ILLIAM was now en garÇon upon the throne of England; but, to use the words of a quaint commentator, "he missed his missus" very grievously. When spoken to on business, he for several weeks returned no other answer than an intimation that business might experience that fate which attends a dramatic production when an audience will not listen to a word of it. The Princess Anne, his sister-in-law, sought a reconciliation through Somers, the lord-keeper, whose reception was not by any means as mild as a summer's day, and who congratulated himself on having the royal conscience rather than the royal temper in his keeping. The keeper, however, was determined to keep it up, and so importuned William to be reconciled to Anne, that his majesty ultimately roared out, "Do as you like, but don't bother me, for I'm not fit for business, nor indeed for anything." Somers arranged an interview between sister Anne and the king, who gave her St. James's Palace as a residence, and a quantity of the jewels, which the late queen, whom he called his "duck of diamonds," had left behind her. The Marlboroughs, who had gone quite out of favour with the king, but were the right and left hand of Anne, expected to have a share of the reconciliation, and an interest in its proceeds.

Early in 1695, a glut of unpaid washing-bills which were floating about the neighbourhood of all the barracks, threw a doubt on the honesty, or at all events on the prudence, of the soldiery; and it was determined by the Government that an inquiry should be made into the causes of this paltry irregularity. The disgraceful discovery was instantly arrived at, that the soldiers could not pay their scores because the gallant fellows had not received their salaries.

Corruption and bribery of the lowest kind in the highest quarters were soon brought to light, and it was proved that the secretary of the treasury had taken a large percentage on the money he had to pay, as a sort of bonus for giving himself the trouble to hand it over. Sir John Trevor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, turned out a shocking old rogue, and was found to have been in the habit of receiving bribes for putting questions from the chair, or for smuggling measures through their various stages. He had, in fact, undertaken to get bills done for anyone who brought him a tempting douceur, and a sum of £1050 was distinctly traced to the pocket of the venerable knave from the promoters of the Orphans' Bill. He was punished by being compelled to put from the chair of the House the resolution that he, Sir John Trevor, was unworthy of sitting in the House, and deserved to be kicked out of it. The "Ayes" decidedly had it, and Sir John Trevor would have had it too, if he had not instantly withdrawn, to avoid the unpleasantness of forcible ejection. Mr. Hungerford, the chairman of the committee on the same bill, was also accused, when, yielding to a loud cry of "Turn him out!" mingled with occasional mutterings of "Throw him over!" the dis-honourable member sneaked away from the senate. A further series of corruptions would certainly have been detected had not William determined to avoid further scandal, or at all events further exposure, by dissolving the Parliament.

James was constantly urging his friend Louis to invade England, and he was at length persuaded to collect a fleet and army on the coast, while James himself sent over Sir George Barclay and the Duke of Berwick to attempt an insurrection. The idea of a couple of adventurers coming over to upset the Government was of itself absurd, and the affair was rendered more preposterous by Barclay having taken a lodging in Hatton Garden, where a garret formed his place of business for conducting the affairs of the conspiracy. A simple notification to "ring the top bell," was all that pointed out this nest of treason to those who took an interest in its progress. Even the modern accessories of a boy and a board-room, with a provisional committee, a dozen chairs, and a dining-table, were wanting to this desperate scheme, and indeed, while Barclay was away in order to get his meals—for there was no cooking on the premises—a recommendation to put letters through the door, and leave messages with the porter at the lodge, formed the entire instructions upon which the subordinate conspirators had to act when they chanced, in the absence of their chief, to call at the chambers.

Such were the contemptible arrangements of this project for turning the thrown upside down, and burying, or at all events, bonnetting, William in the ruins of the outraged upholstery. We cannot be surprised that its progress was not by any means encouraging, but Barclay had heard of a plot to assassinate the king, in which one Sir William Perkins was concerned, and thus the since celebrated firm of Barclay and Perkins may be considered to have originated in a partnership project for brewing the storm of revolution. Barclay thought well of the scheme, and was introduced to one Porter; but in those days Barclay and Perkins turned up their noses at Porter, "who was a drunkard and a blab," and they therefore were unwilling to put any faith in him. Barclay, however, resolved to persevere in his regicide scheme, and applied to one Captain Fisher, who lived in King Street, Westminster, and was understood to be open to an offer as decidedly as if there were written over his door, "Murders carefully performed. Assassins' work in general."

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The proposal of Barclay, whatever it may have been, was not sufficiently liberal; for Fisher would only undertake to kill one of the royal coach-horses between Hyde Park and St. James's, but he declined any higher responsibility at the price that was offered. Barclay called Fisher a fool, and they never came to terms; but the former resolved to make the attempt on William's life, and the romantic Green of Tumham, over which the king was about to pass, on a day appointed, was selected as the scene of the treasonable experiment. The party of assassins had swelled to thirty-five, who planted themselves in ambush behind some bushes, when news was brought that the king had changed his mind, and would not come to Turnham Green; "Which," says Burnet, "was enough to turn 'em pale with anger and disappointment." There being some fear that the plot would be discovered, Barclay sneaked off to France, abandoning his fellow-conspirators to their fate, and believing that his old companion Perkins would be nicely left in the lurch; but by a strange coincidence, that personage had entertained a similar notion with regard to his associate, and had got away first, so that the recreant couple had been equally deep in their cowardice and duplicity.

It appeared that Fisher, who had volunteered the horrible office of knacker upon the coach-horse of the king, disclosed to Lord Portland the particulars of the plot, and the result was that several more of the traitors, finding confession the order of the day, went forward to tell not only all they knew, but a great deal more that they had invented for the sake of having something to communicate. This glut of confidential intelligence was so embarrassing, that the Government did not know what to believe or what to doubt; but nevertheless a proclamation was issued, offering £1000 and a pardon to any gentleman involved in the scheme, who would be fool enough to criminate himself, and villain enough to betray his accomplices. There were, of course, several candidates for the cash, and disclosures at £1000 each poured in at such a rapid rate, that it was difficult to meet the demands made on the treasury, on account of the news for which the Government had advertised. To make a long story short, several were tried, found guilty, and executed, for having shared in the treasonable design against William, and among them was one Keys, a trumpeter, who was a mere instrument—like his own trumpet—in the hands of any one by whom he could be played upon.

William's popularity increased, on account of the plots that had been put into operation against him; for it is a beautiful trait in the English character, that the people will become suddenly attracted towards any one who seems to be an object of dislike to others. Unfortunately, however, this generosity is somewhat inconsistent in its nature, for it is usually accompanied by an excess of illiberality in an opposite direction, and if a man is a martyr to a spirit of hostility, the sympathy evinced for him by the public is joined with a savage desire to make martyrs of his enemies. Upon this principle, poor Sir John Fenwick was pounced upon for having compassed or imagined the death of the king, and though there is every reason to believe that such an idea was quite out of the compass of his wildest imagination, he was brought to the scaffold.

It is doubtful, notwithstanding the fuss we now make—and, indeed, have been making ever since the event—about the glorious Revolution of 1688, whether we really had anything like full value for the trouble it occasioned us. However numerous the blessings we have since derived from it, we must contend that it did not pay in the first instance; for as long as England derived no other advantage than William for its king, the good achieved by the Revolution of 1688 must be considered rather more than dubious. He spent his own time and his new country's money in sustaining his own title against the attacks made upon it by foreign powers, whose interest in supporting the doctrine of the "right divine of kings to govern wrong," kept them constantly in a state of active sympathy with James, whose misconduct had caused his forfeiture of the crown, which would otherwise have been legitimately his beyond the power of any one on earth to take it away from him. William was consequently at perpetual warfare with some of the continental states; and it was only when he got into discredit with his subjects that he seemed to rise in favour with some of the absolute monarchs, who then, for the first time, appeared disposed to bear with him. Louis of France listened to the terms of an arrangement; but he never intended to keep faith with William, and was, in fact, intriguing with Spain to defeat the very project he pretended to be willing to carry out with the duped majesty of England. It was evident that the British public did not look with favour upon the individual that had been chosen to enact the part of king; and though, like the frogs in the fable, the people had rejoiced in being relieved from the devouring stork of absolutism embodied in the Stuarts, the Dutch log of which William formed the type was quite as distasteful to the nation in general.

It would be most unprofitable to unravel the tangled thread of events that made up the complicated but most uninteresting annals of this worrying reign, which was distinguished by the multiplicity and the pettiness of the disputes between the prince and a portion of his people. The loggishness of the sovereign seemed to affect the whole nation with the loggerheads; and not only were parties arrayed against each other, but on some occasions the Lords and the Commons came into very serious collision. The disputes in which William was involved with foreign governments were exceedingly costly to his own country, but he finally, on the 7th of September, 1701, after having been a party to several treaties that had been either violated or "gone off," entered into a "second grand alliance" at the Hague, with various powers. By this arrangement all the parties were bound to provide men and money, which their people of course had to pay; and the emperor, who had made himself liable to furnish a contingency, was so excessively hard up, that he was compelled to borrow the money upon his quicksilver mines; but no silver, however quick, could keep pace with the rapidity with which the money was called for and got rid of.

We will now return for a few minutes to James the Second, who was in a very bad way at St. Germains, and was understood to have been dying all the summer. At length, on Friday, the 2nd of September, he was taken very bad indeed with a fainting fit, but got better, until another and another still succeeded; and the last fit was stronger than the first. On Tuesday, the 13th, Louis came to his bedside to say "How d'ye do?" but poor James was unable to answer the polite and obliging inquiry, for he was almost without consciousness. Louis kindly endeavoured to comfort his last moments by promising to protect his family, and treat the nominal Prince of Wales as actual King of England, but this recognition was not likely to do much good either to the dead or the living, as the only parties who were capable of giving it effect, namely, the English people, would have nothing whatever to do with it. Poor James, who was dosed with a great deal of medicine, and swallowed no end of James's powders, was now beyond the aid of medical skill, and he died on the 16th of September, 1701, at the age of sixty-seven. An attempt was made to pitchfork this very indifferent sovereign into the Roman Calendar as a first-rate saint; but there has never been any disposition among the English to award him the honours of martyrdom.

William was by no means the thing in his own health, when the news of the death of James was brought to him. A report was indeed spread that, like a bill at thirty days, he had only a month to run; but this rumour was circulated by the friends of Louis the Fourteenth, who fancied that if William was once out of the way, the grand monarque might be as potent in Europe as the bull of fabled lore was at his ease in the china shop. William had been in Holland, where he was really dangerously ill; but he contrived to get back to England, where he dissolved Parliament in November, 1701, and called a new one together, which met on the 31st of December, to see the old year out and the new year in, and for the despatch of business. The king made a long and rather an effective speech, which had been written expressly for the occasion by Lord Somers, and had a great effect in giving an impetus to the waning fidelity of the people towards the sovereign of their selection. They might, however, have exclaimed with the poet, that they "never loved a young—or old—gazelle," without the usual unhappy result; for just as they were getting to know William well, and love him—or at least to pretend to do so—he was attacked in such a manner as to make him "sure to die." He had been a great deal shaken by the severity of the winter; but it was hoped he would recover in the spring, which he probably might have done, but for an accident that befel him on the road between Kensington and Hammersmith. "A-hunting he would go, would go" in that savage suburb, whose wildness is remarkable to this day, and his horse coming to a block of stone, was unfortunate enough to find it a regular stumbling-block. William was thrown with some force, and experienced a fracture of the collar-bone, when, having been removed to Hampton Court, the medical men began to quarrel about the treatment of his majesty. They of course made no bones about setting the collar; but a dispute arose about the necessity for bleeding the king, and in the heat of the argument, the physicians all pulled at his pulse with such fury, that they unset the bone "while intending," says Burnet, "to make a dead set at one another." The doctors continuing fractious, the fracture got worse, and at length, on the 8th of March, 1702, the royal patient expired. He had reigned thirteen years and a half, and was in the fifty-second year of his age, when the fatal catastrophe happened.

The character of William will not add much to the reputation of British royalty in former days, when sovereigns were so bad that they would never have been allowed to pass current in times like these, in which there is a disposition to examine closely the weight and quality of the metal. He was by no means popular when alive, and bad characters do not, like old port, improve by keeping. The state of parties during his reign made him the centre in which a great deal of odium met, for he happened to form in his own person the embodiment, or rather the representative, of certain principles which were regarded with the utmost aversion by many.

The most valuable attribute of William, which has handed him down as an object of respect and even of enthusiasm in the minds of some, is the fact of the question of constitutional monarchy having been settled in the affirmative by his elevation to the throne of England. His case is certainly valuable as a precedent, but its greatest value consists in the probability that its existence will spare the country hereafter from the disagreeable necessity of being obliged to follow it. English sovereigns have learned the possibility of their being set aside like James the Second, and replaced by one who, like William the Third, owed his power to the will of the people. Such Revolutions as that of 1688, notwithstanding the glorious character that belongs to it, are better as beacons for rulers than as precedents for the people, since a change of dynasty, however constitutionally effected, must be at all times an unpleasant, not to say a deplorable process.

William the Third is entitled to the very highest admiration for having succeeded in holding firmly a position from which the slightest vacillation would have inevitably shaken him. His early stipulation for all the throne or none, and his repudiation of the right of his wife to interfere, though domestically harsh, was politically respectable. The constitution underwent during his reign some of the most substantial and valuable repairs that were ever bestowed upon it, either before or since, notwithstanding some very high-sounding nominal advantages that the country has in ancient and modern times experienced. It was in William's reign that the Commons took the purse-strings of the country tightly in hand, and the censorship of the Press was, during the same period, permitted to expire. The judges were secured in their places during good behaviour; and members of the Privy Council being compelled, by the Act of Settlement, to sign the measures they proposed, we obtained from William's reign the blessing of a responsible Cabinet. It is true that official heads fell more frequently before than since, but the great salubrity of the provision to which we allude is shown in the fact that it has secured the good conduct of ministers so effectually, as to have preserved their heads upon their shoulders. It is a curious truth that the National Debt increased marvellously during William's reign, and there would seem, therefore, to be some reason for the common assertion, that this tremendous liability is a mark of our national prosperity. It certainly proves our credit to be good, as a load of debt in the case of an individual would make it evident that his tradesmen had trusted him; but no one will contend that, on that account, he must be considered more prosperous.

It was the great increase of the Government expenses that had caused the augmentation of the National Debt, and afforded another illustration of the infallible principle, that nothing good can be had without liberally paying for. We might get a republic done for us no doubt at a hundredth part—or less—of the cost of our present excellent constitutional monarchy; but we do not think any reasonable person would feel very anxious to try the cheap and nasty experiment.

Some historians who have preceded us, fall into what we consider the error of eulogising William as if he had been the author of all the good that occurred in his reign, when the fact is that a great deal was accomplished, not alone without his agency, but actually in spite of him. When he came, or rather when he was called to the throne, the nation had profited by experience, and had become equally sensible to the dangers of democratic excess and of absolute monarchy. The tyranny of the Republic, no less than that of the Stuarts, had pointed out the safety of a middle course between the two sorts of despotism; and William, as a very middling person in every respect, was well adapted for the situation that appeared to be made for him. It was owing to no particular merit on his part that his reign was not arbitrary, for he sometimes tried his hardest to make it so; but the good sense of the nation, sharpened by the troubles it had lately passed through, preserved it against further victimisation at the hands of either kings or demagogues.

As the first really constitutional sovereign, William is, we repeat, entitled to our respect and admiration; but we must not forget that the people themselves made the mould to which, we will admit, he was exceedingly well adapted, for he was pliable enough to take the right impress, and sufficiently firm to give body and substance to the nation's beau ideal of a limited monarchy.

THE accession of Anne to the throne of her Anne-cestors, as Hume in a most humiliating attempt at humour hath it, was hailed with general satisfaction, for it usually happens that a new reign is welcomed on the old principle of "anything for a change," and most people expect that some good may come out of it. It will be remembered that Anne was originally a Miss Hyde, being the child of James by his first wife—the daughter of Old Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon; and she had been married to the young man known among his familiar friends as "Georgey Porgey, Prince of Denmark."

It is a beautiful remark of Thomson, that "the women never can keep quiet;" and Anne soon realised this estimate of the female character by declaring war against France with the utmost promptitude. The Commons voted the supplies necessary.