Subservience to France

The accession of James in 1685 had excited hopes and fears in every Continental court.  One government alone, that of Spain, wished that the trouble that had distracted England for three generations, might be eternal.  All other governments, whether republican or monarchical, Protestant or Romanist, wished to see those troubles happily terminated.  Under the kings of the House of Stuart, she had been a blank in the map of Europe.  That species of force which, in the 14th century, had enabled her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist.  The Government was no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the Middle Ages; it had not yet become one after the modern fashion.  The chief business of the sovereign was to infringe the privileges of the legislature; that of the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the sovereign.

The king readily received foreign aid, which relieved him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament.  The Parliament refused to the king the means of supporting the national honour abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded, that those means might be employed in order to establish despotism at home.  The effect of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vast resources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight than the small province of Holland.  France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of things.  All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it to a close.  The general wish of Europe was that James should govern in conformity with law and with public opinion.  From the Escurial itself came letters expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England would be on good terms with his Parliament and his people.  From the Vatican itself came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Catholic faith.

The king early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof.  While he was a subject he had been in the habit of hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife.  He now ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came to pay him their duty might see the ceremony.  Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace, and during Lent sermons were preached there by Popish divines, to the great displeasure of zealous churchmen.

A more serious innovation followed.  Passion week came, and the king determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his predecessors had been surrounded.  The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after an interval of 127 years, performed at Westminster on Easter Sunday with regal splendour.

Monmouth and his Fate