Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/79

] was contended, by a majority of both naval and military officers, that it was too late in the season—it was only the 28th of July—to attempt such an enterprise amid the dangerous rocks and under the guns of the forts and batteries of St. Malo. The fleet, therefore, returned to St. Helen's, much to the astonishment and disgust of the whole nation. High words arose betwixt the earl of Nottingham, the first lord of the admiralty, and Russell. The minister accused the admiral of cowardice and breach of duty in thus tamely giving up the enterprise against France.

Nottingham's hands were wonderfully strengthened by the deep discontent of the merchants, who complained that they were almost ruined by the so much vaunted victory of La Hogue; that before, we had a fleet in the Mediterranean and another out in the Channel protecting the traders; but that now the fleet had been concentrated to fight Tourville, and then, instead of taking up proper positions to check the French ships of war and privateers, had contemptibly returned to port; that the French, embittered by the defeat of La Hogue, had now sent out their men-of-war in every direction, and, finding our merchantmen defenceless, had committed the most awful havoc amongst them. Fifty vessels alone, belonging to London and Bristol, had been taken by them. More than a hundred of our trading vessels had been carried into St. Malo, which Russell, by destroying that port, could have prevented or avenged. That Bart, of Dunkirk, had scoured the Baltic and our own northern coasts, and Trouin had actually ascended the Shannon, and committed frightful mischief in Clare.

Amid such expressions of discontent king William returned from Holland to England. He landed on the 18th of October. He had had little success in his campaign; La Hogue was the only bright spot of the year, and the scene which now met him on his return was lowering and depressing. There had been an earthquake in Jamaica, which, in three minutes, had converted Port Royal, the most flourishing city of the West Indies, into a heap of ruins, burying one thousand five hundred of the inhabitants, and extending the calamity to the merchants of London and Bristol. The distress in England itself was general and severe. A rainy season had ruined the harvest, and reduced the people to a state of extreme misery. Bread riots were frequent, and the complaints of the excessive burthen of taxation were loud and general. Burglaries and highway robberies were of the most audacious kind. William, however, was not a man to sit and brood over such things. He at once sent out parties of cavalry into the districts where the robberies were frequent, and, by bribing some of the thieves, got information of the rest, whom his police hunted out industriously. Their chief captain, one Whitney, was taken and hanged, and the highways and domestic hearths were soon as secure as ever.

He called together parliament on the 4th of November, where there was every reason to expect no little faction and difficulties. Parliament was not merely divided into ministerialists and opposition, it was broken into sundry parties, all exasperated by one cause or another. The whigs were sore with their loss of office to a great extent; the lords were nettled at the commons refusing their claims put forward in the lord high steward's court bill, and were urged to contention by Marlborough and the other lords who had been imprisoned, and who were loud in denouncing the proceeding as a breach of their privileges. There was a great jealousy of William's employment of so many Dutch in preference to Englishmen, and the commons were as discontented with the manner in which public business was conducted.

William was aware of the difficult part he had to play, and in his opening speech he took care to put La Hogue in the foreground, and to congratulate them on this glorious victory gained by Englishmen. He confessed that the success of the campaign on land had been but moderate, but he praised in the highest terms the valour of the British soldiers. He expatiated on the power and the designs of France, told them that the cause of protestantism was the cause of England, that Louis must be humbled, and that for that purpose there must be still liberal supplies. He threw out a hint of carrying the war into France itself, and assured them that his own arms were identical with theirs, and that he would willingly sacrifice his life for the honour and welfare of the nation. To conciliate both houses, he condescended to ask their advice and assistance in putting the national affairs into the best possible condition—a piece of candour of which he speedily found reason to repent. Both houses voted him thanks for his gracious speech, and, immediately seizing on his request for advice, began to offer it in good earnest.

The lords at once took up the case of Marlborough, Huntingdon, and Scarsdale. They complained that in ungratefully persecuting Marlborough the court had gone the full length of treating the princes of Denmark with severity and indignity. Her guards had been taken away; when she went to Bath, the magistrates had orders to omit the honours due to royalty, and the church to omit her name in the prayers; and this simply because she had shown her attachment to the countess of Marlborough. Marlborough, thus supported by the lords, who had their own cause of pique about the lord high steward's court bill, and by the disrespect shown to the princess, was loud in his complaints of the harshness with which he had been treated; of being kept in prison with his noble friends in defiance of habeas corpus. The earl of Shrewsbury, the marquis of Halifax, the earls of Mulgrave, Devonshire, Montague, and Bradford, Stamford, Monmouth, and Warrington, supported him from various motives, many of them being whigs; and the Jacobites fanned the flame, hoping for a rupture. Lord Lucas, constable of the Tower, was ordered to produce the warrants of commitment, and the clerk of the king's bench to lay before them the affidavit of Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the treasury, on which they had been remanded; and they sharply cross-examined Smith. The judges were ordered to attend, and the lords passed a resolution that the law had been violated in the case of the noble prisoners. They then consulted on the best mode of fully discharging them. The debate was so violent that the ministers were alarmed, and proposed to the king to adjourn parliament till the 17th of the month, and in the interim to liberate the noblemen from their bail. Accordingly, on the re-assembling of the lords, they were informed that the king had discharged the recognisances of the accused nobles, and the lords sullenly dropped the question.