Are sent to the Tower. June 8.

on the advice of Jeffreys, to bring the Bishops before the King's Bench for having published a seditious libel. He felt sure of the partisan judges he had appointed, and of the jury nominated in London, now that the charter of that city had been forfeited. When summoned before the Council, for a long time the Bishops refused to acknowledge their writing, but when absolutely commanded by the King to answer, they naturally supposed that there was an implied promise that their word should not be used against them, and confessed their signatures. They were ordered to find bail, but pleaded that they were Peers, and not bound to do so for libel. They were therefore committed to the Tower. The excitement was prodigious. They passed down the river between lines of boats full of enthusiastic people calling on God to bless them; the very sentinels at the Tower prayed for their blessing, and drank to their health. Many of the most important of the Peers crowded to pay their respects to them, and what was still more offensive to the King, a deputation of Nonconformists waited upon them. The King insisted on carrying through the trial. They were brought to the King's Bench, and discharged upon their own recognisances. In the midst of the agitation, the birth of the Prince of Wales took place (June 10), but as the nation universally believed the child to be supposititious, and the birth a mere invention of the Jesuits to exclude the Princess Mary from her due, it only added to the popular excitement.

Their trial.
June 27.

At length the trial took place. The handwriting was only proved by producing the clerk of the Council, who could swear to the Bishops having there confessed their signatures. It was plain from the way in which this evidence was introduced that the prosecution was itself ashamed of using it. The next step was to prove the publication, and as no one had been present when the petition was presented, this seemed impossible. The judges were already summing up, a verdict of acquittal seemed necessary, when Finch, one of the Bishops' counsel, checked the proceedings, and asked to be heard. This step was nearly disastrous. Before the summing up was resumed, news was brought to the Solicitor-General that the Lord President could prove the publishing of the libel, and the traitor Sunderland, who, finding his influence waning, had lately, though notoriously an unbeliever, professed himself a Roman Catholic, appeared in the box, and told how the Bishops had begged him to present the petition. The technical difficulties being thus removed, the question was tried on its merits. After a trial of some hours, in

1687]

TRIAL OF THE BISHOPS

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which the prisoners' counsel had obviously the best of the argument, and which was closed by a terse, unanswerable speech from their junior counsel, Summers, the judges proceeded to give their judgments. They all, even Wright, the venal Chief-Justice, were afraid openly to uphold the indulgence, and one of them, Powell, was bold enough to assert his firm belief in its illegality, but the jury could not at first agree. The night was passed by the whole town in a feverish anxiety. One of the jury, Arnold, the royal brewer, refused for a long time to risk the King's patronage by a hostile verdict; he was at length overpersuaded, and a verdict of "not guilty" was followed by Acquittal. an explosion of enthusiastic joy such as has seldom been June 30. seen. The very army at Hounslow, which the King had only just reviewed, burst into joyful shouts at the news, even before the King was out of hearing.

Invitation sent

Orange.

That very same day Admiral Herbert, dressed in the clothes of a common sailor, left London, to take to Holland a letter signed by seven names, representing great sections of popular opinion, requesting William, Prince of Orange, to bring an army into England, to secure the liberties of the people. These to William of names were those of Henry Sidney, the brother of Algernon; the Earl of Devonshire, who was regarded as the chief of the old Whigs; Shrewsbury; Danby, the old Tory minister of Charles II.; Bishop Compton, the suspended Bishop of London, who had been the tutor to the Princess of Orange; Lumley; and Edward Russell, who had been the first to bring to the Prince of Orange the suggestion that he should appear in arms in England. The invitation set forth the injuries of England, the discontent of the people, and the excellence of the opportunity. The gentlemen who had signed the document pledged themselves to join him.

The invitation, backed by such important names, was accepted by William, though indeed the difficulties in the way of William's diffihis undertaking appeared almost insuperable. In Eng-culties. land the temper of the majority of the people, though at present in his favour, might speedily turn against him. A victory which should arouse the national pride would be almost as disastrous as a defeat. In his own country he had to expect the opposition of that great oligarchic party which was the hereditary opponent of the House of Orange. War and peace, alliances and taxation, rested with the States-General; but that body could only act on the approval of the provincial states. Those provincial states could only give that approval after it had been given by all the towns represented in them.

The obstinate veto of one town would therefore prevent the StatesGeneral from acting. Such a veto William had every reason to expect from Amsterdam, where the oligarchic and French party was very powerful. Besides these particular difficulties, there was one of a more general character. William's views were those of a European, not of a Dutch statesman. His object was to curtail the power of France. For that purpose he had with consummate skill consolidated a great alliance in Europe, consisting of members of both the Protestant and Catholic communions. The addition of England to that alliance would be of the highest value, but even for so valuable a prize nothing must be risked which might shake the stability of those connections which had already been established. Now the success of the great general scheme of William depended on his keeping together a vast alliance, consisting of both Protestant and Catholic states. If he threw himself too heartily into the quarrel in England as a religious quarrel, the chances were great that he would have to break with his Catholic allies.

Removed by the folly of his enemies.

His task was lightened by the infatuation of James and the high-handed errors of Louis. James would naturally have relied chiefly upon the clergy, who habitually upheld the theory of passive resistance, and upon the army which he had enrolled for his own express purposes, and into which he had introduced many Catholics, in virtue of the dispensing power which he claimed. He proceeded to shock the loyalty both of the clergy and the army. Full of anger at the acquittal of the Bishops, he determined to act in future through a less scrupulous court than the Court of King's Bench. Within a fortnight of the trial, an order was given to all chancellors of dioceses and archdeacons to return to the High Commission a list of those who had failed to read the Declaration. Their number was probably little short of 10,000. His intended vengeance was indeed foiled; the archdeacons and chancellors did not send up the lists; when the High Commission met, it had no ground on which to proceed; but the threat of vengeance none the less alienated the clergy. What had most distressed the King, after the acquittal of the Bishops, was the conduct of the army, whose joyful cheers he had heard as he drove from Hounslow to London. He felt that he could not rely upon the soldiers. His more energetic counsellors urged him to bring over those Irish forces which Tyrconnel had been organizing. Afraid to bring over the whole army, which might perhaps have re-established his authority, he was yet foolish enough to bring over considerable numbers, too few to effect his

1688]

WILLIAM'S DIFFICULTIES REMOVED

781

purpose, but enough to excite the anger of the English regiments with which he incorporated them. By these means the English troops were so irritated that the lieutenant-colonel and five captains of one regiment alone refused to serve if the Irish recruits were admitted; while the whole nation, who regarded the Irish as barbarians, were excited to anger, and the danger of shocking the national pride which William had feared was removed. The defeat of James's army, half composed of barbarous Irish, by the Dutch troops and their English allies, would have caused no displeasure to the people.

While James thus removed William's chief difficulties in England, Louis was pursuing the same course abroad. His conduct to the Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was such as to excite the strongest anger in Holland. As if this was not enough, he proceeded to interfere with what was, if possible, dearer to the Dutch than their religion, namely, their trade. He passed laws prohibiting the importation of several of the chief articles of commerce, notably their herrings. The consequence was much commercial distress, and so complete an alienation of all classes from the French interests, that William had little to fear from his compatriots. There remained the difficulty of insuring the co-operation of William's Catholic allies. Louis took the opportunity of alienating the Pope. The right of asylum and freedom from Government interference had been enjoyed by the foreign embassies at Rome. The privileges had been extended to considerable distances round those embassies. The Pope, eager for the better government of his city, had persuaded all the nations to give up this pernicious right, with the exception of Louis. In the haughtiest and most overbearing manner, Louis sent troops to Rome, and established his ambassador in his old privileges by force of arms. Nor was this all. The archbishopric of Cologne had become vacant. Louis wished to establish his influence in this district, which gave him access to the Rhine. By intrigues he believed he had secured the election of Fürstensburg, Bishop of Strasburg. The rival of Fürstensburg was Prince Clement of Bavaria. As both claimants were Bishops, in accordance with the rules of the Church the votes of two-thirds of the Chapter of Cologne were necessary for their election. The Pope contrived to secure more than a third, and as Prince Clement alone had the Papal dispensation to accept the archbishopric, he was declared elected. Louis wrote very bitterly on the subject, and it was plain that he intended to uphold the claims of his candidate by arms.

He prepares for his descent on

England.

These steps of his enemies, together with the skill with which he himself presented his undertaking to the Catholics as political and aimed against France, to the Protestants as religious and aimed against Catholicism, enabled William to triumph over the difficulties which beset him, and he proceeded to make great preparations, both naval and military, veiling them under the thin excuse of an expedition against the Algerine pirates, who had lately appeared in the North of Europe. While thus engaged, William received from England an offer of support from two men of the greatest importance. One of these was Sunderland, the most trusted minister of James. This unprincipled nobleman, to retain his offices, had lately become a convert to the Romish religion. But now seeing the threatened reaction against James, he contrived, by means of his wife and her lover Henry Sidney, to keep William well informed of what was going on in England. The other offer of friendship came from a man of even lower principles, but of greater talents, Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough. He and his wife had become absolute masters of the Princess Anne. His accession to William's plans therefore implied that of the Princess. He was moreover really at the head of the army, though Feversham was nominally its leader, and now devoted himself with the basest treachery to the task of undermining the fidelity of the commanders of the army, while declaring his loyalty to James, and became in fact the head of a great plot for the desertion of the monarch.

James obsti

take warning.

It was in vain that to the eyes of all Europe the objects of William's preparations were obvious; James refused to believe nately refuses to them. It was in vain that Louis attempted to save him in spite of himself, and declared to the StatesGeneral that he had taken the King of England under his protection, and should treat any action against him as a declaration of war. James, with ill-timed anger, declared that this was not so, and asked whether he had fallen so low as to require, like a petty Elector of Cologne, the support of France, forgetting at the wrong moment the servile position with regard to that country he had been contented so long to occupy. Thus did he throw away his last chance. Louis, justly angry at his display of pride, withdrew the troops he was preparing to pour into the Spanish Netherlands, and began a rapid and successful campaign against the Imperialists on the Rhine.

This movement withdrew the last danger from William, and gave him time to carry out his plans. He could now without danger