Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/545

] the archbishop of Canterbury, to do it; but as the primate from policy declined it, James took it for granted that they were secretly admitted to be unanswerable. He therefore had them printed in magnificent style, and appended to them his own signature, asserting that they were his late brother's own competition, and left in his own handwriting. He had this proof of Charles's Romanism distribute liberally to his courtiers, to the prelates and dignitaries of the church, and amongst the people, even delivering them out of his coach-window to the crowds as he drove about. He thus at once made known that his late brother had been secretly a Romanist, and that he was himself an open and uncompromising one.

His next step was to throw all the power of the government into the hands of the most unscrupulous catholics. His brother-in-law, Rochester, the lord treasurer, was nominally his prime minister, but Sunderland and a knot of catholics were the really ruling junto. Sunderland, one of the basest men that ever crawled in the dust of a court's corruption, was the head of this secret cabal. Sunderland, in the last reign, had been a violent exclusionist. He had intrigued with the duchess of Portsmouth, through her, if possible, to bring Charles to consent to this measure; but so soon as James was on the throne, he became his most servile tool, declaring that as he had nothing to hope but from the king's clemency and his own efforts to make compensation for the past, James could have no more efficient servant. James, who was a mean soul himself, did not spurn this meanness, but made use of it, and truly Sunderland earned his dirty bread. Avarice was his master vice, and he would have sold two souls for money if he had them. He retained the post of president of the council, and held with it his old one of secretary of state; whilst observing the course which James was taking, he did not despair to wrest from the stanch protestant Rochester his still more lucrative office of lord treasurer. He had not the foresight to perceive—what Mammon, always looking on the money bags, has—that the project which James entertained to restore Romanism must bring a speedy destruction on them all. This sordid minister was at the same time in the pay of Louis, at the rate of six thousand pounds a year, to betray all his master's most secret counsels to him. With Sunderland was associated in the secret Romish junta—Sunderland himself not being an avowed catholic, but a secret professor—some of those catholic lords who had been imprisoned on account of the popish plots—Arundel, Bellasis, and William Herbert, earl of Powis. To these were added Castlemaine, the man who for a title and revenue had sold his wife to Charles II. He had been imprisoned, too, on account of the popish plot and was ready to take vengeance by assisting to destroy his protestant enemies and their church together. With him were associated two of the most profligate and characterless men of that profligate age—Jermyn, celebrated for his duels and his licentious intrigues, and lately created by James lord Dover, and a man familiarly named Dick Talbot—whom James had also for these crimes, which were merits in James's eyes, made earl of Tyrconnel. These merits were, that Talbot was ready for any service of unmanly villainy that his master could desire. Like another prime favourite and associate of James, lord chancellor Jeffreys, Tyrconnel was notorious for his drinking, gambling, lying, swearing, bullying, and debauchery. He was equally ready to lie away a woman's character or to assassinate a hotter man than himself. In the last reign, when it was desired by the court to ruin the character of James's wife, Anne Hyde, that she might be got rid of, with colonel Berkeley he joined in the infamous association that they had had the most familiar intrigues with her. When they did not succeed with James, they as readily confessed that the whole was a lie. A man with the least spark of honour in him would have remembered this unpardonable villainy to his now deceased wife, and have banished the wretch from court. James promoted him, and made him one of his most intimate companions. Tyrconnel ordered to murder the duke of Ormond, and was rewarded for his readiness by being made commander of the forces in Ireland; but his services were chiefly at present demanded at court, where he occupied the same post as Chiffinch had discharged for Charles II.—that of royal pander.

To this precious cabal was added father Petre, the Jesuit provincial, brother of lord Petre, and the organ of the Jesuits at court. The pope, too, had his agents at court, Adda, his nuncio, and a vicar apostolic, but these advocated cautious measures, for Innocent XI. had a difficult card to play in the popedom. Louis, the greatest of the catholic kings, was the most dangerous enemy of the temporal power of the pope, as of every other temporal power, and the Jesuits were all at variance with him, because he leaned toward the Jansenist party, which at this time was in the ascendancy, through the triumphant attacks on the Jesuits of Pascal in his "Lettres d'un Provincale." The Jesuits, on the contrary, advocated all James's views. These generally subtle men seemed driven, by their falling estimation all over Europe, to clutch at a hope of power here, and they had at all times been famed for their sly policy of insinuation than for their caution and moderation when successful. For their high-handed proceedings they had then, as they have since, been driven again and again from almost every Christian country. They did not display more than their ordinary foresight in the affairs of James.

But we should not possess a complete view of the position and character of James's court if we did not take in a few other actors, the French king's agents, and the king's mistresses. To Barillon, who had so long been ambassador at the English court, and the agent of Louis's bribes, the French king had sent over Bonrepaux; and whilst Barillon attached himself to Sunderland and the secret catholic cabal, Bonrepaux devoted his attentions to Rochester and his section of the ministry, so that Louis learned the minutest movements and opinions of both parties. These parties, in their turn, made use of the king's mistresses, for James, although in disposition the very opposite of the gay Charles, was, with all his moroseness and profession of zealous piety, just as loose in his adulteries, and much more disgusting. James, amongst his other depraved tastes, had a particular fancy for ugly women. Ugliness was as piquant to him as beauty to other men. He chose his first wife, though possessed of no recommendations of birth or family, from among the plainest women of the court; and his mistresses,