.
But James's relations with William were far more cordial than he
allowed Barrillon to suppose. To his courtiers he revealed the true state
of his feelings under a pledge of secrecy. The Earl of Moray, the
Secretary for Scotland, wrote to Queensberry on February 26:
All the news I shall tell you is that the Prince of Orange will be
right with the King, and will do some things to convince the world
that it is so, but this is only to yourself, for the King told us of it
this night only, and not to be made known.
A few days later Ormonde learnt from one correspondent:
It is said for certain that the King and the Prince of Orange
are heartily reconciled and that there is created a perfect under-
standing between them, and that the King has declared that he will
henceforth look upon him as his successor and concert with him
all those things which shall be for the common good of the nation.
And from another:
In Holland the Prince of Orange gets ground apace since the
reconciliation and that His Majesty has declared in his favour.
In the middle of March it was a matter of common knowledge in
Holland that William had received from James a letter full of cordiality
and affection:
In this letter (Avaux reported from The Hague) His Britannic
264 KING JAMES II
Majesty calls him his son, assures him that he will always consider
him as such and that he will in time see that he is given satisfaction
for what hath been done against him in France; 1 but that he must
have patience and not embroil himself with Louis ; that he regards
the Princess of Orange as his eldest daughter and loves her tenderly ;
with many other expressions stronger and more affectionate.
This is apparently the letter which James wrote to William announcing
Charles's death, and which he described to Barrillon as containing certain
conventional phrases of friendship which William had interpreted as
genuine expressions of goodwill.
Before the end of March, Barrillon was forced to recognise that his
efforts to make trouble between James and William had been entirely
unsuccessful, but he comforted himself with the thought that what he
had been unable to effect would come about of itself : it was to the interest
of each to be on cordial terms with the other, but their other interests
clashed at many points, and James pursued his own way, and took no
account of what might please William. William's friends, said
Barrillon,
want the King of England to enter into the sentiments of the nation
and that he should endeavour to please them by giving them all
possible assurances on the maintenance of religion and law ; but this
Prince shows a firmness on anything that touches his authority
which astonishes everyone who is capable of reflecting on it.
As late as July, Sunderland spoke to Barrillon of the reconciliation as
only a rumour which he himself hardly credited, for William was im-
patiently expecting the English crown, and there was always present
the fundamental difference on the subject of religion.
And, indeed, it is inconceivable that between these two men, both of
autocratic temper and with interests so opposed, friendship could be
anything but precarious. Apart from their diverse attitudes to Louis,
William was anxious that his wife should succeed to the throne of a
kingdom prosperous and at peace within itself and with the royal
prerogatives unimpaired; and he saw that James's blinkered pursuit of
autocracy and Catholic ascendancy in the State could lead only to civil
commotion, and ultimately to the victory of liberal ideas and a decline
in the power of the monarchy. Moreover, William had taken an early
opportunity of warning James that though in all other matters he would
not only not oppose but do all in his power to promote James's interests,
he reserved to himself freedom of action in the matter of religion a
1 No doubt a reference to the occupation by French troops of William's
principality of Orange.
THE ACCESSION 265
warning of which James took little notice at the time, and which he chose
to forget later when he attempted to persuade William to give his moral
support to the repeal of the penal laws and the Test Act.
James, on his side, made no attempt to conciliate William even in
matters in which his own personal interests were concerned. Shortly
after his accession he recalled Chudleigh, the English ambassador at
The Hague, and appointed in his place Bevil Skelton, who, apart from
his absolute incompetence, 1 was personally disliked by William and was
regarded with suspicion and hatred by the Dutch people, on account of
his conduct in Holland on a previous occasion. James disregarded
William's spirited protest against the appointment and, as was inevitable,
Skelton's embassy was unhappy. At the same time James recalled
Henry Sidney, who commanded the six British regiments which were
in the pay of the States-General. Henry Sidney was Sunderland's
uncle and, if reports were true, the lover of Sunderland's Countess.
William protested strongly against his recall, and testified to his ability
and to his loyalty to James :
I cannot dissemble with Your Majesty (he said) that I could have
wished Your Majesty had thought proper to have left him here, since
I can assure you that there never was a minister 2 in this country
who succeeded better or who did you more faithful service, it is
also impossible that any person can be more zealous for your service
for which I can answer.
Whether or no Sidney's loyalty to James was as deep-seated as William
represented it to be, this is the last time anything was heard of it. He
continued to be a great friend of William's, he was constantly at The
Hague, and he was one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of the
Revolution.
1 Avaux, who as French ambassador at The Hague worked with Skelton
in the Anglo-French interest, had a very low opinion of his abilities; in one
place, for instance, he describes him as "Le Sieur Skelton . . . un homme fort
feger et fort inconstant". Four years fearlier Charles had proposed to supersede
Sidney by Skelton but had withdrawn the proposal, though regretfully, on
objection being taken to it by William.
2 The use of the word "minister" in this letter is extraordinary, for it is
clear from James's letter to William of March 6, 1685 (in Dalrymple), that
Chudleigh had been the English Minister at The Hague. Another odd thing
about this letter is its date, June 25, which, from allusions in it to the appoint-
ment of Skelton, is about three months later than would be expected.
CHAPTER II
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685: MONMOUTH'S REBELLION
IT is not difficult to read in James's actions and sayings his conceptions
of the functions of Parliament. He certainly had no intention of consult-
ing it and, according to the ancient formula, acting by its advice. For
him Parliament existed to fortify the King's will, not to modify it, still
less to oppose it. The proper procedure was the introduction by the
King's Ministers of measures embodying the King's intentions, followed
not by a debate, but by a series of speeches of cheerful and loyal
acquiescence. James, as is evident from his pathetic and persistent
endeavours to get together a Parliament which would endorse the
Declaration of Indulgence, fully appreciated the enhancement of
authority which was given to a statute by the forms of parliamentary
procedure the impressiveness of the three readings of the Bill in both
Houses, followed by the formality of the royal assent. But privilege of
Parliament the rule of freedom of speech under which a member could
express himself in any terms whatever, within that degree of decorum
which the House itself prescribed James held in the greatest abhor-
rence ; and he had no compunction in punishing, by any means open to
him, members who voted or spoke against motions of which he ap-
proved, or who addressed the House freely on constitutional questions.
He was himself impervious to argument, he knew he was right on every
subject, and it is at least unlikely that he could conceive that an opinion
contrary to his own could be honestly held; anyone who expressed such
an opinion was ipso facto dishonest, for he pretended, for purposes of his
own and these purposes were probably subversive of the monarchy
to hold opinions which no sane man could hold. The behaviour to the
Catholics and to himself of the English Parliament in the years 1678-81
in the debates on Oates's Plot and on Exclusion had raised in him a
frenzy of impotent rage, but part of the blame he imputed to his brother's
neglect to assert himself. He had no doubt that not even the most
Whiggish of parliaments would have dared to brave the king's dis-
pleasure if that displeasure had been sufficiently plainly shown. All
through his reign he continued to hope, in spite of overwhelming evidence
that the quest was hopeless, to realise the Parliament of his dreams,
and it was not until his flight that he admitted, possibly only in the mood
of the moment, that independence of mind is the badge of an elected
assembly his outburst, "All Commons are alike", in reference to the
266
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 267
Dublin Parliament of 1698, conveyed an acknowledgement that his
hopes had been vain.
It was in accordance with his view of his constitutional position that
from the time of the proclamation that a Parliament was "speedily
to be assembled" James began to formulate in his mind, to discuss with
Barrillon and to make known to the world what he expected Parliament
to do for him. The most urgent and important question was that of the
revenue; he foresaw clearly at this time, though later he wavered from
that opinion, that he could not avoid coming into conflict with the
Houses if he endeavoured to do anything to relieve the Catholics, and
that frequent meetings of Parliament for the purpose of voting the
revenues, and with the constant opportunities for criticism of his actions,
would be inconvenient and unpleasant. At first James said he would
be content if Parliament voted supplies for three years, because he
hoped that by the end of that period he would be in such a strong
position that he could continue to draw the revenues without further
grant. But that moderate mood lasted for only a few weeks; Charles
had had the revenues for life, and James felt that anything less would be
tantamount to an abatement of his royal dignity. At the beginning of
March, Barrillon reported to Louis that James and his Ministers made
no secret of his intention to dissolve Parliament if they refused him the
revenues for life which Charles had enjoyed, and that he would not even
accept a term of thirty years ; the ambassador said further that the King
knew how important it was to show firmness at the commencement of
his reign, and that he was afraid of no one so long as he had Louis's
support. From that time until the meeting of Parliament the matter of the
revenues was uppermost in James's mind: on March 30 Barrillon wrote
that the King "continued to act with great firmness and haughtiness"
and that he said he would insist on having the revenues for life, and ten
days later he explained his attitude at greater length but unfortunately
not very clearly: he told the French ambassador,
that Parliament might grant him money only under conditions
hard and damaging to his authority and that this was the artifice
of those who wished to prevent him from establishing the full
exercise of the Catholic religion ; that the subsidies which he needed
were not for the purpose of resisting his subjects or of constraining
them by force to obey him, but in order to maintain himself by
legal methods and to have measures passed in parliament which
would give sanction to the proceedings he proposed to take; that
therein consisted all the advantage which he intended to get from
this assembly of parliament; that if he was obliged at the start
268 KING JAMES II
to act timidly and irresolutely he might expect to have to submit
throughout his reign to contradictions and difficulties; whereas
if his affairs took the right direction at the beginning it would be
easy to keep them in the same condition and to act according to his
own inclinations and interests.
Barrillon suggested that it might be necessary to bribe members in
order to obtain the revenues for life and without conditions, and to get
laws passed according toleration to the Catholics; but James would
have nothing to do with such a policy: he pointed out how miserably
it had failed in Danby's hands. Shortly before Parliament met he had
decided that, if Parliament proved intractable in financial matters, he
would dissolve it and collect the revenues by force.
James's unofficial declarations did not pass without comment ; as soon
as he began to deliver them, Halifax, undeterred by the possession of
high office, expressed the constitutional view, and, in terms which did
not fail to arouse James's anger, he observed:
that it is an innovation for the King to explain beforehand what he
expects from Parliament ; that the threat of breaking it if it does not
carry out his intentions will still further embitter those who are
already discontented and will make everything more difficult;
that the prosperity of the reign depends on these beginnings and
that for his part he wanted nothing less than that Parliament should
be apprehensive of dissolution if it did not immediately comply
with what was demanded of it.
Parliament duly assembled on May 19, and the Commons were
summoned to attend the King in the House of Lords and sent back to
choose a Speaker. The Earl of Middleton, colleague of Sunderland as
Secretary of State, proposed the King's nominee, Sir John Trevor;
two names had been put before James the Lord Keeper, Lord Guilford,
had suggested Sir Thomas Meres; Jeffreys had recommended Trevor;
as in all other matters, James accepted the advice of the Chief Justice
against that of the Lord Keeper. The nomination by the Bang's
representative was an innovation and an invasion of the privileges of the
Commons; heretofore they had chosen their own speaker, and their
choice (except on a single occasion) had been accepted by the King.
But this was the Kong's Parliament, and no voice was raised in protest.
After two days spent in swearing in, the members of the Commons
were again summoned to the Upper House to hear the King's Speech.
After the usual preliminaries he said :
What I said to my Privy Council at my first coming there I am
desirous to renew to you; wherein I fully declare my opinion con-
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 269
earning the principles of the Church of England, whose members
have showed themselves so eminently loyal in the worst of times.
There is one popular argument which I foresee may be used against
what I ask you of from the inclination men have to frequent
parliaments, which some may think would be the best secured
by feeding me from time to time by such proportions as they
shall think convenient; and this argument (it being the first time
I speak to you from the throne) I will answer once for all: that
it would be a very improper method to take with me and that
the best way to engage me to meet you often is always to use me
well.
He then informed the Houses that Argyll had landed in rebellion in the
Western Isles. It is evident from the wording and from the extremely
truculent tone of this speech that it is of James's own unaided com-
position. It is doubtful whether any Parliament on its first assembly
has been addressed by the sovereign in such terms; the tradition was
for the King to request, if not humbly, at least politely, for such supplies
as he required from his faithful Commons; James's speech is a demand
accompanied by a hardly veiled threat: Give me my revenues for life,
else you are in danger of incurring my displeasure. The speech also
implies an intention to put an end for all time to the parliamentary
practice of withholding supplies pending the redress of grievances, a
practice which James no doubt held to be a violation of the unwritten
law against "capitulating with the King". Moreover, the custom had
been for the Lord Chancellor (or Lord Keeper) to supplement the
King's Speech with a long harangue of his own enlarging upon the points
made by the King. These speeches some of them must have taken a
couple of hours to deliver were, as far as one can judge, a mere waste
of time and a sore trial to the patience of the members (especially the
Commons, who were standing the whole time), but they were a
recognised part of the ceremony of opening Parliament. Guilford had
come prepared with a speech, and he was naturally affronted when
James, without previous warning, cut the proceedings short and
prevented him from delivering it. James had no liking or respect for
Guilford, and he had no compunction in snubbing him, but it is un-
likely that he would have been so deliberately offensive if he had had
no other motive. It appears probable that he thought his own abrupt
speech was best left in the circumstances without comment, that
nothing but misunderstanding could result from an attempt to explain
and expand the reference to the Church of England, and that members
were more likely to vote the revenues quickly if they had his menaces
270 KING JAMES II
ringing in their ears. 1 But in nothing did the Bang displease the
members : at every period of his speech the House gave loud shouts.
The Commons also proceeded, with unparalleled expedition, to
carry out the first part of James's programme; "Such was the eagerness
of the House to comply with the Crown" that they were impatient of
the customary procedure. The same day they went into Committee
on the revenue, and as a House resolved that James should have for life
the same revenues as Charles had had for his life. This resolution
was embodied in a Bill which was read a second time in the Commons
on May 25 and carried to the Lords after the third reading on May 26;
the Lords passed it through all its stages on that and the following day.
In all this there is little that is surprising: every member who accepted
the nomination of James or of his election agents and such members
were in an overwhelming majority was well aware beforehand what
was expected of him, and most of them had no doubt pledged themselves
to vote the revenues for life. The minority saw no point in opposing the
Bill, for their opposition would have been ineffectual.
The harmony of the proceedings was disturbed by a violent speech
from Sir Edward Seymour bitterly attacking the Government for the
way in which the elections had been conducted; he said that he did not
oppose the grant of the revenues, but he urged that the question
should be postponed until it was ascertained whether those present
were in point of fact members of Parliament: "The complaints of the
irregularities are so great that many doubt whether this is a true re-
presentative of the nation or not". He alleged that the elections had been
carried out by "intrigue and authority" and that the established principle
of free election had been violated. He also complained that the remodel-
ling of the Corporations, commenced at the end of the late reign, and
still in progress, had resulted in the return of the wrong kind of
member:
For there had never been a time when it was more necessary to
have a Parliament composed of members of good-will, who were
attached to the laws of England; the people of England were
strong in their aversion to the Catholic religion and were attached
X jj* 1 .? text of the s P e ech which Guilford was to have delivered, and which no
doubt James had perused beforehand, gives support to this surmise e.g.,
"You may look upon the gracious promises you but now received from His
Majesty as concessions made in full Parliament, as laws which His Majesty
hath given himself, which will be more binding and effectual than any that
can be proposed to him. Never therefore let out Church of England fear to
want support when he hath said he will defend it. Never let any man entertain
the least jealousy of arbitrary government when His Majesty hath declared
against it."
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685: MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 271
to their laws; these laws could not be altered except by Parliament
and alterations could easily be made when there was a Parliament
dependent on those who had that end in view ; there was already
talk about the repeal of the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act,
the one a bulwark against the establishment of Popery at the
expense of Protestantism, the other the firmest foundation of
English liberties.
Seymour admitted that he had small hope of getting a motion for
enquiry carried in a House in which the great majority were interested
parties "Little enquiry is expected on petitions where so many are too
guilty to judge justly and impartially'*. Indeed, the motion was not
even seconded, for he had apparently not troubled himself to secure
support beforehand, and though many members approved of his speech,
no one was ready to follow it up for fear of revealing their numerical
weakness. It was a fine and timely speech, but Seymour cannot on the
strength of it be hailed as a single-minded defender of constitutional
liberties: in recent elections he had exercised great influence in many
constituencies in the West of England, and Sunderland's manoeuvres
had undermined that influence. He may also have harboured the
thought that he would have been elected Speaker if the election to that
office had been conducted in the traditional manner. The irregularity
of the elections was again made the subject of a motion by Sir John
Lowther a few days later. This motion was supported by several
members, but it led only to an inconclusive debate.
In the matter of the revenues James's success had been complete
and swift, but this success was immediately followed by a serious
rebuff. Right up to the meeting of Parliament he had hoped that so
loyal a body could be moved to do something for the Bong's religion,
and the action of the House of Lords while they were waiting for the
Revenue Bill to pass the Commons may have given him encouragement :
the Lords rescinded a rule by which impeachments were carried over
from Parliament to Parliament, and in consequence the Catholic lords
who had been victims of Oates's plot and were on bail Powis, Arundel
of Wardour and Belasyse were released and were no longer liable to
be condemned on the evidence which had been produced against them. 1
But the Lords had been moved by principles of abstract justice and
not by any new kindness for the Catholics, and it was in the Commons
that the shock was felt. On May 26, the very day on which they had sent
the Revenue Bill up to the Lords, the Commons went into Grand
Committee to consider that part of the King's Speech which referred to
1 Danby also benefited by the action of the Lords.
272 KING JAMES II
religion. Two resolutions were passed: the first a rather colourless
Church-and-King composition directed against Argyll; the second a
recommendation to the Throne "to make an humble address to His
Majesty to publish his royal proclamation for putting the laws in
execution against all dissenters whatsoever from the Church of England* * .
Resolutions in similar terms had been passed from time to time by the
Parliaments of Charles II, and had been followed as a matter of course
by royal proclamations. No doubt the majority in the Commons had
some slight compunction at their own servility to the royal demands
in the matter of the speakership and the revenues, and remembered
that they were not only a King party but a Church-and-King party,
and in this recollection they were assisted by the few Whigs in the
House and the many outside, who lobbied and met members at taverns
and coffee-houses.
James was very much upset: not only had he failed to get a Parlia-
ment which would give concessions to the Catholics, but he had
saddled himself with one which took the initiative in attacking them.
He sent for
the leaders of the Lower House , . . and those whom he believed
to be in his interests; he lectured them severely on their conduct
in allowing themselves to be seduced and dragged into a resolution
so dangerous and so unacceptable to him; he declared that if they
held to their intention of presenting him with such an address he
would reply to the Commons in such firm and decisive terms
that they would never so offend again.
The result was very surprising: the following day when the recom-
mendation of the Committee came before the House it was rejected,
and it was resolved nemine contradicente "That this House doth acquiesce,
entirely rely, and rest wholly satisfied in His Majesty's gracious word
and repeated declaration to support and defend the religion of the
Church of England as it is now by law established ; which is dearer to us
than our lives' '. The unanimous resolution of the members had on the
following day been by the same members unanimously rejected. James
had achieved a singular personal success, and he felt that he had moved a
great way towards making the Commons amenable on the subject of
religion in the address which he made to Parliament three days later,
and. in which he thanked them for the "readiness and cheerfulness"
with which they had passed the revenue Bill, there is no sign that he
harboured any resentment. Louis wrote in high approval of his conduct,
but with slight knowledge of English conditions : "It may be said that no
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 273
King of England has ever acted with more authority in his Parliament". 1
But Barrillon was not sure that James had acted wisely or had secured
anything beyond a temporary advantage; for it was in Committee that
the members had shown their real opinions, and their subsequent
recantation was merely a concession to the Bang. Moreover, their
Whig friends had a good opening for mirth at their discomfiture
their abject fear of royal displeasure, for instance, presented a sorry
contrast to the resounding phrase, "dearer to us than our lives" and
he was inclined to agree with James's opponents that the parliamentary
majority were so ashamed at yielding to browbeating by the King
that on a future occasion he would be "neither able nor willing to
exercise authority" that is to say, that James had got his way this time
by high-handed methods, but that he could not expect the same methods
to succeed a second time. His quarrel with his Parliament did not
become acute for some months after this incident, but it can hardly be
doubted that from this time onwards his hold over Parliament was
loosened, a fact which he himself tacitly acknowledged, for we hear no
more of his intention to induce it to grant relief to the Catholics. The
resolution of the Committee had placed him in an awkward situation,
but he made the mistake of employing direct and not temporising
methods. His brother Charles would have acted very differently:
he would have allowed the Address to pass the House, and then by delay
and possibly a short prorogation he would have passed it by without
a direct affront to the House.
These ultimate effects were not realised at once, but the browbeating
by the King had the immediate effect of taking all life out of the Parlia-
ment. They would have welcomed prorogation or adjournment, "for
they saw that they could not pass any resolution unless it was to the
King's liking". However, they still had work to do on supply: when
James on May 30 thanked Parliament for granting the revenues for life,
he asked for a grant for special purposes namely, stores which were
very deficient for the Army and Navy, his brother's debts, the cost of
suppressing Argyll's rebellion and to make good anticipations of the
revenue. This was a very reasonable demand; in essence it was merely
a plea that the new reign should commence free of debt. But instead
of meeting it by voting a lump sum of, say, 2,000,000, they granted an
additional revenue for eight years amounting to about 400,000.
Never before or since has there been a Parliament so lavish of public
money, and they had not the excuse that they were working in the dark :
1 Louis's attitude to Parliament is illustrated by his remark in his memoirs,
"This subjection which puts the sovereign to the necessity of taking the law
from his people is the last calamity into which a man of our rank can fall".
274 ' KING JAMES II
they were well aware that Charles had had to do his best with a supply
calculated to yield a revenue of 1,200,000, and that if it had not fallen
short of the estimate he would have had almost enough; they knew also
that the present charge of government was not more than 1,300,000,
and yet they gave the King four millions at once and a revenue little
less than two millions.
Parliament was still sitting when news was received of the landing
of Monmouth at Lyme on June n. The Commons at once took steps
to ascertain the truth of this news, and when they had satisfied themselves,
they brought in a Bill of Attainder against Monmouth for high treason;
this Bill passed both Houses within three days. They also hastened to
vote an extraordinary supply of 400,000 for the expenses of suppressing
the rebellion, and put a price of 5000 on Monmouth's head. The
friction between King and Parliament was immediately forgotten, and
every member who wished to keep it alive was well advised to remain
silent.
This reaction of feeling carried the Houses to dangerous lengths.
In London, as was notorious, there were a great many people who
were cognisant of the plot and many more who sympathised with it, 1
and a good deal of loose talk had no doubt come to the ears of members
and had been keenly resented by them. It was decided to bring in "A
Bill for the Preservation of the Person and Govt. of His Gracious
Majesty King James the Second", the main purport of which was to
extend the definition of high treason to include "anything said to dis-
parage the King's person or government". If this Bill had become law
no one in the kingdom would have been free from a constant danger
from informers; the most harmless remarks, even if they were correctly
reported, could by a court anxious to show its loyalty be construed to
come under the Act, and as in Nazi Germany, no one would have dared
to discuss public questions. These considerations were urged in
speeches of great ability and gravity, but the only concessions which
could be wrung from the Houses were that preaching or teaching
against the errors of Rome should be excepted from the provisions
of the Act and that all informations should be laid within forty-eight
hours of the alleged offence. The former amendment was not at all to
James's liking, and Queen Mary was very much upset by it, for by
implication it encouraged the delivery of those very sermons which it
was James's intention to prohibit. This may have been his real reason
for suspending the session (on July 2), and for doing so by an adjourn-
1 The Lord Mayor told James that he could not answer for the City, "for
if there was one for there were three against him", and James threatened to
turn the guns of the Tower on the city if there was any disturbance.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685: MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 275
merit and not by prorogation, so that Parliament could resume the Bill
at the stage it had reached and might perhaps be induced to drop the
objectionable clause. But Parliament reassembled in November in a
very different mood, and nothing more was heard of the Bill. The
House of Commons had so far shown itself entirely irresponsible in
matters of finance and blind in its attachment to the interests of the
Crown; but in the vital matter of religion, in which James had hoped
for so much from it, it had entirely discouraged him from promoting
legislation.
The sudden death of his father was a cruel blow to Monmouth: as
long as Charles was alive he could harbour hopes of being recalled from
exile 1 and received back into favour, but he was convinced that James
was implacable. He was at The Hague when the news arrived, actually
at William's house ; he left at once, but returned at ten at night and was
closeted with William until midnight. He later left his own house
secretly and was at first thought to have left The Hague, but Bentinck
had taken him in. As a result of the good advice which he got from
William and Bentinck, Monmouth drafted a letter to James,
which was conceived in very respectful terms and in which he
professed most perfect obedience and entire fidelity and asked
pardon for everything he had done.
He showed this letter to William, who entirely approved of it. That
James would have accepted the letter at its face value is not probable;
he conceived himself to have too long a score against his nephew to
trust him again without solid and tangible proofs of change of heart
and after a period of probation. But James was never put to the
test: Monmouth decided not to send the letter, but trusted to his
Duchess who could have no motive of kindness for him to use her
good offices with the King. He drifted away from The Hague and from
the orbit of William's good influence, and into the influence of the Whig
exiles ; they, like Shaftesbury before them, filled his vacant head with
glorious aspirations and led him on to an enterprise which could result
only in the ruin of himself and his followers.
The expeditions of both Argyll and Monmouth were organised at
Amsterdam and with the connivance, if not the assistance, of the
burgomaster of that city; and the incompetent Skelton failed to prevent
1 There appears to be no evidence that Charles communicated with Mon-
tnouth in the last months of his life. Orders were issued to the king's representa-
tives abroad to abstain from recognising Monmouth in any way, and Charles
reproached both William and the Elector of Brandenburg for receiving him.
This official attitude may have been due to pressure by James and may not
have reflected Charles's real feelings.
276 KING JAMES II
cither fleet from putting to sea because he had not taken the trouble to
master the intricacies of the administrative system of the United
Provinces, and because in each case he applied so late to the Admiralty
of Amsterdam that they were able to reply that the ships had sailed and
were no longer within their jurisdiction. William could have saved
Skelton from these errors, and Avaux was convinced that William had
deliberately avoided doing anything to frustrate the plot; he wrote to
Louis saying that Argyll could not possibly have organised his con-
spiracy and collected arms without the connivance of William, that
William had not shown a proper eagerness in James's interests when the
plot became known, and that he had insisted on certain modifications
in the memorial which Skelton was going to present to the States-
General, these modifications being in the interest of the principle of right
of asylum, and hence in that of the English rebels ; Avaux was also firmly
convinced that Bentinck was deep in the plot and that he would not have
kept his activities a secret from William. 1
At first glance, it appears that Avaux was in this instance justified
in his suspicions, and it is almost incredible that William did not know
what was going on and that he might not have taken more active steps
in James's interests. The key of the mystery is probably in the character
of Skelton: he appears not only not to have asked William to advise him,
but to have been so confident of his own powers that he gave William
no chance of offering advice. For the evidence against William's com-
plicity is complete. Barrillon, indeed, wrote on May n that he had done
all he could to increase James's suspicions that William had not behaved
well about Argyll's expedition, that James had agreed, but had said
that he must for the present conceal his opinions, and that he had
declared in Council that if certain persons had in the late reign done
their duty in respect of the exiles in Holland they would not now be
discussing measures to resist their invasion a plain hint at William's
former relations with Monmouth. But James was deceiving the am-
bassador, and his remark in Council was a rather indiscreet allusion
to a grievance which no longer existed. The whole tone of James's
correspondence with William is that of perfect confidence on the one
side and eagerness to help on the other. William used all his influence
to persuade the States-General to send to England first the Scottish
and later the English regiments which were in Dutch pay, and made
repeated offers of his personal services and of those of his officers;
and on June 25 his friend Bentinck embarked for England with most
1 Avaux wrote on July 5, the day before Sedgemoor, that one could judge
by the whole conduct of the Prince of Orange that he was not displeased that
Monmouth had made trouble in England, but that he had not given him suf-
ficient help to ensure success a curious example of diplomatic subtlety.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 277
cordial messages for James. James's replies to these approaches are also
extremely cordial ; on June a he wrote :
I take very kindly of you what you offer concerning yourself;
but besides that you cannot be spared from where you are, the re-
bellion of Argyll is not considerable enough for you to be troubled
with it. However I am as much obliged to you as if I had accepted
of the offer you made as to yourself.
On June 30 and July 3 he repeated his thanks for William's offers of
service and for what he had done in the matter of the despatch of the
regiments, and on July 19 Queen Mary wrote:
The kind message you sent to the King by Mr. Bentinck, and
your good wishes, I believe brought us good luck, for, God be
thanked, here is the end of all troubles and in such a manner as
that we may never hope to see the like again as long as we live. I
have desired this bearer to give you a thousand thanks for all the
marks you give of your friendship both by him and in your letter.
I am extremely pleased with it and desire nothing more than the
continuance of it, of which I will not doubt being resolved to show
myself upon all occasions truly and sincerely yours.
More direct evidence of William's fidelity to James is not wanting.
In Monmouth's letter to James after he had been taken in the New
Forest appears the significant passage:
The Prince and Princess of Orange will be witness for me of the
assurance I gave them that I would never stir against you.
A number of letters passed between William and Bentinck in June
and July 1685, when Bentinck was on his mission to James. These
were naturally of a confidential character, but they could have been
shown to James without furnishing excuse for suspicion. Throughout
the correspondence William shows himself eager for the defeat of
Monmouth 1 and actuated by no other motive than to secure the assist-
ance of James in the impending struggle with Louis ; Bentinck's letters
show clearly his conviction that the interests of James and William
were identical. 2
1 E.g., "We have heard the good news of the capture of Argyll ; God grant
that we may soon have the same news of the rebels in England".
* A curious point which emerges from this correspondence is that Bentinck
says that James suspected Louis of having assisted Monmouth ; this suspicion
had been in William's mind a month or more earlier, and he had mentioned it to
Skelton; it is, of course, open to William's detractors to say that his suspicion
was simulated.
278 KING JAMES II
James himself was no more unduly apprehensive of the results of
Monmouth's expedition than he had been of Argyll's: four days after
the landing at Lyme he wrote to Queensberry, "I shall do well enough
with the rebel Monmouth". But he did not lay his plans with efficiency
and circumspection. The chief muddle was in the matter of the command-
in-chief. The original intention apparently had been to give this to
Churchill, and to him Sunderland wrote on June 15 that certain orders
given to Kirke are not to his prejudice, "for His Majesty will give
particular orders to the troops which shall follow that they obey Your
Lordship". 1 Again on June 18 Sunderland wrote still more definitely
to the Duke of Somerset, "The King , . . commands me to let you know
that he has appointed Lord Churchill to command his forces which
are marched down to the West. ..." But the following day the
Secretary wrote telling Churchill without preamble or excuse that he
had been superseded by Feversham:
The King commands me to acquaint you that he has made the
Earl of Feversham Lieutenant-General. . . . He also thinks it
for his service that the Earl of Feversham should command in
chief, wherever he is, as well the militia as the King's forces.
It seems clear that, while Churchill was employing his unmatched
military talents in the West of England, Feversham and his friends had
been busy at Whitehall, and that James, in Churchill's absence, had been
led to believe that Feversham had superior claims to the command.
It is true that James had been Churchill's first and only patron and that
Churchill had owed his rise in great part to James; but, on the other
hand, he had given James single-minded service for a number of years,
and he should not have been suddenly laid aside in this callous manner
for another favourite. A great deal has been said of Churchill's dis-
loyalty to James at the Revolution, but little about James's flagrant
disloyalty to Churchill : another example of the Stuart tendency to accept
personal service as something due to themselves for which no gratitude
need be paid.
Monmouth had chosen his place of landing well, for the West of
England was at the best lukewarm in James's interest, and the militia,
which was the only military force available in those counties at short
notice, was neither efficient nor anxious for the defeat of the invader.
But as soon as regular troops could be brought into the field the result
was not in doubt, and the rout of Sedgemoor on July 6 placed Mon-
1 Churchill had been raised to the peerage as Baron Churchill at the
coronation.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 279
mouth and all his followers at James's mercy. 1 Monmouth wrote to the
King, and to everyone else who could be expected to influence the King,
in a vain hope to save his life. But there could be no mercy for him ;
for not only had he waged war against the King, but he had taken upon
himself the name of King, and was doubly guilty of high treason. Mon-
mouth begged James to grant him a personal interview, saying that he
had information to give him which was for his ear only, and James very
weakly granted the request which, as his biographer naively admits,
"he should not have done unless he had been disposed to pardon him'*.
There were many alternatives : he could, for instance, have offered him a
choice of any one of those in the royal confidence as an intermediary.
James does not appear to have been unduly distressed by the interview;
he was no doubt disappointed to find that Monmouth had offered in-
formation merely as an excuse for getting an opportunity to plead for his
life; but he should certainly have had a finer sense of the consideration
due to a man condemned to death, for he allowed himself (or so it
appears) to lose his temper. Sir John Bramston, who is in general a
reliable witness, with a lawyer's dislike for unsupported rumours, says:
I have been told the King asked him how he could expect pardon
that had used him so, "To make me a murderer and poisoner of my
dear brother, besides all the other villainies you charge me with in
your declaration". To which Monmouth replied, "Ferguson
drew it and made me sign it before ever I read it". That so angered
the King that he said, "This is trifling: would you sign a paper
of such consequence and not read it?" So he turned from him and
bid him prepare to die.
James's own account of the interview is given in a letter to William
of July 14:
I have yours of the 17 (7th), and now the Duke of Monmouth
is brought up hither with Lord Grey and the Brandenburger.
The two first desired very earnestly to speak with me as having
things of importance to say to me, which they did, but did not
answer my expectations in what they said to me; the Duke of
Monmouth seemed more concerned and desirous to live, and did
not behave himself so well as I expected nor as one ought to have
expected from one who had taken upon him to be Kong. I have
signed the warrant for his execution tomorrow. For Lord Grey,
he appeared more resolute and ingenious [ingenuous] and never so
1 James very surprisingly commends highly Monmouth's generalship in the
campaign of Sedgemoor "he had not made one false step'*,
280 KING JAMES II
much as once asked for his life; his execution cannot be so soon
by reason of some forms which are requisite to be complied with. 1
In his memoirs, touched up no doubt in the light of subsequent events,
James said that he had heard from one of their intimates that Mon-
mouth and William had been working together and that he expected
from Monmouth at the interview information which would establish
William's complicity.
The suppression of Monmouth's rebellion was followed by the orgy
of judicial massacre known as the Bloody Assizes. Horrible as the carnage
was, it does not seem to have awakened public reprobation at the time.
The many pamphlets which recounted the names and sufferings of the
victims were published in the winter of 1688-9 (concocted mainly by
Tutchin and Danton and sponsored by Gates), and were part of the
revolutionary propaganda ; it was not until many years later that English
public opinion would have disapproved of any degree of severity against
rebels taken with arms in their hands. The contemporary diaries place
very little emphasis on the assizes which Jeffreys conducted in the
West; Sir John Reresby does not mention them at all, Bramston gives
them a short passing reference, Anthony Wood gives the numbers and
in another place says without comment that 700 of the prisoners were
transported and forty or fifty pardoned, "the rest have been executed
in several places of the three counties to terrify others from doing the
like hereafter", and Evelyn appears to have thought that the "severities"
of Jeffreys in the West were of small account in comparison with those
he had previously committed in Westminster Hall. Perhaps the most
striking remark known to have been made at the time was that of Sir
Edward Seymour in the House of Commons :
This last rebellion has contributed to our future peace, and those
engaged in it have sung their penitential psalms and their punish-
ment rejoiced at by all good men;
and Seymour, though he was usually classed as a Tory, was by no
means a hearty royalist; moreover, his home was in the West, and
he must have been acquainted with some of the victims. In the same
vein Sir Charles Lyttleton wrote to Lord Hatton on October 7, 1685,
after describing the disgusting sight all over the countryside of the
rotting heads and limbs of the victims :
1 Forde Lord Grey of Werk and created by William Earl of Tankerville
was son of a regicide and suspected of complicity in the Rye House Plot; he
was second in command to Monmouth, and his general of horse ; he was allowed
to compound for his life by the forfeiture of his estates. If he had been put to
death, his fortune would have gone to his brother.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 281
Those who suffered here were so far from deserving any pity,
at least most of 'em and those of the best fashion . . . that they
showed no show of repentance as if they died in an ill cause but
justified their treason and gloried in it.
James and Jeffreys subsequently attempted to shift responsibility
for the Bloody Assizes upon each other, but they would have done
better to have kept quiet: their disclaimers were entirely uncon-
vincing, and the current opinion after the Revolution, except among
the relatives and friends of the victims, was that, though the punish-
ments had been excessive, there was nothing much in them to com-
plain about: "for though the executions were by law just, yet never
were the deluded people all capitally punished"; Jeffreys gloried in
his butchery; when his campaign was drawing to a close he wrote to
James from Bristol:
I will pawn my life and that which is dearer to me, my loyalty,
that Taunton and Bristol and the County of Somerset too shall
know their duty to God and their Bong before I leave them;
and on the previous day, in his charge "at the City of Bristol ... in
his return, from his Western Campaign", he had employed similar
language.
James was so little concerned at the time that he left London on
September 14 to visit Winchester and Portsmouth. He wrote two letters
to William in which he alluded to the trials of the rebels as a mere matter
of routine. On September 10 he wrote:
Lord Chief Justice is making his campaign in the West and when
the parliament meets some of the peers which are in custody will
be tried ;
and on September 24:
As for news there is little stirring except that Lord Chief Justice
has almost done his campaign; he has already condemned several
hundreds, some of which are already executed, more are to be and
the rest sent to the plantations.
His defence as stated in his memoirs reads :
The punishment of Monmouth's followers raised discontents.
A Commission of oyer and terminer was issued to the Lord Chief
Justice Jeffreys to go down into the West and inflict such punish-
ments as the example of former reigns and the security of the
present seemed to require. But imprudent zeal, or some said avarice
282 KING JAMES II
carried him beyond the terms of moderation and mercy, and he drew
great obloquy upon the King's clemency, not only in the number
but in the manner too of several executions and in showing mercy
to so few . . .
and he goes on to say that he had attempted to balance the "imprudent
zeal" which he had expected Jeffreys to show by sending with him
four other judges as well as the Whig Pollexfen as solicitor, and
concludes:
After all this care and foresight His Majesty had reason to
acquiesce in what had been done, though it was a great disservice
to him at bottom.
The Jesuit Father d'Orlans, to whom James supplied information,
wrote in similar terms :
Many others were punished and a great many more than the
King had intended. ... It is said . . . that punishment or
pardon was not meted out according to the greater or less gravity
of the crime, but that those who had least means to buy themselves
off paid most dearly and that if many lost their lives it was because
few had enough money to preserve themselves. The King was
informed of the irregularity too late, but no sooner had he learned
of it than he showed his indignation ; and if he was obliged to spare,
on account of the services they had rendered, those who had been
accused of it, he repaired, as far as he could, the injustices they had
committed by a general pardon to those of the rebels who were still
able to profit by it.
Apart from his letters to William already quoted, there can be no
doubt that James was fully informed of the details of the Assizes and
could at any time have put a stop to the carnage. Letters to him from
Jeffreys are extant from Dorchester on September 5 and 7, from Taunton
on September 19 and from Bristol on September 22, and these appear
to be only part of a regular correspondence. Churchill was a spectator
of the trials at Taunton, and went straight from there to the King;
it is unlikely, from the well-known mildness of his nature, that he
expressed to James anything but disgust at what he had seen.
Nor can there be any doubt that at the time James furnished positive
evidence of his approval of the Bloody Assizes. Sir John Bramston
records that he was present on October 3, when he saw "the Western
judges come all together to the King and kissed his hand and had His
Majesty's thafiks". The elevation of Jeffreys to the peerage took place
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 283
before Monmouth's rebellion, and his appointment as Lord Chancellor
had no doubt been decided on immediately on the death of Lord
Keeper Guilford, and before the Assizes opened, so that neither can be
regarded as a reward for his services in the West. But the entire absence
of any record of James's disapproval at the time of the excessiveness
of the punishments is significant: it is hardly conceivable that if he had
expressed himself in this sense the fact would not have been mentioned
in one or more of the contemporary memoirs, diaries and letters which
have come down to us.
But those who indiscriminately condemn the inhumanity of the
Bloody Assizes are lacking in historical perspective: the events of the
seventeenth century must not be judged by the moral standards of the
twentieth. The humane outlook of the modern Englishman dates from
the end of the eighteenth century; no doubt James was callous and
insensible and Jeffreys sadistic and corrupt, in comparison with their
own contemporaries, but it is idle to blame them for not being a hundred
years ahead of their time. Throughout the eighteenth century the death
penalty and transportation were inflicted for what we should call venial"
offences, and no one can call rebellion a venial offence. Sixty years after
the Bloody Assizes such of the rebels as were taken after- the Battle of
Culloden drew lots ; one in twenty was hanged and the rest sent to the
plantations. Monmouth had about 6000 men at Sedgemoor, and the
estimate generally accepted of the number hanged is in the neighbour-
hood of 300 j 1 nearly 1000 were transported, and a number were
flogged and otherwise punished. In both rebellions a very large number
of the rebels evaded capture, and with this fact in mind it may be ad-
mitted that statistically Jeffreys was less merciful than his successor,
but the same principle was observed in the two cases.
What we are also apt to forget is that, except among the small minority
of the population who still kept alive the political ideas of the Common-
wealth, high treason was accounted the greatest of sins and the greatest
of crimes; the sovereign was next to God, and violence against him
came near to being the sin against the Holy Ghost. If James had kept
his crown until his death in 1701 we should have heard far less about
the Bloody Assizes. But in 1689 everyone was anxious to justify the
Revolution, and the Bloody Assizes provided an obvious objective
1 The latest biographer of Jeffreys, Mr. Montgomery Hyde, says (p. 223) :
"In the light of the Gaol Books [reprinted by F. A. Inderwick in Sidelights an
took place after Jeffreys' departure, was . . . less than 200 probably between
1 60 and 170,"
384 KING JAMES II
for an attack on James; the high-handed behaviour of Jeffreys in court,
his browbeatings of witnesses and juries, which had already earned him
the hatred of the people of London, gave additional point to the pam-
phlets which were produced. There was an opening for an answer to
this form of propaganda if anyone could have been found bold enough
and open-minded enough to write it; such an answer would have
pointed out that recent rebellions Penruddock's rising in 1654,
Venner's revolt, the northern plot of 1664 had been punished with
no less severity and that there had been browbeating judges before
Jeffreys Scroggs, for example, in the trials of Oates's plot. 1
By the defeat of Argyll and Monmouth and the dispersion and
massacre of their followers James had entirely rid himself of active
enemies. For better or worse, it was the turning-point of the reign.
A wiser man would have consolidated his position and rendered it
impregnable by rallying round the throne the best elements in the nation.
But James considered his position already impregnable, and was con-
fident that he could embark without hesitation on the policy on which
he had set his heart. The hour of his greatest apparent prosperity
was also the hour when he choose the path which led to his destruction;
during the first months of his reign he had, with occasional lapses,
been very careful to avoid giving offence; now that he had, as he
thought, gained the hearts of the nation, he grew prodigal and wasteful
of loyalty, and the remaining years of his reign provided a succession
of injuries and insults, to individuals and to categories of men, which
led eventually to his almost complete isolation.
His first trouble was with the Army. To the regiments raised to meet
Monmouth's rebellion he had appointed Catholic officers. He could
not plead that they possessed qualifications which could give them
preference over the many Protestant gentlemen who were ready to serve ;
for, except for the very few who had served abroad, they had been
excluded both from the King's troops and from the militia, and had had
no military experience. It was clear to everyone that the innovation was
in the interests of the Catholics and at the expense of such Protestants
as could look to the Army as a career. James was not unaware of the
1 Macaulay devotes some space at the end of his chapter on "The State of
England in 1685" to showing that "our ancestors were less humane than their
posterity*' ; but when he comes to treat of the Bloody Assizes the difference of
outlook of the English people of 1685 and of 1848 is entirely ignored: the bestial
cruelty of the punishments is regarded as the personal crime of Jeffreys, con-
nived at by James, and not, as it should have been, symptomatic, to a great
extent, of die age. All this is in accordance with Macaulay s historical method:
he had consigned James and Jeffreys to his Chamber of Horrors, and he was not
concerned with palliating their crimes.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 285
opposition he was arousing. On the day the Battle of Sedgemoor was
in progress, Barrillon described two interviews he had had with James :
James told him that the equality he aimed at between Catholic and
Protestant officers had annoyed a great many people, that he had not
intended to move in the matter so early, but Monmouth's rebellion
had given him a good opportunity which might never occur again.
In the second interview he gave the ambassador more details: he
had armed the Catholics in Ireland; in Scotland Lord Dumbarton
and the Duke of Gordon, both Catholics, were in command of the
army and of the militia; in England he had placed military commands
in the hands of Catholics as far as possible; this was to a certain extent
to "raise the mask", but, as he had said previously, he could not let so
good an opportunity pass ; he knew that he had shocked a great many
people, "but he would march straight forward, and nothing would
make him turn from the road he had chosen, if only the King of France
would assist him in so grand and glorious a plan" ; Hamilton's regiment
of dragoons were all Catholics; he had given troops of irregular cavalry
to Bernard Howard and to other important Catholics; he was gradually
attaining his object, and what he was now doing involved the free exercise
of the Catholic religion, and this liberty would be established in practice
before it was legally authorised by Parliament; James added that
Barrillon would agree that the eligibility for public employment would
make more Catholics than would the permission to celebrate Mass
publicly. Louis for his part thoroughly approved of James's measures
and plans for the future: he said that he could never expect such
concurrence from the nation as during the outburst of loyalty following
the defeat of the rebellion; 1 what neither monarch saw was that James's
action was the best possible means of ensuring that the outburst of
loyalty should not develop into a steady attachment to the Crown.
James now thought himself strong enough to dispense with Halifax.
He had hoped that love of office (which indeed the Marquis had in a
strong degree) would incline him to support the royal policy in Parlia-
ment, or at any rate to refrain from active opposition, but it had never
been intended to keep him in office indefinitely, for James distrusted
him, and had retained him at first merely to preserve a sense of mildness
and security and of continuity with the previous regime. Halifax was not
a party man, but he was immovable on certain principles which James
would have designated Whig ; though he was not opposed to a reason-
1 The first open defection from James was that of George Monck's son, the
second Duke of Albemarle, who claimed the, right to the Command-in-Chief
of the Army by a patent of Charles II, and was so incensed at the continuance
of Fevershatn in that office after the rebellion was crushed that he resigned all
his commands in the army.
286 KING JAMES II
able exercise of the prerogative, he had a great respect for law and the
rights of Parliament, and he was anti-Catholic and anti-French. At
the beginning of the reign James had given as a reason for taking the
initiative in summoning Parliament the certainty that Halifax and
Guilford would have pressed such a step on him a clear indication
that James had no hope of his support in his absolutist intentions.
According to Burnet (who is on the whole a reliable guide, though two
witnesses are always better than one), Halifax gave James occasion for
dismissing him by moving in Council "that an order should be given
to examine whether all the officers in Commission had taken the test
or not"; he did not find a seconder, and the motion dropped; but
James could not pass over so bold an expression of opposition on the
part of one of the highest officers of State. He did not, however, dis-
miss Halifax at once, but adopted a device which he was to employ
very freely later in his reign he put him to the question : he asked him
in private audiences whether he was prepared to support the repeal of
the Test Act and of the Habeas Corpus Act, and in effect threatened
him with dismissal if (as he expected) he gave a negative reply. But
the audiences passed off without heat on either side, and James did not
exhibit the irritability and asperity which marred so many of his acts
of State; and in this the credit must go in part at least to Halifax, who
no doubt carefully avoided saying anything to arouse the royal dis-
pleasure. He wrote to the Earl of Chesterfield:
I am very satisfied with my own method of not turning away
my master, but rather chose to receive his commands for my dis-
mission, which I did after two several audiences I had upon that
subject in which I received a great many kind words and took
leave of him very well satisfied in these two respects : that I neither
had anything laid to my charge, not so much as any hard words to
mortify me, nor any obligations laid upon me to lay any greater
restraint upon me than that which shall arise from my duty. . . .
I will only tell you in short that I have had a fair fall and am
turned away because I could not prevail with myself to promise
beforehand to be for taking away the Test and the bill of Habeas
Corpus.
Halifax had no suspicion that his dismissal had long been determined
on, and James on this occasion showed himself a competent actor,
good enough to deceive the most astute of his contemporaries.
Halifax's post of Lord President was promised to Sunderland in
addition to his Secretaryship of State, though the new appointment
was not officially announced until some weeks later. This advancement
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 287
was the outward and visible sign of the progress which Sunderland
had since the beginning of the reign been making in the royal favour.
As early as the middle of March, Barrillon had told Louis that Sunder-
land "seemed to be entirely informed of the plans of the King his
master" ; in July the ambassador noted that the Minister appeared to be
au courant with the discussions on religion which he had had with
James, and a little later James himself confirmed this surmise by telling
Barrillon that he had spoken on the subject of religion with less reserve
to Sunderland than to his other Ministers. Simultaneously the decline
of Rochester had commenced. Rochester told Burnet (no doubt some
years later) that the day of Monmouth's execution was the end of the
King's confidence in him: up to that time James had spoken to him
every morning about the business of the day, but subsequently the
conversation had been confined to Treasury business; Four months
later Barrillon found the first direct evidence that there was a connection
between the rise of the one Minister and the decline of the other; it is
probable that Sunderland commenced his attack on Rochester soon after
James's accession, when he found he could remain in office without
Rochester's assistance, but he kept his own counsel. In the middle of
November, Barrillon wrote to Louis a long letter mainly devoted to
Sunderland. He said that even the least observant people now recog-
nised that Sunderland had the chief place in the Ministry, that
Rochester was employed merely as a useful Treasury official, but
that even there James interfered freely in matters of detail, that Sunder-
land had given proof of his attachment to the French King, in contrast
to Rochester, who had a liaison with the Prince of Orange founded on
interests which could not change, and that Sunderland had told him a
story, which it was difficult to disbelieve, to the effect that Rochester
had advised William, through Henry Sidney, to come to England at any
cost and in spite of any objections James might raise, and had told him
that this was the only possible means of diverting the English Government
from the disastrous course which it was pursuing. Barrillon believed
that Sunderland's only possible motive for telling him this story was
to persuade Louis that Rochester was taking William's side against him;
it is more than possible that Barrillon was not Sunderland's only
confidant and that this story was effectual in undermining James's
confidence in Rochester. Barrillon said further that whereas Rochester
annoyed the Catholics by his zeal for the Protestant religion, they had
openly declared for Sunderland, and that the Jesuit Father Petre,
"who is very much in the King's confidence", has pointed out to
James "how important it is to honour and to reward a Minister who
serves him more faithfully and courageously than the others". Sunder-
2 88 KING JAMES II
land's policy henceforward was to work in close contact with the extreme
wing of the Catholic party led by Petre, with whom the Earl of Tyrconnel
and Lord Dover were associated; we hear nothing of direct dealings
between him and the moderate Catholics, the Capuchins, as Ailesbury
calls them (no doubt having in mind James's confessor, Mansuete),
whose leaders were the three Catholic lords who had narrowly escaped
death in Oates's plot: Powis, Arundel of Wardour and Belasyse.
For two years Sunderland was able to drift with his allies and to secure
himself in James's confidence; but when he saw disaster ahead and
attempted to save the ship of State from ruin by adopting more cautious
methods, they turned on him and prevailed on James to dismiss him.
James owed Sunderland a great debt of gratitude, for without Sunder-
land's able support the collapse of his plans would have occurred far
earlier than it did.
Foreign politics occupied a great deal of James's attention during the
last six months of 1685. In August he renewed with the States-General
the defensive treaty which Charles had concluded with them in 1678,
omitting, however, the guarantee for the Spanish Netherlands: this
renewal came to Louis as an unpleasant surprise, for it had been con-
ducted behind his back and neither Avaux nor Barrillon had heard more
than a rumour that negotiations were proceeding ; he was annoyed that a
treaty which had been avowedly aimed against France should have been
renewed when he and James were acting in concert. What caused
him the greatest anxiety was the possibility that James would make a
fresh treaty with Spain, and even that he would be drawn into the
league which William was forming to resist French aggression; he had,
however, the consolation of believing that James and William could
never be close friends. James did not seem to think that Louis had a
legitimate grievance; he said that the renewal of the Dutch treaty was a
mere formality, and that it was a contribution to the general peace.
Barrillon, though he told Sunderland that it was rather a plan for
war than a defensive treaty, reassured Louis on the other points: he
said that James showed no inclination to include Spain and Branden-
burg in the agreement with the States-General, and that he was hostile
to the league against aggression. In September Barrillon reported that
James had annoyed the Dutch ambassadors by maintaining at Court,
in a voice loud enough to be overheard, that the Calvinist princes were
opposed to his interests and were the enemies of all monarchy. Early
in October he told Barrillon that the Minister of the Elector of Branden-
burg was endeavouring to make an alliance between the Elector and the
States-rGeneral, that the Northern Powers and certain of the German
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 289
princes would be invited to join this alliance, and that there was thus
every appearance of a project for a Protestant league, hostile to France,
which the House of Austria would regard with favour. When the
League of Augsburg was formed in July 1686, James was not a member,
nor, in spite of Louis's apprehensions, had he ever had the least in-
tention of joining the League.
Skelton's uneasy embassy at The Hague was ended by an incident
in October 1685 which brought to a head William's persistent dislike
of James's envoy, and which exhibits James's entire lack of personal
sympathy and inability to appreciate another man's point of view.
William intercepted a letter in cipher to Skelton from Dr. Covell,
Princess Mary's chaplain, in which he described William's household
in very scandalous terms, alleging among other things that "none but
pimps and bawds must expect tolerable usage here"; and on enquiry it
was found that other members of the household were engaged with
Covell in supplying Skelton with information. Now, it may be admitted
that Mary was made unhappy by William's intimacy with Elizabeth
Villiers, one of her maids of honour, but it cannot be maintained that
he was dissolute according to the standards of the time, or that Dr.
Covell, in his anxiety to earn his pay as a spy, was not guilty of gross
exaggeration. But apart from the truth of the allegations, there can be
no question that James's conduct in receiving secret reports from one
of William's servants was quite indefensible. He, however, could see
no validity in the strong protest which William made; Barrillon re-
presents him as incensed by this protest and as saying:
The Prince of Orange shows clearly his bad will towards him
when he is so much upset by the knowledge that his minister is
informed of what goes on in the house of his daughter and son-
in-law.
Nevertheless he consented to withdraw Skelton as soon as he had
wound up the business of his embassy. There was difficulty in finding a
successor who would be acceptable to William but who would not attach
himself to William's interests, and it was not until ten months later that
the post was filled by the appointment of Sir Ignatius White, Marquis
d'Albeville.
James had great hopes of the Parliament on its reassembly after
adjournment, and in this opinion he was supported by Louis, but these
hopes merely provide further evidence that neither of them had even
a rudimentary knowledge of the psychology of Parliament. Barrillon
290 KING JAMES II
was a little less sanguine, but he had no contacts outside the narrowest
Court circles, and he saw little that was not on the surface; he wrote:
Although the greater number of Members of Parliament appear
to be well-intentioned to His Majesty, the Test and Habeas Corpus
Acts are regarded by all the English as the ramparts of the Pro-
testant religion and of the privileges of the nation. The King
hopes to succeed in getting them repealed; but unless he can hope
to succeed it will be imprudent to make the attempt and to find
himself obliged to dissolve parliament without getting what he
considers necessary for the consolidation of his authority.
In the event, in the short period of ten remaining days of the session
the Habeas Corpus Act was not even mentioned and the Test Act only
by implication, and the only subjects which came up for discussion
in the House of Commons were the necessity for a standing army and
supply for its support, and the employment of Catholic officers.
On November 9 James opened proceedings with a long speech: he
congratulated Parliament and himself on the suppression of Monmouth's
rebellion, but he drew the moral that Monmouth's early successes had
revealed the necessity for the strengthening of the defences of the
nation and he asked for a supply for the purpose of increasing the
standing army; he was very explicit and uncompromising on the subject
of the Catholic officers ; he recognised, no doubt, the advantage of having
the first word on a question that was certain to be raised :
Let no man take exception that there are some officers in the
army not qualified according to the late tests for their employ-
ments; the gentlemen, I must tell you, are most of them well
known to me, and having formerly served with me on several
occasions and always approved the loyalty of their principles by
their practice. I think them now fit to be employed under me;
and I will deal plainly with you that after having had the benefit
of their services in such a time of need and danger I will neither
expose them to disgrace nor myself to the want of them if there
should be another rebellion to make them necessary to me. I
am afraid some men may be so minded to hope and expect that a
difference may happen between you and me on this occasion, but
when you consider what advantages have arisen to us in a few
months by the good understanding we have hitherto had, what
wonderful effects it hath already produced in the change of the whole
scene of affairs abroad, so much more to the honour of the nation
and the figure it ought to make in the world, and that nothing can
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH*S REBELLION 2QI
hinder a further progress in this way to all our satisfactions but
fears and jealousies amongst ourselves, I will not apprehend that
such a misfortune can befall us as a divison or but a coldness
between me and you, nor that anything can shake you in your
steadiness and loyalty to me, who by God's blessing will ever
make you returns of all kindness and protection with a resolution
to venture even my own life in the defence of the true interest of
this kingdom.
The debate on the Address opened on November 12, and it was clear
from the outset that the opposition Jiad grown in courage and in
numbers and were no longer afralr of challenging divisions. Their
first spokesman was Sir Thomas Clarges, who sketched the earlier
history of their Parliament: the King had promised to preserve the
government as established by law in Church and State and to maintain
the nation in its rights and privileges, and, acting on this promise, they
had hastily granted to the King a special supply and a revenue far in
excess of his needs four millions at once and 1,900,000 a year, when
the whole expenses of government, including the cost of the Army on
its present footing, was only 1,300,000 ; he then reverted to the debates
on the Exclusion Bills, and reminded the House that what was then
feared was already coming to pass that a popish successor would have
a popish army. In spite of this plain speaking and of the obvious lack
of necessity for the money, the House decided that they had better
attest their loyalty by granting supplies before discussing the more
questionable parts of the Bang's Speech. After suggestions ranging
from 200,000 to 1,400,000, a compromise figure of 700,000 was
accepted; 1 in the intervals of other business Grand Committee pro-
ceeded to apportion the sum among various new taxes, and immediately
after this vote it was decided, by 183 votes to 182, to postpone further
discussion on supply until the question of the retention of the Catholic
officers had been discussed. By implication the House accepted the
principle of a standing army, though (as Seymour pointed out) there
was no more need for it than there had been in the previous reign,
and in spite of a vigorous effort to get over the difficulties and dangers
which the King had mentioned by improving the militia. 2
But in the matter of employment of Catholic officers in the Army
1 Even this moderate sum was voted only by 21 3 to 193, so great had been
the increase in the number of the opposition from James's original estimate
of forty.
4 No one seems to have detected the fallacy in James's argument: Mon-
mouth's early success was due not to the small numbers of the King's troops,
but to their distance from his place of landing.
KING JAMES II
both Houses were uncompromising. 1 To many, no doubt to Halifax
and to Compton and the other bishops, for example the question
was purely one of principle not a very high principle as it appears to
the modern observer the preservation of the rights of the Church
of England. The motives of others were mixed : they were either them-
selves officers in the Army or had sons or other relations in the Army,
and they had a vested interest in preserving commissions to churchmen.
This consideration did not appear in the debates, and it is one which the
members themselves would not have admitted, and the mention of
which they would have keenly resented; but it certainly contributed to
the acrimony of some of the speeches. The situation was comparable
to the indignation roused recently in the House of Lords when in the
debate on the Coal Bill (1938) the Lord Chancellor
urged their lordships to be very sure before they voted against
the second reading of the Bill that their own personal interests
did not influence that course.
In both cases there was a higher principle than personal interest behind
the action of the members, but in both cases, unconsciously perhaps,
the attitude of some of them was in part due to personal considera-
tions. Certainly James's House of Commons was more vehemently
opposed to the employment of Catholic officers than to the establish-
ment of a standing army, although a standing army would have in-
creased the demand for officers. On the other hand, it was generally
understood in the House that members who were officers in the Army
who voted against the Court interest would forfeit their commissions,
and this apprehension no doubt decreased the opposition vote.
The King's Ministers were unable to resist the evident desire of the
House that an Address to the King regarding the Catholic officers
should be drawn up; all that was open to them was to endeavour
to make the Address as mild and innocuous as possible. A proposal
that the House should acquiesce in the continued employment of those
Catholics who already held commissions, on the understanding that no
further unqualified officers would be appointed, was rejected, but a
certain success was achieved by the alteration of the uncompromising
words "that His Majesty would be pleased not to continue them in
1 Indeed, here James failed to carry with him moderate Catholic opinion.
The Earl of Ailesbury in his memoirs recalled the consternation with which the
news of James's speech was received by Lord Belasyse : "That evening, accord-
ing to custom, I went to visit my worthy friend and kinsman the Lord Belasyse,
who seldom stirred out, being so infirm in his limbs. My Lord Belasyse, who
was in a great chair, took me by the hand saying 'My dear Lord, who could be
the framer of this speech? I date my ruin and that of all my persuasion from
day/ "
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH*S REBELLION
their employments" to "we therefore do humbly beseech Your Majesty
that you would be pleased to give such directions therein that no
apprehensions or jealousies may remain in the hearts of Your Majesty's
good and faithful subjects"; another concession was that to those
officers who had accepted commissions without taking the oaths an
act of indemnity was promised.
It then appeared to the promoters of the Address that its weight
would be enormously increased if it went to the King as an Address
of both Houses, and not merely of the House of Commons; they
accordingly moved that the Address should be sent up to the Lords
and that they should be invited to join in it. The Court party had no
doubt whatever that the feeling against the Catholic officers was even
stronger in the Lords than it was in the Commons, that the Address
would have an easy passage in the Upper House, and that a joint Address
of the two Houses would be less easy to reject than one which came from
the Commons alone. By a skilful effort of parliamentary finesse they
secured the rejection of the motion by 212 to I38. 1 The following day,
November 17, the Commons went in a body to present the Address
to the King, who was at no pains to conceal his annoyance at their
presumption.
James had not the excuse which he had later when the bishops
presented their petition, that he had been taken by surprise : he was well
aware of what had been going on in the Commons and he should have
been prepared to behave with dignity and courtesy. But his impetuous
self-confidence drove him on, and without giving himself time for re-
flection, he went next day to the House of Commons and delivered an
outrageous speech; he said:
I did not expect such an address from the House of Commons,
having so lately recommended to your consideration the great
advantages a good understanding between us had produced in a
very short time and given you warning of fears and jealousies
amongst yourselves. I had reason to hope that the reputation
God had blessed me with within the world would have created
and confirmed a greater confidence in you of me and of all that
I say to you; but however you proceed on your part I shall be
steady in all my promises I have made to you and be very just to
my word in this and all my speeches.
This abrupt and undignified utterance does not bear examination.
The least the Commons could expect was a reasoned and courteous
1 These arc the numbers given by the Commons Journals, which should be
the best authority; but Cobbett*s Parliamentary History gives 216 to 204.
2Q4 KING JAMES II
reply; what they received was an injunction to acquiesce in whatever
measures the King was pleased to take, followed (if the report of the
speech is correct) by a jumble of words conveying no sense. No more
gross affront could have been given to the representatives of the
nation, and the offensiveness of the words was enhanced by the haughty
and angry tones in which they were delivered.
On the Bang's withdrawal "deep silence and demur" fell on the
members, and "each in others' countenance read his own dismay,
astonished". Then followed an incident of great interest to the student
of the psychology of deliberative assemblies, and particularly of this
unique Parliament. Thomas Wharton rose in his place and moved that
on the following Friday (November 20) the House should take His
Majesty's answer into consideration; he was seconded by John Coke,
the approved royalist member for Derby and a captain in the Army,
who added to the formal words of a seconder the famous statement,
"We are all Englishmen and we ought not to be frighted out of our duty
by a few high words". Now, it can hardly be doubted that this little
speech exactly represented the private sentiments of the majority
of the members ; but that House of Commons, nominated as it was in
the main by the King, could by no means tolerate anything which
savoured of personal disrespect to the sovereign "every man that spake
did it with great tenderness and reverence to the King". Poor Coke
obtained no support whatever; he made a half-hearted attempt to deny
that the words attributed to him were correct, and Sir John Talbot
proposed that he should be made to ask pardon of the House and
to receive a reprimand from the Speaker; but the sense of the House
was for severe measures and, at the suggestion of Lord Preston and
Lord Middleton, Coke was sent to the Tower. His outburst brought
about a reaction of feeling in the House disastrous to the cause which
he was supporting, for though Seymour and Clarges tried to revive
the resentment engendered by James's speech, the heart was taken
out of the opposition ; they did not even press for a division on Wharton's
motion, and the House, after an adjournment, returned to the business
of providing the supply of 700,000 which they had voted. But for
Coke's ill-advised intervention it is possible that the House would
have postponed the grant of supply to the redress of grievances, and the
stage would have been set for a struggle similar to those of Charles I
with his Parliaments, with the difference, however, that James was
financially much better placed than his father, and would not have
hesitated to silence opposition by prorogation or dissolution.
Meanwhile James was attending the debates in the House of Lords
with slight enjoyment. To a man of his hot and impatient temperament
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH*S REBELLION 295
it must have been a great strain to keep silent while one lord after another,
under forms of deep respect, lectured him (by implication) on his failure
to obey the law "he was much concerned at the plainness which was
used in this debate". The Court party had hurried through the House
an Address of thanks for His Majesty's gracious speech on the reopening
of Parliament, and had hoped by that manoeuvre to prevent discussion
upon it. Halifax replied caustically that giving the King thanks for his
Speech was a matter of common courtesy:
They had reason to thank His Majesty that he would speak to
them at all, but they ought (with) greater reason to thank him when
he spake plainly to them;
and the courtiers were overruled. A debate opened on a motion to
appoint a day to consider the King's Speech, and in that debate many
grave and weighty speeches were made. It was moved in a maiden
speech by Lord Mordaunt, that brilliant, unstable Whig who failed as a
politician because he could never serve loyally with a party but turned
against his friends and tried to betray them, but who as a general (and
as the third Earl of Peterborough) was to achieve a striking (if lucky)
success in the capture of Barcelona in 1705. He was followed by
the most responsible among the peers, Halifax, the Earl of Nottingham
whose Toryism was as sound as Rochester's the Earl of Anglesea,
the Marquis of Winchester, and others ; on the other side were Clarendon
and some peers whose names have not come down to us, and even they
had no word to say in favour of the King's Speech, but spoke only of
the irregularity of considering it when they had already given their
thanks for it. The speech which carried the greatest weight was that
of the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, who "spake long, calmly,
and with great respect and deference to His Majesty, yet very full and
home; and when he ended he said he spake the sense of the whole
bench, at which they (the rest of the bishops) all rose up". Compton
said, as was the feeling throughout the kingdom, that the appointment
of the Catholic officers was merely a prelude to the introduction of
Catholics into the higher posts of the civil administration and the trans-
formation of England into a Catholic state; the laws of England were
like the dykes of Holland, he said, and universal Catholicism like the
ocean if the laws are once broken, inundation would follow. Jeffreys
made a speech which he had cause to regret; he attempted the same
course with the lords that he had taken in the courts ; but the lords were
not to be brow-beaten, and the Earl of Devonshire replied to him in
such plain terms that he wept tears of mortification; the sentimental
side of his bullying nature came to the top, as it did in his last days in
296 KING JAMES II
the Tower when he professed penitence for his sins and plentifully
deceived the divines who visited him.
This was on Thursday, November 19, and it was decided to enter on
an examination of the Kong's Speech on the following Monday, but
James had heard enough about the popish officers; besides, it had been
proposed that the judges should be called in to advise upon the legal
aspect of the King's actions; James had had no opportunity of interrogat-
ing the judges and of supplanting such as would not give an opinion
in his favour, and the result might have been fatal to his plans if they
decided against his recent exercise of the prerogative. On Friday,
November 20, Jeffreys was sent to convey without speech or explanation
the royal will that Parliament should be prorogued to February 10.
By this sudden action James lost the grant of 700,000, an Act for which
the Commons were on the point of completing, but he could not bear
any more talk which implied *that he himself was under the law and
which insisted on the irrevocable privileges of the Church of England;
Barrillon was of opinion that he might have got the money and yet have
prorogued Parliament in time to prevent the Lords coining to a
decision, but James considered the risk too great. In any case, he was
in no real need of money; as Louis had told his ambassador, James was
richer than any of his predecessors.
The prorogation of Parliament James regarded as a personal triumph
to himself: Barrillon reported to Louis three days later:
The King of England is in excellent spirits and he congratulates
himself on having taken a dignified and firm part, which he thinks
should enhance his reputation at home and abroad.
He had no doubt that he had made both Houses feel the weight of
his displeasure and that when they reassembled they would be in a
more submissive mood. In a letter to William (accommodated to that
Prince's more democratic views) he said :
I am as sorry as you can be that I was obliged to prorogue the
parliament; I hope when they next meet they will be in better
temper and consider the true interest of the nation, and not be
deceived by some ill men who fill their ears with fears.
Louis, as usual, approved of James's high-handed dealings with his
Parliament; he thought that the mortification he had given them by
the prorogation would make them more amenable in a future session,
and he added:
However that may be, his firmness in retaining the Catholic
officers, and in refusing to suffer his co-religionists to remain
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685: MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 3Q7
exposed to the penal laws, can produce none but good effects for
his reputation and for the security of his government.
But Barrillon's view was the more correct one: he had been doing
his best (which in this case was not very much) to foment dissension
between the Parliament and the King, and he rejoiced that the proroga-
tion had confounded, at any rate for a time, the hopes which some people
had of an agreement between them. He said also that the members
of Parliament were not remorseful at having put James in a position
to do without them, and that they were pleased at being able to pose
before public opinion as strong upholders of the Protestant faith,
and had decreased their earlier unpopularity. There was, however,
more of the spirit of John Coke among the members than Barrillon
was aware of; the members cannot fail to have been outraged by the
successive brow-beatings which they had endured, and James's refusal,
at the expense of a large subsidy, to permit the question of religion
to be freely debated left them in no doubt as to his intentions in that
regard. James had rendered it impossible that as long as he was King
the same or another Parliament could sit, even a Parliament elected
by the methods of the first months of his reign. The only immediate
effect of the debates in these last days of James's only Parliament was
the dismissal from civil and military posts of a number of members
of both Houses whose conduct had displeased the King; the most
important sufferer was Compton, who was dismissed from the Privy
Council and ceased to be Dean of the Chapel Royal.
For a brief period at the beginning of the year 1686 James's mistress,
Catherine Sedley, was of political importance for the only time in her
life. On his accession James made the gesture of dismissing her, but he
had not been able to keep his pious resolutions, and it was well known
to those about the Court that he had been visiting her surreptitiously
for some months. On January 19 it suddenly became known that he had
created her Countess of Dorchester. The Queen (who may have been
unaware of the resumption of her relations with James) was highly
indignant, and made no effort to conceal her distress in public. Attempts
were made to convince the Queen that the Sedley affair was of no im-
portance, that the title was merely a farewell gift from James :
But when [writes Barrillon] it was known that she was to be a
countess and that she intended to appear at Court the Queen
was in great distress. She loves her husband sincerely and she is
very proud. . . . She declares she will under no circumstances
suffer the public scandal which it is proposed to perpetrate and that
2gS KING JAMES II
she will never receive the new countess ; and that, if the King does
not give her up, she will retire to a Convent.
James's Catholic advisers were also dismayed, for they not only
regarded with horror the scandal in the private life of a prince who had
made himself so conspicuous a champion of their Church, but they
apprehended that the new Countess would assume the position held in
the last reign by the Duchess of Portsmouth and influence James in the
Protestant interest 3 a baseless fear, for there is no evidence either that
James ever in public matters availed himself of female counsel, or that
Catherine had any ambitions beyond the ordinary feminine desires
for wealth and consequence. James was subjected to two concerted
attempts to compel him to break with Catherine. On one occasion
Mary asked him to come to her apartments, and when he entered he
found her surrounded by priests ; the priests all fell on their knees and
the Queen "broke out into bitter mourning for this new honour, which
they expected would be followed with the setting her up openly as
mistress". James was troubled; his experience of his wife had not led
him to expect so determined an attack; he pretended that the honour
had been conferred on Catherine as a parting gift, and promised to see
her no more; and when Mary said she had no belief in his promises, he
undertook to send Catherine out of the country. At another time
the initiative was taken by Father Gifford, later to be made one of the
four apostolic delegates and President of Magdalen ; he went to the King
in company with three Catholic lords, Tyrconnel, Dover and Arundel
of Wardour,
who all told him the advantage it gave to the enemy to retain a
Protestant mistress and desired him to set a mark on those men
who encouraged her and persuaded him to keep her. The King's
answer was that Father Gifford had spoken to him about the
Countess of Dorchester and that he took it very kindly from him,
being a very religious man and one who by his function was obliged
to take notice of it; but for their parts he said this was the first
time he took them for divines, and that he was sure they spoke not
out of religion but some private piques, and bid them for the
future not concern themselves with things that did in no way
relate to them.
In short, James chose to regard the matter as one exclusively of morals
(as indeed it was), and saw through the artifice of Sunderland and
Tyrconnel to use the occasion as a means of getting Rochester dismissed.
1 Catherine had also exasperated the priests by making them the butt of her
jests.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685: MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 299
For there can be little doubt that Sunderland, though he did not
initiate the agitation, carefully nourished it, and by working on the feel-
ings of the Queen and of the priests, succeeded in discrediting Rochester
in James's eyes ; for James, though he had occasional flashes of insight
in which he was aware that the constant hints against a Minister made by
a confidential servant had a definite personal motive, yet at the same time
was unable to resist the cumuktive effect of these hints. Later in the
same year, when Tyrconnel was dissatisfied with what Sunderland had
done for him, he blackmailed Sunderland by threatening
to expose to the King his league with Lord Dover and himself
and upon what promises it had been founded, the turning out
of Lord Rochester, that he himself was to be Lieutenant of Ireland,
Lord Dover to be a captain of the guards in England and a Lieu-
tenant-General . . . (and to the Queen) that the true motive of
removing Mrs. Sedley was to weaken Rochester and gain herself
to their party, and not the honour of religion; for that Sunderland
had assured them there was no leading the King, their main
interest, but by a woman, a priest, or both; that Her Majesty was
pitched on for the one and Father Petre for the other, who was
promised to be made a cardinal.
And Sheridan, who furnishes this account and by whom TyrconneTs
message was conveyed, adds that Sunderland changed colour and
said that Tyrconnel must be mad, but made no attempt to deny the
charges. What evidence there is that Rochester supported Catherine
or proposed to make use of her influence with James probably originated
with Sunderland, and is therefore of no value, but Rochester appears
to have played into the hands of his enemies in keeping aloof at the time
of crisis and in failing to express his sympathy with the Queen by
waiting on her.
The new Countess made as much trouble as possible ; she could be
persuaded to leave the country only by a threat of the forfeiture of her
pension, and she refused to go to any country where there were con-
vents, for fear that she would be kept in confinement in one of them, 1
and when at last she was induced to choose Ireland, she made excuses
for delay. The one thing she was bent upon was being received as a
countess by the Queen, and Mary Beatrice was equally determined not
to receive her.
1 She no doubt had in mind the fate of the Duchess of Northumberland,
whose husband, one of Charles's sons, took her to Flanders and immured her
in a convent; he produced a paper in her handwriting in which she said she had
taken the step of her own free will.
jOO KING JAMES II
You may easily imagine [writes someone unknown on January
28] what disorders and transports of passion such an unexpected
message would raise in her who was preparing for the Drawing
Room the next day and had everything in order as to clothes and
dress befitting her rank whilst she appeared before the Queen
to pay her humble duty and respects to Her Majesty.
And he adds :
All imaginable arguments were made use of to bring the Bang to
this resolution and the victory obtained does fill the hearts of all
virtuous ladies and honest wives with inexpressible joy, because
so solemn an act does generously attest all their matrimonial
privileges and liberties . . . [the Countess] is very well pleased
to live in her great house in the Square [St. James's] where she is
visited by the greatest lords and ladies in town, which makes the
Queen show her dislike of it to such ladies as come to her and visit
the Countess.
On February 17 the Countess of Dorchester set out for Ireland with
an equipage of four coaches and six, and arrived in Dublin on March 2. 1
There the Earl of Clarendon was at great pains to avoid reproach by
treating her with the barest courtesy: as Lord Lieutenant he could not
entirely ignore the presence of a person with the rank of a countess.
But Queen Mary was not in a mood to make allowances, and she nursed
an additional grievance against the Hydes. The Countess when she left
London had made no secret of her intention to return in three or four
months, and as early as the first week of April she was reported to be
making arrangements for permanent residence in London by having
her house in St. James's Square sumptuously furnished and by booking
a seat in the newly consecrated St. Anne's Church. She actually left
Dublin on her return journey on August 17. The Queen was naturally
indignant that the only result of all her trouble had been a short respite,
but James assured her that he would never see Catherine again, and this
time he convinced the Queen of his sincerity. But if he held to his re-
solution, it was only for a few months, and Catherine Sedley was not
the only woman admitted to intimacy. In May 1687 Bonrepaus found
that the King's promiscuous amours were known to a number of people
about the Court; he was said to be seeing women in his closet at White-
hall and at St. James's where he went without the Queen. In July
1 She appears at this time to have prepared for a final severance from James
by making her peace with the respectabilities; in Dublin she conspicuously
arrived first at Church.
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1685 : MONMOUTH'S REBELLION 301
Bonrepaus, after naming a particular lady who was seen to enter the
Bang's room secretly, related an incident that had happened at Windsor :
Three days ago he [James] went to London on the pretext of
visiting the Queen Dowager. It was known that he had constantly
seen this Countess of Dorchester during the past year. I was in
company with the Queen on the terrace and she was in a gay mood,
but when the hour had passed at which the King usually returns
she appeared distressed and tears came into her eyes, she was
unable to hide her suspicions. The King arrived very late, he saw
at once what the situation was and did all he could to appease the
Queen. Those who are accustomed to this sort of trouble know
that there will be no peace unless the Queen has her own way in
everything. She has not naturally great penetration but she is
jealous and sometimes she finds more than .she is looking for. She
often speaks of her jealousy which she says is common among
people of her country.
Mary Beatrice's jealousy must have been a constant worry to James
she was even jealous of his two sons by Arabella Churchill, whom he
brought to Court in September 1685 and acknowledged under the names
of James and Henry Fitzjames. She had also degenerated from her
behaviour as Duchess of York when, by her gracious manners, she had
done much to mitigate her husband's unpopularity, for she was now
remarkable for her haughtiness.
She made, moreover, undue use of her position to promote the
interests of her family, particularly of her uncle, Prince Rinaldo d'Este:
after having succeeded by her importunity in inducing the Pope to
make him a Cardinal, she obtained for him, an Italian, the salaried
post of Cardinal-protector of England and Scotland, and displaced
that excellent man Cardinal Howard, who had been looking after the
interests of English Catholics in Rome for eight years with universal
satisfaction, and against whom she could allege no fault. 1 Another foible
which caused some scandal at Court was her ungovernable temper:
1 See the letter of her secretary Caryll to Cardinal Howard:
"I have a particular command from the Queen to acquaint your
eminence how much Her Majesty is concerned lest you should attribute
to her any unkindness upon the account of transferring the Protectorship
of England to Cardinal d'Este. ... I can assure you that Her Majesty
has at present no less kindness for your person than ever formerly she
had. . . ."
Queen Mary's real grievance against Cardinal Howard was that in common
with the Pope, Adda and the majority of English Catholics he had counselled
moderation in James's religious policy.
302 KING JAMES II
she was said on one occasion to have boxed Lady Peterborough's ears,
and on the eve of the Revolution, when there was indeed some excuse
for rising passions, it was reported that when an officer told the King
that there would be no peace in the City until the Roman Catholic
chapels were abolished,
The Queen up with her hand and gave him a box on the ear
and then he went away, and she did the like to the Princess of
Denmark in her chamber, 1 which the King is troubled at.
But up to the time when he was convinced of William's intention to
invade England James's chief troubles were within himself. Of the
sincerity of the belief that attached him to the Church of Rome there
can be no question, and he was well aware that whenever he was with a
woman he was committing mortal sin; it is not possible to believe that
he achieved even temporary satisfaction. In a moment of expansiveness
he told Bonrepaus how much he envied King Louis's conquest of his
passions : "He is younger than I am, and yet I have not as much control
over my desires as he has". In the writings of his later years in the
Advice to his Son, the Prince of Wales, and the Papers of Devotion
remorse for his incontinence is a persistent theme ; but it was not the
usual remorse of the reformed rake. At about the age of forty, Burnet,
greatly daring, had pointed out the inconsistency of his religious
professions with his manner of life, and James had replied angrily, "Must
a man be of no religion unless he is a saint?" but that remark does not
represent his attitude when he came to the throne; by that time remorse
had become a habit of mind and, whatever face he showed the world,
in the secret places of his heart he was a very unhappy man.
" \ Princess Anne had, of course, left London before James returned from
Salisbury, so that the part of the story that refers to her is untrue. But these
stories would not have occurred casually in contemporary letters unless the
Queen had had a reputation for such outbursts.
CHAPTER III
THE MIDDLE YEARS
THE two-and-a-half years following the prorogation of James's only
Parliament was a period of small events and apparent repose* Every
single action of James tended to the same end : the improvement of the
position of the Catholic Church and of its members, and, though he
did not cease to encroach upon the civil privileges of the kingdom and
to use every endeavour to increase his prerogative, arbitrary govern-
ment was no longer merely an end in itself, but must also be re-
garded as a means of realising his religious aspirations. The success
which the King achieved in securing liberty of worship to the Catholics
and in putting the administration into their hands was very considerable,
but the cost at which this success was achieved was great out of all
proportion, and the tranquillity of the country was entirely illusory.
Every step that James took in favour of his religion either offended the
personal interest of an individual and increased the number of his
personal enemies, or outraged the Protestant prejudices of the nation.
Of the former there are innumerable instances ; and James's inability
to see that when loyalty is rewarded with disgrace it ceases in most
cases to exist is very remarkable, nor could he learn by experience and
refrain from repeating his mistakes : it was a perpetual surprise to him
that loyal subjects whom, as he said, he had loaded with benefits should
suffer, after insult or dismissal, a decline in loyalty. Of the outrages to
Protestant susceptibilities there can be few contemporary proofs, for
Parliament was in abeyance. 1 And, a few pamphlets printed in
Holland notwithstanding, there was no expression of public opinion
through the Press ; but it is not possible that the successive attacks on
the Church of England would be regarded with equanimity, that the
demonstrations in favour of the Seven Bishops could be other than a
culmination of the resentment gradually increasing in the previous
years, or that the outburst of hostility to James at the Revolution can
have been due to a sudden and violent revulsion of feeling.
By the beginning of the year 1686 Sunderland had established him-
self in power to the exclusion of all rivals. James had signified his
increasing reliance on his services by appointing him in December
1685 Lord President of the Council while retaining the post of principal
1 There are plentiful references from the first months of the reign in the
correspondence of the foreign envoys, particularly Barrillon and Terriesi,
with their Governments to these unexpressed and unco-ordinated discontents.
33
304 KING JAMES II
Secretary of State. For two years he held a position in the State even
more preponderant than any of his predecessors as chief Minister
Wolsey, Burleigh, Clarendon or Danby for he had complete control
of the King's sources of information: no public functionary could
approach James without Sunderland's permission, and James would
listen to no criticisms of his Minister. At the same time except in
certain departments in which the King took small interest Ireland, for
example Sunderland had very little real power: on the one hand he
was obliged to keep the favour of Father Petre and others, James's
religious advisers, and on the other he had to admit himself beaten at
all points by the King's obstinacy James wanted not advice but
obedience, and he employed Sunderland's abilities merely to devise
means for effecting what he had determined to do. Small heed need be
paid to Sunderland's contention after the Revolution that he had con-
sistently worked for the Revolution by advising James to take courses
which would inevitably ruin him; but he was no doubt sincerely
drawing on his own experience when he said (as reported) "that he
wondered anybody would be so silly as to dispute with kings". Of
James's complete confidence in Sunderland there is some little doubt.
Queen Mary, writing to her brother in August 1687, describes him as
"prime minister and favourite with the King above all others" and as
"my great friend", and Barrillon gives no hint that James did not
trust him completely ; but Bonrepaus, who endeavoured to look below
the surface, 1 thought that he was aware of his Minister's failings.
The Kong of England [he wrote in May 1687] well knows the
character of the Earl of Sunderland, that he is ambitious and
capable of sacrificing everything to his ambition, and although he
has not great confidence in him he makes use of him because he is
more devoted to himself than others are and that he gives his entire
support to his master's sentiments for the Catholic religion, though
for his part he professes no religion. 2
The figure of Father Petre dominated the reign of James II ; he worked
behind the scenes and left no letters ; but his character, although it
depends mainly on the evidence of hostile witnesses, can be safely
conjectured. He is said to have laid the foundations of his immense
influence at Court two years before James's accession, but it was not
1 Bonrepaus, however, was not infallible: as late as March 1686, when
Rochester's stock had sunk very low, he wrote, "I have not so great an idea
of Lord Sunderland's credit and I always believe that there is more solidity in
Lord Rochester's fortune".
* Macaulay quotes only the last sentence of this passage: "for his part he
professes no religion" and ignoring what has gone before concludes that in the
opinion of Bonrepaus James was entirely Sunderland's dupe.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 305
until the summer of 1686 that his name appeared prominently in
diplomatic and private correspondence. At that time he was said by
the Tuscan ambassador to dominate the Bang's mind and to be a man
to act without reflection and to aim at what could by no possibility be
achieved an accurate estimate of the sort of counsel which led James to
his ruin. Shortly after his flight James stated that Petre had never
given him any but good advice, but his considered opinion when he
wrote his memoirs was that he "was indeed a plausible but a weak man,
and had only the art by an abundance of words to put a gloss upon a
weak and shallow judgement". In July 1686 it was apparently James's
intention to appoint Petre to the Privy Council at the same time as he
appointed the four Catholic lords. Petre declined the honour, but before
the end of the year James gave him the lodgings at Whitehall which he
himself had occupied as Duke of York and promised him the charge
of the new chapel which was approaching completion. Sunderland
found Petre a necessary and useful tool: it was easy to play upon his
vanity and he was flattered with the notion that he would be made a
Cardinal and Archbishop of York. 1 Barrillon credited Petre with an
ambition to be a second Wolsey, and to add the dignity of Lord Chan-
cellor to those in the ecclesiastical heirarchy which he notoriously
coveted. But Petre seems to have been afflicted with a timidity
which frustrated his ambition : he was very much the poor cat in the
adage; Barrillon describes him as mortified by his obscurity, but he had
not the courage to appear openly. Besides, Sunderland was not at all
inclined to enable Petre to become his rival, and his backing of his
pretensions had little sincerity and was calculated rather to secure his
support than with a view to their success.
Petre's domination of James's mind was consummated by his success
in substituting the Jesuit Warner for the Capuchin Mansuete as Con-
fessor to the King. An intrigue against Mansuete had been on foot in
March 1686, but it was not until a year later that he was removed. It
was given out that the King thought it fitting that his Confessor should
be an Englishman: Barrillon says that the true reason for the change
was that Mansuete was suspected of immoral relations with his house-
keeper; but French intrigue was said to be behind the change, and little
heed need be paid to the accusation. It is more than likely that
1 It was widely suspected that James intended to make Petre Archbishop
of York, but the suspicion lacks confirmation. It is unlikely that he could have
contemplated so gross an affront to the Church of England; he would in any
case have had to prepare the way for it by the appointment of Catholics to
northern bishoprics. He did indeed keep the Archbishopric vacant from the
death of Dolben in April 1686 to the appointment of Lamplugh in November
1688, but the vacancy can be explained by the fact that the Treasury benefited
by about 1000 a year.
306 KING JAMES II
Mansuete counselled moderation and that his dismissal, following close
on that of Rochester, signified James's determination to get rid of every-
one near his person who was not prepared to support his forward policy
in religion.
James's first action in favour of the Catholics was taken when he had
been on the throne barely three months. On May u, 1685, he issued
a royal warrant to the Lord Treasurer to supersede and stay until
further orders all process against a number of loyal recusants that is to
say, those loyal recusants were for the present not to be fined for absence
from church ; on June i there was a similar order, with the addition
that all fines still in the receivers' hands and not yet paid into the
Treasury should be refunded, and this was followed on December i
by a list of over 100 persons to be similarly treated. On February 24,
1686, a warrant was issued in general terms for a stay of execution of all
fines and other punishments of loyal recusants until the King's pleasure
be known, and there was again on November 23 a long list of names of
those exempted.
The use of the adjective "loyal" in all these warrants is not very
ingenuous; the obvious implication is that exemption from recusant
fines should be a reward for service to the royal cause in the Civil War,
but with very few exceptions (or with none) the Catholics had fought
for Charles I and the Protestant Dissenters for the Parliament, 1 so
that the exemptions were a boon only to the Catholics. This distinction
is still further brought out by two warrants of March 7 and March 8,
1687. The former is in general terms of restoration and exemption
for "all recusants who have certificates of loyalty for themselves or of
their relatives*' ; the latter reads:
. . . The King . . . does hereby order the restoring, paying
and discharging to all and every of his subjects who (by the certi-
ficates made in 1681, 1682, and 1683 made by the Receivers of
Recusants' Forfeitures) shall appear to be of the Roman Catholic
religion, all moneys grown due and that grow due to the King
thereon, and all moneys levied and received thereon and not yet
answered to the King, and, further, all process against the said
persons touching the premises is hereby to be superseded: all
whether such certificates of loyalty ... be produced or not;
a dear indication that in the previous warrants the use of the word
"loyal" was a mere subterfuge. And this tacit admission was openly
1 Clarendon's statement (History of the Rebellion, VI 75) that there were no
officers and few common soldiers in the royal army who were papists applies only
to me first year of the Civil War and is probably not accurate even with this
limitation.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 307
acknowledged in a warrant of March 15, "The King being well satisfied
of the loyalty of his Roman Catholic subjects", and by a warrant of
April 21, 1687 (the first Declaration of Indulgence having been issued
on April 4), which repeats this last warrant with the addition :
His Majesty having declared that his grace and favour should
extend to all his subjects as well Protestant Dissenters as Roman
Catholics.
Finally, in addition to orders for exemption of particular persons, on
June 3, 1687, in temporary forgetfulness of his grace and favour to the
Protestant Dissenters, the Treasury Lords wrote to the Barons of the
Exchequer:
The King has signified to us his pleasure that all recognizances
against Roman Catholics be totally discharged.
Thus had James quietly and without drawing undue attention to his
action relieved the Catholics of their most pressing burden, the fines for
recusancy. Repugnant as these fines are to modern judgement, they
were part of the law of the land, and were regarded by the people in
general as one of the chief safeguards of their religion.
It has been held by James's advocates that he was very much in
advance of his time in the matter of religious toleration and that his
efforts to promote toleration, which culminated in his two Declarations
of Indulgence, were the outcome of a settled conviction that no one
should be made to suffer for his religious convictions. It is important
that the arguments for this view should be stated fairly and at length,
but at the same time great precision in a discussion on human motives
cannot be expected. One of James's remarks in 1669 to a certain Dr.
Owen, a nonconformist divine, is quoted from his memoirs to the effect
that he
had no bitterness against the nonconformists, he was against all
persecution merely for conscience sake, looking upon it as an un-
christian thing and absolutely against his conscience ;
this report is unfortunately not contemporary and may only represent
what James wished posterity to think of him. They also bring forward
the address to James of the Quakers on the release from prison of 1600
of their number in 1687 (they had been in jail for two years since his
accession !), in which they say:
Though we entertain this act of mercy with all the acknowledge-
ments of a persecuted and grateful people, yet we must needs say,
308 KING JAMES II
it doth the less surprise us since it is what some of us l have known
to have been the declared principle of the King, so well long before
as since he came to the throne.
In addition may be adduced a remark of James's friend Coleman to a
parson in Norfolk who persecuted " the fanatic nonconformists",
that the Duke (of York) was very much troubled that any persons
should be troubled for serving God that was withiix their conscience
they thought they ought to do.
Furthermore, it must be admitted that this general opinion in favour of
toleration with which James's name was associated was expressed in
spite of his prejudice against the Protestant Dissenters as the murderers
of his father, and as republicans and potential rebels.
Nevertheless we are bound to recognise that James as a Catholic had
a personal interest in toleration, and he may easily have perceived many
years before his accession that the Catholics could not hope for relief
from their disabilities except as part of a general toleration ; and this
knowledge may, consciously or unconsciously, have influenced his
opinion. Nor, unfortunately, was he invariably so discreet in his utter-
ances that he did not sometimes reveal a different opinion. The day
after his accession James met the bishops, and the following account is
given by an anonymous reporter who is supposed to have been the
chaplain of Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely :
His Majesty again repeated what he had before declared; and
said moreover he would never give any sort of countenance to dis-
senters, knowing that it must needs be faction and not religion if
men could not be content to meet five besides their own family,
which the Law dispenses with.
(It may be noted that he said nothing about their liability to fines for
recusancy.) And to Barrillon at the very beginning of his reign he
gave the impression that he had no intention of favouring the Dis-
senters ; 2 indeed, he said that he would do nothing for them until he had
established himself by means of the episcopal party and had nothing to
fear from the others.
The Quakers achieved toleration in advance of the other Protestant
1 Major M. V. Hay in Winston Churchill and James II has misquoted this
address, substituting "most of us" for "some of us".
2 Three days after his accession, for example, Barrillon reported, "Le Roi
d'Angleterre . . . me dit . . . qu'il ne serait jamais en sfiret que la ttberte*,
de conscience pour eux [clearly from the context meaning the Catholics] ne
fftt enti&rement tablie en Angleterre."
THE MIDDLE YEARS 3OQ
Dissenters, but in the early part of his reign James viewed them with
distrust. In July 1685 ^ e wrote to Queensberry:
Though I have not great reason to be satisfied with the Quakers
in general yet I look on this bearer, Robert Barclay, to be well
affected to me.
But meanwhile James was consolidating the extraordinary, indeed
inexplicable, friendship with William Penn. Penn's father, the
admiral, and James's shipmate in the naval campaign of 1665, had on
his death-bed commended the younger William to James's patronage ;
but that fact would explain a close acquaintance, but not a friendship
which was known and commented on far beyond the verge of the
Court, a friendship, too, which survived the Revolution and made
Perm risk a charge of high treason rather than abandon his personal
correspondence with Saint-Germain. With Penn liberty of conscience
was a passion; in 1683 he wrote to Ormonde:
Of all that falls under thy administration, in the love of God and
the sincere affection of a friend, let me prevail with thee to avoid
troubling conscientious and quiet living dissenters. ... I cannot
think that God will damn any man for the errors of his judgement
. . . 'Tis what I ever told both the King and Duke, and that at
parting ; if God should suffer men to be so far infatuated as to
raise commotions in the kingdom, he would never find any of that
party [the Quakers] among them, at least not of note or credit. . . .
I am for the just and merciful thing, whoever gets or loses by it, as
ought all men of truth, honour and conscience to be.
This credo went far beyond anything that James ever said, but there
were not many people outside the Quaker community who were sin-
cerely desirous of a general toleration, and Penn was no doubt attracted
to James by his profession of a tolerant spirit. What in Penn attracted
James is more difficult to see, as it is in that other great Christian who
enjoyed James's friendship, Bishop Ken; all he had to say on the subject
was that he enjoyed Penn's conversation, of which, indeed, that very
great Englishman was profuse. We can almost certainly trace to Penn's
influence James's rather belated kindness to the Quakers; he was no
doubt able to reinforce his entreaties for mercy on his brethren by the
concrete argument that the Quakers had been only at their beginnings
at the time of the Civil War and had taken no part in it, and that by their
beliefs and practices they were politically harmless. They were
relieved of the penalties for recusancy in March 1686, and in the
following November Rochester wrote to Sir Daniel Fleming saying
310 KING JAMES II
with regard to the meetings of Quakers that the Bang's pleasure "is not
to have those people so troubled upon the account of their being
Quakers only".
Among the most curious documents of the period is the diary left by
Thomas Cartwright, Bishop of Chester. Cartwright was said to have
owed his elevation to the Bench to a grossly sycophantic sermon, in
which was a passage to the effect that "the King's promises are dona-
tive and ought not to be too strictly examined and urged, and that we
must leave to His Majesty to explain his own meaning in them" ; and
throughout the reign he formed, with Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop of
Durham, and Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford, with the ineffective
support of the Bishops of Lincoln and Lichfield and the more circum-
spect adhesion of Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, a minority party
among the bishops which followed the King wherever he might lead.
His diary (which clearly he did not intend to publish) is a record of a
series of actions calculated to increase the King's favour to him, but to
no degree governed by the interests of the Church of which he was a
prominent member; in particular it reveals him as an intimate ac-
quaintance of Father Petre, a declared enemy of that Church. There
is a passage in this diary which, coming from such a source, appears to
furnish conclusive evidence that James's convictions about toleration
were a late growth: it is an entry under April 20, 1687, describing a
meeting at the Lord Chancellor's, attended by Sunderland, the Bishops
of Durham, Rochester and Oxford, Cartwright himself and, oddly
enough, Thomas White, Bishop of Peterborough, who in the following
year was one of the Seven Bishops. The object of the meeting was to
draw up an address of thanks to the King for the first Declaration
of Indulgence. During the discussion White and Sprat raised the
objection that "they could not choose but remember how vehemently
the King had declared against toleration and said he would never by
any counsel be tempted to suffer it'*; Sunderland admitted the fact,
but reproached them for calling to remembrance an opinion which
James no longer held, "for other men as well as the King had altered
their minds upon new motives".
Perhaps the strongest argument against James's claim to a sincere
desire for religious toleration for its own sake lies in his behaviour with
regard to Louis XIV's action in revoking the Edict of Nantes, in October
1685, and to the previous and subsequent persecutions of the Huguenots ;
we must, however, carefully distinguish between two views, neither of
them identical with his private opinion namely, those which James
wished to have known in England as his own, and those which he
THE MIDDLE YEARS 311
expressed in private to Barrillon as suitable for the ear of Louis. As
early as August 1681 he wrote that he can hardly believe "the reports
of the ferocities, or rather barbarous cruelties, used in France against
the Protestants . . . against all common sense and reason, as well as
against charity and justice", and after his accession he told the Spanish
and Dutch Ambassadors that
he abhorred the employment of "booted missionaries" in France
as impolitic and unchristian . . . although he wished to see his
own religion embraced, he thought it contrary to the precepts of
Holy Writ to force conscience; he expected only to see his Catholic
subjects enjoying the freedom of other Englishmen, not treated as
if they were traitors.
In his conversations with Barrillon on this subject James no doubt
expressed himself more warmly than he would have done to an English
Catholic, for it was always his aim to stand well with Louis, but his
whole-hearted enthusiasm for the work Louis was doing for the Catholic
faith is, even with this allowance, obviously very real. On September
21, 1685, Barrillon wrote to Louis :
His Britannic Majesty has heard with joy what I have told him
about the marvellous progress with which God blesses the efforts
of Your Majesty in regard to the conversion of your subjects and
says that in no country nor at any time have there been such results
in so short a period. His Majesty well believes that so important
a work will not remain imperfect and that God will favour Your
Majesty by completing it entirely.
In letters of October i, 8 and 19, Barrillon reports further expressions
on James's part of delight at the conversions of the Huguenots. On
the last date James had had an advance copy of the Edict by which the
Edict of Nantes was to be revoked:
I have given the King of England (Barrillon writes) a copy which
he has asked for of the Edict which Your Majesty is to execute
immediately. It is not possible to show more joy than this prince
did to see the measures which Your Majesty is taking to destroy
heresy in his kingdom. He has spoken of it to me several times in
the last three days in terms which make it evident that what he
says comes from the bottom of his heart. He is very grateful for
the confidence which Your Majesty has placed in him by letting
Kim know of so important a matter before it is made public.
312 KING JAMES II
It may be noticed in passing that James had no respect for the Edict
of Nantes as a royal charter; royal charters were to James documents
which could be torn up at the royal pleasure those of Magdalen College,
for example. At one time, it is true, James had misgivings about the
excessive violence of the dragonnades and suggested to Barrillon that it
would be better to conduct the business a little more gently; but that
was merely a temporary reaction to the violently hostile feelings which
the persecutions had raised in England, for a fortnight later Barrillon
reports :
The King of England is convinced in his heart that nothing is so
glorious and so beneficial as the work which Your Majesty has
undertaken. He sees that the success has exceeded what could
have been humanly conceived possible.
But he adds that James has to be very careful not to allow his opinions
to be known :
He is obliged to keep in mind the people by whom he is sur-
rounded and not to say everything that is in his mind.
And indeed the indignation in England was very intense and genuine,
assiduous as were both James and Barrillon to ascribe the expression of
it to ulterior and unworthy motives :
Many zealous protestants and others who wish to be considered
such (Barrillon wrote) are speaking with great heat about what is
happening in France with regard to the Huguenots. His Majesty
knows that those who are behaving in this manner are not well
affected to him. He told me yesterday that Halifax is one of the
worst and that he is not actuated by conscience and religion.
Barrillon's own view was that the principal motive of the critics was
jealousy of France:
It is easy to believe that an event so advantageous to the Catholic
religion and so glorious to the person of Your Majesty excites the
jealousy of the English and increases their bitter hatred of France.
He continues, however, in a more convincing strain :
The English read all the news they can get about the conversions
and deplore their inability to help their co-religionists. In the
coffee houses there is a lot of wild talk and they say that the same
thing will happen in England under a Catholic King. At Court
the King has to put up with a certain amount of talk, less extrava-
gant it is true, against the Catholics.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 313
The extensively held opinion that James lacked only power to intro-
duce Louis's methods in his own kingdom received great encourage-
ment from an indiscreet speech of the Bishop of Valence, widely
circulated in England, in which it was more than hinted that when
Louis had completed his glorious work in France he would assist James
to a similar success in England. James was seriously embarrassed by
this conjecture of what he might do if he had the power and by the
anti- French and anti-Catholic propaganda which it evoked ; he made a
feeble effort to counteract the propaganda by representing the Hugue-
nots as republicans and rebels. One piece of propaganda he took serious
notice of, though Louis protested that by doing so he was giving it un-
necessary advertisement. Jean Claude, one of the refugee Huguenot
ministers, had written a book on the persecutions which seemed to
reflect on the French King, and this book had been translated into
English ; both books were publicly burnt by the common hangman.
According to the notions of the time the action was justified; James
was perpetually complaining about libels against himself published in
Holland, and he could not fail to take notice of an attack on a monarch
whom he held in such reverence as Louis.
Meanwhile the French Protestant refugees were pouring into
England: 1 most of them arrived in a state of destitution and, from
motives both of protest against the persecution and of common humanity,
a clamour arose for the establishment of a fund for their support and
for a public collection to support that fund. According to the kws of
the time no subscription could be raised for charitable or other purposes
unless with the permission of the King in Council, 2 and early in
November 1685 the Privy Council, still a strictly Protestant body,
approved in principle of the issue of permission with two restrictions :
that the beneficiaries should conform to the Church of England, and
that the fund should be administered by the two Archbishops. Barrillon
entirely approved of these restrictions, for he thought that they would
discourage subscriptions from the dissenters. He devoted his energies,
however, to co-operate with James in postponing the actual issue of the
"brief" in the vain hope that he would be able to prevent it altogether;
there is ample evidence that James expressed himself to be just as
anxious as Louis or Barrillon that no assistance should be organised
1 They had been arriving in considerable numbers since the autumn of
1681.
* I have been unable to trace the history of this law, but it crops up from
time to time e.g., in the examination of Bishop Ken by the Privy Council in
1696, when he was accused, among other things, of inviting subscriptions for
the non-jurors without the necessary "brief". On November 13, 1665, the
Mayor, Jurats and Constabulary of Rye petitioned the Privy Council for a brief
to enable them to collect 5000 for the repair of their parish church.
314 KING JAMES II
for the refugees. Three months after the Privy Council had taken the
first move in the matter Barrillon wrote to Louis :
It will be difficult to prevent much longer the execution of the
resolution passed by the Council for the fund for the French pro-
testant refugees. The King of England always speaks of them as
ill-disposed and he is resolved that the money subscribed to this
fund shall not go to anyone who cannot satisfy the authorities that
he has joined the Church of England or is suspected of being
mixed up with faction. The delay in the institution of the fund
has grieved and mortified the French refugees here; they see
clearly that the King of England is disinclined to favour them and
that they can hope for no more from him than he can avoid doing.
And a week later he says that James
expresses a strong aversion for them and would be very glad to
avoid having to give permission for the collection, but he does not
believe that such a course is possible. It is anticipated that such a
collection will give occasion in all parishes for sermons fiill of
revilings against the Catholic religion and of calumnies about what
has happened in France,
and James is seriously thinking of having the subscriptions raised
through the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the Archbishop
should issue orders to the clergy to refrain entirely from exhortation or
explanation in announcing the opening of the fund to their congrega-
tions. In the middle of March Bonrepaus (who had been sent by Louis
to England on a special mission, among other things to induce the
Huguenot refugees to return to France) wrote that Barrillon and he had
exhausted their pretexts, and that it was no longer possible to prevent
the appeal for subscriptions, that James had created as great a delay as
possible, and that, if he could have been made to see the deplorable
consequences when the question was first raised, he would have pre-
vented the Council from passing their resolution. 1
The brief for the collection was dated March 5, but the reading of it
in the London churches was dekyed until March 29 ; 2 James thought it
worth while to conceal his real feelings by heading the list with a sub-
scription of 500. Early in April 1686 there was a meeting of the
Commissioners of the fimd, including Bancroft, the Archbishop of
1 The delay in the issue of the brief and the difficulties the refugees ex-
perienced in obtaining benefit fror# the contributions are illustrated in letters
of Rachel, Lady Russell, January 15, 22, April 14, 1686.
2 Barrillon objected to the wording of the first draft of the brief as reflecting
upon Louis, and the brief was accordingly redrafted.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 315
Canterbury, at which Jeffreys endeavoured to discourage subscriptions
by speaking of the Huguenots in very offensive terms. He said that
great care would be exercised against carelessly distributing the money
to people for whom it had not been raised, and that it was not His
Majesty's intention that any of it should go to anyone whose political
conduct was not above suspicion or who was not known to conform to
the doctrine and practices of the English Church. The Huguenots
were very much hurt, but this speech had no effect in checking the
enthusiasm of subscribers, for, apart from their sympathies for the
oppressed, an admirable opportunity was provided for protesting their
anti-Catholic zeal :
His Britannic Majesty (wrote Barrillon) knows well that it
would have been better not to have instituted the fund and that the
people who are hostile to the Catholic religion and to him are
taking this opportunity to advertise their sentiments, which other-
wise they would have been obliged to conceal.
A year later there was a widespread desire for a second brief, and James
again had to make a gesture of compliance; but Barrillon was successful
in so limiting the scope of this second brief that it became merely
supplementary to the first, and ordered a collection only in "such
parishes wherein no collections have been made". No one was allowed
to subscribe twice for the relief of the Huguenots.
During the Exclusion controversy James had found his staunchest
allies among the bishops and clergy of the Church of England, and it
was to them to a considerable extent that he owed his peaceful accession
to the throne. But at his accession they were at great pains to insist that
their loyalty to the Crown implied no weakening of their hostility to the
Church of Rome. James himself was very far from recognising the
Church of England as the religion of the State: his general attitude
suggested that he tolerated it in view of its loyalty, and he could hardly
blame the clergy for speaking in their own defence. In the month after
his accession it was brought to his notice that anti-Catholic sermons had
been preached in many London churches, and he sent for the Bishops
and warned them that if the affronts to his religion were not discon-
tinued he would have to withdraw his protection from the Church of
England. This threat had so little effect that early in the following
year he sent for the two Archbishops and demanded that they should
order the discontinuance of afternoon sermons as being directed against
his religion; the Archbishops consulted the Bishops, and their reply to
the King was that they could go no farther than to remind the clergy
316 KING JAMES II
that the King was a Catholic and to counsel them to avoid offensive
expressions. James had been able to put a stop to the national anti-
Catholic demonstrations on Queen Elizabeth's birthday and Guy
Fawkes Day, but the congregations could not forego their pleasure in
the anti-Catholic sermons at a time when the accession of a Catholic
king had revived their fears of Rome. When the brief for the collection
for the Huguenots came to be read in churches he was very apprehensive
that the exhortations to subscribe would be reinforced by violent
diatribes against the Catholics, and he did what he could to restrict the
clergy to a bare reading of the brief. But he had no control over them
in this matter, except that in a few cases he was able to show his dis-
pleasure by dismissing from posts in his gift clergy who offended him,
and by stopping their pensions.
The matter was brought to a head early in the summer of 1686, by a
sermon delivered by John Sharp at his church of St. Giles in the Fields.
Sharp was a man of high character and attainments ; in addition to his
metropolitan living he held the Deanery of Norwich, and after the
Revolution he became Archbishop of York. He had received an anony-
mous letter purporting to have been written by a man whose Protestant
faith had been shaken by Catholic arguments, and the sermon in
question was intended to solve the doubts of his correspondent. In the
report which was made to the King it was alleged that Sharp had been
less discreet than a man of his wisdom could be expected to be, and in
particular that he had reflected on certain sheets in Charles's hand-
writing which had been found among the late King's papers and
which summarised the reasons which had induced him to embrace the
Roman Faith. James was furious, and he determined to make this a test
case. Compton, Bishop of London, in whose diocese the sermon had
been delivered, was peremptorily ordered by Sunderland to suspend
Sharp; Compton replied with perfect propriety that it was not in his
power to suspend anyone from his ecclesiastical functions unless and
until he had been found guilty of offence by the appropriate ecclesiastical
tribunal; at the same time he privately requested Sharp to desist from
( preaching pending a settlement of his case. But James had no respect
for any law which interfered with the direct operation of his power:
he determined to strengthen his hands against the clergy by instituting
a Commission with summary powers, and he was no doubt influenced
in this decision by a desire to settle his long-standing account with
Compton.
In July 1686 he declared in Council his intention to set up this tri-
bunal, and gave as his object "the -prevention of indiscreet preaching".
But he had much more in his mind than the pulpit attacks on Catho-
THE MIDDLE YEARS 317
licism, and the powers of the Commission were actually so wide that it
superseded all other ecclesiastical courts; by it he was enabled to make
effective his powers as Head of the English Church, a position which as
a Catholic he ought to have repudiated as an encroachment on the rights
of the Pope, 1 These powers, as he told Barrillon and Adda, he deter-
mined to use for the subversion of the English Church and for the
advantage of the Church of Rome. To Barrillon he said
that God had permitted that all the laws which have been passed
for the establishment of the protestant, and to destroy the Catholic
religion, should now serve as a basis for what he wished to do for
the re-establishment of the true religion and should give him the
right to exercise a power still greater than Catholic kings in other
countries exercise over ecclesiastical affairs,
and to Adda that
the unlimited authority granted by Parliament over Ecclesiastical
affairs can be employed with an aim contrary to what was intended,
that is to say to the advantage of the Catholics.
If Parliament had been sitting, the Ecclesiastical Commission could
never have come into being, for the Restoration Parliament when it
re-established the other ecclesiastical courts had expressly and in
unequivocal terms refused to reconstitute the Court of High Com-
mission. It was recognised as what it was, an instrument in the King's
hand for the exercise of arbitrary power over the clergy; Bancroft, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who ought undoubtedly to have been
consulted before it was decided to set up the Commission, and whose
name, by courtesy only, stood first in the Commission, refused to serve,
though characteristically he did not, as he certatoly should have done as
representative of the Church, state that he considered the Commission
illegal, 2 but excused himself on the grounds of ill-health and pressure
x Cf. Lonsdale Memoirs, p. 22, "They that defended the legality of this
Commission said it was founded on the Statute of ist Elizabeth, whereby in my
Lord Coke's construction all the power the Pope had vested in the Crown.
Which made many wonder that the King . . . should take the benefit of a law
that was the highest violation of the rights of the Church."
* Mazure, however, states (without references) that Sancroft said to the
King, "As Primate of the Church of England I cannot authorise, even by my
silence, a tribunal in which the rights of dismissing clergy and bishops is put
into the hands of laymen . . .". Ranke (IV, 300) and Lingard (X, 2i$n)
make a similar statement, the former apparently on the authority of Barrillon.
But whatever he may have said to James in conversation, his official letter
asking to be excused the appointment merely states that he is nearly seventy
years of age and hegs that "Your Majesty . . . would be pleased to dispense
with his attendance ... to the end he may the better mind those things
which belong to his peculiar care".
318 KING JAMES II
of other business. Rochester lost much of his prestige as the chief lay
supporter of the Church by accepting a seat on the Commission he
could hardly have done otherwise if he expected to continue to be Lord
Treasurer; he excused himself on the ground that he could in that
position best serve the interests of the Church, an excuse rather specious
than sound. Two other bishops consented to serve Crewe of Durham,
always servile to James, and Sprat of Rochester, a man of no violent
religious principles, but who deserves to be known in the annals of
literature as one of the chief precursors of the Augustan age of English
prose, Sunderland represented the Catholic interest and Lord Chief
Justice Herbert was one of the two legal members. The other was
Jeffreys, who throughout dominated the Commission and expected
silent acquiescence from his colleagues; such clearly was James's
intention, for it was laid down in the rules that no quorum should be
complete without him; indeed, it may be said to have been his own
Commission, for, if Burnet is to be believed, the original suggestion
came from him. It is significant that he never allowed himself to be
drawn into argument on the legality of the Commission. The single
virtuous act of the Commission was that it issued a decree regulating
the procedure of weddings and putting a stop to the scandal of clande-
stine marriages, and thus anticipated Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act
by nearly eighty years. This decree was annulled at the Revolution,
together with all the other proceedings of the Commission.
Jeffreys did not think it worth while to conceal the true occasion
for the setting up of the Commission, but proceeded at once to the
prosecution of Compton. Compton raised objections to the constitution
of the Commission, but Jeffreys had no difficulty in overruling them;
the Bishop would have been far better advised to have treated tfi e
Commission as an illegal tribunal and to have ignored the summons.
He gained nothing by his attendance except a short delay for the pre-
paration of his case, for the Commission could not allow itself to fail in
the very case for which it had been appointed. If, however, Compton
had deliberately absented himself and taken as his ground that the
King had no right to set up courts condemned by Act of Parliament, the
Commission would have been in a dilemma: they could either have
compelled attendance by sending messengers to apprehend the Bishop,
or have condemned him in absentia ; in either case Compton could have
sought his remedy in the civil courts. It is unlikely that as the Bench
was then constituted a verdict hostile to the King would have been
returned, but the arguments by which the Commission would have
been upheld would not have convinced unprejudiced persons, and
James's true aims would have been exposed. In the event Compton
THE MIDDLE YEARS 3IQ
was suspended from his episcopal functions, but the Commission did
not dare to expose themselves to action in the King's Bench by
depriving him of the emoluments of his See. 1 .
James had revived one of the chief grievances of his father's reign in
this new Court of High Commission, and if necessary he would have
revived the Court of the Star Chamber as well. But it was not necessary,
for he was able by perfectly legal means to obtain from the existing
courts all and more than all that the Star Chamber Court would have
given him. His immediate need at the prorogation of Parliament was to
obtain from the courts a justification of his conduct in giving military
commissions to Catholics in defiance of the law. The only ground on
which such action could be justified was that in such cases the royal
prerogative superseded the law, and James's endeavour was to find
lawyers who would take this view of constitutional law ; he could then
(as he was legally entitled to do and as Charles had frequently done
before him) dismiss the judges who were not of his mind and replace
them by those who were.
Thus commenced a political device invented by James and used
systematically by him and by no other English king, the device later
known as "closetting" : an attempt by the King to secure the conversion
of individuals to his own opinion in a personal interview and by means
of argument and the awe of majesty. It does not appear that James
received in audience all the twelve judges, but he certainly received Sir
Thomas Jones, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who, when
James told him he was determined to have twelve judges who took his
own view of the prerogative, made the famous rejoinder that His
Majesty might find twelve judges of his mind, but hardly twelve
lawyers. He was dismissed with three other judges in April 1686; two
other judges had been dismissed in February, though possibly not for
the same reason. James had now twelve judges pledged to return a
verdict agreeable to himself, and the unsatisfactory position had been
reached, by legal but unprecedented means, of an ad hoc tribunal, set
up not only to try a particular case, but to find a particular verdict. The
next move in the game was to provide a test case. Action was brought
against Sir Edward Hales, by Godden his coachman acting as common
informer, for having, in contravention of the Test Act, held a commis-
1 Ranke, quoting Barrillon, says that Rochester was in favour of giving
Compton time to institute a regular process against Sharp, that Jeffreys was
inclined to agree, but that Sunderland opposed the suggestion as contrary to
the King's will. Burnet says that Rochester, Sprat and Herbert were for
Compton' s acquittal, but that Rochester acquiesced in the conviction after an
audience with the King in which he was threatened with loss of the white staff.
320 KING JAMES II
sion in the army for more than three months without taking the Sacra-
ment. Hales admitted the fact, but pleaded that by the terms of his
commission the King had permitted him to hold it notwithstanding the
Test Act, and the judges with one dissentient, Street, 1 found for the
defendant. Henceforward James was able with legal sanction to
appoint Catholics to any public post.
The case of Godden v. Hales presents a number of interesting
features. The fact that several judges left their posts rather than concur
in the verdict which was ultimately found does not necessarily mean
that the verdict was bad ; there could be no doubt that it was unpopular,
and it is likely that there was an element of fear of Parliament in the
refusal of these judges to undertake in advance to uphold it. But
whether or no the verdict was bad in law, the case is a typical example
of Stuart failure, an inability (and it may be said a lack of desire) to carry
public opinion with them. They found constitutional law in a fluid state
and based on mutually contradictory precedents; they procured
judicial decisions favourable to the Crown and congratulated themselves
on their success; but these decisions surprised and exasperated the
politically conscious part of the public, and their answer was in effect,
" If this is the law, the quicker the law is altered the better". There can
be no doubt that one of the first activities of a Parliament, if James had
called one, would have been to attack the prerogative as it had been
defined by the judges. In the absence of a Parliament this decision was,
through the use the King made of it to appoint Catholics wholesale to
public posts, one of the main causes of the Revolution.
But James, free as he was after this decision to override the penal
laws and Test Act, and much as he had done by royal warrant to nullify
the recusancy laws in particular cases, was not satisfied; he exerted all
his energies towards procuring from Parliament a repeal of the anti-
Catholic statutes. And here we have a conspicuous example of the
confusion of his mind: it is exceedingly difficult to discover why he was
so anxious to convert to his views the Parliament of 1685, and why,
when, after successive prorogations, that Parliament was finally dissolved
in July 1687, he took such infinite pains about getting another Parliament
elected, pledged, as the former Parliament had been pledged in the
matter of the revenue, to extend to the Catholics the same privileges as
1 No satisfactory explanation can be found for Street's dissent. Macaulay's
suggestion that he was "commanded to give his voice against the prerogative"
does not carry any conviction, for clearly a unanimous verdict would have been
better for James's purpose. Bramston (p. 223) says that he asked Street the
direct question, but that he would not answer, and, further, that Street was
subsequently a long time in the royal closet, but was not dismissed.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 321
were enjoyed by his subjects of the Church of England. No individual
Catholic could gain by a favourable parliamentary decision, for he had
only to apply to the King to be free from the penalties attached to his
faith, to worship how and where he pleased, and to be eligible for any
post in the public service; moreover, James's political creed was purely
royalist and autocratic, and the summoning of Parliament would have
been a tacit admission that he was not all-powerful in the kingdom.
Partly, no doubt, he was influenced by a natural feeling that the very
existence of the anti-Catholic laws on the Statute book was a slur on
his faith; for though the courts had decided that he could except
individuals from the operation of particular laws, they had not given
him the power to repeal Acts of Parliament; that question was to be
raised later, in the trial of the Seven Bishops. 1 But James must have
known by his unfortunate experience in November 1685 that a Parlia-
ment, however elected, however it might be pledged beforehand to
support the royal policy on a particular subject, could not be prevented
from raising other subjects the standing army, for example. Besides,
there was the House of Lords, over whose composition he had no control
unless he had adopted Sunderland's jesting proposal and called up to the
peerage Churchill's regiment of the Guards. Perhaps he hoped that they
could be induced to repeal the offensive laws with the same expedition
with which in May 1685 they had granted the revenues for life and that
they could have been prorogued before they had time to raise awkward
questions. But even that device could not have been successful, for by
the nature of bi-cameral legislation both Houses are not simultaneously
engaged on the same Bill, and it was not in his power to suspend the
sittings of a single House.
Whatever may have been his reasons, "James may not inaptly be
described as having been engaged in electioneering 2 from the beginning
to the end of his ill-starred reign". When Parliament was prorogued in
November 1685 James was convinced that his brow-beatings had been a
success and that they would reassemble in a chastened and servile mood ;
he seems to have had a genuine intention to allow them to sit in February
1686, but something or other occurred to convince him that the occasion
was not yet favourable, and they were prorogued again until August ;
then again he was not certain how they would behave, and they were
1 The contract for the farm of the revenue was for three years from February
5, 1685, and could only be renewed by Parliament. There appears to be no
evidence that James had this fact in mind when he schemed for a new parlia-
ment.
8 "Lobbying and electioneering" would have been more accurate, for there
was no question of electioneering between the election of the Parliament of
1685 and its dissolution on July 2, 1687.
L
322 KING JAMES II
again prorogued. At the end of the year James systematically began to
apply to members of both Houses the methods which he had found so
successful with the judges. He called them one by one into his closet,
put to them his stock argument that the Test Act had been the product
of a wave of rage and panic on the Catholic question, asked them to
promise to support the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws, and
if they refused or demurred (as they did in most cases) he dismissed them
from civil employment or from military or naval commands, had tty*ir
names erased from the Commission of the peace or from the list of
deputy lieutenants of their counties, or, if they had nothing tangible
that he could take from them, put them on his black list. The policy
underlying this action was clearly explained by Barrillon:
The King of England is resolved to come to a definite under-
standing with all those who are in posts in his gift and to ascertain,
before the reassembly of parliament, whether or no he can expect
from them what he desires ; this demand for personal statements
and for explicit promises to consent to the repeal of the penal laws
and the Test Act is without precedent and is considered by many an
encroachment on their liberty and privileges.
A few of the actual dialogues between the King and members of the
two Houses were also reported at the time ; that with Lord Maynard will
suffice as an example :
I have been told that the Lord Maynard alleged his conscience
would not permit him to part with the laws made for the preserva-
tion of the religion he professed. The King said there was no
matter of conscience in it. "No Sir?" he replied, "is not conscience
concerned in defence of religion? I pray, if the Test be gone, what
hinders but you may bring whom you please, and as many as you
think fit, into the House of Lords, and so having the majority you
may make what laws you please, even against the religion esta-
blished." To which the King made no reply, but bid his lordship
think better and speak with him again ;
and the result of the audience was that Lord Maynard lost his post as
Controller of the Household and was succeeded by the King's son-in-
law, Waldegrave.
This conversation illustrates the impasse at which James had arrived
after he had been two years on the throne. In the first few months of his
reign he had seen clearly the difficulties of the situation; he was well
aware that in order to achieve the slightest modification of the penal
THE MIDDLE YEARS 323
laws, let alone the repeal of the Test Act, he would have to overcome the
immense prejudice against the Catholics which had been accumulating
in the minds of the English people for three generations. But when he
saw that he could give commissions in the Army to Catholics without
immediate disaster, and, still more, when he had the support of the law
in such action, he ceased to view his problem clearly and as a whole, and
he attempted the totally impossible policy of continuing to protest his
faithfulness to his early promises to protect the Church of England,
while at the same time he was breaking those promises and creating
apprehensions about what would happen if his powers were increased.
For, though we in the twentieth century may doubt whether the grant of
freedom of worship to the Catholics and their admission to office was a
legitimate grievance of the Church of England, they were certainly
regarded as such at the time, and it was with the opinion of his own time
that James was concerned.
Up to the summer of 1687 no great stir was caused by appointments
of Catholics; the policy had rather been to prepare the way for their
appointment by removing from office all who refused to support the
repeal of the Test Act and to substitute subservient Protestants. In
the summer and autumn of 1686 five Catholics Lord Powis, Arundel
of Wardour, Belasyse, Dover and Tyrconnel had been sworn of the
Privy Council, and in March 1687 Lord Arundel of Wardour had been
appointed to one of the four chief posts in the administration, that of Lord
Privy Seal. But the most striking change in the personnel of the adminis-
tration had been the dismissal in January 1687 (December 1686?) of
the Earl of Rochester. Rochester had been steadily losing ground since
the summer of 1685, anc ^ f r a Y 6 ^ ^ s activities had been confined to
his own department. But he was still Lord Treasurer, and nominally,
at least, the chief adviser of the King; he was also one of the chief (if not
the chief) of the ky supporters of the Church of England, and, in spite of
the blind eye which he had had to turn on some of the proceedings of the
Government, it was felt that he was in a position to prevent the most
serious breaches in the defences of that Church. In public James gave
as his reason for the dismissal that he thought the Treasury too great a
charge to be in the hands of one man a sound reason, but one which
might have occurred to him earlier than June 1686, when he first
mentioned his intention; he further said in Council that he was not
acting from "any dissatisfaction against the late Lord Treasurer, for he
had served him very well both before his coming to the Crown and
since"; but he weakened the value of his tribute by not appointing
Rochester to the new Commission of the Treasury. He did indeed
show gratitude and personal friendship by securing to him a con-
324 KING JAMES II
siderable income 4000 a year from the Post Office for ninety-nine
years or two lives, in addition to -the 16,000 granted him six months
earlier out of the forfeited estates of Lord Grey but he cut him off
entirely from the royal counsels.
Rochester was put to a different test from that which was employed
in the other cases. He was not asked whether or no he would support
legislation in favour of the Catholics, but actually in his own person to
join the Roman Church, and it was no doubt understood that his
retention of the Lord Treasurership depended on his decision. In
James's eyes the claims of the Church of Rome were so unassailable
that it was only by a persistent refusal to listen to the arguments of the
priests that Protestants were able to keep their faith; he was unaware
that appeals to reason are of small effect in conversions, and he pressed
Rochester to allow two priests to attempt to convert him. Rochester,
who must have seen that such a proceeding could be no other than a
solemn farce, could not frustrate the King in a harmless design on which
he had set his heart, but he asked that two priests of his own Church
should be present to uphold their own views. James agreed (char-
acteristically, however, vetoing particular clerics), and there were two
conferences, at the first of which James was present and took part. As is
usual in religious controversy, there was no agreement on basic beliefs,
merely assertion and counter-assertion, and Rochester was un-
impressed. The expected result followed, and the new Commission
for the Treasury was headed by a Catholic, Lord Belasyse, who was
seventy-two years of age and a cripple, and comprised another Catholic,
Henry Jermyn, a man of notorious incompetence, 1 who had been
created Lord Dover ; the three other Lords of the Treasury Godolphin,
Sir Stephen Fox and Sir John Ernie were good appointments; they
had all been on the Commission in the reign of Charles, and the presence
of Godolphin in particular was a guarantee of efficiency.
Very shortly afterwards, to no one's surprise, the Earl of Clarendon was
recalled from Ireland, and was succeeded by the Earl of Tyrconnel as Lord
Deputy. Clarendon had hoped to be allowed to retain his post as Lord
Privy Seal, the duties of which had been performed during his absence
in Ireland by a Commission of three members ; but the King relieved
him of that also, and, what was worse, took no thought for him, as he
had taken for his brother, to provide for his maintenance, and he fell
into desperate poverty. But nothing could shake his loyalty; he alone
1 See Etheridge's letter to Dover of January 3i/February 10, 1687; Lauzun's
complaints at the arrangements for his landing in Ireland, and the mirth of the
French at Dover's assurance that his return to Ireland would restore efficiency
there.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 325
of those who had held high office under James in the early part of his
reign refused to take the oaths to William and Mary.
James's relations with the Pope were never easy. The Pope during his
reign was Innocent XI, who, though Burnet had a poor opinion of his
education and intelligence, appears to have possessed considerable
firmness and political wisdom. He was in perpetual conflict with King
Louis, whose imperious temper could not bear to see the French
archbishops and bishops deriving their authority from a power outside
his kingdom. There were two particular matters of conflict: the
succession to the Archbishopric of Cologne, for which Louis had a
candidate, Furstemberg, distasteful to the Pope, and what was known
as the franchises, the jurisdictions of foreign ambassadors in Rome in
and about their embassies, which considerably curtailed the sovereignty
of the Pope in the Holy City. It may be said on the whole that Innocent
had a more bitter and continuous quarrel with Louis than any of his
predecessors, since the Middle Ages, had had with any Catholic
monarch in Europe: the Most Christian King was the least loyal
supporter of the Head of his Church. The era of the Wars of Religion
had passed before Louis came of age; his attitude to the Papacy made
its revival impossible. James was Louis's friend and, though he himself
would not acknowledge the fact, notoriously under Louis's influence;
he tried to ingratiate himself with Innocent by ignoring the conflict with
Louis or by ineffective mediation, but he could never induce the Pope
to receive him as wholeheartedly in the interests of the papacy. More-
over, James had put himself into the hands of the Jesuits, and Innocent
had no love for the French and English Jesuits ; he saw clearly that their
methods were unlikely to benefit the Catholic Church in England. He
had already in 1679 written to James warning him against indiscreet
zeal, and during James's reign he was in sympathy with the resident
English Catholics, people like Lord Belasyse, who knew their fellow-
countrymen and were aware that any strong attempts by the Catholics
to better their position would recoil on their own heads, and in opposition
to the new arrivals who had spent their lives in continental seminaries.
The unofficial representative at Rome of the English Catholics at the
time of James's accession was that excellent person Cardinal Philip
Thomas Howard, who was popularly known as the Cardinal of Norfolk.
He was entirely of the Pope's opinion on James's religious policy, and
for that reason not in James's favour. For the first few months of his
reign James carried on an unofficial correspondence with the Roman
Curia through Cardinal Howard, but in September 1685 he told
Barrillon that he had decided to inaugurate regular diplomatic corres-
326 KING JAMES II
pondence with Rome and asked for his advice on the etiquette of such
correspondence. A few weeks later Barrillon had heard that the first
ambassador was to be Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, and that
rumour proved to be correct. James's choice was not without justifica-
tion, for Castlemaine was a keen Catholic and learned in controversy, he
had travelled in Italy, he was of good family and he had earned the
respect of the English Catholics by standing his trial for his life in
Oates's Plot. But the outstanding fact about him the only fact which
was known to the English public was that he was the husband of a
famous royal mistress and that he owed his title to his wife's infidelity to
himself; for this reason he should have been disqualified for any public
position, and it came near to being an insult to the Pope to send Castle-
maine to him as James's representative; the Pope also doubtless mis-
trusted him as being under the influence of Petre and the English
Jesuits. Moreover, Castlemaine was not the man to hide the mis-
fortunes of his private life under a correct and dignified public manner:
he was of so hot and violent a disposition that he could not restrain him-
self, even in audience with the Pope, when he was unable to get what he
wanted, and to the Pope a direct affront from a foreign ambassador must
have been a new experience ; James actually after Castlemaine's return
to England had to apologise to the Pope for his ambassador's conduct.
Castlemaine's particular business in Rome was to secure a red hat for
Queen Mary's uncle, Prince Rinaldo d'Este, and a red hat and an
archbishopric for Father Petre; 1 both demands were contrary to papal
policy, which was averse to miking princes cardinals and to bestowing
any ecclesiastical dignity upon Jesuits. Innocent gave way in the matter
of Prince Rinaldo, but he could not be moved to do anything for Petre.
After a few audiences he began to treat Castlemaine with contempt, and
when the ambassador became importunate the Pope would terminate
the audience by being "seasonably attacked by a fit of coughing".
Castlemaine was in almost complete isolation in Rome, for in addition
to his notorious disfavour with the Pope he had exasperated the English
Catholics there by his treatment of their acknowledged leader, Cardinal
Howard.
Castlemaine had left for Rome early in November 1685, and a few
days after his departure James received the Papal nuncio, Ferdinand,
Count d'Adda. No secret was made either of his presence or of his
1 Lingard (X, 123), the Life of Petre in Oliver's Collectanea, and the Records
of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (VII, i, 592), furnish reasons for
believing that Petre, as behoved a good Jesuit, was not ambitious, and in
particular did not desire the Cardinalate; Attesbury (I, 128) and Barrillon,
June so/July 10, 1687, are of the contrary opinion and the facts appear to be
on their side.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 327
position, but he was not publicly recognised, and the fiction was
observed that he was a foreign visitor of private station. Though Adda
was in England for three years he never achieved such an important
position as the Pope's representative might have been expected to hold.
Partly, no doubt, his own character, which was gentle and gracious
rather than forceful, did not fit him for the proud behaviour of his
pre-Reformation predecessors, but still more, representing as he did
the moderate papal view on Catholic policy in England, he incurred the
violent hostility of the ruling Catholic clique, Petre and the extreme
Catholics, latterly also of James and the Queen, who did not scruple to
hint that he had been a traitor to their cause and the cause of the Church.
The mission of Adda was mainly important to James as furnishing
two opportunities for spectacular affirmation of his adhesion to the
Church of Rome and for creating the illusion of the return of England
to her ancient allegiance. On May i, 1687, in St. James's Chapel, Adda
was consecrated Archbishop of Amasia (a Turkish village which he
never visited), and two months later there was a splendid 'ceremony
at Windsor on the occasion of his public reception as papal nuncio
It had been James's intention from the first to give him a public char-
acter, but Adda had on various pretexts, which no doubt concealed the
real objection on the ground of inexpediency, successfully eluded a
decision. 1 James so far met his unexpressed misgivings by deciding not
to hold the ceremony in London, where the mob could not have been
prevented, except by the employment of a considerable military force,
from turning the procession into a riot. James was able to escape this
popular affront, but he had to endure one of his most unfortunate
personal encounters, and his discomfiture was not kept a secret: he
ordered the Duke of Somerset to introduce the nuncio in the public
audience, and was met by an uncompromising refusal. James was
anxious that a peer of the highest rank should perform the office of
introduction, and he had no reason to apprehend that the Duke, who
as gentleman of the bedchamber had attended him to his own public
worship, would be scrupulous in the present instance. But Somerset
had taken legal advice, and he refused on the ground that to recognise
the jurisdiction of the Pope in England was high treason, and that a
royal pardon given in advance was invalid:
1 As early as February 1686 Adda wrote that he had been pressed by Sunder-
land to appear in the public character of nuncio and that he had objected on the
grounds of his own unfitness and of the absence of orders from Rome. There
can be Htde doubt that the true reason behind these objections was that the
Pope recognised that in the existing state of public feeling in England more
harm than good would be done to the cause of Rome by emphasising Adda's
importance.
328 KING JAMES II
He humbly desired of the King to be excused; the King asked him
his reason; the Duke told him he conceived it to be against law; to
which the King said he would pardon him. The Duke replied he was
no very good lawyer, but he thought he had heard it said that a
pardon granted to a person offending under assurance of obtaining
it was void.
It was easy to punish Somerset by depriving him of his offices and to
substitute for him in the ceremony James's nephew, the Duke of
Grafton, but Somerset's action was widely applauded and the implica-
tion of the terms of his refusal was clearly seen namely, that the
Declaration of Indulgence was legally null and void: as Barrillon wrote
to Louis, "The refusal of the Duke of Somerset to conduct the nuncio
to the audience shows that the anti-Catholic laws are still in force 5 '.
When on July 2, 1687, Parliament was finally dissolved by proclama-
tion it was James's intention to summon a new Parliament as soon as he
could feel himself safe to have one elected to his liking. His closeting
now had a different aim: instead of trying to influence the votes of
existing members, he exerted pressure on everyone who possessed local
influence in elections. He had already taken steps to revise the Com-
missions of the peace ; in October 1686 a Committee was appointed with
Jeffreys as chairman to revise the list of justices in every county, with
the result that a very large number of changes were made; in the list of
those "put out" may be noticed the names of Dr. Tillotson, Dean of
Canterbury (Kent), Dr. John Sharp, Dean of Norwich (Norfolk) and
Sir John Maynard (Lancashire); among those "put in" are Sir
Edward Hales (Kent), the Dukes of Grafton and Northumberland and
Lords Feversham and Churchill (Middlesex) and Lord Castlemaine
(Radnor). It will be noticed that the first and last of the latter list were
Catholics ; indeed, it was alleged that nearly all the new justices were of
that faith. In August 1687 James began to inquire into the attitude of
the Lords Lieutenant to his proposed reforms and, where necessary
that is to say, in nearly every case to replace them by persons more
amenable. Now, the Lord Lieutenant was a man of very great local
consequence indeed; he was the natural leader of county society and
generally the largest landowner in the county; as commander of the
county militia, it is true, he held military rank, but that was the extent
of his dependence on the Bang; though he was as a matter of form
appointed by the King, it could almost be said that he appointed himself
by his natural predominance in the county ; it had not been the practice
to bestow lord-lieutenancies on successful courtiers, though there had
THE MIDDLE YEARS 329
been occasions in which the leading man in a county had been ob-
noxious to the King and another landowner from the same county had
been preferred to him. It followed that when James dismissed a Lord
Lieutenant and appointed another who had no local connection it was
not the individual dismissed who suffered in former times it had been
held a disgrace to be dismissed by the King, but now dismissal was for a
matter of conscience in which the county concurred but the efficiency
of the administration. In a smaller field the same was true of a dismissed
justice of the peace or a dismissed deputy-lieutenant, for the efficient
performance of these duties depended largely on the natural authority
of the officer in his own immediate locality.
The occasion of the wholesale changes in the lord-lieutenancies l
was an attempt by James to take what is called in America a "straw"
vote of the whole country, and to ascertain in advance from prospective
members of Parliament and from voters what support he was likely to
get from a Parliament to his designs in favour of the Catholics. In the
autumn of 1687 every Lord Lieutenant was ordered to go down to his
county and to put three questions to deputy-lieutenants, sheriffs,
justices of the peace, mayors and members of corporations, Government
officials such as customs and excise officers, forty-shilling freeholders and
any others who could influence or take part in an election, and to demand
a separate answer from each individual. The questions were :
1. If in case he shall be chosen Knight of the Shire or burgess
of a town, when the King shall see fit to call a Parliament, whether
he will be for taking off the Penal Laws and the Tests.
2. Whether he will assist and contribute to the election of such
members as shall be for taking off the Penal Laws and the Tests.
3. Whether he will support the King's Declaration for Liberty
of Conscience by living friendly with those of all persuasions, as
subjects of the same Prince and good Christians ought to do.
The majority of Lords Lieutenant refused to have anything to do with
these questions and accepted dismissal; the questions themselves were
without precedent, and an attempt to pledge Parliament in advance to a
course of action was, constructively at least, a breach of the privileges of
Parliament; besides, there was an implied intention that a Lord Lieu-
tenant who put the questions was to use his influence to secure favour-
able answers to them. A few, however, consented to obey the royal
command, relying on their local reputations to avoid suspicion of
Catholic bias, but put the questions in such a colourless manner as to
1 There had been a previous purge among the Lord-lieutenancies of consider-
able extent in August 1687.
KING JAMES II
discourage rather than to encourage affirmative replies. One of the few
exceptions was Rochester, who lost whatever reputation he had gained
from his refusal to continue in office at the cost of changing his religion
by attempting to obtain by violent speeches the adherence of his county
of Hertfordshire to James's views ; according to Barrillon he had con-
cealed his true feelings from fear of the royal displeasure, and there is
no doubt that he was in danger of losing his pension of 4000 a year.
The device of the Three Questions could not have been conceived by
anyone who had knowledge of the general currents of opinion in England.
It is improbable that Sunderland, who was a man of the world and had
opportunities of listening to the conversation of men, at any rate of his
own class, had any hand in it. Either James himself evolved it or it
emanated from the sanguine and ignorant brains of the Jesuit camarilla.
In effect it attempted on a large scale what closeting had attempted on a
small scale : to determine which of James's subjects could be relied on
to follow him in his pro-Catholic policy, so that they could be employed
to ensure the return of a Parliament which would repeal the penal laws
and the Test Act. Such a device could only be justified by its success:
it should not have been adopted unless after discreet local inquiry it had
been ascertained that it would be successful ; failure, as the event proved,
left James's prospects of getting together the Parliament he wanted
even less happy than they had previously been. There was, indeed, a
fairly numerous minority which was willing to satisfy the King; in this
minority were many in whom the lamp of loyalty burned undimmed,
but there were many also who would sign anything rather than let their
wives and children starve, and many who thought they could better their
fortunes by a display of loyalty. 1 The majority in some localities the
whole body of those questioned refused to give any pledge that they
would assist in returning a Parliament of James's mind on the religious
question. They took their stand on the sound theory (which, however, is
not in accordance with the facts of democratic government) that members
of Parliament should assemble with open minds and should give their
votes to the side which produces the more convincing arguments. Their
answers were identical in substance, though not verbally, and the inference
is unavoidable that the opposition was concerted all over the kingdom,
as it undoubtedly was in particular localities. Here is a typical answer:
i. If I be chosen a Member of Parliament I conceive myself
obliged to give my vote according to the reason of the debate of the
House and not otherwise.
1 Brian Magee (The English Recusants, pp. 171-5) assumes that all those who
gave favourable answers to^the questions were "Catholics and those who were
not ill-disposed to Catholicism'*.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 331
2. If I shall concern myself in the election of any to serve as
Member of Parliament I shall give my vote for such as to the best of my
judgement will serve the King and kingdom faithfully and honestly.
3. I think it my duty to live friendly and peaceably with all men,
as becomes a good Christian and a loyal subject.
A reply which a courtier at Whitehall characterised as a "civil and
politic denial'*.
The effect of imposing on everyone of local importance in some
places on every parliamentary voter the obligation to declare his
opinion for or against the repeal of the laws against the Catholics was to
reveal the overwhelming determination of the country to give the King
no assistance in the matter : what had hitherto been a matter of conjecture
had become a matter of fact ; even the moderate men, who were averse
to persecution for religion, disapproved of the means which had been
taken to secure repeal, suspected James's ultimate aims and kept their
principles in abeyance. Hitherto, moreover, everyone had been careful
in declaring an opinion contrary to that of the King, not knowing on
which side his neighbour stood and fearing lest indiscreet talk might be
reported and distorted to the agents of the Government. As the Im-
perial Ambassador wrote in April 1688:
So far from serving a useful purpose [the enquiry] has done more
harm than one can express, seeing chiefly that nearly everywhere a
negative reply was given ; . . . before this enquiry . . . everyone
suspected his neighbour of being a partisan of the King and people
suppressed their disaffection, which now they express without fear.
James himself was entirely unaware that he had sustained a major
disaster: he took his defeat philosophically and said he would go another
way to work. He did not realise that he had consolidated the opposition
and that his problem had been made far more difficult by the ill-
conceived attempt which he had made to solve it. 1
Simultaneously with the issue of the three questions James attacked
the Corporations. In November 1687 a Commission, again headed by
Jeffreys and including Sunderland and four Catholics Lords Powis
and Castlemaine, Father Petre and Sir Nicholas Butler 2 was appointed
1 A mass of material on this subject has been accumulated by Sir George
.Duckett in his Penal Laws and Test Act.
2 Ailesbury's character of Butler is worth quoting as showing the contempt
which the English nobility, even those who remained faithful to the end, had
for James's tools : (he) "had been a stocking merchant and a bankrupt, a man that
had wit and sense, but else of little or no morals and had publicly changed his
religion*'.
332 KING JAMES II
to deal with them. In the last years of Charles's reign there had been a
revision of the charters of towns and cities throughout England, and the
process was still going on in the early part of the new reign ; by the legal
means of quo warranto the charters were forfeited and new charters
granted, ostensibly because of irregularities committed by the Corpora-
tions (there can be little doubt that the Corporations were thoroughly
corrupt bodies), but actually for the purpose of excluding Whigs and
Dissenters from them and appointing Tories and Churchmen in their
places. James had never respected even these new charters, for he
frequently violated the right of local election by excluding aldermen and
other members and substituting his own nominees. Hitherto the aim
had been to man the Corporations with adherents of the old Court
party ; now James was concerned with the contemplated general election,
and wanted Corporations which would influence the borough elections
in favour of the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence, and, as
Tories and Churchmen were in general opposed to those principles, the
only people available were on the one side Catholics and on the other
the far more numerous Protestant Dissenters. But this Commission
differed altogether from that which had preceded it ; there was no longer
a question of revising the charters by legal process indeed, legality
had no part in the action of the Commission but of purging the
Corporations, as the Lord Lieutenancies, Commissions of the peace
and the other local organisations, of all people who would not give a
definite and affirmative reply to the three questions. 1 During the few
months in which these revised Corporations sat, their meetings must
have presented a ridiculous appearance: there was some slight contact
between the Catholics and the "jure divino" churchmen and between
the liberal churchmen and the Protestant Dissenters, but the Catholics
and the Protestant Dissenters had nothing whatever in common except
their grievances against the Church of England; the Protestant Dis-
senters hated the Catholics as subjects of the Scarlet Women of Rome,
and as persecutors of the Huguenots, and the Catholics despised the
Protestant Dissenters as fanatical schismatics, and probably also re-
garded them as socially contemptible.
In the autumn of 1687, as he had done on a smaller scale a year earlier,
James made a royal progress in the West of England. He set out from
Windsor on August 16 with the Queen, who left him early in the journey
and went to Bath, while he himself proceeded to Portsmouth. There he
inspected the fortifications, and after passing through Southampton and
1 There are numerous instances in the Privy Council Register of the
nomination of particular persons to Corporations.
THE MIDDLE TEARS 333
Salisbury he rejoined the Queen at Bath. The progress was admittedly
an electioneering device, an attempt to influence the electors in favour
of "freedom of conscience" ; on the whole the local gentry hastened to
do their duty in receiving their sovereign with traditional hospitality
and loyalty; but while their personal attitude to the King was un-
changed, so was their devotion to the Church of England, and there is no
record that James had any encouragement in his hopes of a favourable
election. He touched for the King's evil at various places, and these
exhibitions of Romish rites can hardly have been to the taste of the
local gentry. At Bath in particular the healing was made the occasion of
a gross affront to the Church of England, for in the Abbey there Huddle-
stone delivered a proselytising address to the multitudes who came to be
touched. As the good Bishop Ken wrote to Bancroft:
When His Majesty was at Bath, there was a great healing, 1 and
without any warning except by a flying report: the office was
performed in the Church between the hours of prayer. I had not
time to remonstrate, and if I had done it it would have had no
effect but only to provoke: besides I found it had been done in the
Churches before, and I know no place but the Church which was
capable to receive so great a multitude as came for cure: upon
which consideration I was wholly passive. But being aware what
advantage the Romanists take from the least seeming compliances,
I took occasion on Sunday ... to discourse of Charity . . .
though we could not open the Church doors to a worship different
from that we paid to God, yet we should always throw them open
to a common work of charity.
From Bath James went to Gloucester, Worcester, Ludlow, Shrews-
bury and Whitchurch, spending one night at each town; from Whit-
church he made a pilgrimage to Holywell; he arrived at Chester on
August 27 and remained three days. There he met Tyrconnel, who
gave him his own version of what was happening in Ireland and success-
fully prevented him from hearing an independent version from Thomas
1 James took these healings, the touching for the King's Evil, very seriously,
symbolising as they did the divine character of kingship. Before he had been
on the throne a month an order was given for "an elbow chair covered with
black for His Majesty to sit in at healings", and in April 1685 the mint was
ordered to strike off 1000 healing medals "which will be made use of before
Easter". Altogether during his reign he expended between 4000 and 5000
on healing medals. During the first year the healing ceremony was in English,
no doubt in the form used in the previous reigns, and was conducted by bishops
and clergy of the Church of England; in the spring of 1686, however, a Latin
service was substituted and Catholic priests officiated. At Oxford in September
1687 James is said to have touched seven or eight hundred persons in two
days.
334 KING JAMES II
Sheridan. Bishop Cartwright, more obsequious than Ken, put the
Cathedral choir at the King's disposal for the healings, and 450 persons
were touched; before leaving, James commissioned Cartwright to find
accommodation for Roman Catholic worship a curious duty to impose
on a bishop of the Church of England and for a seventeenth-century
bishop to undertake. From Chester James went to Newport, Lichfield,
Coventry and Banbury, and arrived at Oxford for his last and most
memorable visit on September 3. From Oxford he returned to Bath via
Cirencester and rejoined the Queen ; he passed through Winchester on
his journey back to Windsor, where he arrived on September 17. James
himself was well satisfied with his reception everywhere, and on the
whole he was justified, for he could do himself no harm by showing
himself to his people, though it is very doubtful if the true object of the
progress was fulfilled or that he made a single convert to the cause which
he had at heart. For the rest, he was probably unaware that a great
number of leading gentry left their neighbourhoods so as to avoid
having to kiss his hand; those who were sufficiently well-disposed to
give him public welcome made a brave enough show to conceal the
absence of the others. 1
The systematic effort to concentrate the central and local administra-
tion in the hands of Catholics and complacent Protestants was accom-
panied by no corresponding attack on the Church of England. It is true
that when a See fell vacant, as at Chester and Oxford, a bishop was
appointed who could be trusted not to oppose the royal will in matters
affecting the interests of the Church, and in one instance at Putney
the incumbent was by royal dispensation permitted to retain his cure
of souls in spite of his conversion to Rome. The civil appointments had
been made entirely with a view to getting a Parliament which would
endorse the Declaration of Indulgence and, though the influence of the
clergy in elections was manifestly strong, it would have been idle to
approach them by such a device as the Three Questions: for not only
would their response have been overwhelmingly negative, but, secure as
they were in their freeholds, there was no machinery by which they
could have been replaced. There is no evidence that James had in view
any scheme for substituting Catholics for Protestants in the rectories
1 The opinion of Bonrepaus at the time of the conclusion of the progress
was that James had so convinced himself that the disposition of the country
was favourable to his plans that he determined to summon parliament; "But
(adds the ambassador) the acquaintance I have made with the affairs of this
country does not lead me to believe that he will find it easy to succeed in his
principal object, the repeal of the Test Act. The party attached to the Prince
of Orange is stronger than it is thought to be. Everyone of ability or position
in the country is either openly in this party or is sympathetic to it."
THE MIDDLE YEARS 335
and vicarages, but we may be sure that the sanguine and unpractical
Petre dreamt of such a substitution. Be that as it may, it is very striking
that in the list of grievances which the bishops presented to the King in
September 1688 there appeared only two which concerned the Church of
England directly: the suspension of Compton and the vacancy at
York. 1
But the Universities, which on the one hand were the sole recruiting-
ground of the English clergy, and on the other were entirely staffed by
clerics, and were therefore regarded as the Church's dearest possessions,
had to endure a series of sharp attacks on their liberties. Cambridge,
indeed, had only one conflict with the Crown, a conflict in which the
Crown was not on the whole victorious: one Alban Francis, a Romanist
missioner for the County of Cambridge, obtained a royal mandate for
an honorary degree, exempting him from the rule that he should take the
oaths; the University rejected the mandate as contrary to the statutes;
the Ecclesiastical Commission thereupon deprived the Vice-Chancellor
of his post (but not of his freehold as head of his college) ; his successor
on taking office made a defiant speech declaring his determination not to
suffer any invasion of the rights of the University, and was not repri-
manded; nor does it appear that Francis succeeded in obtaining his
degree. At Oxford, on the other hand, the religious controversy was kept
well in the foreground. The Master of University College, Obadiah
Walker, 2 declared his conversion to the Roman faith and was allowed by
royal dispensation to retain his post; he set up an oratory in his college,
and with the aid of three Fellows, two of University and one of Brasenose,
and in spite of systematic persecution by the undergraduates, he
managed to maintain a Catholic nucleus in the University. Further, the
Deanery of Christ Church, which was in the royal gift, was bestowed on
John Massey, a junior Fellow who had nothing to recommend him
except his change of religion, 8 and by a royal dispensation he was
installed without taking the oaths.
The affair of the Presidentship of Magdalen College was more
protracted and important ; it affords many opportunities for forming an
opinion on James's character, on his state of mind at the time of his
highest apparent prosperity and on his control of his Ministers. It also
1 I have not overlooked the vacancies in the Irish Sees, but these are a matter
apart from the present discussion.
1 Dr. Walker was a scholar and a man of excellent character; his only fault,
if fault it was, was his change of religion, but such a conversion in the heated
atmosphere of die times -covered a multitude of virtues.
3 It is not quite certain that Massey was a declared Catholic at the time of his
appointment in October 1686 (see Wood, III, 197; Bumet, 1, 674), but when he
was installed at the end of December there was no doubt that he was a Catholic
(Wood, III, 201 ; Ellis, Corresp., I, 210).
336 KING JAMES II
provides a second instance, the Ecclesiastical Commission being the
first, of definitely illegal action on James's part.
On March 24, 1687, Dr. Henry Clarke, President of Magdalen, who
had been on sick leave from the College since February 7, died at
Gawthrop Hall, Lancashire, the house of his daughter, Lady Shuttle-
worth, and the College was officially informed of this occurrence on
March 29. On March 31 the Vice-President, Dr. Aldworth, convened
the Fellows, a meeting for the election of a new President was fixed for
April 13, and the text of a letter was agreed upon to Peter Mews, Bishop
of Winchester, the visitor of the College; in this letter the Bishop is
asked "to patronise us in the choice of a President according to the
direction of our Founder's Statutes", a form of words which was sub-
stituted for "to recommend us to His Majesty's grace and favour, and
prevent any stranger's being set over us". On April 2 the Bishop's reply
was received ; he advised the College to proceed to an election at once,
and suggested Baptist Levinz, Bishop of Man, as a suitable candidate. 1
On April 5, Sunderland signed a royal mandate to the College, ordering
them to elect and admit Anthony Farmer to the place of President, "any
statute, custom or constitution to the contrary in any wise notwith-
standing, wherewith we are graciously pleased to dispense on his
behalf"; the King also stated that he was well satisfied of Farmer's
"piety, loyalty and learning", but it may be remarked in passing that
there was no mention of the oaths in the mandate or that Farmer on
election would have had to declare himself a good Protestant.
On April 8 the Bishop of Winchester wrote to Sunderland :
I am informed that great endeavours are used with His Majesty
to recommend one Mr. Farmer, who is not at present, nor ever was,
Fellow of that College, to be President of it, which is directly
contrary to the Statutes of the Founder, as I am confident some who
promote Mr. Farmer's interest cannot be ignorant of;
and put forward the names of certain other persons of merit who did
not labour under Fanner's disqualifications. The same day the Bishop
wrote to the College advising them to petition the King against the
mandate and, either on that advice or independently of it, the College
on April 9 agreed on a petition representing "that the said Mr. Farmer
is a person in several respects incapable of that character [i.e. of Presi-
dent], according to our Founder's Statutes". This petition was sent by
the College post haste to London by the hand of one of their members,
1 It was said that Levinz's brother possibly Sir Cresswell Levinz dis-
suaded him from risking himself in so hazardous an enterprise.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 337
Captain Francis Bagshaw, 1 and on the following day he and Dr. Thomas
Smith, another of the Fellows who was living in London, waited on
Sunderland and delivered it to him. On April 12, Smith and Bagshaw
again waited on Sunderland for news of the success of the petition;
they were given an appointment on the next day, and Sunderland said
to them:
I have delivered the Bishop of Winchester's letter and your
address to the King: the King has sent down his letter to the
College, and expects to be obeyed.
Meanwhile this second mandate z had reached the College by the
hand of Robert Charnock, the single Fellow who was a Catholic, and
who was to be executed nine years later for plotting against the life of
William III. The mandate was considered at a meeting on April u,
and it was decided to hold to their intention of proceeding to election
on the 1 3th. The election was adjourned, however, until the I5th (a
postponement expressly allowed by the Statute), when Dr. Thomas
Smith, who had hurried down from London, moved for a delay to
provide time for the despatch of a second petition to the King, but was
over-ruled. In the election which followed the discussion on Dr.
Smith's motion, and which was held according to the prescribed forms,
Dr. John Hough was declared President; and the following day he went
with the Vice-President to Farnham, where the Bishop as Visitor
confirmed the election.
The various points on which more information up to this date are
required are: (i) Had James any plan to interfere in the election in
existence before the death of Dr. Clarke, when he was known to be
very ill ? Such a plan seems to be'.hinted at in the words deleted from the
first draft of the petition of the College. (2) Did James see the petition
which Smith and Bagshaw handed to Sunderland? Smith had his
doubts at the time, and, from reports of conversations in which James
took part when he was at Oxford in September 1687 and questions
which were put to Smith by Jenner and Cartwright in November, we
must very strongly suspect that Sunderland kept the petition in his
own hands and that his answer to it was without authority. (3) Had
James any previous knowledge of the candidate who was put forward
in his name for the presidentship ? If he had not, as appears likely, he
must be convicted of acting very irresponsibly in failing to inquire into
Farmer's suitability for so important a post.
1 Bagshaw had earned his rank in the contingent raised by the University
at the time of Monmouth's rebellion.
a There is no text of this document extant, but its existence and contents
can be inferred.
338 KING JAMES II
For there can be little doubt that in the long history of the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge no person less qualified to be a Head of a
House has ever been proposed for such an office. His qualifications
began and ended with his tenure of a master's degree and with an
alleged willingness to adopt or support the Catholic religion. Anthony
Wood appears to have known something about him before his character
had been fully investigated, for on April 9 he wrote in his diary:
Was there ever such a ridiculous thing that a mandamus for such
a person should come from the King ? Sure if the King had a right
understanding of things and men he would not have recommended
such a person;
and it seems likely that Farmer was well .and not favourably known at
Oxford; indeed, the words of the petition, "a person in several respects
incapable of that character", reveal that the Fellows of Magdalen knew
something of him in addition to .the fact that he had not qualified for
candidature by becoming a Fellow of Magdalen or New College. His
most obvious disqualification was that he was under thirty years of
age 1 a disqualification which could be ignored only if it were balanced
by exceptional scholarship or strength of character. But the Fellows of
Magdalen set to work, and with the zeal of modern detectives traced
Farmer's record and unearthed a series of incidents any one of
which (unless lived down by years of serious living) would have
rendered him unfit for any position of dignity: he had, on his own
signed confession, been expelled from Trinity College, Cambridge, for
misbehaving at a dancing class ; he had been usher to an unlicensed
dissenting schoolmaster; he had been asked to leave Magdalen Hall
because of the disturbances he caused there by his "troublesome and
unpeaceable humour"; he had seduced undergraduates to debauchery
and provided a naked woman for their entertainment; he had insulted
an honest inn-keeper's wife; he professed himself willing to court
Catholics or even to profess himself to be a Catholic in furtherance of
his own interests ; he was constantly drunk in public and in company
with troopers and other mean persons, and as late as June 12, 1687,
when he was still the King's nominee for the Presidentship, he had been
drunk with a number of other men at Abingdon and had concluded a
riotous evening by uprooting the town stocks and throwing them into
Mad Hall's Pool. Such a list whets one's appetite, and it is disappointing
to read that the College proved these misdeeds sufficiently and "as much
more against him, even such, things as are not fit to be heard or spoken".
1 Farmer matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1672 (D.N.B.).
THE MIDDLE YEARS 339
The King took notice of Dr, Hough's election merely by a short letter
of expostulation addressed to the Vice-President and Fellows and de-
manding an explanation of their conduct. To this letter a reply was sent
couched in very loyal terms and enclosing a statement to the effect that
they had been bound by their statutes neither to postpone the election
nor to elect Mr. Farmer, who had never been a Fellow of their College or
of New College "and wanting likewise such personal qualifications as
are required in the character of a President" ; that included in their oaths
was an undertaking not to procure or accept any dispensation from their
oaths; and that though in the past the College had on occasions obeyed
royal mandates in their choice of Presidents, these Presidents had
invariably possessed the statutory qualifications. No answer was made
to this letter, and the College was left in uneasy security for over two
months.
On May 28 the Vice-President and Fellows, or such as they should
empower to represent them, were cited to appear before the Ecclesiasti-
cal Commission. They appeared on June 6, and were allowed a week to
prepare their case; on the I3th they put in two statements, one of their
legal position, the other containing their allegations against Fanner's
character; on the 22nd the Commission declared the election of Dr,
Hough null and void and suspended the Vice-President for contempt
in not having obeyed the royal mandate, and another Fellow, Dr.
Fairfax, for no stated reason, but actually for having put Jeffreys into a
passion by questioning the legality of the Commission. On the 27th
they considered the allegations against Farmer, and it was noticed by
one of them that at the meeting their demeanour had changed: they no
longer hectored the Fellows, but treated them with deference, for they
had become aware of the weak position in which the King had put
himself by offering such a man as President. Farmer had put in a written
answer to the charges against him he appears to have had some of the
brazen effrontery of Titus Gates but even he himself was unable to
suggest that he had any positive qualifications for the post. The Com-
mission determined to examine witnesses and,
What was made out against Farmer was so scandalous that
Obadiah (Walker) and his other friends being in Court could not
say one word, the evidence of the College being most of them people
of good report. The conclusion was that my Lord Chancellor
told Farmer that that Court looked on him as a very bad man.
In short, Jeffreys, conscious as he was of his precarious position in the
King's favour and willing to strain law and equity to any extent, was
for once unable to override the force of the evidence, and had to admit
340 KING JAMES II
that the man who had been in so public a fashion put forward as the
ICing's candidate was an utterly worthless creature. No single action on
the part of James exhibits in the same clear light his entire unfitness for
kingship : for not only did he make no inquiry into Farmer's character
before committing himself to his candidature, but after the event there
is no record that anyone was reprimanded for having deceived the King
in this matter. It is clear that Sunderland had a part in this deception,
but it seems probable that Sunderland himself was deceived by the
Jesuit clique led by Petre, for Petre was undoubtedly very closely in the
counsels of the Commission of three which finally installed Dr. Parker,
and it is not likely that he came into the affair then for the first time;
James could not have broken with Petre without destroying the founda-
tions of the system of government which he had erected.
The College had justified themselves as far as Farmer was concerned,
and they persisted in refusing to acknowledge the validity of the declara-
tion by the Ecclesiastical Commission that the election of Dr. Hough
was null and void. But it was far from the nature of James to admit
defeat; on August 14 a fresh mandate was issued, no mention being
made of the previous mandate to elect Farmer, calling upon the Fellows
to elect Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford, in the vacancy which the
Commission had declared to exist. After a fortnight's delay the Fellows
replied, submissively in form but stubbornly in essence, that "they
humbly conceived the place of the President to be full". James deter-
mined to try to overawe the Fellows by his personal presence. He
arrived at Oxford on his Western progress on September 3, and was
met on the Woodstock Road by the University and the City and con-
ducted to his lodgings at Christ Church, through streets decorated with
green boughs and amid cheering crowds, in a procession of great magnifi-
cence and solemnity; and he no doubt accepted this expression of loyalty
as a sign that he could make his will prevail.
The following afternoon James sent for the Fellows of Magdalen, and
in the Dean's lodgings was enacted a scene in which he exhibited to the
full that lack of royal dignity which his most extravagant contemporary
eulogist, the Earl of Ailesbury, admits to be his gravest fault. After
obtaining the admission of Pudsey, the Senior Fellow, that they had
received his mandate to elect Dr. Parker, he addressed them as
follows :
Then I must tell you and the rest of your Fellows that you have
behaved yourselves undutifully to me and not like gentlemen; you
have not paid me common respect ; you have always been a stubborn
and turbulent college, I have known you to be so these six and
THE MIDDLE YEARS 34*
twenty years myself; you have affronted me, know I am your King
and I will be obeyed. Is this your Church of England loyalty?
One would wonder to see so many Church of England men got
together in such a thing. Go back and show yourselves good
members of the Church of England. (Here all kneeling Dr. Pudsey
offered a petition, which the King refused saying) [I am] hearing
nothing from you, get you gone, I command you be gone, go and
admit the Bishop of Oxford, Head, Principal, or what do you call
him (one that stood by said "president' ') as President of the College.
Let them that refuse it look to it. Go and obey me or you shall feel
the weight of your sovereign's displeasure.
As they were going out James called them back to reprimand them
afresh for having confirmed a probationary Fellow in contravention of
a royal mandate to elect no new Fellows, and when they attempted to
justify their action he cut them short by a fresh outburst.
Even when it is read in cold print this exhibition of temper gives an
impression of gross want of self-control and of regard for the elevation
of majesty. The effect on those who stood round him further heightens
that impression. Bonrepaus, the French agent, says that the King's
anger prevented him from continuing his speech for some moments; a
correspondent of Pepys informed him that "His Majesty chid them . . .
with a much greater appearance of anger that ever I perceived in him" ;
another eye-witness says:
The King put himself into so great passion that he changed
colour and faltered in his speech, but Lord Sunderland stood by
his elbow with much sedate malice in his face.
And the worst of it was from James's point of view that with only two
dissentients the Fellows persisted in their view that it was not in their
power to elect Dr. Parker. They restated their position in a paper which
was left for James at Christ Church, and when he returned from Uni-
versity College, where he had been attending vespers with Obadiah
Walker, he received this paper, "Which answer perusing (says Antony
Wood) he said he was misinformed of the matter".
But if he actually made such a remark it represented only a passing
phase of mind. The next morning, Monday, September 5, he attended
a collation prepared for him in Bodley's Library, 1 and later he held
discourse with the Vice-Chancellor and complained of the conduct of
1 "None did eat but he, for he spoke to nobody to eat", and after he had
finished he watched with interest the spectators scrambling for the remains of a
gargantuan feast.
342 KING JAMES II
the Fellows towards him. 1 The Fellows on their side appear at this
point to have been horrified at their own temerity in opposing the royal
will. They sent to James at Bath by the hand of Sunderand a very
obsequious address, expressing themselves as "being deeply afflicted with
the late sense of Your Majesty's heavy displeasure", and offering "to
obey your royal pleasure in any instance that does not interfere with and
violate our conscience". This latter expression Sunderland chose to
interpret as meaning that if the King were to put Dr. Parker into the
presidency by royal mandate, and excuse them from the form of election,
they would be satisfied and would acknowledge and obey him. There
followed a short period of surreptitious bargaining, the Fellows holding
that they could not elect Parker, even if Hough made way for him by
resigning, 2 without violating their oaths and committing perjury, and
that perjury, being a malum in se y could not be covered by royal dis-
pensation; 3 the King hesitating to create a new precedent by making
the direct appointment. Whatever scruples he had had, he overcame
them by the middle of October, when he appointed as "Lords Com-
missioners for visiting Magdalen College" Cartvyright, Bishop of Chester,
Chief Justice Wright and Baron Jenner. These commissioners sat at
Magdalen from October 21 to 28 ; they repeated the old arguments with
the Fellows and, finding them still obdurate, they forcibly entered the
President's lodgings on October 25 and left in possession there one of the
chaplains of the Bishop of Oxford as proxy for the Bishop. On the
afternoon of the same day they received a declaration by all the Fellows
except Dr. Fairfax (Dr. Hough having previously been dismissed from
his fellowship) that they would obey Dr. Parker as President "so far as is
lawful and agreeable to the Statutes of the said College". Dr. Fairfax,
who was already under suspension, was thereupon dismissed; but
James was not satisfied with this qualified submission : on October 27
Sunderland conveyed peremptory orders that the Fellows must address
the King "asking pardon for their late offences and obstinacy and
acknowledging the jurisdiction of the Court", and that any Fellow who
refused to join in this address should be expelled. The Fellows had
already incurred odium in Oxford for their qualified offer to accept Dr.
1 This conversation is too long to quote, but it is an interesting example of
Jan^es's controversial methods: he made a statement, waited until the reply
was concluded, but took no notice of the reply and proceeded to another state-
ment on the same or another subject.
2 Hough does not appear to have been at any time willing to resign, nor was
pressure put upon him to do so.
8 This legal point does not appear to have been raised directly but it is in-
herent in all the pleas of the College; Aldworth, a Fellow, came near to raising
it when he propounded the curious paradox, "As long as they obeyed the
statutes they obeyed the King".
THE MIDDLE YEARS 343
Parker; they stiffened their attitude, and with three exceptions Robert
Charnock, Jasper Thompson and Thomas Smith they refused. On
November 15 the three Commissioners returned to Oxford, and on the
following day dismissed the twenty-five recalcitrant Fellows. On
November 28, Sunderland moved at a meeting of the Ecclesiastical
Commission that the expelled Fellows should be "incapacitated" that
is to say, that they should not be allowed to earn the means of sub-
sistence by accepting ecclesiastical preferment. Unexpected opposition
was met from Lord Chief Justice Herbert and Thomas Sprat, Bishop of
Rochester, who both said that in their opinion Dr. Hough's election
had been regular. On December 10 this vindictive resolution was passed
by a single vote. On December 31 James wrote to Dr. Parker ordering
him to admit twelve new Fellows; six of these are known to have been
Catholics, and it is probable that the remainder were of the same faith,
for they were not to be called upon to subscribe the oaths. On March
21, 1688, Parker died; by that time there were no Protestant fellows
except Dr. Thomas Smith and perhaps Jasper Thompson, and a few
days before Parker's death a confidential servant of his was witness of an
extraordinary scene in which he worked himself into a passion,
he walked up and down the room, and smote his breast and said,
"There is no trust in man, there is no trust in Princes. Is this the
kindness the King promised me? To set me here to make me his
tool and his prop! To place me with a company of men which he
knows I hate the conversation of."
But from a conversation Parker had with Thomas Smith as early as
March 28, when he said that "the King expected that the person he
recommended should be favourable to his religion", it is clear that he
was deceived not in the nature,, but in the extent of James's intentions.
On March 31 Bonaventura Giffard, one of the four Catholic Vicars-
General, was admitted President of Magdalen in obedience to a royal
mandate, and the process of converting the College into a Catholic
seminary was complete.
As in many other cases, James's victory was less complete than it
appeared to be. The College was indeed in Catholic hands and the
Fellows had been driven to dependence on charity. But they had defied
the royal will for nearly seven months; even at the end of that time the
King had been unable to persuade them or to scare them into electing
his nominee, and they had compelled him to use force to attain his
ends. 1 But the worst feature of the proceedings was that it had des-
1 As Hough said, "I see it is resolved that the papists must have our College,
and I think all we have to do is to let the world see that they take it from us and
that we do not give it up".
344 KING JAMES II
troyed the unanimity of the Ecclesiastical Commission, which up to
that time had been willing to go to any lengths to further James's plans.
There can be little question that, had the headship of another College
at Oxford or Cambridge, not by statute in the royal gift, fallen vacant,
James could not have entered on a second conflict of the same nature,
and that Jeffreys would not have advised him to take such a step. Nor can
he be absolved from personal responsibility or from acting in opposition
to the advice of persons wiser than himself in thus undermining the
loyalty of the Church of England; for the Earl of Ailesbury has left a
record that he went on his knees to the King, begged him not to touch
the freehold of Hough and the Fellows, urged that if he must have a
Catholic College at Oxford it would be a less flagrant breach of the law
to found a new one, and added that though he himself had no ready
money, he would raise a thousand pounds on credit as a subscription to
such a scheme.
The years 1686 and 1687 provide no outstanding events in James's
foreign policy strictly so called. The chief interest abroad lies in the
personal relations of James with his nephew and son-in-law, William of
Orange; these relations, however, inevitably had repercussions on
James's dealings on the one hand with the States-General, in whose
employ William was, and on the other hand with William's personal
enemy, King Louis. In general it may be said that during these years
there was a steady decline in cordiality between James and William, and
that in the spring of 1688 James was so angry with his nephew that,
short of a breach which might have led to war, he would have done him
any injury in his power ; that this decline in cordiality was accompanied
by a growing aversion to the States- General, who supported William in
his opposition to James's plans, and by an increasing dependence on
Louis, under whose domination he had shown restiveness towards the
end of 1685.
James's disavowals notwithstanding, it can hardly be doubted that the
renewal in July 1685 of the treaty with the States-General was a symp-
tom of a desire on his part to pursue a foreign policy independent of
France. In the following month Avaux, the French ambassador at The
Hague, a far more active and reliable diplomatist than Barrillon, re-
ported to Louis that James had told William and Fagel, the Grand
Pensionary, "that he knew what measures to take with France, but that
if he took such measures immediately the results might be disastrous". 1
1 James wrote seven letters to William in order to remove his apprehensions
of a sudden attack on Holland by France, and promising to make every en-
deavour to maintain peace.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 345
Early in December, Barrillon told Louis that there was a general im-
pression in English Court circles that James was anxious to demonstrate
that he was not a docile tool in the hands of the French King, but that
he would henceforth stand on his own feet and conduct an independent
policy.
Most people think (writes the ambassador) that if there is a
cooling off it is on the part of the King of England, who is not so
amenable nor so tractable as the late Bang his brother, and who is t
believed to be more fanatical (ent$t) about what is called the interest
of England and the honour of the nation;
and he adds that James had no doubt allowed himself to be flattered,
and that, since he has obtained from Parliament all the money he needed,
"he has used such language and conducted himself in such a manner as
to encourage those who wish to sever his relations with Your Majesty".
For the most part James was discreet and avoided any action or
declaration which could give offence to Louis. On one occasion, how-
ever (as Barrillon reports), when the Dutch ambassador Van Citters
showed him a pamphlet, "A Remonstrance made to the Bang of England
by his Council", in whch he was accused, among other things, of sub-
servience to France, he was moved to anger and said all that was in his
mind:
Today I possess the Crown in full right and I am determined
not to dishonour it. I was born an Englishman and I want all the
world to know it. ... Never, no never, shall I do anything to
put myself below the Kings of France and Spain. Vassal! Vassal
of France! Sir, if Parliament had wished, if it still wishes, I would
have carried, I will still carry, the monarchy to a degree of con-
sideration which it never enjoyed under my predecessors. And your
State may find in the English monarchy its own security. 1
These brave words were, however, at no time justified by James's
behaviour when he found himself at variance with Louis; in such
circumstances he showed himself half-hearted and timorous, and Louis
1 A modern French historian has said that Europe had been accustomed for
twenty-five years to see England following the lead of France, but that James
was far more national and independent than Charles; and he adds that probably
if he had succeeded in making England Catholic he would have joined the
European movement to curb Louis's ambitions. But even in 1678, when James
was advocating war with France, he appears to have been unaware of the true
object of that war, to limit Louis's conquests in the Spanish Netherlands;
apart from the religious question, he had no sympathy with the territorial
aims of the League of Augsburg, and we have no choice but to accept Ranke's
dictum, <c No prince has ever had less thought for the balance of power in
Europe than James II".
346 KING JAMES II
treated his representations with scarcely disguised contempt. In
September 1685 Sir William Trumbull succeeded Lord Preston as
ambassador at Paris. To Louis the appointment was distasteful on two
grounds : he was not a nobleman or even of gentle birth, and he took
his Protestantism more seriously than his predecessor had done.
Trumbull's tenure of the Embassy was troubled and unsuccessful.
Two questions came to a head shortly after his arrival, both arising out
of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The first question did not
concern James directly ; from family interest he endeavoured to mediate
between Louis and William in the matter of William's principality of
Orange. The possession of Orange had been confirmed to William by
the Treaty of Nimeguen in 1678, but after the Revocation it became a
place of refuge for Huguenots fleeing from the dragonnades. Louis
could not tolerate a Huguenot enclave in the heart of France, and in
October 1685 he occupied Orange with his troops, levelled its fortifica-
tions and subjected its Protestant inhabitants to the rigours of persecu-
tion. Except by precipitating a European war, William had no means of
redress against this high-handed proceeding. He did, however, persuade
James to take up his case, and James made formal and half-hearted
representations to Louis. But Louis refused even to discuss the matter:
he said that the sovereignty of Orange was attached to the Crown of
France, and that he could not believe that James could object to the
extirpation of heresy in the town:
I must believe [he wrote to Barrillon on November 19] that the
King of England will not take up this question, especially as the
interests of our religion do not permit that this town shall remain
longer in heresy. You may . . . make it known that I have
sufficient confidence in his friendship to believe that he will en-
tirely abandon this solicitation.
Early in December, James told Barrillon that he could not refuse to take
up the Orange question without offending William, and that what had
happened had been so strongly resented in England that there would be
discontent if he did nothing; Barrillon replied that both before and after
the Treaty of Nimeguen the French King had held the sovereignty of
Orange, and that Louis could not tolerate a place of retreat for Hugue-
nots in the heart of his kingdom. Bonrepaus was then in England on a
mission which included persuading Huguenot refugees to return to
France, and his view of the matter was that James had intervened only
because he could not help himself, and that he could be satisfied by a
few polite words. Meanwhile Trumbull at Paris has been informed that
the Orange question was closed, that the French troops had been with-
THE MIDDLE YEARS 347
drawn and the town restored to its former condition; nothing ap-
parently was said about the refugees and the Protestant inhabitants.
In January 1686 James wrote to William saying that he was sorry
Trumbull had had no more success with the memorial on the Orange
question which he had presented, "but", he added, "I shall still con-
tinue to do my part in pressing it". There is no evidence, however, that
the matter was again raised either with Barrillon in London or by
Trumbull at Paris.
The second question gave Trumbull constant trouble during a
period of months: the question of the status of English Protestants
domiciled in France. His instructions were that he should do nothing to
facilitate the escape of French Protestants, but Protestant worship was
prohibited in France, and the country had in many ways been rendered
impossible for Protestants of any nationality. In consequence there
was a general exodus of the English to their native country. There was
endless conflict about particular cases. Louis took up a typical dictator
attitude; he recognised no restrictions imposed on him by international
law and made no pretence of reciprocity: he rejected all James's
claims over Englishmen domiciled in France, while pressing his own
claims over Frenchmen domiciled in England. In particular he in-
sisted that the French wives of Englishmen living in France, and their
children who had been born there, were his subjects and could not
leave the kingdom without his consent, and on the other hand he
committed the enormity of having certain French fishermen domiciled
at Rye kidnapped, and refused to give them up. James protested that
he was actuated by no desire to favour the "pr&endus refarmis", who
had been his brother's and his own worst enemies; but the English
people were sensitive about anything that concerned the sea, and for
that reason he was bound to press for the return of the kidnapped men
(he was unaware that Louis had no reason to desire political harmony in
England). This was James's public attitude, but at the same time
Sunderland gave Barrillon to understand that, as in the Orange question,
TrumbulPs representations might be quietly ignored. James's stock at
Versailles at the beginning of the year 1686 was very low, and Louis
could congratulate himself on having as completely neutralised the
power of England as he had done in the previous reign, and at con-
siderable less expenditure of money.
In September 1686 Bevil Skelton was succeeded as envoy by the
Marquis d'Albeville. 1 Albeville came of a family of Irish adventurers,
1 His official title was Sir Ignatius White, Baronet of England, and Marquis
of Albeville in the Roman Empire. An account of Albeville and his brothers by
Mr. E. S. de Beer will be found in English Historical Review, XLV, 397.
348 KING JAMES II
and his own record, if Burnet is to be believed, was not good. He was
appointed on the recommendation of Barrillon, who, in conjunction
with Avaux, also obtained for him a pension from King Louis on condi-
tion that he should model his conduct according to the advice of Avaux.
But Barrillon, on second thoughts, and in spite of the solemn assurances
which Albeville had given to him before leaving for Holland, was
unwilling to guarantee his fidelity; he feared that William might offer
him higher terms, and recommended that the pension should be con-
tingent on satisfactory reports of his conduct from Avaux. Albeville
was in fact miserably poor, and was willing to sell his services to the
highest bidder. Avaux never trusted him, and a year after his appoint-
ment Bonrepaus stated that he had gone over to the Prince of Orange ;
but there is no evidence of any act of treachery on his part to James or
Louis; 1 it seems probable that William, who had little patience with
fools, made no effort to attach him to himself. His appointment was in
itself an affront and a disappointment to William, for, apart from the
fact that he was a Catholic, it had been understood that Skelton's
successor would be a man of quality. This was among James's many
bad appointments, and he was certainly not better served at The Hague
during his last two years than he had formerly been; Burnet's explana-
tion of the choice was that Albeville was entirely in the interests of the
Jesuit faction at Whitehall and was the only man they could trust to
further their designs.
The relations between James and William during the greater part of
the year 1686 appear, from the few letters between them which have
survived, to have been amicable. In May 1686, for example, James
addressed three letters to the Prince on the subject of English refugees
in Holland. In these letters he assumed that William would agree that
it was undesirable that James's enemies should be allowed to congregate
so near to the English coast; he also expressed himself aware that the
matter was not in William's control, and he merely requested him to use
his influence with the States-General to prevent the abuse of the right of
asylum.
Towards the end of July, however, trouble commenced in a disagree-
ment between the King and the Prince regarding the appointment of a
commander to the six British regiments which were in the pay of the
States-General. The existence of these regiments was an anomaly, and
their status was not accurately defined. They dated from Elizabethan
1 Dalrymple (V, 29), however, states that in Albeville's letters in the French
archives there is evidence that he acted in the Dutch interest against his
master.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 349
times and derived from the English volunteers (among whom was Sir
Philip Sidney) who had assisted the Dutch in their revolt against Spain.
Only one attempt had been made to bring the regiments into direct
contact with the English crown; this was early in 1678, when the
English and Dutch were in league against France, and a proposal had
then been made that the King of England should be empowered to
recall them to England if in any crisis he had need of them. This
proposal was the subject of correspondence between Charles and William,
but no agreement had been reached, and certainly no such agreement
had been ratified by the States-General. At the time of Monmouth's
rebellion the regiments had been sent over at James's request, but this
acquiescence was a free act of assistance and in no sense the acknow-
ledgement of a right. Individually the officers and men remained English
or Scottish subjects ; collectively the King of England had no control
over the regiments, but by courtesy he had been allowed to nominate
an officer to command them, and hitherto there had been no conflict
over the appointment. 1 The gallant Lord Ossory, Ormonde's eldest
son, had held the post at the time of his death in 1680, and subsequently
Henry Sidney had been in command, to the entire satisfaction of William
and die States-General.
James had recalled Sidney in March 1685, and for eighteen months
he had failed to nominate a successor. The motive for the delay must
be a matter of surmise, but we may suspect that James's intention from
the first was to put in a Catholic, but that he hesitated to take such a step
until he considered himself sufficiently secure at home. On July 23,
1686, he at last wrote to William saying that he had long been unable to
find a man of the necessary qualifications, but that he had now decided
on Francis Taafe, Earl of Carlingford.
'Tis the Earl of Carlingford I recommend to you, . . . who so
soon as you let me know that you approve of him, shall prepare
himself to go over to you to receive his orders. . . .
The wording of this letter is significant in view of what subsequently
occurred, for James at this stage made no claim to do more than to
recommend, and by implication b' fr &dmitted William's right to object
to the appointment. *^
To William the recommendation was extremely embarrassing: the
chief object of his policy was to avoid giving any sort of offence to
1 In 1680-81 after the death of Ossory there was a prolonged discussion
between Charles and William about his successor; Charles first suggested the
Earl of Dumbarton, but William objected that he was a Catholic, and Charles
withdrew the nomination.
350 KING JAMES II
James, but commands in the Dutch army were given by the Captain-
General, and the appointment of a Catholic would seriously injure him
with his own people.
There is nothing in the world [he wrote to Bentinck] I desire more
than to give satisfaction to His Majesty in everything that depends
upon me. But as the Earl is a Catholic, it would hurt me extremely
in this country if I gave the command of these six regiments to a
person of that religion.
He added that in the previous reign the recommendation of the Catholic
Earl of Dumbarton had been withdrawn at his instance, and he asked
Bentinck (who was then in England) to make a verbal representation
to King James so as to avoid the apparent disrespect of a refusal by letter.
James replied by Sunderland in uncompromising terms, saying that
Dumbarton's name had been withdrawn because of the agitation at the
time of the Popish Plot and that his case could not be considered a
precedent, that James had adopted the principle of employing competent
Catholics, and that "he cannot but desire that my Lord Carlingford may
command these regiments and thinks the alterations of times and
persons ought to be considered". To this letter William replied on
September 2 with a polite but stubborn refusal.
It would not be decent [he wrote] and I have too much respect
for His Majesty to enter further into reasonings on that matter, and
therefore I have only to beg you will humbly intreat His Majesty
on my part to have the goodness not to insist upon this affair.
James was in a quandary, and he took no further direct action until
the winter of 1687-8. He would have liked to recall the troops, but his
military expenditure had increased to such an extent that he could not
afford to support the additional burden of these regiments. In the
summer of 1687 he conceived the plan of persuading Louis to assist
him in a project, to which the French King would have no general objec-
tion, to deprive William of part of his army. But six months passed and
many letters were exchanged before agreement could be reached re-
garding the form which Louis's assistance should take. The simplest
plan, and that which first commended itself to James, was that Louis
should entertain the regiments on conditions similar to those under
which they had been entertained by the States-General ; but to this plan
there were two insuperable objections: pay was higher in the English
than in the French Army, and Louis could not treat foreign troops
better than his own men; and, moreover, most of the men were Protes-
tants, and since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes Protestants could
THE MIDDLE YEARS 351
not live in France. Eventually Louis undertook to furnish the pay of
2000 men to be stationed in England, provided that every one of them
had been taken from the regiments in Holland. Then in January 1688
James formally demanded from the States the return of the regiments.
This demand was (according to Barrillon) discouraged by the moderate
Catholics, notably Powis and Arundel of Wardour, on the grounds that it
would create a rupture with the States-General and with William, and
that it would cause, to such Tories as were still loyal, apprehension that
the increase in the royal army was a menace to the Church of England.
The States-General rejected James's demand as ultra vires, and he
forthwith issued a proclamation commanding every one of his subjects
who was serving in Holland to return to his native country. There was
sufficient response to this proclamation to enable him to form six
regiments, and those who returned were (naturally enough) "the Catho-
lics and those who are not entirely won over by the Prince or Orange*',
They were the men of whom alone he had intended to make use when
the negotiations with Louis commenced, but though he succeeded in
getting much of his own way, it was at the price of any good will
which the Dutch still retained for him, while William still kept the men
who were most devoted to him. On July 16, 1688, Barrillon reported
to Louis that he had made over to Godolphin 93,440 livres tournois as
the first two months' pay of the three new regiments and had promised a
similar payment after each succeeding two months. Thus a final settle-
ment of the question was arrived at almost exactly two years after James
had opened it.
In this controversy the States-General was involved equally with
William. Simultaneously James was engaged in a second controversy
which concerned William personally as husband of the heir-presumptive.
From the beginning of the reign responsible English Catholics had
realised that James's successor would almost certainly be a Protestant,
and that in that case there would inevitably be an anti-Catholic reaction
in which everything that James had gained would certainly be lost, and
in all probability the Catholics would be in a worse position than they
had been when James came to the throne. These moderate Catholics
had no less than James the cause of their Church at heart, but they saw
farther than he did. They had no vision of an England predominantly
Catholic ; they knew that, even if by a most unlikely event a succession
of Catholic kings could keep the administration in Catholic hands, the
results must be a revolution ; and they were convinced that the policy
best calculated for their ultimate benefit was to make no greater demands
than the most humane and enlightened Protestants (such as Halifax
352 KING JAMES II
and William himself) were ready to grant them, and to prove to the
nation by consistent quiet behaviour over a period of years that it was
possible for a good Catholic to be a good citizen. James's view of the
matter was in accordance with his political principles; he entirely
underrated the strength of English Protestantism, and believed that a
succession of English kings pledged to continue his own policy would in
the long run produce a Catholic England.
It was not until he had been on the throne for nearly two years that
James realised that any concessions he could secure for the Catholics
might come to an end with his life and be reversed by his successor. In
November 1686 he sent to The Hague his Quaker friend, William Penn,
on a special mission ; this mission was to endeavour to persuade William
and Mary to declare publicly in favour of the repeal of the penal laws
and the Test Act. Burnet, who was then at The Hague and had con-
versations with Penn, alleges that, as the price of William's acquiescence,
James offered to join the coalition against France. If Burnet's statement
is accurate, the bait was tempting, but William, apart from his own
convictions, was deterred from accepting it by the knowledge that he
would by such a declaration forfeit all claim to the leadership of the
English Protestants ; he therefore replied that he
readily consented to a toleration of popery, as well as of the dissen-
ters, provided it were proposed and passed in Parliament, and he
promised his assistance, if there were need of it to get it passed
but he looked on the tests as such a real security, and indeed the
only one, where the King was of another religion, [and] he would
join in no counsels with those that intended to repeal those laws
that enacted them.
After the First Declaration of Indulgence, Albeville was instructed
to commend the royal policy to William and to endeavour to gain his
approval and support; he was to argue that the Test Act was a restraint
on the royal prerogative and that its repeal would be to the ultimate
advantage of William and Princess Mary; he was to say that James had
been led to favour the repeal of the penal laws by seeing what benefits
the United Provinces had gained by religious toleration; he was also to
express his master's abhorrence of Louis's religious policy. William
had spoken freely to Penn, as to a private friend of his father-in-law, but
he was embarrassed by being approached officially by King James's
ambassador, and for some time he avoided giving a positive answer.
When, however, he found the ambassador persistent he said
that he would never consent to the repeal of those laws which had
been enacted for the support and safety of the Protestant religion
THE MIDDLE YEARS 353
and that his conscience would not let him consent, even if by doing
so he might gain not only the kingdom of England but the empire
of the world.
Bonrepaus, who furnishes this uncompromising statement, adds that
James was more incensed against William than he had ever been before.
The special mission of Dykvelt to England from February to June
1687 was of paramount importance in the history of the Revolution, for
though he was nominally the envoy of the States- General, he was, as
James was aware, closely in William's confidence, he carried instructions
from the Prince (in which Burnet had had a hand), and he was the means
of establishing William's position as head of the opposition to James's
religious policy and of concentrating the hopes of that opposition upon
the ultimate succession of William to the throne. William's instructions
to Dykvelt were:
to expostulate decently but firmly with the King upon the methods
he was pursuing both at home and abroad, ... to assure all
the Church party that the Prince would ever be firm to the Church
of England and to all our national interests, ... to assure them
[the protestant dissenters] of a full toleration, and likewise of a
comprehension, if possible, whensoever the Crown should devolve
on the Princess, . . . and to try all sorts of people and to remove
the ill impressions that had been given them of the Prince.
To the Catholics only Dykvelt brought no message.
This is surely a unique document: never before or since has an
envoy been accredited both to the Bang and to the opponents of his
policy. 1 It would be a grave mistake, however, to exaggerate the scope
of William's intentions at this time and to believe that Dykvelt was to
work for a usurpation already planned; 2 William's immediate object
was to contrast his own view of the religious situation with that of his
father-in-law so as to gain popularity with the English people; his
ultimate object was to prevent Bang James from tampering with the
succession, as it was rumoured he intended to do, and to secure in due
course Princess Mary's peaceful succession to the throne; and, it may
be added, the pleas on which William demanded the suffrage of the
English people were not adopted for immediate purposes, but were
based on his sincere attachment to the principles which he professed.
1 Dykvelt's instructions bear, however, a distant resemblance to many
given by Louis to his ambassadors under which they were to bring pressure on
Charles and James by encouraging Parliament to make trouble for them.
* Even the hot-headed Mordaunt, who early in 1686 proposed to William
that he should make a descent on England, did not contemplate James's
expulsion, but only a compulsion on him to rule by law.
M
354 KING JAMES II
Dykvelt returned to The Hague in June 1687 bearing letters to
William from prominent men of all shades of political opinion from
Halifax, Danby, Nottingham, Compton, Admiral Herbert and John
Churchill ; it may be noted that of these Churchill alone was in James's
employ, and that he wrote rather on Princess Anne's than on his own
behalf. The letters are in general terms, and are merely expressions of
regard and devotion to William; cumulatively, however, they imply
something more than mere compliment, an acknowledgement of
William's leadership, which at that time could only mean leadership of
the opposition to James's policy, and possibly a hint of confidence that
when William came to the throne in right of his wife he would redress
the nation's wrongs and revert to strict constitutional practice. Nothing
is said of immediate measures to be taken, still less can it be inferred
from any one of the letters that the employment of force is in the writer's
mind.
Upon James Dykvelt made not the slightest impression. At the final
audience before his return to Holland the King showed himself still
convinced of the justice and expediency of his policy and unshaken in
his determination to continue it: William should not, he said, object to
the arbitrary nature of the Scottish Declaration of Indulgence or to
favour given to the Catholics, for both would ultimately benefit him as
successor, the first as an assertion of the prerogative, the second as
confirming in their loyalty a body consistent in their support of the
throne ; the Test had been invented to destroy hereditary right, and every
Englishman who subscribed to it swore that Catholicism was idolatry
and could not therefore without absurdity be a loyal subject to a
Catholic king; if he had power to suspend the penal laws, it was only
just that he should provide against their re-enactment after his death;
he was aware of the rumours about the succession, but they had
no foundation in fact but were invented by the factions in order to
alarm the heirs; he was incapable of intention to interrupt the
succession, such an intention would have been contrary to justice
and to the affection he bore to his children, especially to the
Princess of Orange. But neither she nor the Prince could oppose
his unalterable plans without displeasing him; their duty wa$ to
deserve a continuance of his good will by an entire submission to
his judgement*
Dykvelt replied that the Protestants were alarmed at the power
which the repeal of the Acts would put into the King's hands : he could
give the administration over entirely to the Catholics, he could create
Catholic peers and swamp the House of Lords, and the Catholics, in
THE MIDDLE YEARS 355
their new ascendancy, would oppose the succession of a Protestant. He
added that these fears were justified by the notorious Catholic maxims
regarding royal authority, by the example recently given in France, by
the existence of a large standing army and by his own action in arrogating
to himself the right to suspend laws which Parliament alone could repeal.
He told the King that his only means of regaining the confidence of his
subjects was the abandonment of the repeal of the Test Act and, if
indeed it was not already too late, the dismissal of his violent Catholic
counsellors. Dykvelt further suggested that the only result of an agree-
ment between William and James on the justice of the Catholic claims
would be a revolution. James retorted that he had been talking to the
extreme Whigs and had learnt his politics from them, and Dykvelt
replied that he had had conversation with prominent men of all parties,
but that he had formed no attachments prejudicial to James's interests.
Into the controversy between James and William there intruded in
the autumn of 1687 a Scottish Whig, James Stewart, 1 a refugee at The
Hague ; he was either a sincere enthusiast for the principles of the De-
claration of Indulgence or more probably saw an opportunity by a
counterfeit enthusiasm to secure a pardon from King James. He appears
to have been a man of good education and address, and he had sufficient
ability to get himself made Lord Advocate in Scotland after the Revo-
lution. Stewart made friends with Grand-Pensionary Fagel and wrote
several letters urging him to use his influence with William to persuade
him to accept his father-in-law's religious policy. It is not clear whether
Stewart was acting in this matter on his own responsibility or as the
agent of the English Court; but his letters were shown to William, who
saw that they provided him with an excellent opportunity both of
publicly defining his attitude to the religious question in England and
of refuting a charge, which the Jesuit Cabal at Whitehall had been
sedulously propagating, that his intention on the succession of Princess
Mary was to extirpate the English Catholics. This charge had no
repercussions in England, for the English people were so incensed
against the Catholics that they did not mind what happened to them,
but it was calculated to drive a wedge between William and the Catholic
Powers of Europe. At William's instigation, Fagel replied to Stewart
in January 1688; he stated at some length that William was personally
in favour of the Dutch system, under which Catholics enjoyed freedom
of worship but were not admitted to office, but that he had no intention
of imposing this system on the English people, who must settle the
1 Burnet says that Stewart had been disbarred by the Scottish Test Act of
1 68 1 because he refused to renounce the Covenant.
356 KING JAMES II
question themselves through their representatives in Parliament. FageFs
letter was a carefully written document, and the English translation of it
which Burnet made was widely circulated. James was so ill-advised
as to give it additional publicity by publishing, under the name of
Parlimentum Pacificum, a reply prepared by some of the Catholic clergy, 1
which alleged that the letter was a forgery or, alternatively, that Fagel
had not correctly represented William's opinions : a ridiculous allegation,
for James had already twice through Penn and through Van Citters
privately sounded William and learned those opinions; but it was not
possible for James to conceive that an opinion different from his own
could be honestly held or could prove impervious to persistent contra-
diction. Fagel was very angry that his letter should not have been
accepted as genuine, and that he should have been accused of mendacity ;
he told Albeville that not only did the letter represent the views of
Their Mightinesses, but that it had been published by their command.
This statement was also published and circulated.
In the course of these proceedings the Dutch people naturally began
to take an interest in the religious controversy in England; they were
under fewer restrictions than the English people and they published
their opinions freely. James had always regarded the Dutch as "insolent
republicans" ; he forgot that he had himself encouraged them to take
this interest in the internal affairs of England, and was incensed against
them. The Imperial ambassador, in a long letter written at the end of
January 1688, reviewed the various questions on which the English
Court and the States-General were at variance: some of these, such as
the claim of the English to Bantam, were old disputes revived ; the chief
bone of contention was that the Prince of Orange, the States-General
and the Dutch people were taking
an interest without precedent in the government of England and
especially in the religious question, countering the King of England
at every point, and speaking, writing, printing and generally being
more active than the English themselves ; all this (he adds) is very
distasteful to the Bang, who is very ^sensitive and proud, at a time
when the Queen is so bravely supporting the fatigue of pregnancy
and is to bear a prince who will confound all the heirs-presumptive.
Another cause of conflict mentioned by the Imperial ambassador in
the same letter was the protection afforded in Holland to Dr. Gilbert
1 Hoffmann, the Imperial ambassador, says "some of the bishops", but the
Anglican bishops were all on William's side in the controversy except men like
Crewe and Cartwright, who were incapable of sustaining such a correspondence.
Possibly he means Leybourne, the vicar Apostolic, and the vicars-general.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 357
Burnet. "It is a remarkable fact that after the trials which immediately
followed Monmouth's rebellion, James, with only two exceptions
those of Compton and Burnet showed none of that vindictive spirit
against his personal enemies which was so marked a feature of his
character both before and after his reign. The probable explanation is
that he was so certain in his own mind that he would succeed in making
himself an absolute king, and so contemptuous of the efforts of those
who tried to oppose him, that he could well afford to postpone retribu-
tion until he could deal with all his enemies at once. It may be added
that he preserved this reputation for implacability which he had gained
early in life, so that those who were dissatisfied with his methods were
very careful not to give him opportunities for action against them ; they
were discreet in the expression of their dissatisfaction and circumspect
in the company they kept.
Dr. Burnet had in the last reign been for a long period persona grata
at Court, and he was so intimate both with the Kong and James that he
was able without giving offence to expostulate with them about the
irregularity of their private lives. He was of a singularly open, honest
and generous nature, and his notorious lack of discretion was a natural
concomitant of these virtues. He was famous as a preacher, and more
than a little vain of his popularity with his audiences. 1 His humanity
was shown at the time of the Popish Plot, when he was almost alone in
protesting against the persecution of the Catholics. In 1684 he incurred
Charles's displeasure; he was deprived of his appointments and was
permitted to go abroad. He visited Paris, Rome, Geneva, Strasburg,
Frankfort, Heidelberg and Utrecht, and in 1686 he accepted an invita-
tion from William to visit him at The Hague, and there he remained
until he sailed for England with William's expedition in 1688. Burnet
was a man who could never be idle; he had already gained a great
reputation by the publication in 1679 and 1681 of the first two volumes
of his History of the Reformation, and he was engaged on his most
famous work, the History of My Own Times. He also found time to write
tracts on the political and religious situation in England and to translate
French tracts on the same subject into English. By the beginning of
1687 thk activity had become so well known to King James that he
marked him down as a personal enemy, and, in the true dictator spirit,
1 Johnson in his Life of Thomas Sfrat, Bishop of Rochester, another f atnous
preacher, thus contrasts his behaviour in the pulpit with that of Burnet:
*When Burnet preached part of his congregation hummed so loudly and^ so
long that he sat down to enjoy it and wiped his face with his handkerchief.
When Sprat preached he likewise was honoured with the like animating hum,
but he stretched out his hand to the congregation and cried, "Peace, peace 1 I
pray you peace'. "
358 KING JAMES II
he yearned to get him into his power. In the course of the year Burnet
added to his offences by publishing an account of his continental travels
in which he contrasted the misery of life in Catholic countries with the
conditions prevailing in Holland and England.
Among the instructions of Albeville when he took over the Embassy
at The Hague in January 1687 was a demand for the dismissal of Burnet
from William's household. William complied with this demand, and,
if we are to accept Burnet's own statement, he never saw the Prince
again until a few days before they both sailed for England. James,
however, suspected that Burnet was in regular communication with
Bentinck, and that through him he kept in touch with William. James
also at the same time demanded that Burnet should be extradited to
England, or alternatively to Scotland, to stand his trial for high treason.
This was a matter not in William's hands, and James found the States-
General unexpectedly stubborn: they refused the demand for extradi-
tion on the general ground that Burnet was a political refugee, and also
because he had further protected himself by adopting Dutch nationality ;
but they offered James facilities for having him tried in Holland, an
offer which was naturally not accepted. There were two separate
indictments: in Scotland and in England. The Scottish indictment
charged him with communication with Argyll in 1681 and in 1687;
it was embodied in "Criminal Letters" issued against him on April 19,
1687, and adjudged outlawry against him unless he surrendered before
June 27. The second indictment was on his reply to the charge in
Edinburgh, and was issued in London in June 1687 with citation for
August 9 ; in this he was charged with having threatened to publish the
secret history of the previous twenty years and with having transferred
his allegiance from the King of England.
Burnet was very apprehensive that after his outlawry in Scotland he
would be either forcibly removed or assassinated, and just before the
outlawry took effect he "invited all his friends to dinner, and after that
was over took his solemn leave of them, resolving to converse no more
with them". Louis regarded Burnet's behaviour as an affront to mon-
archy, and he was prepared to co-operate in bringing him to the rack
and the scaffold. At the end of the year he made it known that he would
provide not only an asylum in France for anyone who came into conflict
with the Dutch police in an attempt to kidnap Burnet, but also active
assistance in the attempt. 1 It seems probable, however, that the publicity
1 "Jai aussi ordonn . . . que qui que soit qui entreprenne de 1'enlever en
Hollande trouvera une retraite assur6e et une entiere protection dans mes
States, mais aussi tout assistance qu'il pourra d6sirer pour faire conduire
steement ce scelerat en Angleterre."
THE MIDDLE YEARS 359
given to the intention roused the vigilance of the Dutch authorities, for
no attempt appears to have been made. It is curious that James should
have taken this refusal on the part of the States-General so much to
heart in all his conversations with the Dutch ambassador he mentioned
it as a major grievance, and in February 1688 he is said to have stated
that it would have furnished a pretext, if he had wanted one, for de-
claring war on the Dutch. To him, no doubt, the whole affair was an
act of insolence and defiance by one of his own subjects, an experience
to which he was not up to then accustomed; and his inability to punish
the offender reduced him to a condition of impotent rage.
Enough has been said to show that in the spring of 1688 James was
exasperated both against the States-General and also personally against
William. As early as March 1687 Bonrepaus had written that James
could hardly conceal his hatred and jealousy of the Prince of Orange,
and subsequent events served to increase his irritation. Van Citters, the
Dutch ambassador, found himself in an impossible position: if he kept
away from Court it was a crime, if he appeared he was insulted; if he
attempted to justify the States-General James lost his temper, if he
kept silence he was held to have acknowledged their misdeeds.
In the spring of 1688 James might have boasted that he had ac-
complished almost everything that had been in his mind at his accession.
Since the prorogation of Parliament in November 1685 he had for two
and a half years enjoyed the same unrestricted power as his father had
enjoyed between 1629 and 1640, and he had used that power un-
reservedly in the interests of the Roman Catholic religion and of its
adherents^ Catholics were able to worship in public (though in some
apprehension of the mob) and were free from all disabilities under
the penal laws; their priests were not only not proscribed, but were
openly organised under four vicars-general; there were Catholics in
every sort of public position in numbers far in excess of what they would
have claimed under a general toleration the Lord Privy Seal and five
other members of the Privy Council, two Commissioners of the Treasury
and a large proportion of the Lords Lieutenant, Deputy Lieutenants,
Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, members of corporations and revenue
officers; there had as yet, indeed, been no attempt to put Catholics into
livings or positions of dignity belonging directly to the Church of
England, but at Oxford three Heads of Houses and a number of Fellows
were Catholics, and the vicar of Putney had been allowed to retain his
living after he had declared himself a Catholic. In one matter only had
James been disappointed: at the commencement of his reign he had
anticipated that converts would pour into the Church of Rome as soon
360 KING JAMES II
as it was realised that Catholics were under no disability in public
employment; but as a matter of fact conversions had been very few;
two Earls Salisbury and James's old friend Peterborough 1 went over,
but they were both so contemptible that their conversion served rather
to deter others than to encourage them to follow. This absence oi
converts was, indeed, of supreme importance; it was the measure ol
James's real failure in spite of his apparent success. This success was
entirely fallacious ; by a singular paradox he had accomplished nothing;
the structure he had raised had no foundations, and must inevitably
have fallen in the course of a very few years if events had not hastened
its destruction. James had not only failed to carry the people with him,
but had antagonised them at every step ; the politically conscious among
them (and he had enormously spread political consciousness) were
almost to a man against him, and there were very few to say that his
system of government was superior to that which it had replaced,
James, though he did not know it and was never to acknowledge it, was
politically bankrupt.
A very remarkable series of letters was addressed to William oi
Orange from the commencement of the year 1687 down to the eve oi
the Revolution by opponents of James's policy. In these letters there
is nothing which to a modern eye would appear treasonable in particu-
lar there is not a vestige of a hint in any one of them that William's
interest in England went beyond his legitimate desire that, when b}
right of his wife he should in due course have a direct part in the
government, the kingdom should be in internal peace and predominantly
Protestant. But no doubt the writers put no trust in the royal courts
and feared that words might be twisted to support charges of treason
for there is evidence that the letters were not sent by the ordinary posi
but by "good conveyance" that is to say, secretly by the hand of some-
one making the journey to Holland. The most striking, and the longest
of these letters are from the Earls of Halifax and Nottingham, tod fron
them it is easy to infer the reasons which deterred those eminent anc
clear-sighted noblemen from taking an active part in the Revolution
For the burden of their story is that James's policy, which they abhoi
no less than the most violent revolutionary, is inevitably doomed t<
failure; that the farther the King advances along the road he has
determined to take, the greater his difficulties become; that what appeaj
at first sight to be successes are in truth disasters ; and that misgiving!
as to the situation are producing divisions among James's chief advisers
1 The sincerity of Peterborough's conversion is illustrated by the following
anecdote. "When "die churchwardens of St. Margaret's Westminster asked hii
lordship if they might dispose of his pew in the church, 'No, no/ said he, *om
doth not know what may happen'. "
THE MIDDLE YEARS 361
so that all that is needed is to wait in patience for the inevitable debacle ;
any form of violent action is likely only to heal these divisions and to
unite the Court against the aggressors.
The men at the helm are certainly divided amongst themselves,
which will produce great effects if men will let it work and not
prevent [sc. anticipate] the advantages that may be expected by
being too unquiet or doing things out of season ; the great thing to
be done now is to do nothing but wait for the good consequences of
their divisions and mistakes. Unseasonable stirrings or anything
that looketh like the Protestants being the aggressors will tend to
unite them, and by that means will be a disappointment to those
hopes which otherwise can hardly fail. Nothing therefore in the
present conjuncture can be more dangerous than unskilful agitators,
warm men who would be active at a wrong time and want patience
to keep their zeal from running away with them.
Thus wrote Halifax in April 1688 ; three months later Nottingham wrote :
The birth of the Prince of Wales and the designs of a farther
prosecution of the bishops, and of new modelling the army and
calling of a parliament are matters that afford various reflections.
But I cannot apprehend from them such ill consequences to our
religion or the just interests of Your Highness that a little time
will not effectively remedy, nor can I imagine that the Papists are
able to make any further considerable progress.
The Countess of Sunderland and the Earl of Shrewsbury were no less
definite in their expressions of confidence in the future, though the latter,
at any rate, saw salvation in revolution.
The crux of the whole matter was James's fixed determination, which
he never abandoned until the night of his first flight, to have a Parliament
which would repeal the Test Act and the penal laws. He saw clearly
enough that it was hopeless to attempt to overrule the second Test Act of
1678 and to get Catholics into Parliament; for not only would the
Electorate, however manipulated, have declined to elect them, but every
Catholic candidate would have required a body of troops to protect
him from the mob. He hoped, indeed, that the Protestant Dissenters
might be prevailed on to help him, but their numbers were very small in
comparison with the Churchmen, and even if the Catholics voted with
them, their candidates would have small chance of election. Moreover,
the Dissenters were not a united body, few of them had accepted the
Declaration of Indulgence without misgivings, and any candidate who
362 KING JAMES II
declared in advance that he was in favour of concessions to the Catholics
would have had no support from his own people.
It may reasonably be expected [wrote Nottingham] that such
dissenters as shall be chosen will not in their present circumstances
concur to the repeal of so much as the penal laws ; for this has been
their opinion in former parliaments, in which they would never
give that ease to the Papists which they desired for themselves,
and to do it now might encourage the Papists to greater attempts,
and the dissenters would never recover the reproach of having been
factors for popery,
and the consequence to themselves would be that they would not have
"such reason to expect a like indulgence in other times'*.
Halifax had never the least doubt that James would not be able
either to allow his first Parliament to meet again for business or, when
that Parliament was dissolved, to have a second Parliament elected;
William appears to have thought there might be a new Parliament, and
Halifax as time went on was able to boast the superiority of his own
foresight. In the first place, the converts to Romanism were very few,
and the attempts to make converts and to persuade members of Parlia-
ment to change their views had had the effect of hardening the rest in
their opposition,
though there appeareth the utmost vigour to pursue the design
which hath been so long laid, there seemeth to be no less firmness
in the nation and aversion to change ;
and again:
Besides the considerations of conscience and the public interest it is
grown into a point of honour universally received by the nation
not to change their opinion, which will make all attempts to the
contrary very ineffectual.
But the second objection to calling Parliament was still stronger: that
there was no likelihood that they would confine their discussions to the
subjects on which they had been called together to legislate, and that in
addition to the negative danger of a disappointment to the royal hopes
there was a danger, amounting almost to a certainty, that other questions
would be raised which James was averse to submitting to public
discussion :
A Parliament can never be an indifferent thing, and therefore
it is a very weak argument to say that it will be tried and if it doth
THE MIDDLE YEARS 363
not comply it shall be dissolved. Things of this kind are not so
handled : the consequences may be too great to make the experi-
ment without better grounds to expect success than at present
appear,
and Nottingham, with perhaps less art, expresses the same meaning:
And yet if this repeal of the penal laws would be granted, there
are so many other things that will be taken into consideration by a
Parliament, and of a nature so contrary to the present interest and
humour of the Papist, that it will be next to impossible that there
should be time to bring such a bill to perfection how zealously
soever it may be prosecuted in the House of Commons or otherwise
encouraged.
We may form a safe conjecture of the apprehension with which the
assembly of Parliament was viewed by those about the King after
Rochester was dismissed: Sunderland, Jeffreys, the Catholic lords, the
judges. Not one of them was safe from impeachment ; Sunderland and
Jeffreys for having, among other things, given unconstitutional advice
to the King and for having sat on the Ecclesiastical Commission, the
judges for their verdict in the case of Godden v. Hales, and the Catholic
lords for having acted on that verdict and continued in office without
taking the oaths. Petre was in a somewhat different position ; in common
with the rest of the Roman priesthood, he was liable to the death penalty
for breach of the penal laws, but as long as the magistrates failed to put
those laws into operation Parliament could only send the King futile
addresses asking that the abeyance of the laws should be terminated; in
June 1687, however, Petre was sworn of the Privy Council, and three
months later he could have been impeached for not having taken the
oaths and made a declaration against transubstantiation. It is not
surprising, therefore, that James got small encouragement from his
court in his endeavours to have a Parliament.
Meanwhile all this talk of a Parliament, whose election was always
vaguely promised but never accomplished, was very harmful to the
King's party throughout the country. The opposition were well aware
that (except by armed rebellion) it was only through Parliament that the
King's policy could be defeated; they were confident that it would be
impossible for Sunderland to pack a Parliament as he had done in 1685
he himself admitted that an election was impracticable until more
preparations had been made; to the moderate men who desired little
more than to live at ease it became evident that Parliament alone could
relieve the political tension, and as time went on the demand for a
364 KING JAMES II
Parliament was merged in the other aspirations of the opposition and
swelled its numbers, so that James's prospects of getting support in a
Parliament steadily decreased.
Confirmation of the judgement of William's correspondents on the
discontents of the English people and on the insecurity of James's
position is given by the despatches of the foreign envoys. All the
Catholic envoys approved of James's aspirations, but all, except Barril-
lon, persistently decried his policy. Barrillon's letters are not on the
whole of great value for this purpose; he lived too much at Court to see
what was going on outside, and the best that can be said of him is that
he was less blind to the consequences of James's policy than was James
himself. But even Barrillon had his moments of insight: in the spring of
1686 he wrote:
Discontent is great and general. ... It is openly said that the
people will not suffer the subversion of their laws and their religion.
The Tuscan envoy, Terriesi, was far more apprehensive. Four months
after Monmouth's execution he wrote that it was already a matter of
common talk that there would be a great revolution on account of the
way in which the King was conducting the government. In May 1686
he enlarged on the same theme : he said that all the English except the
few who are hoping for it were in daily apprehension of a great rebellion ;
that the chief grievances were the arbitrary manner in which the laws of
the kingdom were over-ridden, the standing army and the Bong's
subservience to France both in temporal and spiritual matters (the envoy,
being a Catholic, avoids direct mention of the religious grievance);
fortunately the malcontents are as yet without a leader, but on the other
hand James has no one near him whose counsel is valuable, for the
better men have been alienated or have been dismissed with little regard
to their dignity. Finally the envoy exclaims, "God preserve the King
when he realises that his troops will not be faithful to him, for they are
English".
Bonrepaus in July 1687 informed his chief, Seignelay, that the Pro-
testants who were closest to the throne Sunderland, Churchill and
Godolphin were all keeping on good terms with William by corres-
pondence with a view to securing their future in case of James's death,
"the Chancellor (Jeffreys), a very violent man, is the only one who is not
involved in intrigue" ; and he added :
The King of England is very unfortunate in having noone near
him on whom he can rely, but he would be still more unfortunate
if he saw all that the others see.
THE MIDDLE YEARS 365
At the end of September he wrote:
The King of England is very cheerful and he believes that he is
succeeding in all his projects. His ministers do not disabuse him,
but I have discovered that Lord Sunderland is not without mis-
givings. He does not dare to offer direct opposition to the zeal with
which the King labours for the repeal of the Test Act but he tries
to divert him from this aim by suggesting other schemes.
The influence of Bonrepaus when he was in England appears to have
induced in Barrillon a mood of pessimism in which he realised the dangers
of James's situation ; from this mood he recovered when Bonrepaus re-
turned to France, and during the spring and summer of 1688 he was as
confident as James himself that the royal policy would succeed and the
opposition be crushed. Towards the end of September 1687 Barrillon
wrote two long letters to Louis. In the first he said frankly that the whole
country was seething with discontent and that private prudential con-
siderations alone prevented the precipitation of a general rising:
There is a great deal of general excitement and there is con-
siderable activity among the opposition groups in London; but the
English are not easily moved to rebellion and they keep themselves
within legal bounds so as not to run the risk of losing their property.
This fear prevails in general over every other consideration in this
country and their zeal for religion is not violent enough to lead them
into enterprises which would make them liable to legal penalties.
Hence opposition to the designs of the court expresses itself only in
talk and in anonymous publications.
But he added if Parliament were summoned a means of expression
would be presented to the malcontents:
Every member can say freely and without fear of punishment all
that is in his mind and he can vote for or against any proposal that
is made.
Three days later he wrote that what might possibly happen was that
James might summon a Parliament and that, if he found that they were
unwilling to repeal the penal laws and the Test Act, he would repeal
them by decree ; in such a case he would need the support of his friends
both at home and abroad, for he would encounter an opposition little
different from open rebellion. He added that William was the true
leader of the opposition and that everyone felt great bitterness at the
size of the army and regretted that Parliament had, by granting the
revenues for life, given away the only means of reducing it; and he
concluded ominously, "It is difficult to see what will happen".
CHAPTER IV
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
THE history of James's dealings with Scotland during the first year of
his reign is largely concerned with the contest for power among the
King's chief subjects. At the time of the accession the Duke of Queens-
berry was Lord High Treasurer and the Earl of Perth, Chancellor, in
London the Earl of Moray and Perth's brother, Lundin, were joint
Secretaries of State. These four men held the reins of power; they had
seven months previously succeeded in ousting the Earl of Aberdeen from
the Chancellorship, and still preserved the close alliance which had been
formed to attain that end. Queensberry was an ally of Rochester, with
whom he was connected by marriage, 1 and his character and his career
during the reign were in some degree similar to those of Rochester ;
like Rochester, he was ready to go to any lengths in support of the royal
prerogative, but his Protestantism was firm and not subject to change
from motives of personal interest. Like Rochester, also, he held at the
time of the accession James's chief confidence in the affairs of his country.
Of Perth at this time little is known except that he was an unscrupulous
politician and a violent persecutor of the Covenanters. Moray appears
to have been respectable, and his loyalty to Queensberry when Queens-
berry's fortunes were declining does him credit.
Lundin is far the most important of the four in a biography of King
James, on account of the important part he played, as Earl of Melfort, in
James's life after the Revolution. At the accession Lundin was at the
commencement of his career, but he was already revealing those
characteristics which account for James's disastrous attachment to him
and which made him one of the most unpopular men of his time. As late
as October 1687 Barrillon described Melfort as Sunderland's tool, 2 and
this description is probably true, for it was in the nature of Melfort to
secure his own advancement by attaching himself to the most influential
man in the Court ; there are great similarities in the character and method
of the two men, but it may be doubted if Melfort learned his statecraft
from Sunderland. In October 1683, before Sunderland had acquired
his ascendancy in James's counsels, Lundin wrote to Queensberry, "I
wfll. sound the Duke, and if I find it is his opinion I shall proceed" an
anticipation of Sunderland's technique in dealing with James. This
1 The connection was not very close: Queensberry's son Lord Drumlanrig
had married Lady Rochester's niece.
1 "Milord Melfort qui a et menag6 par Milord Sunderland."
366
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 367
technique was invariably employed by Melfort, and Avaux, the French
ambassador with James in Ireland, found it his chief obstacle in getting
James to listen to him. Like Sunderland, Melfort had a passion for
power, and was quite shameless in his intrigues against his colleagues;
both men were hard workers : no lazy man could have written the long
letters Lundin wrote to Queensberry in the years 1682-85, or the still
longer letters from Rome to Queen Mary Beatrice in 1689 and i6go. 1
But with these resemblances there was a fundamental difference:
Sunderknd was an extremely able man, while Melfort's incompetence
was a byword. He was very plausible, and he had the ability to achieve
high office and to keep himself in it, but no capacity whatever for
administration. Another exasperating characteristic was his perfect
self-complacency: on July 9, 1685, Moray wrote to Queensberry,
"Melfort thinks he can err in nothing", and in July 1689 Avaux reports
that, after Melfort had committed every possible blunder in Ireland
and had organised nothing, he told Lady Tyrconnel "that if an angel had
come down from heaven he could have done no better than he had done
for the Bang his master".
Moray was for a time deceived by Lundin; at the time of Lundin's
appointment as joint-Secretary of State he wrote to Queensberry:
I wish him much joy, and as I know him a person loyal and firm
to his friends, it will be none of my fault if we do not live well and
friendly together.
Four months later, however, there were signs that Moray had begun to
find him out, and early in James's reign he was to realise that he aimed
not only at undermining Queensberry, but at discrediting his colleague
and securing a monopoly of James's attention and favour. At the time of
James's accession Moray was wholeheartedly in Queensberry's interest,
Lundin expressed the most fervent loyalty to Queensberry, and these
expressions were no doubt genuine at the time.
A month after the accession, Queensberry and Perth set out for London
to receive James's commands on Scottish affairs. The immediate business
was the assembly of the Scottish Parliament. James's experience in
1 Avaux thought Melfort lazy, but his only evidence, except that as a result
of incompetence his work was negligible, was that he saw Melfort walking with
his wife at a time other men were working; but Melfort was very jealous of his
handsome wife, and would not let her go out alone. No doubt he made up
time when most people were at leisure. Melfort's own account (to Queens-
berry) is probably true: "I am confident hitherto there has been no cause to
complain of my neglect, for I haye been as diligent as it was possible to be,
and I am sure, what ever the success may be, I shall never let want of application
lose any business I have in hand. ... I toil like a horse and have no hour
my own." It would probably have been better for James if Melfort (and he
himself) had been lazier.
368 KING JAMES II
1 68 1 had taught him that the constitution of Scotland gave the King
virtual control over both elections 1 to Parliament and legislation. The
procedure was that a committee of Parliament, known as the Lords of
the Articles, decided what measures should be introduced, and so tight
a hold had the King, through his Commissioner, of the nomination of
the Lords of the Articles that Lauderdale wrote to the Kong in 1669,
"If they be amiss blame me for I wrote the lists and not a man was
altered". The measures drafted by the Lords of the Articles were
passed by Parliament almost as a matter of routine. James could there-
fore rely on the obsequiousness of the Scots Parliament, provided he
did not openly attempt anything for the Catholic religion, and he
determined that it should meet before the English Parliament, so as to
set an example to the latter body, though its very lack of independence
would, to a man of more subtle mind, make its decisions suspect in
England. James since his accession had been as careful in Scotland as
in England to do nothing to cause apprehension to good Protestants.
Queensberry, as Commissioner to Parliament, carried with him back to
Edinburgh a very elaborate set of instructions; the only measures pro-
posed with regard to religion were an Act in favour of the Established
Protestant religion and an Act making preaching in a conventicle or in
the fields a capital offence, and imposing severe penalties for worshippers
and for landlords and towns on whose land the proscribed services were
held (James's toleration had suffered diminution in the previous four
years). James did, however, privately instruct Queensberry "to suffer
nothing to pass to the prejudice of the Roman Catholics more than was
already". Parliament met on April 23, and behaved as it was expected
to behave that is to say, with complete obsequiousness ; on the motion
of the Duke of Hamilton, the King was granted excise for life, and all
the measures he proposed were passed. On May 25 James wrote to the
Secret Committee of the Privy Council suggesting that the members
would be better employed in helping to stamp out Argyll's rebellion,
and on June i to Queensberry ordering him to adjourn Parliament as
soon as possible and to thank them "for their signal loyalty expressed in
their humble offers to us", a reference, no doubt, to an Act (suggested
by James himself) to place the lives and fortunes of all persons between
sixty and sixteen at His Majesty's disposal. Two significant events
1 In the Parliament of 1681 the Lord Advocate remarked in course of a
debate that "if the burghs had liberty to choose whom they pleased to represent
them, factions and disloyal persons might prevail to get themselves elected" ;
and a voter was actually prosecuted for having "voted against the Duke (of
York) and the Court faction in the elections of the Commissioner to Fife".
The certainty of the election of "loyal" members was still further increased
by the Test Act of 1681.
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 369
occurred during the session of Parliament: the appointment to the
Scottish Privy Council of the Earl of Dumbarton, a Catholic, without
the necessity of taking the oath of supremacy he was also appointed
Inspector-General of the Forces ; and the dispensations to Commissoners
of Revenue who were Catholics.
The first sign of the breach which was to divide the Scottish admini-
stration into two hostile factions occurred on April 14, when Lundin,
that day created Viscount Melfort, and no doubt intoxicated by his new
elevation, delivered to Moray a violent diatribe against Queensberry,
saying that he "carried now much higher than Duke Lauderdale did
and pretended to be more absolute than ever he was". 1 Moray replied
equally hotly in Queensberry^ defence. Queensberry was still high in
James's confidence, there was no intention during the whole of the year
to remove him from his position as first Minister, and no word of a
conflict between him and Perth appears to have reached the King's
ears until several months later ; 2 but the quarrel was so well known in
Scotland that when, in June and July, the mail from London to Edin-
burgh was twice plundered at Alnwick it was thought that the robbery
was a device of Queensberry's to get hold of Melfort's letters to Perth.
There was hardly even a pretence on either side that the conflict
involved any principle, it was avowedly a contest for power.
In the autumn this contest took a new colour on account of the con-
version of Perth to Catholicism. Now, it has been until very recently an
assumption among historians, among whom Burnet is the earliest, that
the conversion of both Perth and Melfort was due to a cynical calculation
of advantages and disadvantages and that it was a master-stroke in the
struggle for power with Queensberry. 3 But recently there has appeared
in French a book* which has all the external appearance of Catholic
propaganda, but bases its arguments on quotations from papers at
Drummond Castle, hitherto unpublished, and on other material to
which sufficient notice has not been paid. Among these papers is
Perth's own account of his conversion; according to the author of the
book it is of a simplicity and naivety which compel belief, and his con-
clusion is that Perth's conversion was "what it ought to have been, a
1 Fountainhall, who was a neutral onlooker in the contest, supports Melfort's
accusation.
a On May 8, James wrote to Queensberry, "You need not apprehend . . .
it is anybody's power to do you ill offices with me. Nobody has gone about it,
and if they had it would only have done them harm, not you."
8 Thus Sir Charles Firth writes "Queensberry . . . was not disposed to
turn Catholic himself . The two Drummonds . . . were not men to stick at such
trifles. Both had abjured their creed, and had for some time been plotting to
overthrow their rival.' 1
4 A. Joly: Un Conuerti de Bossuet, James Drummond, Due de Perth;
Lille, 1934.
370 KING JAMES II
purely religious matter into which politics did not enter' '. Perth says
that when he was in London in March 1685 James gave him a copy of
the famous papers on religion which Charles had left, and that they led
him to the study of Bossuet's writings, that he wrestled in prayer for
divine guidance, that he thought that if he became a Catholic he would
not only have to give up his post as Chancellor but to go abroad and live
as an exile, that he spent several weeks examining his conscience, and
that when he had made up his mind he made the general confession and
abjured heresy, to the great improvement of his health and spirits.
There is extant a letter of resignation of the Chancellorship and of his
other offices, but it is neither dated nor signed, so that it is not certain,
therefore, that it was delivered to James. But in the memoirs of the
famous Edinburgh doctor, Robert Sibbald, there is a passage which
almost exactly corroborates the account which Perth put into writing
several years after the event.
The Earl [says Dr. Sibbald] had many times signified the aversion
he had for some of the doctrines of the Church of Rome ; . . . but,
behold, . he had declared himself of the Romish Faith and
joined in their worship some two months before I knew it. ... I
thought there could be nothing more contrary to his interests than
it was ; he said he was sensible of it, and had offered with great
earnestness to resign his place; but the King had commanded him
upon his allegiance to continue his post.
Dr. Johnson said wisely about the almost contemporary conversion of
Dry den, "That conversion will always be suspected that apparently
concurs with interest", and it is not surprising that the popular verdict
was unfavourable to Perth. Two circumstances made people less critical
in their judgements than they might otherwise have been : the conversion
was not made public until all danger that Perth would be disgraced had
passed; in the inflamed atmosphere of the time none of James's friends,
especially his Catholic friends, could expect impartial consideration. It
is not necessary to defend Perth in other respects ; he was apparently
always a very religious man, but he was nevertheless an unscrupulous
politician and an inhuman persecutor of the Covenanters; nor was his
private life regular.
The conversion of Melfort is more open to suspicion: he was at first
very angry with Perth for having gone over to Rome, and no doubt
thought he had seriously compromised the fortunes of the family; he
did not announce his own conversion until February 1686, four or five
months after that of his brother that is to say, when it had become
dear that resignation of office would not follow conversion. On the other
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 371
hand, it is interesting to find Perth writing to Bossuet and wishing that he
could attain to Melfort's high standard of religious life.
In the summer of 1685 Perth's religious doubts were known only to at
most one or two intimate friends, and his quarrel with Queensberry
had no element of religion in it. On September i James wrote to Perth
giving him permission to come to London to formulate his grievances
against Queensberry who was already there. Barrillon wrote at the end
of September that the conflict had ended in Perth's favour, but the
news was premature; Barrillon added that Perth was waiting only for
James's permission to declare himself a Catholic. Perth seems to have
delayed his journey, for it was not until late in November that confer-
ences began in which James tried to reconcile his chief Ministers, for it
seems evident that he was impartial between Queensberry and Perth,
and in spite of Perth's conversion, which was now known, if he inclined
to either side it was to Queensberry's. Perth's first complaints he
brushed aside as trivial, and Perth, writing to Hamilton on November 26,
said that though James continued to give himkind words, he sawno results.
It is probable that it was about this time that Perth had his meeting
with Halifax and signified his apprehension, when, in Burnet' words:
The Marquis answered him, he needed fear nothing, his faith
would make him whole; and it proved so.
The conferences extended over several weeks and were entirely
inconclusive. Queensberry had the support of Rochester and no doubt
of Moray; Sunderland's name is not mentioned in the letters which
Perth and Melfort wrote to the Duke of Hamilton (and which are our
fullest source of information), but we may be certain that what influence
he exerted was in favour of the Drummonds, for his conflict with
Rochester was at that time coming to a crisis. Queensberry in his
position of power could afford to be magnanimous ; he went so far as to
say that he loved and trusted Perth and Melfort and that he was hurt
by their opposition to him. But the Drummonds, though they promised
obedience to the King's commands to live at peace with Queensberry,
said they could never trust him; and Perth was so unrestrained in his
language (and, it may be added, so disrespectful to James in using in his
presence such words about his first Minister) as to say that "Duke
Queensberry was an atheist in religion, a villain in friendship, a knave in
business and a traitor in his carriage to him". As late as February 2,
1686, after Queensberry and Perth had returned to Scotland, Moray
wrote to Queensberry:
It is the King's pleasure that Lord Viscount Melfort and I live
well together, and be united in his service, which we have accordingly
KING JAMES II
resolved to do ; but withal I told him I would not in the last abate
the honour and friendship I have for Your Grace's person and
family, which I must say he not only complied with, but said,
whatever thoughts were entertained of him, he would still do just
and equal things and give you no reasonable occasion for judging
otherwise of him.
From these words we may gather that the campaign of Perth and
Melfort against Queensberry had failed, and that the balance of power
in the Scottish administration was maintained in the condition in which
it had been the previous summer.
But this equilibrium was unstable, and it was disturbed by an un-
expected incident. On January 31 there was serious anti-Catholic
rioting at Edinburgh, the Countess of Perth was pelted with mud as she
came from Mass at Holyrood, and on the following day the mob rescued
one of the rioters who was being taken to be publicly whipped. James
was highly indignant, and the Drummonds seized the opportunity of
insinuating that Queensberry both as governor of Edinburgh Castle and
as head of the civil government had been lax in suppressing the disturb-
ance. On February 10, immediately after hearing accounts of the riots
read by the secretaries, James wrote to Queensberry, "I will not let any
suffer or be the worse for being of my persuasion", and to Perth he
wrote, "As to you and all those where you are who share my beliefs I
will support you and show everyone that that is my intention". 1 A
fortnight later he wrote again saying that he had decided to put the
Treasury into Commission (with Queensberry as a member but under
Perth as first Commissioner) and to replace him as governor of Edin-
burgh Castle by the Catholic Duke of Gordon, "to make that town . . .
civiller to the Catholics by seeing it in the hands of one of that per-
suasion". This letter was not in any sense a peremptory dismissal: he
said that "nothing but my being satisfied upon long and mature con-
sideration that it is absolutely necessary for the good of my service
could have obliged me to do it" ; that in his new posts as Commissioner
of the Treasury and President of the Council Queensberry "may have
the opportunity of serving me as well and as usefully as in the former
station you were in" ; and concludes with warm expressions of the con-
tinuance of his regard and esteem. But James, as so often during his
reign, deceived himself in thinking that an officer with a sense of
grievance and Queensberry naturally regarded himself as being
delivered up to his enemies would keep his loyalty unblemished. His
support of James was henceforth so lukewarm that in June 1686 he was
1 These are not James's exact words, they are a translation of M. Joly*s
translation into French.
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 373
deprived of all his offices and was for the remainder of the reign in
opposition. 1
James now made preparations for the reassembly of the Scottish
, Parliament. He had "thrown off the mask" in England, and he proposed
to do the same in Scotland. On March 4 he wrote to the Privy Council
explaining his intentions: that the Catholics were no longer to be under
the disabilities of the penal laws and of the Test Act of 1681, but that
no relief should be given to the Covenanters. The reply of the Council
was so unsatisfactory that James ordered three of them the Duke of
Hamilton, Lieutenant-General Drummond 2 and Sir George Lockhart
to attend him at Whitehall, where they arrived on April 8. They were
all three zealous royalists and Protestants, and while they protested
their loyalty and reverence for their sovereign, they were anxious that
no injury should be done to their religion. In deference to James's
wishes, they were willing to support a certain mitigation of the Catholic
grievances, but they firmly held that the extreme Presbyterians should
benefit equally with the Catholics in any scheme of toleration. According
to Barrillon, James fought hard against any concession to the sectaries,
and, if the ambassador is to be believed, he goes a long way towards
showing that James was not at heart in favour of religious toleration
and that he did not affect to be actuated by the principle of toleration
when, as in Scotland, he felt himself strong enough to get his own way
without using it as a pretext. Barrillon's words are :
This question of giving liberty of worship to the nonconformists
has been debated for several days. The King is very anxious that
only the Catholics shall be granted the free exercise of their
religious rites.
James also refused a demand that he should make a declaration securing
the Protestant religion in its rights and privileges on the ground that it
was a false religion a position that he would hardly have taken up in
the presence of a deputation of English Protestants. On the whole, the
three Scots wasted their time by coining to London, for James had
intended characteristically not to arrange a compromise, but to force
them to adopt his point of view.
Parliament met again on April 29, 1686. The Commissioner was the
1 Too much has, I think, been made of the refusal of Queensberry and
Hamilton to turn Catholic. There is no evidence that pressure in that direction
was put upon them and in any case the social ostracism which would have
resulted would in itself have been a deterrent. Hatred of Catholicism was even
more fanatical in Scotland than it was in England.
2 Macaulay erroneously states that Drummond was a younger brother of
Perth and Melfort; he was a rather distant cousin*
374 KING JAMES II
Earl of Moray, who had followed the example of Perth and Melfort and
gone over to Rome. 1 In Moray's speech at the opening of Parliament
the most significant passage was :
His Majesty believes that none will wonder if he desire, by the
advice and consent of this his Great Council, to give ease and
security to some of his good subjects of the Roman Catholic religion,
who have in all times been firm to the monarchy ... so that His
Majesty, who perfectly understands the loyal and dutiful temper
and genius of Scotland, rests fully persuaded of your ready and
dutiful compliance with his royal desire and inclinations. . . .
In return for acquiescence the King was ready to make certain con-
cessions for the benefit of Scottish trade, including some measure of
free trade with England and a return of the material benefits of the
Cromwellian occupation of Scotland; 2 he also attempted to satisfy the
House by declaring that he wanted no more money. But James achieved
no success in overcoming the rooted Scottish prejudice against his
religion. In the Scottish Parliament there was neither the machinery
for, nor the tradition of, opposition to the Crown; members are re-
ported to have said in private that they had been reproached with having
sold their King, but that no one should be able to say of them that they
had sold their God; in Parliament they were in the main content with
passive resistance to James's demands. Though a contemporary
observer complained that "the Parliament was like to do nothing
thoroughly and so neither please God nor man", and, though the con-
stitution did not permit an excursion into the enemy's country by
protests against Catholic encroachments or by anti-Catholic legislation,
this passive resistance was as effective as the more spectacular resistance
in England. A Toleration Act was drafted, far milder than what James
had hoped for, not touching the Test Act nor abrogating the penal
1 There seems to be some doubt about Moray's conversion. Burnet, I, 679,
and the Ellis Correspondence (I, 46-7, 57) are the authorities for it, and it is
accepted by Rait (Parliaments of Scotland, p. 88) and the Editor of JET. M. C.
Buccleuch and Queensberry, II (p. 6) ; but W. L. Mathieson (Politics and Religion
in Scotland, II, 323n.) disagrees with these authorities. Wpodrow (IV, 365)
states that Ramsay, Bishop of Ross, wrote to Moray telling him that "a project
was already laid to turn his lordship out of his post as secretary as soon as
parliament [i.e., the parliament of 1685] was up and put a papist into it".
2 W. L. Mathieson (Politics and Religion in Scotland, p. 324) has a very good
note on Moray's speech: "James VII, like his father, was an adept in what
Adam Smith calls the higgling of the market'. All these things were to be
done, not because they were good in themselves, but because the King wanted
something in return ; and, that something being refused, nothing more was heard
of the intended reforms . . . the Stewart kingship, when stripped of romantic
illusions, was a very prosaic affair."
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 375
laws, beyond permitting Catholics to worship in their own houses, but
it passed the Lords of the Articles by only eighteen votes to fourteen,
and was defeated in the House by a majority of nearly two to one. A
still milder Act was drafted, backed by a strong disclaimer of any
intention to repeal the Test Act, but the prospects of its passing were so
hopeless that James ordered a prorogation in order to avoid a second
rebuff. He showed his indignation, as he had done in similar circum-
stances in England, by dismissing from the public service those func-
tionaries who had opposed him; against others he instituted pro-
ceedings for high treason on very slight evidence.
James now determined to effect by his prerogative what Parliament
had refused to sanction: in successive messages to the Scottish Privy
Council in September and November 1686 he ordered them to protect
Catholics in their worship in their own houses and to disregard the
Test Act in making appointements to civil and military posts, and even
to Church livings. A Declaration of Indulgence was issued on February
12, 1687, and was so badly drafted that it was necessary to issue a second
Declaration on July 5 in order to correct certain misapprehensions
which the first declaration had caused. These declarations were similar
in scope to the English declarations, but in Scotland James was under no
necessity to excuse his exercise of the prerogative, but based his action
on "the unlimited authority in ecclesiastical matters which the Scottish
legislature conferred on the sovereign" by the Act of Supremacy of
1669.
James did not despair of getting a Parliament together which would
confirm the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence, and to that end
he introduced innovations in the royal burghs; he violated their rights
by nominating provosts and town-councillors, and attempted to persuade
the Convention of Royal Burghs to change the qualifications of candi-
dates for Parliament by declaring eligible non-residents and Catholics.
He did in fact succeed in getting Catholics made eligible, but there was
small chance of getting Catholics elected ; as in England, he was hampered
by the remodelling of the burghs in the previous reign, which had put
them into the hands of men loyal to the Crown but hostile to the Roman
Church, and he never summoned a second Parliament.
James's difficulties in what in Scotland corresponded to "closeting"
that is to say, the attempt to threaten or cajole influential men into
lending their support to Catholic relief are well illustrated by the
correspondence between Melfort and William Douglas, Duke of
Hamilton. Hamilton was at heart a Presbyterian, and in 1681 he had
signified his dislike of the Test Oath by an ostentatious delay in taking
it, but when at last he had in form adhered to the Episcopal Church,
376 KING JAMES II
James looked on him as one of the chief props of the Scottish throne,
and he wrote to him in March 1685 a holograph letter accepting his
offers of service. In the controversy of the winter of 1685-6 Hamilton
took sides against Queensberry and was the recipient of confidences from
Perth and Melfort. In March 1686 Melfort wrote from Whitehall that
the Eling was depending on Hamilton to further his plans, and later in
the same month he was more explicit in his demands, and asked the
Duke "how he should think it consistent with the King's honour to
suffer those of his opinion to be murdered or forfeited for their
opinions". When, in the following month, Hamilton, together with
Lieutenant-General William Drummond and Sir George Lockhart,
was summoned to London, James exerted himself to persuade Hamilton
to give his promise to support the projected legislation. But Hamilton
would go no farther than to undertake not to be active in opposition,
and he demanded time to make up his mind; James could understand
no answer except a plain yes or no, and he construed this hesitation as a
promise of adherence in due course. 1 In May we find Melfort telling
Hamilton that the success or failure of the King's plans depended on
him, for many would delay decision until they saw what he was going
to do, and expostulating with him on his contention that the Presby-
terians' claim to relief was at least equal to that of the Catholics. At the
beginning of June Hamilton was apparently concerned with the drafting
of the second Act, for Melfort was troubled at what might happen to
James's temper if there was delay over so small a matter as the wording
of an Act of Parliament (nor, it may be added, is he very careful to
preserve respect in his choice of words) :
Pray let us have no more debates (Melfort says), for this is the
King's essay and any more jangling will give him the pet past all
our power to cure.
On June 10 Melfort writes that the Bong is of opinion, and he himself
agrees, that, "if there be not probability of its carrying", the Act should
not be brought in. Hamilton no doubt heaved a sigh of relief at this
conclusion of a period of uncertainty, and indeed he was given an eight
months' respite from his uncomfortable seat on the fence.
But at the end of this period he had to decide whether or not he would
sign an address to the King thanking him for the Declaration of
1 Hamilton, either purposely or inadvertently, entirely deceived James, for
Barrillon wrote of him at this time, "He professes now a great attachment to
the person and interests of the King. He promises to employ all his credit in
Parliament to give success to His Majesty's projects. It was believed that
prominent people during his stay in England had persuaded him into different
conduct. He has dissipated these suspicions and the King appears to be quite
satisfied with him."
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 377
Indulgence, and he decided not to sign it. This refusal brought a strong
reprimand from Melfort, who had apparently been entirely deceived by
Hamilton's specious reasons against coming to a decision ; he said that
the refusal had "opened the mouths of all your enemies and given hopes
to a party I am sure you are not of", and that it is tantamount to dis-
puting the King's right to issue the Declaration. Hamilton had always
contended that he had had the King's promise, when he came to London
with Lockhart and Drummond, that he should not be called upon to
announce this decision until he again came to London, but James
denied that he had ever made such a promise, and in February 1688 he
took the correspondence out of Melfort's hands and wrote demanding
to know definitely and without further delay whether or no Hamilton
can comply ^with what I desire and join with those of my loyal
subjects who are for the repeal of those laws and test and for settling
an entire liberty of conscience; (and he adds) If you cannot do this,
tell noone. I expect your positive answer within two or three days.
Even then Hamilton would not commit himself definitely; he said he
had been ill and unable to consult his friends and that he would like
more time for consideration. Meanwhile he professed himself a firm
adherent to the principle of religious toleration, "but how this is to be
done with security to the Protestant religion, our laws and oaths is, in
my humble opinion, what will deserve serious consideration, and is
above what I can presently determine myself in".
After the issue of his second Scottish Declaration of Indulgence
James's interest in Scotland declined. Perth, as Chancellor and First
Commissioner of the Treasury, held the reins of power, and Melfort in
London, now sole Secretary of State, was able to support his brother.
In July 1686 Perth wrote to Bossuet saying that James had entrusted
to him the interests of the Catholic religion in Scotland, but that his
success had been slight, and eighteen months later he wrote a despondent
letter to Cardinal Howard at Rome: they "had advanced little or
nothing"; they had what Knox had left of the Abbey of Holyrood
House for the order of St. Andrew, but there was no one to take posses-
sion; there was also a chapel at Aberdeen; some German missionaries
had been brought over, but there had been very few conversions ; not
one man in a hundred in the army was a Catholic and very few officers.
In the early spring of 1688 a prominent Catholic wrote thus of his
return to Scotland after some years' absence,
upon my arrival hither I found things as to the advancement of
the Catholic faith far short of my expectations, for instead of finding
378 KING JAMES II
good inclination of the people and many converts, to our grief we
perceived that there were but few converts in this place, and a
greater aversion in the people than there was five or six years ago
when I left Scotland.
In fact, all that Perth was doing was to build up for himself day by
day an immense unpopularity in a passively hostile country.
It was in Ireland, both during his reign and in his expedition to that
country after his flight, that James revealed most clearly his char-
acteristic defects as a ruler. Briefly it may be said that he failed at both
times because he had made no study of the facts and had convinced
himself that the only Irish grievance was on the score of religion, and
that if the Irish Catholics were granted freedom of worship and their
due share of public appointments they would be satisfied. He was
unaware that two other major grievances, national and agrarian, focused
in demands for the repeal of Poyning's Law and of the Act of Settlement,
took precedence in the minds of most Irishmen over the religious
grievance. 1 In common with all Englishmen of his time, he regarded
Ireland as a conquered country, to be exploited for the benefit of
England, and not at all on a par with Scotland; he regarded their
grievances as unreasonable, and as far as possible ignored them. During
his reign, however, he robbed himself of all chance of achieving a just
view of the Irish situation by placing himself in Irish affairs unreservedly
in the hands of Tyrconnel and Sunderland and by rejecting all informa-
tion from other sources.
During the reign of Charles II the policy of the Government of
Ireland had been determined in the main by James Butler, Duke of
Ormonde. A period of nine years actually intervened between his two
periods of office, but the three Lords Lieutenant during that period
introduced few, if any, changes in general policy. Ormonde was one of
the greatest men of his time; he cannot be classed as an enlightened
statesman, since he regarded the existing political and economic con-
stitution of Ireland as satisfactory and had no ideas beyond improving
conditions within the existing framework by the preservation of peace
and order; his loyalty also was so extreme as to prevent him from
pressing his views strongly on the King. He was essentially a man of
principle, a staunch Church and King man, and both from temperament
and because of his long periods of residence in Ireland he took no part in
1 As Clarendon wrote to Rochester in August 1686, "The contest here is not
about religion but between English and Irish". He had written similarly to
James in March* and had reminded the King that he had agreed with him before
he took up his Irish appointment
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 379
political intrigue in England. Though he was a strong Protestant, he
was of Catholic parentage on both sides, and his near relations were all,
or nearly all, Catholics; he was therefore singularly fitted to conciliate
the Catholics, though there was never a more rigid upholder of Pro-
testant privileges; he was one of the very few who kept their heads
during the agitation of the Popish Plot. 1
The penal laws in force against the Catholics were considerably
milder in Ireland than in England. Freedom of worship was permitted
with the restrictions that priests were not allowed to appear in public
places in their distinctive dress and that mass-houses could not be
established within the walls of corporate towns; this latter prohibition
was frequently relaxed by connivance. The legislation inspired by
Gates in 1678 and 1679 left the secular priests untouched, and the only
persons expelled from the country were the Jesuits and friars and other
regulars, and such of the higher clergy as had received their appoint-
ments from Rome; 2 popish chapels were, however, suppressed not only
in the principal cities and towns, but also in their suburbs, leaving to
the Catholics in these pkces liberty to worship only in private houses.
On the whole it may be said that except in the years 1678-81 the
Catholics had absolute freedom of worship, unless they drew attention
to themselves and challenged opposition by ostentatious ceremonies or
by convocations of clergy. 3 This toleration is the more surprising be-
cause the Catholic Church in Ireland was almost avowedly disloyal.
In 1670 there had been a movement among some of its members, known
1 Colonel Edward Cooke, who was a member of Ormonde's household in
the early part of his first Lord-lieutenancy, has left a glowing tribute to Ormonde's
industry and regularity of life:". . , my Lord Duke, a greater drudge than whom
I believe breathes not. He always rises about five in the morning and keeps
his closet till eight, despatching his devotions and private business; and then
hath his public ministers till eleven; and then to prayers; and after till dinner
gives free access to all people; and so for an hour after dinner; then to his
closet; and if any of the three council days by three to council where he sits
late ; if not, then it may be if the weather serves, takes the air or keeps his closet
till prayer; but is constant there; keeps great dinners but little suppers and after
that sometimes twice a week or so plays ombre till ten; then to bed, and on
Sundays now hath constantly two sermons in the Cathedral, and always at
them; no swearing to be heard at Court, nor drinking seen, all things very
regular and sober. I never was in love with a Court before."
2 This regulation was of only temporary effect, for Ormonde wrote to
Sunderland in January 1685 saying that there were as many Catholic as
Protestant bishops and that "friars and other regulars do abound in all the parts
of the kingdom".
8 Thus in Galway in August 1683 a public display on the occasion of the
habiting of two nuns gave rise to expostulation on the part of the authorities ;
the Catholic merchants of the town saw their mistake, and not only suppressed
the nunnery and a priory, but closed four mass-houses in the town which had
been, tolerated, and begged Lord Longford "to interpose with the mayor not to
disturb the secular priests and to allow them to worship in their own houses".
380 KING JAMES II
as the Remonstrants, to declare allegiance to the King of England in
all secular matters; but they found themselves in a small minority and
were crushed. 1
But a modified freedom to exercise their religion was the only
privilege of citizenship which the Irish Catholics enjoyed. They were
entirely excluded from civil and military employment, and in February
1 68 1 Ormonde challenged Lord Massarene, who had alleged that this
rule was not strictly observed, "to find out any papists trusted in the
civil or military part of the government". As regards the army, the
rules laid down in December 1660 by Albemarle as Lord General were
strictly observed : "Every officer and soldier to take the oaths of allegiance
and supremacy, and no Papist officer or soldier to be at any time
mustered in the Army". Allegations were made from time to time
that these rules had been evaded, but Ormonde was able invariably to
show that these allegations were baseless and were "a calumny cast on
the army and government" ; after the Popish Plot he instituted a system
of rewards to soldiers who denounced as papists any of their officers or
fellow-soldiers apparently without result.
The Irish House of Commons was entirely Protestant, for though the
Irish freeholders were not disfranchised, their numbers were small,
and in the boroughs there were no Catholic freemen; many Catholic
peers had been deprived of their seats in the House of Lords as a
penalty for complicity in the rebellion of 1641. There were no Catholic
judges or Commissioners under the Act of Settlement, and the justices
of the peace were Protestants to a man, even though in many localities
it \yas difficult to find properly qualified Protestants. But it was in the
towns that the Catholics were made to feel their inferiority most keenly ;
they could not, except in rare cases, be members of the corporation,
and they resided within the walls only on sufferance. Thus in 1661 a
general permission was granted to "innocent" Catholics (i.e., that small
minority who had not taken part in the rebellion of 1641) to reside in
cities and towns, "All others of the King's subjects may have leave to
traffic and trade though they are forbidden to inhabit cities and walled
towns". In 1670 Lord Berkeley of Stratton, who was then Lord
Lieutenant, relaxed this order, and in February 1672 Charles wrote
approving Berkeley's action. In the following November and January
the King wrote further letters successively suspending the orders
regulating the election of Common Councils and approving the appoint-
1 In December 1686 Lord Clarendon stated that the Irish priests were so
ignorant as to believe that Ireland was an appanage of the Pope and that the
King of England "had no right further than the Pope gives him authority" ;
they also instructed Tyrconnel's Irish recruits "to take no oath but to be true
to die Pope'*.
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 381
ment of nine Catholics to the Common Council of Dublin; meanwhile
several Catholics had by some mysterious means got themselves
appointed Justices of the Peace for that city. But the English House of
Commons took alarm, and on March 25, 1673, they petitioned the King
to withdraw the commission which had been appointed to inquire into
the working of the Act of Settlement, to exclude Catholics from the army
and from every public position, to expel from Ireland all Catholics in
orders, including the secular priests, and to permit no Catholic to reside
in a corporate town except under licence. This was at the time when
Charles received his great rebuff over his Declaration of Indulgence,
and in the lesser matter of the Irish corporations he also found it wiser
to give way. Among the severities demanded at the time of the Popish
Plot was the expulsion of all Catholics from corporations and garrison
towns; but this measure was found to be impracticable, since many
Catholics were valuable citizens and the Protestant merchants and others
had need of their services; the expulsion was therefore restricted to
"the useless and idle sort of them".
These grievances were local and in most cases merely personal. The
national grievance the subservience of Ireland to the English Parlia-
ment under Poyning's Law was never absent from the minds of
Irishmen, but no expression was given to it during Charles's reign; it
was nursed in silence until a fitting opportunity should occur for demand
for its redress. The agrarian grievance was kept more to the fore. The
rebels of 1641 had suffered forfeiture of their estates, and these had been
given to two classes of claimants : to the adventurers, the people who
had advanced money (to Charles I and later to the Parliament) for the
suppression of the rebellion on condition of being repaid in Irish land
and to the soldiers of Cromwell's Irish army who received land in satis-
faction of arrears of pay. This land had been secured to both sections of
the new proprietors by Charles's promise in the Declaration of Breda,
and confirmed to them by the Act of Settlement in 1662; the Act of
Explanation of 1665, which had become necessary when it was found
that there was not sufficient land to satisfy all claims under the Act of
Settlement, had indeed deprived the new proprietors of one-third of
their estates, but had re-confirmed them in the possession of the re-
maining two-thirds. They were again confirmed in possession by a
declaration by the King in 1673. But not only had the rebels been
deprived, but the "innocent" Catholics had been compelled to give up
the estates to which they were attached by family tradition in exchange
for estates in Connaught; so that in 1665 the whole of the land in the
three other provinces was out of the hands of the original Irish pro-
prietors, in Munster and Leinster it was held in the main by English-
382 KING JAMES II
men, and in Ulster by the descendants of the Scottish planters of James
Fs time. In these circumstances it was inevitable that the demand for
the repeal of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, from being a
demand on the part of particular persons for the recovery of their
estates, should become part of the national aspiration of Ireland for the
Irish.
In the twenty years between 1665 and 1685 great changes took place
among the possessors of land in Leinster and Munster. What happened
in detail must be largely a matter of conjecture, but it is reasonable to
suppose that most of the adventurers were speculators who never visited
their estates and who took the first favourable opportunity of selling
them, that many of the soldiers found life in Ireland uncongenial, sold
their estates and returned to England, and that many Irish Catholics
and English cavaliers had bought land. When the Act of Settlement was
repealed by the Dublin Parliament of 1689 several Catholic judges were
deprived of their estates; these judges were in a position to protest, but
other purchasers, great and small, we must conclude to have been
numerous, though they could not make their voices heard.
It seems probable that James was moved by his friend Richard
Talbot to take an interest in Irish affairs some months before Charles
died probably in June 1684, when Talbot returned to England from
Ireland after his return from exile. Talbot was a swaggering, impetuous
man, very much the "stage" Irishman, who according, to Grammont
had been the companion of James's amours in the years immediately
following the Restoration ; he had no real ability and was quite incapable
of applying himself to the details of business; his habit of lying was
proverbial, and he had not the intelligence to abstain from unnecessary
and implausible lies; he had, however, two redeeming virtues: he was
not personally corrupt (though he was ready to make use of the
corruption of others, notably of Sunderland), and he had a very real
passion for his country and his religion. 1 His first appearance in public
life was as agent for certain Catholic peers and gentry to conduct their
cases for reinstatement in possession of their lands under the Acts of
Settlement and Explanation. In that capacity he appeared before the
King and Council in February 1671, and he bettered the instructions
of his clients by attempting to invalidate the Act of Settlement itself.
From that time the main object of his life was the repeal of the Act of
1 I omit as tanimportant in a biography of James all reference to the division
of die Catholic Irish into Old and New Irish. Talbot was descended from an
Anglo-Norman family, and on occasion appeared as a strong partisan of the
New Irish; he seems not to have been popular even with mem. Conditions
were such that no single leader would have been acceptable to the Irish Catholics
as a whole.
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 383
Settlement Talbot was three times imprisoned during Charles's reign,
twice in the Tower for insults and worse against Ormonde, and once in
Dublin Castle as a suspect of the Popish Plot. On all three occasions
he was liberated by Ormonde's intercession. Ormonde appears to have
liked him, but by no means to have taken him seriously; 1 in February
1683 Talbot wrote to Ormonde expressing his gratitude for past kind-
ness, but this gratitude may have been only anticipation of favours to
come, for he was asking Ormonde to use his influence to obtain per-
mission for his return from exile. It is more than probable that he had
been throughout working in secret against Ormonde.
In June 1684 Talbot came to England from Ireland, where he had
been since his return from exile, and presented to the King a report on
the administration of Ireland. Now, it is extremely improbable that
Charles would have taken notice of a report which he had not asked
for from a private person, unless it had been pressed upbn him by
someone of great influence, and James was at that time the only Catholic
who could be so described. Ireland was prosperous and was giving no
trouble a great virtue in Charles's eyes; the direction of the royal
policy was in the hands of the Church and King men, and he had no
desire to court trouble by favouring Catholic claims. Nevertheless the
report was accepted, it was decided to bring about an entire re-
formation of the civil and military administration of Ireland that is to
say, to make Catholics eligible for all public appointments and to recall
Ormonde, who indeed said himself that "if it be intended to place some
papists in command in the army, I am really glad I shall not be com-
manded to do it". 2 There can be little doubt that James had never had
a great affection for Ormonde; in his youth and early manhood in
France and Flanders he had been aware of the older man's silent dis-
approval of his conduct on several occasions; later on Ormonde's
uncompromising Protestantism had been an affront. There was never
anything approaching an open quarrel in fact, all the letters which
passed between them notably James's letter of condolence on the
death of Ormonde's eldest son, and James's friend, the Earl of Ossory,
and the letters which were exchanged in October and November 1684
on the subject of Ormonde's recall are cordial in tone; but there is
never a suggestion of mutual confidence. Ormonde's biographer, Carte,
who spent years in studying Ormonde's papers, formed the opinion that
King James II seemed always to stand in awe of him, and whatever
esteem he could not help having of him, and whatever grateful
1 Ailesbury's opinion of Tyrconnel was similar to Ormonde's.
* There was also, apart from the religious question, a- scheme for remodel*
ling the army and increasing its efficiency.
384 KING JAMES II
sense he entertained at some times of his services, yet he never
really cared for him, purely on account of his being a zealous
Protestant.
James's haughtiness and bullying manner were probably a mask for a
secret sense of inadequacy, and Ormonde, who was very self-sufficient
and sure of himself, induced in James a feeling of inferiority which he
resented. In these circumstances it appears certain that James allied
himself with Talbot to have Ormonde recalled. Charles was apt to get
tired of his principal servants after a period of years, and James had many
opportunities of hinting that Ormonde at seventy-four years of age had
better be replaced.
Thus the revolution which took place in the administration of Ireland
between 1685 and 1688 was initiated before Charles's death, though had
Charles lived Rochester would have gone to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant
and James and Talbot would have found in him an opponent less
stubborn perhaps than Ormonde, but not so pliant as Rochester's
brother Clarendon. But Rochester was reserved for a higher post on
James's accession, and when Ormonde returned to England in April
1685 the government of Ireland was placed in the hands of Primate
Boyle and the Earl of Granard as Lords Justices, and Granard was
appointed Commander-in-Chief. Ormonde's official title had been
"Lieutenant-General and General Governor of His Majesty's Kingdom
of Ireland", but against his advice it had been decided in August 1684
to appoint a Commander-in-Chief independent of the Lord Lieutenant.
Six weeks after his accession James made his first breach of the Test
Act by giving Talbot an Irish regiment, and in May Talbot (now Earl of
Tyrconnel) went to Ireland. Already there had been dismissals of
officers in the Army, and Talbot, with scant regard to the authority of
his superior officer, Lord Granard, laid the foundations of the wholesale
conversion of the Protestant army into one predominantly Catholic.
He singled out for removal officers in whom Ormonde had been
personally interested, and Ormonde in retirement was very angry; he
asked "under what qualification my Lord of Tyrconnel is, or is taken to
be, that more should be done to him than to any other colonel in the
Army", but he was told that "Tyrconnel is thought to have the King's
authority to inspect and report on the army".
Tyrconnel took pains to justify to James his high-handed proceedings
with the Army by insinuating that a great many of the officers and men
had served under Cromwell and were still at heart disaffected. Against
such an allegation James was in possession of the clearest evidence, and
he should not have been deceived. Ormonde had been responsible for
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND 385
nearly all military appointments during the previous reign, he was very
strongly prejudiced against the "fanatics" and no one could have been
less inclined to tolerate subversive elements in the Army. Moreover
there had been no less than three scrutinies of the Army List in 1662,
1669 and in January 1685 f r the purpose of eliminating officers of
doubtful loyalty; and in the last James himself had taken part, and he
had expressed himself satisfied except in the cases of two particular
officers. Nevertheless Tyrconnel in August instituted a fresh inquiry,
and all colonels were ordered to report (among other things) which of
the officers under them had served under Cromwell. Apart from the
fact that many of the officers were " '49 men", who had served the royal
cause until in 1649 it had become hopeless, James should have secured
in their employments men who had survived previous purges and had
served his brother for twenty-five years. But this inquiry was pure
bluff, for the wholesale dismissal of Protestant officers was conducted on
no settled principle, and the officers lost their commissions at the whim
of Tyrconnei or of the officers to whom he delegated his powers. One
very mean circumstance of their dismissal was that in many cases the
officers were not paid on the spot compensation for the commissions
which they had previously purchased, or for their horses, but were
forced to spend money on a journey to Dublin and to remain there for
some time at their own expense while they were making good their
claims.
With more plausibility, but with no greater basis in fact, Tyrconnel
further convinced the King that the majority of the Protestants in
Ireland were "fanatics" and enemies of the Government. James was
well aware that during the exclusion agitation and at the time of his
accession Ireland had remained perfectly quiet, but he had been led to
believe that the rebellions of Argyll and Monmouth had had serious
repercussions in Ireland, and his fixed opinion was that "many ill 
