CHAP.

XIX.

leoa.

The ‘King’sspeech.

Questionof pri^■vilegeraised bythcLords,

112 H3ST0ET OF ENGLAND.

Commons as Commons. The spirit both of the hereditary and.of the elective chamber had been thoroughly roused in thepreceding session by the dispute about the Court of the LordHigh Steward; and they met in a pugnacious mood.

The speech which the King made at the opening of the ses-sion was skilfully framed for the purpose of conciliating theHouses.. He came, he told them, to ask for their advice andassistance. He congratulated them on the victory of La Hogue.He acknowledged with much concern that the operations ofthe allies had been, less successful by land than by sea; but hewarmly declared that, both by land and by sea, the valour ofhis English subjects had been preeminently conspicuous. Thedistress of his people, he said, was his own: his interest wasinseparable from theirs: it was painful to him to call on them tomake sacrifices: but from sacrifices which were necessary to thesafety of the English nation and of the Protestant reli-gion no good Englishman and no good Protestant wouldshrink.*

The Commons thanked the King in cordial terms for hisgracious speech.** But the Lords were in a.bad humour. Twoof their body, Marlborough and Huntingdon, had, during therecess, when an invasion and an insurrection were hourly ex-pected, been sent to the Tower, and were still under re-cognisances. Had a country gentleman or a merchant beentaken up and held to bail on even slighter grounds at so alarm-ing a crisis, the Lords would assuredly not have interfered.But they were easily moved to anger by any thing that lookedlike an indignity offered to their own order. They not onlycrossexamined with great severity Aaron Smith, the Solicitorof the Treasury, whose character, to say the truth, entitledhim to little indulgence, but passed, by thirty five votes to

* Lords’ and Commons’ Journals, Nov. 4., Jan. 1692.

** Commons’ Journals, Nov. 10.1692.