Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/133

] pages, and since then his private secretary. The earl of Portland beheld this new attachment with uneasiness, as well as the renewed marks of favour which the king lavished on his mistress, Mrs. Villiers. To be rid of Portland's jealousy, he sent him to Paris as ambassador, but at the same time removed Sir William Trumball, Portland's friend and secretary, from his office, and gave it to Vernon, who had been under-secretary to Shrewsbury. Portland had set out for Paris in January, into which he made so magnificent an entrance as astonished the French. He was well received by Louis, but found himself wholly unable to effect any mitigation of the persecution of the protestants, or the removal of James and his court to Avignon, according to the private agreement attached to the treaty of Ryswick. On his return to England he found Keppel created earl of Albemarle, and retired from all his employments in the palace with disgust. He is supposed, however, to have received private overtures of great importance from Louis to convey to William, and we shall soon find him engaged to carry out these plans by what was called "the treaty of partition."

Whilst Portland was vainly endeavouring to carry his mission in Paris, the French ambassador in London was zealously labouring to restore those commercial connections betwixt the countries which the war had destroyed; but he, too, was disappointed in his object. Formerly England had taken from France large quantities of linen, silks, hats, paper, stuffs, wines, &c.; but all these commodities had, during the war, been obtained from other countries—wines from Spain and Portugal, linen from Holland, and many of the other articles were now manufactured by the French refugees whom the bigotry of Louis had driven out with their trades on account of their religion; and the English were not disposed to break with their new connections. On the contrary, parliament showed every disposition to maintain and protect these new connections. So far from admitting freely the French articles, they enforced the laws against smuggling them in. At the instance of the refugee manufacturers of lutestrings and alamodes, who complained of the illicit trade in them, and that this trade during the war had been made a cover for carrying secret intelligence betwixt the court of St. Germains and the malcontents here, they arrested a number of men whose names pointed them out to be French, or of French origin chiefly, for smuggling transactions, fined them heavily, and imprisoned them till the fines were paid. Because the French, too, had seduced some English manufacturers of woollen cloths, and set up a manufactory in Picardy, the commons brought in a bill rendering more rigorous the penalties on the exportation of wool, fullers'-earth, and scouring-clay.

William prorogued parliament on the 5th of July. He had no cause to be in very good humour with it; for besides insisting on the disbanding of the bulk of the army, it reminded him before the close of the session that it expected the dismissal of the troops to take place without delay. It sent to him requesting a list of all that were already disbanded, as well as of those that had to be disbanded, and also of all the officers who were, or were to be put, on half-pay. There was considerable murmuring even at the retention of officers on half-pay, as but another mode of keeping up the means of raising an army at a few days' notice; the officers, it was said, being the main requisite. William, however much chagrined, concealed his feelings. Only two days after the prorogation he dissolved the parliament, and summoned a new one for the 24th of August. He even made preparation for his summer visit to Holland, though there was no war, but before he went he was obliged to appoint proper persons to take charge of the heir apparent, the duke of Gloucester, the son of the princess Anne, who was now in his ninth year. Anne was extremely importunate that her great friend Marlborough should take the charge of him; and William, not being able to persuade Shrewsbury to accept that office, who was still sensitively suffering under the accusations of the late conspirators, gave way, and made Marlborough governor. He at the same time, to do the thing graciously, restored Marlborough to his rank and his place at the council board. This appointment relieved him from the necessity of placing the boy-prince in the hands of Anne's near relative, earl Rochester, who was a violent tory and leader of the high-church party. With Marlborough as governor of the young duke, he associated bishop Burnet as preceptor, confident that his education and morals would be in good keeping, and that no sentiments but those of high respect for his uncle the king would find a way into his mind from the bishop, who was a most faithful friend and servant of William. The commons, however, were highly indignant at the appointment of Burnet, and the tories in both houses, not forgetting that in his pastoral letter in the year 1691 he used the phrase of William and Mary being conquerors. On the present occasion Marlborough defended the choice of the bishop and carried him through, and from that moment the two keepers of the royal youth were great friends, and discharged their duties with much cordiality towards each other.

Towards the end of July William went to Holland, and having addressed the states-general and given audience to a number of ambassadors at the Hague, he betook himself to his favourite seat at Loo, where, in August, he was joined by Portland, the pensionary Heinsius, his great adviser, and the count Tallard, an emissary from Louis XIV. In this retirement they discussed one of the boldest and most unscrupulous projects which could possibly be entertained by statesmen of any claims to moral character. That the scheme was Louis XIV.'s there can be no question, and, daring as it was, served but as the blinding manœuvre which covered still more daring ones. The ultimate object of Louis was the seizure of the crown and territories of Spain, to which we have already alluded, in preparing the way for which he made a most perfect dupe of William, and contrived to drag him through so much dirt as left him very little authority to denounce the audacious robbery at which his Machiavellian rival aimed.

This plan of dividing the empire of Spain amongst such parties as should suit the views of William and Louis had been suggested by France, apparently, very soon after the peace of Ryswick, and had been going on all the spring in England in profound secrecy. One of the motives for sending Portland to Paris in January had been, to learn the full particulars of this scheme, which had been somewhat mysteriously opened to William. In writing to Heinsius on the