1688.] BIRTH OF THE PRINCE OF WALES. 429 The announced to the lords-lieutenant of counties that it had "pleased Almighty God, about ten o'clock of this morning, to bless his majesty and his royal. consort the queen with the birth of a hopeful son, and his majesty's kingdoms. and dominions with a prince."* In the language of the Council it was "so inestimable a blessing," that all the people would be called upon to unite in thanksgiving. Another language was held even by the staunch friends of the monarchy. Evelyn enters in his Diary of June 10th, " A young prince born, which will cause disputes." The legitimacy of this young prince was long disputed. This birth was as little a blessing to the house of Stuart as it promised to be to the weary subjects of that house. A large majority of the nation was convinced that this heir of the crown was supposititious. It was almost universally believed that imposture had been practised. princess Anne did not give credit to the queen's alleged pregnancy. It was wholly disbelieved at the court of the prince of Orange. The birth arrived a month before it was said to be expected. The most ordinary precautions were not taken to put the fact beyond a doubt; for none but those in whom the people had little confidence were in attendance on the occasion. That there was no imposture is now matter of historical belief; but so convinced were many political partisans that there was no real son of James II., that, seventy years afterwards, Johnson drew the character of a violent Whig, who "has known those who saw the bed into which the Pretender was conveyed in a warming-pan." + Burnet devotes five or six pages of his folio volume to the various accounts of this pretended birth-stories which Swift properly ridicules. The belief in this story is the only blot in the subsequent Declaration of William of Orange to the English people; and James took the manly, though necessarily somewhat indelicate step, of instituting an inquiry and publishing all the evidence to refute the calumny. The most important influence of this birth upon the fortunes of England was, that the prospect of an heir to the Crown, born of a Catholic mother, and to be brought up in the bigoted school of a father who had cast aside Protestantism to be governed by Jesuits and apostates, precipitated the Revolution. * Letter to the Earl of Rochester. Ellis. Series I. vol. iii. p. 339. +"Idler," No. 10. William, Prince of Orange-His character and position with regard to English affairs-The Princess Mary, and the Succession-Invitation to the Prince of Orange-Preparations of William-His Declaration-Hopes of the English people-Alarm of the king-William sails from Helvoetsluys-The voyage-Landing at Torbay-Public entry at Exeter-The king goes to the army at Salisbury-Desertions of his officers-The Prince of Denmark and the Princess Anne-James calls a Meeting of Peers-Commissioners to negotiate with the Prince of Orange-The queen and child sent to France-The king flies-Provisional Government-Riots-The Irish night-James brought back to London-The Dutch guards at Whitehall-The king again leaves London-The Prince of Orange enters-The Interregnum-The Convention-William and Mary King and Queen-The Revolution the commencement of a new era in English history. Ar the village of Hurley, on the Berkshire side of the Thames between Henley and Maidenhead, stood, in 1836, an Elizabethan mansion called Lady Place, built on the site of a Benedictine monastery by sir Richard Lovelace, who was created a peer by Charles I. This building was the seat of lord Lovelace in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.,-a nobleman whose lavish hospitality and expensive tastes were rapidly wasting "the king of Spain's cloth of silver" which his ancestor, one of Drake's privateering followers, had won. The spacious hall opening to the Thames, the stately gallery * "Worthies." 1688.] WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE. 431 whose panels were covered with Italian landscapes, the terraced gardenswere ruined and neglected when we there meditated, some thirty years ago, upon the lessons of "Mutability." All the remains of past grandeur are now swept away. But beneath the Tudor building were the burial vaults of the house of " Our Lady," which seemed built for all time, and which, we believe, are still undisturbed. In these vaults was a modern inscription which recorded that the Monastery of Lady Place was founded at the time of the great Norman Revolution, and that "in this place, six hundred years afterwards, the Revolution of 1688 was begun." King William III., the tablet also recorded, visited this vault, and looked upon the "Recess," in which "several consultations for calling in the prince of Orange were held." During the four years in which James had been on the throne, the question of armed resistance had been constantly present to the minds of many Whigs; and to the prince of Orange they looked for aid in some open attempt to change the policy of the government by force, or, if necessary, to subvert it. The wife of the prince of Orange was the presumptive heir to the crown; he was himself the nephew of the English king. His political and religious principles, and those of the republic of which he was the first magistrate, were diametrically opposed to those of his uncle. The chief enemy of his nation was the chief ally of king James. The one great purpose of the life of William of Orange was to resist the overwhelming ambition of Louis XIV. In 1688 he was thirty-eight years of age. When he was only in his twentysecond year, he had arrested the march of French conquest, and had saved his country. His uncle Charles had deserted his alliance, and had become the degraded pensioner of France. His uncle James equally crouched at the feet of the enemy of national independence, and of civil and religious liberty. William, under every difficulty, had in 1686 succeeded in forming the League of Augsburg, to hold in check this overwhelming ambition. His unrivalled sagacity and prudence had united rulers of Catholic as well as of Protestant states, in a determination that the Balance of Power in Europe should not be destroyed. James of England was content that his country should remain in the degraded position in which it had been left by his brother, provided that a continuance of that degradation would enable him to establish Jesuits and monks in the high places of the Church, and rule without Parliaments, by a power above the law. William of Orange must have long been convinced that this system could not endure. Holland was the refuge of many an Englishman who had fled from persecution, when dissenters were the objects of king James's hatred. They had no confidence in his pretended toleration, because it was based upon absolute authority. The public opinion of Englishmen at home was uniting in the same conclusion. A crisis was at hand, not only in England, but in the general policy of Europe. William had stood aloof from any connexion with plots in the later years of Charles, or of insurrections in the first year of James. His object was that in England there should be union between the Crown and the Parliament; for then England would be strong, and capable of taking a part once more in such a joint system of action as was contemplated in the Triple Alliance. That hope was now utterly gone. It was clear that James and his people would never be at accord. It was equally clear that any bold and elevated foreign policy was hopeless. Unless he had determined wholly to separate himself from English affairs, 432 THE PRINCESS MARY AND THE SUCCESSION. [1688. William of Orange would necessarily become associated with the leading men of England, who saw that the government was driving on to ruin. His original policy was to wait. The time might come when the princess of Orange would be queen, and then William would naturally be England's ruler. It was the desire of Mary that her husband, in that event, should be the real sovereign. Burnet relates this circumstance with some self-applause, but with evident truth: "I took the liberty, in a private conversation with the princess, to ask her what she intended the prince should be, if she came to the crown. She, who was new to all matters of that kind, did not understand my meaning, but fancied that whatever accrued to her would likewise accrue to him in the right of marriage. I told her it was not so. I told her, a titular kingship was no acceptable thing to a man, especially if it was to depend on another's life: and such a nominal dignity might endanger the real one that the prince had in Holland. She desired me to propose a remedy. I told her, the remedy, if she could bring her mind to it, was, to be contented to be his wife, and to engage herself to him, that she would give him the real authority as soon as it came into her hands, and endeavour effectually to get it to be legally vested in him during life: this would lay the greatest obligation on him possible, and lay the foundation of a perfect union between them, which had been of late a little embroiled. * * * She presently answered me, she would take no time to consider of any thing by which she could express her regard and affection to the prince; and ordered me to give him an account of all that I had laid before her, and to bring him to her, and I should hear what she would say upon it. *** She promised him, he should always bear rule; and she asked only, that he would obey the command of 'Husbands, love your wives,' as she should do that, 'Wives, be obedient to your husbands in all things.' Dartmouth con jectures that the prince ordered Burnet-whom he calls "a little Scotch priest "-to propose this to the princess, before he would engage in the attempt upon England. When the insane proceedings of James had rendered it more than probable that the event would happen which his brother Charles said should never happen to him-that he should be sent again upon his travels-the prince of Orange, with an ambition that was founded upon higher motives than mere personal advancement, might not unreasonably think that there was a shorter road to the English crown than by succession. At the very climax of the folly of James, a son, or a pretended son, was born. William and his wife believed that their just rights were attempted to be set aside by an imposture. The leading men of England believed the same. The quarrel between the king and the Church appeared to be irreconcilable; and thus the most powerful influence over the people had ceased to be committed to the doctrine of non-resistance to arbitrary power. The time for decision was come in the summer of 1688. Edward Russell had been over to the Hague in May, to urge the prince of Orange to a bold interference with the affairs of England. "The prince spoke more positively to him than he had ever done before. He said, he must satisfy both his honour and conscience, before he could enter upon so great a design, which, if it miscarried, must bring ruin both on England and "Own Time," vol. iii. p. 129. 1688.1 INVITATION TO THE PRINCE OF ORANGE. 433 Holland: he protested, that no private ambition nor resentment of his own could ever prevail so far with him, as to make him break with so near a relation, or engage in a war, of which the consequences must be of the last importance both to the interests of Europe and of the protestant religion: therefore he expected formal and direct invitation. Russell laid before him the danger of trusting such a secret to great numbers. The prince said, if a considerable number of men, that might be supposed to understand the sense of the nation best, should do it, he would acquiesce in it."* Russell returned to England, and communicated with Henry Sidney, the brother of Algernon: with the earl of Shrewsbury; the earl of Danby; the earl of Devon. shire; and other peers. Compton, the suspended bishop of London, was also confided in. On the 30th of June, the great day of the acquittal of the seven bishops, an invitation to William of Orange, to appear in England, at the head of a body of troops, was sent by a messenger of rank; admiral Herbert. It was signed in cipher, by Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, Compton, Russell, and Sidney. William took his determination. He resolved on a descent upon England. With a secrecy as remarkable as his energy, he set about the preparation of such a force as would ensure success, in conjunction with the expected rising of nineteen-twentieths of the people, to free themselves from an odious government. In this eventful autumn there were dangers immediately surrounding the unhappy king of England, which were the almost inevitable results of a long career of government which had weakened, if not wholly extinguished, political honesty. The high public spirit, the true sense of honour, which had characterised the nobles and gentry of England during the Civil War, was lost in the selfishness, the meanness, the profligacy, of the twenty-eight years that succeeded the Restoration. Traitors were hatched in the sunshine of corruption. The basest expediency had been the governing principle of statesmen and lawyers; the most abject servility had been the leading creed of divines. Loyalty always wore the livery of the menial. Patriotism was ever flaunting the badges of faction. The bulk of the people were unmoved by any proud resentments or eager hopes. They went on in their course of industrious occupation, without much caring whether they were under an absolute or a constitutional government, as long as they could eat, drink, and be merry. They had got rid of the puritan severity; and if decency was outraged in the Court and laughed at on the stage, there was greater licence for popular indulgences.. The one thing to be avoided was nonconformity, which was a very hard service, even when lawful; and a very desperate sacrifice when it brought fine and imprisonment. Such was the temper of England at the accession of James. It was a temper fitted for any amount of national humiliation. It was a temper apt for slavery. But there was one latent spark of feeling which James blew into a flame. The English hated Popery with a passionate hatred. It was then seen by crafty politicians who had endured and even stimulated the bigotry of the king, that he had gone too far, and that he would not recede. Such a politician was Sunderland, who had even made a public profession of Romanism to retain his places. He became a Catholic to please the king in June. In August the breach between * Burnet. vol. iii. p. 263. |