Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent--Death of Luxemburg--Distress of William--Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the Press--Death of Halifax--Parliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public Offices--Vote of Censure on the Speaker--Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of the East India Company--Suspicious Dealings of Seymour--Bill against Sir Thomas Cook--Inquiry by a joint Committee of Lords and Commons--Impeachment of Leeds--Disgrace of Leeds--Lords Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess Anne--Jacobite Plots against William's Person--Charnock; Porter--Goodman; Parkyns--Fenwick--Session of the Scottish Parliament;Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe--War in the Netherlands;Marshal Villeroy--The Duke of Maine--Jacobite Plots against the Government during William's Absence--Siege of Namur--Surrender of the Town of Namur--Surrender of the Castle of Namur--Arrest of Boufflers--Effect of the Emancipation of the English Press--Return of William to England; Dissolution of the Parliament--William makes a Progress through the Country --The Elections--Alarming State of the Currency--Meeting of the Parliament;Loyalty of the House of Commons--Controversy touching the Currency--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency--Passing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to Portland--Two Jacobite Plots formed--Berwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot; Sir George Barclay--Failure of Berwick's Plot--Detection of the Assassination Plot--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Assassination Plot--State of Public Feeling--Trial of Charnock, King and Keyes--Execution of Charnock, King and Keyes--Trial of Friend--Trial of Parkyns--Execution of Friend and Parkyns--Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne and Lowick--The Association--Bill for the Regulation of Elections--Act establishing a Land Bank ON the Continent the news of Mary's death excited various emotions. The Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had retrenched from her own royal state in order to furnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of God.557 In the United Provinces, where she was well known and had always been popular, she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and accomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent Dorset, and who was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrote that the coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very marble, he said, wept.558 The lamentations of Cambridge and Oxford were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put on mourning. The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled dolefully day after day.559 James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited all mourning at Saint Germains, and prevailed on Lewis to issue a similar prohibition at Versailles. Some of the most illustrious nobles of France, and among them the Dukes of Bouillon and of Duras, were related to the House of Nassau, and had always, when death visited that House, punctiliously observed the decent ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden to wear black; and they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great King to prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whispering to each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken by the living on the dead, by a parent on a child.560The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher than they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent was that William would find it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. He would not, it was said, have sustained himself so long but for the help of his wife. Her affability had conciliated many who had been repelled by his freezing looks and short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and tastes had charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutch habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she loved that ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy, and complied willingly and reverently with some ceremonies which he considered, not indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in which he could hardly bring himself to take part. While the war lasted, it would be necessary that he should pass nearly half the year out of England. Hitherto she had, when he was absent, supplied his place, and had supplied it well. Who was to supply it now? In what vicegerent could he place equal confidence? To what vicegerent would the nation look up with equal respect? All the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking that his position, difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far more difficult and more dangerous by the death of the Queen. But all the statesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his reign was decidedly more prosperous and more tranquil after the decease of Mary than during her life.
