The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting still.

Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July 1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return thanks for a still more splendid mark of public gratitude.

Few things illustrate more strikingly the peculiar character of the English government and people than the circumstance that the House of Commons, a popular assembly, should, even in a moment of joyous enthusiasm, have adhered to ancient forms with the punctilious accuracy of a College of Heralds; that the sitting and rising, the covering and the uncovering, should have been regulated by exactly the same etiquette in the nineteenth century as in the seventeenth; and that the same mace which had been held at the right hand of Schomberg should have been held in the same position at the right hand of Wellington, [427] On the twentieth of August the Parliament, having been constantly engaged in business during seven months, broke up, by the royal command, for a short recess.

The same Gazette which announced that the Houses had ceased to sit announced that Schomberg had landed in Ireland, [428] During the three weeks which preceded his landing, the dismay and confusion at Dublin Castle had been extreme.

Disaster had followed disaster so fast that the mind of James, never very firm, had been completely prostrated.