the house of Austria, encouraged this expectation. But in a short time the prospect was darkened. The disgrace of Halifax, the breach between James and the Parliament, the prorogation, the announcement distinctly made by the king to the foreign ministers that continental politics should no longer divert his attention from internal measures tending to strengthen his prerogative and to promote the interest of his Church, put an end to the delusion. It was plain that, when the European crisis came, England would, if James were her master, either remain inactive, or act in conjunction with France. And the European crisis was drawing near. The house of Austria had, by a succession of victories, been secured from danger on the side of Turkey, and was no longer under the necessity of submitting patiently to the encroachments and insults of Louis. Accordingly, in July, 1686, a treaty was signed at Augsburg, by which the princes of the empire bound themselves closely together for the purpose of mutual defense. The Kings of Spain and Sweden were parties to this compact, the King of Spain as sovereign of the provinces contained in the circle of Burgundy, and the King of Sweden as Duke of Pomerania. The confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no wish to offend any power, but that they were determined to tolerate no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under the sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to stand by each other in case of need, and fixed the amount of force which each member of the League was to furnish if it should be necessary to repel aggression. The name of William did not appear in this instrument; but all men knew that it was his work, and foresaw that he would in no long time be again the captain of a coalition against France. Between him and the vassal of France there could, in such circumstances, be no cordial good-will. There was no open rupture, no interchange of menaces or reproaches; but the father-in-law and the son-in-law were separated completely and forever. * The treaty will be found in the Recueil des Traités, iv., No. 200.

now no more.

At the very time at which the prince was thus estranged from the English court, the causes which had hitherto produced a coolness between him and the two great sections of the English people disappeared. A large portion, perhaps a numerical majority of the Whigs, had favored the pretensions of Monmouth; but Monmouth was The Tories, on the other hand, had entertained apprehensions that the interests of the Anglican Church might not be safe under the rule of a man bred among Dutch Presbyterians, and well known to hold latitudinarian opinions about robes, ceremonies, and bishops; but, since that beloved Church had been threatened by far more formidable dangers from a very different quarter, these apprehensions had lost almost all their power. Thus, at the same moment, both the great parties began to fix their hopes and their affections on the same leader. Old Republicans could not refuse their confidence to one who had worthily filled, during many years, the highest magistracy of a republic. Old Royalists conceived that they acted according to their principles in paying profound respect to a prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture, it was of the highest moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her husband must have produced a schism in that vast mass which was from all quarters gathering round one common rallying point. Happily, all risk of such misunderstanding was averted in the critical instant by the interposition of Burnet, and the prince became the unquestioned chief of the whole of that party which was opposed to the government, a party almost coextensive with the nation.

There is not the least reason to believe that he at this time meditated the great enterprise to which a stern necessity afterward drove him. He was aware that the public mind of England, though heated by grievances, was by no means ripe for revolution. He would doubtless gladly have avoided the scandal which must be the effect of a mortal quarrel between persons bound together by the

closest ties of consanguinity and affinity. Even his ambition made him unwilling to owe to violence that greatness which might be his in the ordinary course of nature and of law; for he well knew that, if the crown descended to his wife regularly, all its prerogatives would descend unimpaired with it, and that, if it were obtained by election, it must be taken subject to such conditions as the electors might think fit to impose. He meant, therefore, as it appears, to wait with patience for the day when he might govern by an undisputed title, and to content himself in the mean time with exercising a great influence on English affairs, as first prince of the blood, and as head of the party which was decidedly preponderant in the nation, and which was certain, whenever a Parliament should meet, to be decidedly preponderant in both houses.

Already, it is true, he had been urged by an adviser, less sagacious and more impetuous than himself, to try a bolder course. This adviser was the young Lord Mordaunt. That age had produced no more inventive genius and no more daring spirit. But, if a design was splendid, Mordaunt seldom inquired whether it were practicable. His life was a wild romance, made up of mysterious intrigues, both political and amorous, of violent and rapid changes of scenes and fortune, and of victories resembling those of Amadis and Launcelot rather than those of Luxembourg and Eugene. The episodes interspersed in this strange story were of a piece with the main plot. Among them were midnight encounters with generous robbers, and rescues of noble and beautiful ladies from ravishers. Mordaunt, having distinguished himself by the eloquence and audacity with which, in the House of Lords, he had opposed the court, repaired, soon after the prorogation, to the Hague, and strongly recommended an immediate descent on England. He had persuaded himself that it would be as easy to surprise three great kingdoms as he long afterward found it to surprise Barcelona. William listened, meditated, and replied, in general terms, that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his at

tention fixed on them.* Whatever his purpose had been, it is not likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knight-errant for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common except personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, and to make men stare. William had one great end ever before him. Toward that end he was impelled by a strong passion which appeared to him under the guise of a sacred duty. Toward that end he toiled with a patience resembling, as he once said, the patience with which he had once seen a boatman on a canal strain against an adverse eddy, often swept back, but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labor of hours, a few yards could be gained. Exploits which brought the prince no nearer to his object, however glorious they might be in the estimation of the vulgar, were in his judgment boyish vanities, and no part of the real business of life.

He determined to reject Mordaunt's advice; and there can be no doubt that the determination was wise. Had William, in 1686, or even in 1687, attempted to do what he did with such signal success in 1688, it is probable that many Whigs would have risen in arms at his call. But he would have found that the nation was not yet prepared to welcome an armed deliverer from a foreign country, and that the Church had not yet been provoked and insulted into forgetfulness of the tenet which had long been her peculiar badge. The old Cavaliers would have flocked to the royal standard. There would probably have been in all the three kingdoms a civil war as long and fierce as that of the preceding generation. While that war was raging in the British isles, what might not Louis attempt on the Continent? And what hope would there be for Holland, drained of her troops and abandoned by her stadtholder?

William therefore contented himself for the present with taking measures to unite and animate that mighty + Temple's Memoirs.

* Burnet, i., 762.

opposition of which he had become the head. This was not difficult. The fall of the Hydes had excited throughout England strange alarm and indignation. Men felt that the question now was, not whether Protestantism should be dominant, but whether it should be tolerated. The treasurer had been succeeded by a board, of which a papist was the head. The Privy Seal had been intrusted to a papist. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been succeeded by a man who had absolutely no claim to high place except that he was a papist. The last person whom a government having in view the general interests of the empire would have sent to Dublin as deputy was Tyrconnel. His brutal manners made him unfit to represent the majesty of the crown. The feebleness of his understanding and the violence of his temper made him unfit to conduct grave business of state. The deadly animosity which he felt toward the possessors of the greater part of the soil of Ireland made him especially unfit to rule that kingdom. But the intemperance of his bigotry was thought amply to atone for the intemperance of all his other passions; and, in consideration of the hatred which he bore to the Reformed faith, he was suffered to indulge without restraint his hatred of the English name. This, then, was the real meaning of his majesty's respect for the rights of conscience. He wished his Parliament to remove all the disabilities which had been imposed on papists merely in order that he might himself impose disabilities equally galling on Protestants. It was plain that, under such a prince, apostasy was the only road to greatness. It was a road, however, which few ventured to take; for the spirit of the nation was thoroughly roused, and every renegade had to endure such an amount of public scorn and detestation as can not be altogether unfelt even by the most callous natures.

It is true that several remarkable conversions had recently taken place; but they were such as did little credit to the Church of Rome. Two men of high rank had joined her communion: Henry Mordaunt, earl of Peter