flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and
from the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he
found time for dress, politics, lovemaking, and balladmaking
was a wonder.* Delamere was gloomy and acrimonious,
austere in his private morals, and punctual in his devotions,
but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers of
finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating
their colleague Godolphin. What business had he at White-
hall in these days of Protestant ascendency, he who had sate
at the same board with Papists, he who had never scrupled to
attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous worship of the
Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godol-
phin, though his name stood only third in the commission, was
really first Lord. For in financial knowledge and in habits
of business Mordaunt and Delamere were mere children when
compared with him; and this William soon discovered.*

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through
all the subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every
customhouse, in every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Not-
tingham, a Delamere and a Godolphin. The Whigs com-
plained that there was no department in which creatures of
the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to allege
that these men were versed in the details of business, that
they were the depositaries of official traditions, and that the
friends of liberty, having been, during many years, excluded
from public employment, must necessarily be incompetent to
take on themselves at once the whole management of affairs.
Experience doubtless had its value: but surely the first of all
the qualifications of a servant was fidelity; and no Tory could
be a really faithful servant of the new government. If King
William were wise, he would rather trust novices zealous for
his interest and honour than veterans, who might indeed pos-
sess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability
and that knowledge to effect his ruin.

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore no proportion to their number, or to their weight in the country, and that everywhere old and useful public servants were, for the crime of being friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make way

VOL. II.

"How does he do to distribute his hours,

Some to the Court, and some to the City,
Some to the State, and some to Love's powers,
Some to be vain, and some to be witty!"

† Burnet, ii. 4.

The Modern Lampooners, a poem of 1690.

G G

CHAP.

XI.

CHAP.
XI.

Depart

ment of Foreign Affairs.

for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts, adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their business when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of the marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a dockyard to fit out the fleet ? *

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new settlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a valuable servant of the state, must at that time be had separately or not at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk of mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of treachery. If he employed men of both parties there was still some risk of mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery; and to these risks was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories: but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at the same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in such circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should be feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite the right way or at quite the right time: that the distractions from which scarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, and that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well conducted; and that was the department of Foreign Af fairs. There William directed everything, and, on important occasions, neither asked the advice nor employed the agency

* Ronquillo calls the Whig functionaries "Gente que no tienen pratica ni experiencia." He adds, " Y de esto procede el pasarse un mes y un otro, sin executarse nada." June 24. 1689. In one of the innumerable Dialogues which ap

peared at that time, the Tory interlo cutor puts the question, "Do you think the government would be better served by strangers to business?" The Wh answers, "Better ignorant friends than understanding enemies."

of any English politician. One invaluable assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to Versailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete change in his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and provoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplated it only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the latest day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devoted adherent of William and a mortal enemy of Lewis.*

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important when the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of Heinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs of William might have been frustrated. But happily there was between these two eminent men a perfect friendship, which, till death dissolved it, appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or ill humour. On all large questions of European policy they cordially agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For, though William was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave it entire. The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable to both. The King's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was one of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the Pensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and the most discreet of servants. But, after the death of the master, the servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great Triumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth.†

* Négociations de M. Le Comte d' Avaux, 4 Mars 1683; Torey's Memoirs.

The original correspondence of William and Heinsius is in Dutch. A French translation of all William's letters, and an English translation of a few of Heinsius's letters, are among the Mackintosh MSS. The Baron Sirtema de Grovestins,

who has had access to the originals, fre-
quently quotes passages in his "Histoire
des luttes et rivalités entre les puis-
sances maritimes et la France." There is
very little difference in substance, though
much in phraseology, between his ver-
sion and that which I have used.

CHAP.

XI.

CHAP.

XI.

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in close concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, Religious eminently skilful and successful. But in every other part of disputes. the administration the evils arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutual animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual animosity of sects.

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than in the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first legal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious attempt to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of England. From that year dates a new schism, made in defiance of ancient precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with peculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration. In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but till after the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanent order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by established names. time after the accession of William they began to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party; and, long before the end of his reign, these appellations were in

Some

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates, recently conspicuous as persecutors, now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality and of kind offices with the Separatists. Separatists, on the other

Though these very convenient names are not, as far as I know, to be found in any book printed during the earlier years of William's reign, I shall use them

without scruple, as others have done, in writing about the transactions of those years.

hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on bonfires in honour of the prelates.

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest height on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in orange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to St. James's. When the clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist divines. It was delightful to many good men to hear that pious and learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by him in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials of the reformed faith. There had never before been such a day in England; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling was already on the turn; and the ebb was even more rapid than the flow had been. In a very few hours the High Churchman began to feel tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and dislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the Dissenters the misgovernment of the exiled King. His Majesty,—such was now the language of too many Anglican divines,—would have been an excellent sovereign had he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust in a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to conciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the penal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own mean and tasteless fashion n; had admitted them to the bench of justice and to the Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, gold chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, these people, once so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition even to legitimate authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They had continued to applaud and

CHAP.

XI.

The High

Church

party.