The History of England from the Accession of James II, vol 3 | Page 6

done and suffered during a conflict of half
a century, they had been, during a few months, united by a common
danger. But the danger was over: the union was dissolved; and the old
animosity broke forth again in all its strength.
James had during the last year of his reign, been even more hated by
the Tories than by the Whigs; and not without cause for the Whigs he
was only an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and
thankless friend. But the old royalist feeling, which had seemed to be
extinct in the time of his lawless domination, had been partially revived
by his misfortunes. Many lords and gentlemen, who had, in December,
taken arms for the Prince of Orange and a Free Parliament, muttered,
two months later, that they had been drawn in; that they had trusted too
much to His Highness's Declaration; that they had given him credit for

a disinterestedness which, it now appeared, was not in his nature. They
had meant to put on King James, for his own good, some gentle force,
to punish the Jesuits and renegades who had misled him, to obtain from
him some guarantee for the safety of the civil and ecclesiastical
institutions of the realm, but not to uncrown and banish him. For his
maladministration, gross as it had been, excuses were found. Was it
strange that, driven from his native land, while still a boy, by rebels
who were a disgrace to the Protestant name, and forced to pass his
youth in countries where the Roman Catholic religion was established,
he should have been captivated by that most attractive of all
superstitions? Was it strange that, persecuted and calumniated as he had
been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have become
sterner and more severe than it had once been thought, and that, when
those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthright
were at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently tempered
justice with mercy? As to the worst charge which had been brought
against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of their
inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds did it
rest? Merely on slight circumstances, such as might well be imputed to
accident, or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony
with his character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy in
the stocks without requiring stronger evidence than that on which the
English people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest and most
odious of all frauds? Some great faults he had doubtless committed,
nothing could be more just or constitutional than that for those faults
his advisers and tools should be called to a severe reckoning; nor did
any of those advisers and tools more richly deserve punishment than
the Roundhead sectaries whose adulation had encouraged him to persist
in the fatal exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental law
of the land that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were
done by his authority, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That
great rule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The sycophants,
who were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King, who was not
legally punishable, was punished with merciless severity. Was it
possible for the Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who had
fought under Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when
they reflected on the fate of their rightful liege lord, the heir of a long

line of princes, lately enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile,
a suppliant, a mendicant? His calamities had been greater than even
those of the Blessed Martyr from whom he sprang. The father had been
slain by avowed and mortal foes: the ruin of the son had been the work
of his own children. Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should
have been inflicted by other hands. And was it altogether deserved?
Had not the unhappy man been rather weak and rash than wicked? Had
he not some of the qualities of an excellent prince? His abilities were
certainly not of a high order: but he was diligent: he was thrifty: he had
fought bravely: he had been his own minister for maritime affairs, and
had, in that capacity, acquitted himself respectably: he had, till his
spiritual guides obtained a fatal ascendency over his mind, been
regarded as a man of strict justice; and, to the last, when he was not
misled by them, he generally spoke truth and dealt fairly. With so many
virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he had been a
moderate Roman Catholic, have had a prosperous and glorious reign.