The Fall of the

16831714.

CHAP. III. the father of his country, to bless them also and all that were there present, and in them the general body of his Stuarts. subjects. Whereupon, the room being full, all fell down upon their knees, and he raised himself in his bed and very solemnly blessed them all." The strange comedy was at last over. Charles died as he had lived: brave, witty, cynical, even in the presence of death. Tortured as he was with pain, he begged the bystanders to forgive him for being so unconscionable a time in dying. One mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, hung weeping over his bed. His last thought was of another mistress, Nell Gwynn. "Do not," he whispered to his successor ere he sank into a fatal stupor, " do not let poor Nelly starve!"

James the

The death of Charles in February 1685 placed his Second. brother James, the Duke of York, upon the throne. His character and policy were already well known. Of all the Stuart rulers James is the only one whose intellect was below mediocrity. His mind was dull and narrow though orderly and methodical; his temper dogged and arbitrary but sincere. His religious and political tendencies had always been the same. He had always cherished an entire belief in the royal authority and a hatred of Parliaments. His main desire was for the establishment of Catholicism as the only means of ensuring the obedience of his people; and his old love of France was quickened by the firm reliance which he placed on the aid of Lewis in bringing about that establishment. But the secrecy in which his political action had as yet been shrouded and his long absence from England had hindered any general knowledge of his designs. His first words on his accession, his promise to "preserve this Government both in Church and State as it is now by law established," were welcomed by the whole country with enthusiasm. All the suspicions of a Catholic sovereign seemed to have disappeared. "We have the word of a King!" ran the general cry, "and of a King who was never worse than his word." The conviction of his brother's faithlessness

in fact stood James in good stead. He was looked upon as narrow, impetuous, stubborn, and despotic in heart, but even his enemies did not accuse him of being false. Above all, incredible as such a belief may seem now, he was believed to be keenly alive to the honour of his country and resolute to free it from foreign dependence.

From the first indeed there were indications that James understood his declaration in a different sense from the nation. He was resolved to make no disguise of his own religion; the chapel in which he had hitherto worshipped with closed doors was now thrown open and the King seen at mass. He regarded attacks on his faith as attacks on himself, and at once called on the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to hinder all preaching against Catholicism as a part of their " duty" to their King. He made no secret of his resolve to procure freedom of worship for his co-religionists while still refusing it to the rest of the Nonconformists, whom he hated as republicans and Exclusionists. All was passed over however in the general confidence. It was necessary to summon a Parliament, for the royal revenue ceased with the death of Charles; but the elections, swayed at once by the tide of loyalty and by the command of the boroughs which the surrender of their charters had given. to the Crown, sent up in May a House of Commons in which James found few members who were not to his mind. His appointment indeed of Catholic officers in the army was already exciting murmurs; but these were hushed as James repeated his pledge of maintaining the established order both in Church and State. The question of religious security was waived at a hint of the royal displeasure, and a revenue of nearly two millions was. granted to the King for life.

All that was wanted to rouse the loyalty of the country into fanaticism was supplied by a rebellion in the North, and by another under Monmouth in the West. The hopes of Scotch freedom had clung ever since the Restoration to

CHAP. III.
The Fall

of the Stuarts.

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James

and Parliament.

Argyle's
Rising.

CHAP. III. the house of Argyle.

of the

Stuarts. 1683

1714.

The great Marquis indeed had The Fall been brought to the block at the King's return. His son, the Earl of Argyle, had been unable to save himself even by a life of singular caution and obedience from the ill-will of the vile politicians who governed Scotland. He was at last convicted of treason in 1682 on grounds at which every English statesman stood aghast. We should not hang a dog here," Halifax protested, "on the grounds on which my lord Argyle has been sentenced to death." The Earl escaped however to Holland, and lived peaceably there during the last six years of the reign of Charles. Monmouth had found the same refuge at the Hague, where a belief in his father's love and purpose to recall him secured him a kindly reception from William of Orange. But the accession of James was a death-blow to the hopes of the Duke, while it stirred the fanaticism of Argyle to a resolve of wresting Scotland from the rule of a Catholic king. The two leaders determined to appear in arms in England and the North, and the two expeditions sailed within a few days of each other. Argyle's attempt was soon over. His clan of the Campbells rose on the Earl's landing in Cantyre, but the country had been occupied for the King, and quarrels among the exiles who accompanied him robbed his effort of every chance of success. His force scattered without a fight; and Argyle, arrested in an attempt to escape, was hurried on the 30th of June to a traitor's death.

Mon

Monmouth for a time found brighter fortune. His mouth's popularity in the West was great, and though the gentry Rising. held aloof when he landed at Lyme and demanded an effective parliamentary government as well as freedom of worship for Protestant Nonconformists the farmers and traders of Devonshire and Dorset flocked to his standard. The clothier-towns of Somerset were true to the Whig cause, as they had been true to the cause of the Long Parliament; and on the entrance of the Duke into Taunton the popular enthusiasm showed itself in the

The Fall of the Stuarts.

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flowers which wreathed every door, as well as in a train of CHAP. III, young girls who presented Monmouth with a Bible and a flag. His forces now amounted to six thousand men, but whatever chance of success he might have had was lost by his assumption of the title of king, his right to which he had pledged himself hitherto to leave for decision to a free Parliament. The two Houses offered to support James with their lives and fortunes, and passed a bill of attainder against the Duke. The gentry, still true to the cause of Mary and of William, held stubbornly aloof; while the Guards and the regiments from Tangier hurried to the scene of the revolt and the militia gathered to the royal standard. Foiled in an attempt on Bristol and Bath, Monmouth fell back on Bridgewater, and flung himself in the night of the 6th of July on the King's forces as they lay encamped hard by on Sedgemoor. The surprise failed; and the brave peasants and miners who followed the Duke, checked in their advance by a deep drain which crossed the moor, were broken after a short but desperate resistance by the royal horse. Their leader fled from the field, and after a vain effort to escape from the realm was captured and sent pitilessly to the block.

Never had England shown a firmer loyalty; but its loyalty was changed into horror by the terrible measures of repression which followed on the victory of Sedgemoor. Even North, the Lord Keeper, a servile tool of the Crown, protested against the license and bloodshed in which the troops were suffered to indulge after the battle. His protest however was disregarded, and he withdrew brokenhearted from the Court to die. James was in fact resolved on a far more terrible vengeance; and the Chief-Justice Jeffreys, a man of great natural powers but of violent . temper, was sent to earn the Seals by a series of judicial murders which have left his name a byword for cruelty. Three hundred and fifty rebels were hanged in what has ever since been known as the "Bloody Circuit," while Jeffreys made his way through Dorset and Somerset.

The

Bloody

Circuit.

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1714.

sea.

CHAP. III. More than eight hundred were sold into slavery beyond A yet larger number were whipped and imprisoned. The Queen, the maids of honour, the courtiers, even the 1683- Judge himself, made shameless profit from the sale of pardons. What roused pity above all were the cruelties wreaked upon women. Some were scourged from markettown to market-town. Mrs. Lisle, the wife of one of the Regicides, was sent to the block at Winchester for harbouring a rebel. Elizabeth Gaunt for the same act of womanly charity was burned at Tyburn. Pity turned into horror when it was found that cruelty such as this was avowed and sanctioned by the King. Even the cold heart of General Churchill, to whose energy the victory at Sedgemoor had mainly been owing, revolted at the ruthlessness with which James turned away from all appeals for mercy. "This marble," he cried as he struck the chimney-piece on which he leant, "is not harder than the King's heart."

James

and France.

But it was soon plain that the terror which this butchery was meant to strike into the people was part of a larger purpose. The revolt was made a pretext for a vast increase of the standing army. Charles, as we have seen, had silently and cautiously raised it to nearly ten thousand men; James raised it at one swoop to twenty thousand. The employment of this force was to be at home, not abroad, for the hope of an English policy in foreign affairs had already faded away. In the designs which James had at heart he could look for no consent from Parliament; and however his pride revolted against a dependence on France, it was only by French gold and French soldiers that he could hope to hold the Parliament permanently at bay. A week therefore after his accession he assured Lewis that his gratitude and devotion to him equalled that of Charles himself. "Tell your master," he said to the French ambassador, "that without his protection I can do nothing. He has a right to be consulted, and it is my wish to consult him, about everything." The pledge of