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

Orange not to attempt anything against the government of

England, and having been supplied by them with money to meet

immediate demands.331


The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright one.

There was now no probability that he would be recalled from

banishment. On the Continent his life could no longer be passed

amidst the splendour and festivity of a court. His cousins at the

Hague seem to have really regarded him with kindness; but they

could no longer countenance him openly without serious risk of

producing a rupture between England and Holland. William offered

a kind and judicious suggestion. The war which was then raging in

Hungary, between the Emperor and the Turks, was watched by all

Europe with interest almost as great as that which the Crusades

had excited five hundred years earlier. Many gallant gentlemen,

both Protestant and Catholic, were fighting as volunteers in the

common cause of Christendom. The Prince advised Monmouth to

repair to the Imperial camp, and assured him that, if he would do

so, he should not want the means of making an appearance

befitting an English nobleman.332 This counsel was excellent: but

the Duke could not make up his mind. He retired to Brussels

accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of

Nettlestede, a damsel of high rank and ample fortune, who loved

him passionately, who had sacrificed for his sake her maiden

honour and the hope of a splendid alliance, who had followed him

into exile, and whom he believed to be his wife in the sight of

heaven. Under the soothing influence of female friendship, his

lacerated mind healed fast. He seemed to have found happiness in

obscurity and repose, and to have forgotten that he had been the

ornament of a splendid court and the head of a great party, that

he had commanded armies, and that he had aspired to a throne.


But he was not suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed all

his powers of temptation. Grey, who knew not where to turn for a

pistole, and was ready for any undertaking, however desperate,

lent his aid. No art was spared which could draw Monmouth from

retreat. To the first invitations which he received from his old

associates he returned unfavourable answers. He pronounced the

difficulties of a descent on England insuperable, protested that

he was sick of public life, and begged to be left in the

enjoyment of his newly found happiness. But he was little in the

habit of resisting skilful and urgent importunity. It is said,

too, that he was induced to quit his retirement by the same

powerful influence which had made that retirement delightful.

Lady Wentworth wished to see him a King. Her rents, her diamonds,

her credit were put at his disposal. Monmouth's judgment was not

convinced; but he had not the firmness to resist such

solicitations.333


By the English exiles he was joyfully welcomed, and unanimously

acknowledged as their head. But there was another class of

emigrants who were not disposed to recognise his supremacy.

Misgovernment, such as had never been known in the southern part

of our island, had driven from Scotland to the Continent many

fugitives, the intemperance of whose political and religious zeal

was proportioned to the oppression which they had undergone.

These men were not willing to follow an English leader. Even in

destitution and exile they retained their punctilious national

pride, and would not consent that their country should be, in

their persons, degraded into a province. They had a captain of

their own, Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, who, as chief of the

great tribe of Campbell, was known among the population of the

Highlands by the proud name of Mac Callum More. His father, the

Marquess of Argyle, had been the head of the Scotch Covenanters,

had greatly contributed to the ruin of Charles the First, and was

not thought by the Royalists to have atoned for this offence by

consenting to bestow the empty title of King, and a state prison

in a palace, on Charles the Second. After the return of the royal

family the Marquess was put to death. His marquisate became

extinct; but his son was permitted to inherit the ancient

earldom, and was still among the greatest if not the greatest, of

the nobles of Scotland. The Earl's conduct during the twenty

years which followed the Restoration had been, as he afterwards

thought, criminally moderate. He had, on some occasions, opposed

the administration which afflicted his country: but his

opposition had been languid and cautious. His compliances in

ecclesiastical matters had given scandal to rigid Presbyterians:

and so far had he been from showing any inclination to resistance

that, when the Covenanters had been persecuted into insurrection,

he had brought into the field a large body of his dependents to

support the government.


Such had been his political course until the Duke of York came

down to Edinburgh armed with the whole regal authority The

despotic viceroy soon found that he could not expect entire

support from Argyle. Since the most powerful chief in the kingdom

could not be gained, it was thought necessary that he should be

destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that even the spirit of party

and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of them, he was brought to

trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. The

partisans of the Stuarts afterwards asserted that it was never

meant to carry this sentence into effect, and that the only

object of the prosecution was to frighten him into ceding his

extensive jurisdiction in the Highlands. Whether James designed,

as his enemies suspected, to commit murder, or only, as his

friends affirmed, to commit extortion by threatening to commit

murder, cannot now be ascertained. "I know nothing of the Scotch

law," said Halifax to King Charles; "but this I know, that we

should not hang a dog here on the grounds on which my Lord Argyle

has been sentenced."334


Argyle escaped in disguise to England, and thence passed over to

Friesland. In that secluded province his father had bought a

small estate, as a place of refuge for the family in civil

troubles. It was said, among the Scots that this purchase had

been made in consequence of the predictions of a Celtic seer, to

whom it had been revealed that Mac Callum More would one day be

driven forth from the ancient mansion of his race at Inverary.335

But it is probable that the politic Marquess had been warned

rather by the signs of the times than by the visions of any

prophet. In Friesland Earl Archibald resided during some time so

quietly that it was not generally known whither he had fled. From

his retreat he carried on a correspondence with his friends in

Great Britain, was a party to the Whig conspiracy, and concerted

with the chiefs of that conspiracy a plan for invading

Scotland.336 This plan had been dropped upon the detection of the

Rye House plot, but became again the Subject of his thoughts

after the demise of the crown.


He had, during his residence on the Continent, reflected much

more deeply on religious questions than in the preceding years of

his life. In one respect the effect of these reflections on his

mind had been pernicious. His partiality for the synodical form

of church government now amounted to bigotry. When he remembered

how long he had conformed to the established worship, he was

overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and showed too many signs of

a disposition to atone for his defection by violence and

intolerance. He had however, in no long time, an opportunity of

proving that the fear and love of a higher Power had nerved him

for the most formidable conflicts by which human nature can be

tried.


To his companions in adversity his assistance was of the highest

moment. Though proscribed and a fugitive. he was still, in some

sense, the most powerful subject in the British dominions. In

wealth, even before his attainder, he was probably inferior, not

only to the great English nobles, but to some of the opulent

esquires of Kent and Norfolk. But his patriarchal authority, an

authority which no wealth could give and which no attainder could

take away, made him, as a leader of an insurrection, truly

formidable. No southern lord could feel any confidence that, if

he ventured to resist the government, even his own gamekeepers

and huntsmen would stand by him. An Earl of Bedford, an Earl of

Devonshire, could not engage to bring ten men into the field. Mac

Callum More, penniless and deprived of his earldom, might at any

moment, raise a serious civil war. He bad only to show himself on

the coast of Lorn; and an army would, in a few days, gather round

him. The force which, in favourable circumstances, he could bring

into the field, amounted to five thousand fighting, men, devoted

to his service accustomed to the use of target and broadsword,

not afraid to encounter regular troops even in the open plain,

and perhaps superior to regular troops in the qualifications

requisite for the defence of wild mountain passes, hidden in

mist, and torn by headlong torrents. What such a force, well

directed, could effect, even against veteran regiments and

skilful commanders, was proved, a few years later, at

Killiecrankie.


But, strong as was the claim of Argyle to the confidence of the

exiled Scots, there was a faction among them which regarded him

with no friendly feeling, and which wished to make use of his

name and influence, without entrusting to him any real power. The

chief of this faction was a lowland gentleman, who had been

implicated in the Whig plot, and had with difficulty eluded the

vengeance of the court, Sir Patrick Hume, of Polwarth, in

Berwickshire. Great doubt has been thrown on his integrity, but

without sufficient reason. It must, however, be admitted that he

injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done

by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of

following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless

talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only

against his own allies. With Hume was closely connected another

Scottish exile of great note, who had many, of the same faults,

Sir John Cochrane, second son of the Earl of Dundonald.


A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a

man distinguished by learning and eloquence, distinguished also

by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit but of an

irritable and impracticable temper. Like many of his most

illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Harrington,

Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, from the misgovernment of

several successive princes, conceived a strong aversion to

hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the head of

an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his descent. He was