The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 4 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (well read books txt) 📕

found in the work of the Baron Sirtema de Grovestins. It was probably in consequence of the Pensionary's recommendation that the States General, by a resolution dated July 24/Aug 3 1693, desired L'Hermitage to collect and transmit to them intelligence of what was passing in England. His letters abound with curious and valuable information which is nowhere else to be found. His accounts of parliamentary proceedings are of peculiar value, and seem to have been so considered by his employers.

Copies of the despatches of L'Hermitage, and, indeed of the despatches of all the ministers and agents employed by the States General in England from the time of Elizabeth downward, now are or will soon be in the library of the British Museum. For this valuable addition to the great national storehouse of knowledge, the country is chiefly indebted to Lord Palmerston. But it would be unjust not to add that his instructions were most zealously carried into effect by the late Sir Edward Disbrowe, with the cordial cooperation of the enlightened men who have charge of the noble collection of Archives at the Hague.

FN 457 It is strange that the indictment should not have been printed in Howell's State Trials. The copy which is before me was made for Sir James Mackintosh.

FN 458 Most of the information which has come down to us about Anderton's case will be found in Howell's State Trials.

FN 459 The Remarks are extant, and deserve to be read.

FN 460 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 461 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 462 There are still extant a handbill addressed to All Gentlemen Seamen that are weary of their Lives; and a ballad accusing the King and Queen of cruelty to the sailors.

"To robbers, thieves, and felons, they Freely grant pardons every day. Only poor seamen, who alone Do keep them in their father's throne, Must have at all no mercy shown."

Narcissus Luttrell gives an account of the scene at Whitehall.

FN 463 L'Hermitage, Sept. 5/15. 1693; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 464 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 465 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. In a pamphlet published at this time, and entitled A Dialogue between Whig and Tory, the Whig alludes to "the public insolences at the Bath upon the late defeat in Flanders." The Tory answers, "I know not what some hotheaded drunken men may have said and done at the Bath or elsewhere." In the folio Collection of State Tracts, this Dialogue is erroneously said to have been printed about November 1692.

FN 466 The Paper to which I refer is among the Nairne MSS., and will be found in Macpherson's collection. That excellent writer Mr. Hallam has, on this subject, fallen into an error of a kind very rare with him. He says that the name of Caermarthen is perpetually mentioned among those whom James reckoned as his friends. I believe that the evidence against Caermarthen will be found to begin and to end with the letter of Melfort which I have mentioned. There is indeed, among the Nairne MSS, which Macpherson printed, an undated and anonymous letter in which Caermarthen is reckoned among the friends of James. But this letter is altogether undeserving of consideration. The writer was evidently a silly hotheaded Jacobite, who knew nothing about the situation or character of any of the public men whom he mentioned. He blunders grossly about Marlborough, Godolphin, Russell, Shrewsbury and the Beaufort family. Indeed the whole composition is a tissue of absurdities.

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

FN 467 A Journal of several Remarkable Passages relating to the East India Trade, 1693.

FN 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.

FN 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.

FN 470 "Sir John Lowther says, nobody 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.

FN 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.

FN 472 Van Citters, May 6/16. 1690.

FN 473 Evelyn, April 24. 1691.

FN 474 Lords' Journals, April 28. 1693.

FN 475 L'Hermitage, Sept. 19/29, Oct 2/12 1693.

FN 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 God 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."

FN 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 asserted his own independence. He has been justly blamed for this fault by his two illustrious 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.

FN 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 circumstances 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."

FN 479 See Whiston's Autobiography.

FN 480 Swift's note on Mackay's Character of Wharton.

FN 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.

FN 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.

FN 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.

FN 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."

FN 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 multitudes of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the Puppet Showman.

FN 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.

FN 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.

FN 488 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Nov. 7. 1693.

FN 489 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 1693; Grey's Debates.

FN 490 Commons' Journals, Nov. 17. 1693.

FN 491 Ibid. Nov. 22. 27. 1693; Grey's Debates.

FN 492 Commons' Journals, Nov. 29. Dec. 6. 1693; L'Hermitage, Dec. 1/11 1693.

FN 493 L'Hermitage, Sept. 1/11. Nov. 7/17 1693.

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

FN 495 See the letters written at this time by Elizabeth Villiers, Wharton, Russell and Shrewsbury, in the Shrewsbury Correspondence.

FN 496 Commons' Journals, Jan. 6. 8. 1693/4.

FN 497 Ibid. Jan. 19. 1693/4

FN 498 Hamilton's New Account.

FN 499 The bill I found in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I learned from the journals of the two Houses, from a passage 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