The king's friends were in dismay. His enemies could not conceal their exultation. The consternation of James was increased by news which arrived on the same day from Warminster. Kirke, who commanded at that post, had refused to obey orders which he had received from Salisbury. There could no longer be any doubt that he too was in league with the Prince of Orange. It was rumored that he had actually gone over with all his troops to the enemy; and the rumor, though false, was, during some hours, fully believed.* A new light flashed on the mind of the unhappy king. He thought that he understood why he had been pressed, a few days before, to visit Warminster. There he would have found himself helpless, at the mercy of the conspirators, and in the vicinity of the hostile outposts. Those who might have attempted to defend him would have been easily overpowered. He would have been carried a prisoner to the head-quarters of the invading army. Perhaps some still blacker treason might have been committed; for men who have once engaged in a wicked and perilous enterprise are no longer their own masters, and are often impelled, by a fatality which is part of their just punishment, to crimes such as they would at first have shuddered to contemplate. Surely it was not without the special intervention of some guardian saint that a king devoted to the Catholic Church had, at the very moment when he was blindly hastening to captivity, perhaps to death, been suddenly arrested by what he had then thought a disastrous malady.

Orders

All these things confirmed James in the resolution which he had taken on the preceding evening. were given for an immediate retreat. Salisbury was in an uproar. The camp broke up with the confusion of a flight. No man knew whom to trust or whom to obey. The material strength of the army was little diminished, but its moral strength had been destroyed. Many whom

66

* Letter from Middleton to Preston, dated Salisbury, Nov. 24. Villainy upon villainy, the last still greater than the former."-Clarke's Life of James, ii., 224, 225, Orig. Mem.

shame would have restrained from leading the way to the prince's quarters were eager to imitate an example which they never would have set; and many who would have stood by their king while he appeared to be resolutely advancing against the invaders, felt no inclination to follow a receding standard.*

James went that day as far as Andover. He was attended by his son-in-law, Prince George, and by the Duke of Ormond. Both were among the conspirators, and would probably have accompanied Churchill, had he not, in consequence of what had passed at the council of war, thought it expedient to take his departure suddenly, The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George served his turn on this occasion better than cunning would have done. was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim in French, "Est-il-possible?" "Is it possible?" This catchword was now of great use to him. "Est-il-possible?" he cried, when he had been made to understand that Churchill and Grafton were missing. And when the ill tidings came from Warminster he again ejaculated, Est-il-possible?"

66

It

Prince George and Ormond were invited to sup with the king at Andover. The meal must have been a sad one. The king was overwhelmed by his misfortunes. His son-in-law was the dullest of companions. "I have tried Prince George sober," said Charles the Second, "and I have tried him drunk; and, drunk or sober, there is nothing in him."† Ormond, who was through life taciturn and bashful, was not likely to be in high spirits at such a moment. At length the repast terminated. The king retired to rest. Horses were in waiting for the prince and Ormond, who, as soon as they left the table, mounted and rode off. They were accompanied by the Earl of Drumlanrig, eldest son of the Duke of Queensberry. The defection of this young nobleman was no insignificant event; for Queensberry was at the head of the * History of the Desertion; Luttrell's Diary. + Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i., 643.

Protestant Episcopalians of Scotland, a class compared with whom the bitterest English Tories might be called Whiggish; and Drumlanrig himself was lieutenant colonel of Dundee's regiment of horse, a band more detested by the Whigs than even Kirke's lambs. This fresh calamity was announced to the king on the following morning. He was less disturbed by the news than might have been expected. The shock which he had undergone twenty-four hours before had prepared him for almost any disaster; and it was impossible to be seriously angry with Prince George, who was hardly an accountable being, for having yielded to the arts of such a tempter as Churchill. "What!" said James, "is Est-il-possible gone too? After all, a good trooper would have been a greater loss."* In truth, the king's whole anger seems, at this time, to have been concentrated, and not without cause, on one object. He set off for London, breathing vengeance against Churchill, and learned, on arriving, a new crime of the arch deceiver. The Princess Anne had been some hours

missing.

Anne, who had no will but that of the Churchills, had been induced by them to notify under her own hand to William, a week before, her approbation of his enterprise. She assured him that she was entirely in the hands of her friends, and that she would remain in the palace, or take refuge in the city, as they might determine.† On Sunday, the twenty-fifth of November, she, and those who thought for her, were under the necessity of coming to a sudden resolution. That afternoon a courier from Salisbury brought tidings that Churchill had disappeared; that he had been accompanied by Grafton; that Kirke had proved false; and that the royal forces were in full retreat. There was, as usually happened when great news, good or bad, arrived in town, a great crowd that evening in the galleries of Whitehall. Curiosity and anxiety sat

* Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 26; Clarke's Life of James, ii., 224; Prince George's letter to the king has often been printed.

The letter, dated Nov. 18, will be found in Dalrymple.

on every face. The queen broke forth into natural expressions of indignation against the chief traitor, and did not altogether spare his too partial mistress. The sentinels were doubled round that part of the palace which Anne occupied. The princess was in dismay. In a few hours her father would be at Westminster. It was not likely that he would treat her personally with severity, but that he would permit her any longer to enjoy the society of her friend was not to be hoped. It could hardly be doubted that Sarah would be placed under arrest, and would be subjected to a strict examination by shrewd and rigorous inquisitors. Her papers would be seized. Perhaps evidence affecting her life might be discovered. so, the worst might well be dreaded. The vengeance of the implacable king knew no distinction of sex. For offenses much smaller than those which might probably be brought home to Lady Churchill, he had sent women to the scaffold and the stake. Strong affection braced There was no tie which

If

the feeble mind of the princess. she would not break, no risk which she would not run, for the object of her idolatrous affection. "I will jump out of the window," she cried, " rather than be found here by my father." The favorite undertook to manage an escape. She communicated in all haste with some of the chiefs of the conspiracy. In a few hours every thing was arranged. That evening Anne retired to her chamber as usual. At dead of night she rose, and, accompanied by her friend Sarah and two other female attendants, stole down the back stairs in a dressing-gown and slippers. The fugitives gained the open street unchallenged. hackney-coach was in waiting for them there. Two men guarded the humble vehicle. One of them was Compton, bishop of London, the princess's old tutor; the other was the magnificent and accomplished Dorset, whom the extremity of the public danger had roused from his luxurious repose. The coach drove instantly to Aldersgate Street, where the town residence of the bishops of London then stood, within the shadow of the dome of their Cathe

A

dral. There the princess passed the night. On the following morning she set out for Epping Forest. In that wild tract Dorset possessed a venerable mansion, which has long since been destroyed. In his hospitable dwelling, the favorite resort, during many years, of wits and poets, the fugitives made a short stay. They could not safely attempt to reach William's quarters, for the road thither lay through a country occupied by the royal forces. It was therefore determined that Anne should take refuge with the northern insurgents. Compton wholly laid aside, for the time, his sacerdotal character. Danger and conflict had rekindled in him all the military ardor which he had felt twenty-eight years before, when he rode in the Life Guards. He preceded the princess's carriage in a buff coat and jack-boots, with a sword at his side and pistols in his holsters. Long before she reached Nottingham, she was surrounded by a body guard of gentlemen who volunteered to escort her. They invited the bishop to act as their colonel; and he consented with an alacrity which gave great scandal to rigid Churchmen, and did not much raise his character even in the opinion of Whigs.*

When, on the morning of the twenty-sixth, Anne's apartment was found empty, the consternation was great in Whitehall. While the ladies of her bed-chamber ran up and down the courts of the palace, screaming and wringing their hands; while Lord Craven, who commanded the Foot Guards, was questioning the sentinels in the gallery; while the chancellor was sealing up the papers of the Churchills, the princess's nurse broke into the royal apartments crying out that the dear lady had been murdered by the papists. The news flew to Westminster Hall. There the story was that her highness had been hurried away by force to a place of confinement. When it could no longer be denied that her flight had

Nov. 26

* Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 25, 26, 1688; Citters, Dec. 6 Ellis Correspondence, Dec. 19; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Burnet, i., 792; Compton to the Prince of Orange, Dec. 2, 1688, in Dalrymple. The bishop's mil itary costume is mentioned in innumerable pamphlets and lampoons.