ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.
XXVIII.—JAMES
TT has been the misfortune of Roman Catholicism in England 1 that the only two Sovereigns since the Reformation who have openly identified themselves with its cause have been both singularly ill-qualified to inspire enthusiasm by their personal characteristics. Queen Mary, whatever may be her claims to respect in certain points of view, was unquestionably most unattractive in her demeanour ; and James Stuart the Younger was personally as unromantic and uninteresting a martyr as any cause has ever boasted. In his brother Charles, unshackled personal government had appealed to the support and half-disarmed the prejudice of the nation by an almost unparalleled combination of geniality and consummate tact ; but in the case of James, even those most dis- posed already to enlist themselves under the banner which he displayed, found their continued adherence to him a rather severe strain on their feelings of devoted loyalty. And even now it is difficult to peruse the records of his unfortunate career without experiencing a much stronger feeling of distaste, not to say repug- nance, than is warranted by the actual offences and real disposi- tion of James himself. Certainly in him error and vice lost all the grace which sometimes is held to be their palliation, if not their condonation, and his reputation remains stripped of all adventitious appeals for sympathy, except such as may spring from the merci- ful consideration and pity due to one who ended his days in exile and comparative obscurity. Any description of the character of such a man, apart from a narrative of events, cannot be very interesting; for any interest belonging to the period attaches itself to the events themselves, not to the man who was in turn their principal agent and their victim. James Stuart affords in his career a remarkable example of a man of limited capacity and shallow moral nature, tempted by the mistaken estimate formed of him by others, as well as by his own undoubting self-esteem, to attempt the roles of a statesman and an apostle. There was by nature just enough ability in him and he had just enough good principles to have made him a respectable man of business, and a fairly conscientious and gene- rally well meaning, if not highly moral individual, if circumstances had not called him to any important career or exposed him to any great temptations. He had a clear head for small things, good sense in their appreciation, and when he chose had considerable powers of application to business. He was by nature obstinate, but rather from slowness in apprehending anything which was alien to his preconceived ideas than from any actual persist- ency in his nature ; for he was also very impressionable when some cord of his nature was touched, or when the argument was brought within the range of his mental perceptions ; and when thus affected, he was apt to take sudden resolutions in entirely opposite directions to his former line of action. He was really much influ- enced and led by those who could lay hold of his characteristic peculiarities, but he never willingly did anything which he did not believe to have proceeded from himself alone, and to have been dictated by his own unassisted judgment. lie had the greatest desire to master the situation, and the most firm belief that he was capable of so doing. The Duke of Buckingham, according to Bishop Burnet, said of the two Royal brothers, that Charles II. "could see things if he would," and James " would see things if he could." He was a man who was injured morally and intellec- tually almost equally by prosperity and adversity. By the former his ambition was raised, his estimate of his own abilities was enormously exaggerated, his confidence of success became un- bounded ; good sense and prudence alike deserted him, his temper became rough and arrogant, his disposition fierce and unfeeling, and his whole nature was hardened. On the other hand, adversity or an unexpected overthrow of his confident anticipations depressed his intellect below its natural standard, crushed his personal dignity, and injuriously affected his moral integrity. And his whole career had been one of extreme vicissitudes of good and ill fortune. When too young to be much influenced in the formation of his character by external events, he had been exposed, like his elder brother, to the perils and calamities of civil war,—had been a sort of State prisoner in the hands of the victorious Parliament,—had escaped to the Continent while still a lad, and had there been subjected alike to the evils of exile, and the allurements or persecutions of his mother's religious proselytism , The obstinate elements of his nature seem to have been roused by these attempts to force him against his own free-will into the fold of Rome, and he resisted all overt attempts with a seeming pertinacity of Protestant conviction. He served both under Turenne and Condd with some distinction, giving evidence of aptitudes for the duties of an officer which induced Turenne, it is said, to entertain expectations of his military capacity which were never in any way realized in succeeding years. This was one of the first instances of his really limited abilities misleading spectators into the idea that he was designed for great things. In fact, his brother's fate was exactly reversed in his case. Charles was a clever man,who was depreciated through his own wilful self-effacement. James was a man of inferior talents, who was overrated, and who endeavoured to make the world believe that this exaggerated estimate was correct. In the early years of his brother's reign ho was looked upon with considerable respect as the appropriate head of the Militia of the Crown, both by land and sea. His political influence was weakened, but not overthrown, by the downfall of his father-in-law, Clarendon. He had a sort of professional pleasure in the two services, especially in the Navy, as to which he liked to fancy himself a great administrative reformer. This, joined to a display of physical courage which passed for that presence of mind in crises in which he was really deficient, made the nation for a short time believe that they had found in him a hero-prince and a great commander. At the same time, an impetuous outspoken- ness, which, in truth, was the result very much of arrogance, inspired a belief in his blunt sincerity and truthfulness. But scarcely had he recommended himself to the national affections by these specious appearances of great qualities, and secured the hearty thanks and eager reward of Parliament for his services, than he began to degenerate under the effects of good-fortune and popular estimation, and to display less pleasing characteristics, which soon affected vitally the public estimate of him on nearly all points. Pepys, his subordinate in the Admiralty and devoted creature, has recorded the gossip which conveyed the first intimation of this
'change in the public appreciation of the Duke, in consequence of the change in his demeanour from obsequiousness to arrogant self- assumption.
By degrees the nation awoke to the conviction that James entertained extremely dangerous ideas on the subject of arbitrary power in the Executive, and was very ready to anticipate in his own personal actions their general recognition. James, in fact, had really bad no experience of his own capacity for dealing with 'great events. A Revolution had driven him helplessly into exile ; another Revolution, which he had had no part in bringing about, had replaced him in his native country, and in a position of dignity. A popular delusion had credited him with eminent abilities, in one department at least, and had conjectured the • existence of corresponding talent in other directions. He accepted all these things as true measures of his capacity, and of the in- herent power of the Crown, and in the fullness of his self -satis- 'faction he unfolded to the nation something of his real nature. Like his father, but unlike his brother Charles, his pleasure was in the display more than in the reality of power, and he reaped the fruit in a corresponding amount of unpopularity.
But the event which overthrew entirely the estimation in which lie once stood with the English nation was his avowal of his 'conversion to Roman Catholicism. His brother Charles seems to lave been already a Roman Catholic when be landed in England at the Restoration ; but we have no evidence of James having adopted these views so early. He had been a much more ardent Protestant while an exile than his brother ever was during his whole lifetime, but in some way or other the astute Church of Rome had obtained the key to his understanding and feelings on this point, and the obstinate Protestant became the obstinate Romanist. There was something, indeed, in the pretensions of Rome which was congenial to the character of James. Although he was jealous of his own independence of action, he was, as we have said, really much disposed to rely on others, through an 'unconscious recognition of his own inferior capacity. It was, therefore, areal relief to his whole nature when he was induced to 'believe that in one great department of thought be was not re- quired by any regard to self-respect to exert his own judgment, and when, as a necessity of human nature in general, he was called on to rely implicitly on the guidance of an Infallible Church. As early as the February of 1661, Pepys expresses his disinclina- tion that " the Duke of York and his family should come to the throne, he being a professed friend to the Catholiques." But for many years, and long after the time when it is known that he was a member of the Roman Church, James attended the 'ordinances of the Church of England and remained an ostensible Protestant. In January, 1669, the meeting took place at his house in which King Charles avowed himself a Roman Catholic, and pro- fessed a wish to establish that religion in England. But it was not till 1672 that James omitted to tako the Easter Sunday corn- enunion with the Anglican Church ; he repeated this omission in 1673, and on the passing of the Test Act in the latter year, he cosigned his public employments and avowed his religious opinions. The long delay in this disclosure of his conver- sion was probably due to the influence of Charles, who was greatly annoyed at his brother's ultimate avowal, which seriously 'compromised his own position and overthrew any schemes of his own for a gradual preparation of the ground for a -safe declaration of opinion on the part of both of them. But James, probably, entirely misapprehended the strength and signi- ficance of the popular sentiment on this point, and believed that a public avowal of their conversion by the members of the Royal Family would itself prepare the minds of the nation for a coming change in their own Established Religion. From -this time, during the rest of the reign of his brother, ho was -a constant object of popular suspicion. His ability as well as his 'disposition for evil were exaggerated, and no efforts on his part to conciliate public opinion would have succeeded in disarming the prejudice against him. His own attempts to regain his former position were very unsuccessful. He never succeeded in persuading 'the Nonconformists that he was a lover of toleration, by his new- ^born sympathy with their disabilities and persecutions, and his -overtures to the popular leaders in Parliament to co-operate with them against Denby, which in his autobiographical memorials he 'falsely represents as overtures to him on their part, indignantly rejected by him, were, in fact, coldly received, and led to
to results. The adroit firmness of Charles rescued his 'brother from the impending blow of the Exclusion Bill ; and once more, without any merit of his own, ho resumed some 'degree of open authority in public affairs, and succeeded without 'opposition to the long-coveted Crown, which had at one thus seemed hopelessly lost to him. We need not here repeat the well-known tale of his subsequent blunders. At the moment of his accession, and while still distrustful of the reality of his re- cognition by the nation, he promised everything in Church and State that the nation could desire, and showed a mild urbanity of manner which astonished and delighted his well-wishers among the Protestant Tories and High Churchmen. But as soon as he found himself popular, James relapsed into his arrogance and self- assumption, explained away his promises, and soon showed that in the intoxication of a momentary success he believed every- thing feasible that lie himself wished, and the nation most detested. Minister succeeded minister in his counsels ; measure succeeded measurein a rapid progression of arbitrary tendencies, and Anti-Pro- testant proceedings, until every man of influence was alienated, and every moderate partizan was driven into open opposition. The unsuc- cessful rising of Monmouth really accelerated the downfall of James, by increasing enormously his blind self-confidence. At last, a more formidable leader appeared for the nearly universal discontent in England and Scotland, in which latter country Nonconformity had learnt by bitter experience the justice of its former distrust of James's professions of toleration. English Non- conformity had been very imperfectly conciliated by the dangerous " Indulgence," under which lurked designs of a very different nature. Then James struck his last and, as it proved to him, his fatal blow at the Church of England, in the persons of some of her most influential prelates, and even of some of the most devoted of the advocates of the right divine of kings. Then came the expedition of William of Orange, and the sudden panic-stricken retractation by James of his madly rash measures. It was too late ; and after a faint and igno- minious struggle, James left the shores of England to return thither no more, and after severe but decisive struggles in Scot- land and Ireland, the legitimate line of the Stuarts ceased to reign over the Three Kingdoms.
To his downfall one of James's children had contributed through the person of her husband, while another had deserted him in the moment of his utmost need. The rationale of their conduct belongs rather to subsequent papers in this series of Estimates. It is sufficient to say here that James was a fond father to his children when they were young, and that he always retained a certain sense of property in them, which approached, if it did not realize, the intensity of natural affection, though it did not prevent him from acting towards them on occasions in a manner which was somewhat inconsistent with that idea. As is well known, he was an uxorious but most unfaithful husband, his attachments to other women, which were very numerous, seeming to be, except perhaps in the case of Catherine Sedley, of a purely physical character. Hie choice of mistresses, however, seemed to be in general singularly independ- ent of the common ideas of attraction, so that his witty brother used to conjecture that his ugly mistresses had been forced on him by his priests as a penance. But, in fact, his priests tried in vain to check this profligacy in their Royal convert. James was a devout Romanist, but an obstinate sinner, and with many promises and occasional penitence and remorse, be always relapsed into his evil ways. His sense of duty was in this case indeed feebler than in other ordinary matters. Everyone must admit that ho had a far stronger sense of duty in general than his brother Charles, who can scarcely be said to have had any idea of duty, as such, at all. It was this which made James resolve on an open avowal of his religious principles ; and this again, no doubt, was a great inciting cause of his unlucky attempt to establish Romanism on the ruins of Protestantism after he became King. This feeling of duty and perception of the difference between right and wrong did not, it is true, prevent James from being occasionally a liar and a dissembler,—but in the main it lent to his character a certain weight which is its redeeming quality. if he was a dull bigot, he was certainly not a merely frivolous voluptuary. He had a purpose, and ho endeavoured to carry it out with unfaltering pertinacity up to the fatal moment which disclosed to him the dangers of his position, and to the world his own want of presence of mind and of moral courage. His pursuit of a definite purpose gave him, as contemporaries have observed, the only intellectual advantage which he possessed over his able brother Charles. It is an unfortunate circumstance that it was also the main cause of his disastrous downfall.
The reputation of James would have been highest if he bad been confined to the seclusion of private‘life ; it would have been fairly good if he had been only a clerk in a public office ; it Was very indifferent as a Statesman ; it is calamitously evil as_a Sovereign.
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