of the two rival parties, we can have no doubt to which side he secretly inclined. Had Charles II. lived, it is by no means improbable that Godolphin might have been as great a man as he became after the Revolution, without any of the stains which that political convulsion left upon his character.

It is important to remember, in estimating the characters of the statesmen of the Revolution, that the duplicity and ambidexterity, which became so general after 1688, had in reality begun before that date; that there were statesmen in communication with the Hague, while holding office under Charles and James, as there were statesmen in communication with St. Germain's, while holding office under William. Between 1680 and 1720 a sense of impending change pervaded the whole governing class. There was hardly a single man of eminence but would have been glad to have two strings to his bow. Godolphin had been in communication with the Prince of Orange before the death of Charles II. He threw aside his former professions as soon as James was on the throne, and renewed them after he was banished. Scores of other English gentlemen were acting in the same spirit. They were not more false to one king than to another: and treachery on so large a scale, and of so indiscriminate a character, almost ceases to be treachery.

On the accession of James, Godolphin left the Treasury and was appointed Chamberlain to Mary of Modena, whom he regarded throughout life with a degree of affection, which shows that, with all his worldliness, he had still a soft place in his heart. He soon accommodated himself to the new régime. Rochester, who was now First Lord, refused to go to mass with the King, and was turned out of the Treasury; Godolphin went, and was replaced in the Department. Rochester, however, was not dismissed till he had participated with Lord Sunderland and Godolphin in the treaty with France, to which we have already referred. By this compact, for it was not of course a regular treaty, Louis XIV. undertook to make the King of England virtually independent of the House of Commons, on condition that he used his powers in the interests of France.

It does not appear that Godolphin took any active part in the negociations with the Prince of Orange, which immediately preceded the invasion of 1688. When, after the landing of the Prince, the King set out for Salisbury, Godolphin was one of the Council of Five whom he left in charge of the Government. Shortly afterwards, Godolphin, Halifax, and Nottingham, were the three Commissioners chosen to treat with the invaders. When James turned his back upon

upon the throne, Godolphin was one of those who refused to declare it vacant, and voted for a Regency. Having thus done his duty to his late master, he saw nothing to prevent him from taking service with his old friend, and on February 14th, 1689, he was once more gazetted to his old place at the Treasury. Just a year afterwards, the Convention Parliament was dissolved, and then for some reason-jealousy, it is thought, of Sir John Lowther, who had been appointed to the Board-he insisted on resigning. In the following November, however, he came back again as Chief Commissioner, or First Lord, a post which he retained through all ministerial and party changes for six years. He resigned in October 1696; was reinstated four years afterwards, and resigned again in six months, just a year before William's death.

Of Godolphin's relations with the Jacobite party in general during the reign of William, Mr. Elliot, as we have said, has nothing fresh to tell us. Godolphin saw the Jacobite agents: sometimes, with a command of countenance peculiar to himself, pretended not to understand on what errand they had come, and turned the conversation to the race-course or the play-house; sometimes he professed warm attachment to the exiled Prince, and declared his willingness to serve him effectually as soon as he could withdraw from William's service; sometimes he sent promises, and sometimes good advice; but never, we may be quite sure, without a mental resolution that he would do nothing more till a restoration was morally certain. Mr. Elliot, in dealing with this portion of our history, displays much needless excitement. We have already pointed out, that the treachery imputed to those statesmen, who kept themselves fair with both Courts, was but a venial offence. Mr. Elliot thinks it impossible that Godolphin should have given both William and James good counsel at the same time. He certainly offered such to William, and therefore, thinks Mr. Elliot, could not possibly have offered it to James. We see no impossibility in the matter. Horace Walpole supplies what is no doubt the key to Godolphin's double-dealing, and Clarke, in his 'Life of James II.,' takes the same view. It was the primary object of both Godolphin and Marlborough, who always acted together, to prevent James II. from forming any other engagements with the English Tories, or learning to rely on any one except themselves. They might not have been willing to make any great effort to effect his restoration; they may not even have desired it; but they were quite determined that, if it did happen, nobody else should have the credit of it. If the course of events brought it round, they wished to be able to say that it was owing to their own advice,

and

and their own secret exertions. When James was reseated on the throne, he must attribute his good fortune to Marlborough and Godolphin, and to them alone. It was clearly their interest, therefore, to give him such advice as would be seen in the event of his return to have been well calculated to promote it.

In illustration of this advice, Mr. Elliot quotes Godolphin's letter to William in 1695, first published in Dalrymple's 'Memoirs.' And he is quite right in giving this letter a very prominent place in the history of Godolphin's public life; for it is virtually an exposition of his political principles, and foreshadows, as Mr. Elliot says, the ministerial plan which he himself endeavoured to carry out while at the head of Queen Anne's Government. On this occasion William, it seems, had grown impatient of the Parliamentary difficulties by which he was surrounded, and was anxious to try the effect of a dissolution. Godolphin advises him not to dissolve Parliament till he has made peace, which he recommends him to do in the following summer. As long as the war lasted, he could hardly have a Parliament better suited to his purpose. The Whig party in it was just strong enough to support the war, without being strong enough to annoy the King. In another Parliament, this balance was not likely to be maintained. If the Whigs had a large majority, they might be willing to feed the war, but they would impose conditions on the Sovereign. If the Tories had a large majority, they might uphold the prerogative, but they would be lukewarm in the cause of the alliance. But if peace were once made, and the King were relieved from the necessity of coming to Parliament for money, then indeed he might pursue his favourite scheme of ignoring party differences, and party pretensions, with some prospect of success:

'And if it pleased God to grant your Majesty an honourable peace, and you would then be pleased to set up for a party of your own, and let all people see that if they expected your favour they must depend upon you for it, and not let any one hope for promotion for being true to a faction, but by serving you; I presume to say that the war being ended, a new Parliament called, and such measures pursued, your Majesty would quickly find that the Jacobites would turn moderate Churchmen, and loyal subjects, and the Whigs much more obsequious courtiers and easier servants than now they

are.'

This letter suggests to us a further explanation of the apparent contradiction, which so puzzles Mr. Elliot. Godolphin here advises William to make peace in the ensuing summer; and he advised James, it seems, to invade England with a

French

French army if peace was not made. Godolphin knew well how unpopular the war was in England. He knew better than any one the magnitude of the pecuniary difficulties in which it was involving the nation. Any great financial crisis, supervening on an odious war, might have been extremely awkward for the Minister, who would be held responsible for both. There was no saying what Parliament might do in such a case, as Godolphin himself once remarked to Prince George of Denmark. If matters came to that pass, and William had no power to protect him, it would be well to look to some one who could. If William would take his advice and make peace-well. If not, if he was obstinate and rushed upon his fate, then it might perhaps be just as well that James should reappear upon the scene. Godolphin gave the advice which was in each case distinctly the best for his own interests.

The second of the three subjects to which we have referred is the affair of Brest. It is well known that the betrayal to the French king of the intended expedition against Brest in 1694 is attributed exclusively to Marlborough by the great historian of the Revolution. There is no doubt that Marlborough sent this information to James. But it seems equally certain that Godolphin had been beforehand with him. That Macaulay takes no notice of this report, need surprise no one acquainted with his mode of writing history; but the charge is confidently made by Macpherson, an author whom Macaulay generally trusts. It is repeated by Mr. Leslie Stephen, as a recognized truth; and Mr. John Paget, who has enquired into the whole transaction, has no doubt that the charge is true. But the real question is not who told the secret, but who told it first. If Godolphin told it before Marlborough, the Earl of Arran had told it before Godolphin : while it is by no means improbable that there was a fourth person concerned, who told it before any of them. In a letter of Horace Walpole's, which we do not remember to have seen noticed by any modern writer on the period, he says that William III. openly charged Marlborough with betraying the secret, and that Marlborough replied, upon my honour, your Majesty, I only told my wife.' 'I did

not

even do that,' was the King's answer. Now Marlborough's wife was the sister of the Duchess of Tyrconnell, a devoted adherent of the exiled family, who, if she heard such a secret, was under no obligation to respect it. It seems to us that here we have a clue to the real channel through which the information reached Louis. It is difficult to doubt, in face of the evidence we possess, that Godolphin, as well

as

as Marlborough, sent news of this expedition to James. But we may equally believe, that they both knew it to be valueless: and that whatever harm could be done by the disclosure, had been done already. We should have expected to see this question discussed by Mr. Elliot at a little greater length, we confess. He scarcely seems to realize the atrocity of the act imputed to men high in the confidence of the English Government. Godolphin's connivance at the French compact, which he calls 'a terrible crime,' is a joke compared to it.

We have seen from Godolphin's letter to the King, that in the year 1694 he took rather a gloomy view of our financial situation; and, as Mr. Elliot contends with some justice, there was very good reason why he should find his seat at the Board of Treasury an uneasy one, without supposing that his occasional anxiety to quit it arose from any wish to be at greater liberty to assist King James. Godolphin was alarmed for his own safety and on this point Mr. Elliot has placed the situation before us, for the first time, in a concise and intelligible form. Thus ::

The off-hand manner in which William treated the Treasury shows how great Godolphin's difficulties must have been in saving the wealth of the nation from the rapacity of the King. William's orders were no less diverse than peremptory. The Commissioners of the Treasury are immediately to pay 2001. to every battalion in Flanders for the purpose of buying and maintaining a waggon. His secretary has lost his horses, plate, and equipage, in a passage to the Low Countries; the Treasury must compensate him with 2000l. The Duke of Schomberg's pay is to be increased. The arrears due to the troops in Savoy are to be paid. Godolphin no doubt found the execution of the King's commands a very delicate task. Certain sums of money had been voted by Parliament for certain purposes; more could not be furnished without adding recklessly to the debt. "I beg of you," he writes to Blathwayte, "to represent to the King that the consequence of all this is loading his revenue with more anticipations and plunging it into [such?] fresh engagements as he will be sorry to see at his return, and not only [this?] but the debt to his household and family is all this while increasing, by the necessity of applying all the money that can any way be borrowed to the extraordinary charges of the public." In regard to the necessity of the expenses he had nothing to say. They might be necessary or they might not. Their consequences, he affirmed, however, would be most inconvenient.'

The remonstrances of Godolphin passed unheeded. The King effected neither reform nor retrenchment, while to make matters worse, as time passed on, the news from abroad became alarming. The years 1693 and 1694 were years of intense gloom in England.