The Glorious Revolution

by Edward Vallance

  It was not only the Catholic Irish who were seen as a threat to the lives of English Protestants. There were frequent rumours during James II’s reign that he was entering into secret negotiations with the French. Court gossips circulated stories of a ‘league offensive and defensive’, insisting always that James was keeping ‘close to the French’. One illegally printed pamphlet warned that the King’s eyes were fast closed ‘with the enchanted slumbers of the French Delilah’. James’s own ambassador in Paris, Sir William Trumball, became convinced of a secret league between the two kings. By the summer of 1688 these fears had reached a feverous pitch. In August the Anglican minister Dr William Denton was convinced that ‘the King expects a squadron of French ships to be at his command’, while in September, the Londoner William Westby averred that ‘everybody speaks of a holy league’ between James II and Louis XIV. So pervasive were the fears of an Anglo-French alliance that Dr William Sherlock thought ‘this did more to drive the King out of the nation, than the Prince’s army’. In addition to conducting secret diplomacy, James was suspected of seeking to replace English national political culture with that of France and to replace an English with a French style of government. One pamphleteer explained that the nation had looked to William of Orange because ‘the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland [were] being reduced into the pattern of the French King in government and religion’. James’s standing army was thought to turn ‘the civil government into a military; and that is not the government of England’.29

  In 1688 English Protestants were certainly being told to expect to be butchered by Irish Catholics or even by their own King’s army any day. Broadsheets were issued warning of the threat of a popish massacre. A true relation of the horrid and bloody massacre in Scotland, by the Irish papists, printed at Berwick on 23 December 1688, reported that

  about 20000 Irish were landed in Scotland, about sixty miles from Edinburgh, putting all to Fire and Sword: to whom tis said the Apostate Chancellour of that Kingdom, will joyn with the rest of the Bloody Papists there. And truly … that Kingdom being unarm’d, and un-disciplined those Massacres will in short space run a great length. I desire you may dispense this News abroad, if it be not in Town, before your Receipt of this; for that Country, and the North of England, without speedy relief, is in great danger of depopulation: And the Duke of Gordon hath in his possession the Castle of Edinburgh, whereby he can at pleasure level that City with the Ground … God defend England from the French, and his Highness the Prince of Orange from Bloody Popish attempts.

  Material detailing the supposed horrors of the 1641 Irish Rebellion was reissued at this time. A Relation of the bloody massacre in Ireland (1689) related how in Kilkenny an ‘English woman was beaten into a Ditch, where she died, her Child about six years old, they ript up her Belly and let out her guts’. Other atrocities against pregnant women were recounted in the same pamphlet: ‘one Joan Alder they stabbed, and then put her child of a quarter [year] old to her Breast, and bid it suck English Bastard, and so left it to perish.’30 A Full and True Account of the Inhumane and Bloudy Cruelties of the Papists to the Poor Protestants in Ireland in the Year 1641 (1689) told how the rebels ‘cut off Mens Privy Members and stopt their Mouths with them’.31 Again the cruelty of the rebels to women was recounted: a gentlewoman was stripped naked ‘and turned … out of doors, as if they would make all savages like themselves’.32 Instances of cruelty to children were also highlighted: the rebels were alleged to have dashed out the brains of Protestant children ‘crying these are the pigs of the English sows’.33 In these pamphlets we can also see a growing identification of Protestantism with Englishness and Catholicism with Irishness. The victims of Catholic violence were described as English or Scottish, their attackers as simply ‘Irish’, with no distinction being made between the Old English (Catholic families of English descent) and the Gaelic Irish. The same pamphlet stated bluntly, that the ‘Irish Nation is well known to be a people both proud and envious. For the commonality (they are for the most part) ignorant and illiterate, poor and lazy, and will rather beg or starve rather than work.’34 An Abstract of the Unnatural Rebellion and Barbarous Massacre of the Protestants in the Kingdom of Ireland in the Year 1641 (1689) concurred, stating that the Irish, before the Angevin conquest of the kingdom by Henry II in 1172, were ‘generally void of all manner of civility, governed by no settled Laws, but living like beasts of Prey, biting and devouring one another; without any reasonable Constitution for determining of their properties’.35 The author reported that some two hundred thousand had died as a result of the 1641 massacre, a figure widely accepted at the time, despite being several times the entire Protestant population of Ireland in the seventeenth century.36

  Reviving memories of the 1641 rebellion not only heightened fears of a new Irish massacre but also reflected badly on the Stuart dynasty, owing to the widespread belief that Charles I had colluded with the Irish rebels in their uprising. Thomas Long reported that the myth of the ‘Antrim Plot’ (Charles I’s alleged plan to use an army raised by the Catholic Earl of Antrim against his English subjects) was ‘beginning to pass as Common Discourse in Cabals and Coffee-Houses’.37 (This discussion of the Irish ‘massacre’ of 1641, and the raising of the possibility of another, was also a good way of distracting people from the actual rebellion against the lawful monarch that had already occurred in 1688, while encouraging the population to seek order and stability at the hands of the usurper, William.)

  These tracts on the Irish Rebellion appeared around the same time as accounts of the gruesome deaths of Monmouth’s rebels, written by the Whig writers John Dunton, himself a former Monmouth rebel, and John Tutchin. Tutchin recorded Monmouth rebels as prophesying the reign of William of Orange. Colonel Abraham Ansely told listeners on the scaffold that ‘though it pleased God to block our designs, but he will deliver his people by ways we know not nor think not’. Another rebel was said to have told a bystander that ‘before the year 88 be over, you will see all things turned upside down, and King James for what he had done would be turned out and another come in’. Tutchin portrayed Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, the chief prosecutor of the rebels, as perpetrating atrocities as great as those committed by the Irish rebels of 1641. Not only were Tutchin and Dunton creating a history of Whig martyrdom with which to justify their new political ascendancy as the result of providential justice but they were also creating an image of an English atrocity, perpetrated by James and Jeffreys, to match that committed by the Irish: the conversion of the West Country into a field of blood following the Monmouth rebellion. Again the implication, as with the material on the Irish rebellion, was that the same violence could be repeated in the England of 1688.38

  By 1689, then, there was a host of works in print detailing the horrible crimes of Irish Catholics as well as the atrocities perpetrated by James’s ministers. Englishmen and women were fully prepared for the visitation of such horrors upon them should they prove less than vigilant. In such a poisoned atmosphere a fully coordinated ‘plot’ was not needed to sow the rumour of an Irish rising, any more than it had been needed in 1641 to encourage Englishmen to believe that Irish Catholics had butchered their co-religionists in their hundreds of thousands.

  Presiding over this chaotic scene was an ad hoc government constituted from peers summoned by the Earl of Rochester and the Bishop of Ely, along with the Lord Mayor of London and aldermen at the Guildhall. Ely and Rochester both hoped to make a last-ditch attempt to use their provisional government to negotiate a reconciliation between the King and the Prince of Orange. The first draft of a declaration made by Ely and Rochester sought William’s help to secure ‘Our Religion and Laws in a Free Parliamt’, but stated that this Parliament should be called by James II. However, James’s flight had wrested the initiative away from these loyalists, and instead the final version of the declaration issued from the Guildhall said that the peers sought security for their laws and freedoms in a free Parliament to be presided over by the Prince of Orange, bu
t stopped short of inviting William into the capital. The Lord Mayor and aldermen were not so reticent and issued an open invitation to the Prince. These preparations were interrupted by the startling news that the King had been captured and the agreement among the peers was that James must be brought back to London.

  When Ailesbury finally reached the King on 15 December, he found him in low spirits, full of bitterness, even towards his trusted courtier, concerning his treatment. However, James’s mood was improved by getting his first change of clothes for four days, and finally being able to shave off his new beard. His confidence was further boosted by the reception he received on his return to London. He was cheered by his escort of 120 Life Guards and by the vast numbers of people who had gathered to see the King as he approached. An even warmer reception was given to James as he reached the city itself: ‘The balconies and windows beside were thronged, with loud acclamations beyond whatever was heard of … in fine the joy was so great and general, that if there had been any foreigners in the streets and subjects of a despotic King or commonwealth … they would imagine that they had been all mad.’ However, other reports commented that crowds looked on in silence and Barillon concluded that ‘at heart, most of the people were for the Prince of Orange’.39 Much of the happiness expressed at the King’s return was really relief that the days of near-absolute anarchy in London were over, and hope that stable government would be restored. Indeed, very briefly it seemed as if the regular operation of government had returned as James presided over a meeting of the Privy Council which attempted to deal with the crisis in public order that had swept the nation.

  Yet by this stage, if it had not happened sooner, William was clear that he wanted the crown of England for himself. The initial news that the King had taken flight had been received with barely concealed joy in his camp, immediately resolving all the thorny issues as to what the Prince was to do with his father-in-law once he reached London. Hearing that James had been taken at Faversham, William attempted to get him brought back only to Rochester rather than to the capital, but his messenger did not get through. The Prince demonstrated his anger at the turn of events when he arrested James’s own messenger, Feversham, reporting the King’s return, on the thin grounds that he had acted without authority in disbanding the royal troops. James quickly realised that his son-in-law did not intend to allow him to retain his grip on the reins of government. The King’s own guards at St James’s, Somerset House and Whitehall were swiftly replaced with Dutch soldiers.

  In the early hours of 17 December Lords Delamere, Halifax and Shrewsbury woke the King from his now opiate-induced slumbers to inform him that William wished him to retire from London to Ham House, a residence up the Thames at Richmond. James asked if he might be allowed to move out to Rochester instead, a request to which William quickly agreed. Later that morning James was taken by barge to Gravesend and from there to his new, and very temporary, residence at Rochester. Contemporaries were aware that this second flight from the capital was less of James’s choosing. Reresby spoke of James ‘being forced to withdraw himselfe a second time’.40 Clarendon noted the new mood of sympathy felt for the King among the crowds that gathered to watch him make his exit: ‘It is not to be imagined what a damp there was upon all sorts of men throughout the town. The treatment the King had met from the Prince of Orange, and the manner of his being driven, as it were from Whitehall … moved compassion even in those who were not very fond of him.’41

  It is clear that William intended James’s stay at Rochester to be merely a staging post on his way out of the kingdom. The Dutch troopers guarding the King had clear instructions not to intervene should he attempt to escape. James himself remarked how well they treated him, and the fact that they were almost all Catholics was perhaps not accidental either. Letters from Mary Beatrice asking him to come and join her were intercepted but then passed on to him anyway, his request for passports was eagerly met and he was passed on a letter which alleged that the Prince of Orange felt that it was no longer safe for him to reside in England. James appeared to concur, telling Ailesbury that if he did not retire, ‘I shall certainly be sent to the Tower, and no king ever went out of that place but to his grave.’42 If we cannot say that James was pushed out of his kingdom, it is nonetheless true that he was shown an open door and invited to walk through it.

  The same day that James left his capital for the last time, 18 December, William entered London. Huygens reported that crowds of people gathered to watch the Prince’s entry, some with orange ribbons in their hair or carrying oranges on sticks. Throngs of people awaited William along the road to St James’s, some standing knee deep in mud to get a sight of the Prince, but he disappointed them by taking the route through the park. It would not be the last time that he would attempt to distance himself from his new people. The diarist John Evelyn’s first impressions of William, taken as he held audience at court for the first time, were, revealingly, of a ‘very stately, serious and reserved’ individual.43 London was already under the control of English and Scottish regiments in the Dutch service, complemented by William’s own Blue Guards. On 20 December the Prince agreed to cede civil administration of the country to the Lords for the time being but, crucially, retained control of the armed forces. To attempt to create some semblance of the return of normal government, the surviving members of Charles II’s last Parliament were recalled, together with members of the City of London’s common council, in order to constitute a House of Commons.

  Meanwhile William’s advisers were expressing some exasperation that James was failing to take the hint: ‘he doesn’t want to go,’ Huygens reported. However, receipt of the letter warning the King of the threat to his safety (which may have been sent by Halifax) appears to have worked its intended effect. On the evening of 22 December James summoned his bastard son the Duke of Berwick, along with Ailesbury and Secretary of State Middleton, to his rooms and informed them of his decision to leave the kingdom. Before he departed James prepared a formal statement explaining his reasons for his second flight. He asserted that he was forced to leave his country by the obvious threats to his own person, evidenced by the arrest of Feversham, the changing of his guards and the Prince’s demand that he retire to Rochester. William’s duplicity was already clear from his declaration in which he had dared to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the King’s son. What could James now expect from ‘one who by all arts hath taken such pains to make me appear as black as hell to my own people as well as to the world besides?’ He would not remain in England and let the Prince make him his prisoner: ‘I was born free and desire to continue to do so.’ James would fly the country but only so that he should be free ‘to redeem it from the slavery it is like to fall under’ whenever the nation would open its eyes to who was its true protector.44 Leaving the house by its garden (which backed on to the Thames and was curiously unguarded), he took a rowing boat with Berwick and his servants, reaching the mouth of the Medway by the early hours of the following morning, where he joined the Henrietta, the ship which would take him to France.

  The King’s second flight from the country had exactly the effect on English politicians that William hoped it might. Like James’s first abortive attempt to flee, it forced the peers to look to the Prince to provide security and leadership. On 24 December they agreed to hand the civil administration of the kingdom over to William for the time being, leaving him temporarily in control of both civil and military government in Britain. There would now be no repeat of the situation in 1648 when Charles I, as a captive king, had attempted to play the army, Parliament and the Scots off against one another in round after round of fruitless negotiations. Neither would England be plunged into another civil war. James’s formidable army had been disbanded with hardly a shot fired in anger. His navy had failed even to engage the Dutch armada. Danby’s rebellion in the north could not hope to operate as a counter-balance to the Prince’s military power, particularly once it was clear that Princess Anne would not become a fig
urehead for the aristocratic revolt in Yorkshire. When he received orders from William on 12 December to disperse his troops and attend the court in London, Danby had no alternative but to follow the Prince’s commands with all possible haste.

  Yet, though James’s flight considerably simplified matters for William, the question of how to settle the government of England on a more permanent basis remained highly problematic. Could the King be said to have formally abdicated the throne? If so, should the crown pass to Mary, his daughter, or should William act as regent, with his wife only as nominal monarch, or should William rule alone, or both William and Mary as dual monarchs? It was a situation of unprecedented complexity and one which fashioned the deep political divides that dominated English society from the Glorious Revolution to the late eighteenth century. The sympathy that many felt for James’s plight led some towards a conscientious abstention from participating in civil and ecclesiastical government under William. For others, their residual loyalty to the ‘King over the water’ led them to take part in armed conspiracy to recover his crown. The inclusive nature of the Revolution, with both Whigs like Delamere and Tories like Danby supporting William’s intervention, made it almost impossible for the Prince to satisfy all the claimants for patronage after 1688. In many cases the new alliances forged between Whigs and Tories lasted little beyond the Christmas festivities. No one could dispute the fact of the King’s absence (though there was much debate over whether James had jumped or been given a hefty push); nor was it easy to ignore the Dutch troops who policed the capital or William’s own determination to take the English throne. Yet this was more than a usurpation or a palace coup, it was a revolution that was fought over in pubs and coffee-houses as much as in Parliament. It was the verdict of the people, as well as the peers and commons in Westminster, which would settle the crown on William’s head.