for a minute to take a crust of bread or a glass of claret. Messengers were in waiting to carry the result to Kensington, where William, though shaken by a violent cough, sate up till midnight, anxiously expecting the news, and writing to Portland, whom he had sent on an important mission to the Hague.
The only remaining account of the debate is defective and confused. But from that account it appears that the excitement was great. Sharp things were said. One young Whig member used language so hot that he was in danger of being called to the bar. Some reflections were thrown on the Speaker for allowing too much licence to his own friends. But in truth it mattered little whether he called transgressors to order or not. The House had long been quite unmanageable; and veteran members bitterly regretted the old gravity of debate and the old authority of the chair.[1] That Somers disapproved of the violence of the party to which he belonged may be inferred, both from the whole course of his public life, and from the very significant fact that, though he had charge of the Corporation Bill, he did not move the penal clauses, but left that ungracious office to men more impetuous and less sagacious than himself. He did not however abandon his allies in this emergency, but spoke for them, and tried to make the best of a very bad case. The House divided several times. On the first division a hundred and seventy-four voted with Sacheverell, a hundred and seventy-nine against him. Still the battle was stubbornly kept up; but the majority increased from five to ten, from ten to twelve, and from twelve to eighteen. Then at length, after a stormy sitting of fourteen hours, the Whigs yielded. It was near midnight when, to the unspeakable joy and triumph of the Tories, the clerk tore away from the parchment on which the bill had been engrossed the odious clauses of Sacheverell and Howard.[2]
- ↑ "The authority of the chair, the awe and reverence to order, and the due method of debates being irrecoverably lost by the disorder and tumultuousness of the House." — Sir J. Trevor to the King, Appendix to Dalrymple's Memoirs, Part ii. Book 4.
- ↑ Commons' Journals, Jan. 10, 1689/90. I have done my best to frame an account of this contest out of very defective materials. Burnet's narrative contains more blunders than lines. He evidently trusted to his memory, and was completely deceived by it. My chief authorities are the Journals; Grey's Debates; William's Letters to Portland; the Despatches of Van Citters; a Letter concerning the Disabling Clauses, lately offered to the House of Commons, for regulating Corporations, 1690; The True Friends to Corporations vindicated, in an answer to a letter concerning the Disabling Clauses, 1690; and Some Queries concerning the Election of Members for the ensuing Parliament, 1690. To this last pamphlet is appended a list of those who voted for the Sacheverell Clause. See also Clarendon's Diary, Jan. 10, 1689/90, and the Third Part of the Caveat against the Whigs, 1712. William's Letter of the 10th of January ends thus. The news of the first division only had reached Kensington. "Il est à present onze eures de nuit, et à dix eures la Chambre Basse estoit encore ensemble. Ainsi je ne vous puis escrire par cette ordinaire l'issue de l'affaire. Les previos questions les Tories l'ont emporte de cinq vois. Ainsi vous pouvez voir que la chose est bien disputée. J'ay si grand somiel, et mon toux m'incomode que je ne vous en saurez dire davantage. Jusques à mourir à vous."
On the same night Van Citters wrote to the States General. The debate he said, had been very sharp. The design of the Whigs, whom he calls the Presbyterians, had been nothing less than to exclude their opponents from all offices, and to obtain for themselves the exclusive possession of power.
