dragoons just arrived. When the English fleet drew near, they found the shore lined with entrenchments and batteries, with cavalry drawn up in regular order behind them; and when they advanced still nearer, three masked batteries, which till then had been effectually concealed, opened upon them with a tremendous fire. Tollemache, who was making ready to land, was confounded, but he exclaimed, "The die is cast-we cannot in honour retreat!" About 900 English soldiers were thrown upon the beach in Camaret Bay, flanked right and left with batteries and entrenchments; and the Marquess of Caermarthen, Danby's son, fighting bravely for the country which his father was betraying,* covered the landing of these men with a part of the fleet, his ships all the while being exposed to a heavy cross-fire. The men that were landed were assailed on all sides, but they formed, and, perceiving that the French were slackening their fire, they gave a loud huzza and rushed towards the batteries; but at that moment French dragoons were seen issuing through passages purposely left between the entrenchments. The unprotected English foot halted, wavered, and were soon thrown into complete disorder by the charge of the French horse. Meanwhile the tide had ebbed, and half of the English boats had been left dry on the beach. Unable to get off, the greater part of the troops that had landed were miserably slaughtered, or forced to beg for quarter; and General Tollemache, after displaying more valour than conduct, received a mortal wound. With this great loss, and with the additional loss of about 400 seamen and one ship, the English armament, with a drooping flag, retired from Brest.

Soon after the melancholy failure at Brest, the fleet under Berkeley bombarded and nearly destroyed Dieppe and Havre-de-Grace, destroyed all the unprotected French shipping and fishing-boats, augmented the want and misery already felt by the poor French people,

* Yet Lord Caermarthen had been, or soon afterward became, involved in the Jacobite plots and correspondences.

and threw the whole coast into an agony of consternation. This was called a proper retaliation for the barbarous excesses committed by the French the preceding year at Heidelberg and in other parts of the Palatinate. But in the course of the summer another part of the English navy performed more honourable service. Admiral Russell, now apparently steady and trusty, sailed into the Mediterranean with a noble fleet, consisting of about sixty-five ships of the line, English and Dutch, and not only cleared that sea of De Tourville and the French, but relieved Barcelona, blockaded Toulon, imposed respect upon the states of Venice and Tuscany, which were now, for the first time, brought to acknowledge William's title, reanimated the Duke of Savoy, who had been wavering and thinking of a separate peace with France, and made the English flag respected from one end of the inland sea to the other. And when Russell had performed these signal services, instead of coming home, he wintered with his fleet at Cadiz, in order to be at hand to prevent the annual junction of the Toulon and Brest fleets. From this moment the maritime trade of England, which had been declining ever since the Revolution, began to revive, and a new and unthought-of spirit was infused into it in the course of a very few years.

The land campaign was far from being so brilliant. William again concentrated the allied forces at Louvain, and found himself at the head of nearly 100,000 men; Luxembourg, inferior in number, made use of his old art of avoiding battle. Through the German slowness, a movement conducted by the Elector of Bavaria to invade French Flanders was frustrated. The confederates were fain to satisfy themselves with the capture of the town and castle of Huy; and so the campaign in these parts ended, the troops going to the annual indulgence of winter quarters about the middle of October. Upon the Rhine the French were much more severely chastised; for when Marshal Delorges crossed that river, he was again driven back with loss and shame by the Prince of Baden, who followed him across the French

frontier, established himself for the summer in Alsace, and laid the whole of that province under contribution. On the side of Savoy and Piedmont little or nothing had been done. In Spain, where the French had reduced Castel Follet with other strong fortresses, and had promised themselves the entire possession of Catalonia, Marshal Noailles, utterly disconcerted by the appearance of Admiral Russell and the relief of Barcelona, retreated, and did nothing. The Turks, who had performed the part of valuable allies to the French, by invading the hereditary dominions of the emperor, had been very unsuccessful the whole of this year, and, at the end of the campaign, of all their fortresses on the north of the Danube, none remained to them except Temeswar.

On the 12th of November William met his parliament. Loyal addresses were returned, and supplies to the amount of five millions were readily voted; but with the supply bills the triennial parliament bill kept pace. On the 22nd of November that bill was brought in by Mr. Harley, who was now rising into eminence as a parliamentary debater; it passed the House by a great majority, was sent up to the Lords, who concurred without any amendment; and on the 22nd of December it was presented to William, who now gave the royal assent. He probably felt the constitutional impropriety of longer resisting the two Houses and the popular desire, but his consent was attributed by many to the dangerous illness of the queen, whose death it was imagined might weaken his right, and lead to fresh and more dangerous conspiracies. This act, by which a new parliament was to be called every third year, and the present parliament to be dissolved before the 25th of March, 1696, was received by the nation with very great joy. Six days after it became law Queen Mary breathed her last. Her constitution, which had never been a good one, was weakened by much mental suffering, and in this state she was attacked by small-pox of the most malignant sort. After lying silent for some hours, or only uttering a few disjointed words, she expired on the 28th of December, about one o'clock in the morning, in the thirty-third year

of her age. Whatever was Mary's character and conduct as a daughter and a sister-even in her dying moments she refused to be reconciled with Anne-she was certainly the most devoted and exemplary of royal wives. She had, indeed, the good sense and the good fortune to submit and revere the commanding intellect of her husband; and she tenderly loved his person, though she was childless by him, and though, in accordance with the universal practice of sovereigns, he kept a mistress in the court. And William responded to all this tenderness with a feeling which had been deemed alien to his cold

manners.

The Jacobites now pretended that Mary had had a right by her birth to the crown, and that William's share in that right was made void by her death: and many who were not decided Jacobites took up the same opinion, representing that, by the Act of Settlement, the Princess Anne had a preferable claim to the throne. But these parties were not strong enough in parliament to undertake any thing; and, by means of Sunderland, Marlborough, and his influential wife, and the Lord Keeper Somers, a reconciliation was brought about between the king and the Princess Anne. The Marlboroughs, in forwarding the reconciliation, had expected to be partakers of its good fruits; but the rational repugnance of William continued, and the general renewed his intercourse with the exiled family, and regularly attended in the House of Peers, where he voted with Rochester and the other zealous Tories, and put his name to their addresses and violent protests.

A.D. 1695.-Towards the close of the session there was a searching inquiry into corrupt practices, which seem to have been universal through all the departments of government. The secretary of the treasury was turned out of his place and sent to the Tower; Sir John Trevor, speaker of the House, was expelled; and Mr. Hungerford, being also convicted of corruption, was turned out of the House. But the inquiry, once begun, could not be made to stop here. It was found, from the books of

the East India Company, that great sums of money had been given by the Company for secret services done them in the House of Commons. In the last year, pending a life-and-death struggle between the old company and the promoters of a new one, the secret service money rose to the enormous amount of 167,000l. Sir Thomas Cook, a member of the House of Commons and a governor of the Company, was called upon to explain how this money had been expended. Cook refused to answer, and was committed to the Tower. The Commons then brought in a Bill of Pains and Penalties, to force a full revelation. When this bill was carried up to the Lords it was vehemently opposed by the Duke of Leeds (Danby), then lord president of the council, who spoke like an incorruptible patriot, but who had himself touched no inconsiderable part of the money. His very heat made him the more suspected; and the bill ultimately passed the Lords. It soon appeared in evidence that his Grace of Leeds, through Mr. Bates, a very close friend, had offered to do the old company good service for 5000 guineas. The Commons resolved that articles of impeachment should be drawn up against the duke. In a few days the articles were engrossed and presented to the Lords. But, in the mean time, the principal witness had absconded. The Commons, confounded by the evasion, knew not what to do, but they gave in that evasion as the sole cause of their delay, not scrupling to intimate that the Duke of Leeds could produce the missing witness, who was his own servant, if he thought fit. His grace called for an immediate trial, or for the immediate dropping of the impeachment.

Matters were in this state, when William, on the 3rd of May, prorogued the parliament. "It was intended," says Burnet, "to hang up the matter to another session, but an Act of Grace came in at the end of this, with an exception, indeed, as to corruption; yet this whole discovery was let fall, and it was believed that too many of all sides were concerned in it; for, by a common consent, it was never revived." Enough had appeared to prove