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that is in any history. A great king, with strong armies, and a mighty fleet, a vast treasure, and powerful allies, fell all at once: and his whole strength, like a spider's web, was so irrecoverably broken with a touch, that he was never able to retrieve what, for want both of judgment and heart, he threw up in a day. Such an unexpected revolution deserves to be well opened: I will do it as fully as I can. But, having been beyond sea almost all this reign, many small particulars, that may well deserve to be remembered, may have escaped me: yet, as I had good opportunities to be well informed, I. will pass over nothing that seems of any importance to the opening of such great and unusual transactions; I will endeavour to watch over my pen with more than ordinary caution, that I may let no sharpness, from any ill usage I myself met with, any way possess my thoughts, or bias my mind. On the contrary, this sad fate of this unfortunate prince will make me the more tender in not aggravating the errors of his reign. As to my own particular, I will remember how much I was once in his favour, and how highly I was obliged to him: And as I must let his designs and miscarriages be seen, so I will open things as fully as I can, that it may appear on whom we ought to lay the chief load of them which indeed ought to be chiefly charged on his religion, and on those who had the management of his conscience, his priests, and his Italian queen: which last had hitherto acted a popular part with great artifice and skill, but came now to take off the mask, and to discover herself." 1

We submit that there is no appearance either of unfairness or dishonesty here. That Burnett was a party writer was a consequence inevitable upon the fact that he lived in the times of which he was the chronicler; and we are therefore quite prepared to find him betrayed into erroneous statements through the strength of his prepossessions. But at the same time it must not be forgotten that the events he has recorded subjected the crown of England to a disputed succession, which lasted for more than sixty years: and that the facts disclosed in his book were pre-eminently influential in retaining the people of England in their allegiance to the Protestant line of sovereigns. On this account, his "History of his own Times" sustained a series of incessant attacks from the partizans of the exiled family, during the entire period of the continuance of the Jacobite rebellions. Some few of them were printed at the time; but they were then shown to be untrue by witnesses who had themselves been present in the transactions recorded, and therefore they excited no attention whatever, and fell, for the most

1 Burnet, vol. iii. pp. 1, 2.

part, dead from the press. But by far the greater part were in the form of the private journals of persons who had been attached to the household of the exiled family: and these, after edifying a generation or two of staunch Jacobites, dropped in quiet neglect into the manuscript-chests of the families of which the writers had been members; where they still remain to furnish a precious morsel of "exclusive information" to historical legendaries such as Dr. Lingard, Sir Patrick Fraser Tytler, and Miss Strickland. They were not published at the time they were written, because their falsehood would have been instantly exposed; and they would have shared the fate of those of their kindred productions that ventured upon so bold a measure. Dalrymple's Memoirs, to which we have just alluded, was one of these; though the author of them professed himself a Protestant, and spoke of the revolution of 1688 "as a work of absolute necessity," like Miss Strickland; yet he attracted very little notice at the time of his publication (1748), and his work had no success, and was well nigh forgotten, until the re-appearance of a race of Jacobite historians in the present day.

Among these forgotten literary attempts to serve the cause of James and his family, we are almost surprised to find so little notice taken of the once renowned Bishop Parker, or, as he was more generally styled in the phraseology of the day, Bully Parker. This personage began his career with a high profession of evangelical piety and strict independency. He was one of Dr. Owen's precious gruellers (as the more religious of the students were termed) at Oxford, at the period of the Restoration (1660). But immediately upon that event, he saw which way the tide of patronage was likely to run, was among the first to ask episcopal ordination at the hands of the newly-consecrated bishops, and for many years supported himself in a profligate course of life in London as a pamphleteer. His brochures were either high church and king, or the independence of the church upon the king, according as the court noticed or neglected him: but in either case, they were full of lampoons upon his former religious friends and associates. He always affected to be witty in his writings, but with no very marked success. As he wrote upon the points which then interested the public, he had readers and antagonists, and attained to such a measure of success, that at length he presented the public with a bulky octavo volume, which he entitled "Defence of the Ecclesiastical Polity." This bold measure, however, brought his literary career to a sudden conclusion. It drew forth a reply from one of the wittiest men of that or any age, Andrew Marvell. "Mr. Bayes on the Divine in Mode," was so admirably adapted to

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the genius of the times, was so full of witty sallies and smart repartees, that the entire town, from the merry monarch on the throne down to the quidnunc in the meanest coffee-house in the Cheap, was convulsed with laughter, and poor Parker only ventured upon an anonymous and very brief reply, which he addressed to Marvell, and transmitted to him by post. It was conceived in the following terms:-" By -, if thou write another lie or libel against Dr. Parker, I'll cut thy throat." This production called forth a still more withering satire-"The Rehearsal Transposed," in the title-page of which Marvell printed this anonymous production at length, entitling it "Dr. Parker's Second Letter on Ecclesiastical Polity." This blow, which was still heavier than the first, completed the demolition of Parker's literary character. He employed the remainder of his life in collecting the annals of his own times, in opposition to Burnet, who was known to be engaged upon the same subject. They were published after his death in Latin, and afterwards translated into English under the title of "Bishop Parker's History of his own Times." It is somewhat surprising that Miss Strickland has not discovered the book, which would have supplied her with a large stock of "exclusive information," upon an authority at least as respectable and authoritative as nine out of ten of those she has quoted.

It must, however, be borne in mind that the boldness and enthusiasm of the Jacobite pamphleteers advanced in exact proportion to the desperateness of their cause. The exiled monarch gradually passed, in the estimation of his partisans, from the realms of history to those of poetry. All his good qualities were exaggerated to the perfections of an angel. All the faults which history had imputed to him were either boldly denied or unblushingly defended. James was a saint, yea a seraph! sent down from some loftier sphere to rule over an ungrateful people; whose divine right to the throne of England was as clear as if it had been declared by a voice from heaven: and the providential permission to chase him from the throne, was the heaviest judgment upon the sins of Britain that ever befel our unhappy country. This was the all but unvarying tone of the highflying Jacobites of the first half of the eighteenth century. In their pages, therefore, rather than in those of their predecessors, Miss Strickland would probably find the kind of historical information of which she was in search. Lamenting exceedingly the neglect of English history, which renders all these details necessary, we must now proceed to the history of the reign of James II.

Miss Strickland's account of the commencement of the reign is so fully occupied with the minute details of his coronation, that

she has quite forgotten to acquaint her readers with certain political transactions which also took place at this period. This omission we venture to supply, because we really do not see how it is possible to convey a proper understanding of the reigns either of James or his queen without them.

"Before the Earl of Rochester had the white staff (of the Treasury), the court engaged the Lord Godolphin and the other lords of the Treasury, to send orders to the commissioners of the Customs to continue to levy the customs, though the act that granted them to the late king was only for his life, and so was now determined with it. It is known how much this matter was contested in King Charles I.'s time, and what had past upon it. The legal method 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. Yet the king declared, that he would levy the customs, and not stay for the new grant. But though this did not agree well with the king's promise of maintaining liberty and property, yet it was said in excuse for it, that, if the customs should not be levied, in this interval, great importations would be made, and the markets would be so stocked, that this would very much spoil the king's customs. But in answer to this it was said again, entries were to be made, and bonds taken, to be showed when the act granting them should pass. Endeavours were used with some of the merchants to refuse to pay those duties, and to dispute the matter in Westminster Hall: but none would venture on so bold a thing. He who should begin any such opposition would probably be ruined by it so none would run that hazard. The Earl of Rochester got this to be done before he came into the Treasury: so he pretended, that he only held on in the course that was begun by others.

"The additional excise had been given to the late king only for life. But there was a clause in the act that empowered the Treasury to make a farm of it for three years, without adding a limiting clause, in case it should be so long due. And it was thought a great stretch of the clause, to make a fraudulent farm, by which it should continue to be levied three years after it was determined according to the letter and intendment of the act. A farm was now brought out, as made during the king's life, though it was well known, that no such farm had been made; for it was made after his death, but a false date was put to it. This matter seemed doubtful. It was laid before the judges. And they all, except two, were of opinion that it was good in law. So two proclamations were ordered, the one for levying the customs, and the

other for the excise.

"These came out in the first week of the reign, and gave a

melancholy prospect. Such beginnings did not promise well, and raised just fears in the minds of those who considered the consequences of such proceedings. They saw that by violence and fraud duties were now to be levied without law: but all people were under the power of fear and flattery to such a degree, that none durst complain, and few would venture to talk of those matters." I

These dry details are by no means so interesting to the general reader as the particulars of the coronation; but we submit they are at least as important to the comprehension of the causes which moved the people of England to expel this infatuated and unprincipled monarch from the throne.

We have next to request the reader's attention to Miss Strickland's account of the opening of James's first Parliament.

"Mary Beatrice was present at the opening of the new parliament, May 22, 1685. She and the princess Anne of Denmark came into the house of lords together, without state, some time before the arrival of the king, and stood next above the archbishops, on the right hand of the throne. Her majesty remained standing while the prayers were read, and even while several of the lords took the test and the usual oaths; so that,' says Evelyn, she heard the pope and the worship of the Virgin renounced very decently. Then came in the king, in his robes, wearing his crown; and being seated, the Commons were introduced, and he delivered his speech, at every period whereof the house gave loud shouts. He finished with announcing that morning's news of Argyle's landing in the West Highlands of Scotland from Holland, and expressing his conviction of the zeal and readiness of his parliament to assist him as he required; at which,' pursues Evelyn, there followed another Vive le Roi !' and so his majesty retired. It does not appear that a special seat was provided for the accommodation of the queen, or that her presence was in any way recognised. The commons voted the usual revenue to his majesty."-(p. 176.)

Now let this account be compared with the undisputed testimony of history as to what really occurred in it. The practices employed in the summoning of the parliament could not possibly be omitted in any honest history of the times. "All arts were used to manage elections, so that the king should have a parliament to his mind. Complaints came up from all the parts of England of the injustice and violence used in elections, beyond what had ever been practised in former times. And this was so universal over the whole nation, that no corner of it was neglected. In the new charters that had been granted, the election of the members was taken out of the hands of the inhabitants, and restrained to the corporation-men, all those being left out who were not acceptable at court. In some boroughs they could not find a number of men to be depended on: so the neighbouring

Burnet, vol. iii. pp. 7, 8.

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