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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religious prejudices than he had yet called
on any of his Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the
twenty-third of April, the feast of the patron saint of the
realm. The Abbey and the Hall were splendidly decorated. The
presence of the Queen and of the peeresses gave to the solemnity
a charm which had been wanting to the magnificent inauguration of
the late King. Yet those who remembered that inauguration
pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancient usage
was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his
heralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries,
should ride in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these
cavalcades the last and the most glorious was that which passed
through the capital while the feelings excited by the Restoration
were still in full vigour. Arches of triumph overhung the road.
All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church Yard, Fleet Street,
and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had
thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most splendid and
solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an estimate to
be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it would
amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in covering
his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse
where he ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might
pardonably have been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds
were laid out in dressing the Queen, and the procession from the
Tower was omitted. The folly of this course is obvious. If
pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of
striking the imagination of the multitude. It is surely the
height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show of which
the main object is to make an impression on the populace. James
would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more
judicious parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west
with the accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife
to be somewhat less thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His
example was, however, long followed by his successors; and sums,
which, well employed, would have afforded exquisite gratification
to a large part of the nation, were squandered on an exhibition
to which only three or four thousand privileged persons were
admitted. At length the old practice was partially revived. On
the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there was a
procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but which
was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her
subjects, and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and
called forth far greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display
which was witnessed by a select circle within the Abbey.
James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason
publicly assigned was that the day was too short for all that was
to be done. But whoever examines the changes which were made will
see that the real object was to remove some things highly
offensive to the religious feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic.
The Communion Service was not read. The ceremony of presenting
the sovereign with a richly bound copy of the English Bible, and
of exhorting him to prize above all earthly treasures a volume
which he had been taught to regard as adulterated with false
doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this
curtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man
who sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical
society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be found.
The King made an oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in
the petitions of the Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He
received from those false prophets the unction typical of a
divine influence, and knelt with the semblance of devotion, while
they called down upon him that Holy Spirit of which they were, in
his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes. Such are the
inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a
fanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet
chose to commit what was little short of an act of apostasy,
rather than forego the childish pleasure of being invested with
the gewgaws symbolical of kingly power.254
Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those
writers who still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop
Williams and Bishop Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint
conceits, such as seventy years earlier might have been admired,
but such as moved the scorn of a generation accustomed to the
purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of Tillotson. King
Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab was a Rye
House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest
but misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles
was construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and
another was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the
militia. Towards the close of the discourse the orator very
timidly alluded to the new and embarrassing position in which the
Church stood with reference to the sovereign, and reminded his
hearers that the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, though not himself
a Christian, had held in honour those Christians who remained
true to their religion, and had treated with scorn those who
sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in the Abbey
was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet by
brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry.255
This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of
the Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of
the new King, addresses had been pouring in which expressed
profound veneration for his person and office, and bitter
detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magistrates of Middlesex
thanked God for having confounded the designs of those regicides
and exclusionists who, not content with having murdered one
blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the foundations of
monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the bloodthirsty
villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just
inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that
they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and
rebellions Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope
that the Parliament would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many
corporations pledged themselves never to return to the House of
Commons any person who had voted for taking away the birthright
of James. Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. The lawyers
and the traders vied with each other in servility. Inns of Court
and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent professions of attachment
and submission. All the great commercial societies, the East
India Company, the African Company, the Turkey Company, the
Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland
Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers,
declared that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict
which required them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city
of the island, echoed the voice of London. But nowhere was the
spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two Universities. Oxford
declared that she would never swerve from those religious
principles which bound her to obey the King without any
restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe
terms, the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had
maliciously endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of
the ancient channel.256
Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every
number of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing
that the Tories showed their zeal. The writs for the new
Parliament had gone forth, and the country was agitated by the
tumult of a general election. No election had ever taken place
under circumstances so favourable to the Court. Hundreds of
thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into Whiggism had been
scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the counties
the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the
gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy
almost to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels
of Whiggism had recently been deprived of their charters by legal
sentence, or had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender.
They had now been reconstituted in such a manner that they were
certain to return members devoted to the crown. Where the
townsmen could not be trusted, the freedom had been bestowed on
the neighbouring squires. In some of the small western
corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part composed
of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning officers
were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every
shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful,
active, and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and
intimidating the freeholders. The people were solemnly warned
from thousands of pulpits not to vote for any Whig candidate, as
they should answer it to Him who had ordained the powers that be,
and who had pronounced rebellion a sin not less deadly than
witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant party not only
used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner that
grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy in
peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood
aghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil
times.257
Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their
errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not
yield without an effort. They were still numerous among the
traders and artisans of the towns, and among the yeomanry and
peasantry of the open country. In some districts, in Dorsetshire
for example, and in Somersetshire, they were the great majority
of the population. In the remodelled boroughs they could do
nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance, they
struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been
represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were
victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll.258
In Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen
hundred.259 At the election for Northamptonshire the common
people were so violent in their hostility to the court candidate
that a body of troops was drawn out in the marketplace of the
county town, and was ordered to load with ball.260 The history of
the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more remarkable. The
whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord
Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by
audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a
respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been
one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up
the
on any of his Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the
twenty-third of April, the feast of the patron saint of the
realm. The Abbey and the Hall were splendidly decorated. The
presence of the Queen and of the peeresses gave to the solemnity
a charm which had been wanting to the magnificent inauguration of
the late King. Yet those who remembered that inauguration
pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancient usage
was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his
heralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries,
should ride in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these
cavalcades the last and the most glorious was that which passed
through the capital while the feelings excited by the Restoration
were still in full vigour. Arches of triumph overhung the road.
All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church Yard, Fleet Street,
and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had
thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most splendid and
solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an estimate to
be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it would
amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in covering
his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse
where he ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might
pardonably have been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds
were laid out in dressing the Queen, and the procession from the
Tower was omitted. The folly of this course is obvious. If
pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of
striking the imagination of the multitude. It is surely the
height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show of which
the main object is to make an impression on the populace. James
would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more
judicious parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west
with the accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife
to be somewhat less thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His
example was, however, long followed by his successors; and sums,
which, well employed, would have afforded exquisite gratification
to a large part of the nation, were squandered on an exhibition
to which only three or four thousand privileged persons were
admitted. At length the old practice was partially revived. On
the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there was a
procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but which
was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her
subjects, and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and
called forth far greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display
which was witnessed by a select circle within the Abbey.
James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason
publicly assigned was that the day was too short for all that was
to be done. But whoever examines the changes which were made will
see that the real object was to remove some things highly
offensive to the religious feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic.
The Communion Service was not read. The ceremony of presenting
the sovereign with a richly bound copy of the English Bible, and
of exhorting him to prize above all earthly treasures a volume
which he had been taught to regard as adulterated with false
doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this
curtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man
who sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical
society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be found.
The King made an oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in
the petitions of the Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He
received from those false prophets the unction typical of a
divine influence, and knelt with the semblance of devotion, while
they called down upon him that Holy Spirit of which they were, in
his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes. Such are the
inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a
fanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet
chose to commit what was little short of an act of apostasy,
rather than forego the childish pleasure of being invested with
the gewgaws symbolical of kingly power.254
Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those
writers who still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop
Williams and Bishop Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint
conceits, such as seventy years earlier might have been admired,
but such as moved the scorn of a generation accustomed to the
purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of Tillotson. King
Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab was a Rye
House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest
but misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles
was construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and
another was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the
militia. Towards the close of the discourse the orator very
timidly alluded to the new and embarrassing position in which the
Church stood with reference to the sovereign, and reminded his
hearers that the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, though not himself
a Christian, had held in honour those Christians who remained
true to their religion, and had treated with scorn those who
sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in the Abbey
was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet by
brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry.255
This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of
the Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of
the new King, addresses had been pouring in which expressed
profound veneration for his person and office, and bitter
detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magistrates of Middlesex
thanked God for having confounded the designs of those regicides
and exclusionists who, not content with having murdered one
blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the foundations of
monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the bloodthirsty
villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just
inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that
they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and
rebellions Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope
that the Parliament would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many
corporations pledged themselves never to return to the House of
Commons any person who had voted for taking away the birthright
of James. Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. The lawyers
and the traders vied with each other in servility. Inns of Court
and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent professions of attachment
and submission. All the great commercial societies, the East
India Company, the African Company, the Turkey Company, the
Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland
Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers,
declared that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict
which required them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city
of the island, echoed the voice of London. But nowhere was the
spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two Universities. Oxford
declared that she would never swerve from those religious
principles which bound her to obey the King without any
restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe
terms, the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had
maliciously endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of
the ancient channel.256
Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every
number of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing
that the Tories showed their zeal. The writs for the new
Parliament had gone forth, and the country was agitated by the
tumult of a general election. No election had ever taken place
under circumstances so favourable to the Court. Hundreds of
thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into Whiggism had been
scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the counties
the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the
gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy
almost to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels
of Whiggism had recently been deprived of their charters by legal
sentence, or had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender.
They had now been reconstituted in such a manner that they were
certain to return members devoted to the crown. Where the
townsmen could not be trusted, the freedom had been bestowed on
the neighbouring squires. In some of the small western
corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part composed
of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning officers
were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every
shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful,
active, and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and
intimidating the freeholders. The people were solemnly warned
from thousands of pulpits not to vote for any Whig candidate, as
they should answer it to Him who had ordained the powers that be,
and who had pronounced rebellion a sin not less deadly than
witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant party not only
used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner that
grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy in
peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood
aghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil
times.257
Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their
errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not
yield without an effort. They were still numerous among the
traders and artisans of the towns, and among the yeomanry and
peasantry of the open country. In some districts, in Dorsetshire
for example, and in Somersetshire, they were the great majority
of the population. In the remodelled boroughs they could do
nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance, they
struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been
represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were
victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll.258
In Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen
hundred.259 At the election for Northamptonshire the common
people were so violent in their hostility to the court candidate
that a body of troops was drawn out in the marketplace of the
county town, and was ordered to load with ball.260 The history of
the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more remarkable. The
whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord
Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by
audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a
respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been
one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up
the
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