Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/577

] insubordination in London had been for some time growing even more menacing with the display of James's weakness; and the effect of a huge mob of Irish troops being let loose on the public was frightful in the extreme. This was a circumstance that William extremely resented, both because it endangered the public safety, and prevented that quiet transfer of the allegiance of the army to himself which would undoubtedly for the most part have taken place. He ordered Churchill and Grafton, in whom the English army had great reliance, to proceed to the head-quarters of the different regiments, and, by proclamation, to recall the soldiers to their standards. They were very successful; the majority of the men and officers re-assembled, and the Irish were ordered to deliver up their arms and disband, being offered their maintenance on their way to their own country. The bulk of them complied, but at Tilbury Fort they showed resistance, and a sentinel snapped his pistol at the duke of Grafton; it missed fire, and the man was instantly shot dead by an English soldier. About two hundred of the Irish garrison endeavoured to seize a vessel at Gravesend to make their escape in, but soon ran aground, and were secured.

In London the consequences of Feversham's act were as fearful as might have been expected. There was no government, no constituted authority to appeal to. Lord Rochester had continued loyal to the last; but the base desertion of James and the imminent danger at once decided him. He bade the duke of Northumberland muster the guards, and declare for William. The officers of the other regiments in London followed the advice, and endeavoured to keep together their men, declaring for the prince of Orange. The lords who had been summoned to council hastened into the city to concert measures with the lord mayor and aldermen for the public safety. A meeting was hastily called in Guildhall, where the peers, twenty-five in number, and five bishops, with Sancroft and the new archbishop of York at their head, formed themselves into a provisional council to exercise the functions of government till the prince of Orange should arrive, for whom they sent a pressing message, praying him to hasten and unite with them for the preservation of the constitution and the security of the church. The two secretaries of state were sent for, but Preston only came; Middleton denied the authority of the self-created council. The lieutenant of the Tower, Bevil Skeltor., was ordered to give up the keys to lord Lucas, and an order was sent to lord Dartmouth, desiring him to dismiss a11 popish officers from the fleet, and attempt nothing against the Dutch fleet. But no measures could prevent the outbreak of the mob in London. The animus against the catholics displayed itself on all sides. Under pretence of searching for papists, the hordes of blackguards from every low purlieu of London swarmed forth and broke into houses and plundered them at their pleasure. The office of Hills, the king's printer, whence had issued a constant stream of popish tracts, in recommendation of confession, image worship, and the supremacy of the Pope, was one of the first places ransacked and laid in ruins. Then the fury of the mob was turned against the catholic chapels in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Lime Street, St. John's, and Clerkenwell. They tore down the altars, shrines, pictures, confessionals, and benches, and male bonfires of them in the streets. Lime Street chapel was pulled down stick and stone. The crucifixes, pixes, and relics were paraded along the streets by the light of the tapers from the altars, amid the obscenest mockery and ribaldry; whilst thousands of sticks, swords, and poles were pointed with oranges.

In this style the mob next marched to demolish the houses of the catholic ambassadors. Barillon, in St. James's Square, they found well guarded by troops, and so marched forward to the Venetian envoy's, but found it equaly protected. The house of Ronquillo, however, the Spanish ambassador, was defenceless, and there they were fortunate enough to find the plate of the royal chapel, which James had sent thither, as well as that of many catholic families. They carried off the whole, destroyed the interior of his chapel, and set fire to the house, consuming a splendid library and many valuable manuscripts. It weighed nothing with the marauding herd that Ronquillo was an advocate of the prince of Orange, and his master in strict alliance with him, nor that the elector palatine was a protestant prince—enough that he was a cousin of James's; they destroyed the house of his ambassador, and that of the grand duke of Tuscany.

All this took place on the night of the 11th and on the 12th of December. As the night of the 13th set in, there arose a cry that the Irish were up, and were going to cut the throats of all the protestants. The disbanded Irish soldiers, it was said, were hastening towards the metropolis, tracking their way in carnage and robbery. The drums beat at one in the morning to collect the militia and train bands; lights were placed in all windows, and the streets bristled with pikes and bayonets. It was a night of unexampled horror. An attack was made on the house of lord Powis, in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and mobs and soldiers, to the number of a hundred thousand, kept the streets in a perpetual state of terror and anarchy. This acquired the name of the " Irish night," though no Irish made their appearance; and the same infamous Hugh Speke afterwards claimed the honour or the infamy of planning this attempt to procure a massacre of the catholics. To the honour of the English name, however, the fell purpose failed, and, in all this confusion, robbery, and spoliation, not a single catholic is said to have lost his life.

The mob, indeed, cried lustily for the Jesuit, father Petre, and, had he been found, he would probably have been pulled limb from limb; but, with Jesuit caution, he had taken care to get on the other side of the channel ten days before, as had also lord Melford, the Scottish secretary. Thousands, in fact, were up and flying for their lives on the discovery of James's escape; and many of these were stopped and brought back, as Mr. justice Jenner; the king's solicitors, Barton and, Graham; the two vicars-apostolic, Giffard and Leyburn; Obadiah Walker, of Oxford notoriety, and many others. The pope's nuncio was discovered mounted as a servant behind the carriage of the ambassador of Savoy, and was detained along with that minister and his whole suite till the will of the prince of Orange should be known, who granted them all passports.

But one trembling fugitive did not so easily evade his doom. The lord chancellor Jeffreys, baron of Wem, a man loaded with wealth, the wages of the most devilish wickedness, insolence, and cruelty, was now fleeing in mortal terror