The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 31

James the Second of England had long announced his conversion to the Roman Church, to the alarm and indignation of the English people. But his brother Charles had succeeded in baffling the design of Parliament to exclude him from the throne, and had, after the last effort made in that direction, resolved to summon no more Parliaments. In order, however, should it be necessary to meet such an assembly again, he had, by a trick of law, and with the services of unscrupulous judges, contrived to effect the surrender of the charters by which the boroughs exercised their franchises, and, to a great extent, their representation in Parliament, and to re-grant them under such conditions as to secure the royal influence in all or most of them. How well he had taken his measures is proved by the complete subservience of the only Parliament which his brother and successor ever summoned. This Parliament made James such enormous grants that he was under no necessity, except war broke out, to have recourse to his people again; and there can be no doubt, had his reign been prolonged, that he would have never summoned a Parliament.

James was as fond of French money as Charles, but he was not nearly so prodigal, and a great deal more proud. He resented the advice of the monarch to whom he was indebted, and even disavowed that understanding with him which he had entered into in consideration of the money which Louis advanced him. Meanwhile he had contrived to alienate every one from him, even the Church of England, which had been preaching the doctrine of passive obedience for a generation. His design was to effect the conversion of the English people to his religion, and to employ every means which the law and his prerogative gave him in order to effect this result. In order to make a party, beyond the Roman Catholics in his kingdom, he proclaimed, by his sole authority and in defiance of the law, absolute toleration for all Dissenters, and the suspension of all laws and disabilities which had been enacted against the Roman Catholics, hoping that thereby he might gain the Dissenters, while he had no suspicion that the English clergy would break away from their loyalty to him, however much they were affronted and injured. In order to secure his objects, he brought over a considerable body of troops from Ireland, all men of his own creed, and all officered by men of his own creed. Now if there was one thing which was more injurious than anything else to his father, it was the bare suspicion that he had meditated the enlistment of an Irish army against the Parliamentary forces, and now James had Irish regiments under arms in the vicinity of London, with the object, as it appeared, of overawing the city of London. And as I have already said, the birth of a son, who would be brought up in father's obnoxious creed, made the permanent degradation of England an assured prospect.

The French envoy at the Hague was not blind to the meaning of William's preparations, and had informed Louis and James, assuring the States that there was an understanding between the two monarchs, under which any attack on either would be treated as a declaration of war. James, however in a fit of pride, denied that there was any understanding beyond that which was known to the whole world, and so offended his French ally, who practically left him to his fate. By the aid of Dykvelt and Fagel William contrived to induce, at last, all the United Provinces to assist him in his undertaking. They had probably learned how hostile the English people were to their infatuated king. They were informed of the assistance which was promised by the leading English nobles, and they must have been entirely convinced how dangerous the designs of Louis were. Now if war were to come, it was of the utmost consequence to them that England should be the ally of Holland, and not passively or actively on terms of friendship with France. They remembered the dangers which they ran in 1672, and many of them no doubt recalled how, a century before, the aid of the English had been of the greatest importance to them in the War of Independence. It must have been for such reasons as these that the States overcame their repugnance to engaging in costly hostilities, and these with the dreaded King of France. Besides, William had contrived to gain the warm friendship and close alliance of the Elector of Brandenburg. He knew that he should have the support of the Emperor of Germany, and that even the Pope was favourable to the enterprise of the heretic prince, if he could only be free from the insults of France, the king of which was now engaged in thrusting a partisan of his into a German bishopric, in defiance of both Pope and emperor. He actually seized the opportunity of inflicting a serious loss on the Dutch fisheries, and so had alienated these persons who had hitherto been his partisans.

On the 29th of October, New Style, but on the 19th according to the reckoning of most Protestant countries, the fleet started on the expedition, but, meeting with bad weather, was obliged to return to port, a circumstance which induced James to conclude that there was now no present danger. It had been the intention of William to effect a landing in the North of England, where he believed his partisans were strong, and where he might expect Scotch assistance. Hither James had gone with his forces. There was some delay in starting again, and the wind made it necessary that William should land on the south-west coast. Here he landed at Torbay, on Nov. 5th, Old Style, an auspicious day to English minds, because it was the anniversary of the deliverance of King and Parliament from the Powder Plot. He was gladly received, and marched slowly towards London.

James was deserted by every one - by his first wife's relations, by his most trusted captains, by his army, by the clergy, even by his own daughter Anne and her husband. Never was king more cruelly disabused of the impressions which he cherished a few weeks before, of the abiding loyalty of his people to him. He made no stand whatever, indeed he did not know on what he could rely, for every prop of his throne had crumbled away. For a time he had absolutely no party left. It is doubtful whether even those who afterwards professed allegiance to him would have suffered him to do more than reign, without being allowed to govern. Many of the Jacobites of later times would have been content, if his name still figured on coins, was kept on the Great Seal, and was put in the preamble of writs and grants, that he should live in exile, the powers of government being committed to a Regent or Regents. The majority of Englishmen believed that the child was a fraud, even they who made the severest sacrifices in order to avoid acknowledging William. After the old king's death, in 1701, not a few of these took the oaths to the new settlement, thus showing that they had no belief in the son.

William was by no means satisfied with the restraints which the English Parliament imposed on him. He expected to succeed, if not to the powers which his predecessors had overstrained, to a large prerogative and an ample revenue. But the Parliament determined that they would never run the risk of another arbitrary reign. They resolved that they should be permanently necessary to any government. So they limited their supplies to a year, in order to ensure their annual sitting and an annual review of the expenditure. They did not, indeed, meddle with William's conduct of foreign affairs, for the diplomatic handling of which long years of scandalous inactivity and corruption had made them unfit; but they exercised a very efficient control over that, without which no diplomacy is of any avail. By the theory of the English constitution, the king had a great prerogative, and was untrammelled in many ways. By the theory of the Dutch constitution, William was only the elective magistrate of a republic, the States-General of which could reprimand, order, and control him. But the King of England exercised far more power in his own nation than he did in his adopted country. Indeed it cannot be doubted that William's quarrels with his English Parliaments ruined his constitution and shortened his life.

Still he had achieved a great position, and one of signal service to his country. The English alliance was permanently secured, for the whole nation had deposed the old king, and was certain to stand by its act. Even those who began to wish James back, were convinced that it could not be effected by the aid of Louis. The knowledge that England had been for two reigns the mere tool of France, made even the timid and treacherous indignant at the recurrence of this disgraceful servitude. War was certain to be declared, and war with the object of restoring James. And though his Parliament quarrelled with William, thwarted, and vexed him, so that he seriously thought of resigning his uneasy dignity, they never flinched during the eight years' war which followed, and would not make peace till the king of the Revolution was acknowledged by France.

The Dutch too now felt themselves in a condition of comparative safety. It is true that they were necessarily involved in a war, the first object of which was the liberation of England from French influences and a hated sovereign; but there was no prospect now that another 1672 was before them. It is true that they had to put up with several galling conditions in the alliance with England, and to endure that commercial jealousy which had been a habit with English traders for a century. They could get no relaxation of the Navigation Laws, the repayment of the money which they had advanced for William's expedition was vexatiously delayed, and the English Government insisted that the Dutch should follow the English practice, and make prize of all ships which trafficked with the public enemy. Now the Dutch, being almost entirely a commercial nation, were in the habit of trafficking even with their own enemies, and they were very unwilling to enter into an arrangement by which they should introduce neutrals to a trade which they could have carried on on their own account. But they yielded, at least in appearance, though it is probable that they were not very keen-sighted or very diligent in carrying out this part of the bargain. It is noteworthy, and is a proof of the extraordinary influence which William's position gave him, that after his death, they refused, when another war broke out, to renew this engagement with his successor.

The Dutch complained that William made them the instruments of his English policy; the English that he favoured the Dutch at their expense, that he trusted no one but Dutch counsellors, and relied on nothing but Dutch troops. These charges probably show that William did, as far as possible, the best he could by both nations. It was difficult for him to trust English statesmen. The profligacy of Charles the Second's Court had seriously degraded the characters of public men, and though the misconduct of James justified the Revolution, the dissimulation by which the old king had been driven to his ruin, had made even the agents of it, though they had associated with William, untrustworthy. In the nature of things, men who have betrayed one master are dangerous instruments for another to use, and William soon found out that they who had taken part in his enterprize were in correspondence with the exiled king; not, I believe, because they seriously wished or intended his restoration, but from ingrained habits of perfidy and intrigue. But William always retained the affection of his countrymen. Englishmen who accompanied him in his frequent voyages to the Hague were amazed to see how cordially he was received, how his cold manner thawed, and his grave face was relaxed when he was among the Dutch.

It was also quite clear that the English would employ many men and spend much money in the war. Now this meant the negotiation of English remittances to Amsterdam, and good business at its famous bank. For at this time Amsterdam was the commercial centre of Europe, and its bank contained more specie than all the treasuries of the European states. They who have studied the history of the exchanges at this time can discover how enormous as the profit which the Bank made on the negotiation of English bills. I have little doubt that this profit went a great way towards compensating Holland for the costs which the war involved, and though the Bank was not a State institution, whose profits went to the State treasury, yet it was under the management of the municipal authorities of that city, and its property to a very large extent was theirs.

The Dutch, who were before so averse to war, now requested William that he would declare war against France, a request which he was very ready to gratify. Louis had declared war against Holland immediately on William's landing, not alleging this as the reason for hostilities, for it was not yet clear that the expedition would be successful; but stating that the States had resisted the election of his creature to the see of Cologne. At the same time he declared war against Spain, on the ground that the governor of the Spanish Netherlands had connived at William's expedition. He had already quarrelled with the Emperor of Germany, the Elector of Bavaria, and the Duke of Savoy, whom he had previously insulted and humbled. William, therefore, had no difficulty in consolidating the Grand Alliance, the members of which engaged themselves not to make peace with France, unless Europe was restored to the condition in which it was left by the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees. From the days of the Grand Alliance, French historians of capacity reckon the decline of the French monarchy.