CASSELL'S
HISTORY OF ENGLAND

FROM THE FALL OF MARLBOROUGH
TO THE PENINSULAR WAR

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS,
INCLUDING COLOURED
AND REMBRANDT PLATES

VOL IV

THE KING'S EDITION

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
MCMIX

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER I.]

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE (concluded). PAGE

Meeting of Parliament—Eugene's Visit to England—Ministerial Attacks on the Dutch—Meeting of the Negotiators at Utrecht—The Question of the Spanish Throne—Sham Fighting against the French—Debates on the Peace in Parliament—Withdrawal of the English Troops—Consequent Triumph of the French—Bolingbroke's Visit to Paris—Break-up of the Grand Alliance—More Negotiations with the Pretender—Death of Godolphin—Marlborough retires to the Continent—Signature of the Peace—The Treaty of Commerce—Its Rejection by the Commons—The Whereabouts of the Pretender—Dissolution of Parliament—The General Election—Intrigues with St. Germains—Bolingbroke's Activity—His Friends in Office—The Empire and Spain make Peace—The Pretender declines Overtures to Change his Religion—Illness of the Queen—Tax on Newspapers—Attack upon the "Public Spirit of the Whigs"—Steele expelled the House—Proposals against the Pretender and for bringing over the Electoral Prince—Counter-scheme for bringing over the Pretender—Obstacles to the Scheme—The Queen's Letter to the Elector—Death of the Electress Sophia—The Schism Bill—Its Progress through the Houses—Reward for the Apprehension of the Pretender—Fall of Oxford—Bolingbroke's Jacobite Cabinet—Illness of the Queen—The Whig Coup d'État—Ruin and Desperation of the Jacobites—Death of Anne—Proclamation of George I. [1]

[CHAPTER II.]

THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.

Peaceful Accession of George I.—His Arrival—Triumph of the Whigs—Dissolution and General Election—The Address—Determination to impeach the late Ministers—Flight of Bolingbroke and Ormonde—Impeachment of Oxford—The Riot Act—The Rebellion of 1715—Policy of the Regent Orleans—Surrender of the Pretender's Ships—The Adventures of Ormonde and Mar—The Highlands declare for the Pretender—Mar and Argyll—Advance of Mackintosh's Detachment—Its Surrender at Preston—Battle of Sheriffmuir—Arrival of the Pretender—Mutual Disappointment—Advance of Argyll—Flight of the Pretender to France—Punishment of the Rebels—Impeachment of the Rebel Lords—The Septennial Act—The King goes to Hanover—Impossibility of Reconstructing the Grand Alliance—Negotiations with France—Danger of Hanover from Charles XII.—And from Russia—Alarm from Townshend—Termination of the Dispute—Fresh Differences between Stanhope and Townshend—Dismissal of the Latter—The Triple Alliance—Project for the Invasion of Scotland—Detection of the Plot—Dismissal of Townshend and Walpole—They go into Opposition—Walpole's Financial Scheme—Attack on Cadogan—Trial of Oxford—Cardinal Alberoni—Outbreak of Hostilities between Austria and Spain—Occupation of Sardinia—Alberoni's Diplomacy—The Quadruple Alliance—Byng in the Mediterranean—Alberoni deserted by Savoy—Death of Charles XII.—Declaration of War with Spain—Repeal of the Schism Act—Rejection of the Peerage Bill—Attempted Invasion of Britain—Dismissal of Alberoni—Spain makes Peace—Pacification of Northern Europe—Final Rejection of the Peerage Bill—The South Sea Company—The South Sea Bill—Opposition of Walpole—Rise of South Sea Stock—Rival Companies—Death of Stanhope—Punishment of Ministry and Directors—Supremacy of Walpole—Atterbury's Plot—His Banishment and the Return of Bolingbroke—Rejection of Bolingbroke's Services—A Palace Intrigue—Fall of Carteret—Wood's Halfpence—Disturbances in Scotland—Punishment of the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield—The Patriot Party—Complications Abroad—Treaty of Vienna—Treaty of Hanover—Activity of the Jacobites—Falls of Ripperda and of Bourbon—English Preparations—Folly of the Emperor—Attack on Gibraltar—Preliminaries of Peace—Intrigues against Walpole—Death of George I. [24]

[CHAPTER III.]

THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.

Accession of George II.—Characters of the King and Queen—Adroit Tactics of Walpole—Rise and Fall of Compton—Attitude of the Opposition—Congress of Soissons—Causes of Dispute with Spain—Stanhope's successful Negotiations with King Philip—Retirement of Townshend—Walpole Supreme—Peace Abroad and at Home—Walpole's System of Wholesale Bribery and Corruption—The Public Prisons—Duel between Pulteney and Lord Hervey—The Excise Scheme—Great Outcry—Withdrawal of the Bill—Walpole's Vengeance—Attack on the Septennial Act—Wyndham's Speech—Depression of the Opposition—Definitive Peace of Vienna—Gin Act—The Porteous Riots—The Prince of Wales and the Opposition—Application for an Increase of his Allowance—Birth of George III.—Death of Queen Caroline—Attempt to Reduce the Army—Disputes with Spain—"Jenkins' Ear"—Walpole's Negotiations—Secession of the Opposition—Further Difficulties with Spain—Declaration of War—Privateers and Reprisals—Vernon's Victory—Frederick invades Silesia—Assistance of England—Parliament meets—Sandys' Motion—Walpole's Defence—Disasters of Maria Theresa—She throws herself on the Magyars—Misfortunes of the English Fleets—Vernon repulsed from Carthagena—Power slips from the Hands of Walpole—His last Battles—The Chippenham Election Petition—His Fall [57]

[CHAPTER IV.]

REIGN OF GEORGE II. (continued).

Effects of Walpole's Administration—Formation of the new Ministry—Attitude of the Malcontents—Committee of Inquiry into Walpole's Administration—Walpole's Protectors—Ministerial Measures—Prorogation of Parliament—Disasters of the French—British Diversion in the Netherlands—Opening of Parliament—The German Mercenaries—Amendment of the Gin Act—George goes to Germany—Stair and De Noailles in Franconia—Stair in a Trap—Bold Resolution of King George—The Battle of Dettingen—Resignation of Stair—Retreat of the French—Negotiations for Peace—Treaty of Worms—Pelham becomes Prime Minister—The Attacks of Pitt on Carteret—Attempted Invasion of England—Its Failure—Progress of the French Arms—Frederick II. invades Bohemia—His Retirement—Resignation of Carteret—Pelham strengthens his Ministry—Death of the Emperor—Campaign in Flanders—Battle of Fontenoy—Campaign of Frederick II.—The Young Pretender's Preparations—Loss of the Elizabeth—Landing in the Hebrides—The Highland Clans join him—The first Brush—Raising of the Standard—Cope's Mistake—He turns aside at Dalwhinnie—Charles makes a Dash for Edinburgh—The March to Stirling—Flight of the Dragoons—The "Canter of Coltbridge"—Edinburgh surprised by the Highlanders—Charles marching against Cope—Battle of Prestonpans—Delay in marching South—Discontent of the Highland Chiefs—The Start—Preparations in England—Apathy of the Aristocracy—Arrival of the Duke of Cumberland—Charles crosses the Border—Capture of Carlisle—The March to Derby—Resolution to retreat—"Black Friday"—The Retreat—Recapture of Carlisle—Siege of Stirling—Battle of Falkirk—Retreat to the Highlands—Cumberland's Pursuit—Gradual Collapse of the Highlanders—Battle of Culloden—Termination of the Rebellion—Cruelty of the Duke of Cumberland—Adventures of the Young Pretender—Trials and Executions—Ministerial Crisis [79]

[CHAPTER V.]

REIGN OF GEORGE II. (concluded).

Progress of the War on the Continent—Lethargic Condition of Politics—Battle of Laufeldt—Capture of Bergen-op-Zoom—Disasters of the French on the Sea and in Italy—Negotiations for Peace—Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle—Conditions of Peace—Peace at Home—Commercial Treaty with Spain—Death of the Prince of Wales—Popular feeling against the Bill for Naturalising the Jews—Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act—Foundation of the British Museum—Death of Pelham—Newcastle's Difficulties—Failure of Robinson—Approaching Danger from America—A State of Undeclared War—The Battles of Boscawen and Braddock—George's Anxiety for Hanover—Subsidiary Treaties against Prussia—Pitt's Opposition—Debate in the House of Commons—Danger of England—French Expedition against Minorca—The Failure of Byng—Newcastle resigns—Attempts to form a Ministry—Devonshire succeeds—Weakness of the Ministry—Coalition against Prussia—Alliance with England—Commencement of the Seven Years' War—Frederick conquers Saxony—Gloominess of Affairs—Court-Martial on Byng, and his Death—Dismissal of Pitt—The Pitt and Newcastle Coalition—Failure of the Attack on Rochefort and of that on Louisburg—Convention of Closter-Seven—Frederick's Campaign; Kolin, Rossbach, and Lissa—Successes elsewhere—Wolfe and Clive—Battle of Plassey—Capture of Louisburg—Ticonderoga and Fort Duquesne—Attacks on St. Malo and Cherbourg—Victory of Crefeld—Frederick's Campaign—Commencement of 1759; Blockade of the French Coast—Pitt's Plans for the Conquest of Canada—Amherst's and Prideaux's Columns—Wolfe before Quebec—Position of the City—Wolfe fails to draw Montcalm from his Position—Apparent Hopelessness of the Expedition—Wolfe scales the Heights of Abraham—The Battle—Successes in India—Battle of Quibéron—Frederick's Fortunes—Campaign of Ferdinand of Brunswick—Battle of Minden—Glorious Termination of the Year—French Descent on Carrickfergus—Attempt of the French to Recover Quebec— Their Expulsion from North America—Frederick's Fourth Campaign—Successes of Ferdinand of Brunswick—Death of George II. [111]

[CHAPTER VI.]

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE REVOLUTION TO 1760.

The Church after the Revolution—The Non-Jurors—The Act of Toleration—Comprehension Bill—Laxity of Religion—The Wesleys and Whitefield—Foundation of Methodism—Extension of the Movement—Literature—Survivors of the Stuart Period—Prose Writers: Bishop Burnet—Philosophers: Locke—Bishop Berkeley, etc.—Novelists: Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and Sterne—Dr. Davenant—Bentley—Swift—Addison—Addison and Steele—Bolingbroke—Daniel Defoe—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—Poets: Pope—His Prose Writings—Gay, Prior, Young, etc.—James Thomson, Allan Ramsay, Gray, and Minor Lights—Dramatists—Physical Science: Astronomers—Mathematicians—Electricians—Chemists—Medical Discoverers—Music: Purcell—Italian Music—Handel—Church Music—The Academy of Ancient Music and other Societies—Architecture—Wren and his Buildings—St. Paul's—His Churches and Palaces—Vanbrugh—Gibbs—Hawksmoor—Minor Architects—Painting and Sculpture: Lely and Kneller—Other Foreign Painters and Decorators—Thornhill—Other English Artists—Hogarth and his Works—Exhibition of British Artists—Sculptors—Shipping, Colonies, Commerce, and Manufactures—Increase of Canals—Woollen and Silk Trades—Irish Linens—Lace—Iron, Copper, and other Industries—Increase of the large Towns [141]

[CHAPTER VII.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III.

Accession of George III.—His Conduct—Ascendency of Bute—Meeting of Parliament—Enthusiastic Reception of the King's Speech—Bute's Cabals—Hostility to Pitt—Ministerial Changes—Marriage of the King—Queen Charlotte—Misfortunes of Frederick—Ferdinand of Brunswick's Campaign—Defeat of the French in the East and West Indies—Negotiations for Peace—Pitt's large Demands—Obstinacy of Choiseul—The Family Compact suspected—Resignation of Pitt—Bute's Ministry—War with Spain—Abandonment of Frederick—Policy of the new Czar—Resignation of Newcastle—Bute at the Head of the Treasury—Successes in the West Indies—Capture of Manila—Bute's Eagerness for Peace—The Terms—Bute's Unpopularity—Close of the Seven Years' War—Successes of Clive—Defeat of the Dutch in India—Final Overthrow of the French in India—Fate of the Count de Lally—Bute and the Princess of Wales—The Cider Tax—Bute's Vengeance—His Resignation—George Grenville in Office—No. 45 of the North Briton—Arrest of Wilkes—His Acquittal—Vengeance against him—The King negotiates with Pitt—Wilkes's Affairs in Parliament—The Wilkes Riots—The Question of Privilege—The Illegality of General Warrants declared—Wilkes expelled the House—Debates on General Warrants—Rejoicing in the City of London [168]

[CHAPTER VIII.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

The American Colonies and their Trade—Growing Irritation in America—The Stamp Act—The American Protest—The Stamp Act passed—Its Reception in America—The King's Illness—The Regency Bill—The Princess Dowager omitted—Her Name inserted in the Commons—Negotiations for a Change of Ministry—The old Ministry returns—Fresh Negotiations with Pitt—The first Rockingham Ministry—Riots in America—The Stamped Paper destroyed—Pitt's Speech—The Stamp Act repealed—Weakness of the Government—Pitt and Temple disagree—Pitt forms a Ministry—And becomes Lord Chatham—His Comprehensive Policy—The Embargo on Wheat—Illness of Chatham—Townshend's Financial Schemes—Corruption of Parliament—Wilkes elected for Middlesex—Arrest of Wilkes—Dangerous Riots—Dissolution of the Boston Assembly—Seizure of the Liberty Sloop—Debates in Parliament—Continued Persecution of Wilkes—His Letter to Lord Weymouth—Again expelled the House—His Re-election—The Letters of Junius—Luttrell declared elected for Middlesex—Incapacity of the Ministry—Partial Concessions to the Americans—Bernard leaves Boston—He is made a Baronet—"The Horned Cattle Session"—Lord Chatham attacks the Ministry—Resignations of Granby and Camden—Yorke's Suicide—Dissolution of the Ministry [183]

[CHAPTER IX.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Lord North—He forms a Ministry—Chatham declaims against Secret Influence—Grenville's Election Committee—Lord North's Conciliatory Measures—Determination of the Bostonians—The Boston Massacre—Trial of the Soldiers—Apparent Success of North's Measures—Affair of the Falkland Islands—Promptitude of the Ministry—The Quarrel composed—Trials of Woodfall and Almon—The Right of Parliamentary Reporting—Strengthening of the Ministry—Quarrels in the City—The Royal Marriage Act—Fate of the Queen of Denmark—Anarchical Condition of Poland—Interference of Russia—Deposition of Poniatowski—Frederick's Scheme of Partition—It is ratified—Inquiry into Indian Affairs—Lord North's Tea Bill—Lord Dartmouth and Hutchinson—The Hutchinson Letters—Dishonourable Conduct of Franklin—Establishment of Corresponding Committees—Burning of the Gaspee—Destruction of the Tea—Franklin avows the Publication of the Letters—Wedderburn's Speech—The Boston Port Bill—The Massachusetts Government Bill—The Coils of Coercion—Virginia joins Massachusetts—Gage dissolves the Boston Assembly—He fortifies Boston Neck—The General Congress—A Declaration of Rights—The Assembly at Concord—They enrol Militia—Seizure of Ammunition and Arms—Meeting of Parliament—Chatham's conciliatory Speech—His Bill for the Pacification of the Colonies—Its Fate—Lord North's Proposal—Burke's Resolutions—Prorogation of Parliament—Beginning of the War [199]

[CHAPTER X.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Gage attempts to seize American Arms—Skirmish at Lexington—Blockade of Boston—The Second Congress at Philadelphia—Washington chosen Commander-in-Chief—Fall of Ticonderoga and Crown Point—Washington at Boston—Battle of Bunker's Hill—The Olive Branch Petition—Condition of the American Army—Expedition against Canada—Capture of Montreal—Arnold's Expedition—His Junction with Montgomery—Failure of the Attack on Quebec—The Employment of German Mercenaries—Washington seizes Dorchester Heights—Evacuation of Boston—Howe retires to Halifax—The War in Canada—Thomas's Retreat—Sullivan evacuates Canada—The War in the South—Attack on Charleston—Paine's Pamphlet, "Common Sense"—New York and Virginia decide for Independence—Debate in Congress—Report of the Committee—Arbitrary Proceedings—The Declaration—Overtures to France—Arrival of Lord Howe—Position of Washington—Howe's Overtures—Battle of Brooklyn—Washington's Retreat—His Desperate Position—Howe receives a Deputation from Congress—Washington retires Step by Step—Cornwallis's Pursuit—Close of the Campaign—The Articles of Confederation published by Congress—Fresh Overtures to France—Parliament votes large Sums of Money—John the Painter—Chatham demands a Cessation of Hostilities—Washington's Change of Tactics—Surprise of Trenton—Washington outmanœuvres Cornwallis—He recovers New Jersey—Difficulties of Congress—Howe advances against Washington—Alteration of Howe's Plans—Battle of the Brandywine—Howe crosses the Schuylkill—Cornwallis enters Philadelphia—Battle of Germantown—Washington at Valley Forge—Burgoyne's Plan of Campaign—His Advance—St. Clair's Defeat—Burgoyne on the Hudson—The Beginning of his Misfortunes—Battle of Bemus's Heights—Burgoyne's Message to Clinton—He is surrounded—He attempts to cut his Way through—The Surrender of Saratoga—Clinton's Failure to relieve Burgoyne—Close of the Campaign [217]

[CHAPTER XI.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Meeting of Parliament—Lord Chatham's Amendment to the Address—The News of Saratoga—Treaty between France and America—Washington in Valley Forge—Intrigues against him—Violation of Burgoyne's Convention—Debates in Parliament—Attempt to bring Chatham into the Ministry—Lord North's Conciliation Bills—The French Note—Patriotism of the Nation—The King refuses to send for Chatham—His last Speech and Death—Honours to his Memory—Burke's Measure of Irish Relief—Repeal of Laws against Roman Catholics—Explosion of Scottish Bigotry—Turgot's Warnings—Naval Engagement off Ushant—Failure of Lafayette's Canadian Expedition—Clinton compelled to evacuate Philadelphia—Failure of Lord North's Commissioners—D'Estaing and Sullivan attempt to take Rhode Island—Subsequent Proceedings of D'Estaing—Courts martial of Keppel and Palliser—The Irish Volunteers—Spain declares War—Military Preparations—Junction of the French and Spanish Fleets—They retire from the Channel—D'Estaing in the West Indies—His Attempt on Savannah—Weakness of Lord North's Ministry—Meeting of Parliament—Lord North's Irish Bill—Richmond, Shelburne, and Burke attempt Economic Reforms—The Meeting at York petitions for Reform of Parliament—Burke's Economic Scheme—North's Manœuvre—Further Attempts at Reform—The Westminster Meeting—Dunning's Motion—Defeat of his later Resolutions—"No Popery" in Scotland—Lord George Gordon's Agitation—The Riots and their Progress—Their Suppression—Trial of the Prisoners—Rodney relieves Gibraltar—Destruction of English Merchantmen—Disputes with Holland—The Armed Neutrality of the North—Capture of Charleston—Declaration of South Carolina—Battle of Camden—Expedition into North Carolina—Arrival of the French Squadron—Rodney in the West Indies—Arnold's Treachery—Trial and Death of André—Breach with Holland—Attacks on Jersey and Gibraltar—Mutiny in the Army of Washington—Arnold's Raids in Virginia—Cornwallis in North Canada—His Engagements with Greene—His March into Virginia—Rawdon and Greene—Battle of Eutaw Springs—Siege of York Town—The American Armies close round him—Cornwallis compelled to Surrender [246]

[CHAPTER XII.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Rodney takes St. Eustatia—Destruction of Dutch Commerce—Loss of Minorca—Naval Actions—Meeting of Parliament—Vehemence of the Opposition—Losses in the West Indies—Breaking up of the Ministry—Their Defeat on Conway's Motion—Lord North's Resignation—Shelburne refuses the Premiership—New Whig Government—Agitation in Ireland—Grattan's Motion for Legislative Independence—The Volunteer Meeting at Dungannon—Grattan's Motion carried—Demands of the Irish Parliament conceded—Flood's Agitation—Economic Reforms—Pitt's Motion for Parliamentary Reform—Unsuccessful Negotiations for Peace—Rodney's Victory over De Grasse—Lord Howe's Exploits—The Siege and Relief of Gibraltar—Negotiations for Peace—Folly of Oswald and Duplicity of Shelburne—The Negotiations continued—Franklin throws over Vergennes—Conclusion of a Secret Treaty between England and America—Fate of the American Royalists—Announcement of the Peace in Parliament—Terms of Peace with France, Spain, and Holland—Opposition to the Peace—Coalition of Fox and North—Fall of Shelburne—Pitt's Attempt to form a Ministry—The Coalition in Office—Reform and the Prince of Wales—Fox's India Bill—Its Introduction—Progress of the Measure—The King's Letter to Temple—Reception of the News in the Commons—Dismissal of the Ministry—Pitt forms a Cabinet—Factious Opposition of Fox—Pitt's India Bill—He refuses to divulge his Intentions—The Tide begins to Turn—Attempt at a Coalition—Increasing Popularity of Pitt—Fox's Resolution—The Dissolution—"Fox's Martyrs" [284]

[CHAPTER XIII.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Victory of Pitt—The King's delight—Pitt's Finance—The India Bill—Pitt's Budget—The Westminster Election—The Scrutiny—Fox is returned—The Volunteers in Ireland—Flood's Reform Bill—Riots in Ireland—Pitt's Commercial Policy for Ireland—Opposition of the English Merchants—Abandonment of the Measure—Pitt's Reform Bill—His Administrative Reforms—Bill for fortifying Portsmouth and Plymouth—Pitt's Sinking Fund—Favourable Reception of the Bill—Pitt's Excise Bill—Commercial Treaty with France—Impeachment of Warren Hastings—Retrospect of Indian Affairs: Deposition of Meer Jaffier—Resistance of Meer Cossim—Massacre of Patna—Battle of Buxar and Capture of Allahabad—Clive's Return to India—Settlement of Bengal and Oude—Domestic Reforms—Rise of Hyder Ali—His Treaty with the English—He is defeated by the Mahrattas—Deposition of the Rajah of Tanjore—Failure of Lord Pigot to reinstate him—Lord North's Regulating Bill—Death of Clive—Warren Hastings becomes Governor-General—His dealings with the Famine—Treatment of Reza Khan and the Nabob of Bengal—Resumption of Allahabad and Corah—Massacre of the Rohillas—Arrival of the New Members of Council—Struggle for Supremacy—Robbery of Cheyte Sing—Nuncomar's Charges—His Trial and Execution—Hastings' Constitutional Resignation—His Final Victory—Wars against the Mahrattas—Hyder Ali's Advance—Defeat of Baillie—Energy of Hastings—Victories of Sir Eyre Coote—Capture of Dutch Settlements—Naval Engagements between the British and French—Death of Hyder Ali—Tippoo continues the War—He invokes Peace—Hastings' Extortions from Cheyte Sing—Hastings' visit to Benares—Rising of the People—Rescue of Hastings and Deposition of Cheyte Sing—Extortion from the Begums of Oude—Parliamentary Inquiries—Hastings' Reception in England—Burke's Motion of Impeachment—Pitt's Change of Front—The Prince of Wales and the Whigs—Inquiry into his Debts—Alderman Newnham's Motion—Denial of the Marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert—Sheridan's Begum Speech—Impeachment of Hastings—Growth of the Opposition to the Slave Trade—The Question brought before Parliament—Evidence produced—Sir W. Dolben's Bill—Trial of Warren Hastings—Speeches of Burke, Fox, and Sheridan—Illness of the King—Debates on the Regency Bill—The King's Recovery—Address of the Irish Parliament to the Prince of Wales [307]

[CHAPTER XIV.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Unsettled Condition of Europe—Machinations of Russia and Austria against Turkey—Disasters of the Austrians—Capture of Oczakoff—Further Designs of Catherine—Intervention of Pitt—Gustavus of Sweden invades Russia—His temporary Check—He remodels the Diet and pursues the War—Joseph renews the War—Disaffection in Hungary—Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands—Abolition of the Joyeuse Entrée—The Emperor declared to have forfeited the Crown—The Austrian Troops retired to Luxembourg—Death of Joseph—Outbreak of the French Revolution—Efforts of Turgot and his Successors to introduce Reforms—Loménie de Brienne—Recall of Necker—Assembly of the States General—The Third Estate becomes the National Assembly—The Meeting in the Tennis Court—Contemplated Coup d'État—Project of a City Guard—Dismissal of Necker—Insurrection in Paris—The City Guard—Capture of the Bastille—The Noblesse renounce their Privileges—Bankruptcy and Famine—"O Richard, O Mon Roi!"—The Women and the National Guard march on Versailles—The King brought to Paris—Effect of the Revolution in England—Different Views of Burke and Fox—Rejection of Flood's Reform Bill—The Nootka Sound Affair—Satisfaction obtained from Spain—Motions of Reform in the Irish Parliament—Convention of Reichenbach—Continuance of the War between Sweden and Russia—Renewal of the War with Tippoo Sahib—Debates in Parliament—Discussions on the Eastern Question—The Canada Bill—It is made the occasion of Speeches on the French Revolution—Breach between Fox and Burke—Abuse of Burke by the Whigs—Wilberforce's Notice for immediate Emancipation—Colonisation of Sierra Leone—Bill for the Relief of Roman Catholics—Fox's Libel Bill—Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution"—Replies of Mackintosh and Paine—Dr. Price—Dr. Priestley—The Anniversary of the taking of the Bastille—The Birmingham Riots—Destruction of Priestley's Library—Suppression of the Riots—Mildness of the Sentences [349]

[CHAPTER XV.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Progress of the French Revolution—Death of Mirabeau—Attempted Flight of the King from Paris—Attitude of the Sovereigns of Europe—The Parties of the Right and of the Left—The Girondists—Decrees against the Emigrants—Negotiations between Marie Antoinette and Pitt—Condition of the French Army—Session of 1792; Debates on Foreign Affairs—Marriage of the Duke of York—The Prince of Wales's Allowance—The Budget—The Anti-Slavery Movement—Magistracy Bill—Attempts at Reform—The Society of the Friends of the People—Proclamation against Seditious Writings—Fox's Nonconformist Relief Bill—Prorogation of Parliament—Associations and Counter-Associations—Lord Cornwallis's War against Tippoo Sahib—Capture of Seringapatam—Peace with Tippoo—Embassy to China—Designs of the Powers against Poland—Catherine resolves to strike—Invasion of Poland—Neutrality of England—Conquest of Poland—Imminence of War between France and Austria—It is declared—Failure of the French Troops—The Duke of Brunswick's Proclamation—Insurrection of the 10th of August—Massacre of the Swiss—Suspension of the King—Ascendency of Jacobinism—Dumouriez in the Passes of the Argonne—Battle of Valmy—Retreat of the Prussians—Occupation of the Netherlands by the French Troops—Custine in Germany—Occupation of Nice and Savoy—Edict of Fraternity—Abolition of Royalty—Trial and Death of the King—Effect of the Deed on the Continent—The Militia called out in England—Debates in Parliament on War with France—The Alien Bill—Rupture of Diplomatic Relations with France—War declared against Britain—Efforts to preserve the Peace—They are Ineffectual [386]

[CHAPTER XVI.]

THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Invasion of Holland by Dumouriez—He is defeated at Neerwinden and goes over to the Enemy—Second Partition of Poland—The Campaign in the Netherlands—And on the Rhine—The English Fleets in the Channel and West Indies—Siege of Toulon—First appearance of Napoleon Buonaparte—Fall of Lyons—The Reign of Terror—Insurrection in La Vendée—Its brutal Suppression—Worship of the Goddess of Reason—Opposition to the War in England—Prosecutions for Sedition—Trials in Scotland—Discussions on the subject in Parliament—Arrests of Horne Tooke, Thelwall, Hardy, and others—Battle of the First of June—The War in the West Indies—Annexation of Corsica—The Campaign of 1794—The Prussian Subsidy—Successes of Pichegru against the Austrians—The Struggle for the Sambre—Loss of Belgium—Danger of Holland—The War in the South—The Reign of Terror continues—The Festival of the Supreme Being—Death of Robespierre and his Associates—The Thermidorians—Final extinction of Poland—The Portland Whigs join the Ministry—Trials of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and their Associates—Opening of Parliament—The Budget—Attempts at Reform—Marriage of the Prince of Wales—His Allowance—The French occupy Holland—It becomes a Republic—Prussia and Spain leave the Coalition, but the War continues—Campaigns on the Rhine and in Italy—The War in La Vendée and in Brittany—The Expedition from England planned—Destruction of the Expedition at Quibéron—Extinction of the War in La Vendée—Establishment of the Directory—Attack on George the Third—The Budget—Pitt's first Negotiations for Peace—Failure of Lord Malmesbury's Mission—Successes in the West Indies and Africa—Expedition to Bantry Bay—The Campaign of 1796—Retreat of the French—Napoleon's Italian Campaign—The Battles of Arcole—A new British Loan—Suspension of Cash Payments—Grievances of the Seamen—Mutiny at Portsmouth—Its Pacification—Mutiny at the Nore—Descent on the Welsh Coast—Campaign of 1797—Preliminaries of Leoben—Treaty of Campo Formio—Lord Malmesbury's Mission to Lille [418]

[CHAPTER XVII.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Sympathy in Ireland for the French Revolution—Intrigues with the French—Attitude of the Roman Catholics—Failure of Fitzwilliam's Efforts at Reform—Open Rebellion begins—The Mission of Fitzgerald and O'Connor to France—Disclosure of the Conspiracy—Arrest of Fitzgerald and his Confederates—Outbreak of the Rebellion—Battle of Vinegar Hill—Arrival of Humbert's Expedition—Its brief Success and Surrender—Suicide of Wolfe Tone—Desire of France to invade England—Napoleon advises the Expedition to Egypt—He gives Nelson the slip—His gigantic Projects—Surrender of Malta—Nelson's Pursuit—Napoleon's Campaign—Battle of the Pyramids—Surrender of Cairo—Battle of the Nile (or Aboukir Bay)—Pitt's second Coalition—The Income Tax—Projected Union of Great Britain and Ireland—Proclamation of the Parthenopean Republic—Italy regained by the Coalition—Suppression of the Revolution in Naples—The Allies in Holland—Napoleon's March into Syria—His Defeat at Acre—Battle of Aboukir—Napoleon returns to France—Coup d'État of the 18th Brumaire—Death of Tippoo Sahib—Napoleon's Letter to the King—The Union with Ireland—Means by which it was carried—Its Reception in England—Napoleon crosses the Alps—Battle of Marengo—The French recover Lombardy—Battle of Hohenlinden—Treaty of Lunéville—Corn Riots—Breach with Russia—Pitt's Resignation—The King's Illness—The Addington Ministry—Revival of the Armed Neutrality—Battle of Copenhagen—Peace between Britain and the Northern Powers—The Expedition to Egypt—Battle of Alexandria—Evacuation of Egypt by the French—Negotiations for Peace—Treaty of Amiens [460]

[CHAPTER XVIII.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Napoleon's Plans of Conquest—Sebastiani's Report—Napoleon's Complaints against the British Press—Espionage and Confiscation—He continues his Continental Aggressions—Napoleon's Interview with Lord Whitworth—Imminence of War—Negotiations for Pitt's Return to Office—War Declared—Napoleon arrests British Subjects in France—Seizure of Hanover—Emmett's Rebellion—Naval Attacks on the French Coast—The Mahratta War—Battle of Assaye—Successes of General Lake—Battle of Laswaree—Battle of Argaum—Conclusion of the War—Renewed Illness of George III.—Increasing Opposition of Pitt—He offers to undertake the Government—He forms a Tory Ministry—Wilberforce's Abolition Motion—The Additional Force Bill—Scheme for blowing up the French Fleet—War with Spain—The Georges Conspiracy—Murder of the Duke D'Enghien—Napoleon becomes Emperor—His Letter to the British King—The Condition of Europe—Lord Mulgrave's Reply to the Letter—Ministerial Changes—Weakness of the Ministry—Attack on Lord Melville—Whitbread's Motion—Melville's Defence—His Impeachment voted—Secession of Lord Sidmouth—The European Coalition—Hastened by Napoleon's Aggressions—Rashness of Austria—Invasion of Bavaria—Napoleon marches on the Rhine—Capitulation of the Austrian Army at Ulm—Occupation of Vienna—Battle of Austerlitz—Treaties of Schönbrunn and Pressburg—The Baltic Expedition—Expedition to Naples—Naval Affairs—Nelson's Pursuit of Villeneuve—Calder's Engagement—Battle of Trafalgar—Death of Nelson—Continuation of the Mahratta War—Lord Lake's Engagements with Holkar—Siege of Bhurtpore—Defeat of Meer Khan—The Rajah of Bhurtpore makes Peace—Treaties with Scindiah and Holkar—Death of Pitt—Payment of his Debts by the Nation [485]

[CHAPTER XIX.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

The Ministry of "All the Talents"—Fox informs Napoleon of a supposed Scheme for his Assassination—Futile Negotiations for Peace—Windham's Army Bills—Resolutions against the Slave Trade passed—Inquiry into the Conduct of the Princess of Wales—British Expeditions: Stuart in Calabria—Battle of Maida—Continued Resistance of the Neapolitans—Recapture of the Cape of Good Hope—Expedition to Buenos Ayres—Naval Successes: Victories of Duckworth, Warren, and Hood—Cochrane's Daredevilry—Napoleon's subject Kingdoms—Prussia makes Complaints—Napoleon prepares for War—Murder of Palm—Isolation of Prussia—Imbecility of their Plan of Campaign—Battle of Jena—Napoleon in Berlin—He seizes Brunswick—Complete Subjugation of Germany—Settlement of Germany—The Berlin Decrees—Napoleon rouses the Poles—Campaign against Benningsen—Death of Fox—Ministerial Changes—Votes in Supply—An Administrative Scandal—Abolition of the Slave Trade—Measures of Roman Catholic Relief—Dismissal of the Grenville Ministry—The Duke of Portland's Cabinet—Hostile Motions in Parliament—The General Election—Irish Coercion Bills—Failure of the Expeditions planned by the late Ministry: Buenos Ayres—The Expedition to the Dardanelles—Expedition to Alexandria—Attack on Rosetta—Withdrawal of the Expedition—War between Russia and Turkey—Secret Articles of the Treaty of Tilsit—Bombardment of Copenhagen and Capture of the Danish Fleet—Seizure of Heligoland—The Campaign in Europe—Battle of Eylau—Benningsen's Retreat—Napoleon on the Vistula—Fall of Dantzic—Battle of Friedland—Alexander resolves to make Peace—The Meeting on the Niemen—Treaty of Tilsit. [516]

[CHAPTER XX.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Napoleon's Designs on Spain—The Continental System—Treaty of Fontainebleau—Junot marches on Portugal—Flight of the Royal Family—The Milan Decree—The Pope imprisoned in the Quirinal—Imbecility of the Spanish Government—Quarrels of the Spanish Royal Family—Occupation of the Spanish Fortresses—The King's Preparations for Flight—Rests at Madrid—Abdication of Charles IV.—Murat occupies Madrid—The Meeting at Bayonne—Joseph becomes King of Spain—Insurrection in Spain—The Junta communicates with England—Ferocity of the War—Operations of Bessières, Duchesne, and Moncey—Dupont surrenders to Castanos—Joseph evacuates Madrid—Siege of Saragossa—Napoleon's Designs on Portugal—Insurrection throughout the Country—Sir A. Wellesley touches at Corunna—He lands at Figueras—Battle of Roliça—Wellesley is superseded by Burrard—Battle of Vimiera—Arrival of Dalrymple—Convention of Cintra—Inquiry into the Convention—Occupation of Lisbon—Napoleon's preparations against Spain—Wellington is passed over in Favour of Moore—Moore's Advance—Difficulties of the March—Incompetency of Hookham Frere—Napoleon's Position in Europe—The Meeting at Erfurth—Napoleon at Vittoria—Destruction of the Spanish Armies—Napoleon enters Madrid—Moore is at last undeceived—The Retreat—Napoleon leaves Spain—Moore retires before Soult—Arrival at Corunna—The Battle—Death of Sir John Moore—The Ministry determine to continue the War—Scandal of the Duke of York—His Resignation—Charges against Lord Castlereagh—Wellesley arrives in Portugal—He drives Soult from Portugal into Spain—His Junction with Cuesta—Position of the French Armies—Folly of Cuesta—Battle of Talavera—State of the Commissariat—Wellesley's Retreat—French Victories—The Lines of Torres Vedras—The Walcheren Expedition—Flushing taken—The Troops die from Malaria—Disastrous Termination of the Expedition—Sir John Stuart in Italy and the Ionian Islands—War between Russia and Turkey—Collingwood's last Exploits—Attempt of Gambier and Cochrane on La Rochelle. [546]

[CHAPTER XXI.]

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).

Austria gets ready for War—Napoleon's Preparations—Invasion of Bavaria by Austria—The Archduke Charles driven from Bavaria—Occupation of Vienna—Battle of Aspern—The Spirit of Revolt in Germany: Schill and Brunswick—Battle of Wagram—Peace of Vienna—Victories of the Tyrolese—Death of Hofer—The Betrayal of Poland and Italy—Deposition of the Pope—Ministerial Dissensions—Death of Portland, and Reconstruction of the Ministry—Inquiry into the Walcheren Expedition—Imprisonment of Gale Jones—Burdett committed to the Tower—The Piccadilly Riots—Arrest of Burdett—Debates in the House of Commons—Agitation for Parliamentary Reform—Liberation of Burdett—Remaining Events of the Session—Condition of Spain—Soult's victorious Progress—He fails at Cadiz—The Guerilla War—Massena sent against Wellington—Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo—Capitulation of Almeida—Battle of Busaco—The Lines of Torres Vedras—Massena baffled—Condition of the rival Armies—Victories in the East and West Indies—The War in Sicily. [586]

[INDEX.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

LIST OF PLATES.

PRINCE CHARLIE'S FAREWELL TO FLORA MACDONALD, 1746

From the Painting by George W. Joy.

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ST. JAMES'S PALACE, IN THE TIME OF ANNE.

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CASSELL'S
Illustrated History of England

CHAPTER I.

THE REIGN OF ANNE (concluded).

Meeting of Parliament—Eugene's Visit to England—Ministerial Attacks on the Dutch—Meeting of the Negotiators at Utrecht—The Question of the Spanish Throne—Sham Fighting against the French—Debates on the Peace in Parliament—Withdrawal of the English Troops—Consequent Triumph of the French—Bolingbroke's Visit to Paris—Break-up of the Grand Alliance—More Negotiations with the Pretender—Death of Godolphin—Marlborough retires to the Continent—Signature of the Peace—The Treaty of Commerce—Its Rejection by the Commons—The Whereabouts of the Pretender—Dissolution of Parliament—The General Election—Intrigues with St. Germains—Bolingbroke's Activity—His Friends in Office—The Empire and Spain make Peace—The Pretender declines Overtures to Change his Religion—Illness of the Queen—Tax on Newspapers—Attack upon the "Public Spirit of the Whigs"—Steele expelled the House—Proposals against the Pretender and for bringing over the Electoral Prince—Counter-scheme for bringing over the Pretender—Obstacles to the Scheme—The Queen's Letter to the Elector—Death of the Electress Sophia—The Schism Bill—Its Progress through the Houses—Reward for the Apprehension of the Pretender—Fall of Oxford—Bolingbroke's Jacobite Cabinet—Illness of the Queen—The Whig Coup d'État—Ruin and Desperation of the Jacobites—Death of Anne—Proclamation of George I.

The Houses of Parliament reassembled on the 17th of January, 1712, and Anne sent word that she was not able to attend in person, not having recovered sufficiently from her attack of the gout. She announced that the plenipotentiaries were now assembled at Utrecht, and were already engaged in endeavouring to procure just satisfaction to all the Allies according to their several treaties, and especially with relation to Spain and the Indies. This was a delusion, for, by our treaty with the Emperor, we had engaged to secure Spain and the Indies for his son; and it was now, notwithstanding the assurance in her message regarding them, fully determined to give them up to Philip. There was a strong protest in the message against the evil declarations that there had been an intention to make a separate peace, though nothing was more notorious than that the Ministers were resolved, if the Allies did not come to their terms, to go on without them. The message ended by recommending a measure for the restriction of the liberty of the press. Much alarm was expressed at the great licence in the publishing of false and scandalous libels, though the Ministers themselves did not scruple to employ the terrible pen of Swift.

On the 6th of January there landed at Greenwich an illustrious visitor to the Court on an unwelcome errand—namely, Prince Eugene. The Allies, justly alarmed at the Ministerial revolution which had taken place in England, and at the obvious design of the Tories to render abortive all the efforts of the Whigs and the Allies through the war, from mere party envy and malice, sent over Eugene to convince the queen and the Government of the fatal consequences of such policy. Harley paid obsequious court to the prince as long as he hoped to win him over. He gave a magnificent dinner in his honour, and declared that he looked on that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see in his house the greatest captain of the age. The prince, who felt that this was a mean blow at Marlborough, replied with a polite but cutting sarcasm, which must have sunk deep in the bosom of the Lord Treasurer, "My lord, if I am the greatest captain of the age, I owe it to your lordship." That was to say, because he had deprived the really greatest captain of his command. The queen, though she was compelled to treat Eugene graciously, and to order the preparation of costly gifts to him as the representative of the Allies, regarded him as a most unwelcome guest, and in her private circle took no pains to conceal it. The whole Tory party soon found that he was not a man to be seduced from his integrity, or brought to acquiesce in a course of policy which he felt and knew to be most disgraceful and disastrous to the peace of Europe; and being fully convinced of this, they let loose on the illustrious stranger all the virulence of the press. Eugene returned to the Continent, his mission being unaccomplished, on the 13th of March.

Whilst Prince Eugene had been labouring in vain to recall the English Government from its fatal determination to make a disgraceful peace, the Dutch envoy Van Buys had been equally active, and with as little success. The Ministers incited the House of Commons to pass some severe censures on the Dutch. They alleged that the States General had not furnished their stipulated number of troops both for the campaigns in the Netherlands and in Spain; that the queen had paid above three millions of crowns more than her contingent. They attacked the Barrier Treaty, concluded by Lord Townshend with them in 1709, and declared that it contained several Articles destructive to the trade and interests of Great Britain; that Lord Townshend was not authorised to make that treaty; and that both he and all those who advised it were enemies to the queen and kingdom. They addressed a memorial to the queen, averring that England, during the war, had been overcharged nineteen millions sterling—which was an awful charge of mismanagement or fraud on the part of the Whig Ministers. They further asserted that the Dutch had made great acquisitions; had extended their trade as well as their dominion, whilst England had only suffered loss. Anne gave her sanction to this address by telling the House that she regarded their address as an additional proof of their affection for her person and their attention to the interests of the nation; and she ordered her ambassador at the Hague, the new Earl of Strafford, to inform the States of these complaints of her Parliament, and to assure them that they must increase their forces in Flanders, or she must decrease hers.

This naturally roused the States, who made a very different statement; contending that, by the treaties, every ally was bound to do all in its power to bring the common enemy to terms; that England, being more powerful than Holland, ought to bear a larger share of the burden of the war; yet that the forces of Holland had been in the Netherlands often upwards of a hundred thousand, whilst those of England had not amounted to seventy thousand; that this had prevented the Dutch from sending more soldiers to Spain; and that, whilst England had been at peace in her own territory, they (the Dutch) had suffered severely in the struggle. To this a sharp answer was drawn up by St. John, and despatched on the 8th of March, of which the real gist was that, according to the Dutch, England could never give too much, or the United Provinces too little. Nothing could exceed the bitterness of tone which existed between England and the Allies, with whom it had so long manfully contended against encroaching France; for the whole world felt how unworthily the English generally were acting under the Tory Ministry, and this did not tend to forward the negotiations, which had been going on at Utrecht since the 29th of January. To this conference had been appointed as the British plenipotentiaries, the new Earl of Strafford—whom Swift, a great partisan of the Tory Ministry, pronounced a poor creature—and Robinson, Bishop of Bristol, Lord Privy Seal. On the part of France appeared the Marshal d'Uxelles, the Abbé de Polignac, and Mesnager, who had lately been in England settling the preliminaries. On the part of the Dutch were Buys and Vanderdussen; and, besides these, the Emperor, the Duke of Savoy, and the lesser German princes had their representatives.

France and England being already agreed, independently of the consent of the rest of the Allies, the conference began on a basis which was sure to lead to immediate confusion and contention. The Dutch plenipotentiaries were astonished to see the different tone displayed by the French ambassadors. They were no longer the humble personages that they had been at Gertruydenberg. The Abbé Polignac, who was the chief speaker, assumed a high and confident manner. The French envoys, therefore, when the Dutch deputies demanded that the treaty should be carried out on the basis of the terms offered at Gertruydenberg, told them plainly that matters were now quite altered, and that the conditions offered at Gertruydenberg could not be entertained by France at all, but those to which the Queen of England had agreed in London; that unless the Dutch were willing to treat on these conditions, they would find their allies concluding peace without them, and that on the spot. The chief article to which the Allies objected was the concession of Spain to Philip; and they were the more resolute because it had become imminently necessary from changes that had now taken place in France. The Dauphin had died of the smallpox during the last year. The title had been conferred on his son, the Duke of Burgundy; but the Duke of Burgundy had just expired, too, in the sixth year of his age; and of the Dauphin's children there only now remained the Duke of Anjou, a sickly child of two years old. This child was the only remaining obstacle to Philip, the King of Spain, mounting the throne of France. The danger was so obvious of the union of France and Spain in a very few years—to prevent which had been the object of the war—that the English Government was compelled to demand from Philip a distinct renunciation of all claims on the French Crown, and from France as distinct a one in the treaty that any such claim should be resisted. St. John entered into a correspondence with De Torcy, the French minister, on this point; and the answers of De Torcy must have shown the English Government how useless it was to attempt to bind Frenchmen on such matters. He replied that any renunciation on the part of Philip or any French prince would be utterly null and void according to the laws; that on the king's death the next heir male of the royal blood succeeded, independently of any disposition or restriction of the late king, or any will of the people, or of himself, even; that he was, by the laws of France, sovereign by right of succession, and must be so, in spite of any circumstances to the contrary; that neither himself, the throne, nor the people had anything to do with it, but to obey the constitution. Therefore, even if Philip did bind himself to renounce the Crown of France, should the present Dauphin die, he would be king, independently of any circumstances whatever. Another expedient, however, was proposed by the English ministry, who must have seen clearly enough the folly of their treating on such hollow ground. That was, if Philip did not like to renounce the Crown of France, he should at once quit the throne of Spain, and agree that the Duke of Savoy should take it and the Indies, surrendering his own territories to Philip, to which should be added Naples, Sicily, Montserrat, and Mantua, all of which, whenever Philip succeeded to the French Crown, should be annexed to France, with the exception of Sicily, which should be made over to Austria. Louis XIV. professed to be delighted with this arrangement, but Philip would not listen to it, showing plainly that he meant, notwithstanding any renunciation, to retain his claim to both France and Spain.

On such utterly unsubstantial ground did the English ministers continue this negotiation. They assured De Torcy that the Queen of England insisted on Philip's renunciation of one throne or the other, and he at length renounced that of France, everybody seeing that the sense in which he renounced it was no renunciation at all, but a pretence to get the peace effected; and thus the English ministers, with their eyes open to the fraud, went on urging the Allies to come into these most delusive and unsatisfactory terms. But as the renunciation of Philip did not arrive till after midsummer, the negotiators at Utrecht continued to talk without advancing, and the armies in the field continued to look at each other without fighting.

Marshal Villars, like the French plenipotentiaries, had made a great display of forces, pretty certain, from private information, that there was little fear of being attacked. The Allies had a fine army of one hundred and twenty thousand men opposed to him; but so far as the English were concerned, their commander had his hands tied. The Duke of Ormonde was sent to take the place of the Duke of Marlborough—a certain indication that he was meant only for a mere show general. He was a staunch Jacobite, but no general of talents or experience fit to succeed a man like Marlborough. On arriving at the Hague he assured the States General that his instructions were to act zealously with the Allies, and especially the Dutch, and from his letters it would appear that such were his orders. But before his arrival, Mr. Thomas Harley, a relative of Oxford's, and the Abbé Gualtier, had reached the Hague, and had assured the plenipotentiaries that the Government had determined on peace, and would not allow the army to fight. They also brought over with them the scheme of the Treaty, which was not yet to be made known to the Dutch. But the States General were too well aware of the hollow proceedings of the English Court, and, disgusted at the withdrawal of Marlborough and the substitution of Ormonde, they would not entrust their troops to him, but appointed Eugene as their own general. Thus, instead of one generalissimo of consummate genius, the army was divided under two chiefs, the abler chief, the Prince Eugene, having the utmost contempt for the martial talents of his colleague. All on the part of England, both in the conference and in the army, was hollow, treacherous, and disgraceful. Yet, though there was to be no fighting, the pretence of it was kept up. The Earl of Albemarle marched with a detachment of the army to Arras, where he burnt and destroyed some magazines of the French. Ormonde, too, joined Prince Eugene on the 26th of May, and the united army passed the Scheldt, and encamped between Haspres and Solennes. Eugene proposed to attack Villars in his lines, and Ormonde consented to it, but he immediately received a peremptory order from Mr. Secretary St. John against engaging in any siege or battle, and he was directed to keep this order profoundly secret from the Allies. Ormonde was also instructed that if Villars should intimate that he was aware of these secret proceedings, he was to take no notice of them; nor was Villars long in letting him know that they might now consider each other as friends. The situation of Ormonde thus became one of extreme embarrassment. On the one hand, Eugene urged him to prepare for an engagement; on the other, the Dutch were impatient to see some stroke which should humble the French and make negotiation more easy; but Ormonde was as unable to move, notwithstanding previous assurances, as if he had been a mere image of wood. He wrote to St. John, expressing in strong terms the embarrassing nature of his situation, assuring him that the Dutch were exclaiming that they were betrayed; but St. John encouraged him to hold out as well as he could, and Ormonde condescended to play this false and degrading part, equally disgraceful to him as a general and a man of any pretences to honour. The prince urged forward the necessity of laying siege to Quesnoy, and Ormonde was allowed, for the sake of keeping up appearances, to furnish a considerable detachment for the purpose. But there was so evident a backwardness in the duke's movements, that the Dutch deputies complained vehemently to the English plenipotentiaries at Utrecht of his refusal to act in earnest against the enemy. Thereupon Robinson, the bishop, took high ground, and retorted that the States General had met the queen's proposals for peace so strangely, that her Majesty now felt herself released from any further obligation to maintain the treaties and engagements between herself and them. This roused the States to great and indignant activity. They entered into communication with the Electors of Hanover, of Hesse-Cassel, and other princes of the Empire, regarding the effective service of their troops in the pay of Great Britain. They sent off warm remonstrances to the Queen of England, and Anne was obliged to summon a council, in which it was agreed that Ormonde should appear as much as possible to concur with Eugene in the siege.

Accordingly, on the 5th of June, the queen proceeded to the House of Lords, and stated in a long speech the terms on which it was proposed to make the peace with France—namely, that Louis XIV. should acknowledge the Protestant succession and remove the Pretender out of France; that Philip should renounce the Crown of Spain, should that of France devolve on him; and that the kings of both France and Spain should make solemn engagements for themselves and their heirs that the two kingdoms should never be united under one crown; that Newfoundland, with Placentia, Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, or Acadia, as it was then termed by the French, as well as Gibraltar, Port Mahon, and the whole island of Minorca, should be ceded to England; that the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, the Duchy of Milan, and the places on the Tuscan coast, formerly belonging to Spain, should be yielded to Austria, the appropriation of Sicily being not so far determined; that France would make the Rhine the barrier of the Empire, yielding up all places beyond it, and razing the fortresses on the German side as well as in the river; that the barriers of Savoy, the Netherlands, and Prussia, should be made satisfactory to the Allies. The Electoral dignity was to be acknowledged in the House of Hanover.

DEAN SWIFT.

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The House of Commons received the speech with enthusiasm, and carried up an address of thanks in a body. Very different, however, was the reception of the speech in the House of Lords. Lord Wharton proposed that in the address they should declare themselves against a separate peace, and the Duke of Marlborough supported that view. He said that for a year past the measures pursued were directly opposed to her Majesty's engagement with the Allies, had sullied the glories of her reign, and would render our name odious to all nations. Lord Strafford, who had come over from the Hague purposely to defend the Government policy, and his own share in it at Utrecht, asserted that the opposition of the Allies would not have been so obstinate had they not been encouraged by a certain member of that House who corresponded with them, and stimulated them by assurances that they would be supported by a large party in England. This blow aimed at Marlborough called up Lord Cowper, who directed his sarcasm against Strafford on the ground of his well-known illiterate character, observing that the noble lord had been so long abroad that he had forgotten not only the language but the constitution of his country; that according to our laws it could never be a crime in an individual to correspond with its allies, but that it was a crime to correspond, as certain persons did, with the common enemy, unknown to the allies, and to their manifest prejudice. The amendment of Lord Wharton, however, was rejected, and the protest, entered against its rejection by twenty peers and bishops, was voted violent and indecorous, and erased from the journal.

Notwithstanding these addresses and the confident tone of the Queen's Speech, the Funds fell, and there was general dissatisfaction at the conditions of the proposed pacification. In order to stimulate the proceedings and excite a jealousy of the Dutch, St. John professed to discover that they were themselves secretly negotiating with France, and urged that, if we did not take care, they would have the management of the negotiations and not her Majesty. Lord Strafford hastened back to the Hague, and from thence to Utrecht, where he proposed a cessation of arms, which was rejected by the Allies. He then went on to the army, where the Duke of Ormonde was in a situation of the utmost difficulty. He had received orders from Government, in consequence of the clamour in Parliament, to support Prince Eugene at the siege of Quesnoy, which he had invested on the 8th of June, and accordingly he had appeared before the place with such forces as threatened speedily to reduce it. At the same time he had received from the Marquis de Torcy a copy of the articles of peace signed by him, and from the Marquis of Villars the most bitter remonstrances on his conduct, which he did not hesitate to declare most perfidious and disgraceful. On the other hand, Prince Eugene, who did not find the English forces, notwithstanding their presence, rendering any active service, was equally irritated by his proceedings. Ormonde could but reply to each party that such were his orders, and leave the Government to bear the ignominy of it. To extricate themselves from the just censures on this dishonourable policy, St. John instructed Ormonde to demand from Villars the surrender of Dunkirk, which, it was asserted, must be put into the hands of the queen's troops, as a pledge that France would perform all that she had promised, before there could be a cessation of hostilities.

The French hastened to comply with this condition, on the understanding that Ormonde would immediately draw off his troops from Quesnoy; and the duke was obliged to announce to Prince Eugene that he was under this necessity, in consequence of the terms agreed upon between France and England; in fact, that he must cease all opposition to the French. Ormonde, therefore, not only gave the command for the retirement of the English troops, but also of all those belonging to the German princes which were in British pay. Eugene and the Dutch field deputies protested most indignantly against this proceeding, and the mercenary troops themselves refused to follow Ormonde. In vain did he endeavour to move the officers of those troops; they despised the conduct of England in abandoning the advantageous position at which they had arrived for terminating the war gloriously, and releasing the common enemy of Europe from his just punishment to gratify party spirit in England.

When the French saw that Ormonde could not induce the mercenary troops to move, they refused to surrender Dunkirk, and an English detachment which arrived there to take possession found the gates shut in their faces. At this insult the British troops burst out into a fury of indignation. The officers as well as the men were beside themselves with shame, and shed tears of mortification, remembering the glorious times under Marlborough. Ormonde himself, thus disgraced, thus helpless—for he had not the satisfaction, even, of being able to avenge himself on the French,—thus deserted by the auxiliaries, and made a laughing-stock to all Europe by the crooked and base policy of his Government, retired from before the walls of Dunkirk, and directed his course towards Douay. The Dutch shut their gates against him, and he finally retired in ignominy to England.

Eugene, during these affairs, had been actively prosecuting the fortunes of the Allies with his remnant of an army. He pushed on the siege of Quesnoy, and took it. He sent a flying detachment of one thousand five hundred cavalry, under Major-General Grovestein, to make an incursion into France. This force made a rapid raid in Champagne, passed the Noire, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Saar, ravaged the country, reduced a great number of villages and towns to ashes, rode up to the very gate of Metz, and then retired to Traerbach with a load of rich booty. This was a proof of what might have been done in France at this period with the whole army united under a commander like Marlborough, in place of miserably giving up everything to that country in the moment of power. As it was, it created the utmost consternation in Paris, the people of which already saw the English at their gate; whilst Louis did not think himself safe at Versailles, but gathered all the troops in the neighbourhood of the capital around his palace, leaving the city to take care of itself.

But Harley and St. John had deprived the nation of its triumph, and left the way open to fresh insults and humiliations. No sooner did Villars see the English forces withdrawn from the Allies, than he seized the opportunity to snatch fresh advantages for France, and thus make all their demands on the Allies certain. He crossed the Scheldt on the 24th of July, and, with an overwhelming force, attacked the Earl of Albemarle, who commanded a division of the Allied army at Denain. Eugene, who, from the reduction of Quesnoy, had proceeded to lay siege to Landrey, instantly hastened to the support of Albemarle; but, to his grief, found himself, when in sight of him, cut off from rendering him any assistance by the breaking down of the bridge over the Scheldt; and he had the pain to see Albemarle beaten under his very eyes. Seventeen battalions of Albemarle's force were killed or taken. He himself and all the surviving officers were made prisoners. Five hundred wagons loaded with bread, twelve pieces of brass cannon, a large quantity of ammunition and provisions, horses and baggage, fell into the hands of the French. Villars then marched on to Marchiennes, where the stores of the Allies were deposited, and took it on the 31st of July, the garrison of five thousand being sent to Valenciennes prisoners. He next advanced to Douay, where Eugene would have given him battle, but was forbidden to do so by the States, and thus Douay fell into Villars' hands. Then came the fall of Quesnoy and Bouchain, which had cost Marlborough and Eugene so much to win.

It was now the turn of the French to triumph, and of the Allies to suffer consternation. Louis, once more elate, ordered Te Deum to be sung in Notre Dame, and all Paris was full of rejoicing. He declared that God had given a direct and striking proof of the justice of his cause and of the guilty obstinacy of the Allies. His plenipotentiaries assumed at Utrecht such arrogance that their very lacqueys imitated them; and those of Mesnager insulted one of the plenipotentiaries, Count von Richteren, and Louis justified them against all complaints. In such circumstances, all rational hope of obtaining peace except on the disgraceful terms accepted by England vanished.

In fact, though the Allies still held out, it was useless. Bolingbroke—for St. John had been called in this year to the Upper House as Viscount Bolingbroke—accompanied by Matthew Prior, had been in Paris since the beginning of August, where they were assisted also by the Abbé Gualtier, determined to close the negotiations for England, whether the Allies objected or not. To make this result obvious to the whole world, the troops which Ormonde had brought home were disbanded with all practicable speed. The ostensible cause of Bolingbroke's and Prior's visit to Paris was to settle the interests of the Duke of Savoy and the Elector of Bavaria; but the real one was to remove any remaining impediment to the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace. France and England were quite agreed; Bolingbroke returned to London, and Prior remained as resident at the Court of France, as if the Articles of Peace were, in fact, already signed. A truce, indeed, for four months longer by land and sea was proclaimed in Paris. It was agreed that the Pretender should return to Lorraine; that all hostilities should cease in Italy in consequence of the arrangement of the affairs of the Duke of Savoy; and that the Austrian troops should be allowed to quit Spain and return to Naples.

The secession of the Duke of Savoy only the more roused the indignation of the Allies. The Dutch breathed a hotter spirit of war just as their power of carrying it on failed; and even the experienced Heinsius made an energetic oration in the States General, declaring that all the fruits of the war would be lost if they consented to the peace proposed. But to avoid it was no longer possible. The English plenipotentiaries pressed the Allies more and more zealously to come in, so much so that they were scarcely safe from the fury of the Dutch populace, who insulted the Earl of Strafford and the Marquis del Borgo, the Minister of the Duke of Savoy, when the news came that the duke had consented to the peace. Every endeavour was made to detach the different Allies one by one. Mr. Thomas Harley was sent to the Elector of Hanover to persuade him to co-operate with her Majesty; but, notwithstanding all risk of injuring his succession to the English Crown, he declined. Similar attempts were made on the King of Prussia and other princes, and with similar results. The English Ministers now began to see the obstacles they had created to the conclusion of a general peace by their base desertion of the Allies. The French, rendered more than ever haughty in their demands by the successes of Villars, raised their terms as fast as any of the Allies appeared disposed to close with those already offered. The Dutch, convinced at length that England would make peace without them, and was bending every energy to draw away their confederates, in October expressed themselves ready to treat, and to yield all pretensions to Douay, Valenciennes, and Mauberg, on condition that Condé and Tournay were included in their barrier; that the commercial tariffs with France should be restored to what they were in 1664; that Sicily should be yielded to Austria, and Strasburg to the Empire. But the French treated these concessions with contempt, and Bolingbroke was forced to admit to Prior that they treated like pedlars, or, what was worse, like attorneys. He conjured Prior "to hide the nakedness of his country" in his intercourse with the French Ministers, and to make the best of the blunders of his countrymen, admitting that they were not much better politicians than the French were poets. But the fault of Bolingbroke and his colleagues was not want of talent, it was want of honesty; and, by their selfish desire to damage their political rivals, they had brought their country into this deplorable dilemma of sacrificing all faith with their allies, of encouraging the unprincipled disposition of the French, who were certain to profit by the division of the Allies, and of abandoning the glory and position of England, or confessing that the Whigs, however much they had erred in entering on such enormous wars, had in truth brought them to the near prospect of a far more satisfactory conclusion than what they were taking up with.

Whilst matters were in this discouraging condition, Lord Lexington was sent to Spain to receive the solemn renunciation of the Crown of France for Philip and his successors, in the presence of the Cortes, which accordingly took place on the 5th of November. Portugal, also, on the 7th of November, signed, at Utrecht, the suspension of arms, at the same time admitting to the Allies that she did it only as a matter of absolute necessity. The Portuguese had held out firmly till the English refused to give them any assistance, when the Marquis de Bay invaded the kingdom at the head of twenty thousand men, and laid siege to Campo-Major. The English troops in Spain were ordered to separate from those of the Allies under Count Stahremberg, and were marched into Catalonia to embark at Barcelona. The people of that province beheld the English depart with sentiments of indignant contempt. England had first incited them to take up arms and declare for King Charles under the most solemn engagements never to make peace without them. But now they had broken their faith in the most shameless manner, and left them to the vengeance of the French triumphant in Spain. Such on all sides were the facts which forced on the world the conviction of the perfidy of England, which had hitherto borne so fair a reputation.

Another dishonourable characteristic of the Ministers of Queen Anne at this period was that they were in secret zealous partisans of the Pretender, and whilst openly professing a sacred maintenance of the Protestant succession, were doing all in their power to undermine it. They had given mortal offence to the Elector George of Hanover, the heir to the Throne, by their treachery to the Allies; and, as the health of the queen was most precarious from her excessive corpulence and gout, which was continually menacing a retreat to her stomach, this was equally a cause for their hastening the peace, however disgracefully, and for paving the way, if possible, for the return of the Pretender at the queen's death. Bolingbroke was the great correspondent with St. Germains, as his letters in the Stuart Papers abundantly show. But Oxford, although always more cunning and mysterious, was equally concerned in it; nor was the queen, if we may believe these remarkable papers, by any means averse from the succession of the Pretender, in spite of his stubborn adhesion to Popery. The Jacobite party was numerous, powerful, and indefatigable. They were in the Ministry and in both Houses of Parliament. At this moment a public appointment was made which filled the Whigs with consternation and rage. This was no other than that of the Duke of Hamilton—a supposed partisan of the Pretender—to be Ambassador to the Court of Versailles. Prior was still there, and had all the requisites of a clever and painstaking Envoy; but, being only a commoner and a poet, it did not suit the aristocratic notions of England that he should be accredited Ambassador. Hamilton was appointed, and would thus have had the amplest opportunity of concerting the return of the Stuarts with the base ministers at home. But he was not destined to see Versailles, for, as readers of Thackeray's "Esmond" will remember, he was killed in a duel by Lord Mohun.

THE ENGLISH PLENIPOTENTIARIES INSULTED IN THE STREETS OF UTRECHT. (See p. [7.])

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Instead of Hamilton, the Duke of Shrewsbury was sent to Versailles, where Matthew Prior remained to lend his superior knowledge of French affairs and superior address to the negotiations. The weight of Tory vengeance now fell on the Duke of Marlborough, whom the ministers justly regarded as the most dangerous man amongst the Whigs by his abilities and the splendour of his renown. The Earl of Godolphin died in September of this year. He had always been a staunch friend of the Marlboroughs. His son, Lord Rialton, was married to Marlborough's eldest daughter, and during Godolphin's later years he was nearly a constant resident with the Marlboroughs, and died at their lodge in Windsor Park. Godolphin was one of the best of the Whigs; of a clear, strong judgment, and calm temper. He had rendered the most essential services during the conflict against France, by ably and faithfully conducting affairs at home, whilst Marlborough was winning his victories abroad; and that great general knew that he should be supported against all his enemies and detractors so long as Godolphin remained in power. The highest eulogium on Godolphin's honesty lies in the fact that he died poor. But at Godolphin's death Marlborough stood a more exposed object to the malice of his foes. They did not hesitate to assert that he had had a deep concern in the plot for Hamilton's death. He was also harassed by debt. He therefore resolved to retire to the Continent, where he continued to keep up a correspondence with the Elector of Hanover and the Pretender to the last, so that whichever came in he might stand well with him. He wrote to St. Germains, showing that though he had appeared to fight against the King of England, as he styled the Pretender, it was not so. He had fought to reduce the power of France, which would be as much to the advantage of the king when he came to the throne as it was to the present queen. He gave his advice to the Pretender for his security and success. "The French king and his ministers," he says, "will sacrifice everything to their own views of peace. The Earl of Oxford and his associates in office will probably insist upon the king's retiring to Italy; but he must never consent. He must neither yield to the French king, nor to the fallacious insinuations of the British Ministry, on a point which must inevitably ruin his cause. To retire to Italy, by the living God! is the same thing as to stab himself to the heart. Let him take refuge in Germany, or in some country on this side of the Alps. He wants no security for his person; no one will touch a hair of his head. I perceive such a change in his favour, that I think it is impossible but that he must succeed. But when he shall succeed, let there be no retrospect towards the past. All that has been done since the Revolution must be confirmed." He added that Queen Anne had no real aversion from her brother's interests, but that she must not be alarmed, as she was very timid.

At length it was announced that peace was signed with France at Utrecht, and it was laid before the Council (March 31, 1713). Bolingbroke had made another journey to the Continent to hasten the event, but it did not receive the adhesion of the Emperor at last. Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy had signed, but the Emperor, both as king of Austria and head of the Empire, stood out, and he was to be allowed till the 1st of June to accept or finally reject participation in it. This conclusion had not been come to except after two years' negotiation, and the most obstinate resistance on the part of all the others except England. Even in the English Cabinet it did not receive its ratification without some dissent. The Lord Cholmondeley refused to sign it, and was dismissed from his office of Treasurer of the Household. On the 9th of April the queen opened Parliament, though she was obliged to be carried thither and back in a chair in consequence of her corpulence and gout. She congratulated the country on this great treaty, declared her firm adherence to the Protestant succession, advised them to take measures to reduce the scandalous licentiousness of the Press, and to prevent duelling, in allusion to the tragic issue of that between Hamilton and Mohun. She finally exhorted them to cultivate peace amongst themselves, to endeavour to allay party rage; and as to what forces should be necessary by land and the sea, she added, "Make yourselves safe; I shall be satisfied. Next to the protection of Divine Providence, I depend on the loyalty and affection of my people; I want no other guarantee." On the 4th of May the proclamation of peace took place. It was exactly eleven years since the commencement of the war. The conditions finally arrived at were those that have been stated, except that it was concluded to confer Sicily on the Duke of Savoy for his services in the war; on the Elector of Bavaria, as some equivalent for the loss of Bavaria itself, Sardinia, with the title of king; and that, should Philip of Spain leave no issue, the Crown of Spain should also pass to him.

The Treaty of Peace received the sanction of the Parliament; not so the Treaty of Commerce. By this treaty it was provided that a free trade should be established according to the tariff of 1664, except as it related to certain commodities which were subjected to new regulations in 1669. This went to abolish all the restrictions on the importation of goods from France since that period, and within two months a law was also to be passed that no higher duties should be levied on goods brought from France than on the like goods from any other country in Europe. Commissioners were appointed to meet in London to carry these propositions into effect; but there immediately appeared a violent opposition to these regulations, which were contained in the eighth and ninth articles of the Treaty of Commerce. It was declared that these articles violated the Treaty of Methuen, according to which the duties on Portuguese wines were always to be lower by one-third than the duties on the French wines.

On the 9th of June, when the House of Commons went into committee on the Bill, a large number of merchants desired to be heard against it. For several days their statements were heard, and the Portuguese Ambassador also presented a memorial declaring that should the duties on French wines be lowered to those of Portugal, his master would renew the woollen and other duties on the products of Great Britain. This seemed to enforce the mercantile opinions; the sense of the whole country was against the treaty, and the speech of Sir Thomas Hanmer, a Tory, made a deep impression. There was, however, a growing rumour, during the latter days of the debate, that Oxford had given the treaty up—a rumour probably not without foundation, for Oxford and Bolingbroke were no longer in unity. The latter, ambitious and unprincipled, was intriguing to oust his more slow and dilatory colleague; and, as the Bill was ostensibly the work of Bolingbroke, probably Oxford was by no means unwilling that it should be thrown out to damage him. When the question, therefore, was put on the 18th of June, that the Bill be engrossed, it was negatived by a majority of one hundred and ninety-four to one hundred and eighty-five. Thus the commercial treaty was lost, much to the joy of the nation, and certainly to its immediate benefit.

The defeated party, however, did not give up the idea of the Treaty of Commerce. Another Bill was introduced to modify, or, as it was called, to render the commercial treaty more effectual; but such a host of petitions was presented against it, that it was abandoned. Sir Thomas Hanmer, however, proposed and carried an address to the queen, which was intended to cover, in some degree, the defeat of the Ministers; and, as he had got rid of the Bill itself, he did not hesitate to move for what appeared inconsistent with his proceedings, namely, thanks to her Majesty for the care she had taken of the security and honour of the kingdom by the Treaty of Peace, and also by her anxiety for a Treaty of Commerce; and, further, recommending her to appoint Commissioners to meet those of France, and endeavour to arrange such terms of commerce as should be for the good and welfare of her people. This was laid hold of, as was no doubt intended, in the queen's reply, which assumed this to be a declaration of a full approbation of the Treaty of Commerce, as well as that of Peace; and she thanked them in the warmest terms for their address.

Encouraged by their success against the commercial treaty, the Whigs demanded that the Pretender, according to the Treaty of Peace, should be requested to quit France. It had been proposed by the French Court, and privately acceded to by Anne, that he should take up his residence at Bar-le-duc or Lorraine. The Duke of Lorraine had taken care to inquire whether this would be agreeable to the queen, and was assured by her Minister that it would be quite so. As his territory—though really a portion of France—was nominally an independent territory, it seemed to comply with the terms of the Treaty; but the Whigs knew that this was a weak point, and on the 29th of June Lord Wharton, without any previous notice, moved in the Peers that the Pretender should remove from the Duke of Lorraine's dominions. The Court party was completely taken by surprise, and there was an awkward pause. At length Lord North ventured to suggest that such a request would show distrust of her Majesty; and he asked where was the Pretender to retire to, seeing that most, if not all, the Powers of Europe were on as friendly terms with the king as the Duke of Lorraine. Lord Peterborough sarcastically remarked that as the Pretender had begun his studies at Paris, he might very fitly go and finish them at Rome. No one, however, dared to oppose the motion, which was accordingly carried unanimously. On the 1st of July, only two days afterwards, General Stanhope made a similar motion in the House of Commons, which was equally afraid to oppose it, seeing that the House was still under the Triennial Act, and this was its last session. The slightest expression in favour of the Pretender would have to be answered on the hustings, and there was a long silence. Sir William Whitelock, however, was bold enough to throw out a significant remark, that he remembered the like address being formerly made to the Protector to have King Charles Stuart removed out of France, "leaving to every member's mind to suggest how soon after he returned to the throne of England notwithstanding." The addresses carried up from both Houses were received by the queen with an air of acquiescence, and with promises to do her best to have the Pretender removed. Prior, in Paris, was directed to make the wishes of the public known to the French Government. But this was merely pro formâ; it was understood that there was no real earnestness on the part of the English queen or ministry. Prior, writing to Bolingbroke, said that De Torcy asked him questions, which for the best reason in the world he did not answer; as, for instance, "How can we oblige a man to go from one place when we forbid all others to receive him?" In fact, the Abbé Gualtier, in his private correspondence, assures us that Bolingbroke himself suggested to the Duke of Lorraine the pretexts for eluding the very commands that he publicly sent him.

Anne prorogued Parliament on the 16th of July in a speech, in which she felicitated herself on having closed a long and bloody war, which she had inherited, and not occasioned. She trusted also that before the meeting of the next Parliament the commercial interests of France and England would be better understood, so that there would be no longer any obstacle to a good commercial treaty. She said not a word regarding the Pretender, so that it was felt by the Whigs that she had followed the dictates of nature rather than of party in regard to him. On the 8th of August she dissolved Parliament by proclamation, its triennial term having expired. Burnet says it had acquired the name of the Pacific Parliament; and he winds up his own history with the remark that "no assembly but one composed as this was could have sat quiet under such a peace." There was every effort made, however, to impress on the constituencies the high merit of the Parliament in making an advantageous and glorious peace, medals being cast for that purpose bearing the effigy of the queen and a Latin motto laudatory of peace.

The elections were now carried on with all the fire and zeal of the two parties. The Tories boasted of their successful efforts to stem the tide of expenditure for the war, to staunch the flow of blood, and restore all the blessings of peace. The Whigs, on the contrary, made the most of their opposition to the Treaty of Commerce, which they represented as designed to sacrifice our trade to the insane regard now shown to the French. To show their interest in trade, they wore locks of wool in their hats; and the Tories, to show their attachment to the Restoration and the Crown, wore green twigs of oak. Never was shown more completely the want of logical reason in the populace, for whilst they were declaring their zeal for the Protestant succession, and whilst burning in effigy on the 18th of November—Queen Bess's day—the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, they sent up a powerful majority of the men who were secretly growing more and more favourable to the Pretender's return. Never, indeed, had the chances of his restoration appeared so great. General Stanhope, on the close of the elections, told the Hanoverian minister that the majority was against them, and that if things continued ever so short a time on the present footing, the Elector would not come to the Crown unless he came with an army.

In the Macpherson and Lockhart Papers we have now the fullest evidence of what was going on to this end. The agents of both Hanover and St. Germains were active; but those of Hanover were depressed, those of St. Germains never in such hope. The Jesuit Plunkett wrote: "The changes go on by degrees to the king's advantage; none but his friends advanced or employed in order to serve the great project. Bolingbroke and Oxford do not set their horses together, because Oxford is so dilatory, and dozes over things, which is the occasion there are so many Whigs chosen this Parliament. Though there are four Tories to one, they think it little. The ministry must now swim or sink with France." In fact, Oxford's over-caution, and his laziness, at the same time that he was impatient to allow any power out of his own hands, and yet did not exert it when he had it, had disgusted the Tories, and favoured the ambitious views which Bolingbroke was cherishing. The latter had now managed to win the confidence of Lady Masham from the Lord Treasurer to himself; and, aware that he had made a mortal enemy of the Elector of Hanover by his conduct in compelling a peace and deserting the Allies, he determined to make a bold effort to bring in the Pretender on the queen's decease, which every one, from the nature of her complaint, felt could not be far off. To such a pitch of openness did the queen carry her dislike, that she seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in the most derogatory terms of both the old Electress Sophia and her son. Oxford's close and mysterious conduct disgusted the agents of Hanover, without assuring those of the Pretender, and threw the advantage with the latter party more and more into the hands of Bolingbroke. Baron Schutz, the Hanoverian agent, wrote home that he could make nothing of Oxford, but that there was a design against his master; and when Lord Newcastle observed to the agent of the Pretender that, the queen's life being so precarious, it would be good policy in Harley to strike up with the king and make a fair bargain, the agent replied, "If the king were master of his three kingdoms to-morrow, he would not be able to do for Mr. Harley what the Elector of Hanover had done for him already." Thus Oxford's closeness made him suspected of being secured by the Elector at the very moment that the Elector deemed that he was leaning towards the Pretender.

Meanwhile the changes made in the Government offices betrayed the rising influence of Bolingbroke. The Duke of Shrewsbury was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; the Duke of Ormonde, a noted Jacobite, was appointed Warden of the Cinque Ports and Governor of Dover Castle, as if for the avowed purpose of facilitating the landing of the Pretender; Lord Lansdowne was made Treasurer of the Household; Lord Dartmouth, Privy Seal; Mr. Bromley, the Tory leader of the Commons, joint secretary with Bolingbroke; Benson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was created Lord Bingley, and sent as ambassador to Spain; and Sir William Wyndham, till now a friend of Bolingbroke's, succeeded Benson as Chancellor. Thus Bolingbroke was surrounded by his friends in office, and became more daring in his rivalry with Oxford, and in his schemes to supplant the House of Hanover and introduce the Pretender to the British throne.

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

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Whilst the English Court was distracted by these dissensions, the Emperor was endeavouring to carry on the war against France by himself. He trusted that the death of Queen Anne would throw out the Tories, and that the Whigs coming in would again support his claims, or that the death of Louis himself might produce a change as favourable to him in France; he trusted to the genius of Eugene to at least enable him to maintain the war till some such change took place. But he was deceived. The French, having him alone to deal with, made very light of it. They knew that he could neither bring into the field soldiers enough to cope with their arms, nor find means to maintain them. They soon overpowered Eugene on the Rhine, and the Emperor being glad to make peace, Eugene and Villars met at Rastadt to concert terms. They did not succeed, and separated till February; but met again at the latter end of the month, and, on the 3rd of March, 1714, the treaty was signed. By it the Emperor retained Freiburg, Old Briesach, Kehl, and the forts in the Breisgau and Black Forest; but the King of France kept Landau, Strasburg, and all Alsace. The Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were readmitted to their territories and dignities as princes of the Empire. The Emperor was put in possession of the Spanish Netherlands, and the King of Prussia was permitted to retain the high quarters of Guelders.

The peace with Spain was also ratified in London on the 1st of March. By this, Spain, so far as diplomatic contracts could effect it, was for ever separated from France. Philip acknowledged the Protestant succession, and renounced the Pretender. He confirmed the Assiento, or exclusive privilege of the English supplying the Spanish West Indies and South American colonies with slaves, one-fourth of the profit of which the queen reserved to herself—a strange proof of the small idea of the infamy of this traffic which prevailed then in England, whilst so truly benevolent a woman could calmly appropriate money so earned to her own use. Gibraltar and Minorca were also confirmed to England, on condition that the Spanish inhabitants should enjoy their own property and their religion. There was a guarantee given by Philip for the pardon and security of the Catalans. They were to be left in possession of their lives, estates, and honours, with certain exceptions, and even these were at liberty to quit the country and remove to Italy with their effects. But the Catalans, who had taken up arms for Charles of Austria at our suggestion, were greatly incensed at the dishonourable manner in which we had abandoned them and the cause, and, putting no faith in the word of Philip, they still remained in arms, and soon found themselves overrun with French troops, which deluged their country with blood, and compelled them to submit. Amid all the disgraceful circumstances which attended the peace of Utrecht, none reflected more infamy on England than its treatment of the people of Catalonia.

During these transactions the activity of the Pretender and his agents was encouraged by the growing influence of Bolingbroke in the English Court. Bolingbroke proposed to Oxford that they should pay the dowry of the Pretender's mother, the widow of James II.; but to this Oxford objected, saying that the widow of James had not contented herself with the title of queen-dowager of England, but had assumed that of queen mother, which, he observed, could not be lawfully admitted after the attainder of her son. This strengthened the hands of Bolingbroke with Lady Masham, who was violently in favour of the Pretender. Lady Masham's disgust with Oxford was wonderfully increased. In writing to Mesnager, she did not hesitate to say that if the Court of St. Germains trusted to Oxford, they would be deceived; that he was "famous for loving a secret, and making intricacies where there needed none, and no less renowned for causing everything of such a nature to miscarry." The Pretender, having every day increased encouragement from Lady Masham and Bolingbroke, demanded of the Emperor of Germany one of his nieces in marriage; and it was reported that the Emperor was agreeable to it, and ready to espouse his cause. It was well known that distinct propositions had been made to the Pretender through the Duke of Berwick, at the instance of Lady Masham, before her breach with Oxford, by which his restoration on the demise of Anne was agreed to on condition that he should guarantee the security of the Church and Constitution of England, and that not even his mother should be admitted to the knowledge of this agreement. At the last point, however, Oxford failed to conclude this secret treaty. The Duke of Berwick, in his Memoirs, says that, in consequence of this conduct of Oxford's, the friends of the Pretender turned their attention to other parties about the Court—to Lord Ormonde, the Duke of Buckingham, and many other persons. Buckingham—who was married to the Lady Catherine Darnley, a daughter of James II. by Catherine Sedley, and was, therefore, brother-in-law to the Pretender—wrote to the Earl of Middleton, the Pretender's Minister, how earnestly he desired to see the king back on the English throne; that nothing but his religion stood in the way; that this was the only thing which prevented the queen from acknowledging him; and he urged him to follow the example of Henry IV. of France, who gave up the Protestant religion when he saw that he could not securely hold the Crown without doing so. But the Pretender was, much to his credit—being firmly persuaded of the truth of his religion—much too honest to renounce it, even for the Crown of such a kingdom as Great Britain; and he argued that the English people ought to see in his sincerity a guarantee for his faithful dealing with them in all other matters. But, unfortunately, the example of his father had barred the way to any such plea. No man was more positive in the adherence to his religion, or in his sacrifices on its account; but no man had at the same time so thoroughly demonstrated that he had no such honourable feeling as to breaking his word where any political matter was concerned.

In the midst of these secret correspondences the queen was seized at Windsor with a serious illness, and, considering the general state of her health, it was most threatening. The hopes of the Jacobites rose wonderfully; the Funds went rapidly down; there was a great run upon the Bank, and the Directors were filled with consternation by a report of an armament being ready in the ports of France to bring over the Pretender at the first news of Anne's decease. They sent to the Lord Treasurer to inform him of the danger which menaced the public credit. The whole of London was in excitement, from a report that the queen was actually dead. The Whigs did not conceal their joy, but were hurrying to and fro, and meeting in large numbers at the Earl of Wharton's. The Lord Treasurer, to keep down the public alarm, remained in town, and contented himself with sending expresses to obtain constant news of the queen's state, for his hurrying to Windsor would have had an inconceivable effect. He, therefore, let himself be seen publicly where he could be questioned regarding the condition of the queen, and gave assurances that she was better. To allay the panic, Anne was induced to sign a letter prepared for her, announcing to Sir Samuel Stancer, the Lord Mayor, that she was now recovering, and would be in town and open Parliament on the 16th of February. This news being confirmed, those who had been too hasty in pulling off their masks found some awkwardness in fitting them on again. The Press was active. Steele published a pamphlet called "The Crisis," in advocacy of the Revolution, and on the danger of a Popish succession; whilst on the other hand came out a reply, supposed to be written by Swift, not without a few touches from Bolingbroke; it was styled "The Public Spirit of the Whigs," and was distinguished by all the sarcasm of the authors. The queen's recovery, and the fact that the French armament was a fiction, quieted the storm and again restored the Funds.

The Parliament was punctually opened on the 16th of February, 1714, by the queen, as she had promised at Windsor, though she was obliged to be carried there; for during last autumn she had been obliged, by her gout and obesity, to be raised into her chamber by pulleys, and so let down again, like Henry VIII. After congratulating the two Houses on the peace with Spain, she turned to the subject of the Press, and the rumours spread by it regarding the danger of the Protestant succession. Bolingbroke had been active enough in prosecuting the Press because it was dangerous to the designs which he was cherishing, notwithstanding the affected warmth which he and Oxford had put into the queen's mouth. They had taxed the penny sheets and pamphlets which agitated these questions; but this, according to Swift, had only done their own side mischief. Bolingbroke had, further, arrested eleven printers and publishers in one day. But now the war was opened in Parliament, Lord Wharton, in the House of Peers, called for the prosecution of "The Public Spirit of the Whigs," and the printer and publisher were brought to the bar. These were John Morphew, the publisher, and one John Bache, the printer. But Lord Wharton, who was aiming at higher quarry, said, "We have nothing to do with the printer and publisher, but it highly concerns the honour of this august assembly to find out the villain who is the author of that false and scandalous libel." Oxford denied all knowledge of the author, yet, on retiring from the debate, he sent one hundred pounds to Swift, and promised to do more. Lord Wharton then turned upon the printer, whom he had first affected to disregard, and demanded that he should be closely examined; but the next day the Earl of Mar, one of the secretaries of State, declared that her Majesty had ordered his prosecution. This was to shield him from the Parliamentary inquiry. Here the matter dropped, for Swift was too well screened by his patrons, who had lately rewarded him by Church preferment, and shortly afterwards made him Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin.

The attempt of the Whigs in the Lords to unearth the vituperative dean, though it had failed, stimulated the Tories in the Commons to retaliation. Richard Steele, author of "The Tatler," an eloquent and able writer, had not sought to screen himself from the responsibility of the honest truths in "The Crisis," as Swift had screened himself from the consequences of his untruths, and a whole host of Tories assailed him in the Commons, of which he was a member. Amongst these were Thomas Harley, the brother of Oxford, Foley, the auditor, a relative of Oxford's, and Sir William Wyndham, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They flattered themselves with an easy triumph over him, for Steele, though popular as a writer, was new to the House of Commons, and had broken down in his first essay at speaking there; but he now astonished them by the vigour, wit, and sarcasm of his defence. He was ably supported, too, by Robert Walpole, who had obtained a seat in this new Parliament. Nothing, however, could shield Steele, as Swift's being anonymous had shielded him. Steele was pronounced by the votes of a majority of two hundred and forty-five to one hundred and fifty-two to be guilty of a scandalous libel, and was expelled the House. During the debate Addison had sat by the side of Steele, and, though he was no orator to champion him in person, had suggested continual telling arguments.

The war of faction still went on furiously. In the Lords there was a violent debate on an address, recommended by Wharton, Cowper, Halifax, and others, on the old subject of removing the Pretender from Lorraine; and they went so far as to recommend that a reward should be offered to any person who should bring the Pretender, dead or alive, to her Majesty. This was so atrocious, considering the relation of the Pretender to the queen, that it was negatived, and another clause, substituting a reward for bringing him to justice should he attempt to land in Great Britain or Ireland. Though in the Commons, as well as in the Lords, it was decided that the Protestant succession was in no danger, an address insisting on the removal of the Pretender from Lorraine was carried. Anne received these addresses in anything but a gratified humour. She observed, in reply, that "it really would be a strengthening to the succession of the House of Hanover, if an end were put to these groundless fears and jealousies which had been so industriously promoted. I do not," she said, "at this time see any necessity for such a proclamation. Whenever I judge it necessary, I shall give my orders to have it issued."

The Whigs were as active to bring over the Electoral Prince of Hanover as they were to drive the Pretender farther off. With the Prince in England, a great party would be gathered about him; and all those who did not pay court to him and promote the interests of his House would be marked men in the next reign. Nothing could be more hateful than such a movement to both the queen and her ministers. Anne had a perfect horror of the House of Hanover; and of the Ministers, Bolingbroke, at least, was staking his whole future on paving the way of the Pretender to the throne. When the Whigs, therefore, instigated Baron Schutz, the Hanoverian envoy, to apply to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt for a writ of summons for the Electoral Prince, who had been created a British peer by the title of the Duke of Cambridge, Harcourt was thrown into the utmost embarrassment. He pleaded that he must first consult the queen, who, on her part, was seized with similar consternation. The Court was equally afraid of granting the writ and of refusing it. If it granted it, the prince would soon be in England, and the queen would see her courtiers running to salute the rising sun; the Jacobites, with Bolingbroke at their head, would commit suicide on their own plans now in active agitation for bringing in the Pretender. If they refused it, it would rouse the whole Whig party, and the cry that the Protestant succession was betrayed would spread like lightning through the nation. Schutz was counselled by the leading Whigs—Devonshire, Somerset, Nottingham, Somers, Argyll, Cowper, Halifax, Wharton, and Townshend—to press the Lord Chancellor for the writ. He did so, and was answered that the writ was ready sealed, and was lying for him whenever he chose to call for it; but at the same time he was informed that her Majesty was greatly incensed at the manner in which the writ had been asked for; that she conceived that it should have first been mentioned to her, and that she would have given the necessary orders. But every one knew that it was not the manner, but the fact of desiring the delivery of the writ which was the offence.

Every engine of the English Court was put in motion to prevent the Electoral Prince from coming. Oxford had an interview with Schutz, in which he repeated that it was his applying for the writ to the Lord Chancellor instead of to the queen that had done all the mischief; that her Majesty, had it not been for this untoward incident, would have invited the Prince to come over and spend the summer in England—forgetting, as Schutz observed, that the minute before he had assured him that the queen was too much afraid of seeing any of that family here. He advised Schutz—who could not be convinced that he had done anything irregular in his application, quoting numerous proofs to show that it was the accustomed mode of applying for writs—to avoid appearing again at Court; but Schutz, not seeming disposed to follow that advice, immediately received a positive order to the same effect from the queen through another channel. Schutz, therefore, lost no time in returning to Hanover to justify himself. At the same time, Lord Strafford was instructed to write from the Hague, blaming the conduct of Schutz in applying for the writ in the manner he did, as disrespectful to the queen; for, though strictly legal for an absent peer to make such application, the etiquette was that he should defer it till he could do it personally. Strafford ridiculed the idea of any movement being afoot in favour of the Pretender, and observed that, as to sending him out of the Duke of Lorraine's territory, it was not practicable, because the French king maintained that he had fulfilled the treaty, Lorraine not being any part of France. On the other hand, there were striking signs that the cause of Hanover was in the ascendant. Men who watched the course of events decided accordingly. Marlborough, who so lately had been making court to the Pretender, now wrote from Antwerp, urging the House of Hanover to send over the prince without delay to England; that the state of the queen's health made prompt action necessary; and that the presence of the prince in London would secure the succession without risk, without expense, and without war, and was the likeliest measure of inducing France to abandon its design of assisting the Pretender.

WELFEN CASTLE, HANOVER.

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The real fact was, that exertions equally strenuous were all this time being made on the part of the Pretender. As the state of Anne's health became more and more precarious, both parties increased their efforts to secure their ground, and there was a most active and incessant struggle going on round the throne to enable the head of either party to step into it the moment it became vacant. It was considered essential for the claimant to be on the spot, and, therefore, every means was used to induce the queen to admit the Pretender as well as a member of the Electoral House to Court. It was a scheme of the Duke of Berwick, which he communicated to Oxford through the Abbé Gualtier, that the queen should be induced to consent to do her brother justice; that he should go to St. James's, and that on the understanding that he consented to allow liberty of the subject and of religion, the queen should pass such Acts as were necessary for the public security on these heads, and that then she should suddenly introduce him in full Parliament.

But there was a circumstance taken for granted in such a scheme which would never have been realised—the consent of the queen. Anne, like most other sovereigns, abhorred the idea of a successor. She never liked the contemplation of the occupation of her throne after death, much less did she relish the presence of a competitor during her lifetime. Besides in her days of disease and weakness she had enough to do to manage her Ministry, without adding to her anxieties by a rival authority either from Hanover or St. Germains. There was still another obstacle—the unsatisfactory conduct of Oxford, who had professed great zeal for the Pretender till he got the Peace of Utrecht signed, because this secured him the vote of the Jacobites, but who since then had trifled with them, and never could be brought to any positive decision. Berwick had sent over the Abbé Gualtier to endeavour to bring Oxford to a point. Gualtier soon informed his employer that Oxford was actively corresponding with the House of Hanover and therefore Berwick and De Torcy wrote a joint letter to him, putting the plain question, what measures he had taken to secure the interests of the Pretender in case of the death of the queen, which no one could now suppose to be far off. Oxford, with unwonted candour this time, replied that, if the queen died soon, the affairs of the Prince and of the Cabinet too were ruined without resource. This satisfied them that he had never really been in earnest in the Pretender's cause, or he would long ago have taken measures for his advantage, or would have told them that he found it impossible. They determined, therefore, to throw the interests of the Jacobites into the party of Bolingbroke; and this was another step in Oxford's fall. They managed to set Lady Masham warmly against him, and this undermined him more than ever with the queen.

The scene grew every day more busy as the queen became more obviously failing. Harley, at Hanover, was plying the Elector and his family with reasons why the prince ought not to go to England. The Elector himself appeared quite of the same opinion; but not so the Electress or her son. The Electress, who was now nearly eighty-four, and who was undoubtedly a woman of a very superior character, still had that trace of earthly ambition in her, that she used frequently to say she should die contented if she could only once for a little while feel the crown of England on her head. She was the youngest daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who had ruined her husband by a similar longing after a far less resplendent diadem. When pressed by Harley, the Electress and her son presented him with a memorial, which he was desired to forward to the queen. Anne, in indignation, addressed a letter to the Electress, but without effect; and on the 30th of May she indited a more determined epistle to the Elector himself:—"As the rumour increases that my cousin, the Electoral Prince, has resolved to come over to settle in my lifetime in my dominions, I do not choose to delay a moment to write to you about this, and to communicate to you my sentiments upon a subject of this importance. I then freely own to you that I cannot imagine that a prince who possesses the knowledge and penetration of your Electoral Highness can ever contribute to such an attempt, and that I believe you are too just to allow that any infringement shall be made on my sovereignty which you would not choose should be made on your own. I am firmly persuaded that you would not suffer the smallest diminution of your authority. I am no less delicate in that respect; and I am determined to oppose a project so contrary to my royal authority, however fatal the consequences may be."

This put matters beyond all chance of mistake. The menace had such an effect on the aged Electress that she was taken ill and died suddenly in the arms of the Electoral Princess, afterwards Queen Caroline (May 28, 1714). Sophia was a very accomplished as well as amiable woman. She was perfect mistress of the German, Dutch, French, English, and Italian languages; and, notwithstanding the endeavours of the Jacobite party in England to render her ridiculous, had always maintained an elevated and honourable character. She was more of an Englishwoman than a German, and, had she lived a few weeks longer, would have had—according to her often avowed wish—"Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," engraven on her coffin. The journey of the prince was wholly abandoned; not that the inclination of the prince for the journey was abated, nor that the Whigs ceased to urge it. Townshend, Sunderland, Halifax, and others pressed it as of the utmost importance; and both the Elector and his son wrote to the queen, assuring her that, had the prince been allowed to come, he would soon have convinced her Majesty of his desire to increase the peace and strength of her reign rather than to diminish them.

The two rival Ministers of England became every day more embittered against each other; and Bolingbroke grew more daring in his advances towards the Pretender, and towards measures only befitting a Stuart's reign. In order to please the High Church, whilst he was taking the surest measures to ruin it by introducing a popish prince, he consulted with Atterbury, and they agreed to bring in a Bill which should prevent Dissenters from educating their own children. This measure was sure to please the Hanoverian Tories, who were as averse from the Dissenters as the Whigs. Thus it would conciliate them and obtain their support at the very moment that the chief authors of it were planning the ruin of their party. This Bill was called the Schism Bill, and enjoined that no person in Great Britain should keep any school, or act as tutor, who had not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the Church of England, and obtained a licence of the diocesan. Upon failure of so doing, the party might be committed to prison without bail; and no such licence was to be granted before the party produced a certificate of his having received the Sacrament according to the communion of the English Church within the last year, and of his having also subscribed the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy.

This Act, as disgraceful as any which ever dishonoured the statute-book in the reigns of the Tudors or Stuarts, was introduced into the Commons, on the 12th of May, by Sir William Wyndham, and was resolutely opposed by the Whigs, amongst whom Sir Peter King, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Hampden, Robert Walpole, and General Stanhope distinguished themselves. They did not convince the majority, which amounted to no less than two hundred and thirty-seven to one hundred and twenty-six. In the Lords, Bolingbroke himself moved the second reading, and it was ably opposed by the Lords Cowper, Wharton, Halifax, Townshend, Nottingham, and others. The greatest curiosity was displayed regarding the part which Oxford would take, as it was known that in the Council he had endeavoured to soften the rigorous clauses; but in the House he followed his usual shuffling habit, declaring that he had not yet considered the question; and, having induced the Opposition to let the second reading pass without a division, he absented himself from the final voting, and thus disgusted both parties and hastened his own fall.

In committee the Opposition endeavoured to introduce some modifying clause. They proposed that the Dissenters should have schools for their own persuasion; and, had the object of the Bill been to prevent them from endangering the Church by educating the children of Churchmen, this would have served the purpose. But this was not the real object; the motive of the Bill was the old tyrannic spirit of the Church, and this most reasonable clause was rejected. They allowed, however, dames or schoolmistresses to teach the children to read; and they removed the conviction of offenders from the justices of peace to the courts of law, and granted a right of appeal to a higher court. Finally, they exempted tutors in noblemen's families, noblemen being supposed incapable of countenancing any other than teachers of Court principles. Stanhope seized on this to extend the privilege to the members of the House of Commons, arguing that, as many members of the Commons were connected with noble families, they must have an equal claim for the education of their children in sound principles. This was an exquisite bit of satire, but it was unavailing. The Hanoverian Tories, headed by Lord Anglesey, moved that the Act should extend to Ireland, where, as the native population was almost wholly Catholic, and therefore schismatic in the eye of the Established Church, the Bill would have almost entirely extinguished education. The Bill was carried on the 10th of June by a majority only of seventy-seven against seventy-two, and would not have been carried at all except for the late creation of Tory peers.

The Hanoverian Tories now again joined the Whigs, and their demands compelled the Government to issue a proclamation offering a reward of five thousand pounds for the apprehension of the Pretender should he attempt to land anywhere in Great Britain. Wharton proposed that the words "Alive or Dead" should be inserted in the proclamation, but the queen rejected them with horror. The House of Lords passed a resolution increasing the reward to one hundred thousand pounds. It was made high treason, too, to enlist or be enlisted for the Pretender. Bolingbroke, however, assured Iberville, a French agent, that "it would make no difference;" and that the queen regarded the whole as a mere sop to the public was evinced by her immediately afterwards receiving the Earl of Mar, a most determined Jacobite, at Court on his marriage with Lady Francis Pierrepoint, sister of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and soon after making this man one of her Ministers of State, who, in the very next year, headed the Jacobite rebellion.

The queen closed the session on the 9th of July, assuring the Parliament that her chief concern was for the preservation of our holy religion and the liberty of the subject—this liberty having been most grievously invaded by her through the Schism Bill. But the dissolution of her Ministry was also fast approaching. The hostility of Oxford and Bolingbroke was becoming intolerable, and paralysed all the proceedings of Government. As for Oxford, he felt himself going, and had not the boldness and resolution to do what would ruin his rival. He coquetted with the Whigs—Cowper, Halifax, and others; he wrote to Marlborough, and did all but throw himself into the arms of the Opposition. Had he had the spirit to do that he might have been saved; but it was not in his nature. He might then have uncovered to the day the whole monstrous treason of Bolingbroke; but he had himself so far and so often, though never heartily or boldly, tampered with treason, that he dreaded Bolingbroke's retaliation. Bothmar, the Hanoverian envoy, saw clearly that Oxford was lost. He wrote home that there were numbers who would have assisted him to bring down his rival, but that he could not be assisted, because, according to the English maxim, he did not choose to assist himself. Swift endeavoured, but in vain, to reconcile his two jarring friends; and Oxford finally utterly lost himself by offending the great favourite, Lady Masham. He had been imprudent enough to oppose her wishes, and refuse her some matter of interest. He now was treated by her with such marked indignity, that Dr. Arbuthnot declared that he would no more have suffered what he had done than he would have sold himself to the galleys. Still, with his singular insensibility to insult, he used to dine at the same table with her frequently, and also in company with Bolingbroke, too.

Anne demanded Oxford's resignation. The "dragon," as Arbuthnot styled him, held the White Staff with a deadly grip; but, on the 27th of July, he was compelled to relinquish it, and that afternoon her Majesty stated to the Council her reasons for dismissing him. His confidant and creature, Erasmus Lewis, himself thus records them:—"The queen has told all the Lords the reasons of her parting with him, namely, that he neglected all business; that he was seldom to be understood; that when he did explain himself she could not depend upon the truth of what he said; that he never came to her at the time she appointed; that he often came drunk; lastly, to crown all, that he behaved himself towards her with bad manners, indecency, and disrespect."

Bolingbroke was now Prime Minister, and he hastened to arrange his Cabinet entirely on Jacobite principles. So far as he was concerned, the country was to be handed over to the Pretender and popery on the queen's death. He would not run the risk of a new antagonist in the shape of a Lord Treasurer, but put the Treasury in commission, with Sir William Wyndham at its head. The Privy Seal was given to Atterbury; Bromley was continued as the other Secretary of State; and the Earl of Mar, the rankest of Jacobites, was made Secretary of State for Scotland. Ormonde, long engaged in the Pretender's plot, was made Commander-in-Chief—a most significant appointment; Buckingham was made Lord President, and Harcourt Lord Chancellor. As for the inferior posts, he found great difficulty in filling them up. "The sterility of good men," wrote Erasmus Lewis to Swift, "is incredible." Good men, according to the unprincipled Bolingbroke's notions, were not to be found in a hurry. There were plenty of candidates ready, but it may give an impressive notion of the state of that party, that there was scarcely a man beyond those already appointed whom Bolingbroke could trust. The Cabinet never was completed. What his own notions of moral or political honesty were, may be imagined from the fact that he did not hesitate to attempt a coalition with the Whigs. He gave a dinner-party at his house in Golden Square to Stanhope, Walpole, Craggs, General Cadogan, and other leaders; but though Walpole, when Minister himself, boasted that every man had his price, Bolingbroke had not yet discovered Walpole's price nor that of his colleagues. They to a man demanded, as a sine quâ non, that the Pretender should be compelled to remove to Rome, or to some place much farther off than Lorraine, and Bolingbroke assured them that the queen would never consent to such a banishment of her brother. Nothing but the lowest opinion of men's principles could have led Bolingbroke to expect any other result from these Whig leaders. Perhaps he only meant to sound their real views; perhaps only to divert public attention from his real designs, which the very names of his coadjutors in the Ministry must have made patent enough to all men of any penetration. The very same day that he thus gave this Whig dinner he assured Gualtier that his sentiments towards "the king" were just the same as ever, provided his Majesty took such measures as would suit the people of England. Time only was wanting for this traitor-Minister to betray the country to its old despotisms and troubles; but such time was not in the plans of Providence. The end of Anne was approaching faster than was visible to human eyes; but the shrewd and selfish Marlborough had a pretty strong instinct of it, and was drawing nearer and nearer to the scene of action, ready to secure himself whichever way the balance inclined. He was at Ostend, prepared to pass over at an hour's notice, and to the last moment keeping up his correspondence with the two Courts of Hanover and Bar-le-duc. Both despised and suspected him, but feared him at the same time. Such was still his influence, especially with the army, that whichever party he adopted was considered pretty sure to succeed. That it was likely to succeed was equally certain before Marlborough did adopt it. Lockhart of Carnwath, one of the most active and sagacious Jacobites, and likely to be in the secrets of the Jacobite party, says that the Pretender, to test the sincerity of Marlborough, asked the loan of one hundred thousand pounds from him, as a proof of his fidelity. He did not abide the test, but soon afterwards offered twenty thousand pounds to the Electoral Prince, to enable him to come over to England. The moment that Marlborough was prepared, with his deep-rooted love of money, to do that, it might be certainly pronounced that he was confident of the success of the Hanoverians.

ANNE MAKING THE DUKE OF SHREWSBURY LORD TREASURER. (See p. [22])

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The agitation which the queen underwent on the night of the 27th, when she dismissed Oxford after a long and fierce altercation, produced a marked change in her health. The Council was only terminated, having sat to consider who should be admitted into the new Ministry, by the queen falling into a swoon. Being got to bed, she passed the night, not in sleep, but in weeping. The next day another Council was held, but was again broken up by the illness of the queen, and was prorogued to the 29th of July. To Dr. Arbuthnot, her physician, Anne declared that the disputes of her Ministers had killed her; that she should never survive it. Lady Masham, struck by the queen's heavy and silent manner, apprehended the worst. Bolingbroke and his Jacobite colleagues were thunderstruck by this sudden crisis. They assembled in council at Kensington, in a room not far from that of the dying queen, but they were so stupefied by the blow that they could do nothing. On the other hand, the Whigs had been quite alert. Stanhope had made preparations to seize the Tower; to secure the persons of the Ministers and the leading Jacobites, if necessary, on the demise of the queen; to obtain possession of the outports, and proclaim the king. A proof of this concert was immediately given by the Dukes of Argyll and Somerset, who belonged to the Privy Council, but, of course, had not been summoned, suddenly entering the Council chamber, stating that, hearing of the queen's critical position, they had hastened, though not summoned, to offer their assistance. No sooner had they said this, than the Duke of Shrewsbury rose and thanked them for their courtesy. The Whig dukes immediately demanded that the queen's physicians should be called and examined as to her probable continuance. The physicians in general were of opinion that her Majesty might linger some time; but Dr. Mead declared that she could not live many days, perhaps not many hours; from the apoplectic symptoms she might be gone in one. Argyll and Somerset thereupon declared it absolutely necessary that the post of Lord Treasurer should be filled up, as it was requisite that, at such a moment, there should be a recognised Prime Minister, and proposed that the Duke of Shrewsbury should be nominated to that office. Bolingbroke felt that his power and his plans were at an end, and sat like one in a dream. The members of the Council then proceeded to the queen's apartment, and Bolingbroke followed them, as it were, mechanically. The queen was sensible enough to be made aware of their errand, and expressed her approval of it. Shrewsbury, however, with that singular hesitation which always characterised him, refused to take the White Staff, except from her Majesty's own hand. It was, therefore, handed to her, and she extended it towards Shrewsbury, saying, "For God's sake, use it for the good of my people!" Shrewsbury was already Chamberlain, and he presented the staff of that office in resignation of it; but the queen bade him retain both; and thus he was at once Lord Treasurer, Lord Chamberlain, and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

Oxford had sent round a circular to every Whig lord in or near London who had ever belonged to the Privy Council, warning them to come and make a struggle for the Protestant succession. This was one of the most decided actions of that vibratory statesman, and was, no doubt, prompted by his desire to avenge his recent defeat by Bolingbroke, and to stand well at the last moment with the House of Hanover. In consequence of this, the Jacobite Ministers found themselves completely prostrate and helpless in the midst of the strong muster of Whigs. Even the aged and infirm Somers made his appearance, and threw the weight of his great name into the scale. Prompt measures were taken to secure the advent of the new king. Four regiments were ordered to London; seven battalions were sent for from Ostend, where Marlborough was said to have secured their zealous fidelity to the Elector; a fleet was ordered to put to sea to prevent any interruption of his transit, and to receive him in Holland. An embargo was laid on all ports, and Anne the next morning having sunk again into lethargy, the Council ordered the Heralds-at-Arms and a troop of the Life Guards to be in readiness to proclaim her successor. Mr. Craggs was sent express to Hanover to desire the Elector to hasten to Holland, where the fleet would be ready to receive him. The Council also sent a dispatch to the States General, to remind them of the fact—which for a long time and to this moment the English Government appeared itself to have forgotten—that there was such a thing as a treaty, and that by it they were bound to guarantee the Protestant succession. Lord Berkeley was appointed to the command of the fleet, and a reinforcement was ordered for Portsmouth. A general officer was hastened to Scotland, where much apprehension of a movement in favour of the Pretender existed; and, in short, every conceivable arrangement was made for the safe accession of the Protestant king.

Still, during all this time, though the Tory Ministers in the Council appeared paralysed, the Jacobite lords assembled in secret junto in the very palace where the Council was sitting and the queen dying. Lady Masham's apartments were the scene of the last convulsive agitation of Jacobitism. From her the distracted leaders of that faction received the accounts of the progress of the queen's illness. Amongst these were Buckingham, Ormonde, Atterbury, and, when he was not at Anne's bedside, Robinson, Bishop of London. This prelate, when he attended to administer the Sacrament to the dying woman, received a message from her, which he was bound by the Duchess of Ormonde to promise to deliver, though it cost him his head. Probably it was some last remembrance to her brother, the Pretender; though it was supposed by some to be an order to the Duke of Ormonde, the Commander-in-Chief, to hold the army for the Stuart. Nothing, however, of the nature of this message ever transpired; but the Duke of Buckingham, on the separation of the Council, which had just obtained the affixing of the Great Seal to a patent providing for the government of the country by four-and-twenty regents till the arrival of the successor, clapped his hand on Ormonde's shoulder, saying, "My lord, you have four-and-twenty hours to do our business in, and make yourself master of the country." It was a forlorn hope. That evening Lady Masham entered her apartments in great agitation, saying, "Oh, my lords, we are all undone—entirely ruined! The queen is a dead woman; all the world cannot save her!" Upon which one of the lords asked if the queen had her senses, and if Lady Masham thought she could speak to them. She replied, "Impossible; her pain deprives her of all sense, and in the interval she dozes and speaks to nobody." "That is hard indeed," said one of the lords. "If she could but speak to us, and give us orders, and sign them, we might do the business for all that." "Alas!" replied another lord, "who would act on such orders? We are all undone!" "Then we cannot be worse," said a third. "I assure you," remarked another of these conspirators, probably Ormonde, "that if her Majesty would give orders to proclaim her successor in her lifetime, I would do it at the head of the army. I'll answer for the soldiers." "Do it, then!" swore the Bishop Atterbury, for he did not stick at an oath. "Let us go out and proclaim the Chevalier at Charing Cross. Do you not see that we have no time to lose?" Lady Masham told them they might waive debate; there was nothing to be done; her Majesty was no longer capable of directing anything. On which the Duke of Ormonde exclaimed, "Lord, what an unhappy thing this is! What a cause is here lost at one blow!"

The queen expired at seven o'clock on Sunday morning, the 1st of August, 1714, not having recovered sufficient consciousness to receive the Sacrament, or to sign her will. During her intervals of sense she is reported to have repeatedly exclaimed, "Oh, my brother, my dear brother, what will become of you!" She was still only in her fiftieth year, and the thirteenth of her reign. Bolingbroke wrote to Swift—"The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday, and the queen died on Sunday. What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us!"

Bolingbroke had assured Iberville, the French agent, that, had the queen only lived six weeks longer, his measures were so well taken that he should have brought in the Pretender in spite of everything. On the very day of the queen's death Marlborough landed at Dover, so exactly had he timed his return. He found George I. proclaimed in London, in York, and in other large towns, not only without disorder, but with an acclamation of joy from the populace which plainly showed where the heart lay.

CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.

Peaceful Accession of George I.—His Arrival—Triumph of the Whigs—Dissolution and General Election—The Address—Determination to Impeach the late Ministers—Flight of Bolingbroke and Ormonde—Impeachment of Oxford—The Riot Act—The Rebellion of 1715—Policy of the Regent Orleans—Surrender of the Pretender's Ships—The Adventures of Ormonde and Mar—The Highlands declare for the Pretender—Mar and Argyll—Advance of Mackintosh's Detachment—Its Surrender at Preston—Battle of Sheriffmuir—Arrival of the Pretender—Mutual Disappointment—Advance of Argyll—Flight of the Pretender to France—Punishment of the Rebels—Impeachment of the Rebel Lords—The Septennial Act—The King goes to Hanover—Impossibility of Reconstructing the Grand Alliance—Negotiations with France—Danger of Hanover from Charles XII.—And from Russia—Alarm from Townshend—Termination of the Dispute—Fresh Differences between Stanhope and Townshend—Dismissal of the Latter—The Triple Alliance—Project for the Invasion of Scotland—Detection of the Plot—Dismissal of Townshend and Walpole—They go into Opposition—Walpole's Financial Scheme—Attack on Cadogan—Trial of Oxford—Cardinal Alberoni—Outbreak of Hostilities between Austria and Spain—Occupation of Sardinia—Alberoni's Diplomacy—The Quadruple Alliance—Byng in the Mediterranean—Alberoni deserted by Savoy—Death of Charles XII.—Declaration of War with Spain—Repeal of the Schism Act—Rejection of the Peerage Bill—Attempted Invasion of Britain—Dismissal of Alberoni—Spain makes Peace—Pacification of Northern Europe—Final Rejection of the Peerage Bill—The South Sea Company—The South Sea Bill—Opposition of Walpole—Rise of South Sea Stock—Rival Companies—Death of Stanhope—Punishment of Ministry and Directors—Supremacy of Walpole—Atterbury's Plot—His Banishment and the Return of Bolingbroke—Rejection of Bolingbroke's Services—A Palace Intrigue—Fall of Carteret—Wood's Halfpence—Disturbances in Scotland—Punishment of the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield—The Patriot Party—Complications Abroad—Treaty of Vienna—Treaty of Hanover—Activity of the Jacobites—Falls of Ripperda and of Bourbon—English Preparations—Folly of the Emperor—Attack on Gibraltar—Preliminaries of Peace—Intrigues against Walpole—Death of George I.

The calculations of no political party had ever been more completely falsified than those of the Jacobites and their congeners the Tories on the death of the queen. They had relied on the fact that the House of Hanover was regarded with dislike as successors to the throne of England by all the Catholic Powers of Europe, on account of their Protestantism, and many of the Protestant Powers from jealousy; and reckoned that, whilst France would be disposed to support the claims of the Pretender, there were no Continental countries which would support those of Hanover, except Holland and the new kingdom of Prussia, neither of which gave them much alarm. Prussia was but a minor Power, not capable of furnishing much aid to a contest in England. Holland had been too much exhausted by a long war to be willing to engage in another, except for a cause which vitally concerned itself. In England, the Tories being in power, and Bolingbroke earnest in the interest of the Pretender, the Duke of Ormonde at the head of the army, there appeared to the minds of the Jacobites nothing to fear but the too early demise of the queen, which might find their plans yet unmatured. To this they, in fact, attributed their failure; but we may very confidently assert that, even had Anne lived as long as they desired her, there was one element omitted in their calculations which would have overthrown all their attempts—the invincible antipathy to Popery in the heart of the nation, which the steadfast temper of the Pretender showed must inevitably come back with him to renew all the old struggles. The event of the queen's death discovered, too, the comparative weakness of the Tory faction, the strength and activity of the Whigs. The king showing no haste to arrive, gave ample opportunity to the Jacobites—had they been in any degree prepared, as they ought to have been, after so many years, for this great crisis—to introduce the Pretender and rally round his standard. But whilst George I. lingered, no Stuart appeared; and the Whigs had taken such careful and energetic precautions, that without him every attempt must only have brought destruction on the movers. The measures of Shrewsbury were complete. The way by sea was secured for the Protestant king, and the Regency Act provided for the security of every department of Government at home.

Before the proclamation of the new king the Council had met, and, according to the Regency Act, and an instrument signed by the king and produced by Herr Kreyenberg, the Hanoverian resident, nominated the persons who were to act till the king's arrival. They consisted of the seven great officers of State and a number of the peers. The whole was found to include eighteen of the principal noblemen, nearly all of the Whig party, as the Dukes of Shrewsbury, Somerset, and Argyll; the Lords Cowper, Halifax, and Townshend. It was noticed, however, that neither Marlborough, Sunderland, nor Somers was of the number; nor ought this to have excited any surprise, when it was recollected that the list was drawn out in 1705, though only signed just before the queen's death. These noblemen belonged to that junto under whose thraldom Anne had so long groaned. The omission, however, greatly incensed Marlborough and Sunderland.

GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE I.

Marlborough landed at Dover on the day of the queen's death, where he was received with the warmest acclamations and tokens of the highest popularity. He was met on his approach to London by a procession of two hundred gentlemen, headed by Sir Charles Coxe, member for Southwark. As he drew nearer this procession was joined by a long train of carriages. It was like a triumph; and Bothmar, the Hanoverian Minister, wrote home that it was as if he had gained another battle at Höchstädt (Blenheim) that he would be of great service in case the Pretender should make any attempt, but that he was displeased that he was not in the regency, or that any man except the king should be higher in the country than he. He went straight to the House of Lords to take the oaths to the king; but at Temple Bar his carriage broke down, to the great delight of the people, because it compelled him to come out and enter another, by which they got a good view of him. Having taken the oaths, he retired into the country till the arrival of the king, disgusted at his not being in the regency.

The Lords Justices having met, appointed Joseph Addison, afterwards so celebrated as a writer, and even now very popular, as their secretary, and ordered all despatches addressed to Bolingbroke to be brought to him. This was an intimation that Bolingbroke would be dismissed; and that proud Minister, instead of giving orders, was obliged to receive them, and to wait at the door of the Council-chamber with his bags and papers. As the Lords Justices were apprehending that there might be some disturbances in Ireland, they were about to send over Sunderland as Lord-Lieutenant, and General Stanhope as Commander-in-Chief; but they were speedily relieved of their fears by the intelligence that all had passed off quietly there; that the Lords Justices of Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh, and Sir Constantine Phipps, who had been more than suspected of Jacobitism, had proclaimed the king on the 6th of August, and, to give evidence of their new zeal, had issued a proclamation for disarming Papists and seizing their horses. The proclamation of George passed with the same quietness in Scotland, and no king, had he been born a native, in the quietest times, could have succeeded to the throne more smoothly. Eighteen lords, chiefly Whigs, were nominated by the new king to act as a Council of Regency, pending his arrival, and the Civil List was voted by Parliament.

During these transactions there was naturally an earnestly-inquiring eye kept open towards Hanover, whence the king appeared in no hurry to issue forth and assume the throne of these three fair kingdoms. The coolness with which George of Hanover appeared to contemplate the splendid prize which had fallen to him, seemed to the English little less than unnatural. Thrones and crowns are generally seized upon with avidity; but the new king seemed to feel more regret in quitting his petty Electorate than eagerness to enter on his splendid kingdom. But George was a man of phlegmatic disposition, and of the most exact habits, and went through his duties like an automaton or a piece of machinery. He took, therefore, much time in settling his affairs in Hanover before he turned his face towards England, and it was not till the 18th of September, or nearly seven weeks after the decease of the late queen, that he landed at Greenwich with his son George. "His views and affections were," as Lord Chesterfield properly observed, "singly confined to the narrow compass of his Electorate. England was too big for him."

The triumph of the Whigs was complete. Whilst Oxford, who had been making great efforts at the last to retrieve himself with his party by assisting them to seize the reins of power on the queen's illness, was admitted in absolute silence to kiss the king's hand, and that not without many difficulties, Marlborough, Somers, Halifax, and the rest were received with the most cordial welcome. Yet, on appointing the new cabinet, the king showed that he did not forget the double-dealing of Marlborough. He smiled on him, but did not place him where he hoped to be, at the head of affairs. He made Lord Townshend Secretary of State and Prime Minister; Stanhope, the second Secretary; the Earl of Mar was removed from the Secretaryship of Scotland to make way for the Duke of Montrose; Lord Halifax was made First Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, and was raised to an earldom, and was allowed to confer on his nephew the sinecure of Auditor of the Exchequer; Lord Cowper became Lord Chancellor; Lord Wharton was made Privy Seal, and created a marquis; the Earl of Nottingham became President of the Council; Mr. Pulteney was appointed Secretary-at-War; the Duke of Argyll, Commander-in-Chief for Scotland; Shrewsbury, Lord Chamberlain and Groom of the Stole; the Duke of Devonshire became Lord Steward of the Household; the Duke of Somerset, Master of the Horse; Sunderland, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland; Walpole was at first made simply Paymaster of the Forces, without a place in the cabinet, but his ability in debate and as a financier soon raised him to higher employment; Lord Orford was made First Lord of the Admiralty; and Marlborough, Commander-in-Chief and Master of the Ordnance. His power, however, was gone. In the whole new cabinet Nottingham was the only member who belonged to the Tory party, and of late he had been acting more in common with the Whigs. The Tories complained vehemently of their exclusion, as if their dealings with the Pretender had been a recommendation to the House of Hanover. They contended that the king should have shown himself the king of the whole people, and aimed at a junction of the two parties.

The Ministerial arrangements being completed, the coronation took place on the 31st of October, and was fully attended by the chief nobles and statesmen, even by Oxford and Bolingbroke, and was celebrated in most parts of the kingdom with many demonstrations of joy. Parliament was then dissolved, and the elections went vastly in favour of the Whigs, though there were serious riots at Manchester, and throughout the Midlands. The hopes of advantage from a new monarch made their usual conversions. In the House of Commons of 1710 there was a very large majority of Whigs; in that of 1713 as great a one of Tories; and now again there was as large a one of Whigs. In the Lords the spectacle was the same. Bolingbroke says, "I saw several Lords concur to condemn, in one general vote, all that they had approved of in a former Parliament by many particular resolutions."

In the Commons, Mr. Spencer Compton, the Ministerial nominee, was elected Speaker. The king opened his first Parliament in person, but, being unable to speak English, he handed his speech to Lord Chancellor Cowper to read. In the Commons the Address condemned in strong language the shameful peace which had been made after a war carried on at such vast expense, and attended with such unparalleled successes; but expressed a hope that, as this dishonour could not with justice be imputed to the nation, through his Majesty's wisdom and the faithful endeavours of the Commons the reputation of the kingdom might in due time be vindicated and restored. This was the first announcement of the Ministers' intention to call their predecessors to account, and Secretary Stanhope, in the course of the debate, confirmed it, observing that it had been industriously circulated that the present Ministers never designed to bring the late Ministers to trial, but only to pass a general censure on them; but he assured the House that, though active efforts had been used to prevent a discovery of the late treasonable proceedings, by conveying away papers from the Secretaries' offices, yet Government had sufficient evidence to enable them to bring to justice the most corrupt Ministry that ever sat at the helm. Before three weeks were over a secret committee was appointed to consider the Treaty of Utrecht.

Bolingbroke promptly fled and took service with the Pretender; Ormonde, after putting himself ostentatiously forward as leader of the Jacobite Opposition, followed his example. Both were proceeded against by Act of Attainder.

The impeachment of Oxford followed. On the 9th of July, 1715, Lord Coningsby, attended by many of the Commons, carried up to the Lords the articles against him, sixteen in number, to which afterwards six more were added. The first fifteen related to the Peace of Utrecht; the sixteenth to the sudden creation of twelve peers in 1711, in order to create a Tory majority, by which it charged him with highly abusing the constitution of Parliament and the laws of the kingdom. When the Articles had been read, it was doubted whether any of the charges amounted to high treason. To decide this as a legal point, it was moved that the judges should be consulted; but this motion was rejected, and another was made to commit Oxford to the Tower; and, though reprieved a few days on account of an indisposition, he was committed accordingly, having made a very solemn plea of his innocence, and of having only obeyed the orders of the queen, without at all convincing the House. He continued to lie in the Tower for two years before he was brought to trial, matters of higher public interest intervening. Eventually the impeachment was dropped, the documentary evidence being considered insufficient.

Whilst these proceedings were in agitation, the Tory and Jacobite party, which had at the king's accession appeared stunned, now recovering spirit, began to foment discontent and sedition in the public mind. They got the pulpits to work, and the High Church clergy lent themselves heartily to it. The mobs were soon set to pull down the meeting-houses of the Dissenters. Many buildings were destroyed, and many Dissenters insulted. They did not pause there, but they blackened the character of the king, and denied his right to the Crown, whilst the most fascinating pictures were drawn of the youth, and grace, and graciousness of the rightful English prince, who was wandering in exile to make way for the usurper. To such a length did matters go, that the Riot Act, which had been passed in the reign of Mary, and limited to her own reign, which was again revived by Elizabeth, and had never since been called into action, was now made perpetual, and armed with increased power. It provided that if twelve persons should unlawfully assemble to disturb the peace, and any one Justice should think proper to command them by proclamation to disperse, and should they, in contempt of his orders, continue together for one hour, their assembling should be felony without benefit of clergy. A subsequent clause was added, by which pulling down chapels or houses, even before proclamation, was made subject to the same penalties. Such is the Act in force at this day.

We come now to the rebellion of 1715. The succession of the House of Hanover had raised the Pretender and his Jacobite faction in England to a pitch of excitement which made them ready to rush upon the most desperate measures. In England the destruction of the Tory Ministry, the welcome given to the new Protestant king, and the vigour with which the Whigs and all the supporters of the principles of the Revolution had shown the majority which they were able to return to the new Parliament, were all indications that the spirit of the nation was more firmly than ever rooted in Protestantism and the love of constitutional liberty, and that any endeavours to overturn the new dynasty must be supported by an overwhelming power from without. Without such force the event was certain failure; yet, under existing auspices, it was determined to try the venture. Bolingbroke, on his arrival in France, saw that all was rashness, impatience, and want of preparation in the party on both sides of the Channel. The Highlanders were all eagerness for the Chevalier's arrival, lest he should land in England, and the English should snatch the glory of the restoration from them. From England came the letters of Ormonde, who was down in the West, and sent most glowing representations of the spirit of the people there; that out of every ten persons nine were against King George, and that he had distributed money amongst the disbanded officers, to engage them in the cause of King James. But all these fine words terminated with the damping intelligence that nobody would stir until they saw the Chevalier with a good army at his back. Such an army there was not the smallest hope of obtaining from France. All that Louis would or could do, without engaging in a new war with England, was to prevail on his grandson, Philip of Spain, to advance four hundred thousand crowns for the expedition, and besides this, the Pretender had been able privately to borrow another hundred thousand, and purchase ten thousand stand of arms. At this juncture came two fatal events—the flight of Ormonde and the death of Louis XIV. on September 1st.

Louis was succeeded for the time by the Duke of Orleans as Regent, who had other views, and was surrounded by other influences than the old king. He had secured the Regency in opposition to Madame Maintenon and the royal bastards. He changed all the ministers, and was not inclined to risk his government by making enemies of the English abroad, having sufficient of these at home. He had been for some time cultivating the good offices of the present English Government, which had offered to assist him with troops and money, if necessary, to secure the Regency. He had seen a good deal of the new Secretary of State, Stanhope, in Spain, and still maintained a correspondence with him. Lord Stair, the British Ambassador, therefore, was placed in a more influential position with the Regent, and the Pretender and his ministers were but coldly looked on.

Vigilant Stair had discovered the ships that had been prepared at Havre, by the connivance and aid of the late king, and he insisted that they should be stopped. Admiral Byng also appeared off Havre with a squadron, and Lord Stair demanded that the ships should be given up to him. With this the Regent declined to comply, but he ordered them to be unloaded, and the arms to be deposited in the royal arsenal. One ship, however, escaped the search, containing, according to Bolingbroke, one thousand three hundred arms, and four thousand pounds of powder, which he proposed to send to Lord Mar, in Scotland.

This succession of adverse circumstances induced Bolingbroke to dispatch a messenger to London to inform the Earl of Mar of them, and to state that, as the English Jacobites would not stir without assistance from abroad, and as no such help could be had, he would see that nothing as yet could be attempted. But when the messenger arrived in London, he learnt from Erasmus Lewis, Oxford's late secretary, and a very active partisan of the Jacobites, that Mar was already gone to raise the Highlands, if we are to believe the Duke of Berwick, at the especial suggestion of the Pretender himself, though he had, on the 23rd of September, in writing to Bolingbroke, expressed the necessity of the Scots waiting till they heard further from him. If that was so, it was at once traitorous towards his supporters and very ill-advised, and was another proof to Bolingbroke of the unsafe parties with whom he was embarked in this hopeless enterprise.

As soon as this news reached France the Pretender hastened to St. Malo in order to embark for Scotland, and Ormonde hastened over from Normandy to Devonshire to join the insurgents, whom he now expected to meet in arms. He took with him only twenty officers and as many troopers from Nugent's regiment. This was the force with which Ormonde landed in England to conquer it for the Pretender. There was, however, no need of even these forty men. The English Government had been beforehand with him; they had arrested all his chief coadjutors, and when he reached the appointed rendezvous there was not a man to meet him. On reaching St. Malo, Ormonde there found the Pretender not yet embarked. After some conference together, Ormonde once more went on board ship to reach the English coast and make one more attempt in the hopeless expedition, but he was soon driven back by a tempest. By this time the port of St. Malo was blockaded by the English, and the Pretender was compelled to travel on land to Dunkirk, where, in the middle of December, he sailed with only a single ship for the conquest of Scotland, and attended only by half a dozen gentlemen, disguised, like himself, as French naval officers.

Mar had left London on the 2nd of August to raise the Highlands. In order to blind the agents of Government he ordered a royal levée on the 1st, and on the following night got on board a collier bound for Newcastle, attended by Major-General Hamilton and Colonel Hay. From Newcastle they got to the coast of Fife in another vessel. On the 6th of September he raised the standard of the Chevalier at Kirkmichael, a village of Braemar. He was then attended by only sixty men, and the Highland chiefs, extremely alive to omens, were startled by the gilt ball falling from the summit of the pole as it was planted in the ground. The standard was consecrated by prayers, and he was in a few days joined by about five hundred of his own vassals. The gentlemen who came on horseback, only about twenty at first, soon became several hundreds, and were named the Royal Squadron. The white cockade was assumed as the badge of the insurgent army, and clan after clan came in; first the Mackintoshes, five hundred in number, who seized on Inverness. James was proclaimed by Panmure at Brechin, by the Earl Marshal at Aberdeen, by Lord Huntly at Gordon, and by Graham, the brother of Claverhouse, at Dundee. Colonel Hay, brother of the Earl of Kinnaird, seized Perth, and in a very short time the country north of the Tay was in the hands of the insurgents.

THE EARL OF MAR RAISING THE PRETENDER'S STANDARD. (See p. [28.])

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By the 28th of September Mar had mustered at Perth about five thousand men. He was cheered by the arrival of one or two ships from France with stores, arms, and ammunition. He had also managed to surprise a Government ship driven to take shelter at Burntisland, on its way to carry arms to the Earl of Sutherland, who was raising his clan for King George in the north. The arms were seized by Mar's party, and carried off to the army. Argyll, commander of the king's forces, arrived about the same time in Scotland, and marched to Stirling, where he encamped with only about one thousand foot and five hundred cavalry. This was the time for Mar to advance and surround him, or drive him before him; but Mar was a most incompetent general, and remained inactive at Perth, awaiting the movement of the Jacobites in England. Thanks, however, to the energy of the Government, that movement never took place.

At length Mar, who was kept back by the absence of the Pretender, determined to outwit Argyll by sending a detachment under Brigadier Mackintosh across the Firth of Forth below Stirling, whilst another body, under General Gordon, was despatched to seize on Inverary, and keep the clan Campbell in check. Mackintosh had about two thousand men under his command, chiefly from his own clans, but supported by the regiments of the Lords Nairn, Strathmore, and Charles Murray. To prevent these forces from crossing, three English ships of war ascended the Forth to near Burntisland; but whilst a detachment of five hundred men held the attention of the ships at that point, the main body were embarking on the right in small boats lower down, and the greater part of them got across the Firth, and landed at Aberlady and North Berwick. The city of Edinburgh was in consternation at this daring manœuvre, and at the proximity of such a force; and Mackintosh, hearing of this panic, and of the miserable state of defence there, determined to attempt to surprise it. He stayed one night at Haddington to rest his men, and on the 14th appeared at Jock's Lodge, within a mile of Edinburgh. But on the very first appearance of Mackintosh's troops, Sir George Warrender, the Provost of Edinburgh, had despatched a messenger to summon the Duke of Argyll from Stirling to the aid of the capital. The duke was already approaching Edinburgh, and therefore Mackintosh, perceiving that he had no chance of surprising the town, turned aside to Leith.

Continuing southwards, Mackintosh joined the English insurgents at Kelso on the 22nd. This united force now amounted altogether to about two thousand men—one thousand four hundred foot commanded by Mackintosh, and six hundred horse under Lord Kenmure and Mr. Forster. This force might, in the paucity of troops in the service of the king, have produced a great effect had they marched unitedly southward and engaged General Carpenter, who was advancing from Newcastle, with only about nine hundred cavalry, to attack them; or had they gone at once north, taken Argyll in the rear, and then combined with Mar. But after marching to Jedburgh and then to Hawick, the Scots and English formed two different opinions. The Scots would not enter England, being persuaded by the Earl of Wintoun that, if they went into England, they would be all cut to pieces, or be sold for slaves. Mackintosh was willing to enter England, but they would listen to no one but Wintoun. Several hundred Highlanders deserted, and the remainder of the army, under the inefficient command of Forster, marched into England and reached Preston without molestation.

But here their career was doomed to end. Preston had witnessed the rout of the Royalists by Cromwell, and it was now to witness the rout of the rebels by the Royalists. Carpenter, on finding that the insurgents had taken the way through Cumberland, also hastened back to Newcastle and Durham, where he was joined by General Wills. Wills was in advance with six regiments of cavalry, mostly newly-raised troops, but full of spirit, and well-officered. He came near Preston on the 12th of November, whilst Carpenter was approaching in another direction, so as to take the enemy in the flank. Forster quickly showed that he was an incompetent commander. He was at first greatly elated by the junction of the Lancashire men, but, on hearing that the royal troops were upon them, he was instantly panic-stricken, and, instead of issuing orders, or summoning a council, he betook himself to bed. Lord Kenmure roused him from his ignominious repose, but it was too late; no means were taken to secure the natural advantages of the place. The bridge over the Ribble, which might have kept the enemy at bay, was left undefended; so that when Wills rode up to it on the morning of the 13th, he imagined that the rebels had evacuated the place. Besides the bridge over the river, there was a deep and hollow way of half a mile from the bridge to the town, with high and steep banks, from which an army might have been annihilated; but all was left undefended. It was only when Wills advanced into the town that he became aware that the rebels were still there, and found his path obstructed by barricades raised in the streets. His soldiers gallantly attacked these barricades, but were met by a murderous fire both from behind them and from the houses on each side. But luckily for the royal forces the least ability was wanting in the rebel commander. With all the advantages on his side, Forster secretly sent Colonel Oxburgh to propose a capitulation. Wills at first refused to listen to it, declaring that he could not treat with rebels who had murdered many of the king's subjects; but at length he said, if they would lay down their arms, he would defend them from being cut to pieces by the soldiers till he received further orders from Government. One thousand five hundred men surrendered, including eight noblemen, but a good many escaped.

This branch of the rebel force was thus completely removed from the field, and on the same day a far more sanguinary conflict had taken place between the chief commanders on the two sides, Argyll and Mar, at Sheriffmuir.

It was the 10th of November when Mar, aware that Argyll was advancing against him, at length marched out of Perth with all his baggage and provisions for twelve days. On the 12th, when they arrived at Ardoch, Argyll was posted at Dunblane, and he advanced to give them battle. The wild, uneven ground of Sheriffmuir lay between them, and it was on this spot that Argyll on quitting Stirling had hoped to meet them. He therefore drew up his men on this moorland in battle array, and did not wait long for the coming of the Highland army. It was on a Sunday morning, the 13th of November, that the battle of Sheriffmuir was fought. Argyll commanded the right wing of his army, General Whitham the left, and General Wightman the centre. He calculated much on this open ground for the operations of his cavalry. On the other hand, Mar took the right wing of his army, and was thus opposed, not to Argyll, but to Whitham. The Highlanders, though called on to form in a moment, as it were, did so with a rapidity which astonished the enemy. They opened fire on Argyll so instantly and well, that it took the duke's forces by surprise. The left army retired on Stirling pursued by Mar. Argyll was compelled to be on the alert. He observed that Mar had drawn out his forces so as to outflank him; but, casting his eye on a morass on his right, he discovered that the frost had made it passable, and he ordered Major Cathcart to lead a squadron of horse across it, while with the rest of his cavalry he galloped round, and thus attacked the left wing of Mar both in front and flank. The Highlanders, thus taken by surprise, were thrown into confusion, but still fought with their wonted bravery. They were driven, however, by the momentum of the English horse, backwards; and between the spot whence the attack commenced and the river Allan, three miles distant, they rallied ten times, and fairly contested the field. Argyll, however, bore down upon them with all the force of his right wing, offering quarter to all who would surrender, and even parrying blows from his own dragoons which went to exterminate those already wounded. After an obstinate fight of three hours, he drove the Highlanders over the Allan, a great number of them being drowned in it. Mar at this crisis returned to learn the fate of the rest of his army. He found that he had been taking the office of a General of Division instead of that of the Commander-in-Chief, whose duty is to watch the movements of the whole field, and send aid to quarters which are giving way. Like Prince Rupert, in his ardour for victory over his enemies in front of him, he had totally forgotten the centre and left wing, and discovered now that the left wing was totally defeated. He was contented to draw off, and yet boast of victory.

At this juncture, while daily desertions thinned Mar's army at Perth, arrived the Pretender. He landed at Peterhead on the 22nd of December. On the 6th of January, 1716, he made his public entry into Dundee, at the head of his cavalcade, the Earl of Mar riding on his right hand, and the Earl Marshal on his left, and about three hundred gentlemen following. His reception was enthusiastic. The people flocked round him to kiss his hands; and to gratify this loyal desire he remained an hour in the market-place. On the 8th he arrived at Scone, and took up his residence in the ancient palace of his ancestors. There he was only two miles from the army, and having established a council, and issued six proclamations, ordering a public thanksgiving for the "miraculous providence" of his safe arrival, for prayers in the church, for the currency of foreign coin, for a meeting of the Convention of Estates, for all fencible men from sixteen to sixty to repair to his standard, and for his coronation on the 23rd of January, he presented himself before the army. But here the scene was changed. Instead of enthusiasm there was disappointment—disappointment on both sides. The soldiers, who expected to see a royal-looking, active-looking man, likely to encourage them and lead them on their career, beheld a tall, thin, pale, and dejected sort of person, who evidently took no great interest in them. That the Pretender should not exhibit much vivacity was no wonder. He had been assured by Mar that his army had swelled to sixteen thousand men; that the whole North was in his favour; and that he had only to appear to carry everything before him. On inquiring into the force, it turned out to be so miserably small, that the only desire was to keep it out of sight. The spirits of the Pretender fell, and though not destitute of ability, as is manifest by his letters, he had by no means that strength of resolution demanded by such an enterprise.

At length Argyll, whose movements had been hastened by the arrival of General Cadogan, prepared to march northwards through deep snow and villages burnt by the Pretender's order. On the 30th of January the rebel army retreated from Perth, the Highland soldiers, some in sullen silence, others in loud curses, expressing their anger and mortification at this proceeding. The inhabitants looked on in terror, and bade adieu to the troops in tears, expecting only a heavy visitation for having so long harboured them. Early the next morning they crossed the deep and rapid Tay, now, however, a sheet of solid ice, and directed their march along the Carse of Gowrie towards Dundee.

Argyll, who received the news of the retreat about four in the afternoon of that day, occupied Perth with Dutch and English troops by ten o'clock the next morning. They had quitted Stirling on the 29th, and that night they encamped on the snow amid the burnt remains of the village of Auchterarder. Argyll and Cadogan followed the advanced guard and entered Perth on the evening of the 1st of February; but the remainder of the troops did not arrive till late at night, owing to the state of the roads and the weather. Some few of the rebels, who had got drunk and were left behind, were secured. The next day Argyll and Cadogan, with eight hundred light foot and six squadrons of dragoons, followed along the Carse of Gowrie to Dundee. Cadogan, in a letter to Marlborough, complained of the evident reluctance of Argyll to press on the rebels. When he arrived at Dundee on the 3rd, the rebel army was already gone. He and Cadogan then separated, taking different routes towards Montrose. Cadogan, whose heart was in the business, pushed on ahead, and on the 5th, at noon, reached Arbroath, where he received the news that the Pretender had embarked at Montrose and gone to France. In this manner did the descendant of a race of kings and the claimant of the Crown of Great Britain steal away and leave his unhappy followers to a sense of his perfidious and cruel desertion. His flight, no doubt, was necessary, but the manner of it was at once most humiliating and unfeeling. The consternation and wrath of the army on the discovery were indescribable. They were wholly broken up when Argyll reached Aberdeen on the 8th of February.

Gloomy as was the Pretender's fortune, it was, nevertheless, infinitely better than that of thousands who had ventured their lives and fortunes in his cause. There were not many prisoners in Scotland, but the clans which had sided with the English Government were hounded on to hunt down those who had been out with the Pretender amongst their hills, and they were hunted about by the English troops under the guidance of these hostile clans; and where they themselves were not to be found, their estates suffered by troops being quartered in their houses and on their lands. In England the prisons of Chester, Liverpool, and other northern towns were crowded by the inferior class of prisoners from the surrender of Preston. Some half-pay officers were singled out as deserters, and shot by order of a court-martial; but the common soldiers were eventually acquitted or let off with light sentences.

On the 9th of January, a month after their arrival, Lord Derwentwater was impeached of high treason by Mr. Lechmere in a bitter speech in the Commons. Other members, with equal acrimony, followed with impeachments against the Lords Widdrington, Nithsdale, Wintoun, Carnwath, Kenmure, and Nairn. The impeachments were carried up to the House of Lords on the same day, and on the 19th the accused noblemen were brought before the Peers, where they knelt at the bar until they were desired to rise by the Lord Chancellor, when, with the exception of Lord Wintoun, they confessed their guilt, and threw themselves on the mercy of the king. Sentence of death was immediately pronounced on those who had pleaded guilty; and Lord Wintoun was condemned after trial, but several months later he effected his escape from the Tower. Every effort was made to save the prisoners, and they were all reprieved, with the exception of Derwentwater, Kenmure, and Nithsdale. The first two were executed; but the Countess of Nithsdale, being about to take her leave of her husband, contrived, by introducing some friends, to secure his escape in female attire.

In April the inferior prisoners were tried in the Common Pleas. Forster, brigadier Mackintosh, and twenty of their accomplices were condemned; but Forster, Mackintosh, and some of the others, managed, like Wintoun, to escape; so that, of all the crowds of prisoners, only twenty-two in Lancashire and four in London were hanged. Bills of attainder were passed against the Lords Tullibardine, Mar, and many others who were at large. Above a thousand submitted to the king's mercy, and petitioned to be transported to America.

Meanwhile the Whigs were anxious to add fresh security to their own lease of office. At the last election they had procured the return of a powerful majority; but two years out of the triennial term had expired, and they looked with apprehension to the end of the next year, when a dissolution must take place. They were aware that there were still strong plottings and secret agitations for the restoration of the banished dynasty. By both the king and his Ministers all Tories were regarded as Jacobites, and it was resolved to keep them out of office, and, as much as possible, out of Parliament. They had the power in their own hands in this Parliament, and, in order to keep it, they did not hesitate to destroy that Triennial Act for which their own party had claimed so much credit in 1694, and substitute a Septennial Act in its place. They would thereby give to their own party in Parliament more than a double term of the present legal possession of their seats. Instead of one year, they would be able to look forward four years without any fear of Tory increase of power through a new election. On the 10th of April, Devonshire, Lord Steward of the Household, moved the repeal of the Triennial Act, long lauded as one of the bulwarks of our liberties, under the now convenient plea that it had been "found very grievous and burthensome, by occasioning much greater and more continued expenses in order to elections of members to serve in Parliament, and more lasting heats and animosities amongst the subjects of this realm than ever were known before the said clause was enacted."

In the preamble to the new Bill the object of that extended Bill was candidly avowed, namely, that when "a restless and popish faction are designing and endeavouring to renew the rebellion in this kingdom and an invasion from abroad, it might be destructive to the peace and security of the Government." The Septennial Bill was, in fact, intended as a purely temporary measure, and, though originated by party spirit, it was really of great advantage in days when every general election meant a fresh exercise of the influence of the Crown and the Lords.

RETREAT OF THE HIGHLANDERS FROM PERTH. (See p. [31].)

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Whilst Parliament was busy with the Septennial Bill, George I. was very impatient to get away to Hanover. Like William III., he was but a foreigner in England; a dull, well-meaning man, whose heart was in his native country, and who had been transplanted too late ever to take to the alien earth. The Act of Settlement provided that, after the Hanoverian accession, no reigning sovereign should quit the kingdom without permission of Parliament. George was not content to ask this permission, but insisted that the restraining clause itself should be repealed, and it was accordingly repealed without any opposition. There was one difficulty connected with George's absence from his kingdom which Council or Parliament could not so easily deal with: this was his excessive jealousy of his son. The king could not take his departure in peace if the Prince of Wales was to be made regent, according to custom, in his absence. He proposed, therefore, through his favourite, Bothmar, that the powers of the prince should be limited by rigorous provisions, and that some other persons should be joined with him in commission. Lord Townshend did not hesitate to express his sense of the impolicy of the king's leaving his dominions at all at such a crisis; but he also added that to put any other persons in commission with the Prince of Wales was contrary to the whole practice and spirit of England. Driven from this, the king insisted that, instead of regent, the prince should be named "Guardian and Lieutenant of the Realm"—an office which had never existed since the time of the Black Prince.

The retreat of George to Hanover was not merely to enjoy his native scenes and old associations; he felt himself insecure even on the throne of England, and the rebellion for the present quelled; he was anxious to form or renew alliances on the Continent to give strength to his position. The part which England had taken at the end of the war seemed to have alienated all her confederates of the Grand Alliance, and transferred their resentment to himself with his accession to the British Crown. Holland was, perhaps, the least sensible of the past discords; she had kept the treaty, and lent her aid on the landing of the Pretender; but she was at daggers drawn with Austria, who was much irritated by the Barrier Treaty, by which the Dutch secured a line of fortresses on the Austrian Netherlands. As for the Emperor, he was more feeble and sluggish than he had shown himself as the aspirant to the throne of Spain. He was a bigoted Catholic, little disposed to trouble himself for securing a Protestant succession, although it had expended much money and blood in defence of his own. On the contrary, he felt a strong jealousy of George, the Elector of Hanover, as King of England, and therefore capable of introducing, through his augmented resources, aggressive disturbances in Germany. The King of Prussia, his son-in-law, was rather a troublesome and wrangling ally than one to be depended upon.

Taking this view of his Continental neighbours, George was driven to the conclusion that his only safety lay in firmly engaging France to relinquish the Pretender. The means of the attainment of this desirable object lay in the peculiar position of the Regent, who was intent on his personal aims. So long as the chances of the Pretender appeared tolerable, the Regent had avoided the overtures on this subject; but the failure of the expedition to the Highlands had inclined him to give up the Pretender, and he now sent the Abbé Dubois to Hanover to treat upon the subject. He was willing also to destroy the works at Mardyk as the price of peace with England. The preliminaries were concluded, and the Dutch included in them; but the Treaty was not ratified till January, 1717.

But though this difficulty was tided over, there remained a still greater one with Sweden. Charles XII., overthrown by the Czar Peter at the battle of Pultowa, had fled into Turkey, and obstinately remained at Bender, though the Czar and his allies were all the time overrunning and taking possession of the Swedish territories on the eastern side of the Baltic. Russians, Norwegians, Danes, Saxons, and Prussians were all busy gorging the spoil. The King of Denmark, amongst the invasions of Swedish territory, had seized on the rich bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, which had been ceded to Sweden at the Peace of Westphalia. These bishoprics, which lay contiguous to Hanover, had always been an object of desire to that State. And now Charles of Sweden, suddenly ruined by the proceedings of his neighbours, who thus rent his kingdom limb from limb, galloped away from Bender, and in November, 1714, startled all his enemies by appearing at Stralsund. The Danish king, seeing a tempest about to burst over his head, immediately tempted the English king to enter into alliance with him, by offering him the stolen bishoprics of Bremen and Verden on condition that he should pay a hundred and fifty thousand pounds and join the alliance against Sweden. Without waiting for any consent of Parliament, Sir John Norris was sent with a fleet to the Baltic, under the pretence of protecting our trade there, but with the real object of compelling Sweden to cede the bishoprics, and to accept a compensation in money for them.

At the same time that we were thus dragged into hostilities with Sweden, we were brought into hostilities with the Czar too in defence of Hanover. Peter had married his niece to the Duke of Mecklenburg, who was on bad terms with his subjects, and the Czar was only too glad to get a footing in Germany by sending a large body of troops into the Duchy. Denmark became immediately alarmed at such a dangerous and unscrupulous neighbour, and remonstrated; whereupon the Czar informed the Danish king that if he murmured he would enter Denmark with his army too. Of course the King of Denmark called on his ally, George of Hanover, for the stipulated aid; and George, who hated the Czar mortally, and was hated by the Czar as intensely in return, at once sent his favourite, Bernsdorff, to Stanhope, who had accompanied him to Hanover, with a demand that "the Czar should be instantly crushed, his ships secured, his person seized, and kept till he should have caused his troops to evacuate both Denmark and Germany."

The receipt of such proposals in England produced the utmost consternation in the Cabinet. Townshend, in an "absolutely secret" answer to Stanhope, expressed the concern both of himself and the Prince of Wales at the prospect of a rupture with the Czar, who would seize the British ships and subjects in Russia, and prohibit the supply of naval stores from his kingdom, and that especially at a crisis when England was threatened with an invasion from Sweden and a rising of the Jacobites. He did not deny that there was a great risk of both these kingdoms and the German empire being exposed to imminent danger by the designs of the Czar on the whole coast of the Baltic, a danger which he might, had he dared, truly have attributed to George's own deeds by offending Sweden, instead of uniting with it to counterbalance the Czar's plan of aggrandisement. Fortunately, the Czar was induced, by the combined remonstrances of Austria, Denmark, and Sir John Norris, to abandon his projects for the moment, at least in Germany, and to withdraw his troops from Mecklenburg.

The fear of the Russians being removed, the king was impatient to get the Treaty with France ratified both by England and Holland. As there was some delay on the part of Holland, Stanhope proposed to comply with the king's desire, that the Treaty should be signed, without further waiting for the Dutch, but with the agreement on both sides that they should be admitted to sign as soon as they were ready. Dubois was to proceed to the Hague, and there sign the Treaty in form with our plenipotentiaries at that place, Lord Cadogan and Horace Walpole. But these ministers had repeatedly assured the States that England would never sign without them, and Horace Walpole now refused to consent to any such breach of faith. He declared he would rather starve, die, do anything than thus wound his honour and conscience; that he should regard it as declaring himself villain under his own hand. He said he would rather lay his patent of reversion in the West Indies, or even his life, at his Majesty's feet, than be guilty of such an action, and he begged leave to be allowed to return home. Townshend, for a moment, gave in to the proposition for not waiting for the Dutch, but immediately recalled that opinion; and he drew the powers of the plenipotentiaries for signing so loosely, that Dubois declined signing upon them. As we have said, the ratification did not take place till January, 1717, and after great causes of difference had arisen between Townshend and Stanhope. So greatly did Stanhope resent the difference of opinion in Townshend, that he offered his resignation to the king, who refused to accept it, being himself by this time much out of humour with both Townshend and Robert Walpole, the Paymaster of the Forces.

Various causes, in fact, were operating to produce a great schism in the Ministry of George I. Townshend, as we have seen, had very unguardedly expressed his disgust with the measures of the king at and concerning Hanover. George's dislike was, of course, fomented by his courtiers and mistresses, and they found a powerful ally in Sunderland, who, tired of his subordinate position in the Ministry, had joined the king in Hanover. A letter from Townshend, in which, in order to allow the longer absence of the king, he recommended that additional powers should be conferred on the Prince of Wales, brought George's indignation to a head. This letter, which arrived about the middle of December, seemed to cause his anger to burst all bounds, and he vowed that he would dismiss Townshend at once from his service.

Stanhope appears to have done his best to break Townshend's fall. He represented to the king the high character of that minister, his real services, and the injustice and impolicy of disgracing him; that he might remove him to another office, and thus answer every purpose. He could take the chief direction of affairs out of his hands, even while appearing to promote him. He therefore advised that Townshend should, without a word of dismissal or disapprobation, be offered the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, instead of the Secretaryship of State, and to this the king consented. Accordingly Stanhope was directed to write to Townshend, and also to Secretary Methuen, and he did so on the 14th of December, conveying in most courteous terms the king's desire that he should accept the Lord-Lieutenancy, and this without a syllable of discontent on the part of his Majesty. Townshend at first refused, but on the arrival of George in London he received Townshend very cordially, and so softened him as to induce him to accept the Lord-Lieutenancy, and to do the very thing he had declared it was not common honesty to do—accept the post and still remain in London, acting with the rest of the Cabinet. His political adherents, including Methuen, Pulteney, the Walpoles, Lord Orford, and the Duke of Devonshire, were contented to remain in office. The only change was that Methuen was made one of the two Secretaries along with Stanhope. It was thus imagined that the great schism in the Whig party was closed; but this was far from being the case: the healing was only on the surface. It was during this brief reconciliation that the great Triple Alliance between England, France, and Holland, was concluded.

Thus entered the year 1717. It had been intended to open Parliament immediately on the king's return, but the discovery of a new and singular phase of the Jacobite conspiracy compelled its postponement. We have seen that the trafficking of George with Denmark for the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, reft in the king of Sweden's absence from his possession, had incensed that monarch, and made him vow that he would support the Pretender and march into Scotland with twelve thousand men. Such a menace on the part of a general like Charles XII. was not likely to pass unnoticed by the Jacobites. The Duke of Berwick had taken up the idea very eagerly. He had held several conferences upon it with Baron Spaar, the Swedish Minister at Paris, and he had sent a trusty minister to Charles at Stralsund, with the proposal that a body of seven or eight thousand Swedes, then encamped near Gothenburg, should embark at that port, whence, with a favourable wind, they could land in Scotland in eight-and-forty hours. The Pretender agreed to furnish one hundred and fifty thousand livres for their expenses. At that time, however, Charles was closely besieged by the Danes, Prussians, and their new ally, George of Hanover, purchased by the bribe of Bremen and Verden. Charles was compelled by this coalition to retire from Stralsund, but only in a mood of deeper indignation against the King of England, and therefore more favourable to his enemies.

The invasion of Scotland was again brought under his notice, and strongly recommended by his chief confidant and minister, Baron Gortz. Charles now listened with all his native spirit of resentment, and Gortz immediately set out on a tour of instigation and arrangement of the invasion. He hastened to Holland, where he corresponded with Count Gyllenborg, the Swedish Ambassador at London, and Baron Spaar, the Swedish Minister at Paris. He put himself also into communication with the Pretender and the Duke of Ormonde. The scheme of Gortz was able and comprehensive. A peace was to be established between Charles and his great enemy and rival, Peter of Russia. They both hated George of Hanover and England, and by this union might inflict the severest injuries on him. Next a conspiracy was to be excited against the Regent of France, so as to prevent him aiding England according to the recent Treaty, and all being thus prepared, Charles XII. was himself to conduct the army of twelve thousand veterans destined to invade Scotland, and, if supported by the Jacobites, England.

The Jacobites were in ecstasies at this new phase of their old enterprise. By Charles's adhesion, their scheme was stripped of all those prejudices which had insured its ruin with the English. It had no longer the unpopular aspect of a French invasion; it was no longer headed by a Popish but a Protestant leader; it was no longer consigned to an untried or doubtful general, but to one of the most victorious monarchs living, who came as a Protestant to call on a Protestant nation to receive their rightful king. Money was not wanting. Spain remitted to Baron Spaar a million of livres for the expedition, and the Court of the Pretender offered sixty thousand pounds.

But unfortunately for the Pretender, at the moment that the Swedish hero should prepare his armament for the earliest spring, the conspiracy exploded. Whilst the leaders of it had been flattering themselves that it was conducted with the profoundest secrecy, the English Ministry were in possession of its clue. As early as October they had found reason to induce them to intercept the correspondence of Gyllenborg, and had come at once on the letters of Gortz. The matter was kept close, and as nothing was apprehended in winter, Ministers used the time to improve their knowledge of the scheme from the inspected letters passing between Gortz and Gyllenborg. On the king's return it was resolved to act, and accordingly Stanhope laid the information regarding this formidable conspiracy before the Council, and proposed that the Swedish Minister, who had clearly, by conspiring against the Government to which he was accredited, violated the law of nations, and deprived himself of its protection, should be arrested. The Cabinet at once assented to the proposal, and General Wade, a man of firm and resolute military habits, was ordered to make the arrest of the Ambassador. The general found Count Gyllenborg busy making up his despatches, which, after announcing laconically his errand, Wade took possession of, and then demanded the contents of his escritoire. The Dutch Government acted in the same manner to Gortz, and the evidence thus obtained was most conclusive.

JAMES EDWARD STUART, THE "OLD PRETENDER."

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When Parliament met on the 20th of February, this conspiracy was laid before it and excited great indignation. The two Houses voted cordial addresses to his Majesty, and for a while there was an air of harmony. But the fires of discontent were smouldering beneath the surface, and, on a motion being made in April, in consequence of a royal message, to grant the king an extraordinary Supply in order to enable his Majesty to contract alliances with foreign powers, that he might be prepared to meet any attempts at invasion which the Swedes might, after all, be disposed to make, the heat broke forth. The Supply moved for was fixed at two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was expected that Walpole, having had his name suspiciously mentioned in Gyllenborg's correspondence, would take this opportunity to wipe off all doubt by his zeal and co-operation. On the contrary, he never appeared so lukewarm. Both he and his brother Horace, indeed, spoke in favour of the Supply, but coldly; and Townshend and all their common friends openly joined the Tories and Jacobites in voting against it; so that it was carried only by a majority of four. This could not pass; and the same evening Stanhope, by the king's order, wrote to Townshend, acknowledging his past services, but informing him that he was no longer Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

Walpole did not wait for a like humiliation. The next morning he waited on the king, and tendered his resignation of his places as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The king, if he could be judged by his conduct, had formed no resolution of parting with Walpole. He handed again to him the seals, cordially entreating him to take them back, speaking to him in the kindest manner, and appearing as though he would take no refusal. But Walpole remained steady to his purpose, and, accordingly, his friends Methuen, Pulteney, Lord Orford, and the Duke of Devonshire, resigned a few days afterwards. Stanhope was then appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sunderland and Joseph Addison were made Secretaries of State; Craggs, Secretary at War; Lord Berkeley, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain; the Duke of Bolton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Lord Cowper and the Duke of Kingston retaining their old places.

The retired Ministers showed for the most part a very hostile attitude, and Pulteney denounced the new Ministry as a "German Ministry." Walpole, for a little time, affected a liberal conduct, declaring, when the Supply of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds was voted, that, as he had before spoken in its favour, he should now vote in its favour, and would show by his proceedings that he had never intended to make the king uneasy, or to embarrass his affairs. But it was not in Walpole's nature to maintain this air of temperance long. He was as violent in opposition as he was able and zealous in office. Whether in or out of office, he was, in fact, equally unscrupulous. He very soon joined himself to Shippen, Wyndham, Bromley, and the other violent opponents of the reigning family; so that Shippen himself ere long said exultingly that he was glad to see that Walpole was no longer afraid of being styled a Jacobite.

Before Walpole thus threw off the mask of moderation—indeed, on the very day of his resignation—he introduced a well-matured scheme for the reduction of the National Debt, which was, in fact, the earliest germ of the National Sinking Fund. Though the ordinary rate of interest had been reduced, by the statute of the 12th of Queen Anne, to five per cent., the interest on the funded debt remained upwards of seven. The Long and Short Annuities were unredeemable, and could not be touched without the consent of the proprietors; but Walpole proposed to borrow six hundred thousand pounds at only four per cent., and to apply all savings to the discharge of the debts contracted before December, 1716. He proposed, also, to make some arrangement with the Bank and the South Sea Company, by which the Bank should lend two millions and a half, and the Company two millions, at five per cent., to pay off such holders of redeemable debts as should refuse to accept an equal reduction.

The new Administration took measures to render themselves popular. They advised the king to go down to the House on the 6th of May, and propose a reduction of the army to the extent of ten thousand men, as well as an Act of Grace to include many persons concerned in the late rebellion. Walpole and his friends, on the contrary, did all in their power to embarrass the Government. Lord Oxford was not included in the Act of Indemnity, and it was resolved now by his friends to have his trial brought on. Before this was effected, however, a violent attack was made on Lord Cadogan. As Ambassador at the Hague, he had superintended the embarkation of the Dutch troops sent to aid in putting down the rebellion. He was now charged with having committed gross peculations on that occasion. Shippen led the way in this attack, but Walpole and Pulteney pursued their former colleague with the greatest rancour, and Walpole declaimed against him so furiously that, after a speech of nearly two hours in length, he was compelled to stop by a sudden bleeding at the nose. Stanhope, Craggs, Lechmere, and others defended him; but such was the combination of enemies against him, or rather, against the Ministers, that the motion was only negatived by a majority of ten.

Lord Oxford's case was brought at length to a termination also in his favour. His friends having complained of the hardship of keeping him without a hearing for nearly two years, the 24th of June was appointed for the trial to take place in Westminster Hall. The Commons again met in committee to complete the evidence against him; but it was now found that Walpole, who was the chairman, and who had formerly pursued the inquiry with all eagerness, had suddenly cooled, and seldom came near the Committee; and they therefore appointed a new one. In fact, he and Townshend, out of opposition, were doing that secretly which they could not do openly without loss of character—they were exerting themselves in favour of their old antagonist, and they soon hit on a scheme for bringing him off without any trial at all. The Lords were persuaded to listen to any evidence in support of the charge of misdemeanour before they heard that on the grave charge of treason, and the result foreseen by the Opposition took place when the resolution was reported to the Commons. They immediately determined that it was an infringement of their privileges, and declined compliance with it. This was what Walpole and the then partisans, secret or open, of Lord Oxford, had foreseen. The Commons refusing to attend in Westminster Hall on the day fixed, the Lords returned to their own House, and passed a resolution declaring the Earl of Oxford acquitted, an announcement received by the people with acclamation. The Commons then demanded that Oxford should be excepted from the Act of Grace; but, notwithstanding, he was released from the Tower, and the Commons never renewed the impeachment.

It might have been supposed that Europe, or at least the southern portion of it, was likely to enjoy a considerable term of peace. France, under a minor and a Regent, appeared to require rest to recruit its population and finances more than any part of the Continent. The King of Spain was too imbecile to have any martial ambition; and though his wife was anxious to secure the succession to the French throne in case of the death of the infant Louis XV., yet Alberoni, the Prime Minister, was desirous to remain at peace. This able Churchman, who had risen from the lowest position, being the son of a working gardener, and had made his way to his present eminence partly by his abilities and partly by his readiness to forget the gravity of the clerical character for the pleasure of his patrons, was now zealously exerting himself to restore the condition of Spain. He was thus brought into collision with Austria and France, and eventually with this country to which at first he was well disposed. England was under engagement both to France and the Empire, which must, on the first rupture with either of those Powers and Spain, precipitate her into war. The treaty with the Emperor—as it guaranteed the retention of the Italian provinces, which Spain beheld with unappeasable jealousy, in Austrian hands—was the first thing to change the policy of Alberoni towards Britain. This change was still further accelerated by the news of the Triple Alliance, which equally guaranteed the status quo of France. The Spanish Minister displayed his anger by suspending the Treaty of Commerce, and by conniving at the petty vexations practised by the Spaniards on the English merchants in Spain, and by decidedly rejecting a proposal of the King of England to bring about an accommodation between the Emperor and the Court of Spain.

In this uneasy state of things Austria very unnecessarily put the match to the political train, and threw the whole of the south of Europe again into war. Don Joseph Molina, the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, being appointed Inquisitor-General at Spain, commenced his journey homewards, furnished with a passport from the Pope, and an assurance of safety from the Imperial Minister. Yet, notwithstanding this, he was perfidiously arrested by the Austrian authorities and secured in the citadel of Milan. The gross insult to Spain, and equally gross breach of faith, so exasperated the King and Queen of Spain that they would listen to nothing but war. The earnest expostulations of Alberoni, delivered in the form of a powerful memorial, were rejected, and he was compelled to abandon the cherished hopes of peaceful improvement and make the most active preparations for war.

Alberoni despatched Don Joseph Patiño to Barcelona to hasten the military preparations. Twelve ships of war and eight thousand six hundred men were speedily assembled there, and an instant alarm was excited throughout Europe as to the destination of this not very formidable force. The Emperor, whose treacherous conduct justly rendered him suspicious, imagined the blow destined for his Italian territories; the English anticipated a fresh movement in favour of the Pretender; but Alberoni, an astute Italian, who was on the point of receiving the cardinal's hat from the Pope led Charles (VI.) to believe that the armament was directed against the Infidels in the Levant. The Pope, therefore, hastened the favour of the Roman purple, and then Alberoni no longer concealed the real destination of his troops. The Marquis de Lede was ordered to set out with the squadron for the Italian shores; but when Naples was trembling in apprehension of a visit, the fleet drew up, on the 20th of August, in the bay of Cagliari, the capital of the island of Sardinia. That a force which might have taken Naples should content itself with an attack on the barren, rocky, and swampy Sardinia, surprised many; but Alberoni knew very well that, though he could take, he had not yet an army sufficient to hold Naples, and he was satisfied to strike a blow which should alarm Europe, whilst it gratified the impatience of the Spanish monarch for revenge. There was, moreover, an ulterior object. It had lately been proposed by England and Holland to the Emperor, in order to induce him to come into the Triple Alliance and convert it into a quadruple one, to obtain an exchange of this island for Sicily with the Duke of Savoy. It was, therefore, an object to prevent this arrangement by first seizing Sardinia. The Spanish general summoned the governor of Cagliari to surrender; but he stood out, and the Spaniards had to wait for the complete arrival of their ships before they could land and invest the place. The governor was ere long compelled to capitulate; but the Aragonese and the Catalans, who had followed the Austrians from the embittered contest in their own country, defended the island with furious tenacity, and it was not till November, and after severe losses through fighting and malaria, that the Spaniards made themselves masters of the island. The Powers of the Triple Alliance then intervened with the proposal that Austria should renounce all claim on the Spanish monarchy, and Spain all claim on Italy. Enraged at this proposal, Alberoni embarked on extensive military preparations, and put in practice the most extensive diplomatic schemes to paralyse his enemies abroad. He won the goodwill of Victor Amadeus by holding out the promise of the Milanese in exchange for Sicily; he encouraged the Turks to continue the war against the Emperor, and entered into negotiations with Ragotsky to renew the insurrection in Hungary; he adopted the views of Gortz for uniting the Czar and Charles of Sweden in peace, so that he might be able to turn their united power against the Emperor, and still more against the Electorate of Hanover, thus diverting the attention and the energies of George of England. Still further to occupy England, which he dreaded more than all the rest, he opened a direct correspondence with the Pretender, who was now driven across the Alps by the Triple Alliance, and promised him aid in a new expedition against Britain under the direction of the Duke of Ormonde, or of James himself. In France the same skilful pressure was directed against all the tender places of the body politic. He endeavoured to rouse anew the insurrection of the Cevennes and the discontents of Brittany. The Jesuits, the Protestants, the Duke and Duchess of Maine, were all called into action, and the demands for the assembling of the States-General, for the instant reformation of abuses, for reduction of the national debts, and for other reforms, were the cries by which the Government was attempted to be embarrassed.

These preparations on the part of Spain were in one particular favourable to the King of England—they rendered the Emperor much more conceding. The English envoy at that Court—rather singularly a Swiss of the canton of Bern—the General de St. Saphorin, had found Stahremberg, the Emperor's Minister, very high, and disinclined to listen to the proposals of the King of England regarding Bremen and Verden; but the news of the Spanish armament, and still more of its having sailed from Cadiz to Barcelona, produced a wonderful change. The Imperial Court not only consented to the demands of England, but accepted its mediation with the Turks, by which a considerable force was liberated for the service in Italy. The Emperor acceded to the alliance proposed between England, France, and Germany in order to drive Spain to terms, and which afterwards, when joined by the Dutch, was called the Quadruple Alliance. In France, however, all obstacles to this Treaty were not yet overcome. There was a strong party, headed by the Marshal d'Huxelles, chief of the Council for Foreign Affairs, which strongly opposed this plan of coercing the grandson of Louis XIV. To overcome these obstacles Stanhope went over to Paris, and had several conferences with King Philip; and, supported by Lord Stair and Nancré, all difficulties were removed, and the Alliance was signed in the succeeding August.

By this treaty Parma and Tuscany were ceded in reversion to the infant Don Carlos; Sicily was to be made over to the Emperor, and, in exchange for it, Sardinia was to be given to Victor Amadeus of Savoy. As Sardinia was an island of so much less extent and value than Sicily, the succession to the Crown of Spain was guaranteed to the House of Savoy should Philip of Spain leave no issue. Three months were allowed for the King of Spain and the Duke of Savoy to come in, and after that, in case of their non-compliance, force was to be used to effect it. It was to avert such a result that Stanhope (now Secretary for the Southern Department, which included Foreign Affairs) made a journey to Spain, where he failed to make the slightest impression on Alberoni. Before setting out, however, Admiral Byng had been despatched to the Mediterranean with twenty-one ships of the line, and peremptory orders to attack the Spanish fleet whenever he should find it engaged in any hostile attempt against Sicily, Naples, or any other of the Emperor's possessions in the Mediterranean.

Byng went in pursuit of the Spanish fleet, which was assisting in the conquest of Sicily, and came in sight of twenty-seven sail of the line, with fire-ships, ketches, bombs, and seven galleys, drawn up in line of battle between him and Cape Passaro. So soon as they were clear of the straits, a council was held to determine whether they should fight or retreat. They came to no resolution, but continued to linger about in indecision till Byng was down upon them. Whereupon he utterly destroyed them (August 11, 1718).

Alberoni, though defeated at sea, was more successful in Sicily, and he continued his cabals against England in nearly every Court of Europe with only the more assiduity. He was zealously at work in France, England itself, Holland, Piedmont, and Sweden. By his ambassador at the Hague he endeavoured to keep the Dutch out of the Quadruple Alliance by exciting their commercial jealousy; but he was ably opposed by our minister there, the Earl of Cadogan. In Piedmont he endeavoured to deter Victor Amadeus from entering into this alliance by assuring him that he was only endeavouring to secure Sicily to keep it out of the hands of the Austrians, and reserve it for him; while, on the other hand, he threatened him with thirty thousand bayonets if he dared to accede to the Quadruple Treaty. The Allies, however, threatened still greater dangers, and the Duke at last consented to accept Sardinia in lieu of Sicily, and that island remains attached to the kingdom of Italy to the present time.

SEA FIGHT OFF CAPE PASSARO. (See p. [41].)

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Foiled in these quarters, Alberoni appeared more successful in the North. A negotiation had been opened between the two potentates, so long at bitter variance, the Czar and Charles XII. of Sweden. They were induced to meet in the island of Åland, and to agree that the Czar should retain Livonia, and other Swedish territories south of Finland which he had torn from Sweden, but, in compensation, Charles was to be allowed to reconquer Bremen and Verden from George of Hanover and England, and Norway from Denmark; and the two monarchs were to unite their arms for the restoration of Stanislaus to the throne of Poland, and of the Pretender to that of Great Britain. The success of these arrangements appeared to Alberoni so certain that he boasted that the Northern tempest would burst ere long over England with annihilating fury; but even here he was doomed to disappointment. Charles XII. delighted in nothing so much as in wild and romantic enterprise. Such was that of the conquest of Norway; and he was led by his imagination to commence it without delay. With his characteristic madness, he divided his army into two parts, with one of which he took the way by the coast of Norway, and the other he sent over the mountains at the very beginning of winter. There that division perished in the snow amid the most incredible horrors; and he himself, whilst carrying on the siege of Frederickshall, was killed on the 11th of December, as appears probable, by the treacherous shot of a French engineer in his service. Almost simultaneously the Duke of Maine's conspiracy against the French Government was detected, and he and his wife, together with the Spanish Ambassador, were apprehended. There was nothing for it on the part of the Regent but to proclaim war against Spain—a measure which England had long been urging on him. The English declaration appeared on the 28th of December, 1718, and the French on the 9th of January, 1719.

In the session of 1719 Stanhope and his colleagues tried to undo the arbitrary measures of 1711 and 1714—the Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Bill. Stanhope would have made a strenuous effort to abolish not only these laws, but the Test Act itself; but Sunderland, though equally liberal, was more prudent, and showed that, to attempt too much was to ruin all; and when they came to introduce their greatly modified measure—that of annulling only some of the less prominent clauses of the Test Act under the name of a Bill for strengthening the Protestant interest—they found so much opposition that Sunderland's discernment was fully justified. Not only the two archbishops and some of the bishops opposed the measure, but the great Whigs, the Duke of Devonshire and Earl Cowper. Cowper, though he expressed himself willing to abolish the Schism Bill, stood stoutly for the Test and Corporation Acts as the very bulwarks of our constitution in Church and State; whilst the Earl of Islay declared even this moderate measure a violation of the union with Scotland. On the other hand, the Bishops Hoadley, Willis, Gibson, and Kennett supported the Bill, which, however, was not carried without considerable mutilation; and had Stanhope introduced such a measure as he proposed, including even considerable relief to Catholics, the whole would have been lost.

Parliament was prorogued on the 18th of April, and the king soon after set out for his German dominions, taking Stanhope along with him, and his mistress, the Duchess of Kendal. In appointing the Regency to administer affairs in the king's absence, the Prince of Wales was entirely passed over, to his great indignation; nor were he and the Princess allowed to hold levees, that duty being assigned to the young princesses, to the great scandal of the public, and further exposure of the discord raging in the Royal family. Even during the session the ministers had brought in a Bill to "settle and limit the Peerage in such a manner that the number of English peers should not be enlarged beyond six of the present number (178), which, upon failure of male issue, might be supplied by new creations; that, instead of the sixteen elective peers of Scotland, twenty-five should be made hereditary on the part of that kingdom; and that this number, upon failure of heirs male, should be supplied from the other members of the Scottish Peerage." Both the king and ministers flattered themselves that they should carry this Bill, and thus fetter the Prince of Wales when he came to the throne. The king was desirous to do this out of sheer jealousy and hatred of his own son, and the ministers, Sunderland in particular, out of dread of his vengeance in that case; for, if he created a dozen peers at a time, as Anne had done, he could easily swamp the Whigs and put the present ministers in peril of impeachment. But though the Whigs had been clamorous against the act of Anne, some of them now, Cowper and Townshend at their head, as vehemently denounced this measure as a gross infringement of the royal prerogative. The debate became very bitter, and many friendships were broken up by it, amongst others that of Addison and Steele, who took different sides; but the Bill was finally dropped, through the vigorous opposition offered to it by Walpole.

Scarcely had Parliament ceased to sit, and the king was gone to spend the summer months in Germany, when the vigilance of the Ministry was demanded to ward off a fresh invasion. Alberoni, defeated in his schemes on France, and his hopes of the invasion of England by Charles XII. crushed by that monarch's death, determined now to make a grand effort to support the Pretender himself. For this purpose, he invited him to Spain, and at the same time began the equipment of a formidable fleet to carry over a Spanish force, under the command of the Duke of Ormonde, to the shores of Britain. The Pretender was not intended to accompany the expedition, but to be in readiness to follow on the first news of its successful landing. But it was no more destined to reach these shores than the Grand Armada. It has always been the fate of invading squadrons to encounter providential tempests in coming hitherward, and the usual hurricane was ready to burst. Scarcely, indeed, had the fleet lost sight of Cape Finisterre before the storm swooped down upon it. For twelve days the terrible Bay of Biscay was swept by a frightful wind, which drove the vessels in all directions, and rendered it impossible to manage them. Fortunate would it have been if every vessel had failed to reach the shores at which they aimed; but two vessels, on board of which were the Earls Marshal and Seaforth, and the Marquis of Tullibardine, accompanied by about three hundred Spanish soldiers, reached Scotland, and landed, on the 16th of April, at Kintail, in Ross-shire. In the hope that Ormonde would still reach England, this small force lay quiet for some time, and so little did they excite notice, that the Government imagined that they had re-embarked. Their presence there, however, had the mischievous effect of exciting some few of the Highlanders to join them. They seized Donan Castle, and thus attracted the attention of the English. Some vessels of war arrived upon the coast. The castle was speedily retaken, and Lord Carpenter, the commander of the forces in Scotland, sent some troops from Inverness against them. General Wightman, the officer thus despatched, was attended by about a thousand men, and found the enemy, now swollen to about two thousand, strongly posted at Glenshiel. He immediately attacked them, and the miscellaneous force speedily dispersed. The Highlanders, who knew the country, rapidly disappeared amongst the hills, and the Spaniards had no other resource than to lay down their arms.

Alberoni now found himself in turn attacked by France. Whilst busying himself to repair a few of the shattered ships which had escaped from the tempest, in order to harass the coast of Brittany in conjunction with the malcontents there, he beheld an army of thirty thousand French menacing the Pyrenean frontier. War having begun, the Spaniards were utterly defeated by the French in Spain and by the Austrians in Sicily, thanks to the zealous co-operation of the British fleet under Admiral Byng. At length Philip was compelled to dismiss Alberoni.

The King of Spain hoped, by the dismissal of Alberoni, to obtain more advantageous terms of peace from France and England; but they still stood firmly to the conditions of the Quadruple Alliance. On the 19th of January, 1720, the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Holland signed an engagement at Paris not to admit of any conditions of peace from Spain contrary to those of the alliance. Stanhope despatched his secretary, Schaub, to Madrid, to endeavour to bring over the queen to this agreement, and Dubois sent instructions to the Marquis Scotti, Father d'Aubenton, and others in the French interest to press the same point. She stood out firmly for some time, but eventually gave way, and the mind of the king was soon influenced by her. Some difficulties which could not be overcome were referred to a congress to be held at Cambray. On the 26th of January Philip announced his accession to the Quadruple Alliance, declaring that he gave up his rights and possessions to secure the peace of Europe. He renewed his renunciation of the French Crown, and promised to evacuate Sicily and Sardinia within six months, which he faithfully performed.

By the firmness of the Allies a peace which continued twelve years was given to Europe, and the storm which Alberoni had so fondly expected out of the North was as completely dissipated. The new Queen of Sweden had consented to yield absolutely to George I., as King of Hanover, the disputed possession of Bremen and Verden. Poland was induced to acknowledge Augustus of Saxony as king, and Prussia to be satisfied with the acquisition of Stettin and some other Swedish territory. But the Czar and the King of Denmark, seeing Sweden deprived of its military monarch, and exhausted by his wild campaigns, contemplated the actual dismemberment of Sweden. The Queen of Sweden threw herself for protection on the good offices of the King of England, and both England and France agreed to compel the Czar and the King of Denmark to desist from their attacks on Sweden if they would not listen to friendly mediation. Lord Carteret, a promising young statesman, was sent as ambassador to Stockholm, and Sir John Norris, with eleven sail of the line, was ordered to the Baltic. Russia and Denmark, however, continued to disregard the pacific overtures of England, trusting to there being no war with that Power. They ravaged the whole coast of Sweden, burning above a thousand villages, and the town of Nyköping, the third place in the kingdom. Seeing this, Lord Stanhope, who was still at Hanover with the king, sent orders to Admiral Norris to pay no regard to the fact of there being no declaration of war, but to treat the Russian and Danish fleet as Byng had treated the Spanish one. Norris accordingly joined his squadron to the Swedish fleet at Carlscrona, and went in pursuit of the fleet of the Czar. Peter, seeing that the English were now in earnest, recalled his fleet with precipitation, and thereby, no doubt, saved it from complete destruction; but he still continued to refuse to make peace, and determined on the first opportunity to have a further slice of Swedish territory. Denmark, which was extremely poor, agreed to accept a sum of money in lieu of Marstrand, which it had seized; and thus all Europe, except the Czar, was brought to a condition of peace.

George had arrived in England from his German States on the 11th of November of the preceding year, 1719, and opened Parliament on the 23rd. In his speech he laid stress on the success of his Government in promoting the evacuation of Sicily and Sardinia by Spain, in protecting Sweden, and laying the foundation of a union amongst the great Protestant Powers of Europe. He then recurred to the subject of the Bill for limiting the peerage, which had been rejected in the previous Session. George was animated by the vehement desire to curtail the prerogative of his son, and said that the Bill was necessary to secure that part of the Constitution which was most liable to abuse. Lord Cowper declared, on the other hand, that besides the reasons which had induced him to oppose the measure before, another was now added in the earnestness with which it was recommended. But Cowper was not supported with any zeal by the rest of the House, and the Bill passed on the 30th of November, and was sent down to the House of Commons on the 1st of December. There it was destined to meet with a very different reception. During the recess Walpole had endeavoured to rouse a resistance to it in both Houses. He had convened a meeting of the Opposition Whigs at Devonshire House, and called upon them to oppose the measure; but he found that some of the Whig peers were favourable to it, from the perception that it would increase the importance of their order; others declared that it would be inconsistent in them to oppose a principle which they had so strenuously maintained against a Tory Ministry—that of discountenancing the sudden creation of peers for party purposes; and others, though hostile to the Bill, declared that they should only expose themselves to defeat by resisting it. But Walpole persisted in his opposition, and declared that, if his party deserted him, he would contend against the Bill single-handed. He asserted that it would meet with strong resistance from the country gentlemen who hoped some time or other to reach the peerage—a hope which the Bill, if carried, would extinguish for ever.

By these endeavours Walpole managed to array a considerable body of the Commons against it. It was introduced on the 8th of December, and Sir John Pakington, Sir Richard Steele, Smith, Methuen, and others joined him in attacking it. Steele made a very powerful speech against it, but the grand assault was that of Walpole. He put out all his strength, and delivered a harangue such as he had never achieved till that day. He did not spare the motives of the king, though handling them with much tact, and was unsparingly severe on the Scottish clauses, and on the notorious subserviency of the Scottish representative peers. He declared that the sixteen elective Scottish peers were already a dead weight on the country; and he asked what they would be when made twenty-five, and hereditary? He declared that such a Bill would make the lords masters of the king, and shut up the door of honour to the rest of the nation. Amongst the Romans, he said, the way to the Temple of Fame was through the Temple of Virtue; but if this Bill passed, such would never be the case in this country. There would be no arriving at honours but through the winding-sheet of an old, decrepit lord, or the tomb of an extinct noble family. Craggs, Lechmere, Aislabie, Hampton, and other Ministerial Whigs supported the Bill; but, in the words of Speaker Onslow, the declamation of Walpole had borne down everything before it, and the measure was defeated by a majority of two hundred and sixty-nine to one hundred and seventy-seven.

In our time this defeat would, as a matter of course, have turned out the Ministry, but in that day it had no such effect. They continued to hold office, and to command undiminished majorities on other questions. Still more singular was its effect, for it induced them to offer office to their triumphant opponent Walpole, who not only accepted a subordinate post amongst them—the Paymaster of the Forces—but consented to support the very clauses regarding the Scottish peers which he had so firmly denounced, should they be inclined to bring forward the Bill a third time.

THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. (After the Picture by E. M. Ward, R.A., in the National Gallery, London.)

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The spring of 1720 was a period of remarkable national prosperity. But "the grand money schemes projected of late," which appeared to the Jacobite Atterbury and others calculated to cement the royal peace and strengthen the foundation of the Government and nation, were destined to produce a very different effect. For the South Sea Bubble was about to burst. In 1711, Harley, being at his wits' end to maintain the public credit, established a fund to provide for the National Debt, which amounted to ten millions of pounds. To defray the interest he made permanent the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco, etc. To induce the purchase of the Government stock, he gave to the shareholders the exclusive privilege of trading to the Spanish settlements in South America, and procured them an Act of Parliament and a royal charter, under the name of the South Sea Company. The idea, hollow and groundless as it was, seized on the imagination of the most staid and experienced traders. All the dreams of boundless gold which haunted the heads of the followers of Drake and Raleigh were revived. The mania spread through the nation, and was industriously encouraged by the partisans of Harley. But this stupendous dream of wealth was based on the promises of Ministers, who at the Peace of Utrecht were to secure from the Government of Spain this right to trade to its colonies. The right was never granted by that haughty and jealous Power, further than for the settlement of some few factories, and the sending of one small ship annually of less than five hundred tons. This, and the Assiento, or privilege of supplying those colonies with African slaves, were the sole advantages obtained, and these were soon disturbed by the war with Spain, which broke out under Alberoni. The South Sea Company, however, from its general resources, remained a flourishing corporation, and was deemed the rival of the Bank of England.

It was at the close of 1719, when George I. returned from Hanover, that this Company proposed to Ministers to consolidate all the funds into one. It was strange that both Ministers and merchants could be deluded by the hope of enriching themselves by a share of the trade with the Spanish South American provinces, when Spain herself, in full enjoyment of them, was sunk into indigence and weakness, and presented the most determined resistance to the unfettered intercourse of any other nation with them. Yet Sir John Blunt, a leading director of the South Sea Company, persuaded the Ministers that by granting the Company power to deal with the public funds, and especially to buy up the unredeemable annuities which had been granted in the two preceding reigns, chiefly on terms of ninety-nine years, and which now amounted to about eight hundred thousand pounds a year, they could, in twenty-six years, pay off the entire National Debt. But, to enable them to do this, they must be empowered to reduce all the different public securities to one aggregate fund in their hands, to convert both redeemable and unredeemable debts into stock by such arrangements as they could make with the holders, and to have certain commercial privileges vested in them. Ministers accepted the proposals with great alacrity. Aislabie introduced the scheme to Parliament in the month of February, 1720, declaring that, if it was accepted by the House, the prosperity of the nation would be amazingly enhanced, and all its debts liquidated in a very few years. Craggs seconded the proposal in most sanguine terms, expressing his conviction that every member of the House must be ready to adopt so advantageous an offer. Ministers had already closed with the proposals of the Company, and they were themselves greatly disconcerted by the suggestion of Mr. Thomas Brodrick, the member for Stockbridge, who expressed his entire accordance with Ministers, but thought that the nation should endeavour to obtain the best terms for itself by opening the competition to every other company or association of men as well as that in question. Ministers were confounded by this proposal, and Aislabie endeavoured to get out of it by declaring that to do this would be like putting the nation up to auction, and that such things should be done with spirit. But Jekyll interposed, saying it was this spirit which had ruined the nation, and it was now requisite to consider seriously what was best for the public. A violent debate ensued, in which Walpole eloquently recommended open competition, and was sharply replied to by Lechmere. The question was carried in favour of competition; and then the Bank of England, which before had coolly declined to enter into the proposals, suddenly appeared in a new temper, and made liberal offers for the privilege of thus farming the public debts. But the South Sea Company was not to be outdone; it offered seven millions and a half, and the Bank gave way in despair.

Walpole, however, continued to oppose the South Sea Bill in the Commons, declaring that the terms were too extravagant ever to be fulfilled; that the experiment could result in nothing but a fearful increase of the costs of stockjobbing, and final confusion and ruin. He insisted that, before the proposals of the Company were accepted, the rise of their stock should be limited, and every means taken to prevent the fever of infatuation that would ensue from the promise of dividends out of funds which could never be realised. He proposed for this purpose the introduction of a clause fixing the number of years' purchase to be granted to the annuitants of the South Sea Company; but to this it was objected that it was the interest of the Company to take up the annuities; and, as the annuitants had the power of coming in or not, as they pleased, the Company would, of course, offer advantageous terms, and, therefore, the whole affair might be safely left to private adjustment. Aislabie added that the South Sea Company would not submit to be controlled in an undertaking they were to pay so dear for. The Bill passed both Houses.

The South Sea Company had immediately on the passing of the Bill proposed a subscription of one million, and this was so eagerly seized on that, instead of one, two millions were subscribed. To stimulate this already too feverish spirit in the public, the Company adopted the most false and unjustifiable means. They had eight millions and a half to pay over to Government as a douceur for granting them the management of the Funds; and, therefore, to bring this in rapidly, they propagated the most lying rumours. It was industriously circulated that Lord Stanhope had received overtures at Paris to exchange Gibraltar and Port Mahon for invaluable gold lands in Peru! The South Sea trade was vaunted as a source of boundless wealth in itself. In August the stock had risen from the one hundred and thirty of the last winter to one thousand! Men sold houses and land to become shareholders; merchants of eminence neglected their affairs and crippled their resources to reap imaginary profits. The Company flattered the delusion to the utmost. They opened a third, and even a fourth subscription, larger than the former, and passed a resolution that from next Christmas their yearly dividend should not be less than fifty per cent.! In labouring to increase the public delusion they seem to have caught the contagion themselves, for they began to act, not like men who were blowing a bubble which they knew must speedily burst, but like persons who had mounted permanently into the very highest seat of prosperous power. They assumed the most arrogant and overbearing manner, even towards men of the highest station and influence. "We have made them kings," said a member of Parliament, "and they deal with everybody as such."

The spirit of gambling thus set going by Government itself soon surpassed all bounds, and burst forth in a thousand shapes. It was well known that the king, his mistresses, his courtiers, his son and heir apparent, were all dabbling busily in the muddy waters of this huge pool of trickery and corruption. A thousand other schemes were invented and made public to draw in fresh gudgeons, and the Prince of Wales allowed his name to stand as governor of a Welsh Copper Company. All ranks and classes rushed to Change Alley—dukes, lords, country squires, bishops, clergy (both Established and Dissenting), were mixed up with stockjobbers and brokers in eager traffic. Ladies of all ranks mingled in the throng, struggling through the press and straining their voices to be heard amid the hubbub. There and all over the kingdom were advertised and hawked about the following and other schemes:—Wrecks to be fished for on the Irish coast; plans for making of oil from sunflower seeds; for extracting of silver from lead; for the transmuting of quicksilver into a malleable and fine metal; for importing a number of large jackasses from Spain; for a wheel for perpetual motion; and, finally, for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed!

The South Sea Company, with a folly of which extreme greed only is capable, endeavoured to put down these rival schemes and obtained an order from the Lords Justices and writs of scire facias against several of these new bubbles. It was like raising a wind to blow away the bubbles, forgetting that their own was a bubble too, and would go with them. The moment that the people began to distrust one they distrusted all. The panic became as great as the mania had been. The South Sea stock dropped in less than a month from one thousand to below six hundred. There was a simultaneous rush to sell out, and the shares must have sunk instantly to nil but for the gigantic exertions of the Company to raise money and buy in. The relief, however, was but temporary. The bankers and pawnbrokers who had advanced money on scrip broke and fled; merchants, goldsmiths, and speculators rushed away after them. Walpole was summoned in haste from Haughton to devise some means of staying the panic. He endeavoured to get the Bank of England to circulate three millions of South Sea bonds for a year; but the Bank, seeing that the case was desperate, declined it. This was decisive. The rage and despair of the swarming dupes were indescribable. They heaped execrations not only on the South Sea Company, but on Ministers, the king, his mistresses, and the Royal Family, who had all been deep in the affair, and who had taken good care of themselves. George landed at Margate on the 9th of November, soon after which the South Sea stock fell to one hundred and thirty-five. On the 8th of December Parliament met, and promptly began to investigate the scandal.

In the House of Lords on the 24th of January, 1721, five directors who had been called before them were arrested and their papers seized. By what had been drawn from them, it appeared that large sums had been given to people in high places to procure the passing of the South Sea Bill. Lord Stanhope rose and expressed his indignation at such practices, and moved that any transfer of stock for the use of any person in the Administration without a proper consideration was a notorious and dangerous corruption. The motion was seconded by Lord Townshend, and carried unanimously. The examination being continued on the 4th of February, Sir John Blunt refused to answer their lordships, on the plea that he had already given his evidence before the Secret Committee. A vehement debate arose out of this difficulty, during which the Duke of Wharton, a most profligate young nobleman, and president of the Hell-fire Club, made a fierce attack on Stanhope, accused him of fomenting the dissensions between the king and his son, and compared him to Sejanus, who had sown animosities in the family of Tiberius, and rendered his reign hateful to the Romans. Stanhope, in replying to this philippic, was so transported by his rage, that the blood gushed from his nostrils. He was carried from the House, and soon afterwards expired.

Lord Townshend succeeded Stanhope as Secretary of State. Aislabie, who had been deep in the iniquities of the South Sea affair, was compelled to resign his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to which Walpole succeeded. Meanwhile the Secret Committee appointed by the Commons continued its labours indefatigably. They sat nearly every day from nine in the morning till eleven at night, and on the 16th of February, 1721, they presented their first report to the House. This revealed a vast amount of Ministerial corruption.

On the very day that this report was being read in the House died one of the accused, James Craggs, Secretary of State. His complaint was smallpox; but the state of mind induced by this exposure is supposed to have rendered the malady fatal. His father, who was Postmaster-General, was so shamefully involved in the same dishonest proceedings, that he took poison.

Charles Stanhope, though clearly guilty, escaped, after examination in the House, by a majority of three, out of respect for the memory of his deceased relative, the upright Lord Stanhope. Aislabie's case came next, and was so palpably bad that he was committed to the Tower and expelled the House, amid the ringing of bells, bonfires, and other signs of rejoicing in the City of London. The bulk of his property, moreover, was seized. This was some compensation to the public, which had murmured loudly at the acquittal of Stanhope. Sunderland's case was the next, and he escaped by the evidence against him being chiefly second-hand. He was acquitted by a majority of two hundred and thirty-three against one hundred and seventy-two. As to the king's mistresses, their sins were passed over out of a too conceding loyalty; but no favour was shown to the directors, though some of them were found to be much poorer when the scheme broke up than they were when it began. Amongst them was Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the historian, who afterwards exposed the injustice of many of these proceedings, though at the time they were considered as only too merited. The directors were disabled from ever again holding any place, or sitting in Parliament; and their estates, amounting to upwards of two millions, were confiscated for the relief of the sufferers by the scheme.

On the death of Stanhope, Sir Robert Walpole was left without a rival, and he received his commission of First Lord of the Treasury on the 2nd of April, and from this period down to 1742 he continued to direct the government of Great Britain. His chief anxiety now was to restore the public credit. He drew up, as Chairman of the Committee of the Commons, a report of all that had been lost in the late excitements, and of the measures that had been adopted to remedy the costs incurred. Amongst these were the resolutions of the House respecting the seven and a half millions the directors of the South Sea Company had agreed to pay to Government; more than five had been remitted, and we may add that on the clamorous complaints of the Company the remainder was afterwards remitted too. The forfeited estates had been made to clear off a large amount of encumbrance, the credit of the Company's bonds had been maintained, and thirty-three per cent. of the capital paid to the proprietors. Such were the measures adopted by the Commons, and these being stated in the report to the king, a Bill was brought in embodying them all. Many of the proprietors, however, were not satisfied. They were very willing to forget their own folly and greediness, and charge the blame on the Government. On the second reading of Walpole's Bill they thronged the lobby of the House of Commons. The next day the Bill was carried, and gradually produced quiet; but Walpole himself did not escape without severe animadversions. He was accused of having framed his measures in collusion with the Bank, and with a clear eye to his own interest; but he had been strenuously vindicated from the charge, and on the whole the vigour and boldness with which he encountered the storm and quelled it deserve the highest praise, and may well cover a certain amount of self-interest, from which few Ministers are free.

GEORGE I.

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The discontents occasioned by the South Sea scheme and its issue had caused the Jacobites to conceive fresh hopes of success, and their spirits were still more elevated by the birth of a son to the Pretender. The business of this faction was conducted in England by a junto or council, amongst the chief members of which were the Earls of Arran and Orrery, Lords North and Gower, and the Bishop of Rochester. Lord Oxford had been invited to put himself at the head of this council of five, but everything of a decided nature was out of his character. He continued to correspond with the leaders of the faction, but he declined putting himself too forward. In fact, his habitual irresolution was now doubled by advancing infirmities, and he died three years afterwards. Though several of the junto were men of parliamentary, and North of military experience, Atterbury was the undoubted head of it. The period of confusion created by the South Sea agitation was first pitched on for a new attempt, then that of the general election, which had taken place in March, and, finally, it was deferred till the king should have gone to Hanover, according to his custom, in the summer.

In preparation for this movement James the Pretender was to sail secretly to Spain, in readiness to cross to England; and he had already quitted his house in Rome and removed to a villa, the more unobserved to steal away at the appointed moment. Ormonde also had left Madrid and gone to a country seat half way to Bilbao, when the secret of the impending expedition was suddenly revealed by the French Government to that of England. The conspirators had been mad enough to apply to the Regent for five thousand troops, trusting that, notwithstanding his peaceful relations with Britain, he would secretly enjoy creating it some embarrassment. But in this, as in all other views, they proved more sanguine than profound. Sir Luke Schaub, the British Ambassador, was immediately informed of it on condition, it was said, that no one should die for it.

Walpole was instantly on the alert on this startling discovery. He prevailed on the king to put off his journey to Germany. Troops were drawn round London and a camp was formed in Hyde Park. The king took up his residence at Kensington, in the midst of the soldiers, and the Prince of Wales retired to Richmond. General Macartney was dispatched for still more troops from Ireland; some suspected persons were arrested in Scotland; the States of Holland were solicited to have ships and soldiers in readiness; an order was obtained from the Court of Madrid to forbid the embarkation of Ormonde; and General Churchill was dispatched to Paris to make all secure with the Regent. Atterbury was arrested on the 24th of August.

Parliament opened its first sitting on the 9th of October. The rumour of invasion, of course, gave the tone to the king's speech. He recited the leading facts of the conspiracy, and observed that he should the less wonder at them had he in any one instance, since his accession to the throne of his ancestors, invaded the liberty or property of his subjects.

The very first act was to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act for a year. To punish the Catholics and Non-jurors, who were all regarded as implicated in this conspiracy, Walpole proposed to raise one hundred thousand pounds by a tax on their estates. A Bill of Pains and Penalties was passed against Atterbury, and he was compelled to go into banishment. On the 18th of June Atterbury was put on board a man-of-war and conducted to Calais. As he landed there, he was told that Bolingbroke had received the king's pardon, and was just quitting Calais for England; and the Bishop said, with a smile, "Then I am exchanged."

This Act, however, merely gave Bolingbroke the right to come back and live in security in England. His ambition could only be satisfied by the restoration of his estates and honours. Unfortunately for him, when he arrived in England, the king had sailed for Hanover, attended by Townshend and Carteret, and his great patroness, the Duchess of Kendal. He waited, therefore, on Walpole, who promptly rejected his offers. Mortified at this repulse, Bolingbroke returned to Paris, where a field of action had opened in which he was well calculated to figure.

The restless Englishman, much more like a Frenchman in temperament and character than a native of England, had married Madame de Villette, a niece of Louis XIV.'s last mistress, Madame de Maintenon, a lady rich and well-trained in all the Court life of Paris. By this means Bolingbroke was brought into close connection with that Court. The notorious Cardinal Dubois had died in August, 1723, and in less than four months died also the Duke of Orleans, the Regent. Louis XV. being nominally of age, no other Regent was appointed; but the Duke of Bourbon, a man of better character but of less ability than the Regent, Orleans, was Prime Minister. He was greatly under the influence of his bold and ambitious mistress Madame de Prie; and Bolingbroke, who was high in the favour of both Minister and mistress, flattered himself that, with the aid of his courtier wife, he could govern both them and France.

Bolingbroke was well aware that a violent strife for power was going on in the British Cabinet. Lord Carteret, the new Secretary of State, and afterwards Earl Granville, was labouring hard to undermine both Walpole and Townshend. He was a very accomplished man and a great linguist, familiar with nearly all the Continental languages, including German, which, strangely enough, the English courtiers neglected, though they had a German monarch on the throne who could not speak English. German then was regarded as a language rude and even vulgar—a tongue, as Voltaire afterwards said, "only fit for horses." But Carteret, by being master of it, could converse freely with the king, whilst Walpole, ignorant, too, of French, could hold communication with him only in Latin, which, from the wide difference between the English and foreign pronunciation of it, could not have been a very favourable medium. Carteret had ingratiated himself so much with the king by conversing in German, and flattering George's German tastes and politics, that he had succeeded to the influence which Stanhope had formerly possessed. He had also secured the same influence in the Court of Paris. He had by that means confirmed the appointment of Sir Luke Schaub at that Court, and thus kept open the most favourable communication with the Abbé Dubois. The Courts of England and France continued during Dubois' life in close connection, and through the influence of George and his Ministers, Dubois obtained first the Archbishop's mitre, and then the Cardinal's hat.

The struggle for ascendency proceeding, Walpole and his party secured the interest of the Duchess of Kendal, who always took care to side with that which she thought the stronger. Carteret and his party, on the other hand, secured the interest of the other mistress, the Countess of Darlington, and her sister, Madame de Platen. Whilst affairs were in this position, the two Secretaries of State, Townshend and Carteret, accompanied the king to Hanover. There came upon the tapis the question of a marriage between the Count St. Florentin, the son of La Vrillière, the Secretary of State for France, and a daughter of Madame de Platen. Madame de Platen, however, demanded that La Vrillière should be made a duke, so that in due course of time her daughter would be a duchess. George I. warmly seconded this demand; and, had Bolingbroke used his influence, there was little doubt that it would have been accomplished. But the French nobility raised a huge outcry against this honour being conferred on the family of La Vrillière, which they deemed too obscure for such a dignity. Bolingbroke, however, was seeking his own objects through the other mistress, the Duchess of Kendal; and, notwithstanding the repulse which he had received from Walpole, he still calculated that his power would prevail, and he therefore smothered his personal vexation, and remained on the side of the Duchess of Kendal and Walpole, leaving Carteret and his allies, the Platens, to fight their own battle.

In the midst of these cabals died the Regent, and Townshend, acting with Walpole, sent over Walpole's brother Horace to watch their interests at Paris. Carteret, on the other hand, ordered Sir Luke Schaub to make every exertion for the grant of the dukedom. On the arrival of Horace Walpole, Bolingbroke, obeying the impulses of the courtier and not of the man, immediately waited on him, and placed all his influence at the French Court at his service; but Walpole, who had an invincible repugnance to Bolingbroke, whilst he availed himself of the advantages offered by Bolingbroke, still kept him at a great and stately distance. Undeterred by this conduct, however, Bolingbroke swallowed his mortification, and continued to keep his eye and his hope on the Walpole Ministry. Unassisted by Bolingbroke, the dukedom could not be obtained; but George reconciled Madame Platen to the match by giving her daughter a portion of ten thousand pounds. Horace Walpole, at the same time, succeeded in getting Schaub recalled, and himself installed in his office of Ambassador at Paris—a decided victory over Carteret; indeed, so decided, that Carteret was removed from the Secretaryship to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland.

The domestic serenity of the realm was, however, greatly disturbed at this moment by Dean Swift, who seized on the occasion to avenge himself on the Whig Ministry for the defeat and punishment of his party, and especially of his particular friends and patrons, Oxford and Bolingbroke. There had long been a great deficiency of copper coin in Ireland. The Government undertook to remove this pressing want of so useful a medium, and they set about it in an honest and honourable manner as regarded the quality of the coin. Tenders were issued, and various offers received for the coining of farthings and halfpence to the value of a hundred and eight thousand pounds. The proposal of Mr. William Wood, an iron and copper founder, of Wolverhampton, was accepted; but the quality of the coin, both as to weight and fineness, was determined by the advice of Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, and Wood was bound under heavy penalties to furnish it according to this stipulation. Every care was used by the Ministers and the Solicitor- and Attorney-General to insure the supply of a much better copper coinage than Ireland had ever possessed before.

There were some circumstances, however, which came out that created considerable suspicion and displeasure in Ireland. Wood had given a bribe to the king's mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, to procure him the contract, and the Government had ordered the coinage without paying the Irish Privy Council and Lord-Lieutenant the compliment of consulting them on this occasion. Swift saw these errors, and seized on them for his own purposes. He did not stop to inquire whether, after all, the proposed coinage would not, in any circumstances, be much better than the present distressing scarcity of copper money, and whether the farthings and halfpence might not turn out as good, though they were contracted for. It was enough for him that there was a cause of discontent which he could fan into a flame against the British Government. He threw all his spiteful soul into it, and his "Drapier's Letters" inflamed the public mind to such a degree that Walpole was compelled to cancel the patent.

The tumult in Ireland was succeeded by one in Scotland. The people of that country, though they were, by the provisions of the Act of Union, to bear their proportion of the malt tax, had always refused compliance, and in 1713 had issued a violent resolution against it. They had never yet complied with the law, and Walpole, seeing the sturdy nature of the opposition, was willing to give up the point quietly. But during the Parliamentary Session of this year, Mr. Brodrick proposed that a duty of sixpence on every barrel of ale should be paid in lieu of it. Walpole was reluctant to go into the question, but the House was bent on it, and he therefore complied so far as to consent to a duty of threepence per barrel, or half the amount. There were promptly riots in Glasgow, and at Edinburgh the brewers refused to brew. Walpole sent down the Earl of Islay, the brother of the Duke of Argyll, and a zealous adherent of his own, to pacify the country. Islay behaved with equal prudence and firmness. He found the powerful combination of brewers essaying to make a stand against and then attempting to make terms with him. But he let them know that nothing but unconditional surrender to the laws would be accepted, and they at length held a meeting, where the chairman put the question, "To brew, or not to brew?" The members were to vote seriatim; but neither the man on his right nor the one on his left would venture to begin. In the long pause that ensued, one Gray declared that he thought there was nothing for them to do but to return to their trades; that he would not be bound by the majority, but would vote independently, and he voted to brew. The meeting broke up, and that night a number of breweries were set to work, and the next day, at noon, about forty brew-houses were in full action in Edinburgh, and ten in Leith.

One of the first acts of the Parliament, which met on November 12th, was to punish the peculations and abuses of the Lord Chancellor, Parker, Earl of Macclesfield. The Court of Chancery, in former ages a sink of corruption, was at this time in its worst condition. The offices of Masters were regularly sold, and the Masters as regularly took care to recoup themselves by all manner of peculation. The estates of widows and orphans and the money of suitors were unscrupulously plundered. There was a loud outcry against these robberies, and especially against the Lord Chancellor, for his not only tolerating but partaking in them. He endeavoured to escape the storm of public indignation by resigning in January, but this did not avail him. He was impeached by Sir George Oxenden in the Commons, and tried in the Lords, and fined thirty thousand pounds. A motion for disabling him from ever again sitting in Parliament or holding any office was lost only by a very few votes. The king struck his name out of the list of Privy Councillors, and in 1725 Sir Peter King was made Chancellor in his stead, with the title of baron.

Bolingbroke, now restored to his estates, though the attainder still deprived him of his seat in the House of Lords, endeavoured to create a new species of opposition in Parliament. He retained his influence with the Duchess of Kendal, and cultivated that of the ultra-Tories. Still more, he soon discovered that William Pulteney, the most eloquent man in the House, had grown disgusted with Walpole, who could never bear any man of pre-eminent ability near the throne except himself. Pulteney had been one of the steadiest friends of the late queen's Government, and of the Protestant succession. Under George he had been made Secretary at War. He had adhered to Walpole when he was sent to the Tower for corruption, and in the great schism of 1717. Yet Walpole had carefully excluded him from any high post in the Cabinet, and had endeavoured to veil his jealousy of him by offering to procure him a peerage, by which he would have removed him from the active sphere of the House of Commons. Pulteney saw the object, and rejected the specious favour. Instead of conferring on Pulteney some office worthy of his talents, Walpole then put him into that of Cofferer of the Household. In the state of indignation which this paltry appointment raised in him Bolingbroke soon induced Pulteney to put himself at the head of a large body of Oppositionists, under the title of "Patriots." In this character he made some smart attacks on Walpole and his heavy drafts on the Civil List for his friends, for which he was dismissed, and joined Bolingbroke in a bold attempt to write down the Minister. Between them the celebrated paper The Craftsman was planned and established, and they became the bitterest and most persevering assailants of Walpole.

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, LONDON, IN 1721. (From a Painting on a Fan.)

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Soon after the close of the Session in June, the king proceeded to Hanover, accompanied, as usual, by Townshend and the Duchess of Kendal. The state of his foreign relations demanded the utmost attention, and very soon underwent the most extraordinary changes. These were precipitated by the Duke of Bourbon, and were caused by the state of the French succession. The young king might have children, and the only reason why he might not have legitimate issue soon was that he was affianced to the Infanta, Mary Ann, Philip's daughter, then a mere child. Should he not have children, the young Duke of Orleans, the son of the late Regent, would succeed him. To prevent this contingency, the Duke of Bourbon, who had a violent hatred of Orleans, prevailed on Louis to dismiss the Infanta, and choose as queen some princess of mature age. He turned his eye for this purpose on the Princess Anne of England, but George declined the alliance, because the Queen of France was bound to become Catholic. The Princess Mary Leczinska was next fixed upon, daughter of the exiled Stanislaus of Poland, and the Duke of Bourbon then sent the Infanta back to Spain.

This insult roused the fiery blood of Spain. The king and queen were excited to paroxysms of rage. They told Mr. William Stanhope that, in future, they would put confidence in no prince except his master, nor admit any one else to mediate for them in their negotiations. But George refused to break with France on their account, and ventured to remind Philip that he himself stood greatly in need of the alliance with France. Blinded, however, by their wounded pride, the King and Queen of Spain now turned their anger against England. They recalled their plenipotentiaries from the Congress of Cambray, which was sitting to settle the affairs of Europe, and professed their readiness to abandon all their hostility to the Emperor of Germany, and to concede all that they had so long demanded from him, on condition that he entered into a close alliance with them against France and England. They sent back to France the widow of the late Don Louis, and also Mademoiselle Beaujolais, another daughter of the late Regent Orleans, who had been contracted to Don Carlos.

The Emperor of Germany was delighted at the Spanish offer. He had always felt himself aggrieved by the conditions of the Quadruple Alliance. He was afraid of France, and hated George of England for his German policy. He had, moreover, embroiled himself with both England and Holland, by establishing at Ostend an East India Company, which was declared to be in violation of the Treaty of Westphalia, and was, at all events, regarded with particular jealousy by both England and Holland. This being the case, Ripperda, the envoy of Spain, a Dutch adventurer, who had been the tool of Alberoni, completed with ease a treaty with the Emperor at Vienna, which was signed on the 30th of April, 1725.

By this treaty almost everything was given up which had kept Spain and Austria in war and conflict for many years, and by themselves and their allies had steeped Europe in blood. The King of Spain agreed to sanction the Ostend Company, to yield the long-contested point regarding the exclusive mastership of the Golden Fleece. He surrendered the right to garrison with Spanish troops the fortresses of Tuscany. He acknowledged the Emperor's right to Naples, Sicily, the Milanese, and Netherlands, and guaranteed what was termed the Pragmatic Sanction; that is, the succession of the hereditary states of Austria in the female line. This was a concession of immense importance to the Emperor, who had only daughters, and whose claim to the Flemish and Italian dominions might thus have been contested by Philip on the Emperor's death. Thus, before the emotions of a family quarrel, fell at once all the mighty questions which had rent and desolated Europe for a quarter of a century! Both the sovereigns engaged to afford mutual support should either be attacked. Charles agreed to bring into the field twenty thousand foot and ten thousand horse, Philip twenty thousand troops and fifteen ships of war.

The world looked on in astonishment—diplomatists in dread of more secret and momentous compacts, and that not without cause. In the heat of this hastily-formed alliance, it was proposed to marry the young Archduchess, the heiress of the Austrian States, to one of the Infants of Spain—a contract, if carried out, which would probably have overthrown all that had been done at such cost of life and wealth for the establishment of the balance of power. This dangerous project was frustrated by other events, but serious engagements were entered into for compelling England to surrender Gibraltar and Minorca to Spain, and for placing the Pretender on the throne of Great Britain.