Hitherto the Jacobites had tried to persuade the nation that the French would come as friends and deliverers, would observe strict discipline, would respect the temples and the ceremonies of the established religion, and would depart as soon as the Dutch oppressors had been expelled and the ancient constitution of the realm restored. The short visit of Tourville to our coast had shown how little reason there was to expect such moderation from the soldiers of Lewis. They had been in our island only a few hours, and had occupied only a few acres. But within a few hours and a few acres had been exhibited in miniature the devastation of the Palatinate. What had happened was communicated to the whole kingdom far more rapidly than by gazettes or news letters.
A brief for the relief of the people of Teignmouth was read in all the ten thousand parish churches of the land. No congregation could hear without emotion that the Popish marauders had made desolate the habitations of quiet and humble peasants, had outraged the altars of God, had torn to pieces the Gospels and the Communion service. A street, built out of the contributions of the charitable, on the site of the dwellings which the invaders had destroyed, still retains the name of French Street.726The outcry against those who were, with good reason, suspected of having invited the enemy to make a descent on our shores was vehement and general, and was swollen by many voices which had recently been loud in clamour against the government of William.
The question had ceased to be a question between two dynasties, and had become a question between England and France. So strong was the national sentiment that nonjurors and Papists shared or affected to share it. Dryden, not long after the burning of Teignmouth, laid a play at the feet of Halifax, with a dedication eminently ingenious, artful, and eloquent. The dramatist congratulated his patron on having taken shelter in a calm haven from the storms of public life, and, with great force and beauty of diction, magnified the felicity of the statesman who exchanges the bustle of office and the fame of oratory for philosophic studies and domestic endearments. England could not complain that she was defrauded of the service to which she had a right. Even the severe discipline of ancient Rome permitted a soldier, after many campaigns, to claim his dismission; and Halifax had surely done enough for his country to be entitled to the same privilege. But the poet added that there was one case in which the Roman veteran, even after his discharge, was required to resume his shield and his pilum; and that one case was an invasion of the Gauls. That a writer who had purchased the smiles of James by apostasy, who had been driven in disgrace from the court of William, and who had a deeper interest in the restoration of the exiled House than any man who made letters his calling, should have used, whether sincerely or insincerely, such language as this, is a fact which may convince us that the determination never to be subjugated by foreigners was fixed in the hearts of the people.727There was indeed a Jacobite literature in which no trace of this patriotic spirit can be detected, a literature the remains of which prove that there were Englishmen perfectly willing to see the English flag dishonoured, the English soil invaded, the English capital sacked, the English crown worn by a vassal of Lewis, if only they might avenge themselves on their enemies, and especially on William, whom they hated with a hatred half frightful half ludicrous. But this literature was altogether a work of darkness. The law by which the Parliament of James had subjected the press to the control of censors was still in force;and, though the officers whose business it was to prevent the infraction of that law were not extreme to mark every irregularity committed by a bookseller who understood the art of conveying a guinea in a squeeze of the hand, they could not wink at the open vending of unlicensed pamphlets filled with ribald insults to the Sovereign, and with direct instigations to rebellion. But there had long lurked in the garrets of London a class of printers who worked steadily at their calling with precautions resembling those employed by coiners and forgers.
