Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/42

28 distant; other circumstances widened the alienation, and on her death-bed Mary refused to see Anne.

The tories in the commons exerted themselves to carry the seventy thousand pounds for the princess, but the opposition was strong enough to reduce the grant to fifty thousand pounds—the same sum which William had offered; so that Anne, without getting more, had got that at the expense of a painful quarrel with her nearest relative. The countess of Marlborough obtained her share of the spoil in a settlement of one thousand pounds a year on her by Anne; and the means of drawing a much larger sum was thus obtained, all Anne's affairs being under the control of the Churchills.

The next measure on which the whigs and tories tried their strength was a bill brought in by the whigs to do what was already sufficiently done in the bill of rights—to declare William and Mary the rightful and lawful sovereigns of this realm, and next to declare that all the acts of the late convention should be declared valid as laws. The first part, already sufficiently recognised, was quietly passed over; but the tories made a stout opposition to extending the act beyond the year 1689, on the plea that nothing could convert the self-constituted convention into a legal parliament. But the distinction was a mere party distinction, for, if the convention was not a legal body, nothing could render its acts so. The earl of Nottingham, who headed this movement, entered a strong protest on the journal of the lords against it, and this protest was signed by many peers, and amongst them the whig peers, Bolton, Macclesfield, Stamford, Bodford, Newport, Monmouth, Herbert, Suffolk, Delamere, and Oxford. The bill, however, was carried, and with still more ease in the commons.

The tories, mortified at the triumph of the whigs, now brought in a bill to change the military government of the city of London as the lieutenancy of the counties had been changed. They thanked the king for having by his measures brought in so many churchmen and thrown out so many nonconformists. This bill the whigs managed to impede till the session closed; but not so with another from the tory party, ordering payment of the five hundred pounds fines incurred by all who had taken office or served as magistrates without taking the necessary oaths of allegiance and supremacy, &c. This was carried, and the money ordered to be paid into the exchequer, and a separate account of it to be kept.

This defeat of the whigs only aroused to more fierceness the party warfare. They hastened to bring in a bill compelling every person in office, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, to take an oath, to abjure king James and his right to the crown, thence called the Abjuration Oath. This oath might, moreover, be tendered by any magistrate to any subject of their majesties whatever, and whoever refused it was to be committed to prison, and kept there till he complied. It was hoped by the whigs that this bill would greatly embarrass the tories who had taken office under the present monarchy, and accordingly it met with a decided opposition in the commons, and was thrown out by a majority of one hundred and ninety-two to one hundred and seventy-eight. It was then, with some alteration, introduced as a fresh bill into the lords. William went down to the lords to listen personally to the debate; and several of the peers made very free and pertinent remarks on the uselessness of so many oaths to bind any disloyal or unconscientious person. Lord Wharton, who had fought for the Long Parliament, and, therefore, must have been called on, under the many changes which had since taken place, to swear very contradictory oaths, said he was a very old man, and that he had taken so many oaths in his time, that he was afraid he could not have kept them all; in fact, there were more than he could remember, and that he would be no party to laying fresh snares either for his own soul or those of his neighbour. The earl of Macclesfield, who had come over with William from Holland, as captain of the English volunteers, said he had made very free with his oath to king James, and was loth to be put into the temptation to break more. Marlborough thereupon expressed his surprise to hear lord Macclesfield say what he did, for he was sure no one had done more to effect the revolution than he had, and that it appeared inconsistent to hesitate even to give the revolution all possible strength. Macclesfield, stung by the observation, retorted, that the earl of Marlborough did him too much honour, in ascribing so principal a share in the revolution to him. That there were others who had gone much further than he had done: that he had simply been a rebel, and should always be ready to venture his head whenever the laws or the liberties of his country required it. This was a hard blow for Marlborough, for it implied that he had been something more than a mere rebel, that is, a traitor; and yet such an one as kept his head out of danger by only going over openly when little danger was left. The tone of the house was getting very venomous, when the bishop of London threw it into a convulsion of laughter, by first declaiming on the uselessness of multiplying oaths, and then adding that he was ready to take any the government chose to bring forward.

The bill was defeated in the lords by being committed, but never reported, for on the 20th of May, after king William had given his consent to the bill, which he had recommended, for conferring on the queen full powers to administer the government during his absence in Ireland, and also to that of revising the quo warranto judgment against the City of London, the marquis of Caermarthen appeared in the house with an act of grace ready drawn and signed by the king.

William had tried in vain to curb the deadly animosities of the contending parties by bills of indemnity. They could be discussed and rejected, not so an act of grace: that issued from the sovereign, and came already signed to parliament. It must be at once accepted or rejected by each house, and in such a case as the present, where it was meant as a healing and pacifying act, it could not be rejected without a disloyal and ungracious air. Accordingly it was received with the deference which it deserved, and both houses gave their sanction to it, standing bare-headed, and without one dissenting voice. By this act William achieved a great triumph, and presents a most striking contrast to the two monarchs who had preceded him, who had made the throne swim in the blood of those who had opposed their father or themselves. If we call to mind the sanguinary commencement of the reign of Charles II., dyed in the blood of the regicides, and the horrors committed by