The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

the project. It was found that to adjust the

details would be a work of time; and the King's wants were so

pressing that he thought it necessary to quicken the movements of

the House by a gentle exhortation to speed. The plan of taxing

buildings was therefore relinquished; and new duties were imposed

for a term of five years on foreign silks, linens, and

spirits.371


The Tories of the Lower House proceeded to introduce what they

called a bill for the preservation of the King's person and

government. They proposed that it should be high treason to say

that Monmouth was legitimate, to utter any words tending to bring

the person or government of the sovereign into hatred or

contempt, or to make any motion in Parliament for changing the

order of succession. Some of these provisions excited general

disgust and alarm. The Whigs, few and weak as they were,

attempted to rally, and found themselves reinforced by a

considerable number of moderate and sensible Cavaliers. Words, it

was said, may easily be misunderstood by a dull man. They may be

easily misconstrued by a knave. What was spoken metaphorically

may be apprehended literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be

apprehended seriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis,

may make the whole difference between guilt and innocence. The

Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice could

find no acts to impeach, had been called in question for words

spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syllable which would

have made it clear that those words were figurative, and had thus

furnished the Sanhedrim with a pretext under which the foulest of

all judicial murders had been perpetrated. With such an example

on record, who could affirm that, if mere talk were made a

substantive treason, the most loyal subject would be safe? These

arguments produced so great an effect that in the committee

amendments were introduced which greatly mitigated the severity

of the bill. But the clause which made it high treason in a

member of Parliament to propose the exclusion of a prince of the

blood seems to have raised no debate, and was retained. That

clause was indeed altogether unimportant, except as a proof of

the ignorance and inexperience of the hotheaded Royalists who

thronged the House of Commons. Had they learned the first

rudiments of legislation, they would have known that the

enactment to which they attached so much value would be

superfluous while the Parliament was disposed to maintain the

order of succession, and would be repealed as soon as there was a

Parliament bent on changing the order of succession.372


The bill, as amended, was passed and carried up to the Lords, but

did not become law. The King had obtained from the Parliament all

the pecuniary assistance that he could expect; and he conceived

that, while rebellion was actually raging, the loyal nobility and

gentry would be of more use in their counties than at

Westminster. He therefore hurried their deliberations to a close,

and, on the second of July, dismissed them. On the same day the

royal assent was given to a law reviving that censorship of the

press which had terminated in 1679. This object was affected by a

few words at the end of a miscellaneous statute which continued

several expiring acts. The courtiers did not think that they had

gained a triumph. The Whigs did not utter a murmur. Neither in

the Lords nor in the Commons was there any division, or even, as

far as can now be learned, any debate on a question which would,

in our age, convulse the whole frame of society. In truth, the

change was slight and almost imperceptible; for, since the

detection of the Rye House plot, the liberty of unlicensed

printing had existed only in name. During many months scarcely

one Whig pamphlet had been published except by stealth; and by

stealth such pamphlets might be published still.373


The Houses then rose. They were not prorogued, but only

adjourned, in order that, when they should reassemble, they might

take up their business in the exact state in which they had left

it.374


While the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Monmouth and

his partisans, he found at Taunton a reception which might well

encourage him to hope that his enterprise would have a prosperous

issue. Taunton, like most other towns in the south of England,

was, in that age, more important than at present. Those towns

have not indeed declined. On the contrary, they are, with very

few exceptions, larger and richer, better built and better

peopled, than in the seventeenth century. But, though they have

positively advanced, they have relatively gone back. They have

been far outstripped in wealth and population by the great

manufacturing and commercial cities of the north, cities which,

in the time of the Stuarts, were but beginning to be known as

seats of industry. When Monmouth marched into Taunton it was an

eminently prosperous place. Its markets were plentifully

supplied. It was a celebrated seat of the woollen manufacture.

The people boasted that they lived in a land flowing with milk

and honey. Nor was this language held only by partial natives;

for every stranger who climbed the graceful tower of St. Mary

Magdalene owned that he saw beneath him the most fertile of

English valleys. It was a country rich with orchards and green

pastures, among which were scattered, in gay abundance, manor

houses, cottages, and village spires. The townsmen had long

leaned towards Presbyterian divinity and Whig politics. In the

great civil war Taunton had, through all vicissitudes, adhered to

the Parliament, had been twice closely besieged by Goring, and

had been twice defended with heroic valour by Robert Blake,

afterwards the renowned Admiral of the Commonwealth. Whole

streets had been burned down by the mortars and grenades of the

Cavaliers. Food had been so scarce that the resolute governor had

announced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of

horse flesh. But the spirit of the town had never been subdued

either by fire or by hunger.375


The Restoration had produced no effect on the temper of the

Taunton men. They had still continued to celebrate the

anniversary of the happy day on which the siege laid to their

town by the royal army had been raised; and their stubborn

attachment to the old cause had excited so much fear and

resentment at Whitehall that, by a royal order, their moat had

been filled up, and their wall demolished to the foundation.376

The puritanical spirit had been kept up to the height among them

by the precepts and example of one of the most celebrated of the

dissenting clergy, Joseph Alleine. Alleine was the author of a

tract, entitled, An Alarm to the Unconverted, which is still

popular both in England and in America. From the gaol to which he

was consigned by the victorious Cavaliers, he addressed to his

loving friends at Taunton many epistles breathing the spirit of a

truly heroic piety. His frame soon sank under the effects of

study, toil, and persecution: but his memory was long cherished

with exceeding love and reverence by those whom he had exhorted

and catechised.377


The children of the men who, forty years before, had manned the

ramparts of Taunton against the Royalists, now welcomed Monmouth

with transports of joy and affection. Every door and window was

adorned with wreaths of flowers. No man appeared in the streets

without wearing in his hat a green bough, the badge of the

popular cause. Damsels of the best families in the town wove

colours for the insurgents. One flag in particular was

embroidered gorgeously with emblems of royal dignity, and was

offered to Monmouth by a train of young girls. He received the

gift with the winning courtesy which distinguished him. The lady

who headed the procession presented him also with a small Bible

of great price. He took it with a show of reverence. "I come," he

said, "to defend the truths contained in this book, and to seal

them, if it must be so, with my blood."378


But while Monmouth enjoyed the applause of the multitude, he

could not but perceive, with concern and apprehension, that the

higher classes were. with scarcely an exception, hostile to his

undertaking, and that no rising had taken place except in the

counties where he had himself appeared. He had been assured by

agents, who professed to have derived their information from

Wildman, that the whole Whig aristocracy was eager to take arms.

Nevertheless more than a week had now elapsed since the blue

standard had been set up at Lyme. Day labourers, small farmers,

shopkeepers, apprentices, dissenting preachers, had flocked to

the rebel camp: but not a single peer, baronet, or knight, not a

single member of the House of Commons, and scarcely any esquire

of sufficient note to have ever been in the commission of the

peace, had joined the invaders. Ferguson, who, ever since the

death of Charles, had been Monmouth's evil angel, had a

suggestion ready. The Duke had put himself into a false position

by declining the royal title. Had he declared himself sovereign

of England, his cause would have worn a show of legality. At

present it was impossible to reconcile his Declaration with the

principles of the constitution. It was clear that either Monmouth

or his uncle was rightful King. Monmouth did not venture to

pronounce himself the rightful King, and yet denied that his

uncle was so. Those who fought for James fought for the only

person who ventured to claim the throne, and were therefore

clearly in their duty, according to the laws of the realm. Those

who fought for Monmouth fought for some unknown polity, which was

to be set up by a convention not yet in existence. None could

wonder that men of high rank and ample fortune stood aloof from

an enterprise which threatened with destruction that system in

the permanence of which they were deeply interested. If the Duke

would assert his legitimacy and assume the crown, he would at

once remove this objection. The question would cease to be a

question between the old constitution and a new constitution. It

would be merely a question of hereditary right between two

princes.


On such grounds as these Ferguson, almost immediately after the

landing, had earnestly pressed the Duke to proclaim himself King;

and Grey had seconded Ferguson. Monmouth had been very willing to

take this advice; but Wade and other republicans had been

refractory; and their chief, with his usual pliability, had

yielded to their arguments. At Taunton the subject was revived.

Monmouth talked in private with the dissentients, assured them

that he saw no other way of obtaining the support of any portion

of the aristocracy, and succeeded in extorting their reluctant

consent. On the