Grafton refuted all the stories which had been circulated about him by coming to be sworn on the first day. Two members of the Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and Sprat, hastened to make atonement for their fault by plighting their faith to William.
Beaufort, who had long been considered as the type of a royalist of the old school, submitted after a very short hesitation.
Aylesbury and Dartmouth, though vehement Jacobites, had as little scruple about taking the oath of allegiance as they afterwards had about breaking it.35 The Hydes took different paths.
Rochester complied with the law; but Clarendon proved refractory.
Many thought it strange that the brother who had adhered to James till James absconded should be less sturdy than the brother who had been in the Dutch camp. The explanation perhaps is that Rochester would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon by refusing to take the oaths. Clarendon's income did not depend on the pleasure of the Government but Rochester had a pension of four thousand a year, which he could not hope to retain if he refused to acknowledge the new Sovereigns. Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during some months, it seemed doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be suffered to retain the splendid reward which he had earned by persecuting the Whigs and by sitting in the High Commission. He was saved from what would have been a fatal blow to his fortunes by the intercession of Burnet, who had been deeply injured by him, and who revenged himself as became a Christian divine.36In the Lower House four hundred members were sworn in on the second of March; and among them was Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites was broken by his defection; and the minority with very few exceptions followed his example.37Before the day fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begun to discuss a momentous question which admitted of no delay.
During the interregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the administration, collected the taxes and applied them to the public service; nor could the propriety of this course be questioned by any person who approved of the Revolution. But the Revolution was now over: the vacancy of the throne had been supplied: the Houses were sitting: the law was in full force; and it became necessary immediately to decide to what revenue the Government was entitled.
Nobody denied that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown had passed with the Crown to the new Sovereigns. Nobody denied that all duties which had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years might be constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. But large revenues had been settled by Parliament on James for life; and whether what had been settled on James for life could, while he lived, be claimed by William and Mary, was a question about which opinions were divided.
Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore, as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land, to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise and unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this doctrine. His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which had imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to the spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that therefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired. This was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was naturally alive, and that his successors must receive that money because he was politically defunct. The House was decidedly with Somers. The members generally were bent on effecting a great reform, without which it was felt that the Declaration of Rights would be but an imperfect guarantee for public liberty. During the conflict which fifteen successive Parliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the chief weapon of the Commons had been the power of the purse; and never had the representatives of the people been induced to surrender that weapon without having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous loyalty. In that season of tumultuous joy which followed the Restoration, a large revenue for life had been almost by acclamation granted to Charles the Second. A few months later there was scarcely a respectable Cavalier in the kingdom who did not own that the stewards of the nation would have acted more wisely if they had kept in their hands the means of checking the abuses which disgraced every department of the government.
James the Second had obtained from his submissive Parliament, without a dissentient voice, an income sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses of the state during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that income half a year, the great majority of those who had dealt thus liberally with him blamed themselves severely for their liberality. If experience was to be trusted, a long and painful experience, there could be no effectual security against maladministration, unless the Sovereign were under the necessity of recurring frequently to his Great Council for pecuniary aid.
