and critical works first gave the new prose the stamp of a high style and the sanction of a great name. French influence is as decisive on the development of our prose as on the new departure of our poetry. Before the end of the century, a nervous, natural, simple, and idiomatic standard prose had become universally established, and greatly raised the level of all the journey work of literature and of the books whose importance rests in facts or arguments rather than in their style. For the first time in our history it became possible for a few popular writers to earn considerable sums by their pens, so that a professional literary class was beginning to grow up.

Prose literature now became increasingly plentiful and touched a greater variety of subjects. The theological discussions of the age are reflected in the controversial writings of the Caroline and later Puritan divines. The political interests of the period found expression even in the antiquarian researches of a Prynne or a Dugdale, and still more strongly in the contemporary memoirs, among which (besides Clarendon's Rebellion) we may mention Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs, Ludlow's Memoirs, and May's History of the Long Parliament; while the Diaries of the stately and scholarly John Evelyn, and of the lively and worldly admiralty clerk, Samuel Pepys, and Roger North's Lives of the Norths, throw a flood of light on contemporary manners. There were many translations from the lighter literature of France; and most foreign books of importance, on such subjects as theology, politics and history, were promptly put into English. Every school of politicians now had its literary exponents. Thomas Hobbes upheld the absolute power of the State in his famous Leviathan (1651), which traced the origin of society to a social contract, in which individuals agree with each other to resign their liberty to the sovereign, who is thus able to secure order and prosperity. Hobbes's rationalistic theory of the State was displeasing both to his Puritan opponents, such as Richard Baxter, the prominent Nonconformist divine, and to the friends of Divine Right, whose views were a generation later upheld in Filmer's Patriarcha, which traced all lawful rule back to the patriarchal monarchy set forth in the book of Genesis. James Harington, in his Oceana, upheld an aristocratic republic as the ideal form of government, while John Locke, the friend and dependant of Shaftesbury, tried to establish on a philosophic basis the Whig theory of government that triumphed in the Revolution of 1689.

BOOK VIII.

1689-1760.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Revolution completed the work that the Long Parliament had already more than half done, but which in some ways the Restoration bade fair to undo.

It put an end to the doctrines of Divine Right and Passive Obedience which had raised the monarchy into a sort of sacred position far above human law. It made the king the first magistrate of a free state, with definite work to do. If he neglected it he could be sent about his business. It reduced his legal powers wherever they seemed dangerous.

It secured the victory of Parliament over the Crown. The triumph of Parliament meant, in the long run, the triumph of the Commons, who now gradually got into their hands most of the powers that the Constitution still left to the king. The king's ministers soon became in reality the ministers of the Commons, who thus won the control of the executive power. But the Commons were a close body, mostly consisting of landlords and rich gentlemen. Their triumph made England an aristocracy instead of a monarchy. Side by side with the legal constitution grew a new customary constitution that superseded it. Cabinet government, aristocratic influence, constitutional monarchy were the chief notes of the new period. But the changes were less in form than in spirit.

The Revolution brought about equal changes in the Church. It destroyed the strong priestly power which for a century had been the one great support of monarchy. But Puritanism as well as Anglicanism gave way before the new spirit of Rationalism. The Dissenters got Toleration.

Yet the constitution of the Church was not altered, despite the new spirit that came over it.

The Revolution brought some sort of civil liberty to Scotland with that form of church government which the Scots liked best. It finally led to the union of Scotland with England. To Ireland it simply renewed in a more grievous form the Protestant and English ascendency.

The Revolution restored England to its right place as a great power in Europe. The first result was the fall of the French supremacy over Europe.

The Revolution made England the greatest commercial and maritime state in Europe. When waging war to uphold her political interests and the balance of power, England now keeps a keen eye on winning advantages for her trade. Her navy now becomes her chief care. Her colonies and trading stations spread her name and tongue over every continent.

But tendencies work slowly, and in England perhaps more slowly than anywhere. It took two generations for all these great changes to be carried out, and even then plenty of traces remained of the old state of things.

The new system makes a fair start under William III. Under Anne we seem in some ways to be back in Charles II.'s time. The reigns of the two Georges mark the completion of the change.

CHAPTER I.

William and Mary (1689-1694). William III. (1689-1702).

1. William's first business was to choose his ministers. Called in by a body of Whig and Tory gentlemen, he would The New not be the king of one party, and took care that Ministry, 1689. both should be represented in his cabinet. The chief Tory ministers were Danby, now President of the Council and Marquis of Carmarthen, and Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, Secretary of State. Nottingham was a very strong churchman. In appearance he was very tall, thin, swarthy-complexioned man like a Spaniard or Jew," "in his habit and manners very formal," so that he was called Don Diego Dismallo by the Whig wits. Sidney, Lord Godolphin, who had been with James to the

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last, soon became First Lord of the Treasury. He was low stature, thin, with a very black and stern countenance," but "modest in his behaviour, speaks not much, but is affable in his manner when he is pleased." His quiet business-like habits, great knowledge of figures, and unobtrusive usefulness soon made him as necessary to William as to James. Halifax, as Privy Seal, represented the Trimmers. The most prominent Whig was the young Earl of Shrewsbury, who combined great ability with "a handsome person (though with but one eye) and noble and obliging manners." But the chief household posts were given to William's old friends from Holland, such as the trusty William Bentinck, soon Earl of Portland, with his "very lofty mien, polite and graceful yet dignified manners," that won more recognition abroad than with the churlish English, and the more brilliant Arnold Joost van Keppel, after 1696 Earl of Albemarle, a "cheerful young man, beautiful in his person." Lord Churchill was now made Earl of Marlborough. William himself had no notion of reigning without governing; his long and wide experience of foreign affairs led him to act as his own foreign minister: all the strings even of home policy remained in his hands, though here he knew less when and how to act.

2. The Convention, as in 1660, was turned into a Parliament. The king was granted the hereditary revenue for life to support his household, but parliamentary The Convention grants were henceforth made from year to year, Parliament and so that the king was now forced to have a its work, 1689. session of Parliament every year. The same object was also got by passing for a short period a Mutiny Act, which allowed the king to keep discipline in the army by military law. The abolition of the harsh and burdensome Hearth Tax relieved the poor. The Dissenters were rewarded by the Toleration Act, which gave Protestants who believed in the Trinity the right to worship in their own chapels. But the harsh Clarendon Code, though relaxed, was not repealed. No one was willing to relieve the papists, and a Comprehension Bill to bring back moderate Dissenters to the Church was thrown out through the opposition of the clergy and the languid interest of the Dissenters themselves. A new Oath of Allegiance was forced on all office-holders in Church and State. Many of the clergy scrupled to take it, and were turned out of their livings. Thus arose the schism of the Non-jurors, which was saved from being formidable by very few laymen following the 300 clergy who refused

to swear allegiance to William and Mary. Among the Non-jurors were Archbishop Sancroft and the holy Bishop Ken. William filled up their places from the party now beginning to be called Low Church, or Latitudinarian. Tillotson, Dean of St. Paul's, a liberal and fair-minded man and a polished though cold preacher, became Archbishop of Canterbury. The active, fussy, good-natured Whig partisan, Gilbert Burnet, a famous writer and preacher, was made Bishop of Salisbury. The High Church clergy, who were the great majority, and who followed more closely on the footsteps of Laud, strongly disliked William's Church policy. But the mass of them took the oaths, though without giving up their old theories of divine right and passive obedience. They still had a strong hold over the people.

The Declaration of Right was now turned into the Bill of Rights, the last of the great charters of English liberty.

1. It enacted that all the liberties declared in the Declaration were the ancient and indubitable rights of the English people. 2. It declared illegal (a) the suspending power; and (b) the dispensing power as it hath been assumed and exercised of late"; (c) James's Court of Commissioners in ecclesiastical causes; (d) levying money for a longer time than granted by Parliament; (e) keeping a standing army without parliamentary consent. 3. It declared that subjects have the right to petition the king, and that Parliaments should be freely elected, frequently held, and have free speech. 4. It resolved that "for the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom" all persons "who profess the Popish religion or marry a papist shall be incapable to inherit or possess the crown.

The Convention Parliament was dissolved in January 1690, after wild debates and much excitement. Many Tories were now sorry for the Revolution, and wished James back, while the extreme Whigs attacked William almost as fiercely as his uncle. The "foreign king" had already lost his popularity. Rival factions, war in Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent made a bad beginning for his reign.

The Revolution

1688-92.

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3. In Scotland the fall of the "tyrant" James was hailed with general delight. Popular disturbances broke out everywhere. On Christmas Day 1688 the curates in Scotland, (as the Episcopalian ministers were called) were, in many cases, "rabbled," that is, driven out with violence and insult from their churches and manses. A Convention of the Estates was summoned as in England, and sat in Edinburgh, while the Duke of Gordon held the castle for King James, and a Cameronian rabble poured in from the fervid south-west. The Duke of Hamilton became President of the Convention, where Whig feeling rose so high that