•wnimr and maby.

itsssasm

119

sellors, and faithful allies, with gallant fleets and armies, withvictory, with peace, and finally with crowns more glorious and -more durable than those which then glittered on the altar of theAbbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons.*

On the whole the ceremony went off well, and producedsomething like a revival, faint, indeed, and transient, of theenthusiasm of the preceding December. The day was, inLondon and in many other places, a day of general rejoicing.The churches were filled in the morning: the afternoon wasspent in sport and carousing; and at night bonfires werelighted, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. TheJacobites however contrived to discover or to invent abundantmatter for scurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly,that the way from the hall to the western door of the Abbeyhad been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly that anEnglish king should enter into the most solemn of engagementswith the English nation behind a triple hedge of foreignswords and bayonets? Little affrays, such as, at every greatpageant, almost inevitably take place between those who areeager to see the show and those whose business it is to keepthe communications clear, were exaggerated with all the artificesof rhetoric. One of the alien mercenaries had backed hishorse against an honest citizen who pressed forward to catcha glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudely pushedback a woman with the but end of his musket. On suchgrounds as these the strangers were compared to those LordDanes whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked theAnglosaxon population to insurrection and massacre. Butthere w r as no more fertile theme for censure than the coronationmedal, which really was absurd in design and mean in execu-

CHAP.

XI.

S.;1S

* The sermon deserves to be read. Sec the London Gazette of April 14.3689; Evelyn’s Diary; Narcissus Luttrell’s Diary; and the despatch of theDutch Ambassadors to the States General.