formed the Prince himself, who, in consequence, suffered himself to be attended with a guard. The above is the outline of Facio's narrative, which agrees with Burnet's short relation of the same affair. What became of Fenil does not appear. Six years after the discovery of this attempt, (viz. in 1692,) another conspiracy was formed against the life of William. The account of it given by Burnet is, that one Grandval had been in treaty with Louvois to perpetrate this act, and that on Louvois' death his son found a memorandum of the design amongst his father's papers, and sending for Grandval persuaded him to renew it. However, before the attempt could be accomplished, it was discovered, and Grandval, being seized, was tried in Flanders by a courtmartial, and executed. The whig writers have not hesitated to assert James's participation in this scheme. Of the justice of such an accusation it is difficult to form an opinion; but from all the circumstances of the case we are inclined to think that these designs originated with the French Court rather than with James. It does not seem improbable that Fenil, and Grousfeldt, and Grandval, were one and the same person. We know that Count Fenil communicated his design by letter to Louvois, and that it was amongst his papers that the plan of the proposed assassination was found, on which Louvois the younger proceeded in 1692. The name of Grousfeldt too would be easily converted by the French into Grandval; but, after all, this is and must be merely matter of speculation.

There are, unfortunately, more substantial grounds for believing that James was implicated in the conspiracy against William, discovered in the year 1696, and for which several persons were tried and suffered. The most important evidence of James's guilt has been brought to light by M. Mazure, who has devoted a note at the conclusion of his volume to the subject. The account given of the transaction by James himselft is as follows:

"That about the end of the year 1693, a proposal had been made to the King, by one newly come out of England, of seizing and bringing away the Prince of Orange, and of making a rising in and about London, but his Majesty would not hear of it, looking upon the project as impracticable, and exposing his friends when he had no prospect of seconding them. The same thing some time after was proposed again, and again rejected; notwithstanding which, in the beginning of the year 1695, it was a third time moved by one Crosby, or Clench, who came from people that wished the king well (as he pretended), though another set of men than those the King had hitherto corresponded with; these persons, he said, made no doubt of seizing the Prince of Orange and bringing him off, but desired a warrant by his Majesty to empower them to do it; this the king again rejected, and charged him not to meddle in any such

matter."

James then proceeds to relate the manner in which Crosby disobeyed these injunctions, and excited Sir William Parkins, Charnock, and

* See Burnet and Kennett, vol. iii. p. 617, 644. t Life of James II. vol. ii. p. 545.

others, to the attempt in which they lost their lives. He then gives a narrative of Sir George Berkeley, and the commission which that person held from him, for the purpose of showing, that though he had authorized his adherents to levy war against William, he had never assented to the attempt upon his person.

In searching among the papers relating to James II., at Saint Germain, M. Mazure discovered a very extraordinary document, which necessarily raises a doubt as to the correctness of the above statement. The date (in pencil) was 1693, and it purported to be a commission from James II. It ran thus

"You are hereby authorized and required to seize and secure the person of the Prince of Orange, and to bring him before us, taking to your assistance such others of our faithful subjects in whom you may have the most confidence; and we order and command all such lieutenants, deputy lieutenants, mayors, sheriffs, and other officers, civil and military, to be assistant to you in the due execution of these presents, and for your so doing this shall be your warrant."

In the margin of the same paper is written"Prendre l'ordre du Roi pour écrire au Gouverneur de Boulogne en faveur du Sieur C.”

From a letter given by M. Mazure, there appears to be little doubt that the Sieur C. was the Crosby whose offers are said by James to have been rejected by him; and if that be correct, it is difficult to reconcile the existence of the document discovered at St. Germain, with the statement in James's memoirs. It is possible, indeed, that although the draft of the commission may have been prepared, the scruples which James professes may have operated to prevent the completion of the instrument. It is certain that all the conspirators who suffered in 1696, denied at the scaffold, that the commission under which they acted contained any authority to seize the person of William.

The interesting nature of the inquiry will excuse the above digression; but we shall now resume the narrative of M. Mazure, with his spirited picture of the trial of the seven bishops. He has, however, brought to light no new facts, and we only advert to the subject, for the purpose of giving an extract from a letter to Barillon, who seems to have been quite convinced that the bishops and their councils were in the right.

66

It seems," says the ambassador, speaking of the trial, "as if there had been a sort of trial of strength between the two parties, and that the popular cause has completely triumphed over that of the king. The counsel for the bishops seized the opportunity which was offered thein for agitating the question of the dispensing power. They maintained that this power could never be granted to the king, without entirely overturning the laws and the established forin of government, which is at an end if the laws can be suspended by any other power than that which made them, namely, the Parliament. This doctrine was received with universal applause and great acclamation. The advocates of the royal prerogative were not prepared to reply, or to refute the arguments brought for ward by the most learned lawyers of England. who were opposed to them."-vol. ii. p. 469.

The birth of the Prince of Wales, which happened two days after the bishops had been committed to the Tower, hastened the crisis of James's fortunes; and the event which he had so long and so earnestly desired as that which was to strengthen and confirm his power, was in fact the immediate cause of his overthrow. The enemies of Catholicism, who had looked with hope and confidence to the Protestant heirs, now beheld themselves deprived even of this remote consolation, and in their dread of a Popish successor, they did not hesitate to invite the immediate interposition of the Prince of Orange. With consummate skill and caution that able statesman had prepared himself and his resources for this great emergency, and the call of the English nation for deliverance found a prompt answer. Never was so bold and so noble an enterprise achieved with more wisdom and valour. Although himself exposed to the vigorous assaults of France, William successfully protected the States against the menaced danger, and left himself free for the accomplishment of his great task in England. While thus, on the one hand, all that prudence could suggest and energy exccute was pressed into the service of the Prince, the proceedings of James were marked with an imbecility and an inertness which almost amounted to infatuation. Undecided whether to press forward or to retrace his fatal footsteps, James ferme dans ses irresolutions, to use a phrase of M. Mazure, seemed willing to persuade himself that the threatened danger would yet pass away. Though forewarned, both by the French ambassador and by D'Albeville, of the preparations making in Holland, which it was but too obvious were destined for England, he still persisted in asserting that the Prince would not venture upon so perilous an enterprise; and when Louis XIV. menaced the States with war in case an attempt should be made upon England, James had the folly to resent as impertinent an interference upon which all his hopes must have depended. And yet there was in this some show of royal feeling not unbecoming a king of England :-"I need not a protector," said he to Van Aters, the ambassador of the States; "I have no wish to be treated like the Cardinal of Furstemberg" a creature of Louis XIV.) But upon whom was he to rely? He had alienated the affections of the great majority of his people; he had offended the Church of England, fill in the extremity of her wrath she forgot even her own principles of non-resistance; he had failed to conciliate the sovereign pontiff, who, in common with all the moderate and sensible

Catholics of England, looked with regret upon measures so little calculated to promote the true interests of the Church of Rome. Under these circumstances, France seemed the only power to which James could turn with confidence for assistance and support, and yet he slighted the efforts thus made by Louis in his favour; nay, as the danger approached nearer, he abandoned altogether the idea of succours from that sovereign, and endeavoured to coneiliate the States, by expressing his readiness to join with them in preserving the peace of Nimeguen. The memoir which James despatched at this period to the States, given by

M. Mazure from the correspondence of Barillon, is a very remarkable document, and betrays the extremity to which the king was reduced. In consequence of the adoption of this line of policy by James, Louis XIV. suspended his intention of declaring war against the States a fact which is now for the first time brought to light. At the same time we cannot altogether coincide with our author in the eulogy which he takes this occasion of passing upon the magnanimity of Louis XIV. whose conduct in this affair ought, he tells us, to inspire us with veneration for his character. That Sovereign was fully aware that it deeply interested himself to preserve the crown of England upon the brows of James, and in forbearing at this time to press his warlike designs against Holland, he was doubtless governed by the expectation that James would probably, by his new policy, be enabled to prevent the threatened descent of the Prince of Orange. Had Louis at once declared war against the States, it would have been impossible that the repudiation by James of a connexion with France could have gained any credit, and the design of the Prince of Orange upon England would have been forwarded with double vigour. The cautious policy of the two monarchs was doomed to be unsuccessful, and the fair promises of the king of England produced no change in the conduct of the States. Thus deprived alike of his hopes of succour from France, and of forbearance from Holland, James was driven to the unpalatable necessity of retracing those steps in his domestic policy which had led him to the brink of ruin. Even this attempt failed. Those measures of restitution, so grateful to the people, were attributed to his highness, and not to his majesty, whose good faith in retracting what had cost him so much to achieve was more than suspected. In this state of things the fleet of the Prince of Orange sailed for England.

When the intelligence of this hostile armament, and of its approach to the shores of England, reached the ears of the king, all brave men expected to see him hastening to meet the invaders at the head of his army. Now came the time when the reputation for courage, which he had, perhaps, not unjustly acquired, was to be put to the test. Energy, promptitude and resolution might yet preserve the throne, which was trembling beneath him. To place himself without delay in front of his troops, and to strike a speedy and vigorous blow, was the bold and wise exhortation of the French king.

"The more a king exhibits greatness of soul in peril," said Louis, in a letter to his ambassador, "the more he strengthens the fidelity of his subjects. Let the king of England exhibit the intrepidity which is natural to him, and he will make himself formidable to his enemies, and cause them to repent of their enterprise." vol. iii. p. 266.

Again, in a subsequent letter, Louis regretted that the king hesitated to take the personal command of his forces, and finding that he had resolved to place another person at their head, he offered to despatch to James's assistance, under the title of envoy extraordinary, a marshal of France, or a lieutenant general of his

army. This degrading proposition was made too late to be accepted, nor is it probable that the king would have assented to it, since it must have heightened that jealousy which the nation had already begun to entertain of a connexion with France.

In this state of supineness James suffered the Prince of Orange to land without opposition. The disaffected, whose spirits might have been awed by a show of resolution in the king, gathered fresh hopes from the success of his enemies. To forsake the banners of a king who did not venture to lead his followers to the field was not unnatural, and the example of Lord Cornbury was quickly followed. This was the last blow to all James's hopes. That army, which it had cost him so much to create, and which he had regarded as the great engine by which all his designs in the end were to be effected, was now converted into the instrument of his destruction. Desertion followed desertion; doubt and distrust of those who still gathered under his standards rendered every idea of effective resistance vain; and, without striking a single blow in his defence, James beheld his sceptre wrenched from his hands.

In estimating the character of this great transaction, and of those who played the principal parts in it, M. Mazure has, we think, displayed some harshness and injustice towards William. The circumstance of his relationship and near connexion with James appears to have had an undue weight upon the mind of the historian. It is well that the tender charities and affections of private life should in social intercourse be inviolably observed; but when the happiness and welfare of nations are thrown into the opposite scale, who can blame the man who yields to such paramount claims? In other respects also, the character of William seems to be displeasing to the historian; his imperturbable coldness, his utter want of vivacity, and perhaps, more than all, his irreconcileable aversion to France, have arrayed the prejudices of M. Mazure against him.

In closing the volume before us we cannot avoid expressing our regret, or rather our shame, that the literature of England possesses no worthy history of the greatest revolution ever wrought upon English soil. The public have long looked in vain for the performance of this task to the genius of Mackintosh; but we confess that there is another pen which we should even with more satisfaction see employed in tracing this neglected but noble history.

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