Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/76

62 could scarcely believe that so demoniacal a deed could have been done in a Christian country. The Jacobites did not fail to dilate on its infamy with particular emphasis. The whole frightful particulars were gleaned up industriously by the non-jurors from the soldiers of this regiment, which happened the next summer to be quartered in England. All the execration due to such a deed was liberally showered on the courtiers, and the actors of the brutal butchery, and on the king who had sanctioned it. Terror, if not conscience, seized on the chief movers in it. Breadalbane sent his steward to Glencoe, to induce the miserable inhabitants who had returned to their burnt-up valley to sign a paper asserting that they did not charge him with any participation in the crime, promising in return to use his influence with the king to obtain a full pardon and immunity from forfeiture for them all. Glenlyon was shunned as a monster wherever he appeared; but Stair, so far from showing any shame or remorse, seemed to glory in the deed. As for William, there was a zealous attempt to make it appear that he did not know of what had been done; and when his warrant was produced, then that he was deceived as to the circumstances of the case. Unfortunately for William's reputation there was a searching inquiry into the facts of the affair, and when he did know these in all their atrocity, he failed to punish the perpetrators. Stair was for the time dismissed, but very soon restored to William's service; and after this all attempts would be futile to absolve him from gross want of feeling and of justice in the case. It is a black spot on his fame, and must remain so. Burnet, who is always anxious to defend William, says that, from the letters and documents produced which he himself read, so many persons were concerned in the business, that "the king's gentleness prevailed to a fault," and so he did not proceed against them; a singular kind of gentleness! At the very least, the blood-guiltiness of Breadalbane, Stair, and Glenlyon was so prominent, and he were so few, that they ought to have been made examples of; and such a mark of the sense of the atrocity of the crime would have wiped from William's reputation the now clinging stain.

Scarcely had William left England in the spring, when the country was menaced by an invasion; and whilst he was contending with Luxembourg in Flanders, the queen and her ministers had been as actively contending with real and imaginary plots, and with the French fleet at La Hogue. The papists of Lancashire had for some time bean particularly active in encouraging in king James the idea that he would be welcomed again in England by his subjects. One Lant, a carpenter, had been dispatched to St. Germains, and brought back assurances that his majesty would, in the course of the spring, certainly land in England. He also sent over colonel Parker, one of the parties engaged to assassinate William, to concert the necessary measures with the catholics and Jacobites for the invasion. Parker assured them that James would embark at La Hogue with thirty thousand men. Johnson, a priest, was said to be associated with Parker to murder William before his departure if possible; but he was gone already when they arrived.

The great minister of Louis, Louvois, was dead. He had always opposed these ideas of invasion of England as absurd and impracticable. His removal enabled James to persuade Louis to attempt the enterprise. It was determined to muster a fleet of eighty sail. The count de Tourville commanded five-and-forty of them, and under him the count D'Estrees thirty-five more. The most active preparations were making for the completion of all things necessary for the equipment of this fleet, and the army which it was to carry over. The ships under Tourville lay at Brest, those of D'Estrees at Toulon; they were to meet at Ushant, and take on board the army at La Hogue. James was in high spirits; he was puffed up by the invitations which the catholic emissaries had brought him; he had, he believed, firmly won over the admirals of the fleet, Russell, Carter, Delaval, and Killigrew. Whilst in this elation of mind he sent over invitations to many protestant ladies of quality to attend the expected accouchement of his queen. He said many base aspersions had been cast on the birth of his son, and he desired now to prevent a recurrence of such; he therefore offered to all the distinguished persons invited safe conducts both for going and returning from the French monarch. No one accepted the invitation; and a daughter was born to James about which no one in England very much concerned themselves. But the preparations of James and Louis occasioned similar preparations in England. The militia was called out; London was strongly guarded by troops; the train-bands of the southern counties appeared in arms on the coasts; the beacons were all kept in vigilant order, and the fleet was manned and equipped with all possible speed and strength.

The invitation of James to the birth of his daughter was speedy followed by a proclamation to his subjects in England. James had always done himself more harm by his declarations than all the efforts of his friends and allies could do him good; and this was precisely of that character. He expressed no regret for any of his past actions or measures; he betrayed no suspicion, even, that he might have governed more wisely. On the contrary, he represented himself as having always been right, good, and gracious, and his subjects wrong, captious, and unreasonable. He had always meant and done well, but he had been shamefully maligned. He now promised to maintain the church indeed; but then people had had too recent a proof of how he had maintained it in Ireland. He meant to pardon many of his enemies, but at the same time added such a list of proscriptions as looked more like a massacre than an amnesty. Amongst those expressly excepted from all pardon were the duke of Ormond, the marquis of Winchester, the earls of Sunderland, Danby, and Nottingham, the lords Delarmere, Wiltshire, Colchester, Cornbury, and Dunblane; the bishop of St. Asaph; Drs. Tillotson and Burnet. He excepted not even the poor fishermen who at Feversham had mistaken him for a Jesuit priest on his flight, and called him "hatchet-face;" all judges, magistrates, sheriffs, jurymen, gaolers, turnkeys, constables, and every one who had acted under William in securing and condemning any Jacobite; and all justices and other authorities who should not immediately on his landing abandon the present government and support him; and all gaolers who should not at once set at liberty all prisoners confined for any conspiracy in favour of James, or for any political deed on that side. In short, such was the Draconian rigour