CHAPTER II

JAMES II. THE REVOLUTION AND ITS RESULTS

BORN 1633; SUCCEEDED 1685; LEAVES THE KINGDOM 1688

A REVOLUTION proper is a violent change of the

form of government. Such was the French Revolu

tion. Such have been the revolutions and counter-revolutions by a series of which it has been followed. Such were the revolutions which often occurred in the states of antiquity and in the city republics of the middle ages. Such had been the English Revolution in the time of Charles I., commonly known as the Great Rebellion. Such was the revolution which separated the American Republic from the British crown. The Revolution of 1688, though glorified by that name, was not in fact a revolution at all; it was a change of dynasty, not of the form of government. The form of government it preserved from the change attempted by a king who strove to turn a limited monarchy into a despotism, and at the same time to impose an alien religion on the nation. It was in fact the defeat of revolution attempted in the interest of reaction. It was attended by no revolutionary violence, went through none of the phases of revolutions, produced no Girondists or Jacobins. Nor was it propagandist, though its results inspired Montesquieu and Voltaire.

In the next reign a trial of a great political cause gave the Whig leaders the opportunity for an exposi

tion of the principles on which the party had acted in 1688. Nothing can be less revolutionary than their speeches. Their creed is that no part of the constitution was altered or suffered the least damage; but that the whole received new life and vigour. They studiously minimize resistance. Still, 1688 is a landmark. It closed the long conflict of which the first great crisis was the struggle for the Petition of Right. It established the supremacy of parliament. From the point of view of constitutional liberalism, it was not unworthy of the admiration with which it was regarded by Burke.

Not only was this a British, it was a European event of the first order. It redressed the balance of power in Europe. Under the Stuarts England had become the subsidized and subservient ally of the French king's rapacious ambition, and of the popery, cognate to despotism, of which he, more than the pope himself, was the head. The Revolution of 1688 transferred her to the side of William of Orange and of the liberties of Europe.

When James, as Duke of York, fearing for his brother's life, offered him his own guard, Charles, as the story went, replied, "Don't be afraid, brother; nobody will kill me to make you king." Charles was not by nature a tyrant. He was not malignant or cruel. His only personal murder was that of Vane. His desire was not absolute rule, but freedom from inspection and control. James was a tyrant by nature. He was malignant and cruel in a high degree. His heart was as hard as flint. We have no reason for rejecting the positive statement of Burnet that James, while acting as viceroy in Scotland, used to sit out the applications of the boot and thumbscrew when other members of the council left the room.

That as king he beheaded one aged woman and burned another alive for showing womanly kindness to a hunted fugitive, are certain facts. It is not less certain that he presided over a cruel persecution of peasants in Scotland and rewarded the perpetrator of a most savage and dastardly butchery of peasants in England. Nor can it be doubted that he aimed at absolute power. Louis XIV. and French monarchy were always in his mind. He was almost more than absolutist. He fancied himself the vicegerent of God. To his council at his accession he had proclaimed his resolution of reigning according to law; yet the first thing that he did on ascending the throne was to show his contempt for the law of parliamentary taxation by ordering the customs to be collected before they had been voted by parliament. He addressed his first parliament in the menacing language of a master. A still more ominous sign of his intentions was his immediate increase of the standing army. That if he had not been prevented he would have used that army to crush constitutional liberty, to introduce French despotism, and afterwards to force popery on the nation, cannot reasonably be doubted. Fortunately for the nation, while Charles had been an unprincipled man of sense, James was an obstinate fool.

Of loose life, like his brother, and scandalously given not only to concubinage but to adultery, James, unlike his brother, was devout and under the dominion of priests, to whose influence he, like Louis XIV., would be exposed by an old sinner's cravings for specifics to save his soul, as well as by the general tendency of kings. Especially was he under the dominion of the Jesuits, who in directing his perverted conscience for their own objects

showed their usual unscrupulousness, their usual cunning, and their usual lack of wisdom. The intrigue of the sons of Loyola is often a web woven with infinite skill and labour, but in the moment of accomplishment swept away. Even the failures, however, have cost humanity dear. In England the Jesuits brought ruin upon themselves and upon their dupe. In France their influence, exercised through a priest-ridden woman and a royal confessor over the conscience of the French king, enabled them to obtain the revocation of the Edict of 1685 Nantes and cruelly to persecute or expatriate the best and most industrious part of the French people. The house of Bourbon in the end paid for its submission to Jesuit guidance even more dearly than the house of Stuart.

The disgraceful vassalage to France commenced by Charles II. was continued by his successor. With abject expressions of gratitude James received the dole sent him on his accession by his French patron. It was his pride, not his patriotism, that afterwards rebelled, and led him at a decisive moment peevishly to reject his patron's advice and aid.

The twin objects of James's policy, absolute monarchy and the conversion of England from protestantism to popery, were thoroughly akin, as the history of Europe has shown; yet, happily for the nation, one of them crossed and wrecked the other. Had he aimed at absolute monarchy alone there is no saying what the event might have been. In the end, probably, national spirit and the love of liberty innate in the race would have gained the day. But there might have been an evil 1685 time. When James came to the throne everything was

propitious to his design. The tide was running in favour

of royalty almost as high as on the morrow of the Restoration. The clergy were preaching the doctrines of Filmer, in support of the power to which they were beholden for their restoration to wealth and privilege, and which set their feet on the necks of their nonconformist enemies. James was a Roman Catholic, but he had pledged his word to uphold the church of England, and the clergy believed him, as they reasonably might, knowing that they were at least as good friends to absolutism as any Roman Catholic priesthood; better friends, in fact, since their dependence was solely on the crown. It was

passed round among them that they had for their security the word of a king who never was worse than his word. From the University of Oxford, their mouthpiece, came professions of unlimited obedience. James's bluntness was taken for honesty by those who did not know that his hand was held out behind his back for French gold. The attempt to deprive him of his birthright, having failed, had increased his popularity. After the defeat of the Exclusion Bill and the discovery of the Rye House Plot, the Whig party, which was that of liberty and the constitution, lay prostrate. Its electoral strongholds, the boroughs, had, by the remodelling of the corporations after the wholesale confiscation of their charters, passed completely into the hands of the crown, which already had the support of most of the squires, and of the county constituencies which were under their control. Where there was still any room for doubt about the election, official influence and intimidation were unscrupulously used. The electorate of Cornwall, which had forty-four petty boroughs, was openly packed with guardsmen. Here was plain treason to the constitution.