30

msTOur or exgland.

CHAP.

XXI.

J695.

Jacobite

plots

against

William’s

person.

of Saint Germains: but the correspondence gradually became■ more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have been madeup of vague professions and trifling excuses.

The event which had changed all Marlborough’s views hadfilled the minds of fiercer and more pertinacious politicians withwild hopes and atrocious projects.

During the two years and a half which followed the execu-tion of Grandval, no serious design had been formed againstthe life of William. Some hotheaded malecontents had indeedlaid schemes for kidnapping or murdering him: but thoseschemes were not, while his wife lived, countenanced by herfather. James did not feel, and, to do him justice, was notsuch a hypocrite as to pretend to feel, any scruple about re-moving his enemies by those means which he had justly thoughtbase and wicked when employed by his enemies against himself.If any such scruple had arisen in his mind, there was no want,under his roof, of casuists willing and competent to sooth hisconscience with sophisms such as had corrupted the far noblernatures of Anthony Babington and Everard Digby. To ques-tion the lawfulness of assassination, in cases where assassina-tion might promote the interests of the Church, was to questionthe authority of the most illustrious Jesuits, ofBellarmine andSuarez, of Molina and Mariana: nay, it was to rebel againstthe Chair of Saint Peter. One Pope had walked in processionat the head of his cardinals, had proclaimed a jubilee, hadordered the guns of Saint Angelo to be fired, in honour of theperfidious butchery in which Coligni had perished. AnotherPope had in a solemn allocution hymned the murder of Henrythe Third of France in rapturous language borrowed from theode of the prophet Habakkuk, and had extolled the murdererabove Phinehas and Judith.* William was regarded at SaintGermains as a monster compared with whom Coligni and Henry* De Thou, liii. xevi.