104

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XVI.

1690 .

not believe that he had from his heart renounced those arbitrary■ doctrines for which he had once been zealous, or that he couldbear true allegiane to a government sprung from resistance.Through the last six months of 1690 he was mercilessly lam-pooned. Sometimes he was King Thomas and sometimes Tomthe Tyrant.* William was adjured not to go to the Continentleaving his worst enemy close to the ear of the Queen. Hali-fax, who had, in the preceding year, been ungenerously andungratefully persecuted by the Whigs, ivas now mentioned bythem with respect and regret: for he was the enemy of theirenemy.** The face, the figure, the bodily infirmities of Caer-marthen, were ridiculed.*** Those dealings with the FrenchCourt in which, twelve years before, he had, rather by hismisfortune than by his fault, been implicated, were repre-sented in the most odious colours. He was reproached withhis impeachment and his imprisonment. Once, it was said, hehad escaped: but vengeance might still overtake him; andLondon might enjoy the long deferred pleasure of seeing theold traitor flung off the ladder in the blue riband which he dis-

* In one Whig lampoon of this year aro these lines:

“David, we thought, succeeded Saul,

When William rose on James’s fall;

But now King Thomas governs all."

In another are these lines:

“When Charles did seem to fill the throne,

This tyrant Tom made England groan."

A third says:

“Yorkshire Tom was rais’d to honour,

For what cause no creature knew;

He was false to the royal donor,

And will be the same to you.”

** A Whig poet compares the two Marquesses, as they were often called,and gives George the preference over Thomas.

“ If a Marquess needs must steer us,

Take a better in his stead,

Who will in your absence cheer us,

Aud has far a wiser head.”

“A thin, illnatured ghost that haunts the King."

***