Therefore, to pass by their persons, and consider their design, it is evident, that on both sides they began with a League, and ended with a conspiracy. In this they have copied, even to the word Association, which you may observe was used by Humieres, in the first wary League which was formed in Picardy; and we see to what it tended in the event: For when Henry III., by the assistance of the king of Navarre, had in a manner vanquished his rebels, and was just upon the point of mastering Paris, a Jacobin, set on by the preachers of the League, most barbarously murdered him; and, by the way, take notice, that he pretended enthusiasm, or inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, for the commission of his parricide. I leave my superiors to conclude from thence, the danger of tolerating nonconformists, who, (be it said with reverence,) under pretence of a whisper from the Holy Ghost, think themselves obliged to perpetrate the most enormous crimes against the person of their sovereign, when they have first voted him a tyrant and an enemy to God’s people. This, indeed, was not so impudent a method as what was used in the formal process of a pretended high court of justice, in the murder of King Charles I., and therefore I do not compare those actions; but it is much resembling the intended murder of our gracious king at the Rye, and other places: And, that the head of a college might not be wanting to urge the performance of this horrible attempt, instead of Father Edm. Bourgoing,[34] let Father Ferguson[35] appear, who was not wanting in his spiritual exhortations to our conspirators, and to make them believe, that to assassinate the king was only to take away another Holofernes. It is true, the Jacobin was but one; and there were many joined in our conspiracy, and more perhaps than Rumsey or West[36] have ever named: but this, though it takes from the justness of the comparison, adds incomparably more to the guilt of it, and makes it fouler on our side of the water.
My author makes mention of another conspiracy against Henry IV., for the seizing of his person at Mante, by the young Cardinal of Bourbon, who was head of the third party, called at that time the Politics, that is to say, in modern English, Trimmers. This, too, was a limb of our conspiracy; and the more moderate party of our traitors were engaged in it.[37] But had it taken effect, the least it could have produced, was to have overthrown the succession; and no reasonable man would believe, but they who could forget their duty so much as to have seized the king, might afterwards have been induced to have him made away, especially when so fair a provision was made by the House of Commons, that the Papists were to suffer for it.
But they have not only rummaged the French histories of the League for conspiracies and parricides of kings; I shall make it apparent, that they have studied those execrable times, for precedents of undermining the lawful authority of their sovereigns. Our English are not generally commended for invention; but these were merchants of small wares, very pedlers in policy; they must like our tailors, have all their fashions from the French, and study the French League for every alteration, as our snippers go over once a year into France, to bring back the newest mode, and to learn to cut and shape it.
For example: The first estates convened at Blois by Henry III. (the League being then on foot, and most of the three orders dipped in it,) demanded of that king, that the articles which should be approved by the three orders should pass for inviolable laws, without leaving to the king the power of changing any thing in them. That the same was designed here by the leading men of their faction, is obvious to every one: for they had it commonly in their mouths in ordinary discourse; and it was offered in print by Plato Redivivus,[38] as a good expedient for the nation, in case his Majesty would have consented to it.
Both in the first and last estates at Blois, the bill of exclusion against the King of Navarre was pressed; and in the last carried by all the three orders, though the king would never pass it. The end of that bill was very evident; it was to have introduced the Duke of Guise into the throne, after the king’s decease: to which he had no manner of title, or at least a very cracked one, of which his own party were ashamed. Our bill of exclusion was copied from hence; but thrown out by the House of Peers, before it came to the king’s turn to have wholly quashed it.
After the Duke of Guise had forced the king to fly from Paris by the barricades, the queen-mother being then in the traitor’s interests, when he had outwitted her so far, as to persuade her to join in the banishment of the Duke of Espernon, his enemy, and to make her believe, that if the King of Navarre, whom she hated, were excluded, he would assist her in bringing her beloved grandchild of Lorraine, to the possession of the crown: it was proposed by him for the Parisians, that the lieutenancy of the city might be wholly put into their hands; that the new provost of merchants, and present sheriffs of the faction, might be confirmed by the king; and for the future, they should not only elect their sheriffs, but the colonels and captains of the several wards.
How nearly this was copied in the tumultuous meetings of the city for their sheriffs, both we and they have cause to remember; and Mr Hunt’s book, concerning their rights in the city charter, mingled with infamous aspersions of the government, confirms the notions to have been the same.[39] And I could produce some very probable instances out of another libel, (considering the time at which it was written, which was just before the detection of the conspiracy,) that the author of it, as well as the supervisor, was engaged in it, or at least privy to it; but let villainy and ingratitude be safe and flourish.
By the way, an observation of Philip de Comines comes into my mind: That when the Dukes of Burgundy, who were Lords of Ghent, had the choice of the sheriffs of that city, in that year all was quiet and well governed; but when they were elected by the people, nothing but tumults and seditions followed.[40]
I might carry this resemblance a little farther: for in the heat of the plot, when the Spanish pilgrims were coming over,[41] nay more, were reported to be landed; when the representatives of the Commons were either mortally afraid, or pretended to be so, of this airy invasion, a request was actually made to the king, that he would put the militia into their hands; which how prudently he refused, the example of his father has informed the nation.
To shew how the heads of their party had conned over their lesson of the barricades of Paris, in the midst of Oates his Popish plot, when they had fermented the city with the leven of their sedition, and they were all prepared for a rising against the government; let it be remembered, that as the Duke of Guise and the council of sixteen forged a list of names, which they pretended to be of such as the king had set down for destruction; so a certain earl of blessed memory caused a false report to be spread of his own danger, and some of his accomplices, who were to be murdered by the Papists and the royal party; which was a design to endear themselves to the multitude, as the martyrs of their cause; and at the same time, to cast an odious reflection on the king and ministers, as if they sought their blood with unchristian cruelty, without the ordinary forms of justice. To which may be added, as an appendix, their pretended fear, when they went to the parliament at Oxford; before which some of them made their wills, and shewed them publicly; others sent to search about the places where the two houses were to sit, as if another gunpowder plot was contriving against them, and almost every man of them, according to his quality, went attended with his guard of Janizaries, like Titus:[42] so that what with their followers, and the seditious townsmen of that city, they made the formidable appearance of an army; at least sufficient to have swallowed up the guards, and to have seized the person of the king, in case he had not prevented it by a speedy removal, as soon as he had dissolved that parliament.
I begin already to be tired with drawing after their deformities, as a painter would be, who had nothing before him in his table but lazars, cripples, and hideous faces, which he was obliged to represent: yet I must not omit some few of their most notorious copyings. Take for example their Council of Six, which was an imitation of the League, who set up their famous council, commonly called “Of the Sixteen:” And take notice, that on both sides they picked out the most heady and violent men of the whole party; nay, they considered not so much as their natural parts, but heavy blockheads were thrown in for lumber, to make up the weight. Their zeal for the party, and their ambition, atoned for their want of judgment, especially if they were thought to have any interest in the people. Loud roarers of aye and no in the parliament, without common sense in ordinary discourses, if they were favourites of the multitude, were made privy counsellors of their cabal; and fools, who only wanted a parti-coloured coat, a cap, and a bawble, to pass for such amongst reasonable men, were to redress the imaginary grievances of a nation, by murdering, or at least seizing of the king. Men of scandalous lives, cheats, and murderers, were to reform the nation, and propagate the Protestant religion; and the rich ideots to hazard their estates and expectations, to forsake their ease, honour, and preferments, for an empty name of heading a party; the wittiest man amongst them to encumber and vex his decrepit age, for a silly pique of revenge, and to maintain his character to the last, of never being satisfied with any government, in which he was not more a king than the present master. To give the last stroke to this resemblance, fortune did her part; and the same fate, of division amongst themselves, ruined both those councils which were contriving their king’s destruction. The Duke of Mayenne and his adherents, who were much the most honest of the Leaguers, were not only for a king, but for a king of the royal line, in case that duke could not cause the election to fall on himself, which was impossible, because he was already married. The rest were, some for this man, some for another, and all in a lump for the daughter of Spain; this disunited them, and in the end ruined their conspiracy. In our Council of Six, some were for murdering, and some for securing of the king; some for a rising in the west, and some for an insurrection of the Brisk Boys of Wapping: in short, some were for a mongrel kind of kingship, to the exclusion of the royal line, but the greater part for a bare-faced commonwealth. This raised a division in their council; that division was fomented into a mutual hatred of each other; and the conclusion was, that instead of one conspiracy, the machines played double, and produced two, which were carried on at the same time. A kind of spread eagle plot was hatched, with two heads growing out of the same body: such twin treasons are apt to struggle like Esau and Jacob in the womb, and both endeavouring to be first born, the younger pulls back the elder by the heel.
I promised to observe no order, and am performing my word before I was aware. After the barricades, and at many other times, the Duke of Guise, and Council of Sixteen, amongst the rest of the articles, demanded of the king to cashier his guards of the forty-five gentlemen, as unknown in the times of his predecessors, and unlawful; as also, to remove his surest friends from about his person, and from their places, both military and civil. I leave any man to judge, whether our conspirators did not play the second part to the same tune; whether his majesty’s guards were not alleged to be unlawful, and a grievance to the subjects; and whether frequent votes did not pass in the House of Commons at several times, for removing and turning out of office those, who, on all occasions, behaved themselves most loyally to the king, without so much as giving any other reason of their misdemeanors than public fame; that is to say, reports forged and spread by their own faction, or without allowing them the common justice of vindicating themselves from those calumnies and aspersions.
I omit the many illegal imprisonments of freeborn men, by their own representatives, who, from a jury, erected themselves into judges; because I find nothing resembling it in the worst and most seditious times of France. But let the history be searched, and I believe Bussy Le Clerc never committed more outrages in pillaging of houses, than Waller in pretending to search for Popish relics:[43] Neither do I remember that the French Leaguers ever took the evidence of a Jew, as ours did of Faria.[44] But this I wonder at the less, considering what Christian witnesses have been used, if at least the chief of them was ever christened. Bussy Le Clerc, it is true, turned out a whole parliament together, and brought them prisoners to the Bastile; and Bussy Oates was for garbling too, when he informed against a worthy and loyal member, whom he caused to be expelled the House, and sent prisoner to the Tower:[45] But that which was then accounted a disgrace to him, will make him be remembered with honour to posterity.
I will trouble the reader but with one observation more, and that shall be to show how dully and pedantically they have copied even the false steps of the League in politics, and those very maxims which ruined the heads of it. The Duke of Guise was always ostentatious of his power in the states, where he carried all things in opposition to the king: but, by relying too much on the power he had there, and not using arms when he had them in his hand, I mean by not prosecuting his victory to the uttermost, when he had the king enclosed in the Louvre, he missed his opportunity, and fortune never gave it him again.
The late Earl of Shaftesbury, who was the undoubted head and soul of that party, went upon the same maxims; being (as we may reasonably conclude) fearful of hazarding his fortunes, and observing, that the late rebellion, under the former king, though successful in war, yet ended in the restoration of his present majesty, his aim was to have excluded his royal highness by an act of parliament; and to have forced such concessions from the king, by pressing the chimerical dangers of a popish plot, as would not only have destroyed the succession, but have subverted the monarchy; for he presumed he ventured nothing, if he could have executed his design by form of law, and in a parliamentary way. In the mean time, he made notorious mistakes: first, in imagining that his pretensions would have passed in the House of Peers, and afterwards by the king. When the death of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey had fermented the people; when the city had taken the alarm of a popish plot, and the government of it was in fanatic hands; when a body of White Boys was already appearing in the west,[46] and many other counties waited but the word to rise—then was the time to have pushed his business: but Almighty God, who had otherwise disposed of the event, infatuated his counsels, and made him slip his opportunity; which he himself observed too late, and would have redressed by an insurrection, which was to have begun at Wapping, after the king had been murdered at the Rye.
And now, it will be but justice, before I conclude, to say a word or two of my author.[47] He was formerly a Jesuit. He has, amongst others of his works, written the history of Arianism, of Lutheranism, of Calvinism, the Holy War, and the Fall of the Western Empire. In all his writings, he has supported the temporal power of sovereigns, and especially of his master the French king, against the usurpations and encroachments of the papacy. For which reason, being in disgrace at Rome, he was in a manner forced to quit his order, and, from Father Maimbourg, is now become Monsieur Maimbourg. The great king, his patron, has provided plentifully for him by a large salary, and indeed he has deserved it from him. As for his style, it is rather Ciceronian, copious, florid, and figurative, than succinct: He is esteemed in the French court equal to their best writers, which has procured him the envy of some who set up for critics. Being a professed enemy of the Calvinists, he is particularly hated by them; so that their testimonies against him stand suspected of prejudice. This History of the League is generally allowed to be one of his best pieces.[48] He has quoted everywhere his authors in the margin, to show his impartiality; in which, if I have not followed him, it is because the chiefest of them are unknown to us, as not being hitherto translated into English. His particular commendations of men and families, is all which I think superfluous in his book; but that, too, is pardonable in a man, who, having created himself many enemies, has need of the support of friends. This particular work was written by express order of the French king, and is now translated by our king’s command. I hope the effect of it in this nation will be, to make the well-meaning men of the other party sensible of their past errors, the worst of them ashamed, and prevent posterity from the like unlawful and impious design.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] “Our attention, therefore, was to make the play a parallel betwixt the Holy League plotted by the house of Guise and its adherents, with the Covenant plotted by the rebels in the time of Charles I. and those of the New Association, which was the spawn of the Old Covenant.”—Vol. VII. p. 146.
[12] I wish the fervour of Dryden’s loyalty had left this exhortation to such writers as the author of “Justice Triumphant,” an excellent new song, in commendation of Sir George Jefferies, Lord Chief Justice of England. To a pleasant new tune, called, Now the Tories that glories.
[13] “And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of rain.
“So Ahab went up to eat and to drink; and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, and cast himself down upon the earth, and put his head between his knees;
“And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea; and he went up and looked, and said there is nothing; and he said, Go again seven times.
“And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold there comes a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand: And he said, Go, say unto Ahab, prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.
“And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind; and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel.”—1 Kings, xviii. 41-46.
[14] Joash king of Israel, having visited the prophet Elisha while on his death-bed, was desired, by the dying seer, to take a bow, and shoot an arrow towards the east, and he shot. “And he said, the arrow of the Lord’s deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them.
“And he said, Take the arrows, and he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground, and he smote thrice and stayed.
“And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldst have smitten five and six times, then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.”—2 Kings, xiii. 14-20.
[15] Our readers need hardly be reminded, that the League was a confederacy formed under pretence of maintaining the Catholic religion, and excluding Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., from the throne, on account of his being a Huguenot. It was only dispersed and subdued after the long and bloody war which was terminated by his ascending the throne in 1594.
[16] Louis XIV.
[17] i.e. The association of the Huguenots, under the Prince of Conde, Coligni, and others.
[18] It would not have been decent to remind the Grand Monarque of such arguments, as dragoons, banishment, and the gallies.
[19] Peter Victor Palma Cayet studied at Geneva, and was a domestic in the house of Calvin. He afterwards became a reformed minister and chaplain to Catherine, sister to Henry IV. Being addicted to alchemy, and having written a work in defence of public stews, he was deposed by a synod from his ministerial functions, as a wizard and a libertine. Upon this disgrace, he abjured the reformed doctrine, and was considered by the Catholics as a convert of such importance, that the Pope himself honoured his proselyte with a letter of congratulation. His historical works are, an Account of the War between the Turks and Hungarians, published in 1598; his “Septennary Chronology” comprizing from 1598 to 1604; and his “Novennary Chronology,” giving an account of the nine years war, which broke out in 1589, and was terminated by the peace of Vervins. Cayet died in 1610.
[20] He was assassinated, by Jaques Clement, on the 2d August, 1589, when he had besieged Paris with every prospect of success.
[21] To which kingdom Charles repaired upon the invitation of the Presbyterians, whose clergy, however, treated him with an indecent rigour, which he never forgave to the sect.
[22] See some account of these fanatics, and the ravages which they committed in Munster, in the Notes on “Hind and Panther,” Vol. X. p. 145.
[23] In the preface to “Religio Laici,” Vol. X. p. 25.
[24] John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, who wrote a valuable, and, the times considered, a moderate history of the church of Scotland, with a bias, as was natural, to the interests of episcopacy. It is a valuable record of Scottish history. James’s harassing disputes with the Presbyterian clergymen, of course make a great figure in his annals. Spottiswoode was born in 1565, and died in 1639, just about the breaking out of those troubles which ruined the Scottish episcopal church.
[25] In 1603, when the king heard, at Hampton-Court, the bishops’ dispute against Dr Reynolds, Dr Sparks, Mr Knewstubs, and Mr Chadderton, James, infinitely better skilled in the subtleties of polemical divinity, than in the arts of ruling a great kingdom, threw his influence into the scale of episcopacy with such ingenuity, that even the pious Whitegift, then primate of England, did not hesitate to avow his persuasion, that “the king spoke by the very spirit of God.” It was therefore no wonder, that Dr Thomas Sparks, although so learned as to be called the Pillar of Puritanism, and so zealous a despiser of forms, as to appear in a Turkey merchant’s gown at the conference, instead of canonicals, should be so melted and overcome by the king’s eloquence and argument, as to become, in future, a strict conformist. He died in 1616, after having experienced the favour of James, which indeed was due to a proselyte of his own making. Sparks wrote several tracts in favour of the establishment; as, “A Brotherly persuasion to Unity and Uniformity,” &c.
[26] Robert Bellarmine, one of the most able controversialists whom the church of Rome has produced, and whose very name became a sort of war-cry of polemical divinity. He was born at Monte Pulciano, in 1542, and entered, in 1560, the order of Jesuits, of which he soon became a distinguished ornament. In the year 1599, he was honoured with a cardinal’s hat, but not till he had carried the principle of “Nolo Episcopari” so far, that the pope was obliged to threaten an anathema, should he persist in declining the proffered honour. Bellarmine died 17th September, 1621, leaving behind him sundry huge volumes of polemical divinity.
[27] See similar arguments for fixing the same principles of disregard to civil authority upon the Catholics and the Puritans, in the preface to “Religio Laici,” Vol. X. p. 18. Our author little foresaw his near approaching conversion to the faith of Rome.
[28] Queen Elizabeth was very much startled by these and other similar reasons which John Knox assigned to persuade the nobility to depose the queen-regent, Mary of Lorraine; and the reformer was obliged to humble himself before he could obtain her forgiveness for broaching doctrines so deeply fraught with danger to monarchy.
[29] Dryden alludes to the conspiracy of Amboise, in 1559, by which, the Huguenots, under direction of the Prince of Conde and Coligni, meditated to surprise the court, possess themselves of the person of the king, and drive from his councils the family of Guise. It was dissipated by the policy of Catherine of Medicis and the bravery of the Duke of Guise.
[30] This passage affords Tom Brown grounds for a flat sneer at our author. See Vol. X. p. 267. The “Advices to a Painter,” to which Dryden alludes, were a series to satires upon Charles II. and his court, published under the name of Denham, but, which in reality, were written by Andrew Marvell. They are printed in the State Poems.
[31] The Cardinal of Lorraine, brother to the Duke of Guise, and the political head of the Leaguers. He was assassinated at the same time with his brother. Dryden compares him to Shaftesbury.
[32] A fiery and gallant adherent of the Duke of Guise. He distinguished himself by his bravery in the battles, and his forwardness in the councils, of the League; and, on the famous day of the barricades, entered the Queen’s garden by force, supposing his patron’s life in danger, and swearing, if the game was to be played, he would have his stake in it. He was created Marshal of France in 1593, by the Duke of Mayenne, and afterwards governor of Champagne. These honours cost him his life; for the young Duke of Guise having requested him to withdraw some troops from Rheims, and receiving an insolent refusal, drew his sword and killed him on the spot.
[33] “There was scarcely any thing to be seen in the army of the League but gold and silver embroideries, upon costly and magnificent coats of velvet, of all sorts of colours, and an infinite number of banderolles fluttering about their thick forest of lances.”—Dryden’s Translation of the History of the League, p. 778.
[34] Father Edmund Bourgoing, prior of the convent in which Jaques Clement, who assassinated Henry III., was a jacobin monk. As he vindicated the action when committed, and compared the murderer, in his sermons, to Judith, it was not doubted, that he had prompted, or at least confirmed, his execrable resolution.
[35] Robert Ferguson, called the Plotter, who told the conspirators, that if they took off Charles on a Sunday, the day would sanctify the deed, and proposed to consecrate the blunderbuss with which he was to be shot. See Vol. IX. p. 363.
[36] Evidences for the king on the trial of the conspirators for the Rye-house plot.
[37] This is apparently an allusion to the designs of Lord Russell and others, who meditated a change of councils, not of government, by the schemes which they agitated.
[38] A tract in octavo, published in October 1680, shortly after the sitting of the short parliament. The author was Henry Neville, second son of Sir Henry Neville, knight, who made some figure among the speculative commonwealth’s men, yet was not so much attached to their doctrines, as to prevent his submitting to be one of Cromwell’s council of state. He died 20th September, 1694.
[39] Mr Hunt’s book was entitled, a “Defence of the Charter and Municipal Rights of the City of London.” See vol. vii. p. 127. Our author was fiercely attacked in that work, and defended himself in the Vindication of the Duke of Guise.
[40] The author alludes to the exertions made by the crown to secure the election of sheriffs; see vol. ix. p. 450.
[41] Among the absurdities sworn to, and believed at the time of the Popish plot, Bedloe’s assertion, that 40,000 pilgrims, assembled in Spain to pay their devotion to Saint James, were to be employed in the invasion of England, was not the less terrifying because so eminently incredible. A false report that the Pilgrims had actually landed, obtained general credit, and one nobleman gallopped to London with the news.
[42] Many of the opposition members, particularly those for the city of London, went armed and escorted to the parliament of Oxford, so that they resembled Titus Oates, who in his days of splendour was always attended by a guard. See vol. ix. p. 355.
[43] Jean Le Clerc, otherwise called Bussy, once a procureur before the parliament of Paris; being a bold, active, and ferocious man, he was created governor of the Bastile by the Duke of Guise, and employed in seizing the persons of the President Harlai, and other counsellors of parliament, and exercising severities on all those suspected of disaffection to the cause of the League. Dryden compares him to Waller, whom the Catholics accused of pillaging their houses, under pretence of searching for relics during the times of the plot. See him described under the character of Arod in “Absalom and Achitophel,” pp. 11. 335; and the note, p. 381, Vol. IX.
[44] Francisco de Faria, who designed himself interpreter and secretary of languages to Gaspar de Abreu de Freitas, ambassador from the crown of Portugal, was one of the witnesses concerning the popish plot. He pretended he had been employed by the Portuguese ambassador to assassinate Oates, Bedlow, and Shaftesbury. His narrative was licenced for publication on 19th November, 1680; and concludes with an impudent affectation of admiring the Divine Providence, which had brought him, “from almost the utmost parts of the far distant habitable world, to be an instrument, in England, to detect, or at least more convincingly to prove the truth of these horrid treasons and conspiracies.” Faria was a native of Fernambuco, in Brazil, and apparently a Portuguese Jew.
[45] Sir Robert Peyton was expelled the House, and committed to the Tower, on account of expressing some hesitation as to the credibility of Oates.
[46] White was the dress affected by those who crowded to see Monmouth in his western tour. See Vol. VII. p. 257. Mr Trenchard undertook to raise 1500 men in and about Taunton alone. See Lord Grey’s Account of the Rye-house Plot, p. 18; where the plan of the city insurrection is also distinctly detailed.—Pp. 32-40.
[47] Louis Maimbourg was born at Nanci, in 1610, and became a Jesuit in 1626. But he was degraded from that order by the General, because he espoused, in some of his writings, the cause of the Gallican church against the claims of the Roman see. He retired to the Abbey of St Victor, where he died in 1686. His historical writings, which are numerous, are now held in little esteem, being all composed in the spirit of a partizan, and without even the affectation of impartiality. They are, however, lively and interesting during the perusal; which led an Italian to say, that Maimbourg was among the historians, what Momus was among the deities.
[48] Maimbourg’s History of the League was first published at Paris in 1683.