Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/373

 ing William to undertake the provisional government and to summon a convention. The Clarendon party complained of the partisan spirit in which he hurried these resolutions to the vote (Clarendon Diary, passim). On 22 Jan. 1689, on the meeting of the convention, he was regularly chosen speaker of the peers. He and Danby led the opposition to the regency scheme of Rochester and Nottingham, and subsequently he led the whig peers, who held that the crown should be offered to William, against Danby and his following of tories, who held that the crown had already devolved upon Mary. In the presence of Halifax's masterly strategy Danby withdrew his opposition, and it was carried without a division that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be declared king and queen. Upon the famous instrument by which they were called to the throne, Halifax, next to Somers, had the chief determining voice. A week later, in the banqueting house at Whitehall, in the name of the estates of the realm, Halifax solemnly requested the prince and princess to accept the crown (13 Feb.). ‘The revolution, as far as it can be said to bear the character of any single mind, assuredly bears the character of the large yet cautious mind of Halifax’.

‘The great expectation now was, who would have the preference, Halifax or Danby,’ as the new king's chief adviser. On 14 Feb. Halifax was appointed lord privy seal, while Danby had to be content with the presidency of the council. It seemed as if for some time to come Halifax might direct the policy of the new era; but, in reality, his political position was precarious. The tories regarded his abandonment of the regency position as perfidious, while to the extreme whigs his confidential position with William was a grievous offence. As early as July 1689 Mordaunt moved to have him deposed from the woolsack. All the disasters in Ireland were laid at his door, and his enemies, with vague imputations, demanded his dismissal from the service of the crown. The attacks had no influence whatever upon William. But, rendered sensitive by the loss of two of his sons within the year, Halifax himself determined to anticipate further persecution by resigning the woolsack, though he retained his seat on the council; he was still, too, in the inner cabinet and on the committee for the affairs of Ireland. In December he was summoned before the committee appointed to inquire who was answerable for the deaths of Russell, Sidney, and others. Tillotson testified that Lord Russell, in his last speeches, commended Halifax's humanity and kindness, and Halifax himself skilfully baffled the malevolent efforts made to implicate him, especially by John Hampden. Nevertheless, in the following February he resigned the privy seal, despite the remonstrances of William, who argued that he, too, was a trimmer. Shortly after his retirement appeared Dryden's dramatic opera ‘King Arthur,’ with a dedicatory epistle addressed in felicitous terms to Halifax. The frequent ‘shifting of the winds’ seemed to Dryden to portend a storm; a French invasion in behalf of James seemed not improbable, and it was during this autumn that Halifax entertained some advances by a Jacobite agent (Peter Cook). But, beyond providing for his security in the event of a counter-revolution, it is improbable that these negotiations had much significance, though to Macaulay they constitute the one serious blemish in Halifax's career (see, Orig. Papers, i. 236). In June 1692, during William's absence, he was struck off the council as a persistent absentee. A less ostensible reason was his having entered bail for Lord Marlborough, then in extremely bad odour at court (, Life of Marlborough, ii. 284, 298). Twice during this summer, however, the queen dined with him at Acton—a fact which seems to refute the statement that she had been offended by a slighting allusion to her father.

At Acton, where (as so much nearer the court than Rufford) he had settled after the revolution, Halifax was once more devoting himself to the production of pamphlets no less incisive than of old. In 1693 appeared his ‘Essay upon Taxes’ (reprinted in Somers Tracts, vol. iv. and in, Parl. Hist. vol. v.) and his ‘Maxims of State.’ The latter first appeared under the title of ‘Maxims found among the Papers of the great Almanzor’ (Guildhall Libr. Cat.), but they were included in the ‘Miscellanies’ of 1700. Next year was first published his ‘Rough Draught of a New Model at Sea,’ containing, among many notable passages, the admonition that the first article of an Englishman's political creed must be that he believeth in the sea; for, says the writer, ‘it may be said to England, Martha, Martha, thou art busy about many things, but one thing is necessary. To the question what shall we do to be saved in this world, there is no answer but this, Look to your moat.’

‘The Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflexions,’ published first in 1750, were probably written towards the close of Halifax's career, as mention is made of the Bank of England, which was not incor-