geography, considered that isthmus as a place where a good settlement might be made, or rather two settlements, for he proposed establishing a town and blockhouse on the side of the Atlantic, and another over against it in Panama Bay, on the shores of the Pacific, from which, conjointly, a trade might be opened both with the West Indies and with the East, and means taken to keep the Spaniards in the neighbourhood of the isthmus in quiet, if not in subjection. When the passing of this ill-considered act was known in London, many more rich merchants entered into the scheme, and thus provoked more than ever the hostility of the East India Company. When all was ready, Paterson and his people, amounting in all to 1200 souls, set sail, in fifty Scottish ships, to famine and destruction, but with the confident hope of establishing a great colony, and realizing enormous wealth. creature of courts and saloons, promoted by court intrigues and the influence of mistresses, was wholly incapable of contending with the difficulties in which even his great predecessor had left the country; and if to this we add that the oppressed people, in many parts of France, were absolutely perishing with hunger, the reader will understand that the French army in Flanders, badly supplied with provisions and recruits, and commanded by third-rate generals, Boufflers and Villeroy, was in no condition to repair the check it had received in the last campaign. The important city of Namur, which had been taken by the French in the year 1692, was soon invested. The garrison then amounted to 14,000 or 15,000 men, under the brave Boufflers, and, as Vauban had been employed upon the works, the French deemed the place impregnable. The siege of Namur was prosecuted with vigour under the In Ireland, the first session of a new parlia- eye of William, and the direction of the great ment was held in the was neither better nor worse than many who succeeded him, and who acted upon the one principle-that the only way to keep Ireland quiet was to coerce the natives, and degrade and persecute their religion. By a series of acts passed during this and the next reign by the English parliament, the great body of the Irish people were put into the chains of a new and complicated bondage. On the 12th of May William embarked to put himself again at the head of the allied army. One great event which contributed to hasten the decline of the power of Louis XIV. was the death of the Marshal Duke of Luxembourg, one of the greatest generals of that age, who died at the beginning of this year. The other great generals of France, and Seignelai, the son of Colbert, who had called the French navy into existence, and Louvois, the greatest of her statesmen, were all dead already; there were none that promised to supply their places; Barbessieux, the new minister, a VOL. III. engineer Cohorne. The king, though a valetudinarian, shared in the fatigues as well as in the dangers of the common soldiery. On the 27th of July, at the storming of the first counterscarp, Mr. Godfrey, deputy-governor of the Bank of England, who had come over to speak with the king upon some financial business, but who ventured where he was not wanted, was killed, with several other persons, close to William's side.' It was a long and memorable siege, attended with a prodigious loss of life. The town was carried on the 3d of August; but Boufflers still held out in the castle, with 6000 or 7000 men. Marshal 1 According to a note in Ralph, "tradition also adds, that a short parley had just before passed between them to the following effect: Godfrey, I think you should not expose yourself to the hazards "King.-As you are no adventurer in the trade of war, Mr. of it. "Mr. Godfrey.-Not being more exposed than your majesty, should I be excusable if I showed more concern? "King.-Yes; I am in my duty, and therefore have a more reasonable claim to preservation." 211 Villeroy advanced with a relieving army, and offended at this dry, cold manner, and that he wa On the appointed day-the 22d of November the new parliament assembled: the commons again chose Foley for their speaker, and the king made a long speech from the throne. The demand for supplies was still very high; but William said that, as he had engaged in the present war by the advice of his first parliament, who thought it necessary for the defence of our reli Europe, and as the last parliament, with great cheerfulness, had assisted him to carry on the war, so he could not doubt but that the present would be unanimously zealous in the prosecution of it, particularly since the advantages gained this year afforded a reasonable hope of future success. "Upon this occasion," said he, "I cannot but take notice of the courage and bravery of the English troops, which, I may say, have answered their highest character in any age; and it will not be denied that, without the concurrence of the valour and power of England, it were impossible to put a stop to the ambition and greatness of France.” William returned to England on the 20th of October, and was received with enthusiastic acclamations. On his passage through London to Kensington the city was in an uproar, and he was hailed as a conqueror. But he came not to enjoy pomps and pageantries, or even quiet, which was far more desirable after the incessant fatigues which he had undergone, with a constitution that was always rather sickly than robust. On the very night of his arrival he held a council to debate the great question of dissolving the present parliament, which, by the triennial act so recently passed, might sit till Lady Day. A proclama-vernment, which had recently issued from the tion was presently published, dissolving this parliament, and calling another for the 22d day of November. Burnet seems to attribute a journey, which the king made at this moment, to a desire of influencing the elections by courting that popularity of which he had hitherto been exceedingly careless. "The king," he says, "made a progress to the north, and stayed some days at the Earl of Sunderland's, which was the first public mark of the high favour he was in. The king studied to constrain himself to a little more openness and affability than was natural to him; but his cold and dry way had too deep a root not to return too oft upon him." And we learn from other quarters that the English gentry were again The decay of trade, though it was now reviving, and the encroachments made by William s countrymen, the Dutch, by the Scotch, and others, on the East India Company, were prominent topics in the numerous invectives against the go press. The double relation in which the king stood to this country and to Holland was always the source of infinite clamour and jealousy; and it is wonderful that national prejudices and clashing interests did not produce more serious mischief to his government. It was said, for example, by party writers, that the great losses of the English had been connived at purposely that the Dutch might run away with our trade; that the navigation act, and all the other statutes intended for the increase of our shipping and the extension of our home manufactures, had become a dead letter; that the importation of Dutch commodities, though prohibited by the laws, had been encouraged; that the states-general, in order to cover and protect their own merchant vessels, had manors in Denbighshire, never having money to spend in this way. The donation excited a terrible clamour: it was pretended that the king intended to make this Dutchman Prince of Wales -to give him all that the crown could give in the principality; and the gentlemen of Denbigh not furnished their proper quota to the combined | stowed upon Lord Portland four very extensive fleet, nor suffered their men-of-war to act for the common service; that their wants and deficiencies ere supplied out of English stores and English provisions; and that, instead of acting in conformity to the signals and instructions of the commander-in-chief of the combined fleet, they too often detached their ships of war to act as guard-shire, with true Welsh heat, petitioned the House ships and convoys to their own trade. Early in the session parliament passed the memorable act for regulating trials in cases of treason and misprision of treason; and thus secured equally to peers and commoners, and to all Englishmen, a palladium against the suspicions and malice of despotically inclined sovereigns. They rectified the vile state of the coinage, giving up the absurd principle of raising money above its intrinsic value, and recommending the re-coining of all the specie in England in milled money.' A bill was also passed for preventing charge and expense in elections; meaning to level a blow against the profligate corruption which was practised then, and so long after, to the disgrace of the nation and the demoralization of the poorer classes.2 Above all men, William most trusted and cherished Bentinck, Earl of Portland, who had followed him through all his dangers and difficulties. To reward his important services, and to testify the warmth of his affection, he had be- | "The distress of the common people was severe, and was aggravated by the follies of magistrates and by the arts of malcontents. A squire who was one of the quorum, would sometimes think it his duty to administer to his neighbours at this trying conjuncture, what seemed to him to be equity; and as no two of these rural pretors had exactly the same notion of what was equitable, their edicts added confusion to confusion. In one parish people were, in outrageous violation of the law, threatened with the stocks, if they refused to take clipped shillings by tale. In the next parish it was dangerous to pay such shillings except by weight. The enemies of the government, at the same time, laboured indefatigably in their vocation. They harangued in every place of public resort, from the chocolate house in St. James's Street, to the sanded kitchen on the village green. In verse and prose they incited the suffering multitude to rise up in arms. Of the tracts which they published at this time, the most remarkable was written by a depraved priest, named Grascombe, of whose ferocity and scurrility the most respectable Nonjurors had long been ashamed. He now did his best to persuade the rabble to tear in pieces those members of parliament who had voted for the restoration of the currency. It would be too much to say that the malignant industry of this man and of men like him produced no effect on a population which was doubtless severely tried. There were riots in several parts of the country, but riots which were suppressed with little difficulty, and, as far as can be discovered, without the shedding of a drop of blood. In one place a crowd of poor ignorant creatures, excited by some knavish agitator, besieged the house of a Whig member of parliament, and clamorously insisted on having their short money changed. The gentleman consented, and desired to know how much they had brought. After some delay, they were able to produce a single elipped half-crown. Such tumults as this were at a distance exaggerated into rebellions and massacres. At Paris it was gravely asserted in print that, in an English town which was not named, a soldier and a butcher had quarrelled about a piece of money, that the soldier had killed the butcher, that a great fight had followed, and that fifty dead bodies were left on the ground. The truth was, that the behaviour of the great of Commons against these grants. To the fiery petition William coolly replied, "I have a kindness for my Lord Portland, which he has deserved of me by long and faithful services; but I had not imagined the House of Commons could have been concerned: I will therefore recall the grant, and find some other way of showing my favour to him." And he forthwith made a fresh grant to the Earl of Portland of the manors of Grantham, Druchlow, Pevensey, East Greenwich, &c., in the several counties of Lincoln, Cheshire, Sussex, Kent, together with the honour of Penrith, in the county of Cumberland, and other manors in Norfolk, York, and the duchy of Lancaster. As these ancient crown-lands were far apart, it could not be pretended that the king was creating a principality for his favourite; but the English murmured at the largeness of the grants, and probably the more because Bentinck was not only a foreigner, but a man of cold retiring habits, like his master. body of the people was beyond all praise. The judges, when, in September, they returned from their circuits, reported that the temper of the nation was excellent. There was a patience, a reasonableness, a good faith, which nobody had anticipated. Everybody felt that nothing but mutual help and mutual forbearance could prevent the dissolution of society. A hard creditor who sternly demanded payment to the day in milled money, was pointed at in the streets, and was beset by his own creditors with demands which soon brought him to reason Much uneasiness had been felt about the troops. It was scarcely possible to pay them regularly-if they were not paid regularly, it might well be apprehended that they would supply their wants by rapine; and such rapine it was certain that the nation, altogether unaccustomed to military exaction and oppression, would not tamely endure. But, strange to say, there was through this trying year, a better understanding than had ever been known between the soldiers and the rest of the community. The gentry, the farmers, the shopkeepers, supplied the red-coats with necessaries in a manner so friendly and liberal, that there was no brawling and no marauding. Severely as these diffi culties have been felt, L'Hermitage writes, 'they have produced one happy effect-they have shown how good the spirit of the country is. No person, however favourable his opinion of the English may have been, could have expected that a time of such suffering would have been a time of such tranquillity. Men who loved to trace, in the strangely complicated maze of human affairs, the marks of more than human wisdom, were of opinion that but for the interference of a gracious Providence, the plan so elaborately devised by great statesmen and great philosophers, would have failed completely and ignominiously.'”—Macaulay, vol. iv. p. 705. 2 "A severe bill was brought in for voiding all the elections of parliament men, where the elected had been at any expense in meat, drink, or money to procure votes: it was very strictly penned, but time must show whether any evasions can be found out to avoid it: certainly, if it has the desired effect, it would prove one of the best laws that ever was made in England, for abuses in elections were grown to most intolerable excesses, which threatened even the ruin of the nation.' "-Burnet. Al The House of Lords took up the popular out- | secretaries of state for Scotland, and made grea cry against the trading charters granted to the changes in the ministry of that kingdom. Scots, and represented that the whole trade of this, with the assurances of his English ministers the larger and richer kingdom of England must that he had been duped, and that the Scots should be destroyed by them. They invited the com- not be allowed to benefit by the deception, quieted mons to a conference, and both houses agreed in the powerful East India Company, and gave a joint address to the throne, in which they re-general satisfaction to the English, who had not presented that an act of parliament, which had lately received his majesty's assent in his kingdom of Scotland, for creating a company trading to Africa and the Indies, was like to bring many great prejudices and mischiefs to all his English subjects that were concerned in the wealth or trade of this nation; that the said act exempted the Scots from restraints, customs, taxes, &c.; that by reason of these great advantages, and the duties and difficulties that lay upon their trade in England, a great part of the stock and shipping of this nation would be carried to Scotland, and so Scotland would be made a free port for all the East Indian commodities; that, moreover, the said commodities would be brought by the Scotch into England by stealth, both by land and sea, to the vast prejudice of English trade and navigation, and to the great detriment of his majesty in his customs. Loud complaints were made of the Scotch settling themselves in plantations in America, to the great detriment of English commerce in tobacco, sugar, cotton, wool, masts, &c. To this address the king replied, "That he had been ill served in Scotland, but that he hoped some remedies might be found to prevent the inconveniences which might arise from the Scottish act." But the commons did not give A.D. 1696. over the clamour. Being quickened by a petition from the English East India Company, they, on the 26th of January, came to the resolution that the directors of the company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies, &c., and, under colour of a Scotch act of parliament, styling themselves a company, and acting as such, and raising monies in this kingdom for carrying on the said company, were guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour; and that the said directors, whose names were inserted, should be impeached of the said high crimes and mis-zans. To satisfy his own conscience he applied demeanours. The spirit of jealousy and monopoly to learned doctors of the Romish church, to was bitter and boundless; but at the same time bishops, to archbishops, to the pope himself, and the framers of the Scottish act, in tenderness to wherever they were not disposed to chime in with their own countrymen, had inserted clauses and his wishes he attempted to deceive and cajole conditions which, though thought necessary for them. He was scarcely more sincere with the the infant foreign trade of a poor country, gave | Roman church than with the English partizans. the Scots invidious advantages over the estab- The exiled king importuned Louis to take adlished companies in England, and had thus ex-vantage of the consternation occasioned by Wilceeded the intentions of William, who had given the royal assent in a hurry in his camp in Flanders, and in the midst of the cares and turmoils of William dismissed the Marquis of Tweeddale, his lord high-commissioner, and the two yet forgotten their old national animosity. "But, says Burnet, "when it was understood in Scotland that the king had disowned that act, from which it was expected that great riches should flow into that kingdom, it is not easy to conceive how great and how general an indiguation was spread over the whole kingdom. The Jacobites saw what a game it was like to prove in their hands they played it with great skill, and to the advantage of their cause, in a course of many years.' At this moment, however, William was in greater danger from the Jacobites in England, who, encouraged by the presence of another French army of invasion collected on the opposite coasts, were getting ready to rise, while a desperate band among them, sanctioned by the devout and penitent outcast King James, were planning how they could best assassinate William. Notwithstanding his pilgrimages, his visitation to the monks of La Trappe, and his flagellations and fastings, James had never ceased to struggle for his earthly crowns; and his petty court at St. Germain had been the scene of constant plots and intrigues, including some of the darkest dye. Perceiving that his former declarations did not go far enough to satisfy the malcontent Whigs, or remove all the jealousies of Popery entertained by the ultra-loyal high-church party, James resolved to promise everything, with the mental reservation of a fixed intention to break all such of these promises as were too much for the tenderness of his conscience. According to his memoirs, he was sensible he should be blamed by several of his friends for making such promises and submitting to such "hard terms;" but, “reasonably speaking," there was nothing else for him to do, and no other hope of regaining his kingdoms than by gratifying his English parti war. liam's defeat at Landen and the disasters of the Smyrna fleet, and forthwith invade England. He represented as confidently as ever that a large part of the nation would join the invading force, and conduct him back in triumph to Whitehall. |