Devonshire, Cornish, Alice Lisle, and Samuel Johnson. Some of the surviving whigs who had suffered obtained pecuniary compensation, but Johnson obtained none. He was deemed by the whigs to be too violent—in fact, he was a radical of that day. The scoundrel Titus Oates crawled again from his obscurity, and, by help of his old friends the whigs, managed to obtain a pension of three hundred pounds a year. This done, there was an attempt to convert the declaration of rights into a bill of rights—thus giving it all the authority of parliamentary law; and in this bill it was proposed, in case of William, Mary, and Anne all dying without issue, to settle the succession on the duchess Sophia of Brunswick Lunenburg, the daughter of the queen of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I.; but it failed for the time. A bill of indemnity was also brought in as an act of oblivion of all past offences; but that too was rejected. The triumphant whigs, so far from being willing to forgive the tories who had supported James, and had been their successful opponents during the previous attempts through Titus Oates and company to exclude James from the succession, that they were now clamorous for their blood and ruin. William refused to comply with their truculent desires, and became, in consequence, the object of their undisguised hatred. They declared that he was a true scion of the Stuart house; that he had acted in Holland more like an absolute monarch than a republican stadtholder, and that now he meant to make himself as despotic as the prince whom he had deposed, though he was his own father-in-law; that this was what made him so tender of the tories who had abetted James in all his violations of the constitution. They endeavoured to annoy him to the utmost of their power. Ireland was in a critical state, James was still there; France was preparing to give him strenuous support; and they persuaded themselves that William's seat was uncertain, and that he must yield to their wishes. They particularly directed their combined efforts against Danby, now earl of Cacrmarthen, and Halifax. They demanded that Caermarthen should be dismissed from the office of president of the council, and Halifax from holding the privy seal, and being speaker of the house of lords. But William steadfastly resisted their demands, and declared that he had done enough for them and their friends, and would do no more, especially in the direction of vengeance against such as were disposed to live quietly and serve the state faithfully.
The clergy were as disaffected to William as his old friends the whigs. William was a presbyterian in principle, and they looked on his disregard of their rites and ceremonies as flat heresy. He at once put a stop to the singing of the service in his private chapel. He refused to touch for the scrofula, treating the practice as a gross superstition. This was a severe reproof to those high churchmen who applauded the profligate Charles for a parade of the practice—as if the miraculous powers of the church were likely to be permitted to pass through so unclean a vessel. Charles is said to have touched no less than a hundred thousand persons in his reign, and James quite as many in proportion to the length of his. On one single occasion he had touched no fewer than eight hundred persons in Chester cathedral. William had given mortal offence to a large section of the clergy by requiring them to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the jurors, or those who complied, were little less bitter than the non-jurors, for they had many of them sworn with very ill-will, and some with not very easy consciences. He had proposed a scheme of comprehension, which, if carried, would admit a numerous body of nonconformists to the livings of the church. They were mortified that ho had allowed the Scotch to abolish episcopacy, and they saw with alarm the work of the commission which he had appointed to prepare a plan of alterations in the church service to be Laid before the convocation, which was to meet simultaneously with the next session of parliament.
On the 19th of October the second session of William first parliament met. The commons were liberal in voting supplies; they granted at once two million pounds, and declared that they would support the king to the utmost of their ability in reducing Ireland to his authority, and in prosecuting the war with France. Part of the required sum was to be levied partly by a poll-tax, partly by new duties on tea, coffee, and chocolate, partly by an assessment of one hundred thousand pounds on the Jews, but chiefly by a tax on real property. The Jews, however, protested that they would sooner quit the kingdom than submit to the imposition, and that source was abandoned. They next took up the bill of rights, and passed it, omitting the clause respecting the succession of the house of Brunswick, which measure was not brought forward again for eleven years. They however took care, at the suggestion of Burnet, to insert a clause that no person who should marry a papist should be capable of ascending the throne; and if any one on the throne so married, the subjects should be absolved from their allegiance. This clause, however, has become inoperative in our time, or George IV., who married a catholic, Mrs. Fitzherbert, would have been deposed.
After thus demonstrating their zeal for maintaining the throne in affluence and power, the commons next proceeded to display it in a careful scrutiny of the mode in which the last supplies had been spent. The conduct of both army and navy had not been such as to satisfy the public. The commons had, indeed, not only excused the defeat of Herbert at Bantry Bay, but even thanked him for it as though it had been a victory. But neither had Schomberg effected anything in Ireland; and he loudly complained that it was impossible to fight with an army that was neither supplied with necessary food, clothing, nor ammunition. This led to a searching scrutiny into the commissariat department, William himself being the foremost in the inquiry, and the most frightful peculation and abuses were brought to light. Though enormous sums had been voted, the army was found in as destitute a condition as that in the Crimea in our own day; the same villany in defrauding the unhappy soldiers of shoes, clothes, ammunition, and even tents. Whole cargoes of these had been paid for by government, but had never been delivered, and could nowhere be found. The muskets and other arms, like those in the Crimea, fell to pieces in the soldiers' hands; and, when fever and pestilence were decimating the camp, there was not a drug to be found, though one thousand seven hundred pounds had been charged government for medicines. What baggage and supplies there were could not be got to the army for want of horses to draw the wagons; and the very cavalry went afoot,
