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

him as with a brother by blood.

A fatal attachment sprang up. The high spirit and strong passions

of Lady Henrietta broke through all restraints of virtue and

decorum. A scandalous elopement disclosed to the whole kingdom

the shame of two illustrious families. Grey and some of the

agents who had served him in his amour were brought to trial on a

charge of conspiracy. A scene unparalleled in our legal history

was exhibited in the Court of King's Bench. The seducer appeared

with dauntless front, accompanied by his paramour. Nor did the

great Whig lords flinch from their friend's side even in that

extremity. Those whom he had wronged stood over against him, and

were moved to transports of rage by the sight of him. The old

Earl of Berkeley poured forth reproaches and curses on the

wretched Henrietta. The Countess gave evidence broken by many

sobs, and at length fell down in a swoon. The jury found a

verdict of Guilty. When the court rose Lord Berkeley called on

all his friends to help him to seize his daughter. The partisans

of Grey rallied round her. Swords were drawn on both sides; a

skirmish took place in Westminster Hall; and it was with

difficulty that the Judges and tipstaves parted the combatants.

In our time such a trial would be fatal to the character of a

public man; but in that age the standard of morality among the

great was so low, and party spirit was so violent, that Grey

still continued to have considerable influence, though the

Puritans, who formed a strong section of the Whig party, looked

somewhat coldly on him.325


One part of the character, or rather, it may be, of the fortune,

of Grey deserves notice. It was admitted that everywhere, except

on the field of battle, he showed a high degree of courage. More

than once, in embarrassing circumstances, when his life and

liberty were at stake, the dignity of his deportment and his

perfect command of all his faculties extorted praise from those

who neither loved nor esteemed him. But as a soldier he incurred,

less perhaps by his fault than by mischance, the degrading

imputation of personal cowardice.


In this respect he differed widely from his friend the Duke of

Monmouth. Ardent and intrepid on the field of battle, Monmouth

was everywhere else effeminate and irresolute. The accident of

his birth, his personal courage, and his superficial graces, had

placed him in a post for which he was altogether unfitted. After

witnessing the ruin of the party of which he had been the nominal

head, he had retired to Holland. The Prince and Princess of

Orange had now ceased to regard him as a rival. They received him

most hospitably; for they hoped that, by treating, him with

kindness, they should establish a claim to the gratitude of his

father. They knew that paternal affection was not yet wearied

out, that letters and supplies of money still came secretly from

Whitehall to Monmouth's retreat, and that Charles frowned on

those who sought to pay their court to him by speaking ill of his

banished son. The Duke had been encouraged to expect that, in a

very short time, if he gave no new cause of displeasure, he would

be recalled to his native land, and restored to all his high

honours and commands. Animated by such expectations he had been

the life of the Hague during the late winter. He had been the

most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls in that splendid

Orange Hall, which blazes on every side with the most

ostentatious colouring of Jordæns and Hondthorst.326 He had

taught the English country dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in

his turn learned from them to skate on the canals. The Princess

had accompanied him in his expeditions on the ice; and the figure

which she made there, poised on one leg, and clad in petticoats

shorter than are generally worn by ladies so strictly decorous,

had caused some wonder and mirth to the foreign ministers. The

sullen gravity which had been characteristic of the Stadtholder's

court seemed to have vanished before the influence of the

fascinating Englishman. Even the stern and pensive William

relaxed into good humour when his brilliant guest appeared.327


Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give offence

in the quarter to which he looked for protection. He saw little

of any Whigs, and nothing of those violent men who had been

concerned in the worst part of the Whig plot. He was therefore

loudly accused, by his old associates, of fickleness and

ingratitude.328


By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more

vehemence and bitterness than by Robert Ferguson, the Judas of

Dryden's great satire. Ferguson was by birth a Scot; but England

had long been his residence. At the time of the Restoration,

indeed, he had held a living in Kent. He had been bred a

Presbyterian; but the Presbyterians had cast him out, and he had

become an Independent. He had been master of an academy which the

Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival to Westminster

School and the Charter House; and he had preached to large

congregations at a meeting house in Moorfields. He had also

published some theological treatises which may still be found in

the dusty recesses of a few old libraries; but, though texts of

Scripture were always on his lips, those who had pecuniary

transactions with him soon found him to be a mere swindler.


At length he turned his attention almost entirely from theology

to the worst part of politics. He belonged to the class whose

office it is to render in troubled times to exasperated parties

those services from which honest men shrink in disgust and

prudent men in fear, the class of fanatical knaves. Violent,

malignant, regardless of truth, insensible to shame, insatiable

of notoriety, delighting in intrigue, in tumult, in mischief for

its own sake, he toiled during many years in the darkest mines of

faction. He lived among libellers and false witnesses. He was the

keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile to be

acknowledged received hire, and the director of a secret press

whence pamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued. He boasted

that he had contrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of

Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pillow. In this way

of life he was put to many shifts, was forced to assume many

names, and at one time had four different lodgings in different

corners of London. He was deeply engaged in the Rye House plot.

There is, indeed, reason to believe that he was the original

author of those sanguinary schemes which brought so much

discredit on the whole Whig party. When the conspiracy was

detected and his associates were in dismay, he bade them farewell

with a laugh, and told them that they were novices, that he had

been used to flight, concealment and disguise, and that he should

never leave off plotting while he lived. He escaped to the

Continent. But it seemed that even on the Continent he was not

secure. The English envoys at foreign courts were directed to be

on the watch for him. The French government offered a reward of

five hundred pistoles to any who would seize him. Nor was it easy

for him to escape notice; for his broad Scotch accent, his tall

and lean figure, his lantern jaws, the gleam of his sharp eyes

which were always overhung by his wig, his cheeks inflamed by an

eruption, his shoulders deformed by a stoop, and his gait

distinguished from that of other men by a peculiar shuffle, made

him remarkable wherever he appeared. But, though he was, as it

seemed, pursued with peculiar animosity, it was whispered that

this animosity was feigned, and that the officers of justice had

secret orders not to see him. That he was really a bitter

malecontent can scarcely be doubted. But there is strong reason

to believe that he provided for his own safety by pretending at

Whitehall to be a spy on the Whigs, and by furnishing the

government with just so much information as sufficed to keep up

his credit. This hypothesis furnishes a simple explanation of

what seemed to his associates to be his unnatural recklessness

and audacity. Being himself out of danger, he always gave his

vote for the most violent and perilous course, and sneered very

complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not having taken

the infamous precautions on which he relied, were disposed to

think twice before they placed life, and objects dearer than

life, on a single hazard 329


As soon as he was in the Low Countries he began to form new

projects against the English government, and found among his

fellow emigrants men ready to listen to his evil counsels.

Monmouth, however, stood obstinately aloof; and, without the help

of Monmouth's immense popularity, it was impossible to effect

anything. Yet such was the impatience and rashness of the exiles

that they tried to find another leader. They sent an embassy to

that solitary retreat on the shores of Lake Leman where Edmund

Ludlow, once conspicuous among the chiefs of the parliamentary

army and among the members of the High Court of Justice, had,

during many years, hidden himself from the vengeance of the

restored Stuarts. The stern old regicide, however, refused to

quit his hermitage. His work, he said, was done. If England was

still to be saved, she must be saved by younger men.330


The unexpected demise of the crown changed the whole aspect of

affairs. Any hope which the proscribed Whigs might have cherished

of returning peaceably to their native land was extinguished by

the death of a careless and goodnatured prince, and by the

accession of a prince obstinate in all things, and especially

obstinate in revenge. Ferguson was in his element. Destitute of

the talents both of a writer and of a statesman, he had in a high

degree the unenviable qualifications of a tempter; and now, with

the malevolent activity and dexterity of an evil spirit, he ran

from outlaw to outlaw, chattered in every ear, and stirred up in

every bosom savage animosities and wild desires.


He no longer despaired of being able to seduce Monmouth. The

situation of that unhappy young man was completely changed. While

he was dancing and skating at the Hague, and expecting every day

a summons to London, he was overwhelmed with misery by the

tidings of his father's death and of his uncle's accession.

During the night which followed the arrival of the news, those

who lodged near him could distinctly hear his sobs and his

piercing cries. He quitted the Hague the next day, having

solemnly pledged his word both to the Prince and to the Princess

of