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

would probably have been fatal to our country,

and that we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the

wisdom and courage of much better sovereigns. He came to the

throne at a critical moment. The time was fast approaching when

either the King must become absolute, or the parliament must

control the whole executive administration. Had James been, like

Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of Nassau, or like Gustavus

Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, had he put

himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had he gained

great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he adorned

Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish

cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint

Paul's, and had he found himself, after great achievements, at

the head of fifty thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and

devotedly attached to his person, the English Parliament would

soon have been nothing more than a name. Happily he was not a man

to play such a part. He began his administration by putting an

end to the war which had raged during many years between England

and Spain; and from that time he shunned hostilities with a

caution which was proof against the insults of his neighbours and

the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of his life

could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament,

and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in

defence of his family and of his religion. It was well for those

whom he governed that he in this matter disregarded their wishes.

The effect of his pacific policy was that, in his time, no

regular troops were needed, and that, while France, Spain, Italy,

Belgium, and Germany swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence

of our island was still confided to the militia.


As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to

form one, it would have been wise in him to avoid any conflict

with his people. But such was his indiscretion that, while he

altogether neglected the means which alone could make him really

absolute, he constantly put forward, in the most offensive form,

claims of which none of his predecessors had ever dreamed. It was

at this time that those strange theories which Filmer afterwards

formed into a system and which became the badge of the most

violent class of Tories and high churchmen, first emerged into

notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded

hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,

with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of

primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the

Christian, and even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human

power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of

adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could

deprive a legitimate prince of his rights, that the authority of

such a prince was necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by

which, in England and in other countries, the prerogative was

limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the

sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and

that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was

merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a

contract of which the performance could be demanded. It is

evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the

foundations of government, altogether unsettles them. Does the

divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit females, or

exclude them? On either supposition half the sovereigns of Europe

must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law of God, and

liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine

that kingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives

no countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament

we read that the chosen people were blamed and punished for

desiring a king, and that they were afterwards commanded to

withdraw their allegiance from him. Their whole history, far from

countenancing the notion that succession in order of

primogeniture is of divine institution, would rather seem to

indicate that younger brothers are under the especial protection

of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of

Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of

David Nor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from

those passages of the New Testament which describe government as

an ordinance of God: for the government under which the writers

of the New Testament lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The

Roman Emperors were republican magistrates, named by the senate.

None of them pretended to rule by right of birth; and, in fact,

both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded that tribute should be

given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to obey, were,

according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers. In

the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right

would have been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether

incompatible with the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It

was a doctrine unknown to the founders of the Church of England.

The Homily on Wilful Rebellion had strongly, and indeed too

strongly, inculcated submission to constituted authority, but had

made no distinction between hereditary end elective monarchies,

or between monarchies and republics. Indeed most of the

predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have regarded

the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William

Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry

the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the

Seventh, had all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of

descent. A grave doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and

of Elizabeth. It was impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and

Anne Boleyn could have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth;

and the highest authority in the realm had pronounced that

neither was so. The Tudors, far from considering the law of

succession as a divine and unchangeable institution, were

constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of

parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by will, and

actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family of

Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a

similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent

Reformers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to

grave objection, and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right

in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament

to pass a law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency

of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the

realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor:

But the situation of James was widely different from that of

Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity,

regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from the throne

by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was yet

the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He

had, therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the

superstitions notion that birth confers rights anterior to law,

and unalterable by law. It was a notion, moreover, well suited to

his intellect and temper. It soon found many advocates among

those who aspired to his favour, and made rapid progress among

the clergy of the Established Church.


Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to

manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country,

the claims of the monarch took a monstrous form which would have

disgusted the proudest and most arbitrary of those who had

preceded him on the throne.


James was always boasting of his skill in what he called

kingcraft; and yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course

more directly opposed to all the rules of kingcraft, than that

which he followed. The policy of wise rulers has always been to

disguise strong acts under popular forms. It was thus that

Augustus and Napoleon established absolute monarchies, while the

public regarded them merely as eminent citizens invested with

temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct

reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by

constantly telling them that they held their privileges merely

during his pleasure and that they had no more business to inquire

what he might lawfully do than what the Deity might lawfully do.

Yet he quailed before them, abandoned minister after minister to

their vengeance, and suffered them to tease him into acts

directly opposed to his strongest inclinations. Thus the

indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by his

concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for

worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their

tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His

cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person,

his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in

his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently

unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the

venerable associations by which the throng had long been fenced

were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years

all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of

Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous,

and of princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above

the ordinary level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of

the decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments,

royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering,

shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking

in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue.


In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the

days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been

distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The interval

which had separated the first generation of Puritans from Cranmer

and Jewel was small indeed when compared with the interval which

separated the third generation of Puritans from Laud and Hammond.

While the recollection of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, while

the powers of the Roman Catholic party still inspired

apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and aspired

to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had

a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity

which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with

the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and

Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of

extreme severity against the Papists. But when more than half a

century of undisturbed possession had given confidence to the

Established Church, when nine tenths of the nation had become

heartily Protestant, when England was at peace with all the

world, when there was no danger that Popery would be forced by

foreign arms on the nation, when the last confessors