The Diary of John Evelyn Volume II Part 34

[Sidenote: LONDON]

5th November, 1688. I went to London; heard the news of the Prince having landed at Torbay, coming with a fleet of near 700 sail, pa.s.sing through the Channel with so favorable a wind, that our navy could not intercept, or molest them. This put the King and Court into great consternation, they were now employed in forming an army to stop their further progress, for they were got into Exeter, and the season and ways very improper for his Majesty's forces to march so great a distance.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and some few of the other Bishops and Lords in London, were sent for to Whitehall, and required to set forth their abhorrence of this invasion. They a.s.sured his Majesty that they had never invited any of the Prince's party, or were in the least privy to it, and would be ready to show all testimony of their loyalty; but, as to a public declaration, being so few, they desired that his Majesty would call the rest of their brethren and Peers, that they might consult what was fit to be done on this occasion, not thinking it right to publish anything without them, and till they had themselves seen the Prince's manifesto, in which it was pretended he was invited in by the Lords, spiritual and temporal. This did not please the King; so they departed.

A declaration was published, prohibiting all persons to see or read the Prince's manifesto, in which was set forth at large the cause of his expedition, as there had been one before from the States.

These are the beginnings of sorrow, unless G.o.d in his mercy prevent it by some happy reconciliation of all dissensions among us. This, in all likelihood, nothing can effect except a free Parliament; but this we cannot hope to see, while there are any forces on either side. I pray G.o.d to protect and direct the King for the best and truest interest of his people!--I saw his Majesty touch for the evil, Piten the Jesuit, and Warner officiating.

14th November, 1688. The Prince increases everyday in force. Several Lords go in to him. Lord Cornbury carries some regiments, and marches to Honiton, the Prince's headquarters. The city of London in disorder; the rabble pulled down the nunnery newly bought by the Papists of Lord Berkeley, at St. John's. The Queen prepares to go to Portsmouth for safety, to attend the issue of this commotion, which has a dreadful aspect.

18th November, 1688. It was now a very hard frost. The King goes to Salisbury to rendezvous the army, and return to London. Lord Delamere appears for the Prince in Cheshire. The n.o.bility meet in Yorkshire. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some Bishops, and such Peers as were in London, address his Majesty to call a Parliament. The King invites all foreign nations to come over. The French take all the Palatinate, and alarm the Germans more than ever.

29th November, 1688. I went to the Royal Society. We adjourned the election of a President to 23d of April, by reason of the public commotions, yet dined together as of custom this day.

2d December, 1688. Dr. Tenison preached at St. Martin's on Psalm x.x.xvi.

5, 6, 7, concerning Providence. I received the blessed Sacrament.

Afterward, visited my Lord G.o.dolphin, then going with the Marquis of Halifax and Earl of Nottingham as Commissioners to the Prince of Orange; he told me they had little power. Plymouth declared for the Prince.

Bath, York, Hull, Bristol, and all the eminent n.o.bility and persons of quality through England, declare for the Protestant religion and laws, and go to meet the Prince, who every day sets forth new Declarations against the Papists. The great favorites at Court, Priests and Jesuits, fly or abscond. Everything, till now concealed, flies abroad in public print, and is cried about the streets. Expectation of the Prince coming to Oxford. The Prince of Wales and great treasure sent privily to Portsmouth, the Earl of Dover being Governor. Address from the Fleet not grateful to his Majesty. The Papists in offices lay down their commissions, and fly. Universal consternation among them; it looks like a revolution.

7th December, 1688. My son went toward Oxford. I returned home.

9th December, 1688. Lord Sunderland meditates flight. The rabble demolished all Popish chapels, and several Papist lords and gentlemen's houses, especially that of the Spanish Amba.s.sador, which they pillaged, and burned his library.

13th December, 1688. The King flies to sea, puts in at Faversham for ballast; is rudely treated by the people; comes back to Whitehall.

The Prince of Orange is advanced to Windsor, is invited by the King to St. James's, the messenger sent was the Earl of Faversham, the General of the Forces, who going without trumpet, or pa.s.sport, is detained prisoner by the Prince, who accepts the invitation, but requires his Majesty to retire to some distant place, that his own guards may be quartered about the palace and city. This is taken heinously and the King goes privately to Rochester; is persuaded to come back; comes on the Sunday; goes to ma.s.s, and dines in public, a Jesuit saying grace (I was present).

17th December, 1688. That night was a Council; his Majesty refuses to a.s.sent to all the proposals; goes away again to Rochester.

[Sidenote: LONDON]

18th December, 1688. I saw the King take barge to Gravesend at twelve o'clock--a sad sight! The Prince comes to St. James's, and fills Whitehall with Dutch guards. A Council of Peers meet about an expedient to call a Parliament; adjourn to the House of Lords. The Chancellor, Earl of Peterborough, and divers others taken. The Earl of Sunderland flies; Sir Edward Hale, Walker, and others, taken and secured.

All the world go to see the Prince at St. James's, where there is a great Court. There I saw him, and several of my acquaintance who came over with him. He is very stately, serious and reserved. The English soldiers sent out of town to disband them; not well pleased.

24th December, 1688. The King pa.s.ses into France, whither the Queen and child were gone a few days before.

26th December, 1688. The Peers and such Commoners as were members of the Parliament at Oxford, being the last of Charles II. meeting, desire the Prince of Orange to take on him the disposal of the public revenue till a convention of Lords and Commons should meet in full body, appointed by his circular letters to the shires and boroughs, 22d of January. I had now quartered upon me a Lieutenant-Colonel and eight horses.

30th December, 1688. This day prayers for the Prince of Wales were first left off in our Church.

7th January, 1688-89. A long frost and deep snow; the Thames almost frozen over.

15th January, 1689. I visited the Archbishop of Canterbury, where I found the Bishops of St. Asaph, Ely, Bath and Wells, Peterborough, and Chichester, the Earls of Aylesbury and Clarendon, Sir George Mackenzie, Lord-Advocate of Scotland, and then came in a Scotch Archbishop, etc.

After prayers and dinner, divers serious matters were discoursed, concerning the present state of the Public, and sorry I was to find there was as yet no accord in the judgments of those of the Lords and Commons who were to convene; some would have the Princess made Queen without any more dispute, others were for a Regency; there was a Tory party (then so called), who were for inviting his Majesty again upon conditions; and there were Republicans who would make the Prince of Orange like a Stadtholder. The Romanists were busy among these several parties to bring them into confusion: most for ambition or other interest, few for conscience and moderate resolutions. I found nothing of all this in this a.s.sembly of Bishops, who were pleased to admit me into their discourses; they were all for a Regency, thereby to salve their oaths, and so all public matters to proceed in his Majesty's name, by that to facilitate the calling of Parliament, according to the laws in being. Such was the result of this meeting.

My Lord of Canterbury gave me great thanks for the advertis.e.m.e.nt I sent him in October, and a.s.sured me they took my counsel in that particular, and that it came very seasonably.

I found by the Lord-Advocate that the Bishops of Scotland (who were indeed little worthy of that character, and had done much mischief in that Church) were now coming about to the true interest, in this conjuncture which threatened to abolish the whole hierarchy in that kingdom; and therefore the Scottish Archbishop and Lord-Advocate requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to use his best endeavors with the Prince to maintain the Church there in the same state, as by law at present settled.

It now growing late, after some private discourse with his Grace, I took my leave, most of the Lords being gone.

The trial of the bishops was now printed.

The great convention being a.s.sembled the day before, falling upon the question about the government, resolved that King James having by the advice of the Jesuits and other wicked persons endeavored to subvert the laws of the Church and State, and deserted the kingdom, carrying away the seals, etc., without any care for the management of the government, had by demise abdicated himself and wholly vacated his right; they did therefore desire the Lords' concurrence to their vote, to place the crown on the next heir, the Prince of Orange, for his life, then to the Princess, his wife, and if she died without issue, to the Princess of Denmark, and she failing, to the heirs of the Prince, excluding forever all possibility of admitting a Roman Catholic.

[Sidenote: LONDON]

27th January, 1689. I dined at the Admiralty, where was brought in a child not twelve years old, the son of one Dr. Clench, of the most prodigious maturity of knowledge, for I cannot call it altogether memory, but something more extraordinary. Mr. Pepys and myself examined him, not in any method, but with promiscuous questions, which required judgment and discernment to answer so readily and pertinently. There was not anything in chronology, history, geography, the several systems of astronomy, courses of the stars, longitude, lat.i.tude, doctrine of the spheres, courses and sources of rivers, creeks, harbors, eminent cities, boundaries and bearings of countries, not only in Europe, but in any other part of the earth, which he did not readily resolve and demonstrate his knowledge of, readily drawing out with a pen anything he would describe. He was able not only to repeat the most famous things which are left us in any of the Greek or Roman histories, monarchies, republics, wars, colonies, exploits by sea and land, but all the sacred stories of the Old and New Testament; the succession of all the monarchies, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, with all the lower Emperors, Popes, Heresiarchs, and Councils, what they were called about, what they determined, or in the controversy about Easter, the tenets of the Gnostics, Sabellians, Arians, Nestorians; the difference between St.

Cyprian and Stephen about re-baptism, the schisms. We leaped from that to other things totally different, to Olympic years, and synchronisms; we asked him questions which could not be resolved without considerable meditation and judgment, nay of some particulars of the Civil Laws, of the Digest and Code. He gave a stupendous account of both natural and moral philosophy, and even in metaphysics.

Having thus exhausted ourselves rather than this wonderful child, or angel rather, for he was as beautiful and lovely in countenance as in knowledge, we concluded with asking him if, in all he had read or heard of, he had ever met with anything which was like this expedition of the Prince of Orange, with so small a force to obtain three great kingdoms without any contest. After a little thought, he told us that he knew of nothing which did more resemble it than the coming of Constantine the Great out of Britain, through France and Italy, so tedious a march, to meet Maxentius, whom he overthrew at Pons Milvius with very little conflict, and at the very gates of Rome, which he entered and was received with triumph, and obtained the empire, not of three kingdoms only, but of all the then known world. He was perfect in the Latin authors, spoke French naturally, and gave us a description of France, Italy, Savoy, Spain, ancient and modernly divided; as also of ancient Greece, Scythia, and northern countries and tracts: we left questioning further. He did this without any set or formal repet.i.tions, as one who had learned things without book, but as if he minded other things, going about the room, and toying with a parrot there, and as he was at dinner (_tanquam aliua agens_, as it were) seeming to be full of play, of a lively, sprightly temper, always smiling, and exceedingly pleasant, without the least levity, rudeness, or childishness.

His father a.s.sured us he never imposed anything to charge his memory by causing him to get things by heart, not even the rules of grammar; but his tutor (who was a Frenchman) read to him, first in French, then in Latin; that he usually played among other boys four or five hours every day, and that he was as earnest at his play as at his study. He was perfect in arithmetic, and now newly entered into Greek. In sum (_horresco referens_), I had read of divers forward and precocious youths, and some I have known, but I never did either hear or read of anything like to this sweet child, if it be right to call him child who has more knowledge than most men in the world. I counseled his father not to set his heart too much on this jewel,

"_Immodicis brevis est aetas, et rara senectus,_"

as I myself learned by sad experience in my most dear child Richard, many years since, who, dying before he was six years old, was both in shape and countenance and pregnancy of learning, next to a prodigy.

29th January, 1689. The votes of the House of Commons being carried up by Mr. Hampden, their chairman, to the Lords, I got a station by the Prince's lodgings at the door of the lobby to the House, and heard much of the debate, which lasted very long. Lord Derby was in the chair (for the House was resolved into a grand committee of the whole House); after all had spoken, it came to the question, which was carried by three voices against a Regency, which 51 were for, 54 against; the minority alleging the danger of dethroning Kings, and scrupling many pa.s.sages and expressions in the vote of the Commons, too long to set down particularly. Some were for sending to his Majesty with conditions: others that the King could do no wrong, and that the maladministration was chargeable on his ministers. There were not more than eight or nine bishops, and but two against the Regency; the archbishop was absent, and the clergy now began to change their note, both in pulpit and discourse, on their old pa.s.sive obedience, so as people began to talk of the bishops being cast out of the House. In short, things tended to dissatisfaction on both sides; add to this, the morose temper of the Prince of Orange, who showed little countenance to the n.o.blemen and others, who expected a more gracious and cheerful reception when they made their court. The English army also was not so in order, and firm to his interest, nor so weakened but that it might give interruption.

Ireland was in an ill posture as well as Scotland. Nothing was yet done toward a settlement. G.o.d of his infinite mercy compose these things, that we may be at last a Nation and a Church under some fixed and sober establishment!

30th January, 1689. The anniversary of King Charles I.'s MARTYRDOM; but in all the public offices and pulpit prayers, the collects, and litany for the King and Queen were curtailed and mutilated. Dr. Sharp preached before the Commons, but was disliked, and not thanked for his sermon.

31st January, 1689. At our church (the next day being appointed a thanksgiving for deliverance by the Prince of Orange, with prayers purposely composed), our lecturer preached in the afternoon a very honest sermon, showing our duty to G.o.d for the many signal deliverances of our Church, without touching on politics.

6th February, 1689. The King's coronation day was ordered not to be observed, as. .h.i.therto it had been.

The Convention of the Lords and Commons now declare the Prince and Princess of Orange King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland (Scotland being an independent kingdom), the Prince and Princess being to enjoy it jointly during their lives; but the executive authority to be vested in the Prince during life, though all proceedings to run in both names, and that it should descend to their issue, and for want of such, to the Princess Anne of Denmark and her issue, and in want of such, to the heirs of the body of the Prince, if he survive, and that failing, to devolve to the Parliament, as they should think fit. These produced a conference with the Lords, when also there was presented heads of such new laws as were to be enacted. It is thought on these conditions they will be proclaimed.

There was much contest about the King's abdication, and whether he had vacated the government. The Earl of Nottingham and about twenty Lords, and many Bishops, entered their protests, but the concurrence was great against them.

The Princess hourly expected. Forces sending to Ireland, that kingdom being in great danger by the Earl of Tyrconnel's army, and expectations from France coming to a.s.sist them, but that King was busy in invading Flanders, and encountering the German Princes. It is likely that this will be the most remarkable summer for action, which has happened in many years.

[Sidenote: LONDON]

21st February, 1689. Dr. Burnet preached at St. James's on the obligation to walk worthy of G.o.d's particular and signal deliverance of the nation and church.

I saw the NEW QUEEN and KING proclaimed the very next day after her coming to Whitehall, Wednesday, 13th February, with great acclamation and general good reception. Bonfires, bells, guns, etc. It was believed that both, especially the Princess, would have shown some (seeming) reluctance at least, of a.s.suming her father's crown, and made some apology, testifying by her regret that he should by his mismanagement necessitate the nation to so extraordinary a proceeding, which would have shown very handsomely to the world, and according to the character given of her piety; consonant also to her husband's first declaration, that there was no intention of deposing the King, but of succoring the nation; but nothing of all this appeared; she came into Whitehall laughing and jolly, as to a wedding, so as to seem quite transported.

She rose early the next morning, and in her undress, as it was reported, before her women were up, went about from room to room to see the convenience of Whitehall; lay in the same bed and apartment where the late Queen lay, and within a night or two sat down to play at ba.s.set, as the Queen, her predecessor used to do. She smiled upon and talked to everybody, so that no change seemed to have taken place at Court since her last going away, save that infinite crowds of people thronged to see her, and that she went to our prayers. This carriage was censured by many. She seems to be of a good nature, and that she takes nothing to heart: while the Prince, her husband, has a thoughtful countenance, is wonderfully serious and silent, and seems to treat all persons alike gravely, and to be very intent on affairs: Holland, Ireland, and France calling for his care.

Divers Bishops and n.o.blemen are not at all satisfied with this so sudden a.s.sumption of the Crown, without any previous sending, and offering some conditions to the absent King; or on his not returning, or not a.s.senting to those conditions, to have proclaimed him Regent; but the major part of both Houses prevailed to make them King and Queen immediately, and a crown was tempting. This was opposed and spoken against with such vehemence by Lord Clarendon (her own uncle), that it put him by all preferment, which must doubtless have been as great as could have been given him. My Lord of Rochester, his brother, overshot himself, by the same carriage and stiffness, which their friends thought they might have well spared when they saw how it was like to be overruled, and that it had been sufficient to have declared their dissent with less pa.s.sion, acquiescing in due time.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and some of the rest, on scruple of conscience and to salve the oaths they had taken, entered their protests and hung off, especially the Archbishop, who had not all this while so much as appeared out of Lambeth. This occasioned the wonder of many who observed with what zeal they contributed to the Prince's expedition, and all the while also rejecting any proposals of sending again to the absent King; that they should now raise scruples, and such as created much division among the people, greatly rejoicing the old courtiers, and especially the Papists.

Another objection was, the invalidity of what was done by a convention only, and the as yet unabrogated laws; this drew them to make themselves on the 22d [February] a Parliament, the new King pa.s.sing the act with the crown on his head. The lawyers disputed, but necessity prevailed, the government requiring a speedy settlement.

Innumerable were the crowds, who solicited for, and expected offices; most of the old ones were turned out. Two or three white staves were disposed of some days before, as Lord Steward, to the Earl of Devonshire; Treasurer of the household, to Lord Newport; Lord Chamberlain to the King, to my Lord of Dorset; but there were as yet none in offices of the civil government save the Marquis of Halifax as Privy Seal. A council of thirty was chosen, Lord Derby president, but neither Chancellor nor Judges were yet declared, the new Great Seal not yet finished.