Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/199

James II there supposed to have been thrown by him into the river (, p. 421, is clearly in error). He continued his journey in a carriage to Sheerness, where he had appointed a custom-house hoy to be in readiness. ‘With this,’ says Burnet (iii. 345), ‘his reign ended.’

James did not venture to reveal himself to the commander of the hoy. Moreover a gale was blowing; ballast had to be taken in; and thus it was that at 11 P.M., when the vessel was on the point of putting out again from Sheppey Island, she was boarded by fifty or sixty fishermen. James was roughly handled, was brought to Faversham, where his identity was discovered, and escorted by ‘seamen and rabble’ to the mayor's house. He was detained there for two days under arrest (Life, ii. 251–6; Hist. MSS. Comm. App. to 5th Rep. (1876) p. 319).

The news of the king's detention arrived in London 13 Dec., in a letter unaddressed but written in his own hand. The council of lords under Halifax immediately despatched Feversham with a troop of life-guards to set him at liberty. Middleton and a few others sent by the lords found their way to him even sooner. James was allowed to take his departure to Rochester, but William sent Zuylesteen to bid him remain there. On the afternoon of the intervening Sunday (16 Dec.) James was back in London. Accounts differ as to his reception (, ii. 572 n.; Life, ii. 272; Clarendon Correspondence, ii. 230; Diary of Sir Patrick Hume, ib., 231 n.; see also Dartmouth MSS. p. 244), but it raised his spirits for the moment. After his arrival he went to mass and dined in public, a jesuit saying grace (, iii. 61). He also held a council, at which he ‘refused all proposals’ (ib.). But he assented to the introduction of William's Dutch guards into St. James's (Clarendon Correspondence, ii. 226n.; cf., ii. 574); declined to reassemble his disbanded army, and told Balcarres and Dundee, who had come from Scotland with projects of aid, that he was bound for France (Memoirs of Colin, Earl of Balcarres, pp. xv–xvi; Les derniers Stuarts, ii. 431; , iv. 71). The lords at Windsor, 16 Dec., concluded that he should take up his abode outside London. On 17 Dec. James was sent back to Rochester.

Here he received numerous messages entreating him to yield, including an address from the primate and the bishops (Life, ii. 270–2); Middleton and Dundee advised him to stay. On the night of the 22nd he left Rochester with Berwick, passing by a back door to the Medway, and on the morning of the 23rd boarded a smack which took him out of the Thames (, p. 334). He left behind him a paper, in which he charged the Prince of Orange with having, while posting his own guards at Whitehall, given him notice to quit on the following morning (cf., pp. 341–2; Life, ii. 263 seqq.; ‘Reflections on “H.M.'s Reasons for withdrawing himself from Rochester,”’ in State Tracts of Revolution and Reign of William III, 1705, i. 126–8). James also dwelt, not without dignity and force, on the accusations connected with his son's birth (Life, ii. 273–5). Various accounts circulated as to James's immediate motives. Halifax was said to have terrified him by statements as to personal violence intended against him by the Prince of Orange (, pp. 433–4–6). The fiction, according to which the reign of James II in England and in Scotland was supposed to have terminated by his flight from Whitehall, 11 Dec. 1688, was consummated by William's acceptance of the Declaration of Right, 13 Feb., and of the Claim of Right, 11 April 1689.

At 3 A.M. on Christmas day 1688, James, after a rough voyage, landed at Ambleteuse, under the guns of a French man-of-war. After hearing mass he received the Duke d'Aumont, with whom he dined at Boulogne (Les derniers Stuarts, ii. 456–8). He received a warm welcome on his journey through France. He had intended to proceed to Versailles; but Louis insisted on receiving him at St. Germains, where the queen and Prince of Wales had already found shelter. The reception has been often described (by, edit. 1862, viii. 399–401; , ii. 292–5; , pp. 205–8; cf. Les derniers Stuarts, ii. 390–2). St. Germains was freely assigned to the English royal family, with a monthly pension of between forty and fifty thousand francs and fifteen thousand scudi; other courtesies were heaped upon them. While the queen was generally admired, James looked old, fatigued, and dull (ib. ii. 471, 477). He paid visits at Paris to the jesuits and Carmelites (ib. pp. 481–2; cf., pp. 211, 225 seqq.).

James's first political efforts were feeble. On 2 Feb. 1689 his equerry, Ralph Sheldon, arrived in London to fetch away the king's equipage (Clarendon Correspondence, ii. 251; Dartmouth MSS. p. 260). But he also carried with him a long epistle from James to the peers at Westminster. Though not allowed to be read to the house it was generally known there, and is preserved among the papers (MSS. of the House of Lords, 1689–90, p. 19). A postscript, dated 26 Jan., offered a free pardon to all who had taken part against him, accompanied, however, by