However, by 1688 he had come to regard the former head of his office, when Duke of York, with other eyes, and was quite ready to join in the Revolution, then necessary. King James names him among his adversaries in the St. Germain's Notes in Macpherson's State Papers.

"The King soon after his arrival at London had advice that Sir J. Hanmer, Lt.-Col. of Montgomery's regiment in garrison at Hull, hearing that several lords were up in several parts of the realm, and, combining with Copley the Lieutenant-Governor and some magistrates, had surprised the governor Lord Langdale and Lord Montgomery by night in their lodgings, declared for the Protestant religion, and kept these two lords, and some Roman Catholic gentlemen of the country who had retired there for safety, prisoners, and then let them go."

The course he thus took appears to have been suggested to him by the following letter from Lord Danby:

The EARL of DANBY to SIR JOHN HANMER. SIR,

York, 30th Nov. 1688. As I have heretofore paid you all the services in my power, so I should rejoice if you would now take the opportunity I can put into your hands of doing yourself an infinitely greater kindness in point of advantage to your fortune than can probably ever offer itself again whilst you live, if you let slip this occasion; and besides your personal

advantage it is but to do what divers of the best quality here have newly set you the example, and particularly the Earl of Bath, who has declared for the Prince at Plymouth, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Churchill, and twenty others, men of the first rank. My proposal is that you would give both your advice and assistance to our surprize of Hull, and that if you will be instrumental in it you will let me know, as well as what officer besides yourself will be assisting to us in it, as by what means you think the thing may be best effected. I am sure most both of seamen and townsmen will be ready to give their help, and I am sure that many of the poor soldiers themselves that are in the garrison, are so sensible that the Protestants will be destroyed if the Prince should now be beaten, that they stay amongst you more for subsistence than any kindness. Were there any visible hopes under Heaven of saving the Protestant religion in England but by this opportunity that God has given us, I think you know me well enough to believe that I am the last man in the kingdom that would attempt to have it rescued by force, but it has been made so plain to us what we were to expect from a power in the Papists hands, that whatever any may pretend no man can in his heart believe that any man shall be able to find protection that shall continue in the Protestant religion; and I take the greater confidence in writing all this to you, because I know your principles to be truly Protestant. I have reason to hope upon the strong grounds by the last letters that are come to us, that there will not be a blow struck by the armies, but that the matter will be decided by a Parliament. His Majesty having put off all his Roman Catholic Privy Counsellors, and advised with most of

those Bishops and Lords who did first petition for a Parliament: and in truth it is so plain that his army will desert him, that he will be immediately under a necessity of complying with the just requests of his subjects. If you are willing and can help us in this design, so far as to make us masters of Hull, I do hereby engage that five thousand pounds shall be paid to you in a month after it is done, besides the just merits you will deserve from the Prince, which shall not want my recommendation of it as it deserves, and you shall not want 1,000 men to your assistance, if other things be all prepared for it. Y' most faithful humble servant,

DANBY.

To the Hon. Sir John Hanmer, Knt. and Baronet, at his quarters in Hull.

I hope the five thousand pounds, if it was ever paid Sir John, of which no token exists, may have been expended in maintaining his regiment, and keeping it together. There was no office of Paymaster-General in those days. However, he performed the service with the help of the people he had about him, and without calling in Lord Danby's 1,000 men. It is remarkable that, in the life of Lady Warner, he is described as a zealous Roman Catholic, and he may have been so while he was in Portugal, where, on the same authority, I find that his father sent him to be educated, during his own exile, in the first years of the Common

wealth. Possibly he was not very zealous, but he would have had to do as others did where the Inquisition lay like an octopus about the shores, nor could he have lived there as a heretic.

This incident of his life was first related to me at Hull itself, by the side of the citadel ditch, when I stood in the days of my youth and was elected member there many years since, and it appeared that "towns-taking day" had been kept as a kind of local festival for a long time. The keen winds of that period much invigorated my kinsman's political constitution, which, if I may judge by Anchitel Grey's short notices of several of his speeches, was not without some damage in the preceding reign. Afterwards having taken his seat as representative of Flint, in the Convention Parliament, he went in 1689 in command of his regiment to Ireland, embarking at Mostyn, then a usual place of embarkation, as it may be again.

The first service in which he took part was the relief of Londonderry; but, though he went regularly through the campaigns of that and the succeeding year, I do not find any particular personal adventures of his, such as would be answerable to the purpose of this book, until the battle of the Boyne, where Story's account of the engagement