Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/60

46 by taking the field on that side; and he had suddenly thrown an army into Savoy, taken the city of Nice, and found the duke enough to do to hold his own. By this means he had been able to bring from the maritime Alps a large body of troops to this siege.

William was sensible of the disastrous effect which the fall of Mons would have on the spirits of his allies, and on those courts of Sweden and Denmark which were brought to the very point of joining the confederation; he therefore rushed from his place of temporary retirement, mustered the forces of the states-general, sent dispatches with all haste after the German princes, urging them to bring up all the troops they could collect to the rescue of Mons, and to the generals of the Spanish troops in Flanders. By hasty marches he advanced towards the devoted city; but all the vices of confederations were now glaringly apparent in contrast to the single and prompt action of a despot. The German princes, naturally slow, were already far off; the Spanish generals were utterly unprepared for such an emergency; and William found it almost impossible to procure even horses to drag his artillery and stores. He sent on, however, hasty messengers to apprise the people of Mons of his approach; but the vigilance of the French prevented their reaching the city. An immense quantity of artillery was thundering against the walls of Mons; breaches were made in them; a redoubt was carried, sword in hand; shells fell in showers on the roofs and streets of the town, which was burning in ten places. The inhabitants, appalled by the terrible destruction apparently awaiting them, threatened to murder the garrison if they did not surrender; and the garrison, ignorant of the relief which William was bringing, surrendered on the 20th of April. William, deeply chagrined, returned to the Hague, and thence hastened back to London; whilst Louis, in proud triumph, returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations of his courtiers on his splendid 'coup-de-main.

On William's return to London he found his government had tried the traitors, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott. Preston and Ashton were found guilty, and sentenced to death; Elliott was not brought to trial. By some it has been asserted that the evidence of his being admitted into the real interior of the plot was not clear; by others, that he purchased his escape by disclosures. Ashton was hanged on the 18th of January—the very day on which William had embarked at Gravesend for Holland. Preston, after much vacillation betwixt the desire to accept a proffered pardon and repugnance to the conditions attached to it—that of making a full disclosure of his accomplices—at length chose life and dishonour, and made charges against Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner, bishop of Ely, and William Penn. Clarendon was sent for a time to the Tower; Dartmouth, who was accused, as an admiral, of the heinous crime of intending to betray Portsmouth to the French, indignantly repelled the accusation, and died in the Tower without having been brought to trial. Turner escaped to France. Macaulay, in his recent history, only too much delighted to have a shadow of crimination of Penn, says that he was accused of writing to James to assure him that, with thirty thousand men, he might command England. But what are the facts? This message to James is on the evidence of the lying and infamous Melfort, whom Macaulay himself has shown to be totally unworthy of all belief; and Penn, so far from shrinking from the charge, went straight to Sidney, the secretary of state, and denied the whole allegation. That he had a friendly feeling for and commiseration of James, he did not deny; but he declared himself a faithful subject of William and Mary, and, so far from being willing to aid any design against them, if he became aware of any such he would at once discover it. Instead of clapping Penn in the Tower—which the government would have done, had they any such letters, which Macaulay pretends, inviting James to come over with thirty thousand men—he was suffered to depart in full freedom. He afterwards made a religious journey on the continent as a minister of the Society of Friends, which Macaulay terms "wandering and lurking about," when he returned to England; but without any attempt on the part of government to molest him.

But there were deeper and more real traitors than any of these around William—namely, admiral Russell, Sidney Godolphin, and Marlborough. These men, encouraged by the fall of Mons and the triumphant aspect of Louis's affairs, renewed with fresh activity their intrigues with the court of James. It was in vain that William heaped riches, honours, and places of confidence upon them; they were ready to receive any amount of favours, but still kept an eye open to the possible return of James, and made themselves secure of pardon from him, and kept him duly informed of all the intended movements of William both at home and on the continent. Russell was made high admiral in place of Torrington. He was treasurer of the navy, enjoyed a pension of three thousand pounds a year, and a grant from the crown of property of great and increasing value near Charing Cross. But, with an insatiable greediness, he still complained of unrequited services; and, having a shoal of poor and hungry relatives badgering him for places and pensions, he complained that their incessant demands could not be gratified; and he cherished the hope that he could sell his treason at a favourable crisis to king James at no mean price. Godolphin was first commissioner of the treasury, sate in the privy council, and enjoyed the confidence of the sovereign; his former conduct in being one of the most pliant tools of James, ready to vote for his act of indulgence, being overlooked. Yet he was sworn, through the agency of a Mr. Bulkeley, to serve the interests of James. Hand in hand with him went Marlborough, who, though he was now fast overcoming the long-retained prejudices of William, had been honoured by his commission in the expedition to Ireland, and by his warm approbation on his return, and had the prospect of a brilliant command of the army in Flanders, where he could indulge his highest ambition—was yet a most thorough traitor, making a hypocritical pretence of great sorrow to James for his desertion of him, and, through colonel Sackville, and Lloyd, the non-juring bishop of Norwich, offering, on a good opportunity, to carry over the whole army to James.

Amid these lurking treasons the exultation of the Jacobites over the fall of Mons was open and insolent. They came by swarms out of their hiding-places and thronged the park and the neighbourhood of the palace, even insulting the queen in her drives before William's return.