Accession of King James the Second. CHAPTER XI. THE death of King Charles the Second made way for his brother, the Roman-Catholic Duke of York, to the throne of England. The party which endeavored to obstruct his elevation had been broken down; and he might flatter himself that, with the exercise of a moderate degree of prudence, he would be able to consolidate the despotism to which the nation seemed to be resigned. Greater difficulties than he had surmounted were not likely to confront him in future. If he had not great abilities, he had a resolute will. So far from being in danger of losing anything by carelessness, he loved labor for its own sake, and never wearied of the details of business. In particular, his sedulous and serviceable attention to naval affairs had not failed to procure for him a degree of esteem. His private life was impure, but he did not, like his brother, devote life to a shameless profligacy. Announcement of his policy. In The new King's first act excited agreeable expectations in minds that did not sufficiently understand the constitutional perfidy of his race. the Council which came together immediately after his brother's death, he declared that he was no friend to arbitrary power, and that it was his purpose to maintain the liberties of Englishmen, the government as it had hitherto existed, and the Established Church. With his consent, his words were taken down,1 and their publication lightened the oppressive weight of anxiety that lay upon the public mind. 1 Clarke, Life of James the Second, II. 3. The constitution of his first ministry did not absolutely belie his fair professions. Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, his brother-in-law, was made Lord Treasurer, and the Earl of Sunderland continued to be Secretary of State. Godolphin, superseded in the Treas- His first ury, was made Chamberlain to the Queen, and ministry. was admitted to a large share of the royal confidence. Halifax, whose more recent patriotic course had forfeited the favor formerly won with James by his opposition to the Exclusion Bill, was, however, retained for the present in the royal service, in the dignified though unimportant post of President of the Council.1 The honest Duke of Ormond was recalled from the government of Ireland to figure as Lord Steward in the pageants of the court. The Earl of Guilford was confirmed in the office of Lord Keeper; while a check against any legal punctiliousness of his was provided in the person of George Jeffreys, now re-commissioned as Chief Justice of the King's Bench. However objectionable some of these statesmen were in other respects, they all hitherto professed the Protestant religion. 2 On the other hand, the King did not hesitate to offend the public sense by at once going publicly to mass; and little privacy was affected as to a mission which Early develop. designs. he sent to Rome, to assure the pontiff of his ment of his devotion to the Church. His civil administration began with a usurpation of the kind that had been fraught with fatal consequences to his father. He proposed to continue to levy for himself the duties assessed on imports by a grant which, according to ancient usage, had been made to the late King for his lifetime only. Guilford's advice was, that that course might be justified 1 Lord Halifax was discharged from office in the following October. The King took leave of him civilly, but gave no reason for his dismission. (Reresby, Memoirs, 312, 315.) 2 Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, III. 413. 3 See above, Vol. I. p. 251. by the exigency of the case, since fair dealers who had paid duties on their goods ought not to be ruined by the underbidding of traders who received their commodities duty-free; but that the moneys thus received into the Treasury should be sequestered there, to await the disposal of Parliament, when it should meet. Jeffreys stood by the King; and a proclamation was issued, enjoining on importers the unconditional payment of the customary duties.1 These offensive proceedings, if they excited solicitude, occasioned no outbreak. The disgust that had followed the infatuation of the Popish Plot was not yet exhausted. The delusive hope excited by the King's first speech in council was still fresh and active. Patriots might well differ upon the question whether it was not safer to attempt to conciliate a headstrong man, for the present so secure in his position, than to provoke him to displeasure. The House of Commons was almost in the King's hands; for a large part of the members represented corporations whose charters had been so remodelled as to give to the friends of prerogative the municipal offices and the power of determining elections. No organization for even the mildest resistance was yet possible. In his opening speech to his Parliament, the King made no secret of his contempt for any precautions the Houses might be disposed to take. He said that it was idle to suppose that the doling out of supplies to him would be a security for frequent Parliaments; that, on the contrary, "the best way to engage him to meet them often was always to use him well." The House of Commons thanked him for his speech, and, by a unanimous vote, continued to Meeting of 1 North, Life of Lord Keeper Guilford, II. 112, 113. 2. The King said, there were not above forty members but such as he himself wished for." (Burnet, History of his Own Time, I. 626.) "Most of them were furious and violent, and seemed resolved to recommend them selves to the King by putting every thing in his power." (Ibid.) him for his life all the allowances which had been made to his brother, and added some considerable grants.1 Nothing seemed to be wanting to the King's secu rity, or even to the fulfilment of his most ambitious hopes, but a rash and defeated insurrection. This advantage, too, he was to have. The Duke of Monmouth had of late resided in the Netherlands, where, in consideration of his father's fondness for him, he had been treated with distinction by the Prince of Orange. The Insurrection accession of James placed the exile in a differ- of the Duke ent position. The Prince felt obliged to humor his father-in-law by an altered aspect towards Monmouth, who withdrew from his court to Brussels. There the Duke was ill-advised enough to embark in an enterprise which speedily brought about his own ruin, and which might well have proved the ruin of England, had the King but had the prudence to use the advantage which it gave him for the prosecution of his despotic schemes.2 of Monmouth. Monmouth undertook to overset the throne of England at the moment when Lords and Commons in Par liament were bowing in the dust before it. June. Landing at Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire, with a following of about a hundred men, he issued a proclamation charging the King with all sorts of crimes, and invited all patriotic Englishmen to unite in expelling him from the throne. Within four days he was joined by some two thousand men; and the Duke of Albemarle, in command of a force of royal troops twice as large, retreated before him. Pressing on to Taunton, he there proclaimed himself King of England, as being the legitimate son of the late sovereign. He was now at the head of six thousand men. But, while his motions were dilatory, the King had time to collect an effective 1 Parliamentary History, IV. 1353, advantage he might then have opened 1354. and pursued his designs." (Burnet, 2 "It is not easy to imagine with what History of his Own Time, I. 647.) His defeat July 6. army. In a battle fought at Sedgemoor, near Bridge water, the insurgents were routed. Their unand capture. fortunate leader, having escaped from the field, was found by his pursuers in a ditch, disguised in peasant's clothes. He was taken up to London, where he wrote to the King with abject expressions of remorse for his crime. As if taking a malignant pleasure in distressing him to the utmost, James consented to his suit for a personal interview, and then, with revilings, reHis execution. fused his entreaty for pardon.1 He was beJuly 15. headed on Tower Hill, the second day after being brought to London.2 The The prosecution of another branch of the same wild undertaking was attended with like ill-success. Scottish Parliament had, if possible, shown itself more basely servile to King James than the Parliament of England. They had voted that, by the immemorial law of the realm, their monarchs possessed absolute authority; and they had made lavish grants to the crown, which, instead of being limited to the present reign, were declared to be perpetual. They had by law made it treason to maintain that the Covenant was obligatory on the signers, or to refuse to give evidence in trials for treason or for non-conformity, and had declared attendance. at a conventicle to be a crime punishable with death. The Earl of Argyll, who, four years before, had escaped into Holland while under sentence for treason, in Scotland. vainly supposed that such excesses would rouse the ancient spirit of his countrymen. Preceding the expedition of the Duke of Monmouth by about a week, he landed in the west of Scotland, in his own country, Insurrection 1 "King James, in ordering him to be brought into his presence under the sentence of death, was pleased to make one exception against a general rule observed inviolably among kings, never to allow a criminal, under the sentence of death, the sight of his |