Note 89 — Chapter XIV · THE REIGN OF JAMES II.

See London Gazettes, 1685, passim: the most remarkable are inserted by Ralph and Kennet. I am sure the addresses which we have witnessed in this age among a neighbouring people are not on the whole more fulsome and disgraceful. Addresses, however, of all descriptions, as we well know, are generally the composition of some zealous individual, whose expressions are not to be taken as entirely those of the subscribers. Still these are sufficient to manifest the general spirit of the times.

The king's popularity at his accession, which all contemporary writers attest, is strongly expressed by Lord Lonsdale. "The great interest he had in his brother, so that all applications to the king seemed to succeed only as he favoured them, and the general opinion of him to be a prince steady above all others to his word, made him at that time the most popular prince that had been known in England for a long time. And from men's attempting to exclude him, they, at this juncture of time, made him their darling; no more was his religion terrible; his magnanimous courage, and the hardships he had undergone, were the discourse of all men. And some reports of a misunderstanding betwixt the French king and him, occasioned originally by the marriage of the Lady Mary to the Prince of Orange, industriously spread abroad to amuse the ignorant, put men in hopes of what they had long wished; that, by a conjunction of Holland and Spain, etc., we might have been able to reduce France to the terms of the Pyrenean treaty, which was now become the terror of Christendom, we never having had a prince for many ages that had so great a reputation for experience and a martial spirit."—P. 3. This last sentence is a truly amusing contrast to the real truth; James having been, in his brother's reign, the most obsequious and unhesitating servant of the French king.