A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  after resisting the brewer all night, and gave a verdict of not

  guilty, such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had never

  heard before; and it was passed on among the people away to Temple

  Bar, and away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to the

  east, but passed to the west too, until it reached the camp at

  Hounslow, where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it up and echoed

  it. And still, when the dull King, who was then with Lord

  Feversham, heard the mighty roar, asked in alarm what it was, and

  was told that it was 'nothing but the acquittal of the bishops,' he

  said, in his dogged way, 'Call you that nothing? It is so much the

  worse for them.'

  Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given birth to a

  son, which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred.

  But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King's

  friend, inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic

  successor (for both the King's daughters were Protestants)

  determined the EARLS OF SHREWSBURY, DANBY, and DEVONSHIRE, LORD

  LUMLEY, the BISHOP OF LONDON, ADMIRAL RUSSELL, and COLONEL SIDNEY,

  to invite the Prince of Orange over to England. The Royal Mole,

  seeing his danger at last, made, in his fright, many great

  concessions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men; but the

  Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to cope with.

  His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind was

  resolved.

  For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England, a

  great wind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet.

  Even when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed by a

  storm, and was obliged to put back to refit. At last, on the first

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  of November, one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the

  Protestant east wind, as it was long called, began to blow; and on

  the third, the people of Dover and the people of Calais saw a fleet

  twenty miles long sailing gallantly by, between the two places. On

  Monday, the fifth, it anchored at Torbay in Devonshire, and the

  Prince, with a splendid retinue of officers and men, marched into

  Exeter. But the people in that western part of the country had

  suffered so much in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart.

  Few people joined him; and he began to think of returning, and

  publishing the invitation he had received from those lords, as his

  justification for having come at all. At this crisis, some of the

  gentry joined him; the Royal army began to falter; an engagement

  was signed, by which all who set their hand to it declared that

  they would support one another in defence of the laws and liberties

  of the three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of the

  Prince of Orange. From that time, the cause received no check; the

  greatest towns in England began, one after another, to declare for

  the Prince; and he knew that it was all safe with him when the

  University of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if he wanted

  any money.

  By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way, touching

  people for the King's evil in one place, reviewing his troops in

  another, and bleeding from the nose in a third. The young Prince

  was sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to

  France, and there was a general and swift dispersal of all the

  priests and friars. One after another, the King's most important

  officers and friends deserted him and went over to the Prince. In

  the night, his daughter Anne fled from Whitehall Palace; and the

  Bishop of London, who had once been a soldier, rode before her with

  a drawn sword in his hand, and pistols at his saddle. 'God help

  me,' cried the miserable King: 'my very children have forsaken

  me!' In his wildness, after debating with such lords as were in

  London, whether he should or should not call a Parliament, and

  after naming three of them to negotiate with the Prince, he

  resolved to fly to France. He had the little Prince of Wales

  brought back from Portsmouth; and the child and the Queen crossed

  the river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable wet night, and

  got safely away. This was on the night of the ninth of December.

  At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King, who had,

  in the meantime, received a letter from the Prince of Orange,

  stating his objects, got out of bed, told LORD NORTHUMBERLAND who

  lay in his room not to open the door until the usual hour in the

  morning, and went down the back stairs (the same, I suppose, by

  which the priest in the wig and gown had come up to his brother)

  and crossed the river in a small boat: sinking the great seal of

  England by the way. Horses having been provided, he rode,

  accompanied by SIR EDWARD HALES, to Feversham, where he embarked in

  a Custom House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more ballast,

  ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen and

  smugglers crowded about the boat, and informed the King of their

  suspicions that he was a 'hatchet-faced Jesuit.' As they took his

  money and would not let him go, he told them who he was, and that

  the Prince of Orange wanted to take his life; and he began to

  scream for a boat - and then to cry, because he had lost a piece of

  wood on his ride which he called a fragment of Our Saviour's cross.

  He put himself into the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county,

  and his detention was made known to the Prince of Orange at Windsor

  - who, only wanting to get rid of him, and not caring where he

  went, so that he went away, was very much disconcerted that they

  did not let him go. However, there was nothing for it but to have

  him brought back, with some state in the way of Life Guards, to

  Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his infatuation, he

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  Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England

  heard mass, and set a Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner.

  The people had been thrown into the strangest state of confusion by

  his flight, and had taken it into their heads that the Irish part

  of the army were going to murder the Protestants. Therefore, they

  set the bells a ringing, and lighted watch-fires, and burned

  Catholic Chapels, and looked about in all directions for Father

  Petre and the Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador was running away

  in the dress of a footman. They found no Jesuits; but a man, who

  had once been a frightened witness before Jeffreys in court, saw a

  swollen, drunken face looking through a window down at Wapping,

  which he well remembered. The face was in a sailor's dress, but he

  knew it to be the face of that accursed judge, and he seized him.

  The people, to their lasting honour, did not tear him to pieces.

  After knocking him about a little, they took him, in the basest

  agonies of terror, to the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at his own

  shrieking petition, to the Tower for safety. There, he died.

  Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted bon
fires and

  made rejoicings, as if they had any reason to be glad to have the

  King back again. But, his stay was very short, for the English

  guards were removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up to

  it, and he was told by one of his late ministers that the Prince

  would enter London, next day, and he had better go to Ham. He

  said, Ham was a cold, damp place, and he would rather go to

  Rochester. He thought himself very cunning in this, as he meant to

  escape from Rochester to France. The Prince of Orange and his

  friends knew that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more. So,

  he went to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by certain

  lords, and watched by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous

  people, who were far more forgiving than he had ever been, when

  they saw him in his humiliation. On the night of the twenty-third

  of December, not even then understanding that everybody wanted to

  get rid of him, he went out, absurdly, through his Rochester

  garden, down to the Medway, and got away to France, where he

  rejoined the Queen.

  There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and the

  authorities of London. When the Prince came, on the day after the

  King's departure, he summoned the Lords to meet him, and soon

  afterwards, all those who had served in any of the Parliaments of

  King Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by these

  authorities that the throne was vacant by the conduct of King James

  the Second; that it was inconsistent with the safety and welfare of

  this Protestant kingdom, to be governed by a Popish prince; that

  the Prince and Princess of Orange should be King and Queen during

  their lives and the life of the survivor of them; and that their

  children should succeed them, if they had any. That if they had

  none, the Princess Anne and her children should succeed; that if

  she had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should succeed.

  On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred and eightynine,

  the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne in Whitehall,

  bound themselves to these conditions. The Protestant religion was

  established in England, and England's great and glorious Revolution

  was complete.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  I HAVE now arrived at the close of my little history. The events

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  Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England

  which succeeded the famous Revolution of one thousand six hundred

  and eighty-eight, would neither be easily related nor easily

  understood in such a book as this.

  William and Mary reigned together, five years. After the death of

  his good wife, William occupied the throne, alone, for seven years

  longer. During his reign, on the sixteenth of September, one

  thousand seven hundred and one, the poor weak creature who had once

  been James the Second of England, died in France. In the meantime

  he had done his utmost (which was not much) to cause William to be

  assassinated, and to regain his lost dominions. James's son was

  declared, by the French King, the rightful King of England; and was

  called in France THE CHEVALIER SAINT GEORGE, and in England THE

  PRETENDER. Some infatuated people in England, and particularly in

  Scotland, took up the Pretender's cause from time to time - as if

  the country had not had Stuarts enough! - and many lives were

  sacrificed, and much misery was occasioned. King William died on

  Sunday, the seventh of March, one thousand seven hundred and two,

  of the consequences of an accident occasioned by his horse

  stumbling with him. He was always a brave, patriotic Prince, and a

  man of remarkable abilities. His manner was cold, and he made but

  few friends; but he had truly loved his queen. When he was dead, a

  lock of her hair, in a ring, was found tied with a black ribbon

  round his left arm.

  He was succeeded by the PRINCESS ANNE, a popular Queen, who reigned

  twelve years. In her reign, in the month of May, one thousand

  seven hundred and seven, the Union between England and Scotland was

  effected, and the two countries were incorporated under the name of

  GREAT BRITAIN. Then, from the year one thousand seven hundred and

  fourteen to the year one thousand, eight hundred and thirty,

  reigned the four GEORGES.

  It was in the reign of George the Second, one thousand seven

  hundred and forty-five, that the Pretender did his last mischief,

  and made his last appearance. Being an old man by that time, he

  and the Jacobites - as his friends were called - put forward his

  son, CHARLES EDWARD, known as the young Chevalier. The Highlanders

  of Scotland, an extremely troublesome and wrong-headed race on the

  subject of the Stuarts, espoused his cause, and he joined them, and

  there was a Scottish rebellion to make him king, in which many

  gallant and devoted gentlemen lost their lives. It was a hard

  matter for Charles Edward to escape abroad again, with a high price

  on his head; but the Scottish people were extraordinarily faithful

  to him, and, after undergoing many romantic adventures, not unlike

  those of Charles the Second, he escaped to France. A number of

  charming stories and delightful songs arose out of the Jacobite

  feelings, and belong to the Jacobite times. Otherwise I think the

  Stuarts were a public nuisance altogether.

  It was in the reign of George the Third that England lost North

  America, by persisting in taxing her without her own consent. That

  immense country, made independent under WASHINGTON, and left to

  itself, became the United States; one of the greatest nations of

  the earth. In these times in which I write, it is honourably

  remarkable for protecting its subjects, wherever they may travel,

  with a dignity and a determination which is a model for England.

  Between you and me, England has rather lost ground in this respect

  since the days of Oliver Cromwell.

  The Union of Great Britain with Ireland - which had been getting on

  very ill by itself - took place in the reign of George the Third,

  on the second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight.

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  Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England

  WILLIAM THE FOURTH succeeded George the Fourth, in the year one

  thousand eight hundred and thirty, and reigned seven years. QUEEN

  VICTORIA, his niece, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the fourth

  son of George the Third, came to the throne on the twentieth of

  June, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. She was married

  to PRINCE ALBERT of Saxe Gotha on the tenth of February, one

  thousand eight hundred and forty. She is very good, and much

  beloved. So I end, like the crier, with

  GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

  End of the Project Gutenberg eText A Child's History of England

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