CHAPTER XIV. THE REIGN OF JAMES II. Parliament of 1685 Designs of the King the Throne. - THE great question that has been brought forward at the end of the last chapter, concerning the right and usage of election in boroughs, was perhaps of less practical importance in the reign of Charles the Second than we might at first imagine, or than it might become in the present age. Whoever might be the legal electors, it is undoubted that a great preponderance was virtually lodged in the select body of corporations. It was the knowledge of this that produced the corporation act soon after the restoration, to exclude the presbyterians, and the more violent measures of quo warranto at the end of Charles's reign. If by placing creatures of the court in municipal offices, or by intimidating the former corporators through apprehensions of forfeiting their common property and lucrative privileges, what was called a loyal parliament could be procured, the business of government, both as to supply and enactment or repeal of laws, would be carried on far more smoothly, and with less scandal than by their entire disuse. Few of those who assumed the name of tories were prepared to sacrifice the ancient fundamental forms of the constitution. They thought it equally necessary that a parliament should exist, and that it should have no will of its own, or none at least, except for the preservation of that ascendancy of the established religion which even their loyalty would not consent to surrender. It is not easy to determine whether James II. had resolved Designs of to complete his schemes of arbitrary government by the king. setting aside even the nominal concurrence of the two houses of parliament in legislative enactments, and especially in levying money on his subjects. Lord Halifax had given him much offence towards the close of the late reign, and was considered from thenceforth as a man unfit to be employed, because in the cabinet, on a question whether the people of New England should be ruled in future by an assembly or by the absolute pleasure of the crown, he had spoken very freely against unlimited monarchy.* James, indeed, could hardly avoid perceiving that the constant acquiescence of an English house of commons in the measures proposed to it, a respectful abstinence from all intermeddling with the administration of affairs, could never be relied upon or obtained at all, without much of that dexterous management and influence which he thought it both unworthy and impolitic to exert. It seems clearly that he had determined on trying their obedience merely as an experiment, and by no means to put his authority in any manner within their control. Hence he took the bold step of issuing a proclamation for the payment of customs, which by law expired at the late king's death; and Barillon mentions several times, that he Fox, Appendix, p. 8. "The legal method," says Burnet, "was to have made entries, and to have taken bonds for those duties to be paid when the parliament should meet and renew the grant." Mr. Onslow remarks on this, that he should have said, the least illegal and the only justifiable method. To which the Oxford editor subjoins that it was the proposal of lordkeeper North, while the other, which was adopted, was suggested by Jefferies. This is a mistake. North's proposal was to collect the duties under the proclamation, but to keep them apart from the other revenues in the exchequer until the next session of parliament. There was surely little difference in point of illegality between this and the course adopted. It was alleged that the merchants, who had paid duty, would be injured by a temporary importation duty free; and certainly it was inconvenient to make the revenue dependent on such a contingency as the demise of the crown. But this neither justifies the proclamation, nor the dis. graceful acquiescence of the next parliament in it. The king was thanked in several addresses for directing the customs to be levied, particularly in one from the benchers and barristers of the Middle Temple. London Gazette, March 11. This was drawn by sir Bartholomew Shower, and presented by sir Humphrey Mack worth. Life of James, vol. ii. p. 17. The former was active as a lawyer in all the worst measures of these two reigns. was resolved to continue in the possession of the revenue, whether the parliament should grant it or no. He was equally decided not to accept it for a limited time. This, as his principal ministers told the ambassador, would be to establish the necessity of convoking parliament from time to time, and thus to change the form of government by rendering the king dependent upon it; rather than which it would be better to come at once to the extremity of a dissolution, and maintain the possession of the late king's revenues by open force.* But the extraordinary conduct of this house of commons, so unlike any that had met in England for the last century, rendered any exertion of violence on this score quite unnecessary. The behaviour of that unhonoured parliament, which held its two short sessions in 1685, though in a great Parliament measure owing to the fickleness of the public mind of 1685. and rapid ascendancy of tory principles during the late years, as well as to a knowledge of the king's severe and vindictive temper, seems to confirm the assertion strongly made at the time within its walls, that many of the members had been unduly returned. † The notorious facts, indeed, as to the forfeiture of corporations throughout the kingdom, and their re-grant under such restrictions as might serve the purpose of the crown, stand in need of no confirmation. Those who look at the debates and votes of this assembly, their large grant of a permanent revenue to the annual amount of two millions, rendering a frugal prince, in time of peace, entirely out of all dependence on his people; their timid departure from a resolution taken to address the king on the only matter for which they were really solicitous, the enforcement of the penal laws, on a suggestion of his displeasure‡; their Yet, after the revolution, they both became tory patriots, and jealous assertors of freedom against the government of William III. Barillon, however, takes notice that this illegal continuance of the revenue produced much discontent. Fox's Appendix, 39. And Rochester told him that North and Halifax would have urged the king to call a parliament, in order to settle the revenue on a lawful basis, if that resolution had not been taken by himself. Id. p. 20. The king thought it necessary to apologize to Barillon for convoking parliament. Id. p. 18. Dalrymple, p. 100. Dalrymple, p. 142. The king alludes to this possibility of a limited grant with much resentment and threatening, in his speech on opening the session. † Fox, Appendix, p. 93. Lonsdale, p. 5. [Ralph, 860. Evelyn, i. 561.] For this curious piece of parliamentary inconsistency, see Reresby's Memoirs, p. 113.; and Barillon in the Appendix to Fox, p. 95. "Il s'est passé avant hier une chose de grande consé bill entitled, for the preservation of his majesty's person, full of dangerous innovations in the law of treason, especially one most unconstitutional clause, that any one moving in either house of parliament to change the descent of the crown should incur the penalties of that offence*; their supply of 700,000l., after the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, for the support of a standing armyt; will be inclined to believe that, had James been as zealous for the church of England as his father, he would have succeeded in establishing a power so nearly despotic, that neither the privileges of parliament, nor much less those of private men, would have stood in his way. The prejudice which the two last Stuarts had acquired in favour of the Roman religion, so often deplored by thoughtless or insidious writers as one of the worst consequences of their father's ill fortune, is to be accounted rather among the most signal links in the chain of causes quence dans la chambre basse: il fut proposé le matin que la chambre se mettoit en comité l'après diner pour considérer la harangue du roy sur l'affaire de la religion, et savoir ce qui devoit être entendu par le terme de religion protestante. La résolution fut prise unanimement, et sans contradiction, de faire une adresse au roy pour le prier de faire une proclamation pour l'exécution des loix contre tous les non-conformistes généralement, c'est-à-dire, contre tous ceux qui ne sont pas ouvertement de l'église Anglicane; cela enferme les presbitériens et tous les sectaires, aussi bien que les catholiques Romains. La malice de cette résolution fut aussitôt reconnu du roy d'Angleterre, et de ses ministres; les principaux de la chambre basse furent mandés, et ceux que sa majesté Britannique croit être dans ses intérêts; il leur fit une réprimande sévère de s'être laissés séduire et entraîner à une résolution si dangereuse et si peu admissible. Il leur déclara que, si l'on persistoit à lui faire une pareille adresse, il répondroit à la chambre basse en termes si décisifs et si fermes qu'on ne retourneroit pas à lui faire une pareille adresse. La manière dont sa majesté Britannique s'explique produisit son effet hier matin; et le chambre basse rejeta tout d'une voix ce que avoit été résolu en comité le jour auparavant." The only man who behaved with distinguished spirit in this wretched parliament was one in whose political life there is little else to praise, sir Edward Seymour. He opposed the grant of the revenues for life, and spoke strongly against the illegal practices in the elections. Fox, 90. 93. Fox, Appendix, p. 156. "Provided always, and be it further enacted, that if any peer of this realm, or member of the house of commons, shall move or propose in either house of parliament the disherison of the rightful and true heir of the crown, or to alter or change the descent or succession of the crown in the right line; such offence shall be deemed and adjudged high treason, and every person being indicted and convicted of such treason, shall be proceeded against, and shall suffer and forfeit as in other cases of high treason mentioned in this act.' See what Lord Lonsdale says, p. 8., of this bill, which he, among others, contrived to weaken by provisoes, so that it was given up. Parl. Hist. 1372. The king's speech had evidently shown that the supply was only demanded for this purpose. The speaker, on presenting the bill for settling the revenue in the former session, claimed it as a merit that they had not inserted any appropriating clauses. Parl. Hist. 1359. tion to repeal through which a gracious Providence has favoured the consolidation of our liberties and welfare. Nothing less than a motive more universally operating than the interests of civil freedom would have stayed the compliant spirit of this unworthy parliament, or rallied, for a time at least, the supporters of indefinite prerogative under a banner they King's intenabhorred. We know that the king's intention was the habeas to obtain the repeal of the habeas corpus act, a law corpus act. which he reckoned as destructive of monarchy as the test was of the catholic religion. And I see no reason to suppose that he would have failed of this, had he not given alarm to his high-church parliament, by a premature manifestation of his design to fill the civil and military employments with the professors of his own mode of faith. It has been doubted by Mr. Fox whether James had, in this part of his reign, conceived the projects commonly imputed to him, of overthrowing, or injuring by any direct acts of power, the protestant establishment of this kingdom. Neither the copious extracts from Barillon's correspondence with his own court, published by sir John Dalrymple and himself, nor the king's own memoirs, seem, in his opinion, to warrant a conclusion that any thing farther was intended than to emancipate the Roman catholics from the severe restrictions of the penal laws, securing the public exercise of their worship from molestation, and to replace them upon an equality as to civil offices, by abrogating the test act of the late reign. We find nevertheless a remarkable conversation of the king himself with the French ambassador, which leaves an impression on the mind that his projects were already irreconcilable with that pledge of support he had rather Reresby, p. 110. Barillon, in Fox's Appendix, pp. 93. 127, &c. "Le feu roi d'Angleterre et celui-ci m'ont souvent dit, qu'un gouvernement ne peut subsister avec une telle loi." Dalrymple, p. 171. †This opinion has been well supported by Mr. Serjeant Heywood (Vindication of Mr. Fox's History, p. 154.). In some few of Barillon's letters to the king of France, he speaks of James's intention établir la religion catholique; but these perhaps might be explained by a far greater number of passages, where he says only établir le libre exercice de la religion catholique, and by the general tenor of his correspondence. But though the primary object was toleration, I have no doubt but that they conceived this was to end in establishment. See what Barillon says, p. 84.; though the legal reasoning is false, as might be expected from a foreigner. It must at all events be admitted that the conduct of the king after the formation of the catholic junto in 1686, demonstrates an intention of overthrowing the Anglican establish ment. |