Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 3.djvu/31

 Speaker of the House of Lords. He had been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government, and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensing power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of invasion: he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march towards London, to effect a reconciliation; and he had never deserted James till James had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that shameful flight, the sagacious Trimmer, convinced that compromise was thenceforth impossible, had taken a decided part. He had distinguished himself preeminently in the Convention: nor was it without a peculiar propriety that he had been appointed to the honourable office of tendering the crown, in the name of all the Estates of England, to the Prince and Princess of Orange; for our 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 Whigs, however, were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an atonement for an old offence; and the offence of Halifax had been grave indeed. He had long before been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fight for liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect of dominion and revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed sides with him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck them dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding party of the Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day of their insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their distress. But, now that their distress was over, they forgot that he had returned to them, and remembered only that he had left them.

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not diminished by the news that Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous churchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance, who thought the