turn Catholic or go out." He put many questions for the purpose of ascertaining whether the communication was made by authority, but could extort only vague and mysterious replies. At last, affecting a confidence which he was far from feeling, he declared that Barillon must have been imposed upon by idle or malicious reports. “I tell you," he said, "that the king will not dismiss me, and I will not resign. I know him; he knows me; and I fear nobody." The Frenchman answered that he was charmed, that he was ravished to hear it, and that his only motive for interfering was a sincere anxiety for the prosperity and dignity of his excellent friend the treasurer. And thus the two statesmen parted, each flattering himself that he had duped the other.*

Meanwhile, in spite of all injunctions of secrecy, the news that the lord treasurer had consented to be instructed in the doctrines of popery had spread fast through London. Patrick and Jane had been seen going in at that mysterious door which led to Chiffinch's apartments. Some Roman Catholics about the court had, indiscreetly or artfully, told all, and more than all, that they knew. The Tory Churchmen waited anxiously for fuller information. They were mortified to think that their leader should even have pretended to waver in his opinion; but they could not believe that he would stoop to be a renegade. The unfortunate minister, tortured at once by his fierce passions and his low desires, annoyed by the censures of the public, annoyed by the hints which he had received from Barillon, afraid of losing character, afraid of losing office, repaired to the royal closet. He was determined to keep his place, if it could be kept by any villainy but one. He would pretend to be shaken in his religious opinions, and to be half a convert; he would promise to give strenuous support to that policy which he had hitherto opposed; but, if he were driven to extremity, he would refuse to change his religion. He began, therefore, by telling the king that the business in which his majesty * From Rochester's Minutes, dated Dec. 3, 1686.

took so much interest was not sleeping; that Jane and Giffard were engaged in consulting books on the points in dispute between the churches; and that, when these researches were over, it would be desirable to have another conference. Then he complained bitterly that all the town was apprised of what ought to have been carefully concealed, and that some persons, who, from their station, might be supposed to be well informed, reported strange things as to the royal intentions. "It is whispered," he said, "that, if I do not do as your majesty would have me, I shall not be suffered to continue in my present station." The king said, with some general expressions of kindness, that it was difficult to prevent people from talking, and that loose reports were not to be regarded. These vague phrases were not likely to quiet the perturbed mind. of the minister. His agitation became violent, and he began to plead for his place as if he had been pleading for his life. "Your majesty sees that I do all in my power to obey you. Indeed, I will do all that I can to obey you

in

every thing. he cried, in an

I will serve you

I will serve you in your own way. Nay," agony of baseness, "I will do what I can to believe as you would have me. But do not let me be told, while I am trying to bring my mind to this, that, if I find it impossible to comply, I must lose all; for I must needs tell your majesty that there are other considerations." "Oh, you must needs," exclaimed the king, with an oath ; for a single word of honest and manly sound, escaping in the midst of all this abject supplication, was sufficient to move his anger. "I hope, sir," said poor Rochester, "that I do not offend you. Surely your majesty could not think well of me if I did not say so.". The king recollected himself, protested that he was not offended, and advised the treasurer to disregard idle rumors, and to confer again with Jane and Giffard.*

After this conversation, a fortnight elapsed before the decisive blow fell. That fortnight Rochester passed in intriguing and imploring. He attempted to interest in his

From Rochester's Minutes, Dec. 4, 1686

favor those Roman Catholics who had the greatest influence at court. He could not, he said, renounce his own religion; but, with that single reservation, he would do all that they could desire. Indeed, if he might only keep his place, they should find that he could be more useful to them as a Protestant than as one of their own communion. His wife, who was on a sick bed, had already, it is said, solicited the honor of a visit from the much-injured queen, and had attempted to work on her majesty's feelings of compassion.† But the Hydes abased themselves in vain. Petre regarded them with peculiar malevolence, and was bent on their ruin. On the evening of the seventeenth of December the earl was called into the royal closet. James was unusually discomposed, and even shed tears. The occasion, indeed, could not but call up some recollections which might well soften even a hard heart. He expressed his regret that his duty made it impossible for him to indulge his private partialities. It was absolutely necessary, he said, that those who had the chief direction of his affairs should partake his opinions and feelings. He owned that he had very great personal obligations to Rochester, and that no fault could be found with the way in which the financial business had lately been done; but the office of lord treasurer was of such high importance, that, in general, it ought not to be intrusted. to a single person, and could not safely be intrusted by a Roman Catholic king to a person zealous for the Church of England. "Think better of it, my lord," he continued. "Read again the papers from my brother's box. I will give you a little more time for consideration, if you desire it." Rochester saw that all was over, and that the wisest course left to him was to make his retreat with as much money and as much credit as possible. He succeeded in both objects. He obtained a pension of four thousand pounds a year for two lives on the post-office. He had made great sums out of the estates of traitors, and carried with him, + Burnet, i., 684.

* Barillon, Dec. 8, 1686.

in particular, Grey's bond for forty thousand pounds, and a grant of all the estate which the crown had in Grey's extensive property.* No person had ever quitted office on terms so advantageous. To the applause of the sincere friends of the Established Church, Rochester had, indeed, very slender claims. To save his place, he had sat in that tribunal which had been illegally created for the purpose of persecuting her. To save his place, he had given a dishonest vote for degrading one of her most eminent ministers, had affected to doubt her orthodoxy, had listened with the outward show of docility to teachers who called her schismatical and heretical, and had offered to co-operate strenuously with her deadliest enemies in their designs against her. The highest praise to which he was entitled was this, that he had shrunk from the exceeding wickedness and baseness of publicly abjuring, for lucre, the religion in which he had been brought up, which he believed to be true, and of which he had long made an ostentatious profession. Yet he was extolled by the great body of churchmen as if he had been the bravest and purest of martyrs. The Old and New Testaments, the Martyrologies of Eusebius and of Fox, were ransacked to find parallels for his heroic piety. He was Daniel in the den of lions, Shadrach in the fiery furnace, Peter in the dungeon of Herod, Paul at the bar of Nero, Ignatius in the amphitheater, Latimer at the stake. Among the many facts which prove that the standard of honor and virtue among the public men of that age was low, the admiration excited by Rochester's constancy is, perhaps, the most decisive.

In his fall he dragged down Clarendon. On the seventh of January, 1687, the Gazette announced to the people of London that the treasury was put into commission. On the eighth arrived at Dublin a dispatch formally signifying that in a month Tyrconnel would assume the gov* Rochester's Minutes, Dec. 19, 1686; Barillon, 168; Burnet, i., 685; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii., 102; Treasury Warrant Book, Dec.

Dec. 30
Jan. 9'

29, 1686.

ernment of Ireland. It was not without great difficulty that this man had surmounted the numerous impediments which stood in the way of his ambition. It was well known that the extermination of the English colony in Ireland was the object on which his heart was set. He had, therefore, to overcome some scruples in the royal mind. He had to surmount the opposition, not merely of all the Protestant members of the government, not merely of the moderate and respectable heads of the Roman Catholic body, but even of several members of the Jesuitical cabal.* Sunderland shrunk from the thought of an Irish revolution, religious, political, and social. To the queen Tyrconnel was personally an object of aversion. Powis was therefore suggested as the man best qualified for the viceroyalty. He was of illustrious birth; he was a sincere Roman Catholic; and yet he was generally allowed by candid Protestants to be an honest man and a good Englishman. All opposition, however, yielded to Tyrconnel's energy and cunning. He fawned, bullied, and bribed indefatigably. Petre's help was secured by flattery. Sunderland was plied at once with promises and menaces. An immense price was offered for his support, no less than an annuity of five thousand pounds a year from Ireland, redeemable by payment of fifty thousand pounds down. If this proposal were rejected, Tyrconnel threatened to let the king know that the lord president had, at the Friday dinners, described his majesty as a fool who must be governed either by a woman or by a priest. Sunderland, pale and trembling, offered to procure for Tyrconnel supreme military command, enormous appointments, any thing but the vice-royalty; but all compromise was rejected; and

* Bishop Malony, in a letter to Bishop Tyrrel, says, "Never a Catholic or other English will ever think or make a step, nor suffer the king to make a step for your restauration, but leave you as you were hitherto, and leave your enemies over your heads; nor is there any Englishman, Catholic or other, of what quality or degree soever alive, that will stick to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England; and would as willingly see all Ireland over inhabited by English of whatsoever religion as by the Irish."