me. However, one circumstance I think myself BOOK in obliged to mention:-It was sworn against me 1096. by Mr. Porter, that I had owned to him that I had seen and read a commission from the king to levy war upon the person of the prince of Orange. Now I must declare, that the tenor of the king's commission which I saw was general, and directed to all his loving subjects to raise and levy war against the prince of Orange and his adherents, and to seize all forts, castles, &c. But as for any commission particularly levelled against the person of the prince of Orange, I neither saw nor heard of any such." After all, this distinction is of little importance, for whether the term person was expressly mentioned in the commission or not, it seems apparent from the authorised construction of sir George Berkeley, that it was included in the design and spirit of it.

The memoirs composed or corrected by king James contain, notwithstanding, a peremptory denial of this charge. "The king," it is said, "was pressed to make another attempt upon England. He was prevailed upon by conceiving the kingdom to be much better disposed, and the conjuncture more favorable. Before the king entered upon his expedition, he found great difficulties about wording his declaration. Melfort had been dismissed at the solicitations of his friends in England. Middleton, who succeeded him,

1696.

BOOK III. was of opinion that the king ought to adhere to his last declaration. The king left St. Germaine's February 28. The troops intended for the invasion began to draw near Dunkirk and Calais. He was hastened off too soon by the court of France. The alarm was taken before things were ripe, and the intended expedition fell to the ground. Besides the misfortunes common to this expedition with the rest of the king's attempts, it brought obloquy upon him, by its being thought that he was privy to or approved of the design on the person of the prince of Orange. Certain gentlemen, thinking to do the king good service by it, combined among themselves. Their first project was to surprise and seize the prince of Orange, and carry him into France. But finding that impracticable if they scrupled his life, they were by degrees drawn into a resolution of attacking him as he came from Hampton Court, or from hunting; and if they found no possibility of carrying him off alive, to make no difficulty of killing him. The king was neither privy to this design, nor did he commission the persons, though he suffered most undeservedly both in his repution and interest. For those unfortunate gentlemen-by mistaking messages on the one hand, and their too forward zeal on the other, most of them lost their own lives, and furnished an opportunity to the king's enemies of renewing their calumnies

1696.

against him*." It appears by this account, there- BOOK IIL fore, that the persons concerned in this dark and desperate business imagined they were acting under the sanction of the court of St. Germaine's: and it is not easy to conceive how it was possible in such a case to mistake the messages or instructions to which we are necessarily led to infer that they meant to conform. The duke of Berwick relates "that he was, during his residence in London, informed by sir George Berkeley of a conspiracy which was carrying on against the person," or, as he afterwards explains it-for the seizure of the person, "of the prince of Orange. The duke hastened his return to France, that he might not be confounded with the conspirators, whose design appeared to him difficult to executet." Far, however, from disapproving this conspiracy, he declares that he thought himself bound in honor not to dissuade sir George Berkeley from it. And on communicating the project to the French king at Marli, that monarch gaye orders that all things should be in readiness to pass over to England in case it should prove successful. It seems on the whole too evident that the seizure of the prince of Orange's person was, with all the parties. concerned in this nefarious business, sufficiently understood as a phrase nearly equivalent to assassination. In a cause so sacred as that of the

• MACPHERSON's State Papers.

+ Memoirs of M, BERWICK.

BOOK III. restoration of the lawful sovereign, they deemed 1696. all the common obligations of morality suspend

Great Na

val exer

tions.

ed; and with them, as well as with political enthusiasts of a directly opposite description, it appears to have been an axiom secretly cherished as incontrovertible in relation to usurpers, that "killing was no murder."

The government having with such success detected and punished the authors of this daring and dangerous conspiracy at home, the most vigorous efforts were at the same time made to counteract the machinations of the enemies of the nation abroad. Admiral Russel, having with incredible diligence collected a vast fleet of fifty ships of the line, stood over to the French coast, and discovered in the port of Calais between 3 and 400 transports, drawn up close in shore, as also seventeen or eighteen men of war lying among the sands of Dunkirk, which were intended to cover the embarkation. The enemy, astonished at the sudden appearance of the English fleet, instead of continuing their preparations for a descent on the adverse coast, became anxious for the safety of their own. The English admiral, after detaching sir Cloudesley Shovel, an officer of great merit, to bombard the town of Calais, and completely disconcerting the designs of the court of Versailles, returned in triumph to the Downs. King James, after having tarried some weeks at Calais, with a view to embark for Eng

land as soon as matters were sufficiently ripe, BOOK III. now returned disconsolate to St. Germaine's. 1696. The troops assembled for the purpose of invasion were marched back into the interior of the country; and the people of France exclaimed, "that the malignant star which ruled the destiny of James, had blasted this and every other project formed for his restoration."

in Flanders,

Early in May 1696 the king of England em- Campaign barked, as for several preceding years, to take &c. upon him the command of the allied army in Flanders. Some weeks previous to his arrival, a spirited attempt had been made, under the conduct of the earl of Athlone and general Coehorn, on a vast magazine of ammunition and military stores, which the French had collected at Givet, in order to enable them to make an early opening of the campaign. Such was the success attending this enterprise, that, after a bombardment of a few hours, the whole was set on fire, and before the close of the day completely consumed; the two generals returning to Namur without loss or molestation. Vast armies were this year brought into the field without any visible end or purpose, no offensive operations being attempted either by maréchal Villeroi or the king of England; and a more striking proof could not be exhibited of the folly of continuing a war at so immense an expence, without the prospect, or,