The first act of the Commons was to choose a Speaker; and the choice which they made indicated in a manner not to be mistaken their opinion touching the great questions which they were about to decide. Down to the very eve of the meeting, it had been understood that Seymour would be placed in the chair. He had formerly sate there during several years. He had great and various titles to consideration; descent, fortune, knowledge, experience, eloquence. He had long been at the head of a powerful band of members from the Western counties. Though a Tory, he had in the last Parliament headed, with conspicuous ability and courage, the opposition to Popery and arbitrary power. He had been among the first gentlemen who had repaired to the Dutch head quarters at Exeter, and had been the author of that association by which the Prince's adherents had bound themselves to stand or fall together. But, a few hours before the Houses met, a rumour was spread that Seymour was against declaring the throne vacant.
As soon, therefore, as the benches had filled, the Earl of Wiltshire, who represented Hampshire, stood up, and proposed that Powle should be Speaker. Sir Vere Fane, member for Kent, seconded the motion. A plausible objection might have been raised; for it was known that a petition was about to be presented against Powle's return: but the general cry of the House called him to the chair; and the Tories thought it prudent to acquiesce.641 The mace was then laid on the table; the list of members was called over; and the names of the defaulters were noted.
Meanwhile the Peers, about a hundred in number, had met, had chosen Halifax to be their Speaker, and had appointed several eminent lawyers to perform the functions which, in regular Parliaments, belong to the judges. There was, in the course of that day, frequent communication between the Houses. They joined in requesting that the Prince would continue to administer the government till he should hear further from them, in expressing to him their gratitude for the deliverance which he, under God, had wrought for the nation, and in directing that the thirty-first of January should be observed as a day of thanksgiving for that deliverance.642Thus far no difference of opinion had appeared: but both sides were preparing for the conflict. The Tories were strong in the Upper House, and weak in the Lower; and they knew that, at such a conjuncture, the House which should be the first to come to a resolution would have a great advantage over the other. There was not the least chance that the Commons would send up to the Lords a vote in favour of the plan of Regency: but, if such a vote were sent down from the Lords to the Commons, it was not absolutely impossible that many even of the Whig representatives of the people might be disposed to acquiesce rather than take the grave responsibility of causing discord and delay at a crisis which required union and expedition. The Commons had determined that, on Monday the twenty-eighth of January, they would take into consideration the state of the nation. The Tory Lords therefore proposed, on Friday the twenty-fifth, to enter instantly on the great business for which they had been called together. But their motives were clearly discerned and their tactics frustrated by Halifax, who, ever since his return from Hungerford, had seen that the settlement of the government could be effected on Whig principles only, and who had therefore, for the time, allied himself closely with the Whigs. Devonshire moved that Tuesday the twenty-ninth should be the day. "By that time," he said with more truth than discretion, "we may have some lights from below which may be useful for our guidance." His motion was carried; but his language was severely censured by some of his brother peers as derogatory to their order.643On the twenty-eighth the Commons resolved themselves into a committee of the whole House. A member who had, more than thirty years before, been one of Cromwell's Lords, Richard Hampden, son of the illustrious leader of the Roundheads, and father of the unhappy man who had, by large bribes and degrading submissions, narrowly escaped with life from the vengeance of James, was placed in the chair, and the great debate began.
It was soon evident that an overwhelming majority considered James as no longer King. Gilbert Dolben, son of the late Archbishop of York, was the first who declared himself to be of that opinion. He was supported by many members, particularly by the bold and vehement Wharton, by Sawyer, whose steady opposition to the dispensing power had, in some measure, atoned for old offences, by Maynard, whose voice, though so feeble with age that it could not be heard on distant benches, still commanded the respect of all parties, and by Somers, whose luminous eloquence and varied stores of knowledge were on that day exhibited, for the first time, within the walls of Parliament. The unblushing forehead and voluble tongue of Sir William Williams were found on the same side. Already he had been deeply concerned in the excesses both of the worst of oppositions and of the worst of governments. He had persecuted innocent Papists and innocent Protestants. He had been the patron of Oates and the tool of Petre. His name was associated with seditious violence which was remembered with regret and shame by all respectable Whigs, and with freaks of despotism abhorred by all respectable Tories. How men live under such infamy it is not easy to understand: but even such infamy was not enough for Williams. He was not ashamed to attack the fallen master to whom he had hired himself out for work which no honest man in the Inns of Court would undertake, and from whom he had, within six months, accepted a baronetcy as the reward of servility.