The History of England, from the Accession of James II Volume IV Part 39

It ought to be remarked that, in the Life of James compiled from his own Papers, the a.s.surances of support which he received from Marlborough, Russell, G.o.dolphin Shrewsbury, and other men of note are mentioned with very copious details. But there is not a word indicating that any such a.s.surances were ever received from Caermarthen.]

[Footnote 467: A Journal of several Remarkable Pa.s.sages relating to the East India Trade, 1693.]

[Footnote 468: See the Monthly Mercuries and London Gazettes of September, October, November and December 1693; Dangeau, Sept. 5. 27., Oct. 21., Nov. 21.; the Price of the Abdication, 1693.]

[Footnote 469: Correspondence of William and Heinsius; Danish Note, dated Dec 11/21 1693. The note delivered by Avaux to the Swedish government at this time will be found in Lamberty's Collection and in the Memoires et Negotiations de la Paix de Ryswick.]

[Footnote 470: "Sir John Lowther says, n.o.body can know one day what a House of Commons would do the next; in which all agreed with him." These remarkable words were written by Caermarthen on the margin of a paper drawn up by Rochester in August 1692. Dalrymple, Appendix to part ii.

chap. 7.]

[Footnote 471: See Sunderland's celebrated Narrative which has often been printed, and his wife's letters, which are among the Sidney papers, published by the late Serjeant Blencowe.]

[Footnote 472: Van Citters, May 6/16. 1690.]

[Footnote 473: Evelyn, April 24. 1691.]

[Footnote 474: Lords' Journals, April 28. 1693.]

[Footnote 475: L'Hermitage, Sept. 19/29, Oct 2/12 1693.]

[Footnote 476: It is amusing to see how Johnson's Toryism breaks out where we should hardly expect to find it. Hastings says, in the Third Part of Henry the Sixth,

"Let us be back'd with G.o.d and with the seas Which He hath given for fence impregnable, And with their helps alone defend ourselves."

"This," says Johnson in a note, "has been the advice of every man who, in any age, understood and favoured the interest of England."]

[Footnote 477: Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of great abilities, who used to talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover the bottom of his heart. In the Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen's Ministry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one unconversable fault, formality. It is not very easy to understand how the same man can be the most unreserved of companions and yet err on the side of formality. Yet there may be truth in both the descriptions. It is well known that Swift loved to take rude liberties with men of high rank and fancied that, by doing so, he a.s.serted his own independence. He has been justly blamed for this fault by his two ill.u.s.trious biographers, both of them men of spirit at least as independent as his, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott. I suspect that he showed a disposition to behave with offensive familiarity to Somers, and that Somers, not choosing to submit to impertinence, and not wishing to be forced to resent it, resorted, in selfdefence, to a ceremonious politeness which he never would have practised towards Locke or Addison.]

[Footnote 478: The eulogies on Somers and the invectives against him are innumerable. Perhaps the best way to come to a just judgment would be to collect all that has been said about him by Swift and by Addison. They were the two keenest observers of their time; and they both knew him well. But it ought to be remarked that, till Swift turned Tory, he always extolled Somers not only as the most accomplished, but as the most virtuous of men. In the dedication of the Tale of a Tub are these words, "There is no virtue, either of a public or private life, which some circ.u.mstances of your own have not often produced upon the stage of the world;" and again, "I should be very loth the bright example of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to other eyes, both for their sake and your own." In the Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions at Athens and Rome, Somers is the just Aristides. After Swift had ratted he described Somers as a man who "possessed all excellent qualifications except virtue."]

[Footnote 479: See Whiston's Autobiography.]

[Footnote 480: Swift's note on Mackay's Character of Wharton.]

[Footnote 481: This account of Montague and Wharton I have collected from innumerable sources. I ought, however, to mention particularly the very curious Life of Wharton published immediately after his death.]

[Footnote 482: Much of my information about the Harleys I have derived from unpublished memoirs written by Edward Harley, younger brother of Robert. A copy of these memoirs is among the Mackintosh MSS.]

[Footnote 483: The only writer who has praised Harley's oratory, as far as I remember, is Mackay, who calls him eloquent. Swift scribbled in the margin, "A great lie." And certainly Swift was inclined to do more than justice to Harley. "That lord," said Pope, "talked of business in so confused a manner that you did not know what he was about; and every thing he went to tell you was in the epic way; for he always began in the middle."--Spence's Anecdotes.]

[Footnote 484: "He used," said Pope, "to send trifling verses from Court to the Scriblerus Club almost every day, and would come and talk idly with them almost every night even when his all was at stake." Some specimens of Harley's poetry are in print. The best, I think, is a stanza which he made on his own fall in 1714; and bad is the best.

"To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved is above; But here below The examples show 'Tis fatal to be good."]

[Footnote 485: The character of Harley is to be collected from innumerable panegyrics and lampoons; from the works and the private correspondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and Bolingbroke, and from mult.i.tudes of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the Puppet Showman.]

[Footnote 486: In a letter dated Sept. 12. 1709 a short time before he was brought into power on the shoulders of the High Church mob, he says: "My soul has been among Lyons, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongues sharp swords. But I learn how good it is to wait on the Lord, and to possess one's soul in peace." The letter was to Carstairs. I doubt whether Harley would have canted thus if he had been writing to Atterbury.]

[Footnote 487: The anomalous position which Harley and Foley at this time occupied is noticed in the Dialogue between a Whig and a Tory, 1693. "Your great P. Fo-y," says the Tory, "turns cadet and carries arms under the General of the West Saxons. The two Har-ys, father and son, are engineers under the late Lieutenant of the Ordnance, and bomb any bill which he hath once resolv'd to reduce to ashes." Seymour is the General of the West Saxons. Musgrave had been Lieutenant of the Ordnance in the reign of Charles the Second.]

[Footnote 488: Lords' and Commons' Journals, Nov. 7. 1693.]

[Footnote 489: Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 1693; Grey's Debates.]

[Footnote 490: Commons' Journals, Nov. 17. 1693.]

[Footnote 491: Ibid. Nov. 22. 27. 1693; Grey's Debates.]

[Footnote 492: Commons' Journals, Nov. 29. Dec. 6. 1693; L'Hermitage, Dec. 1/11 1693.]

[Footnote 493: L'Hermitage, Sept. 1/11. Nov. 7/17 1693.]

[Footnote 494: See the Journal to Stella, lii. liii. lix. lxi.; and Lady Orkney's Letters to Swift.]

[Footnote 495: See the letters written at this time by Elizabeth Villiers, Wharton, Russell and Shrewsbury, in the Shrewsbury Correspondence.]

[Footnote 496: Commons' Journals, Jan. 6. 8. 1693/4.]

[Footnote 497: Ibid. Jan. 19. 1693/4]

[Footnote 498: Hamilton's New Account.]

[Footnote 499: The bill I found in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I learned from the journals of the two Houses, from a pa.s.sage in the Diary of Narcissus Luttrell, and from two letters to the States General, both dated on Feb 27/March 9 1694 the day after the debate in the Lords. One of these letters is from Van Citters; the other, which contains fuller information, is from L'Hermitage.]

[Footnote 500: Commons' Journals, Nov. 28. 1693; Grey's Debates.

L'Hermitage expected that the bill would pas;, and that the royal a.s.sent would not be withheld. On November. he wrote to the States General, "Il paroist dans toute la chambre beaucoup de pa.s.sion a faire pa.s.ser ce bil." On Nov 28/Dec 8 he says that the division on the pa.s.sing "n'a pas cause une pet.i.te surprise. Il est difficile d'avoir un point fixe sur les idees qu'on peut se former des emotions du parlement, car il paroist quelquefois de grander chaleurs qui semblent devoir tout enflammer, et qui, peu de tems apres, s'evaporent." That Seymour was the chief manager of the opposition to the bill is a.s.serted in the once celebrated Hush Money pamphlet of that year.]

[Footnote 501: Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The engrossed copy of this Bill went down to the House of Commons and is lost. The original draught on paper is among the Archives of the Lords. That Monmouth brought in the bill I learned from a letter of L'Hermitage to the States General Dec. 13. 1693. As to the numbers on the division, I have followed the journals. But in Grey's Debates and in the letters of Van Citters and L'Hermitage, the minority is said to have been 172.]

[Footnote 502: The bill is in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I have collected from the journals, from Grey's Debates, and from the highly interesting letters of Van Citters and L'Hermitage. I think it clear from Grey's Debates that a speech which L'Hermitage attributes to a nameless "quelq'un" was made by Sir Thomas Littleton.]

[Footnote 503: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, September 1691.]

[Footnote 504: Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1693/4.]

[Footnote 505: Of the Naturalisation Bill no copy, I believe exists. The history of that bill will be found in the Journals. From Van Citters and L'Hermitage we learn less than might have been expected on a subject which must have been interesting to Dutch statesmen. Knight's speech will be found among the Somers Papers. He is described by his brother Jacobite, Roger North, as "a gentleman of as eminent integrity and loyalty as ever the city of Bristol was honoured with."]

[Footnote 506: Commons' Journals, Dec 5. 1694.]

[Footnote 507: Commons' Journals, Dec. 20. and 22. 1693/4. The journals did not then contain any notice of the divisions which took place when the House was in committee. There was only one division on the army estimates of this year, when the mace was on the table. That division was on the question whether 60,000L. or 147,000L. should be granted for hospitals and contingencies. The Whigs carried the larger sum by 184 votes to 120. Wharton was a teller for the majority, Foley for the minority.]

[Footnote 508: Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. 1694.]

[Footnote 509: Stat. 5 W. & M. c. I.]

[Footnote 510: Stat. 5 & 6 W.& M. c. 14.]

[Footnote 511: Stat. 5 & 6 W. & M. c. 21.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.]