arer
to them than either life or property. "And, sir," said Bath, "if your
Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would give
exactly the same answer." [331] If there was any district in which the
government might have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire.
Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of what was passing
there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable
families adhered to the old religion. The heads of many of those
families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made
justices of the Peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet
from Lancashire the new Lord Lieutenant, himself a Roman Catholic,
reported that two thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were
opposed to the court. [332] But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the
King's pride still more deeply. Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty
years before, borne him a son, widely renowned, at a later period,
as one of the most skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named
James Fitzjames, had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he
afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that
he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of
the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part
of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was
announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the
Princess of Orange. [333] When it is remembered how signally Monmouth,
though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the
champion of the national religion, had failed in a similar competition,
it must seem extraordinary that any man should have been so much
blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was
universally known to be a Popish bastard. It does not appear that this
absurd design was ever countenanced by the King. The boy, however, was
acknowledged; and whatever distinctions a subject, not of the royal
blood, could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created
Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative
employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with
the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the
Blues, and the Earl of Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire,
Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On the frontier of
Hampshire Berwick expect