The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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the envy of practiced rhetoricians.239
His courage was singularly cool and imperturbable. During many
years of anxiety and peril, he never, in any emergency, lost even
for a moment, the perfect use of his admirable judgment.
In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to join
the French forces, then engaged in operations against Holland.
His serene intrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave
soldiers. His professional skill commanded the respect of veteran
officers. He was publicly thanked at the head of the army, and
received many marks of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who
was then at the height of military glory.
Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled
with alloy of the most sordid kind. Some propensities, which in
youth are singularly ungraceful, began very early to show
themselves in him. He was thrifty in his very vices, and levied
ample contributions on ladies enriched by the spoils of more
liberal lovers. He was, during a short time, the object of the
violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess of Cleveland. On one
occasion he was caught with her by the King, and was forced to
leap out of the window. She rewarded this hazardous feat of
gallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum
the prudent young hero instantly bought an annuity of five
hundred a year, well secured on landed property.240 Already his
private drawer contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty
years later, when he was a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the
richest subject in Europe, remained untouched.241
After the close of the war he was attached to the household of
the Duke of York, accompanied his patron to the Low Countries and
to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch
peerage and with the command of the only regiment of dragoons
which was then on the English establishment.242 His wife had a
post in the family of James's younger daughter, the Princess of
Denmark.
Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary to
Versailles. He had it in charge to express the warm gratitude of
the English government for the money which had been so generously
bestowed. It had been originally intended that he should at the
same time ask Lewis for a much larger sum; but, on full
consideration, it was apprehended that such indelicate greediness
might disgust the benefactor whose spontaneous liberality had
been so signally displayed. Churchill was therefore directed to
confine himself to thanks for what was past, and to say nothing
about the future.243
But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did
not mean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelligibly,
what they wished and expected. In the French ambassador they had
a dexterous, a zealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested
intercessor. Lewis made some difficulties, probably with the
design of enhancing the value of his gifts. In a very few weeks,
however, Barillon received from Versailles fifteen hundred
thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a hundred and
twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to dole out
cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government
with thirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting
members of the New House of Commons. The rest he was directed to
keep in reserve for some extraordinary emergency, such as a
dissolution or an insurrection.244
The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged:
but their real nature seems to be often misunderstood: for though
the foreign policy of the last two Kings of the House of Stuart
has never, since the correspondence of Barillon was exposed to
the public eye, found an apologist among us, there is still a
party which labours to excuse their domestic policy. Yet it is
certain that between their domestic policy and their foreign
policy there was a necessary and indissoluble connection. If they
had upheld, during a single year, the honour of the country
abroad, they would have been compelled to change the whole system
of their administration at home. To praise them for refusing to
govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and yet to
blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is
inconsistent. For they had only one choice, to be dependent on
Lewis, or to be dependent on Parliament.
James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third
way: but there was none. He became the slave of France: but it
would be incorrect to represent him as a contented slave. He had
spirit enough to be at times angry with himself for submitting to
such thraldom, and impatient to break loose from it; and this
disposition was studiously encouraged by the agents of many
foreign powers.
His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental
court: and the commencement of his administration was watched by
strangers with interest scarcely less deep than that which was
felt by his own subjects. One government alone wished that the
troubles which had, during three generations, distracted England,
might be eternal. All other governments, whether republican or
monarchical, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, wished to see
those troubles happily terminated.
The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their
Parliaments was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign
statesmen: but no statesman could fail to perceive the effect
which that contest had produced on the balance of power in
Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts
of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have been with a prince
struggling against subjects, and especially with a Roman Catholic
prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all such
sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear
and hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the
arrogance of the French King were at the height. His neighbours
might well doubt whether it were more dangerous to be at war or
at peace with him. For in peace he continued to plunder and to
outrage them; and they had tried the chances of war against him
in vain. In this perplexity they looked with intense anxiety
towards England. Would she act on the principles of the Triple
Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help
Lewis might yet be withstood: but no help could be expected from
her till she was at unity with herself. Before the strife between
the throne and the Parliament began, she had been a power of the
first rank: on the day on which that strife terminated she became
a power of the first rank again: but while the dispute remained
undecided, she was condemned to inaction and to vassalage. She
had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors: she was again
great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution: but,
under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the
map of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not
yet acquired another. That species of force, which, in the
fourteenth century had enabled her to humble France and Spain,
had ceased to exist. That species of force, which, in the
eighteenth century, humbled France and Spain once more, had not
yet been called into action. The government was no longer a
limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It had not
yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With the
vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither.
The elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony,
counteracted and neutralised each other All was transition,
conflict, and disorder. The chief business of the sovereign was
to infringe the privileges of the legislature. The chief business
of the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the
sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign aid, which relieved
him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament.
The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting the
national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded,
that those means might be employed in order to establish
despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our
country, with all her vast resources, was of as little weight in
Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and
certainly of far less weight than the small province of Holland.
France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of
things.245 All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it
to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James would
govern in conformity with law and with public opinion. From the
Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest hope that the
new King of England would be on good terms with his Parliament
and his people.246 From the Vatican itself came cautions against
immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Benedict
Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of Innocent
the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress
of the French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were
peculiar to himself. It was a happy circumstance for the
Protestant religion that, at the moment when the last Roman
Catholic King of England mounted the throne, the Roman Catholic
Church was torn by dissension, and threatened with a new schism.
A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the eleventh century
between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had arisen between
Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry for the
doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights
of the French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of
encroaching on the spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty
as he was, encountered a spirit even more determined than his
own. Innocent was, in all private relations, the meekest and
gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially from the chair of
St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the Seventh and of
Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of the King
were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. The
King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope
refused them institution. They took possession of the Episcopal
palaces and revenues: but they were incompetent to perform the
Episcopal functions. Before the struggle terminated, there were
in France thirty prelates who could not confirm or ordain.247
Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a
dispute with the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant
governments on his side. But the fear and resentment which the
ambition and insolence of the French King had inspired were such
that whoever had the courage manfully to oppose him was sure of
His courage was singularly cool and imperturbable. During many
years of anxiety and peril, he never, in any emergency, lost even
for a moment, the perfect use of his admirable judgment.
In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to join
the French forces, then engaged in operations against Holland.
His serene intrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave
soldiers. His professional skill commanded the respect of veteran
officers. He was publicly thanked at the head of the army, and
received many marks of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who
was then at the height of military glory.
Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled
with alloy of the most sordid kind. Some propensities, which in
youth are singularly ungraceful, began very early to show
themselves in him. He was thrifty in his very vices, and levied
ample contributions on ladies enriched by the spoils of more
liberal lovers. He was, during a short time, the object of the
violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess of Cleveland. On one
occasion he was caught with her by the King, and was forced to
leap out of the window. She rewarded this hazardous feat of
gallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum
the prudent young hero instantly bought an annuity of five
hundred a year, well secured on landed property.240 Already his
private drawer contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty
years later, when he was a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the
richest subject in Europe, remained untouched.241
After the close of the war he was attached to the household of
the Duke of York, accompanied his patron to the Low Countries and
to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch
peerage and with the command of the only regiment of dragoons
which was then on the English establishment.242 His wife had a
post in the family of James's younger daughter, the Princess of
Denmark.
Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary to
Versailles. He had it in charge to express the warm gratitude of
the English government for the money which had been so generously
bestowed. It had been originally intended that he should at the
same time ask Lewis for a much larger sum; but, on full
consideration, it was apprehended that such indelicate greediness
might disgust the benefactor whose spontaneous liberality had
been so signally displayed. Churchill was therefore directed to
confine himself to thanks for what was past, and to say nothing
about the future.243
But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did
not mean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelligibly,
what they wished and expected. In the French ambassador they had
a dexterous, a zealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested
intercessor. Lewis made some difficulties, probably with the
design of enhancing the value of his gifts. In a very few weeks,
however, Barillon received from Versailles fifteen hundred
thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a hundred and
twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to dole out
cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government
with thirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting
members of the New House of Commons. The rest he was directed to
keep in reserve for some extraordinary emergency, such as a
dissolution or an insurrection.244
The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged:
but their real nature seems to be often misunderstood: for though
the foreign policy of the last two Kings of the House of Stuart
has never, since the correspondence of Barillon was exposed to
the public eye, found an apologist among us, there is still a
party which labours to excuse their domestic policy. Yet it is
certain that between their domestic policy and their foreign
policy there was a necessary and indissoluble connection. If they
had upheld, during a single year, the honour of the country
abroad, they would have been compelled to change the whole system
of their administration at home. To praise them for refusing to
govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and yet to
blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is
inconsistent. For they had only one choice, to be dependent on
Lewis, or to be dependent on Parliament.
James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third
way: but there was none. He became the slave of France: but it
would be incorrect to represent him as a contented slave. He had
spirit enough to be at times angry with himself for submitting to
such thraldom, and impatient to break loose from it; and this
disposition was studiously encouraged by the agents of many
foreign powers.
His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental
court: and the commencement of his administration was watched by
strangers with interest scarcely less deep than that which was
felt by his own subjects. One government alone wished that the
troubles which had, during three generations, distracted England,
might be eternal. All other governments, whether republican or
monarchical, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, wished to see
those troubles happily terminated.
The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their
Parliaments was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign
statesmen: but no statesman could fail to perceive the effect
which that contest had produced on the balance of power in
Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts
of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have been with a prince
struggling against subjects, and especially with a Roman Catholic
prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all such
sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear
and hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the
arrogance of the French King were at the height. His neighbours
might well doubt whether it were more dangerous to be at war or
at peace with him. For in peace he continued to plunder and to
outrage them; and they had tried the chances of war against him
in vain. In this perplexity they looked with intense anxiety
towards England. Would she act on the principles of the Triple
Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help
Lewis might yet be withstood: but no help could be expected from
her till she was at unity with herself. Before the strife between
the throne and the Parliament began, she had been a power of the
first rank: on the day on which that strife terminated she became
a power of the first rank again: but while the dispute remained
undecided, she was condemned to inaction and to vassalage. She
had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors: she was again
great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution: but,
under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the
map of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not
yet acquired another. That species of force, which, in the
fourteenth century had enabled her to humble France and Spain,
had ceased to exist. That species of force, which, in the
eighteenth century, humbled France and Spain once more, had not
yet been called into action. The government was no longer a
limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It had not
yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With the
vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither.
The elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony,
counteracted and neutralised each other All was transition,
conflict, and disorder. The chief business of the sovereign was
to infringe the privileges of the legislature. The chief business
of the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the
sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign aid, which relieved
him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament.
The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting the
national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded,
that those means might be employed in order to establish
despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our
country, with all her vast resources, was of as little weight in
Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and
certainly of far less weight than the small province of Holland.
France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of
things.245 All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it
to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James would
govern in conformity with law and with public opinion. From the
Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest hope that the
new King of England would be on good terms with his Parliament
and his people.246 From the Vatican itself came cautions against
immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Benedict
Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of Innocent
the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress
of the French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were
peculiar to himself. It was a happy circumstance for the
Protestant religion that, at the moment when the last Roman
Catholic King of England mounted the throne, the Roman Catholic
Church was torn by dissension, and threatened with a new schism.
A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the eleventh century
between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had arisen between
Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry for the
doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights
of the French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of
encroaching on the spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty
as he was, encountered a spirit even more determined than his
own. Innocent was, in all private relations, the meekest and
gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially from the chair of
St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the Seventh and of
Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of the King
were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. The
King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope
refused them institution. They took possession of the Episcopal
palaces and revenues: but they were incompetent to perform the
Episcopal functions. Before the struggle terminated, there were
in France thirty prelates who could not confirm or ordain.247
Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a
dispute with the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant
governments on his side. But the fear and resentment which the
ambition and insolence of the French King had inspired were such
that whoever had the courage manfully to oppose him was sure of
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