The History of England from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 3 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (reading an ebook .txt) 📕

peut nombre, il n'y en a point qui ayt soin des soldats, des armes, et de la discipline." "On a beaucoup plus de confiance en la cavalerie, dont la plus grande partie est assez bonne." Avaux mentions several regiments of horse with particular praise. Of two of these he says, "On ne peut voir de meilleur regiment." The correctness of the opinion which he had formed both of the infantry and of the cavalry was, after his departure from Ireland, signally proved at the Boyne.

FN 435 I will quote a passage or two from the despatches written at this time by Avaux. On September 7/17. he says: "De quelque coste qu'on se tournat, on ne pouvoir rien prevoir que de desagreable. Mais dans cette extremite chacun s'est evertue. Les officiers ont fait leurs recrues avec beaucoup de diligence." Three days later he says: "Il y a quinze jours que nous n'esperions guare de pouvoir mettre les choses en si bon estat mais my Lord Tyrconnel et tous les Irlandais ont travaille avec tant d'empressement qu'on s'est mis en estat de deffense."

FN 436 Avaux, Aug 25/Sep 4 Aug 26/Sep 5; Life of James, ii. 373.; Melfort's vindication of himself among the Nairne Papers. Avaux says: "Il pourra partir ce soir a la nuit: car je vois bien qu'il apprehende qu'il ne sera pas sur pour luy de partir en plein jour."

FN 437 Story's Impartial History of the Wars of Ireland, 1693; Life of James, ii. 374; Avaux, Sept. 7/17 1689; Nihell's journal, printed in 1689, and reprinted by Macpherson.

FN 438 Story's Impartial History.

FN 439 Ibid.

FN 440 Avaux, Sep. 10/20. 1689; Story's Impartial History; Life of James, ii. 377, 378 Orig. Mem. Story and James agree in estimating the Irish army at about twenty thousand men. See also Dangeau, Oct. 28. 1689.

FN 441 Life of James, ii. 377, 378. Orig. Mem.

FN 442 See Grey's Debates, Nov. 26, 27, 28. 1689, and the Dialogue between a Lord Lieutenant and one of his deputies, 1692.

FN 443 Nihell's Journal. A French officer, in a letter to Avaux, written soon after Schomberg's landing, says, "Les Huguenots font plus de mal que les Anglois, et tuent force Catholiques pour avoir fait resistance."

FN 444 Story; Narrative transmitted by Avaux to Seignelay, Nov 26/Dec 6 1689 London Gazette, Oct. 14. 1689. It is curious that, though Dumont was in the camp before Dundalk, there is in his MS. no mention of the conspiracy among the French.

FN 445 Story's Impartial History; Dumont MS. The profaneness and dissoluteness of the camp during the sickness are mentioned in many contemporary pamphlets both in verse and prose. See particularly a Satire entitled Reformation of Manners, part ii.

FN 446 Story's Impartial History.

FN 447 Avaux, Oct. 11/21. Nov. 14/24 1689; Story's Impartial History; Life of James, ii. 382, 383. Orig. Mem.; Nihell's Journal.

FN 448 Story's Impartial History; Schomberg's Despatches; Nihell's Journal, and James's Life; Burnet, ii. 20.; Dangeau's journal during this autumn; the Narrative sent by Avaux to Seignelay, and the Dumont MS. The lying of the London Gazette is monstrous. Through the whole autumn the troops are constantly said to be in good condition. In the absurd drama entitled the Royal Voyage, which was acted for the amusement of the rabble of London in 1689, the Irish are represented as attacking some of the sick English. The English put the assailants to the rout, and then drop down dead.

FN 449 See his despatches in the appendix to Dalrymple's Memoirs.

FN 450 London Gazette; May 20 1689.

FN 451 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13, 23. 1689; Grey's Debates, Nov. 13. 14. 18. 23. 1689. See, among numerous pasquinades, the Parable of the Bearbaiting, Reformation of Manners, a Satire, the Mock Mourners, a Satire. See also Pepys's Diary kept at Tangier, Oct. 15. 1683.

FN 452 The best account of these negotiations will be found in Wagenaar, lxi. He had access to Witsen's papers, and has quoted largely from them. It was Witsen who signed in violent agitation, "zo als" he says, "myne beevende hand getuigen kan." The treaties will be found in Dumont's Corps Diplomatique. They were signed in August 1689.

FN 453 The treaty between the Emperor and the States General is dated May 12. 1689. It will be found in Dumont's Corps Diplomatique.

FN 454 See the despatch of Waldeck in the London Gazette, Aug. 26, 1689; historical Records of the First Regiment of Foot; Dangeau, Aug. 28.; Monthly Mercury, September 1689.

FN 455 See the Dear Bargain, a Jacobite pamphlet clandestinely printed in 1690. "I have not patience," says the writer, "after this wretch (Marlborough) to mention any other. All are innocent comparatively, even Kirke himself."

FN 456 See the Mercuries for September 1689, and the four following months. See also Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus of Sept. 18. Sept. 25. and Oct. 8. 1689. Melfort's Instructions, and his memorials to the Pope and the Cardinal of Este, are among the Nairne Papers; and some extracts have been printed by Macpherson.

FN 457 See the Answer of a Nonjuror to the Bishop of Sarum's challenge in the Appendix to the Life of Kettlewell. Among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library is a paper which, as Sancroft thought it worth preserving, I venture to quote. The writer, a strong nonjuror, after trying to evade, by many pitiable shifts the argument drawn by a more compliant divine from the practice of the primitive Church, proceeds thus: "Suppose the primitive Christians all along, from the time of the very Apostles, had been as regardless of their oaths by former princes as he suggests will he therefore say that their practice is to be a rule? Ill things have been done, and very generally abetted, by men of otherwise very orthodox principles." The argument from the practice of the primitive Christians is remarkably well put in a tract entitled The Doctrine of Nonresistance or Passive Obedience No Way concerned in the Controversies now depending between the Williamites and the Jacobites, by a Lay Gentleman, of the Communion of the Church of England, as by Law establish'd, 1689.

FN 458 One of the most adulatory addresses ever voted by a Convocation was to Richard the Third. It will be found in Wilkins's Concilia. Dryden, in his fine rifacimento of one of the finest passages in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, represents the Good Parson as choosing to resign his benefice rather than acknowledge the Duke of Lancaster to be King of England. For this representation no warrant can be found in Chaucer's Poem, or any where else. Dryden wished to write something that would gall the clergy who had taken the oaths, and therefore attributed to a Roman Catholic priest of the fourteenth century a superstition which originated among the Anglican priests of the seventeenth century.

FN 459 See the defence of the profession which the Right Reverend Father in God John Lake, Lord Bishop of Chichester, made upon his deathbed concerning passive obedience and the new oaths. 1690.

FN 460 London Gazette, June 30. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. "The eminentest men," says Luttrell.

FN 461 See in Kettlewell's Life, iii. 72., the retractation drawn by him for a clergyman who had taken the oaths, and who afterwards repented of having done so.

FN 462 See the account of Dr. Dove's conduct in Clarendon's Diary, and the account of Dr. Marsh's conduct in the Life of Kettlewell.

FN 463 The Anatomy of a Jacobite Tory, 1690.

FN 464 Dialogue between a Whig and a Tory.

FN 465 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. 1697, Feb. 1692.

FN 466 Life of Kettlewell, iii. 4.

FN 467 See Turner's Letter to Sancroft, dated on Ascension Day, 1689. The original is among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library. But the letter will be found with much other curious matter in the Life of Ken by a Layman, lately published. See also the Life of Kettlewell, iii. 95.; and Ken's letter to Burnet, dated Oct. 5. 1689, in Hawkins's Life of Ken. "I am sure," Lady Russell wrote to Dr. Fitzwilliam, "the Bishop of Bath and Wells excited others to comply, when he could not bring himself to do so, but rejoiced when others did." Ken declared that he had advised nobody to take the oaths, and that his practice had been to remit those who asked his advice to their own studies and prayers. Lady Russell's assertion and Ken's denial will be found to come nearly to the same thing, when we make those allowances which ought to be made for situation and feeling, even in weighing the testimony of the most veracious witnesses. Ken, having at last determined to cast in his lot with the nonjurors, naturally tried to vindicate his consistency as far as he honestly could. Lady Russell, wishing to induce her friend to take the oaths, naturally made as munch of Ken's disposition to compliance as she honestly could. She went too far in using the word "excited." On the other hand it is clear that Ken, by remitting those who consulted him to their own studies and prayers, gave them to understand that, in his opinion, the oath was lawful to those who, after a serious inquiry, thought it lawful. If people had asked him whether they might lawfully commit perjury or adultery, he would assuredly have told them, not to consider the point maturely and to implore the divine direction, but to abstain on peril of their souls.

FN 468 See the conversation of June 9. 1784, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, and the note. Boswell, with his usual absurdity, is sure that Johnson could not have recollected "that the seven bishops, so justly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance to arbitrary power, were yet nonjurors." Only five of the seven were nonjurors; and anybody but Boswell would have known that a man may resist arbitrary power, and yet not be a good reasoner. Nay, the resistance which Sancroft and the other nonjuring bishops offered to arbitrary power, while they continued to hold the doctrine of nonresistance, is the most decisive proof that they were incapable of reasoning. It must be remembered that they were prepared to take the whole kingly power from James and to bestow it on William, with the title of Regent. Their scruple was merely about the word King.

I am surprised that Johnson should have pronounced William Law no reasoner. Law did indeed fall into great errors; but they were errors against which logic affords no security. In mere dialectical skill he had very few superiors. That he was more than once victorious over Hoadley no candid Whig will deny. But Law did not belong to the generation with which I have now to do.

FN 469 Ware's History of the Writers of Ireland, continued by Harris.

FN 470 Letter to a member of the Convention, 1689

FN 471 Johnson's Notes on the Phoenix Edition of Burnet's Pastoral Letter, 1692.

FN 472 The best notion of Hickes's character will be formed from his numerous controversial writings, particularly his Jovian, written in 1684, his Thebaean Legion no Fable, written in 1687, though not published till 1714, and his discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695. His literary fame rests on works of a very different kind.

FN 473 Collier's Tracts on the Stage are, on the whole his best pieces. But there is much that is striking in his political pamphlets. His "Persuasive to Consider anon, tendered to the Royalists, particularly those of the Church of England," seems to me one of the best productions of the Jacobite press.

FN 474 See Brokesby's Life of Dodwell. The Discourse against Marriages in different Communions is known