Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/586

 560 least of the Commons was still strong was manifested by the grant of a revenue of two millions, and by the enactment of severer measures against treason. If the loyalty of the nation had begun to waver, it was also for the time strengthened by the premature and headstrong attempts at rebellion by Argyll in Scotland, and Monmouth in England. The renewal of the Covenanting persecutions had, however, branded the name of James with the hatred of the Scottish people, and the butchery of the Bloody Assizes, which in England followed the discomfiture of Monmouth, left behind it a widespread horror, the repres sion of which only wrought effects on the mind of the nation the deeper and more ineffaceable. But James was too intent on his one aim the establishment of irrespon sible despotism to scrutinize or consider the indirect con sequences of his acts. In that aim was necessarily involved the restoration of Popery, because James was a Papist, but happily the accidental prominence given to this secondary and subordinate aim made the other impossible of success. In his imprudent zeal to accomplish his purpose, James outran the wishes even of Rome, but that was because the purpose which to the one was secondary was to the other primary. James required both a large standing army and freedom from the control of parliament ; but for these ends a foreign source of money supply was at first necessary, and this he could only obtain by an arrangement which, while it was unpalatable to him self and loathsome to the nation, was far from acceptable to the pope, namely, by becoming the temporary vassal of Louis of France, whose ambitious designs, notwith standing his intense and virulent Catholicism, had awakened the jealousy of Rome. Besides, many of the individual acts of James were prompted by the Jesuits, with whom the pope was then at feud. The progress of James s ill-starred design was marked by clear and well- defined steps. While all England was shocked by the cruelties following the revocation by Louis of the edict of Nantes, James resolved to demand the repeal of the Test Act, and when this was refused by parliament he fabricated by means of corrupted judges a semblance of legal sanction for his disregard of its provisions, and not only encamped an army on Hounslow Heath, chiefly officered by Catholics, but manifested his determination that henceforth to be a Catholic should be a recommendation and not a bar to the highest offices of state, by creating Father Petre and five Catholic peers privy councillors. An appearance of liberality was indeed given to his policy by a declaration of indulgence to Protestant dissenters, but this only quickened suspicion as to his ultimate purpose. Moreover, while a commission was illegally appointed to restrain the discussion of political subjects by the clergy, the publication of Romanist sentiments was freely permitted, monasteries and Catholic schools were being rapidly augmented, and an attempt was made to swamp the Protestantism of the universities by conferring the principal dignities as they became vacant on Catholics. This final step, and a second declaration of indulgence of April 1688, which contained a provision for the prosecution of those clergymen who might refuse to read the declaration in their pulpits, dissipated the last atoms of veneration in the minds of the Tories for the divine right of the king ; and after the birth of a son to James in May of the same year nearly every party in the state was prepared to support the invitation to William of Orange to aid in the restitution of the liberties of the country. The discussion of the motives which induced William to accept this invitation, and the results which followed his landing in England, belong properly to the article on WILLIAM III. James, finding the bulwarks of despotism crumbling around him, after refusing the advice of a council of lay and temporal peers to open negotiations with William, made a pretence of yielding only to gain time to escape, and by his cowardly flight, which he per severed in even after being intercepted and brought back to London, rendered the coronation of Mary and William indispensable. All hope in England was for the time lost, and as by his action on the Test Act he had alienated the sycophantic estates of Scotland, the rising in the Highlands afforded no permanent benefit to his cause ; but in Ireland it might be possible for him still to enjoy, though in diminished lustre, the glories of sovereignty until he should be restored to his wider dignities. If his policy towards Ireland had been dictated by the position in which he was now placed, it failed of its purpose, for even be fore the arrival of William he discovered that he had to fight his way to dominion, and finally, notwithstanding the aid of French troops, his craven irresolution in the face of danger lost him the battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690, after which he made a hurried escape to France. Ati expedition to England in his favour was projected by Louis in 1692, but was frustrated by the defeat of the French fleet off Cape La Hogue on May 17, and another invasion planned to follow on the success of an assassination plot on February 10, 1696, was foiled by the discovery of the treachery. James died at St Germain, September 1701. The principal contemporary authorities for the reign of James are the Diaries of Evelyn, Pepys, and Luttrell ; Burnet s History of His Own Times; Sir William Temple s Memoirs; Life of James II., London, 1705 ; Bishop Rennet s History of England ; The Ellis Correspondence, London, 1829; and the Life of James II., collected out of Memoirs written by Ms oivn hand, by J. 0. Clarke, 1816. See also the Life by C. J. Fox; C. T. Wilson, James II. and the Duke of Berwick, 1876 ; and the histories of Macaulay, Lingard, and Ranke. JAMES, or, in full, JAMES FREDERICK EDWARD STUART (1688-1766), prince of Wales, called by his adherents James III. of England, but better known as the Pretender, was the son of James II. and Mary of Moclena, and was born in St James s Palace, London, June 10th 1688. The general opinion prevailing at the time of his birth that he was a supposititious child seemed to be confirmed by a variety of circumstances, but it has been completely overthrown by undoubted facts. Shortly before the flight of the king to Sheerness, the infant prince along with his mother was sent to France, and afterwards he con tinued to reside with his father at the court of St Germain. On the death of his father he was immediately proclaimed king by Louis XIV. of France, but a fantastic attempt to perform a similar ceremony in London so roused the anger of the populace that the mock pursuivants barely escaped with their lives. A bill of attainder against him received the royal assent a few days before the death of William III. in 1702, and the Princess Anne, half-sister of the Pretender, succeeded William on the throne. An influential party still, however, continued to adhere to the Jacobite cause ; and an expedition planned in favour of James failed of success chiefly in all probability because his falling ill of measles, on the eve of its departure, enabled the English to assemble so powerful a fleet as rendered disem barkation inadvisable. A rebellion in the Highlands of Scotland was inaugurated in September 1715 by the raising of the standard &quot; on the braes of Mar,&quot; and the solemn proclamation of James Stuart, &quot; the Chevalier of St George,&quot; in the midst of the assembled clans, but its progress was arrested in November by the indecisive battle of Sheriff- mulr, and it was practically extinguished a few weeks after wards by the surrender at Preston. Unaware of the gloomy nature of his prospects, the Chevalier landed in December at Peterhead, and advanced as far south as Scone, accom panied by a small force under the earl of Mar ; but, on learning of the approach of the duke of Argyle, he retreated to Montrose, where the Highlanders dispersed to the