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which the others said, Amen. This very justly occasioned a loud outery; for it was, in fact, fully approving and justifying the deed. A warrant was issued for their apprehension, and Snatt and Cook were taken and cast into prison, but Collier, who was well accustomed to hiding, was not to be found; but still he was near enough to hear all that was said against him, and to answer the charge that he advocated assassination. This he denied, and probably denied honestly; but certainly his act favoured a directly contrary opinion. There was a multitude of replies to his defence, amongst others one from the two archbishops, and by twelve bishops, the whole number then in London, including even Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester. They very justly remarked that the prisoners had expressed no sorrow or repentance for their great crime against the monarch and the state; that Parkyns had been actively engaged in the business of the assassination if Friend had not, and yet he had expressed no penitence or contrition for the deed; that to absolve such men was directly contrary to the canons and creed of the church, was a gross abuse of the power conferred on his ministers by Christ, and was an apparent proof that the divines who absolved them from all their sins did not number assassination amongst sins. Collier rejoined, endeavouring to defend himself by quotations, the acts of councils, and the writings of the fathers. Not being forthcoming, he was outlawed.

The last prisoners tried were Cranburne, Lowick, Rookwood, and Cook. They were tried under the new act, and had counsel, but were all convicted and condemned. Porter, De la Rue, Fisher, Goodman, Bertram, Harris, and Pendergrast were evidence against them. Lowick protested in strong terms his entire innocence, and there was made much interest in his favour as a mild, good-natured, inoffensive man, but without avail. Cook was the son of Sir Miles Cook. Goodman charged him with having been present at two meetings at the King's Head tavern, Leadenhall Street, with Fenwick, Friend, Parkyns, and the lords Montgomery and Aylesbury; but the landlord contradicted this evidence, and this probably saved his life, for, though condemned, his sentence was mitigated to banishment. The others were executed. All died denying any orders from James for their proceedings, and the writer of James's Memoirs repeats this assertion. He declares that, though applied to several times, he always discouraged any schemes of assassination; but he does not deny that he did authorise the attempt to seize and carry off William, in confirmation of which the minute of a warrant dated 1693 has been found by M. Mazure ordering such an attempt. The reader, however, weighing all the eircumstances of the case-the avowal of Charnock, the wording of the commission issued to Barclay, the knowledge of the duke of Berwick of the whole plan of assassination, the waiting of James at Calais, and his return in dejection and despair to St. Germains as soon as the failure of the attempt became known-will have no difficulty in deciding how far the denials of James and his adherents are worthy of credit. The association into which the commons had entered for the defence of the king had not yet been made law, but they now brought in a bill for that purpose. Out of the five hundred and thirteen members of the commons, four hundred had signed it; but on its reaching the lords exception was made by the tories to the words "rightful and lawful

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sovereign" as applied to William. Even Nottingham, who had so long and faithfully served William, declared that he could not accept them; that William was king de facto he admitted, but not king by rightful succession. He was supported by Rochester, Normanby, and others; but on the duke of Leeds proposing that the words "rightful and lawful" should be altered to "having right by law," and no other person having such right, singularly enough the tories acquiesced in the change, though it would not be easy for minds in general to perceive a distinction betwixt being a rightful and lawful sovereign and a sovereign who had a full and, indeed, exclusive right by law. The commons retained their own form and the lords theirs. The bill of the commons was passed on the 4th of April. It provided that all such persons as refused the oaths to his majesty should be liable to the forfeitures and penalties of papist recusants; that all who questioned William's being "a lawful and rightful sovereign" should be subject to heavy penalties ; that no person refusing to sign this association should be capable of holding any office, civil or military; of sitting in parliament, or being admitted into the service of the prince or princess of Denmark. All magistrates, of course, were included in the requirements, and some who refused to sign were dismissed. The lords were to use their own form, and with this understanding it passed their house without delay. The bishops drew up a form for themselves, and, according to Burnet, not above a hundred clergymen all over England refused to sign. The people everywhere signed the bond with almost universal enthusiasm, even in the most papist districts, as Lancashire and Cheshire.

Before this remarkable session closed, a bill was brought in to check the corruption of elections. It was now become common for moneyed men to go down to country boroughs and buy their way into parliament by liberal distribution of their gold. It was, therefore, proposed to introduce a property qualification for members of parliament; that a member for a county should be required to possess five hundred pounds a year in land, and a member for a town three hundred pounds a year in land. It was even proposed to adopt the ballot, but that was rejected. The bill itself was carried through both houses, but William declined to ratify it. The towns abounded with whigs, and had stood stoutly by him, and it appeared to be a sweeping infringement on their privileges to debar them from electing men in whom they had confidence because they were not landed proprietors, though they might otherwise be wealthy as well as duly qualified for such duties. William did not consider the corruption so extensive as to warrant the shutting out all but landowners from parliament.

He ratified, however, another bill intended for the benefit of the landed gentry. This was for the establishment of Hugh Chamberlayne's land-bank. Unsound and delusive as the principles of this scheme were, it had the great attraction to the landowners of offering them extensive accommodation and a fancied accession of wealth, and to William the further advance of a large sum for his wars. The bank of England had only furnished him with one million at eight per cent. ; this land-bank was to lend him two millions and a half at seven per cent. It was ratified by William, and the parliament was prorogued the same day, April the 27th.

sent a detachment of horse from Brussels and the neighbouring garrisons to amuse the French in the vicinity of Charleroi, and this ruse succeeding, they suddenly marched, with a powerful force, well supplied with cannon, mortars, and ammunition, upon Givet. They commenced a furious cannonade upon the place, and in a few hours destroyed the whole of the stores and ammunition collected there. This was a truly brilliant and effective exploit, conceived and executed more in the spirit of Louis himself than of the allies, and utterly crippling him in that quarter for that campaign.

On the 1st of May Signors Soranzo and Venier arrived from Venice to acknowledge William as rightful king of England, and had gracious audience of him. Under these flattering circumstances, William embarked on the 7th at Margate, and landed at Orange-Polder in the evening. But the affair of Givet remained the only important affair in the campaign of 1696. William, indeed, put himself at the head of his army, which lay near Ghent, and Villeroi and Boufflers were already in the field, but neither army had the means of proceeding to active operations. The destruction of the magazines of Givet had swept away the provisions and ammunition of the French army. Three or four millions of rations for the men, and all the provender of the horses, had perished, and France was in no condition to replace them. She was exhausted, and her people famishing William was equally helpless, but from a different cause. England was never more flourishing, and parliament had voted him most ample supplies; but the order to call in the old money and issue new had completely paralysed the national currency. True, there had been several millions of silver poured into the Treasury to be taken as taxes, or to be exchanged for new milled money; but the new money, notwithstanding all the exertions at the different mints in London, Bristol, York, Exeter, and Norwich, did not produce the new money in anything like the necessary speed to meet the demands of William in payment of his army, and of the English public in discharging its daily liabilities. In Flanders, therefore, both William and the French were compelled to lie still.

At home the confusion and distress were indescribable, and lasted all the year. In the spring and till autumn it was a complete national agony. The last day for the payment of the clipped coin into the Treasury was the 4th of May. There was a violent rush as that day approached to the exchequer to pay in the old coin and get new. But there was very little new ready, and all old coin that was not clipped was compelled to be allowed to remain out some time longer. Notwithstanding this, the deficiency of circulating medium was so great that even men of large estate had to give promissory notes for paying old debts, and take credit for procuring the necessaries of life. The notes of the new Bank of England and of the Lombard Street money-changers gave also considerable relief; but the whole amount of notes and coin did not suffice to carry on the business of the nation. Numbers of work-people of all kinds were turned off because their employers had not money to pay them with. The shopkeepers could not afford to give credit to every one, and, as their trade stagnated in consequence, they were compelled to sacrifice their commodities to raise the necessary sums to satisfy

their own creditors. There was a heavy demand on the poor rates, and the magistrates had orders to have sufficient force in readiness to keep down rioting. This distress was aggravated by those who had new milled money, hoarding it up lest they should get no more of it, or in expectation that its scarcity would raise its value enormously, and that they could pay their debts to a great advantage, or purchase what they wanted at still greater advantage.

The Jacobites were delighted with this state of things, and did all they could to inflame the people against the government, which they said had thus needlessly plunged the nation in such extreme suffering. There were numbers of exciting tracts issued for this purpose, and especially by a depraved priest named Grascombe, who urged the people to kill the members of parliament who had advocated the calling in of the silver coin. To make the calamity perfect, the land-bank had proved as complete a bubble as Montague and other men of discernment had declared it would. The landed gentry wanted to borrow from it, not to invest in it; its shares remained untaken; and it found, when the government demanded the two million six hundred thousand pounds which it had pledged itself to advance, that its coffers were empty; and it ceased to exist, or rather to pretend to have any life in it.

The bursting of the land-bank bubble was severely trying to the new Bank of England. The failure of the one alarmed the public as to the stability of the other, and the Jacobites and the Lombard Street rival money-lenders lent their cordial aid to increase the panic. The Lombard Street bankers made a vigorous run upon the bank. They collected all its paper that they could lay hands on, and demanded instant payment in hard cash. Immediately after the 4th of May, when the government had taken in the bulk of the money and had issued out very little, they made a dead set against the bank. One goldsmith alone presented thirty thousand pounds in notes. The bank resolved to refuse the payment of the notes thus obviously presented in order to ruin it, and then the Lombard Street bankers exultingly announced everywhere that the boasted new institution was insolvent. But the bank, leaving the Lombard Street goldsmiths to seek a remedy at law, continued to give cash for all notes presented by the fair creditors, and the public continued to support them in this system, and condemned the selfish money-dealers.

Montague also contrived to relieve the tightness to a considerable extent by availing himself of a clause in the act of the land-bank, empowering government to issue a new species of promissory notes, bearing interest on security of the annual taxes. These bills, called now and henceforward “exchequer bills," were issued from a hundred pounds to five pounds, and were everywhere received with avidity. They also urged on the mints in the production of the new coinage, and to facilitate this they made Sir Isaac Newton master of the mint, who exerted himself in his important office with extraordinary zeal and patriotism.

In August, William sent Portland over from Flanders to bring him money for the subsistence of his troops by some means. The failure of the land-bank made his demand appear hopeless; but the government applied to the Bank of England, and, notwithstanding its own embarrassments,

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it advanced to the government two hundred thousand pounds on the 15th of August, and that in hard cash, for it was plainly told that its paper was of no use in Flanders. Yet to such extremities was the bank reduced that at the same time it was obliged to pay its demands by threefourths the value of its notes in cash, marking that amount as paid on the notes, and returning them into circulation reduced to one-fourth of their original value. As the bank, however, so bravely supported the government, the government determined as firmly to support it; and the public confidence, which had never entirely failed it, from this moment grew stronger and stronger. As the year drew towards a close, the rapidly-increasing issue of the new coin began to reduce the intensity of the distress, and the forbearance of creditors of all kinds enabled the nation to bear up wonderfully, much to the chagrin of its enemies both at home and abroad, where the most wonderful stories of English poverty and ruin were circulated.

As there was no fighting to be done, William quitted his camp early, leaving the command to Athlone and the elector of Bavaria, and retired to Loo. There, however, he had no real quiet, for many things were going on in different parts of the continent to create the deepest anxiety. Louis, weary of the war, was trying on all sides to break up the alliance. He sent Caillières to Holland to tamper with the Louvestein faction, which had always been hostile to William, and offered through it certain mercantile advantages to induce Holland to demand a peace. To this the Dutch convention of estates listened favourably, but refused to treat without the concurrence of William and the rest of the allies. To render the allies more prompt to treat, Louis put his arms in motion in Catalonia to do all the damage they could. The duke of Vendôme attacked the Spaniards at Ostalric, and defeated them, but was soon after compelled to retreat. In Germany the duke de Lorges again crossed the Rhine into Baden, but was again forced back. At this crisis Peter the Czar of Muscovy took the town and garrison of Azoph, and the Russians were now brought so much into the eye of Europe that the emperor of Germany entered into an alliance with them. The imperial army encountered the Turks on the river Breque, and defeated them, but with such loss to themselves that they did not pursue their success. These movements, however, tended to weaken the force of the allies in the Netherlands; and now came to light a grand defection of one of the allied powers which occasioned much chagrin and consternation. Savoy had fallen from the league. The duke had been wavering for some time. The French had persuaded him that England would be invaded and James unquestionably restored. He made a pretended pilgrimage to Loretto, and there met the agents of France disguised as monks. Louis engaged to give him four millions of livres in reparation of the damages sustained, and to defend him against all his enemies; that the duke of Burgundy, the son of the dauphin, should marry the princess of Savoy, when at a proper age, and the treaty was guaranteed by the pope and the Venetians, who were anxious to see the Germans driven out of Italy. News of this treaty being in agitation, William and the emperor no sooner heard of it than they sent emissaries to dissuade the duke. The emperor offered him the king of the Romans in marriage with the

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princess of Savoy, and an increase of his subsidy and the forces to defend him. The duke protested the rumours were totally groundless, till Catinat appeared in the plains of Turin at the head of fifty thousand men, when he threw off the mask, and excused himself by saying he was no longer able to maintain himself against the power of France. He wrote to all the allies except William, giving them his reasons for his change, and pressing them to follow his example. On the 23rd of August he signed in public the treaty he had already signed in private. Prince Eugene, the duke's kinsman, was highly incensed at this conduct, and the young prince de Commerci so much so that he challenged the duke, but the duel was prevented by their friends. One of the conditions of the treaty was that the allies should be compelled to quit Piedmont. The duke had waited till most of the allies had sent in their subsidies; but lord Galway managed to intercept that sent by William, and applied it to the payment of the British troops in the service of the Milanese. The duke then put himself at the head of a French force, and marched into the duchy of Milan and invested Valencia. The courts of Spain and of the emperor, believing themselves unable to resist France under these altered circumstances, joined the neutrality, and William saw himself left almost alone. The distresses of England owing to the change in the coin were mistaken both by friends and enemies abroad for exhaustion of her wealth, and Caillières assumed a higher tone at the Hague. He had been commissioned by Louis to offer to recognise William's right to the throne of England, but he now drew back, and evinced an arrogant indifference to the treaty. In fact, the necessity no longer existing of maintaining a large army in Savoy, and the engaged neutrality of the emperor, so elated Louis, that he again thought himself a match for England.

It was under such gloomy circumstances that William returned home. He landed at Margate on the 6th of October. During his absence little had been done by the fleet. Lord Berkeley had insulted the coast of France, pillaged and burnt several villages on the islands Grouais, Houat, and Heydic, made prize of about twenty vessels, bombarded St. Martin's, on the isle of Rhé, and set fire to the town Olonne. These ravages compelled the French to keep an army of sixty thousand men on those coasts, and to erect above a hundred batteries betwixt Brest and Goulet. Rear-admiral Benbow made an attempt to blockade the famous pirate Du Bart in Dunkirk, but he gave him the slip and attacked the Dutch fleet in the Baltic, and got back safe with fifteen captured vessels.

But, except the trouble arising from the coinage, the great event during William's absence had been the capture of Sir John Fenwick, and his examination, with the view of tracing the further ramifications of the conspiracy in which he had been engaged. Fenwick, if not engaged in the assassination scheme, was charged by Porter and the other king's evidence with being fully privy to it, and deep in the plot for the invasion. He was a man of high birth, high connections, being married to a sister of the earl of Carlisle, had held high office in the state, and was a most indefatigable and zealous traitor. During the king's absence, and when the Jacobites were in high spirits, hoping to drive out William, he had shown the most marked and unmanly disrespect to the queen.