Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/109

] done to promote a union of the Dutch and Scotch for the infringement of the English commerce. They joined in an address to the king representing that the late act of the Scottish parliament granting to the company the right to trade to the East and West Indies, and freeing them from all taxation, would enable them to undersell the English merchants, and make Scotland the mart for all the commodities of the East and West Indies; that it was impossible for the English merchants to bear up under such disadvantages, for the Scotch would clandestinely introduce their importations into England, and thus completely undermine them.

The king admitted that he had been imposed on by the Scotch ministers, and soon after removed the marquis of Tweeddale, and the two secretaries of state. But the committee of both houses did not let the matter rest. The East India Company, at the bottom of the movement, sent in a petition, affirming that the Scotch company were guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour in taking au oath de fidele in this kingdom, and demanding their impeachment. But Roderick Mackenzie, who was to prove this fact, escaped, and the inquiry failed. It served, however, to render William extremely unpopular in Scotland. "When," says Burnet, "it was understood in Scotland that the king had disowned that act from which it was expected that great riches should flow into that kingdom, it is not easy to conceive how great and how general an indignation spread over the whole kingdom." Nor was the ferment less here. The English merchants complained so loudly both of the injury done by these means and by the war itself, that a motion was made in the commons for establishing a council of trade for watching over and protecting the commerce of England; that the commissioners constituting the council should be nominated by parliament, but that none of them should be members of parliament.

William took great offence at this proposal; he declared it an attempt to usurp his prerogative, and he and his immediate advisers suspected that if this council were once established, it would soon enlarge its powers, if nominated by parliament, proceed in a while to appoint convoys and cruisers on pretence of protecting trade, which would only require another step to include the affairs and the payment of the navy. What greatly piqued William was, that Sunderland, who had lately been received into his favour, was one of the most zealous advocates of this rival power in the executive. But from this danger the king was rescued by another, which at first appeared formidable, but which eventually served to restore his popularity.

This was no other than a great Jacobite plot for his assassination, with which the year 1696 opened. James had tried the effect of declarations proposing to protect the liberties of the subject and the rights of the established church, and nobody believed him, and with good reason. Even Bossuet, the celebrated bishop of Meaux, had been induced, at the command of Louis, to give his opinion, that James might fairly promise all this with a secret determination to break his word the moment that he was firmly restored. The infamous Melfort had written to cardinal Janson, inclosing Bossuet's opinion, to get him to procure the pope's sanction to this Jesuitical ruse, but, from some cause, the packet never went, and has been discovered in the archives of Versailles. And this letter of Melfort's was written at the same time that James signed the declaration declaring that he intended to come to England "to vindicate his own right, and to establish the liberties of his people," and praying God to give him success in his enterprise, as he "sincerely intended to keep his word." His prayer was, in fact, heard; for, as he never meant to keep his word, so he had never any chance of breaking it. Seeing, therefore, that empty pretences availed nothing, he thought seriously of invasion, and of something worse, of preparing his way by the assassination of William. During the winter of 1695-6 Louis fell into his schemes. In 1694 two emissaries, Crosley and Parker, had been sent over from St. Germains to London to excite the Jacobites to insurrection; but they had been discovered and imprisoned. Parker contrived to escape out of the Tower, but Crosley was examined; but, nothing being positively proved against him, he was liberated on bail. It was now resolved to send over fresh and more important agents—one of these no less a person than the duke of Berwick, James's son, and Sir George Barclay.

The fact was that there were two parts of the scheme. As in the conspiracy of Grey and Raleigh in the time of James I., there was "the main plot" and "the bye plot," so there was here a general scheme for an invasion, and a particular scheme for the assassination of the king. This assassination was to come off first, and an army and transports were to be ready on the French coast, to take advantage of the consternation occasioned by the murder. The management of the general plot was confided to Berwick, and of the murder plot to Barclay. Berwick must be supposed to be well aware of the assassination scheme from the first, for both James and Louis undoubtedly were, and the whole movements of the army and navy were made dependent on it. But if Berwick did not know of it at first, he was made acquainted with it in London, as we shall see; but it was the policy of both Louis, James, and Berwick, to avoid all appearance of a cognisance, which would have covered them with infamy;—that was to fall on the lesser tools of their diabolical scheme, and they were to reap the benefit of it.

A mode of communication betwixt the court of St. Germains and the Jacobites in England had long been established through a man named Hunt, who was a noted smuggler. This man had a house about half a mile from the Sussex coast, on Romney Marsh. The whole country round was a boggy and dreary waste, therefore having scarcely an inhabitant, was admirably adapted to both the smuggling in of French goods and French plots. There Barclay landed in January and proceeded to London. He was followed in a few days by the duke of Berwick, and very soon by about twenty coadjutors, some of whom were troopers of James's guard, amongst them one named Cassels, another brigadier Ambrose Rookwood, one of a family which had been in almost every plot since the gunpowder plot, and a major John Bernardi, a man of Italian origin.

James saw and instructed many of these men himself before their leaving St. Germains, and furnished them with funds. He had given Barclay eight hundred pounds to pay expenses and engage coadjutors, which Barclay complained