end to the war. the garrison of Limerick were allowed to march out with all the honours of war, with their arms and baggage, and either to embark for France or enter the service of King William, at their option. Of 14,000 or 15,000 Irish soldiers, about 10,000 chose to embark for France, where they entered the service of Louis XIV., and became that gallant corps so constantly mentioned in the wars as "the Irish brigade." But, though the army of England had been so triumphant in Ireland, her fleet had scarcely done more under Russell than they had done the preceding year under Herbert and precisely for the same reason, or because the commander was lukewarm in the cause, and actually corresponding with the court of St. Germain. Russell, during his long cruise, scarcely fired a shot; and the maritime trade of England was almost ruined by French privateers.

By the articles of capitulation, every person worth £300, 108.; every beneficed clergyman or teacher worth £80 a-year, 208.; every lord of parliament, £10; and Nonjurors double. Two things are here made apparent— the great expensiveness of a continental war, and the unskilfulness of the legislature in the art of taxation. The very name of poll-tax had always been odious to the English people; but perhaps the unpopularity excited by it was the reason why many men in parliament voted for the bill.

William met his parliament on the 22d of October, and then called for more troops and for more ships; but all those who had been shut out of the "court pasture" set themselves in strong opposition to every money bill. The commons complained loudly of the abuses and peculations of officers in the army, of officers in the navy, of commissioners, of men in office, and of the servants of government generally; they challenged the right of inspecting all public accounts whatsoever; and the party out of place had the enthusiastic generosity to propose that all the profits arising from any place in the gift of the crown, either by salary, fee, or perquisite, above and beyond £500 per annum, should be applied to the charge of the war, with an exception in favour of the speaker of the House of Commons, the commissioners of the great seal, the judges, ambassadors and ministers residing at foreign courts, and the officers of the fleet and army. It is scarcely necessary to pause to explain how soon the wheels of this mighty move came to a dead-lock, or how it was demonstrated that the three kingdoms could not furnish persons disinterested enough to serve the public for £500 a-year. In the course of the months of November and December supplies of unprecedented magnitude were voted "for the carrying on a vigorous war against France." For the service of the navy they voted £1,575,898; for that of the army £1,935,787, to be paid by England, and £165,000 to be taken out of the revenue of Ireland. The army was to be raised to 65,000 men, exclusive of officers.

On the 29th of February the parliament was prorogued. Several important changes were made in court and cabinet; and these changes were almost entirely in favour of the Tory party, or of the trimmers, who could be Whigs and Tories by turns. The Earl of Rochester-maternal uncle to Queen Mary, and the head of the high-church party, Lord Ranelagh, Lord Cornwallis, and Sir Edward Seymour-who had opposed the king in everything, were brought into the privy council, and the Earl of Pembroke was made lord privy-seal. Pelham, a Whig, was turned out to make room for Mr. Montague, the ablest head of the Tory party. A damp fell upon the whole Whig party, and not a few of them were suddenly converted into flaming Jacobites. But, before these appointments, the Earl of Marlborough, who called himself a Tory, was suddenly disgraced and dismissed from all his employments, and prohibited from appearing at court. As the Princess Anne espoused the cause of the husband of her friend, and joined Lady Marlborough in styling William ". 'a monster," a Dutch abortion," &c., the bitter quarrel between her and her sister, the queen, which had begun with the new reign, became irreconcilable. Various reasons were assigned for Marlborough's disgrace. Some said that it was owing to his excessive taking of bribes, covetousness, and extortion on all occasions from his inferior officers;' others said that he was endeavouring to breed divisions in the army; while others again held. that he was undone by the jealousy of Bentinck,. Lord Portland, and the hatred of King William's favourite lady or mistress, Mrs. Villiers, afterwards Lady Orkney. On the 5th of March William embarked for the Continent, and was soon with the grand army of the confederacy, which was assembled near Louvain. On the 20th of May Louis XIV. joined the French army, which was still commanded by Luxembourg, who had with him the celebrated Vauban, the greatest military engineer of the time. On the 29th of May the French opened the trenches before Namur, which strong place surrendered on the 30th

If France had been victorious in the Low Countries this year, she had felt the shame and the mischief of foreign invasion on her own frontiers in the south. The Duke of Savoy and Prince Eugene, accompanied by Schomberg-son of the old marshal who fell at the battle of the Boyneand his small body of English, rushed into Danphiné, crossed the Durance, took several towns, levied large contributions, burned eighty châteaux and villages, and threatened Grenoble, and even Lyons, the second city in the kingdom. But the great blow of the year was struck by British sailors.

of June, William being unable to relieve it, I were afterwards taken to exculpate James, who through various causes. After this disappoint- himself explicitly denied participation in any of ment William failed in an attempt to surprise the schemes which were repeatedly proposed to Mons, and Louis went back in triumph to Paris. him for killing William. But the weight of this On Sunday, the 24th of July, the allies brought royal denial, and the arguments of the Jacobites, the French under Luxembourg to a general fall to the ground before the documentary eviaction near Steinkirk. Count Solmes, one of the dence which has been produced in our own days Dutch generals, behaved infamously, and was from the friendly obscurity of the archives of Verthe main cause of the loss of the battle, remain-sailles; and M. Mazure, by proving that James ing inactive on the field. William brought up subsequently employed conspirators against the in person a strong body of infantry, and an un-person of William, has made it more than proequal and most desperate fight was continued for bable that he had employed this Grandval, or at nearly three hours, the English and French oc- least sanctioned his foul attempt.' casionally fighting with their muskets muzzle to muzzle. In the end, William was obliged to retreat before Luxembourg, who had been strengthened by some fresh troops brought up at a critical moment by Boufflers. The retreat was effected with excellent order, the English grenadiers covered the rear, and the French infantry scarcely venturing near enough to fire a shot. The carnage on both sides was tremendous, amounting, it is said, to 5000 killed on the side of the allies, and nearly as many on that of the French. The brave and devout Mackay, Sir Robert Douglas, and General Sir John Lanier, fell in the thickest of the battle. There was still an observable want of strict discipline and proper military training among them; but the headlong intrepidity which the British infantry displayed on this memorable day raised them and their country in the estimation of their foreign king. Though Luxembourg claimed a victory, he could not deny that he had sustained a perilous surprise, and he was in no condition to follow up his advantages. Little or nothing was done in this campaign after the battle of Steinkirk; but in the month of August a detestable conspiracy against the life of William was discovered through the skill of one Leefdale, a Dutchman. M. de Grandval, a captain of dragoons in the French service, was arrested at Eindhoven, and brought to trial before a military court, where he and one Dumont, his accomplice, confessed that King James, at St. Germain, in the presence of the queen, had engaged him to shoot King William. De Grandval was shot in the allied camp, and William proclaimed to the world the guilt of James and the connivance of Louis, by publishing the confession of the hired assassin. Neither the court of St. Germain nor that of Versailles replied to the foul accusation, though great pains

1 Note, Sur une Conjuration contre la Personne de Guillaume III. In Appendix to Histoire de la Révolution de 1688 en Angleterre, par F. A. J. Mazure.

2 Anne, it appears, never wrote to her father till there was an appearance that he must succeed in his new enterprise and recover his lost kingdoms. Then she deemed it necessary to avert the wrath of the parent she had abandoned, and expressed her concern for his misfortunes, the sense of her own unhappi

Shortly after the departure of William for the Continent, the French began to collect a large fleet of men-of-war and transports to carry over King James and a formidable army for the invasion of England, where the Jacobites were full of insolent hope, and, encouraged by William's absence, were plotting and combining with wonderful activity. In some of the northern counties, where the Papists were numerous, considerable numbers of men were enlisted for the service of the dethroned king, who by the month of April reached the port of La Hogue, where he lay surrounded by a considerable army of French, Irish, and English refugees, all ready to embark. At this dangerous crisis several avowed Jacobites, including Lord Middleton, the Lords Griffin and Dunmore, Sir John Fenwick, and Colonels Slingsby and Sackville, were taken into custody; and on the 5th of May the Earl of Marlborough was suddenly arrested and conveyed to the Tower on a charge of high treason. Warrants were also issued against the Earls of Huntingdon and Scarsdale, and Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. The Princess Anne herself expected to be put in durance; and she had some grounds for this apprehension, seeing that she had been making overtures to her dethroned father.2

ness, and her long-nourished wishes of redeeming her fault by undoing all that had been done.-See her letter in the Memous of James. Dalrymple says, boldly, "At length all things were settled; and the French king got assurances that the army would be directed by Marlborough, the fleet by Russell, and a great part of the church by the Princess Anne." And upon the evidence of the papers collected by Dalrymple and Mazure, of the Stuart MSS., and of other documents which have been suc

burned and destroyed them all. Eighteen French | are the only people I envy." But, in spite of

the popular affection. On the 4th of November | out-of-place patriots. It proposed nothing less be opened the parliament in person, in a gracious speech, in which there was more warmth of feeling than he usually displayed. At a very early period of the session, attention was drawn to the case of those who had been prisoners in the Tower. Marlborough, Scarsdale, and Huntingdon complaned, in their places in the House of Lords, of the treatment they had received, and of the educt of the judges who had refused to discharge them from their bail, or bring them to trial, conformably to the habeas corpus act. The Earl of Shrewsbury, one of Marlborough's sureties, supported the appeal, and represented Marlborough as ungratefully and unjustly used. The debate was vehement and prolonged, but the king terminated the business by discharging the accused himself, and the ministers were exonerated by a bill of indemnity. Marlborough renewed his intrigues with the agents of James, begging all the while employment from William, who, however, thought it not for the good of the service to intrust the command of any of his troops to him, and who would never employ him until he was convinced that it was his interest to be faithful. Under a less magnanimous prince, and any government less controlled by the law, Marlborough would not have lived to be the Lero of Blenheim, but would have perished on a scaffold. The other business of this session of parliament was exceedingly interesting. The war of parties was carried on with great acrimony. The Tories attempted to ruin the Whig admiral, Russell, who, as was supposed by many that were of neither faction, had not done all that he ought in the battle of La Hogue; and the Whigs attempted to unseat the Tory secretary of state, Lord Nottingham. The Whigs Lad the advantage in the House of Commons, which declared that Admiral Russell had behaved with fidelity, courage, and conduct: but the Tories prevailed in the lords; and the king, ho had been offended by several things in the debate, and who very possibly knew something of Russell's intercourse with the court of St. Germain, dismissed the Whig admiral and retained the Tory secretary.'

than the banishing all the servants of the crown from the House of Commons. It was entitled "A bill touching free and impartial proceedings in parliament," aud its substance was, that all members of the house should be held incapable of places of trust or profit under the crown; and that any member that accepted a place should, by the fact, lose his seat, and be barred from any re-election. And, strange as it may appear, this bill actually passed, with little or no difficulty, in a house that was unusually full of military officers and placemen. It was carried up to the lords on the 22d of December, while the supplies were yet depending, and, notwithstanding all the efforts of the court party, it was there committed by a majority of nine. In the committee it was still triumphant; and even on the report forty-two peers voted for it and only forty against it; but the scale was turned by the proxies, of which the court had seven and the opposition only three; so that the bill, for the present, was rejected by a majority of two. The ministers considered this an escape rather than a victory; and their opponents, including the Princess Anne's husband, Marlborough (who was absolutely pining for place), the Duke of Cumberland, and the Earls of Warrington, Thanet, Weymouth, Danby, Rivers, Sandwich, Mulgrave, and others, entered a strong protest; and Mulgrave, as a parting blow, printed his able and eloquent speech, " which was everywhere received as if it had been a new revelation."'*

The Whig majority in the commons, on the 13th of December, ordered a bill to be brought in which made the people wonder, for nine days or a little more, at the disinterestedness of the

In a

We have said that Admiral Russell was not altogether a selfish man. But this must be taken comparatively. There are papers that tell strongly against his disinterestedness. letter addressed to the king, and dated the 10th of May, 1691, Russell complained of ill usage, and reproached his sovereign for not having added to his appointments, which at that moment he confesses were not under £3000 a-year. He also complains grievously of his sisters being left without one pension, and of his brother, a lieutenant-colonel of horse, being "forced to quit

Before the ministry had recovered from the panic occasioned by the place bill, Marlborough's friend, the Earl of Shrewsbury, brought in the celebrated "Bill for Triennial Parliaments," which provided for annual sessions and a fresh election every three years. After the example exhibited in Charles II.'s time of a seventeen years' House of Commons, it seemed necessary to fix the duration of the representative body, and three years were judged a proper medium term, appearing sufficient to establish a control of the electors over their representatives, without having recourse to the scheme of annual parliaments, which men who aimed at a still more popular form of government were then, as at later periods, most anxious to recommend. But the more immediate object of the movers of the bill was to procure the dissolution of the present parliament,

the service, and seek a subsistence by marrying an old widow."— Dalrymple, Appendix.

Burnet says that "whereas King Charles's Long Parliament was called the Pension Parliament, so they called this the Officers' Parliament; because many that had commands in the army were of it: and the word they gave out among the people was, that we were to be governed by a standing army and a standing parliament."

3 Ralph.