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

mortification doubled the

triumph of his enemies: very slight provocations sufficed to

kindle his anger; and when he was angry he said bitter things

which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but which others

remembered many years. His quickness and penetration would have

made him a consummate man of business but for his selfsufficiency

and impatience. His writings proved that he had many of the

qualities of an orator: but his irritability prevented him from

doing himself justice in debate; for nothing was easier than to

goad him into a passion; and, from the moment when he went into a

passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far inferior to him in

capacity.


Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation he was

a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the

old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church,

and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had

consequently a great body of personal adherents. The clergy

especially looked on him as their own man, and extended to his

foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in

some need: for he drank deep; and when he was in a rage,-and he

very often was in a rage,-he swore like a porter.


He now succeeded Essex at the treasury. It is to be observed that

the place of First Lord of the Treasury had not then the

importance and dignity which now belong to it. When there was a

Lord Treasurer, that great officer was generally prime minister:

but, when the white staff was in commission, the chief

commissioner hardly ranked so high as a Secretary of State. It

was not till the time of Walpole that the First Lord of the

Treasury became, under a humbler name, all that the Lord High

Treasurer had been.


Godolphin had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had early

acquired all the flexibility and the selfpossession of a veteran

courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and profoundly versed in

the details of finance. Every government, therefore, found him an

useful servant; and there was nothing in his opinions or in his

character which could prevent him from serving any government.

"Sidney Godolphin," said Charles, "is never in the way, and never

out of the way." This pointed remark goes far to explain

Godolphin's extraordinary success in life.


He acted at different times with both the great political

parties: but he never shared in the passions of either. Like most

men of cautious tempers and prosperous fortunes, he had a strong

disposition to support whatever existed. He disliked revolutions;

and, for the same reason for which he disliked revolutions, he

disliked counter-revolutions. His deportment was remarkably grave

and reserved: but his personal tastes were low and frivolous; and

most of the time which he could save from public business was

spent in racing, cardplaying, and cockfighting. He now sate below

Rochester at the Board of Treasury, and distinguished himself

there by assiduity and intelligence.


Before the new Parliament was suffered to meet for the despatch

of business a whole year elapsed, an eventful year, which has

left lasting traces in our manners and language. Never before had

political controversy been carried on with so much freedom. Never

before had political clubs existed with so elaborate an

organisation or so formidable an influence. The one question of

the Exclusion occupied the public mind. All the presses and

pulpits of the realm took part in the conflict. On one side it

was maintained that the constitution and religion of the state

could never be secure under a Popish King; on the other, that the

right of James to wear the crown in his turn was derived from

God, and could not be annulled, even by the consent of all the

branches of the legislature. Every county, every town, every

family, was in agitation. The civilities and hospitalities of

neighbourhood were interrupted. The dearest ties of friendship

and of blood were sundered. Even schoolboys were divided into

angry parties; and the Duke of York and the Earl of Shaftesbury

had zealous adherents on all the forms of Westminster and Eton.

The theatres shook with the roar of the contending factions. Pope

Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants.

Pensioned poets filled their prologues and epilogues with

eulogies on the King and the Duke. The malecontents besieged the

throne with petitions, demanding that Parliament might be

forthwith convened. The royalists sent up addresses, expressing

the utmost abhorrence of all who presumed to dictate to the

sovereign. The citizens of London assembled by tens of thousands

to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at

Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our

tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable

memorials of a season of tumult and imposture.21 Opponents of the

court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists.

Those who took the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers,

and Tantivies. These appellations soon become obsolete: but at

this time were first heard two nicknames which, though originally

given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in

daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and

which will last as long as the English literature. It is a

curious circumstance that one of these nicknames was of Scotch,

and the other of Irish, origin. Both in Scotland and in Ireland,

misgovernment had called into existence bands of desperate men

whose ferocity was heightened by religions enthusiasm. In

Scotland some of the persecuted Covenanters, driven mad by

oppression, had lately murdered the Primate, had taken arms

against the government, had obtained some advantages against the

King's forces, and had not been put down till Monmouth, at the

head of some troops from England, had routed them at Bothwell

Bridge. These zealots were most numerous among the rustics of the

western lowlands, who were vulgarly called Whigs. Thus the

appellation of Whig was fastened on the Presbyterian zealots of

Scotland, and was transferred to those English politicians who

showed a disposition to oppose the court, and to treat Protestant

Nonconformists with indulgence. The bogs of Ireland, at the same

time, afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those

who were afterwards known as Whiteboys. These men were then

called Tories. The name of Tory was therefore given to Englishmen

who refused to concur in excluding a Roman Catholic prince from

the throne.


The rage of the hostile factions would have been sufficiently

violent, if it had been left to itself. But it was studiously

exasperated by the common enemy of both. Lewis still continued to

bribe and flatter both the court and the opposition. He exhorted

Charles to be firm: he exhorted James to raise a civil war in

Scotland: he exhorted the Whigs not to flinch, and to rely with

confidence on the protection of France.


Through all this agitation a discerning eye might have perceived

that the public opinion was gradually changing. The persecution

of the Roman Catholics went on; but convictions were no longer

matters of course. A new brood of false witnesses, among whom a

villain named Dangerfield was the most conspicuous, infested the

courts: but the stories of these men, though better constructed

than that of Oates, found less credit. Juries were no longer so

easy of belief as during the panic which had followed the murder

of Godfrey; and Judges, who, while the popular frenzy was at the

height, had been its most obsequious instruments, now ventured to

express some part of what they had from the first thought.


At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The Whigs had so

great a majority in the Commons that the Exclusion Bill went

through all its stages there without difficulty. The King

scarcely knew on what members of his own cabinet he could reckon.

Hyde had been true to his Tory opinions, and had steadily

supported the cause of hereditary monarchy. But Godolphin,

anxious for quiet, and believing that quiet could be restored

only by concession, wished the bill to pass. Sunderland, ever

false, and ever shortsighted, unable to discern the signs of

approaching reaction, and anxious to conciliate the party which

he believed to be irresistible, determined to vote against the

court. The Duchess of Portsmouth implored her royal lover not to

rush headlong to destruction. If there were any point on which he

had a scruple of conscience or of honour, it was the question of

the succession; but during some days it seemed that he would

submit. He wavered, asked what sum the Commons would give him if

he yielded, and suffered a negotiation to be opened with the

leading Whigs. But a deep mutual distrust which had been many

years growing, and which had been carefully nursed by the arts of

France, made a treaty impossible. Neither side would place

confidence in the other. The whole nation now looked with

breathless anxiety to the House of Lords. The assemblage of peers

was large. The King himself was present. The debate was long,

earnest, and occasionally furious. Some hands were laid on the

pommels of swords in a manner which revived the recollection of

the stormy Parliaments of Edward the Third and Richard the

Second. Shaftesbury and Essex were joined by the treacherous

Sunderland. But the genius of Halifax bore down all opposition.

Deserted by his most important colleagues, and opposed to a crowd

of able antagonists, he defended the cause of the Duke of York,

in a succession of speeches which, many years later, were

remembered as masterpieces of reasoning, of wit, and of

eloquence. It is seldom that oratory changes votes. Yet the

attestation of contemporaries leaves no doubt that, on this

occasion, votes were changed by the oratory of Halifax. The

Bishops, true to their doctrines, supported the principle of

hereditary right, and the bill was rejected by a great

majority.22


The party which preponderated in the House of Commons, bitterly

mortified by this defeat, found some consolation in shedding the

blood of Roman Catholics. William Howard, Viscount Stafford, one

of the unhappy men who had been accused of a share in the plot,

was impeached; and on the testimony of Oates and of two other

false witnesses, Dugdale and Turberville, was found guilty of

high treason, and suffered death. But the circumstances of his

trial and execution ought to have given an useful warning to the

Whig leaders. A large and respectable minority of the House of

Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude, which a

few months before had received the dying declarations of Oates's

victims with mockery and execrations, now loudly expressed a

belief that Stafford was a murdered man. When he with his last

breath protested his innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my

Lord! We believe you,