tation of the
Palatinate. What had happened was communicated to the whole kingdom far
more rapidly than by gazettes or news letters. A brief for the relief
of the people of Teignmouth was read in all the ten thousand parish
churches of the land. No congregation could hear without emotion that
the Popish marauders had made desolate the habitations of quiet and
humble peasants, had outraged the altars of God, had torn to pieces
the Gospels and the Communion service. A street, built out of the
contributions of the charitable, on the site of the dwellings which the
invaders had destroyed, still retains the name of French Street, [726]

The outcry against those who were, with good reason, suspected of having
invited the enemy to make a descent on our shores was vehement and
general, and was swollen by many voices which had recently been loud in
clamour against the government of William. The question had ceased to
be a question between two dynasties, and had become a question between
England and France. So strong was the national sentiment that nonjurors
and Papists shared or affected to share it. Dryden, not long after
the burning of Teignmouth, laid a play at the feet of Halifax, with
a dedication eminently ingenious, artful, and eloquent. The dramatist
congratulated his patron on having taken shelter in a calm haven from
the storms of public life, and, with great force and beauty of diction,
magnified the felicity of the statesman who exchanges the bustle of
office and the fame of oratory for philosophic studies and domestic
endearments. England could not complain that she was defrauded of the
service to which she had a right. Even the severe discipline of ancient
Rome permitted a soldier, after many campaigns, to claim his dismission;
and Halifax had surely done enough for his country to be entitled to the
same privilege. But the poet added that there was one case in which
the Roman veteran, even after his discharge, was required to resume his
shield and his pilum; and that one case was an invasion of the Gauls.
That a writer who had purchased the smiles of James by apostasy, who had
been driven in disgrace from the court of William, and who had a deeper
interest in the restoration of the exiled House than any man who made
letters his calling, should have used, whether sincerely or insincerely,
such language as this, is a fact which may convince us that the
determination never to be subjugated by foreigners was fixed in th