Monarchs From England

"I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the World."

"The respect and obedience that Christ and his Apostles showed to the rulers of the states they lived in is clearly shown in the Gospel. However, the idea that Christ or his Apostles ever commanded the establishment of an equal-ranking group of presbyters, in the way the Scots are trying to do, doesn't seem very debatable to me."

"In committing himself to Arminianism, Charles destroyed the painstaking labour James had put into making a cosmetic unity between the kingdoms. He committed himself to that interpretation of the English religious settlement which had least in common with the kirk of Scotland... The primum mobile of the British crisis, chronologically and probably logically as well, was the conflict between Charles and the Scottish Covenanters. This was a real clash of ideas as well as of interests. It enshrined visions of the church, and of authority, so far apart that no real compromise was ever likely to be possible between them. It was this conflict which was the vortex into which the other kingdoms were drawn. This is not to say that Charles was faced by a united Scotland: it has been one of the major findings of this book that that was not the case: all kingdoms, like all English counties, and even most English villages, were divided. Yet it was clearly in Scotland that the Calvinist-Presbyterian ideas to which Charles was most deeply allergic had taken the deepest root. It was the Scots who resorted to arms first, and who did so with the least compunction. It was Charles's determination to suppress them when he was physically unable to do so which caused his authority to collapse, and troubled the English waters enough to encourage the Scots to fish in them."

"Three of James's qualities were conspicuously lacking in his son: his shrewd intelligence, his wisdom in the ways of the world, and a certain natural authority. Charles was not stupid, but his mind was narrow and inflexible, and since his imagination was severely limited he too often failed to foresee the results of his decisions or to gauge their impact on other people. Indeed decisions did not come easily to him, and once he had painfully arrived at them he tended to affirm them so uncompromisingly that if a tactical withdrawal should prove necessary, as it often did, it was bound to be humiliating."

"For the people. And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body whomsoever. But I must tell you, That their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government; those Laws, by which their Life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share in government (Sir) that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things, and therefore until they do that, I mean, that you do put the people in that liberty as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves. Sirs, It was for this that now I Have come here. If I would have given way to an Arbitrary way, for to have all Laws changed according to the power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here; and therefore, I tell you, (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) That I Am the Martyr of the People."

"If Presbyterianism, in such a supreme form, is truly an institution of Christ, it certainly stands apart from all others. It would be the first and only part of Christianity that needed to be established and spread with so much Christian bloodshed—a bloodshed that flows in a direction completely opposite to the early founders of Christianity and Episcopacy, who patiently sacrificed their own lives instead of violently taking others'. There seems to be too much human ambition in it to truly reflect Christ's teachings."

"Charles I could govern without parliament only as long as he stayed out of war. But the truth is that fighting wars was the essential function of the early modern state, and by this simple test his Personal Rule was an abysmal failure. Even the relatively minor (by European standards) effort required to subdue the Scots rebels brought his government to its knees."

"Distrust was the main obstacle to agreement between king and parliament, but it might not have been an insurmountable obstacle without the conjuncture of other factors, which involved the lower classes in the crisis and drove a deeper wedge into the ruling class. These other factors were the fear of papists, the sharp decline of trade and industry, and an upsurge of class-feeling and class-hostility."

"By 1640 it was overwhelmingly believed that Charles was an innovative and irresponsible monarch: that he tolerated the spread of Popery at Court and in government; that he sought to change the religion of Englishmen away from "the pure religion of Queen Elizabeth and King James" by his support of Laudian clericalism; that his misuse of his prerogative powers constituted a threat to the security of mens' liberties and properties."

"As I know that you are not now to learn that chiefest particular duty of a king is to maintain the true religion (without which he can never expect to have God's blessing), so I assure you that this duty can never be right performed without the Church is rightly governed, not only in relation to conscience, but likewise for the necessary subsistence of the Crown. For, take it as an infallible maxim from me, that, as the Church can never flourish without the protection of the Crown, so the dependency of the Church upon the Crown is the chiefest support of regal authority. This is that which is so well understood by the English and Scots rebels, that no concessions will content them without the change of Church government, by which that necessary and ancient relation which the Church hath had to the Crown is taken away. Wherefore, my first direction to you is, to be constant in the maintenance of the episcopacy, not only for the reasons abovesaid, but likewise to hinder the growth of Presbyterian doctrine, which cannot but bring anarchy into any country, wherever it shall come for any time."

"Next to religion, the power of the sword is the truest judge and greatest support of sovereignty which is unknown to none (as it may be that of religion is to some). Wherefore, concerning this, I will only say that whosoever will persuade you to part with it, does but in a civil way desire you to be no king; reward and punishment (which are the inseparable effects of regal power) necessarily depending upon it, and without which a king can neither be loved nor feared of his subjects."

"Many of those who distrusted the king and regarded his obstinacy as the only obstacle to agreement consented to the raising of an army under the command of the Earl of Essex because they thought that a show of force would make the king more reasonable. They believed that no more than a show of force would be necessary because the king appeared to have few supporters and small means to raise an army; he would not be able to fight and would be obliged to negotiate. But the king proved to have more supporters and greater resources than at first appeared. For many were willing to trust him now that he seemed almost powerless. They did not wish to see him forced into an abject surrender which would permanently weaken the crown. They supported him because they thought that when parliament saw that he had the means to fight it would moderate its demands and reach an agreement without bloodshed. So by the end of summer 1642 there were two armies on foot in England, and the country found that it had drifted into a civil war that few wanted to fight."

"In 1603 King James VI of Scotland succeeded the childless Queen Elizabeth I on the throne of England as James I. Thereafter, although frequently professing an intimate attachment to their ancient kingdom, both he and his son King Charles I, who succeeded him in 1625, regarded themselves first and foremost as English monarchs. Scotland nevertheless still retained its own parliament, referred to as the Estates, and therefore its own quite separate system of government. Unfortunately, moves initiated by Charles I in 1633 with the aim of bringing both the Scottish church and legal system into line with English practice proved to be a disastrous mistake. In 17th century Britain religion and politics were still inextricably linked, and the monarchy's temporal and religious prerogatives were both the subject of passionate debate among the influential classes. Less than a century beforehand the struggle between Roman Catholic and Protestant had seen religious martyrs burned alive at the stake; and despite Elizabeth's generally successful establishment of the Anglican Protestant church of England created by her father Henry VIII, both her reign and that of James I were intermittently troubled by Roman Catholic conspiracies."

"That, whatever his faults, Charles died a martyr for his Church and his religious convictions is beyond dispute... The image of Charles I as a Christ-figure was soon to become familiar through the illicit circulation of the Eikon Basilike. This image, more powerful than all the intellectual arguments of James I in defence of royal absolutism, is among the main reasons why the age of absolute monarchy par excellence in England came after 1660 rather than before 1640."

"In the early part of 1642 only two small minorities saw a resort to force as either necessary or inevitable. There were a few wholehearted royalists who for some time had been telling the king that if he did not show a willingness to defend his rights by force he would never be able to stop the steady erosion of his power; and there were a few radical puritans who were ready to resort to force to bring about sweeping changes in the government and doctrine of the church. But the vast majority of the two Houses of Parliament, of the nobility and gentry in general, of the government officers, of the lawyers, of the mayors and aldermen of the towns, of the leading merchants, in other words, the great bulk of the governing classes, still deplored the thought of resolving the disagreement by force, and still hoped for and expected agreement between the king, Lords and Commons."

"In England a strong dissenting or low-church movement (the Puritans) was hostile to what it saw as Charles' ambiguity towards Catholicism (his queen was a French Catholic), and suspicions of his rumored future plans for meddling with the Protestant settlement. Simultaneously, on the political front, resentment was growing in both England and Scotland towards the King's autocratic style of rule, which tended to unite very diverse groups in at least temporary opposition to Charles, whatever their fundamental views of the monarchy itself. On his part, Charles was continually frustrated by the grudging and conditional grants of funds controlled by the English Parliament which was increasingly conscious of its own constitutional powers, and of which some influential members were leaders of the Puritan religious movement."

"I am no less confident, that no learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King, they all going in his name: and one of their maxims is, that the King can do no wrong."

"Yet they were steadily being divided into two parties during 1642; parliamentarians, who distrusted the king and demanded more restrictions on his power, at least for a time until they could trust him with greater power again; and royalists, who were unhappy about reducing the power of the crown too much, and longed to be able to trust the king. This was not a division over religious or political ends. Thus men from the same social background and with the same economic interests, with similar political and religious ideas, found themselves in opposite parties, for the decision they had to take in 1642 was not a decision about the best form of government for the church or for the state, nor about the changes in the social or the economic order, but simply whether or not to trust Charles I."

"Historians are in general agreement that Charles I was a lamentable failure as a monarch and by 1640 he had alienated most of his subjects. While far from being a stupid man, Charles was temperamentally authoritarian, holding to an exalted notion of the nature of kingship as God-given and denying opposition any legitimacy. Cold and aloof, he lacked basic political skills and judgment and came increasingly to be seen as untrustworthy. He made concessions with the greatest of reluctance, and sought to reverse them later, and gained a well-deserved reputation for deviousness by negotiating with opponents while, at the same time, planning to use force against them. He pursued unpopular policies, none more so than his disastrous religious policy, and he was personally responsible for the decision to impose the Scottish prayer book which set the whole chain of events that would eventually lead to civil war in motion. Yet the entire responsibility for the conflict cannot be laid at Charles' door even though he had an important part to play in making it possible."

"He had received from nature a far better understanding, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's political theories, and was much more disposed than his father to carry them into practice. He was, like his father, a zealous episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had never been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles had some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His taste in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified, though not gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of little moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also on principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most esteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he made, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge."

"The personal government of Charles I. has been more associated with the exaction of Ship Money than with attempts to enforce a system which has much in common with the socialistic schemes with which we are familiar on paper, and yet these eleven years are remarkable for more continuous efforts to enforce socialistic measures than has been made by the central Government of any other great European country. Apart from its success or failure the attempt is interesting, because it shows us the ideal of government which was in the minds of Charles I. and his advisers, and reminds us that these infringers of individual liberties were also, in intention at least, the protectors of the poor."

"At the same time it became more evident than ever that the King could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bring out in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely to learn frankness in the midst of embarrassments and distresses. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognised the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and, at the same time, made a private minute in council declaring the recognition null. He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his people: he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Loraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists: at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at Popery: he privately assured his wife, that he intended to tolerate Popery in England; and he authorised Lord Glamorgan to promise that Popery should be established in Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense. Glamorgan received, in the royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted the King's whole nature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining to each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics."

"Charles was put to death at the time when his influence, long on the wane, was at its lowest point. He had outlived his usefulness, alienated every party, political and religious, betrayed and deserted his most intimate accomplices, and deceived his subjects generally. Charles had talents above the average. With much of the culture and refinement of his epoch, he lacked that breadth of view, consistency of purpose, and firmness of will which distinguish a good ruler and a powerful statesman. His manliness was not of the highest order, and his courage was spasmodic, which is not to be wondered at, since in courting success Charles acted on the vicious principle that the end justifies the means. The oft-repeated assertion that Charles died a martyr to religion and to Episcopacy cannot be maintained by any one cognizant of the unscrupulous stratagems which he used in order to restore himself to absolute power, such as the temporary countenancing of Presbyterianism in Scotland in 1641, and his offer to re-establish popery in Ireland in 1645."

"After Charles tried to rule as an autocrat for eleven years, the outcome was civil war and his defeat and execution in 1649. To us, that execution ranks as the truly revolutionary event of English history. But to see revolutions as incidents rather than processes is misleading. Charles’ execution was not seen at the time as a revolutionary triumph, whether for democracy or for Parliament. It was rather, as its instigator Oliver Cromwell put it, a cruel necessity’ to secure the sanctity of the Petition of Right. If that required violence, so be it."

"In no long time it became manifest that those political and religious zealots, to whom this deed Charles's execution] is to be ascribed, had committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given to a prince, hitherto known to his people chiefly by his faults, an opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the eyes of all nations and all ages, some qualities which irresistibly call forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit of a gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a penitent Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge that the very man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties of England now seemed to die a martyr in the cause of those liberties. No demagogue ever produced such an impression on the public mind as the captive King, who, retaining in that extremity all his regal dignity, and confronting death with dauntless courage, gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people, manfully refused to plead before a court unknown to the law, appealed from military violence to the principles of the constitution, asked by what right the House of Commons had been purged of its most respectable members and the House of Lords deprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping hearers that he was defending, not only his own cause, but theirs. His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies, were forgotten. His memory was, in the minds of the great majority of his subjects, associated with those free institutions which he had, during many years, laboured to destroy: for those free institutions had perished with him, and, amidst the mournful silence of a community kept down by arms, had been defended by his voice alone. From that day began a reaction in favour of monarchy and of the exiled house, a reaction which never ceased till the throne had again been set up in all its old dignity."

"Since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect from you that you will send them unto me as soon as they return hither. But, I assure you on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a legal and fair way, for I never meant any other."

"There are thus grounds for believing that never since the days of Charles I. have we had either so much provision of work for the able-bodied or so complete a system of looking after the more needy."

"What the King said to me the 29th January 1648. being the last time I had the happinesse to see Him. He told me, He was glad I was come, and although He had not time to say much, yet somewhat He had to say to me, which he had not to another, or leave in writing, because He feared their Crueltie was such, as that they would not have permitted Him to write to me. He wished me not to grieve and torment myself for Him, for that would be a glorious death that He should die, it being for the Laws and Liberties of this Land, and for maintaining the true Protestant Religion. He bid me read Bishop Andrews's Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Politie, and Bishop Laud's Book against Fisher, which would ground me against Poperie. He told me, He had forgiven all His Enemies, and hoped God would forgive them also; and commanded Us, and all the rest of my Brothers & Sisters, to forgive them... Further, He commanded Us all to forgive those people, but never to trust them; for they had been most false to Him, and to those that gave them power, and He feared also to their own souls; And desired me not to grieve for Him, for He should die a Martyr; And that He doubted not but the Lord would settle His Throne upon his Son, and that We should be all happier, then We could have expected to have been, if He had lived: With many other things, which at present I cannot remember."

"Amidst the wreck of his fortunes Charles seized on the growing discord among his opponents as a means of retrieving all. He trusted that the dread of revolution would at last rally the whole body of conservative Englishmen round the royal standard; and it is likely enough that had he frankly flung himself on the side of the Parliament at this juncture he might have regained much of his older power. But, beaten and hunted as he was from place to place, he was determined to regain not much but all. The terms which the Houses offered were still severe; and Charles believed that a little kingcraft would free him from the need of accepting any terms whatever. He therefore intrigued busily with both parties, and promised liberty of worship to Vane and the Independents at the moment when he was negotiating with the Parliament and with the Scots. His negotiations were quickened by the march of Fairfax upon Oxford. Driven from his last refuge at the close of April 1646, the King had to choose between a flight from the realm or a surrender to one of the armies about him. Charles had no mind to forsake England when all seemed working for his success; and after some aimless wanderings he made his appearance in May in the camp of the Scots."

"Cruel necessity."

"On the twentieth of January Charles appeared before Bradshaw's Court only to deny its competence and to refuse to plead; but thirty-two witnesses were examined to satisfy the consciences of his judges, and it was not till the fifth day of the trial that he was condemned to death as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy of his country. The popular excitement vented itself in cries of "Justice," or "God save your Majesty," as the trial went on, but all save the loud outcries of the soldiers was hushed as, on the 30th of January, 1649, Charles passed to his doom. The dignity which he had failed to preserve in his long jangling with Bradshaw and the judges returned at the call of death. Whatever had been the faults and follies of his life, "he nothing common did, nor mean, upon that memorable scene." Two masked executioners awaited the King as he mounted the scaffold, which had been erected outside one of the windows of the Banqueting House at Whitehall; the streets and roofs were thronged with spectators; and a strong body of soldiers stood drawn up beneath. His head fell at the first blow, and as the executioner lifted it to the sight of all a groan of pity and horror burst from the silent crowd."

"I confess that, speaking as a mere soldier or statesman, there is no probability of my ruin; yet, as a Christian, I must tell you that God will not suffer rebels and traitors to prosper, nor this cause be overthrown, and whatever personal punishment it shall please hi to inflict on me, must not make me repine, much less give over this quarrel... Indeed, I cannot flatter myself with the expectation of good success more than this, to end my days with honour and a good conscience."

"Unlike James, Charles looked every inch a Divine Right monarch, despite his short stature. That is, he bore himself with regal dignity and maintained proper courtly etiquette at all times. He was also monogamous and kept a much more respectable court than his father. Highly cultured, he was probably the greatest connoisseur ever to sit on the English throne. Charles sent his diplomats scouring the studios of Europe to fill Whitehall Palace with the most distinguished collection of artwork of any early modern ruler. At his insistence both Rubens and van Dyck came to England and painted for the Stuarts. Van Dyck's portraits of the royal family are one of the great achievements of Western art and kingly propaganda, projecting an image of monarchy so serenely confident in its exercise of divinely inspired royal power."

"The news of the King's death was received throughout Europe with a thrill of horror. The Czar of Russia chased the English envoy from his court. The ambassador of France was withdrawn on the proclamation of the Republic. The protestant powers of the Continent seemed more anxious than any to disavow all connexion with a Protestant people who had brought their King to the block. Holland took the lead in acts of open hostility to the new power as soon as the news of the execution reached the Hague. The States-General waited solemnly on the Prince of Wales, who took the title of Charles the Second, and recognized him as "Majesty," while they refused an audience to the English envoys. Their Stadtholder, his brother-in-law, the Prince of Orange, was supported by popular sympathy in the aid and encouragement he afforded to Charles; and eleven ships of the English fleet, which had found a refuge at the Hague ever since their revolt from the Parliament, were suffered to sail under Rupert's command, and to render the seas unsafe for English traders. The danger however was far greater nearer home."

"From that day (4 January 1642) whatever of confidence and loyal attachment had survived the misrule of 17 years was, in the great body of the people,extinguished for ever."

"I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it."

"William III. is now termed a scoundrel, but was not James II. a fool? The character of William is generally considered on too small a scale. To estimate it properly, we must remember that Louis XIV. had formed a vast scheme of conquest, which would have overthrown the liberties of all Europe, have subjected even us to the caprice of French priests and French harlots. The extirpation of the Protestant religion, the abolition of all civil privileges, would have been the infallible consequence. I speak of this scheme not as a partisan, but from the most extensive reading and information on the topic. I say that William III. was the first, if not sole cause, of the complete ruin of this plan of tyranny. The English revolution was but a secondary object, the throne a mere step towards the altar of European liberty. William had recourse to all parties merely to serve this great end, for which he often exposed his own life in the field, and was devoured by constant cares in the cabinet."

"After Westphalia brought peace to Europe, the second half of the seventeenth century saw a further spread of resident ambassadors, with Louis XIV’s France leading the way, and French replaced Latin as the lingua franca. There was, however, still scope for summitry, for instance during Peter the Great’s tour of Western Europe in 1697–8. His meetings with William III of England helped bring Russia belatedly into the European diplomatic orbit. In due course, the czar created a “Diplomatic Chancellery” and a network of foreign embassies on the European model."

"Despite the considerable opposition he faced, William achieved much as King. He retained the crown; guided the nation through a protracted war; established Britain as central to the anti-French alliance; committed the nation to the Hanoverian succession; oversaw the transformation of public finances; altered the relationship between Church and State; and worked with Parliament. This last point distinguished him from Charles II and James II. They preferred to use the legislature only occasionally, managing to reign without it for long periods. William had no such choice. And though he was not always able to get his way—witness his failures over triennial parliaments and Irish estates—he was able to avoid a fundamental breakdown in relations between Crown and Parliament. That was not easy, for he was a foreign invader who spent vast amounts of English tax revenues abroad. Fundamental to his success was his Protestantism and his appreciation of the need to rule through Parliament via English ministers. These were no small matters, for James had failed on both counts. Moreover, as time passed, William was able to tie more and more of the political nation to his regime."

"To have been a Sovereign, yet the champion of liberty,—a revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of William. Till his accession the British Constitution was in its Chaos. It had contained, from a very remote period, the simple elements of an harmonious government. But they were in a state not of amalgamation, but of conflict,—not of equilibrium but of alternate elevation and depression. The tyranny of Charles the first produced civil war and anarchy. Tyranny had now again produced resistance and revolution. And, but for the wisdom of the new King, it seems probable that the same cycle of misery would have been again described."

"James II's replacement by William III in February 1689 was one of the most decisive changes of monarch in England since the coming of the first William in 1066. Even on a personal level the change was dramatic. James II had been devotedly Catholic, blinkered and narrowly English in outlook. He was hostile to the pretensions of parliament, impatient of the restrictions that the law imposed on his powers. William, though James's nephew by blood, was anything but English in most ways. While he indulged his wife's Anglicanism, his personal sympathies lay with the starkly un-English Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church. His favourite friends were as foreign as his accent. His intelligence was acute and his tastes cosmopolitan. His political preoccupations were European, far removed from the average Englishman's insularity. He had no great love of representative institutions, but had learned to live with them in the United Provinces and accepted that he must do so in England."

"I considered him as a person raised up by God to resist the power of France, and the progress of tyranny and persecution: the series of the five princes of Orange, that was now ended in him, was the noblest succession of heroes that we find in any history: and the thirty years, from the year 1672 to his death, in which he acted so great a part, carry in them so many amazing steps of a glorious and distinguishing providence, that in the words of David he may be called, the man of God's right hand, whom he made strong for himself: after all the abatements that may be allowed for his errors and faults, he ought still to be reckoned among the greatest princes that our history, or indeed that any other, can afford."

"King William was a brave and warlike king: he would have been glad of more power than he ought to have; but his parliaments kept him within due bounds against his will. To the Revolution we again owe our liberties."

"But William knew where to pause. He outraged no national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He altered no venerable name. He saw that the existing institutions, possessed of the greatest capabilities of excellence, and that stronger sanctions and clearer definitions were alone required to make the practice as admirable as the theory. Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and stability of antiquity. He transferred to a happier order of things the associations which had attached the people to their former government. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, invoked its guardian Gods to leave its walls, and to accept the worship and patronize the cause of the besiegers; this great prince, in attacking a system of oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply seated feelings to which it was indebted for protection. As he avoided violent changes, he also abstained from political persecution. A powerful party had strongly and, in the house of Lords, at first successfully, opposed his elevation to the throne. Many of his ministers and generals were falsely, and some justly accused, of correspondence with his exiled competitor. The world has rarely produced a prince whom such circumstances would not have converted into a vindictive and jealous tyrant.—William did not even resort to a system of exclusion. His conduct displayed a lofty scorn of suspicion which was at once the highest magnanimity and the highest wisdom. He would see nothing.—He would believe nothing.—He fearlessly surrounded his person and his throne with pardoned enemies and calumniated friends, and thus secured the services and conciliated the affection of many whom a less generous policy would have rendered useless or treacherous. By such means was the constitution of England established."

"He persevered to expel the fears of his people, by his fortitude; to steady their fickleness, by his constancy; to expand their narrow prudence, by his enlarged wisdom; to sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious; to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the Arbitress of Europe, the tutelary Angel of the human race. In spite of the Ministers, who staggered under the weight that his mind imposed upon theirs, unsupported as they felt themselves by the popular spirit, he infused into them his own soul; he renewed in them their ancient heart; he rallied them in the same cause."

"The steps which were taken, at that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most interesting part in the history of that great period. It formed the master-piece of King William's policy, dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of preserving, not only a local civil liberty, united with order, to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the King called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture to preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the counsels and affairs ABROAD. "It will be requisite Europe should see you will not be wanting to yourselves.""

"[T]hat great religious radical, King William...intended to raise a goodly fabric of charity, of concord, and of peace, and upon which his admirers of the present day are endeavouring to build the dungeon of their Protestant Constitution. If the views and intentions of King William had been such as are now imputed to him, instead of blessing his arrival as an epoch of glory and happiness to England, we should have had reason to curse the hour when first he printed his footstep on our strand. But he came not here a bigoted polemic, with religious tracts in one hand, and civil persecution in the other; he came to regenerate and avenge the prostrate and insulted liberties of England; he came with peace and toleration on his lips, and with civil and religious liberty in his heart."

"By saving the Republic from the French he had become a real hero. He was still very young, not yet twenty-four. Yet no one could think of treating him as his father had been treated. For the rest of his life, no matter how bitterly he became involved in party politics, no matter what mistakes he seemed to make, his enemies had to treat him with respect. He was the Redeemer of the Fatherland. He had a claim on the gratitude of his people which could never be repaid."

"Our Naval Force being increased to near double what it was at my Accession to the Crown, the Charge of Maintaining it will be proportionably augmented; and it is certainly necessary for the Interest and Reputation of England, to have always a great Strength at Sea. The Circumstances of Affairs Abroad are such, that I think my self oblig'd to tell you My Opinion, That for the present, England cannot be Safe without a Land Force, and I hope We shall not give those who mean Us Ill, the opportunity of Effecting that, under the Notion of a Peace, which they could not bring to pass by a War."

"I did recommend to the last Parliament the Forming some good Bill for the Encouragement and Increase of Seamen; I hope you will not let this Session pass without doing somewhat in it; and that you will consider of such Laws as may be proper for the advancement of Trade, and will have a particular regard to that of the East-Indies, lest it should be lost to the Nation."