Read The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 Online
Authors: David Hume
Many of the most considerable persons, both in church and state, Is applied to by the made secret applications to Dykvelt, and through him to the English.
prince of Orange. Admiral Herbert too, though a man of great expence, and seemingly of little religion, had thrown up his employments, and had retired to the Hague, where he assured the prince of the disaffection of the seamen, by whom that admiral was extremely beloved. Admiral Russel, cousin german to the unfortunate lord of that name, passed frequently between England and Holland, and kept the communication open with all the great men of the protestant party. Henry Sidney, brother to Algernon, and uncle to the earl of Sunderland, came over under pretence of drinking the waters at Spaw, and conveyed still stronger assurances of an PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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universal combination against the measures of the king. Lord Dumblaine, son of the earl of Danby, being master of a frigate, made several voyages to Holland, and carried from many of the nobility tenders of duty, and even considerable sums of money,
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to the prince of Orange.
There remained, however, some reasons, which retained all parties in awe, and kept them from breaking out into immediate hostility. The prince, on the one hand, was afraid of hazarding, by violent measures, an inheritance, which the laws ensured to the princess; and the English protestants, on the other, from the prospect of her succession, still entertained hopes of obtaining at last a peaceable and a safe redress of all their grievances. But when a son was born to the king, both the prince and the English nation were reduced to despair, and saw no resource but in a confederacy for their mutual interests. And thus the event, which James had so long made the object of his most ardent prayers, and from which he expected the firm establishment of his throne, proved the immediate cause of his ruin and downfall.
Zuylestein, who had been sent over to congratulate the king on the birth of his son, brought back to the prince invitations from most of the great men in England, to assist them, by his arms, in the recovery of their laws and liberties. The bishop of London, the earls of Danby, Nottingham, Devonshire, Dorset, the duke of Norfolk, the lords Lovelace, Delamere, Paulet, Eland, Mr. Hambden, Powle, Lester, besides many eminent citizens of London; all these persons, though of opposite parties, concurred in their applications to the prince.
The whigs, suitably to their ancient principles of liberty, which Coalition of parties.
had led them to attempt the exclusion bill, easily agreed to oppose a king, whose conduct had justified whatever his worst enemies had prognosticated concerning his succession. The tories and the church party, finding their past services forgotten, their rights invaded, their religion threatened, agreed to drop for the present all over-strained doctrines of submission, and attend to the great and powerful dictates of nature. The nonconformists, dreading the caresses of known and inveterate enemies, deemed the offers of toleration more secure from a prince, educated in those principles, and accustomed to that practice. And thus all faction was for a time laid asleep in England; and rival parties, forgetting their animosity, had secretly concurred in a design of resisting their unhappy and misguided sovereign.
The earl of Shrewsbury, who had acquired great popularity by deserting, at this time, the catholic religion, in which he had been educated, left his regiment, mortgaged his estate for forty thousand pounds, and made a tender of his sword and purse to the prince of Orange. Lord Wharton, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, had taken a journey for the same purpose. Lord Mordaunt was at the Hague, and pushed on the enterprize with that ardent and courageous spirit, for which he was so eminent. Even Sunderland, the king’s favourite minister, is believed to have entered into a correspondence with the prince; and at the expence of his own honour and his master’s interests, to have secretly favoured a cause, which, he foresaw, was likely
The prince was easily engaged to yield to the applications of the English, and to embrace the defence of a nation, which, during its present fears and distresses, regarded him as its sole protector. The great object of his ambition was to be placed at PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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the head of a confederate army, and by his valour to avenge the injuries, which he himself, his country, and his allies, had sustained from the haughty Lewis. But while England remained under the present government, he despaired of ever forming a league which would be able, with any probability of success, to make opposition against that powerful monarch. The tyes of affinity could not be supposed to have great influence over a person of the prince’s rank and temper; much more, as he knew, that they were at first unwillingly contracted by the king, and had never since been cultivated by any essential favours or good offices. Or should any reproach remain upon him for violating the duties of private life; the glory of delivering oppressed nations would, he hoped, be able, in the eyes of reasonable men, to make ample compensation. He could not well expect, on the commencement of his enterprize, that it would lead him to mount the throne of England: But he undoubtedly foresaw, that its success would establish his authority in that kingdom. And so egregious was James’s temerity, that there was no advantage, so great or obvious, which that prince’s indiscretion might not afford his enemies.
The prince of Orange, throughout his whole life, was peculiarly happy in the situations, in which he was placed. He saved his own country from ruin, he restored the liberties of these kingdoms, he supported the general independency of Europe.
And thus, though his virtue, it is confessed, be not the purest, which we meet with in history, it will be difficult to find any person, whose actions and conduct have contributed more eminently to the general interests of society and of mankind.
The time, when the prince entered on his enterprize, was well Prince’s preparations.
chosen; as the people were then in the highest ferment, on account of the insult, which the imprisonment and trial of the bishops had put upon the church, and indeed upon all the protestants of the nation. His method of conducting his preparations was no less wise and politic. Under other pretences he had beforehand made considerable augmentations to the Dutch navy; and the ships were at that time lying in harbour. Some additional troops were also levied; and sums of money, raised for other purposes, were diverted by the prince to the use of this expedition. The States had given him their entire confidence; and partly from terror of the power of France, partly from disgust at some restraints laid on their commerce in that kingdom, were sensible how necessary success in this enterprize was become to their domestic happiness and security. Many of the neighbouring princes regarded him as their guardian and protector, and were guided by him in all their counsels. He held conferences with Castanaga, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, with the electors of Brandenburgh and Saxony, with the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and with the whole house of Lunenbourg. It was agreed, that these princes should replace the troops employed against England, and should protect the United Provinces during the absence of the prince of Orange. Their forces were already on their march for that purpose: A considerable encampment of the Dutch army was formed at Nimeguen: Every place was in movement; and though the roots of this conspiracy reached from one end of Europe to the other, so secret were the prince’s counsels, and so fortunate was the situation of affairs, that he could still cover his preparations under other pretences; and little suspicion was entertained of his real intentions.
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The king of France, menaced by the league of Augsbourg, had resolved to strike the first blow against the allies; and having sought a quarrel with the emperor and the elector Palatine, he had invaded Germany with a great army, and had laid siege to Philipsbourg. The elector of Cologne, who was also bishop of Liege and Munster, and whose territories almost entirely surrounded the United Provinces, had died about this time; and the candidates for that rich succession were prince Clement of Bavaria, supported by the house of Austria, and the cardinal of Furstemberg, a prelate dependant on France. The pope, who favoured the allies, was able to throw the balance between the parties, and prince Clement was chosen; a circumstance which contributed extremely to the security of the States. But as the cardinal kept possession of many of the fortresses, and had applied to France for succour, the neighbouring territories were full of troops; and by this means the preparations of the Dutch and their allies seemed intended merely for their own defence against the different enterprizes of Lewis.
All the artifices, however, of the prince could not entirely conceal his real intentions from the sagacity of the French court. D’Avaux, Lewis’s envoy at the Hague, had been able, by a comparison of circumstances, to trace the purposes of the preparations in Holland; and he instantly informed his master of the discovery. Lewis conveyed the intelligence to James;
and accompanied the information with an important offer. He Offers of France to
was willing to join a squadron of French ships to the English the king.
fleet; and to send over any number of troops, which James should judge requisite for his security. When this proposal was rejected, he again offered to raise the siege of Philipsbourg, to march his army into the Netherlands, and by the terror of his arms to detain the Dutch forces in their own country. This proposal met with no better reception.
James was not, as yet, entirely convinced, that his son-in-law Rejected.
intended an invasion upon England. Fully persuaded, himself, of the sacredness of his own authority, he fancied, that a like belief had made deep impression on his subjects; and notwithstanding the strong symptoms of discontent which broke out every where, such an universal combination in rebellion appeared to him no wise credible. His army, in which he trusted, and which he had considerably augmented, would easily be able, he thought, to repel foreign force, and to suppress any sedition among the populace. A small number of French troops, joined to these, might tend only to breed discontent; and afford them a pretence for mutinying against foreigners, so much feared and hated by the nation. A great body of auxiliaries might indeed secure him both against an invasion from Holland, and against the rebellion of his own subjects; but would be able afterwards to reduce him to dependance, and render his authority entirely precarious. Even the French invasion of the Low Countries might be attended with dangerous consequences; and would suffice, in these jealous times, to revive the old suspicion of a combination against Holland, and against the protestant religion; a suspicion, which had already produced such discontents in England. These were the views suggested by Sunderland; and it must be confessed, that the reasons, on which they were founded, were sufficiently plausible; as indeed the situation, to which the king had reduced himself, was, to the last degree, delicate and perplexing.
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Still Lewis was unwilling to abandon a friend and ally, whose interests he regarded as closely connected with his own. By the suggestion of Skelton, the king’s minister at Paris, orders were sent to D’Avaux to remonstrate with the States in Lewis’s name against those preparations, which they were making to invade England. The strict amity, said the French minister, which subsists between the two monarchs will make Lewis regard every attempt against his ally as an act of hostility against himself. This remonstrance had a bad effect, and put the States in a flame. What is this alliance, they asked, between France and England, which has been so carefully concealed from us? Is it of the same nature with the former; meant for our destruction and for the extirpation of the protestant religion? If so, it is high time for us to provide for our own defence, and to anticipate those projects, which are forming against us.
Even James was displeased with this officious step taken by Lewis for his service. He was not reduced, he said, to the condition of the cardinal of Furstemberg, and obliged to seek the protection of France. He recalled Skelton, and threw him into the Tower for his rash conduct. He solemnly disavowed D’Avaux’s memorial; and protested, that no alliance subsisted between him and Lewis, but what was public and known to all the world. The States, however, still affected to appear incredulous on that head;
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and the English, prepossessed against their sovereign, firmly believed, that he had concerted a project with Lewis for their entire subjection. Portsmouth, it was said, was to be put into the hands of that ambitious monarch: England was to be filled with French and Irish troops: And every man, who refused to embrace the Romish superstition, was by these bigotted princes devoted to certain destruction.
These suggestions were every where spread abroad, and tended to augment the discontents, of which both the fleet and army, as well as the people, betrayed every day the most evident symptoms. The fleet had begun to mutiny; because Stricland, the admiral, a Roman catholic, introduced the mass aboard his ship, and dismissed the protestant chaplain. It was with some difficulty the seamen could be appeased; and they still persisted in declaring, that they would not fight against the Dutch, whom they called friends and brethren; but would willingly give battle to the French, whom they regarded as national enemies. The king had intended to augment his army with Irish recruits, and he resolved to try the experiment on the regiment of the duke of Berwic, his natural son; But Beaumont, the lieutenant-colonel, refused to admit them; and to this opposition five captains steadily adhered. They were all cashiered; and had not the discontents of the army on this occasion become very apparent, it was resolved to have punished those officers for mutiny.