Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/581

] ere lying ready to convoy him away if he so willed. He was openly invited, as it were, to go away, and strictly prevented from going back or into bis kingdom. To a man of any intellect, nothing could be clearer than that, because his enemies so anxiously wished him to depart, it was his interest to stay; and this lord Middleton and his other friends earnestly impressed upon him. They assured him that still he had only to declare that he submitted himself to his parliament and people, was prepared to enter into the most solemn engagements to rule according to law, and that nothing could prevent him regaining his throne and the love of his people. The catholics themselves sent entreaties for him to yield, for it was clear that his endeavours for their supremacy were hopeless. Middleton supported this view by telling him that if he once quitted England he could never again set foot in it.

But James had now sunk the last manly feeling of a monarch who would dare much and sacrifice more to retain a noble empire for his family. A dastardly fear that if he remained he would be put to death like his father took possession of him. He made a last offer to the bishops, through the bishop of Winchester, as he had done to the city of London, to put himself into their hands for safety, but they also declined the responsibility, and he then gave all over as lost. On the evening of the 22nd of December he sat down before supper, and wrote a declaration of his motives for quitting the kingdom. He declared that his life was in danger from a nephew who had invaded his kingdom, thrown him from his palace and his capital, and had blackened his character by representing him as having imposed a supposititious child on the country, and was designing to destroy the constitution of the realm. He declared that he only retired till the country opened its eyes to the false pretences of liberty and religion with which it had been deluded, when he should be ready at its call. About midnight he stole quietly away with the duke of Berwick, his natural son, and, after much difficulty, through storm and darkness, reached a fishing smack hired for the purpose, which, on Christmas-day, landed him at Arableteuse, on the coast of France. Thence he hastened to the castle of St. Germains, which Louis had appointed for his residency, and where, on the 28th, he found his wife and child awaiting him. Louis also was there to receive him, and settled on him a revenue of forty-five thousand pounds sterling yearly, besides giving him ten thousand pounds for immediate wants. The conduct of Louis was truly princely, not only in thus conferring on the fallen monarch a noble and delightful residence, with an ample income, but in making it felt by his courtiers and by all France, that he expected the exiled family to be treated with all the respect due to the sovereigns of England.

Perhaps the reception of the fallen king was the warmer, because the most determined enemy of Louis was the man who had now occupied his seat. William had not concealed his imperishable hostility to Louis even in his lowest and weakest condition, and he now did not lose a moment in testifying that he still remembered his aggressions and insults in his new pride of place. True, he was not yet king, but exercising a kingly power, and Barillon, the French ambassador, was ordered to quit the kingdom in four-and-twenty hours. It was in vain that the wily Frenchman pretended to rejoice at the success of William, to throw money amongst the populace, and to drink the prince's health; though he begged earnestly for a little delay, it was refused.

The flight of James had removed the great difficulty of William—that of having recourse to some measure of harshness towards him, as imprisonment, or forcible deposition and banishment, which would have greatly lowered his popularity. The adherents of James felt all this, and were confounded at the advantage which the impolitic monarch had given to his enemies. The joy of William's partisans was great and unconcealed. In France the success of William was beheld with intense mortification, for it was the death-blow to the ascendancy of Louis in Europe, which had been the great object of all his wars, and the expensive policy of his whole life. In Holland the elevation of their stadtholder to the head of the English realm was beheld as the greatest triumph of their nation; and Dykvelt and Nicholas Witsen were deputed to wait on him in London and congratulate him on his brilliant success. But, notwithstanding all these favourable circumstances, there were many knotty questions to be settled before William could be recognised as sovereign. The country was divided into various parties, one of which, including the tories and the church, contended that no power or law could affect the divine right of kings; and that, although a king by his infamy, imbecility, or open violation of the laws might be restrained from exercising the regal functions personally, those rights remained untouched, and must be invested for the time in a regent chosen by the united parliament of the nation. Others contended that James's unconstitutional conduct and subsequent flight amounted to an abdication, and that the royal rights had passed on to the next heir; and the only question was, which was the true heir—the daughter of James, the wife of William, or the child called the prince of Wales? The more determined whigs contended that the arbitrary conduct of the house of Stuart, and especially of James, who attempted both to destroy the constitution and the church, had abrogated the original compact betwixt prince and people, and returned the right of electing a new monarch into the hands of the people; and the only question was, who should that choice be? There were not wanting some who advised William boldly to assume the crown by right of conquest; but he was much too wise to adopt this counsel, having already pledged himself to the contrary in his declaration, and also knowing how repugnant such an assumption would be to the proud spirit of the nation.

To settle all these points he called together, on the 23rd of December, the peers, all the members of any parliament summoned in the reign of Charles. II. who happened to be in town, and the lord mayor and aldermen, with fifty other citizens of London, at St. James's, to advise him as to the best mode of fulfilling the terms of his declaration. The two houses, thus singularly constituted, proceeded to deliberate on the great question in their own separate apartments. The lords chose Halifax as their speaker; the commons, Henry Powle. The lords came to the conclusion that a convention was the only authority which could determine the necessary measures; that in the absence of Charles II. a convention had called him back to the throne and