5-0} Lowell UnwMitg §ilrwg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME PROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 .^././..6..f.^.o..a ■^/■■g://...y.€».3 5474 My 9 '3^ 3s 3 e '40 ^ 4- '49 6 m49 J MAY k; 5 1949J 3 1924 088 004 506 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924088004506 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES B OLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES BY WALTER SICHEL LATE EXHIBITIONER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 91 & 93 FIFTH AVENUE I9QX T H ^3 PERIOD I THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE '* Andheiv the block off and get out the man." — PoPE, " Dunciad. " " To Friendship and Liberty.^'' — Bolingbroke's Toast. '■'■For charity and justice are due to the dead as ivell as to the li-ving. " — BOUNGBROKE, PHILOSOPHICAL WoRKS : Essay 4. " Whether the piece be of three or Jive acts^ the part may be long: and he ivho sustains it through the tuhole^ may be said to die in the fulness of years ^ ivhilst he "who declines it sooner, ^'^y ^^ ^^^^ "^^ '^ ^'"^^ out half his days."" — Bolingbroke, " On the Spirit of Patriotism.'' "iVt' "virtutcs sileanfur." — TaciTus. Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson ^5" Co. Edinburgh MEMORISE PARENTUM OPTIMO RUM CARISSIM^. HAS EHEU! TARDAS PRIMITIAS FILIUS REVERENTER DEDICAT. PREFACE The age of Anne and the commanding figure of Boling- broke will always fascinate. Without derogating from my predecessors, to some of whom I am indebted, I may say that the first has not been exhausted, nor the second as yet understood. This is an attempt to present from original sources, and with the fresh materials recently to hand, some adequate portrait of a great genius and of the crowded background in which he moved. Much is here exhibited for the first time. Among other matters, St. John's early days, his first wife's per- sonality, his conduct preceding his flight, the interpretation and application of his many political works, the true state of parties, the full Guiscard episode, the plot of Eugene, the long labyrinth of the Utrecht negotiations, Bothmar's influence, the death-scene of Queen Anne, the parlia- mentary debates, and the real relations, political and social, of many prominent but unexplored figures. Bolingbroke's life necessitates division. There are two persons and two periods. This volume embraces his whole public career and the complete reign of Queen Anne. In another I hope to delineate Bolingbroke, out of place but not out of power, in a new world of leaders and events ; and to show the debt of Burke and Gibbon, as well as of Pope and Voltaire, to his thoughts, words, and style. viii PREFACE All our influential historians have been Whigs, Some vindication of Tory principles seemed, on an impartial review, indispensable. In every case I have cited autho- rities ; and, if my assertions are impugned, my authorities must be rebutted also. Differing, as I do, from previous histories both m view and system, I have adopted a method which, up to the d^but of Bolingbroke himself, somewhat scatters the sequence of time. I have sought through a careful index to restore this chain for the student. My grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr. William Blackwood and Mr. John Murray for allowing me to insert a few sentences from articles which appeared in Maga and The Quarterly Review respectively during 1899; also to the "Dictionary of National Biography," the aid of which to research is invaluable. I may add, with regard to my third chapter, that I delayed reading " Social England " till my researches were ended ; and then found that it supplemented, without repeating, the points there emphasised. In selecting from sources so many and various, my aim has been to make the actors, and especially the chief actor, speak in their own words. My principle has been that what is interesting is important, and that what is important should be made interesting. That such a work should have imperfections is in- evitable. I can only commend it to the patient indulg- ence of the public. W. SICHEL. January 1st, 1901. CONTENTS CHAPTER I CAGE INTRODUCTORY I CHAPTER n QUEKN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES . .II CHAPTER HI THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 84 CHAPTER IV EARLY DAYS. 138 CHAPTER V INTERMEZZO — 1709-1710 ....... 20I CHAPTER VI CHURCH AND STATE 219 CHAPTER VII THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE — UP TO MARCH 171I 278 CHAPTER VIII THE PRELIMINARIES 316 CHAPTER IX THE NEGOTIATIONS 357 X CONTENTS CHAPTER X »AGE THE NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUED 409 CHAPTER XI TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 4^6 CHAPTER XII " LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 49^ INDEX 531 ERRATUM The allusions to characters on pages 220, note 3, and 295 are from Bolingbroke's " Reflections upon Exile," and not from his " True Use of Retirement and Study," which immediately precedes them in volume viii. of his Works. In the Index under "Clarendon" the later references, of course, refer to Bolingbroke's contemporary. BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The leading actors on the stage of history are certain to become types in the popular tradition, and so the tragi- comedy of human character tends continually towards melodrama rather than drama. The passions and pre- judices of sect and faction survive the decay or develop- ment of creed and party themselves. The scene is crowded with villains or heroes, although " Manners with Fortunes, Humours turn with climes, Tenets with Books and Principles with Times." History too often " compares the proceedings without com- paring the situations." ^ 1^11 great men should be judged by the aims and stan- dards of their age. But perhaps no great man ever needed the sympathy of imagination leavening judgment more than Henry St. John, the first Viscount Bolingbroke. He was born to be admired rather than loved, to be dreaded rather than respected. ^ He was unique in a unique ' Bolingbroke, " Dissertation on Parties," Letter 9. ^ And yet such was not quite the verdict of Swift, who, in October 1729, writes to Bolingbroke : " ... But yet I see you as much esteemed, as much beloved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more (though it be almost impossible) than ever you were in your highest exaltation — only I grieve like an alderman {i.e. Barber) that you are not so rich." Swift's Works (Scott's edition), vol. xvii. p. 301. A 2 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES period. Statesmanship, eloquence, and administrative ability, which in his hot-headed youth compelled the ad- miration of Swift and the mingled fear and wonder of both Harley and Marlborough, which in his middle age by turns dazzled and embittered Pulteney and Carteret, which awed Walpole and his satellites beneath the mask of their scorn, which nearly succeeded in moulding a loose faction into a magnificent party, which provoked, after his death, the young Burke into indignant imitation,^ which controlled the reins of Government during the last four years of Queen Anne, and moved the springs of opposition during the first eight years of George the Second, were allied to a literary genius which has left an undying imprint on Pope and Voltaire, a style which kindled Chatham,^ inspired Gibbon,^ and preluded Macaulay, a personal fascination and irresistible persuasiveness which enchanted his "dearest foes.'^ Nor was his career less singular than his endowmenfT Thrice did the death of a monarch dash the cup of fruition from his lips.* Twice was he almost Prime Minister,^ and once almost a king- maker. Twice an exile and once an outlaw. He pro- jected a kingdom in the Bermudas.* He lived to be, 1^ i_IiUusJIA3'in(iHatien-of-Natu«il-S«eiety"-(i7S6), vol. xix. p. 404. 2 See " Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham," p. 108. ' We shall discuss this question at length in a subsequent volume. Suffice it now to say that, though Gibbon only once quoted him, he vfas "domesticated" with Mallet just after this literary executor of Bolingbroke had published his works ; that there are many traces of obligation to Bolingbroke in Gibbon's great history, and that there is a passage in the " Study of History " which probably suggested it. See Bolingbroke's Works (edition 1752), vol. viii. p. 133. * The death of Queen Anne prevented his consolidation and leadership of the Tories under George I. The death of Louis XIV. dashed the hopes of the Pre- tender to the ground. The death of George the First prevented his own premier- ship : cf. as to this remarkable circumstance Chesterfield's Memoirs, 42, 283, and the very important authority (through Pelham) quoted in the Onslow Papers. Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. App. pt. 9, p. 516. In a letter to Swift of June 24, 1727 (Works, Scott's edition, vol. xvii. p. 150), Bolingbroke says " fortune turned rotten at the very moment it grew ripe. " ' On the first occasion he was actually Prime Minister for two days, until the white staff was handed to the Duke of Shrewsbury. Those two days were used for securing ;^iooo for Swift. ' Swift's Works (Letters), Scott's edition, vol, xvii. p. 22. INTRODUCTORY 3 in the words of his wife, "a stately Roman aqueduct through which the water no longer flowed." The man of pleasure, the man of business, a student, a philoso- pher, the first to systematise history and to rationalise criticism, he electrified his most opposite surroundings. And however Themistoclean his conduct may appear, his thoughts are the most consistent in our language ^ and the most vital to our constitution. ^No one was more reproached with perfidy or more implicitly followed. None created a more brilliant stir in his age, yet our own has been necessary for the partial fulfilment of his dreams. No scepticism attracted so much belief, no belief more scepticism. His friendships were constant and with the best intellects of his day. Wherever he went he ruled, and yet whenever he aspired he failed. So lofty, so little, so ephemeral, and so enduring an assemblage of qualities have rarely met. Small wonder that the verdicts of " Prince Posterity" have been equally conflicting. He has been alternately consigned to the stars and to the dust. Pope, who adored, adapted, and betrayed him, called him an angel.^ Walpole, who loathed him, a " perjured villain." Walpole's finnikin son denounced him as "that master- hand at sedition." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who abominated a Tory almost as much as any friend of Pope, branded him "a vile man." Mrs. Delany, who as a child had been petted and treated by him, admired but reprobated him as a girl. Addison, who had tasted his salt, complacently misquoted "that cankered Bolingbroke."7 ' His last published political work "On the State of the Nation" (I749). written long after any personal motive could be imputed to him, after Walpole's downfall and after the end of Carteret's brief-lived ascendancy, contains the same arguments and principles, in the same brilliant form, as are found in his earliest productions. It is a fine work and can still be read " for use, for ornament, and for ability." The same consideration applies to his chef-d' auvre, "On the Study and Use of History," written in 1736, which for power, condensation, and ori- ginality, has never been surpassed. ^ " Paulo minus ab angelis." Pope to Swift ; Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 44. In his later letters to Swift he again terms him "more than mortal," and in another place protests that, whatever happens, "Bolingbroke will still remain " the greatest man in the world." 4 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Not without reason did Chesterfield tell Bolingbroke, during the last seven years of his ebbing and embittered life, that against him had been leagued a "coalition of Whigs, Tories, Trimmers, and Jacobites." Not without reason was Bolingbroke's comment, " But Truth is on my side." i But Swift was never weary in his praises long after the intrigues which associated them had flickered out,^ and at a period when even the endeavours of their coterie to transplant him to England had proved ineffectual. He named his ' Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 380. 2 Cf. especially Swift's letter to Bolingbroke, October 31, 1729, Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 300 : — " . . . You were my hero, but the other never was. Yet if he were, it was your own fault who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him in the beginning of your Ministry from my accusations. But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive, and his whole scene was fifty times more a what-d'ye-call-it than yours : for I declare yours was Unie ..." In the same year Bolingbroke thus reciprocated his admiration, " I loved you almost twenty years ago." See also the less familiar mention in the "Inquiry:" — "But what I have often wondered at in a man of his temper was his prodigious application whenever he thought it necessary ; for he would plod days and nights like the lowest clerk in an office. His talent for speaking in public, for which he was so very cele- brated, I know nothing of except from the information of others, but understand, as men of both parties have assured me, that, in this point, in their memory and judgment, he was never equalled." See also Swift's letter to him of August 8, 1738 : — " . . . Besides you never deceived me even when you were a great Minister of State ; and yet I love you still more for condescending to write to me when you had the honour to be an exile." Every one recollects the tribute at the outset of their acquaintance in the Journal to Stella, but few will recall his statement that George, Lord Digby, afterwards Earl of Bristol, who was banished from France for the part he took in the Fronde, and who reappeared in England, an eccentric at the Restoration, was Bolingbroke's prototype. Cf. Swift's Works, vol. xv. p. 413. With regard to Swift's comparison of Bolingbroke with Lord Digby, it may be interesting to recall Clarendon's summary of his character : — " He had been, by the extra- ordinary favour of King James to his person (for he was a very handsome man) and his parts, which were naturally great and had been improved by a good education at home and abroad, sent ambassador to Spain before he was thirty years of age . . . and was then crushed by the power of the Duke of Buckingham . . . upon which he was imprisoned on his return ; and after the Duke's death . . . the Earl of Bristol could not recover any admission to the Court, but lived , in the country . . . ; and before in the beginning of Parliament appeared in the head of all the discontented party, but quickly left them when they entered upon their unwarrantable violences. . . . Though he was a man of great parts, and a wise man, yet he had been for the most part single, and by himself in business INTRODUCTORY 5 very horse " Bolingbroke." ^ In 1733 he calls Boling- broke and Pope the two best friends he ever had.^ Lord Chesterfield, his political opponent, termed his penetration "almost intuition," and confessed that till he read "The Patriot King," he did not know " all the extent and powers of the English language." Of his memory he observed that " it is his pocket-money, and he never has occasion to draw upon a book for any sum." He pays a tribute to his " noble and generous sentiments," and admits that " if his conduct in the former part of his life had been equal to all his natural and acquired talents, he would justly have merited the title of all-accomplished."^ Lord Peter- borough, the most frank and impulsive of wits, remained his devotee. Dr. Arbuthnot, the most genial of good fellows, loved him to the last. Windham, Bathurst, and Marchmont never abandoned their affectionate admira- tion. Homage and friendship hovered around long after the world had ceased to fear or had begun to outlive him. Speaker Onslow,* a contemporary and keen enemy, speaks of his "unbounded spirit and ambition." He mentions, with some justice, his impatience of restraint, and his disdain of " any notion of equality with others in business." " He must," he adds, " be first." But his inference is false because biassed and against the facts of human nature. " Lord Bolingbroke," he concludes, " was of a temper to overturn kingdoms to make way for himself which he managed with good sufficiency ; and had lived so little in consort, so that in council he was passionate and supercilious, and did not bear contradiction without much passion, and was too voluminous in discourses, so that he was not considered there with much respect." See Clarendon's History, ed. 1843, p. 370. He here touches the weak spot in Bolingbroke's character — his impatient inability to act in concert with others. Swift's restlessness and Bolingbroke's isolation marred their respective careers. The former became sullenly listless when out of the stir of exciting intrigue, the latter subsided because he could not tolerate the stupidities of his associates. But literature is a sphere that compensates for action, and where they both still reign pre-eminent. ^ Cf. Letter of Vanessa to Swift, June 6, 1713 : "How does 'Bolingbroke' perform ? " ' Swift's Works, vol. xviii. p. 207. ' Letters, vol. ii. p. 515. * Onslow Papers ; Hist. MS. Comm., 14th Rep. App. pt. ix. p. 471. 6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES and his talents to govern the world." That Bolingbroke was passionate and lacked self-control is never forgotten by his foes. That he was candid is unanimously recorded by his friends. It is the cold, not the warm temperament that calculates with craft and executes without a qualm ; and we shall see that after all personal resentment had been gratified and his rival overthrown, after, again, in advanced years, he had no political stake for which to play, he was still consumed with a zeal for the greatness of his country. His was a lofty and a lonely soul. " Truths would you teach, and save a sinking land— All fear, none heed you, and few understand." After his death, Dr. Johnson, who pilfered his "Patriot" opinions, stigmatised him as " a scoundrel and a coward," because he was a theist (though he excused and belauded Gibbon), and vented his righteous wrath over his last breath. " Black as the whirlwind of the north St. John's fell genius issued forth." ^ The last act of the dying Fielding was to begin a refutation of that scheme of Natural Religion which in- censed the Church by revealing the true trend of Georgian latitudinarianism ; but that refutation itself pays a forcible tribute to the uncompromising power of his opponent.^ Burke, who borrowed not only his oratory, but, as we shall eventually show, his thoughts and even his words, disclaimed him as tinsel ; Macaulay sweepingly followed suit with his " brilliant knave " as a balance in the architec- tural antithesis of a sentence. Thackeray has boldly and ' The lines repeated by Dr. Johnson are Garrick's, and refer to the death of Pelham simultaneously with the first publication of Bolingbroke's works in 1754. Cf. Coxe's "Pelham," vol. ii. p. 305. The whole passage runs ;^ " The same sad morn to Church and State, So for our sins 'twas fixed by fate, A double stroke was given. Black as the whirlwind of the north, St. John's fell genius issued forth And Pelham's fled to heaven." ^ " Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham,'' vol. i. INTRODUCTORY 7 inaccurately^ portrayed him toasting the Protector over his cups. Carlyle dismisses him with " Pericles-Boling- broke " and " his lacquered brass ; " and, in our own time, Mr. John Morley has gravely denominated him " a consum- mate posture-maker." Throughout he has been regarded as the Joseph Surface of history, while his opponents are con- stantly treated as the companion-figure of the comedy. We shall prove the first type to be an unwarranted attribution ; while the second in reality lacks both the carelessness and the generosity of Sheridan's prodigal. Throughout — as Lytton so justly observes in his " Devereux " — he has been more discussed and less read than any great figure of the past. Nor has the psychology of "a man of sentiment' been sufficiently examined. FDeep thought and keen feel- ing were constantly contending in his diversified being. But Disraeli's reorganisation of Toryism and revival of the Imperial idea (which after all means a united nation as well as a united empire) confessedly springs from his attachment to this misconstrued and resplendent genius. Disraeli himself once said that George Smythe, afterwards Lord Strangf ord, was Bolingbroke's lineal successor ; but no attentive student of the works of Bolingbroke and the opinions of Disraeli can fail to notice the profound in- fluence of the former on the latter. Disraeli's views of the constitution are founded on Bolingbroke and steeped in the era of Anne, while some of his most famous -expressions are quotations from him : among these we may instance " Plundering and blundering " and the application of " Imperium et libertas^lij Bolingbroke has been per- petually condemned and acquitted. So has Voltaire. The last word has not yet been said about Voltaire ; nor has it, we venture to assert, about Bolingbroke. Among the double stars there is one which the Arabians named " Algol." Through the vista of the firmament, we are told, it blinks in provoking chiaroscuro. It is both demon and seraph. But modern science has unravelled ^ Cf. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. viii. p. 208 : " As little as I honour his (Cromwell's) memory." § BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the mystery. Mated with Algol's radiance is an imp of darkness who obscures it. Bolingbroke is such a double star. The malignity of the three Walpoles still pursues him. His sheen is in their shade. Bolingbroke united in a remarkable degree speculation and action. Nor has he allowed this combination to slip uncommemorated. In his tract on "The Spirit of Patriot- ism " he contrasts the " speculative philosopher " with him "who speculates in order to act, goes on and carries his scheme into execution." " His labour," he proceeds in one of those rhythmical crescendos which resound his speeches, " continues, it varies, it increases ; but so does his pleasure too. The execution, indeed, is often traversed by unforeseen and untoward circumstances, by the per- verseness or treachery of friends, and by the power or malice of enemies. . . . Whilst a great event is in suspense, the action warms, and the very suspense, made up of hope and fear, maintains no unpleasing agitation in the mind. If the event is decided successfully, such a man enjoys pleasure proportionable to the good he has done. If the event is decided otherwise, and usurping courts or over- bearing parties prevail ; such a man has still the testimony of conscience, and a sense of the honour he has acquired, to soothe his mind and support his courage." ^ The conventional notions of his character are so re- markably expressed by Disraeli's description of " Fakre- deen " in " Tancred," that we transcribe the passage : " He lived in the centre of intrigues which were to shake thrones, and perhaps to form them. He became habi- tuated to the idea that everything could be achieved by dexterity, and that there was no test of conduct except success. To dissemble and to simulate ; to conduct con- fidential negotiations with contending powers and parties at the same time ; to be ready to adopt any opinion and to possess none ; to fall into the public humour of the moment and to evade the impending catastrophe ; to look upon every man as a tool, and never to do anything which ' Bolingbroke's Works (mixed edition of 1752 and 1754), vol. viii. p. 30. INTRODUCTORY 9 had not a definite though circuitous purpose — these were his political accomplishments ; and, while he recognised them as the best means of success, he found in the exercise excitement and delight. To be the centre of a maze of manoeuvres was his empyrean. . . , Recklessness with him was a principle of action. He trusted always to his fertile expedients if he failed, and the risk in the meanwhile of paramount success — the fortune of those who are entitled to be rash. With all his audacity, which was nearly equal to his craft, he had no moral courage." Such is very much the received version of Bolingbroke. Was he maligned or malignant ? Was he, like Homer's Autolycus, "paramount at theft and perjury ?" If so, it is curious that, in an epoch more of taste than of erudition, he was learned ; at a period of honoured avarice, disdainful of lucre ; ^ in surroundings where nimbleness outran reflec- tion, the profound, originator of a plan ; at a time when a new order was compassing a new oligarchy, the assertor of " the ancestral alliance of the Crown, the Church, and the People." It is not without significance that he united the Cavalier and the Roundhead branches of his family, and that in his veins ran the blood both of the Beau- champs ^ and the Cromwells.^ " 'Tis no matter what the world says of us. If a man is sensible that he has always acted for the good of his country, he may always lay down his head with pleasure on his pillow ; and this is the great satisfaction that I enjoy and have always enjoyed amidst all that has been said against me." * So spoke Bolingbroke in 1744, after the fevers of four separate careers were stilled, ' Cf. among many other passages, the following short sentence from his essay " Of the State of Parties : " "A great regard to wealth and a total contempt of virtue are sentiments very nearly allied." Bolingbroke's Works (mixed edition of 1752 and 1754), vol. vii. p. 259. ' The arms of Henry VII.'s grandmother were quartered with those of the St. Johns in the old stained glass window of Battersea Church. See Lyson's "Environs of London" (Surrey), vol. i. p. 32. 3 For Cromwell's letter to Bolingbroke's great-grandmother, see Carlyle, "Cromwell's Letters," vol. i. p. 79. Oliver St. John, his Chief Justice, had twice intermarried with the Cromwells. See post, chap. iv. * Spence, p. 238. lo BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES and in the dead calm of advancing age. That he spoke truth will, we hope, appear to the patient peruser of these pages. "History," he says, "is philosophy teaching by ex- amples." "The school of example is the world, and the masters of this school are history and experience." In what we are to say we shall try to avoid the error which mistakes a sequence of dates for an intelligence of energies — the style which is a mere nuntia vetustatis, as well as that second-hand repetition of prejudice which, in Bolingbroke's own words, converts history into "authorised romance." Character even more than achievement will be our study. To interpret events by character and not character by events is the true historical method. For, indeed, the peruser of chronicles is too often reminded of an auction in some ancient manor. The garniture is dis- persed in order and catalogued for sale. The inventories are tritely truthful and superficially solid. But the main- spring of memories, the intimacies of association are want- ing ; the ghosts that haunt the whispering corridors are invisible and neglected. It is a sale of dead lumber. CHAPTER II QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES A FOREIGN influence has constantly modified the dividing periods of English history. The age of Elizabeth was tinged with the Italianism of the Renaissance ; that of the Stuarts imported French ideas. With WiUiam of Orange arose the Dutch atmosphere. Method and thrift ; a vogue for clipped gardens and trim literature ; for tiles and china, coffee and tulips ; for houses like those at the Hague ; above all, for republican notions manipulated by caballing oligar- chies with all the formalities of the counting-house and the comphcations of the ledger. The spirit of England turned retail. The moneyed interest ruled rampant ; finance was directly based on Dutch models,^ and the " New Whig " policy of 1707, on the bank.^ Queen Anne herself succeeded, as it were, to this tem- perament of her time. From her ancestors she inherited obstinacy, a fondness for violent exercise,* a dependence ' The national debt, as is well known, was of Dutch origin and was sug- gested by Burnet. It was most uncongenial to the landed interest. Cf. Swift (Scott's edit.), vol. v. 254, 255. It is not so well known that the Excise was also suggested by the plodding ingenuity of Holland. Cf. " The People of England's Grievances, &c.," by Sir James Montgomery, Somers Tracts (edit. 1748), p. 522 : " It is already given in the intention of some ; for one Parker, agent from the Dutch bankers, is come out of Holland with a plan or method there con- trived for raising it here in England." William had written in September 1682, on the marriage of Sophia of Celle to George of Hanover, " I perceive that in our generation money is the sole consideration." Pauli's article in Rundschau, 1883, p. 348. Betty Wentworth writes in July 1710, "For money now-a-days is the ruling passion." Wentworth Papers, p. 126. * Cf. Swift's Works, iv. 62. . . . " They preferred the monied interest to the landed, and rely on the bank and the East India Company." ^ Every one remembers Swift's description of her in his Journal when he was at Windsor in July 17 11, "Drives furiously like Jehu, and is a mighty huntress like Nimrod." 12 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES on favourites, and a strong Church feeling. Her intense regularity and love of etiquette belonged to her epoch. But she had no love for William or his era. She styled him "a Dutch monster." ^ She could never forget her quarrels with her sister and that masterful, inscrutable husband. It was her constant boast that her "empire" was based on the love of her subjects, and though William had perpetually protested his zeal for the honour of his adopted country, he could not win their affections, nor barely their gratitude. It was remembered that by his will he bequeathed his property to the King of Prussia.^ He was never regarded as more than the stepfather, while Anne was acclaimed the " true nursing mother " ^ of her king- doms, and beloved for the " English heart "* which endeared her first speech to her first Parliament. She was devoted to peace both at home and abroad, and revolted at the notion of bloodshed. There is scarcely one of her speeches to her Parliaments which does not breathe these sentiments. Directly after the Peace of Utrecht had been proclaimed she herself chose as text for the sermon "Blessed are the peacemakers." ° Anne was, moreover, haunted by the ghosts of the past and the goblins of the future. On the one hand was the prick of undutifulness towards her father, on the other a reluctance to face the problem of her successor. She would not be confronted ■ by her coffin.' She was narrow, sincere, slow, and fidgety ; by fits confid- ing and suspicious, dogged and vacillating. But she was also a virtuous and religious woman, considerate of de- pendents,' and faithful to her conceptions of duty ; her 1 Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 4.18. ^ Luttrell, vi. 147. ^ Among many other places she is so styled in Swift's will. Although Anne disappointed Swift of preferment, he never once mentions her with disrespect. * Cf. Swift " On the Union : " " The Queen has lately lost a part of her entirely English heart." » Dartmouth Papers. Hist. MS. Coram., n Rep. App. pt. v. p. 315. " "... It being a thing I cannot bear to leave any successor here, though but for a week." Letter to the Duchess of Marlborough, 1705 ; "Conduct of the Duchess," p. 154. ' Cy; as an instance her kindness in letting Peter Wentworth " ride" inside her carriage while it was raining. Wentworth Papers, p. 206. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 13 public-spirited generosity surrendered ^17,000 a year for poor livings and ^£10,000 a year for national purposes.^ Her attachment to the High Church perpetually swayed her personal predilections. Burnet and all William's bishops she abhorred as latitudinarian Whigs, although she by no means repudiated their " moderating " projects. Had not Burnet been already preferred, she would have refused him preferment, as she afterwards did Hoadley and on the same grounds. She would certainly have agreed with the Tory epitaph on the former : — " If such a soul To heaven has stole, And 'scaped old Satan's clutches, We'd here presume There may be room For Marlboro' and his Duchess." And with the Tory libel on the latter : — " And how does Ben Hoadley ? Oh, he's very well, A truer blue Whig You have not in hell." The Tories she always called the " High Church party." * She believed that the Low Church section were unfriendly to the constitution ; nor would Marlborough and Godolphin have had a chance of engrossing her favour had they not been professed Tories at her accession. In 1702 she writes to the Duchess of Marlborough: "And upon my word, my dear Mrs. Freeman, you are mightily mistaken in your notion of a true Whig ; for the character you give of them does not in the least belong to them, but to the Church." ^ Lecky, "History of the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. ^ "Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough," p. 124, and cf. p. 158, where her letter to the Duchess of Marlborough of November 21, 1704, is quoted ; "As to my saying the Church was in some danger in the late reign, I cannot alter my opinion ; for, though there was no violent thing done, everybody that will speak impartially must own that everything was leaning towards the Whigs, and whenever that is I shall think the Church beginning to be in danger." When " that was " (in 1708), the Junto thought to have weaned the Queen from her High Church sympathies, but the change was only a temporary cloak of her native sympathies. This brochure is good evidence for anything counter to the Duchess herself. 14 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Of the many mortifying dictations to which she was ex- posed between the years 1708-1710, she resented none more than that of the Junto who insisted on deciding Church preferments.! Her own project— itself suggested by a tract of Swift— for building fifty new churches in London was far dearer to her heart than the Tory ex- pedient of making a dozen new peers ; and her aim was to be queen indeed without unduly exalting her consti- tutional prerogative. Her dependence on favourites was not only an in- heritance, but the partial result of her early Ufe, which had created a small Stuart court in antagonism to the foreign favourites of her brother-in-law. She had been withdrawn from Papist surroundings, and her instructor had been Compton. By Compton, again, she had been spirited away to Nottingham when she abandoned her father. Sharp, less extreme in his Church opinions, suc- ceeded Compton as Anne's spiritual director. Women who lean much upon the clergy lean also upon other women and on doctors. It was so with Anne. " Lo, Marlborough's Duchess ! Welcome to her Grace— Her with the fury heart and fairy face." ^ Sarah Jennings — perhaps the best hated intrigante of any period — owed her first introduction to Mrs. Corn- wallis, a Papist whom she courted, by means of Compton again.^ This remarkable woman confesses most disin- genuously that, " having never read nor employed my time in anything but playing at cards, and having no ambition myself, I thought that the Prince of Orange's sole design was to provide for the safety of his own country by obliging King James to keep the laws of ours." * " No ambition ! " Lady Macbeth had not more than my Lady Marlborough. She early endeared herself to Anne's ivy- like disposition. There is little doubt that she connived 1 See Ralph's " The Other Side of the Question," p. 300. ^ Bulwer Lytton's " St. Stephen's." » Burnet, p. 486, tiote.'\ * "Conduct of the Duchess," p. 21. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 15 at her escape. When William and Mary insulted and maltreated the heiress-apparent, when Prince George of Denmark was forbidden to command a fleet, when the King docked the allowance of the little Duke of Gloucester, who so sympathetic as " Mrs. Freeman ? " who, therefore, so devoted as the querulous Princess, whose large family was only represented by one delicate boy ? She would sign herself " passionately yours." And when, in 1700, that sickly lad died of a " malignant fever;" when, in 1703, the Duchess's only son also expired,^ the bond became riveted the closer, till at length the Queen found herself a slave in its fetters. The fetters were shaken off, and the instrument was Abigail Masham, a plain, assiduous woman ^ with a shrewd head. She owed her appointment as " dresser " to the fact that she was niece by marriage to Sarah's grandfather. She owed her promotion and ascendancy to her distant cousinship with Harley. She owed her opportunity to the Queen's second bereavement through widowhood in 1708.^ Then began the duel between the reigning and the rising favourites. The former's account has been proved a false- hood by the Portland Papers. The latter became a fel- low-sufferer with the Queen at the hands of the hector- ing Duchess, who strove that the Junto-syndicate should tyrannise over England. But the Duchess of Somerset still remained to watch and counteract Abigail and frighten the poor Queen, crippled with gout and longing for rest.* It was said that she was ruined by her husband as Marl- borough was by his wife. In the Wentworth Papers we ^ It was at this date that Anne wrote to Lady Marlborough, ' ' The unfortunate ought also to come to the unfortunate." Cf. Coxe's "Life of Marlborough," i. 223. ' She was asked by the Queen to live quietly, so as not to attract " the envy of the people," like the Duchess of Marlborough. Wentworth Papers, p. 285. Swift in his Journal says she reminded him of one Mrs. MaloUy, who was his landlady at Trim. 3 Cf. Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 510. * The dismissal of this haughty, meddlesome woman was what Swift and Bolingbroke insisted upon as Harley's true policy. Cf. Swift, Journal, Sept. 20, 1711 ; Dec. 8, 1711 ; Dec. 9, 1711. This affords a clue to many obscure passages which have been misconstrued by historians. Cf. especially Swift's letter to Bolingbroke, August 7, 1714 : " Having let slip those dispositions she had got 1 6 BOLINGBOKE AND HIS TIMES gain a significant glimpse of the Queen. It is under date January 1712. "On Saturday the Queen took all her clothes and divided them herself in several heaps among the bedchamber women by seniority, and Lady Masham took in her turn." 1 How wrathful must the red-haired Duchess of Somerset have been, who held the golden key which Sarah flung down in scorn, to have perforce received the first parcel ; how humble must Abigail have appeared as she curtseyed for the royal bounty lower in the list ! But the humility was dipped in pride, for Abigail, who bore the snubs and caprices, held also the twisted skein of her cousin's tangle. The Queen loved those she bullied, not such as bullied her. We mentioned physicians as likely to attract Anne's temperament. She cultivated a number, the most conspicuous of whom were Dr. Ratcliffe and Dr. Arbuthnot. M. Aim6, a French surgeon, who evoked Harley's mot of " II faut aimer pour etre aime," was also among them. Dr. Ratcliffe was the fashionable ^sculapius.^ His love of money and of ladies was frequently satirised. The Wentworth Papers style him an " old amourist." ^ He affected gallantries with the Duchess of Bolton.* The Tatler^ ridiculed him in a sentence. "The anxious and mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover." In the summer of 1709 the after her sickness at Windsor," i.e. in the summer of 1712, a year after the quarrel between Mrs. Masham and the Duchess of Somerset. As Mistress of the Robes she assumed a court dictation. See Wentworth Papers, p. 249, and cf. Swift's letter to Archbishop King, August 26, 1 7 1 1 , and Arbuthnot's to Swift, July 24, 1 7 14. ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 252. ' In this connection it may be interesting to remember the fees of the time. " To a graduate in physick his due is about ten shillings, though he commonly expects or demands twenty. Those that are only licensed physicians, their due is no more than six shillings and eightpence, though they commonly demand ten shillings. A surgeon's fee is twelve pence a mile, be his journey far or near ; ten groats to set a bone broke or out of joint, and for letting of blood, one shilling ; the cutting off or amputation of any limb is five pounds, but there is no settled price for the time." " Levamen Infirmi, or Cordial Comfort to the Sick and Diseased," by D. Irish, Practitioner in Surgery, 1700, pp. 28 and 29. Quoted Lyson's " Environs of London," vol. i. p. 115. ' Page 97. • The husband of this lady Swift terms "a great booby," x. 301. ° No. 43. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 17 softer passion proved the stronger, for he gave "musick upon the water and a fine supper in the barge" for the delectation of the Duchess. His conduct during the Queen's last seizure nearly caused his ruin, for he refused at first to attend when suddenly summoned. The Queen was constantly ailing, as she was constantly aggrieved. The constitution perhaps caused the temperament. She had a distemper of the eyes ; she had an inward weakness ; and she had the gout. But she rallied from time to time and then appeared robust. The summer of 171 2 was one of her good summers. So was that of 1714, when the final attack supervened. In an edition (1704) of the " State Poems" which we possess is a contemporary manuscript set of obscene verses on the Queen and Ratcliffe. Every one remembers Prior's epigram upon him : — " . . . cured of my disease, I died last night of my physician.'' He founded the " Radcliffe '' at Oxford, and survived the Queen but a few months. Dr. Arbuthnot (or " Albertmote," as the Wentworth genius for misspelling burlesques him) was of a very dif- ferent calibre. Swift calls him " the Queen's favourite." He figures prominently at her court when at Windsor in the autumn of 1711.1 He seems certainly to have been the most humorous and best - humoured of that bril- liant galaxy over which Harley, Swift, and Bolingbroke (whose exact contemporary he was) presided. His per- sonal characteristics were those of unambitious ability. He was, in Swift's phrase, "the king of inattention." ^ He " slouched in his gait." He played picquet. He was fond of practical jokes. His light-heartedness is teased by Swift in the verses on his own death : — " Poor Pope would grieve a month, and Gay A week, and Arbuthnot a day." ' ' On his president-day at the " Brothers' " weekly dinner, the dinner was dressed in the Queen's kitchen. Swift, Journal, March 27, 1712. 2 Swift to Gay. Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 79. ' " On the death of Dr. Swift." Poems (Aldine edition), vol. ii. p. 91. B 1 8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Such letters and verses as have come down to us exhibit a talent which, while it modestly blushed as dilettante, competes favourably with the brightest of his age. As Pope sang in verses which remained in manuscript :— " The man whose heart has ne'er forgot a friend Or head an author : Critic, yet polite, And friend to learning-, yet too wise to write." The "New Atalantis" portrays him as "Seignior Mont- pelier, who wrote not much but well. He seems to understand the difficulty to maintain an acquired repu- tation, and is therefore wiser than to hazard the losing of it by a new attempt." The son of a High Church clergyman, a graduate of Aberdeen University, he was an early member of the Royal Society. His court promotion sprang from the accident of attending Prince George at Epsom. Till then he was known to the wits only as a frequenter of " Button's," where he was first attracted by the eccentric figure of Swift pacing silently up and down the sanded floor till he was nicknamed the "mad parson." His "John Bull," of which Swift slyly at first did not disclaim the authorship, is as good in its way as the " Tale of a Tub." His contributions to the " Scribbler's Club " shine out in that spontaneous but mangled miscellany.^ He afterwards contributed to the Craftsman. He is an excellent type of a canny genial Scot, and his friendship was as prized as it was firm. He it was who, on the Queen's decease, wrote the only good pun of the time — which has hitheiio suffered .from the printer — " Fuimus ' Arbuthnot was probably the author of the "very humorous" brief account of John Ginglicut's treatise concerning the altercation or scolding of the ancients which concerned the duel between W. Pulteney and Lord Hervey. See Pulteney to Swift, February 9, 1731. He was "busy about a book" in 1725 (Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 46). There is also every reason to suppose that he wrote " It cannot rain but it pours," usually accredited to Swift in the Scriblerus papers. Pope owned to his joint authorship with himself and Parnell in " The Origin of the Sciences from the Monkeys in Ethiopia" (Spence, 152). A so-called " Miscellaneous Works of the late Dr. Arbuthnot" was published in Glasgow. He had a hand in one of Swift's political ballads (Journal, January 4, 1712 The Windsor Prophecy). Of his verses he thought slightingly, and terms them his "jade of a Pegasus." QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 19 Tores ; " he too who, in the days of distress, averred that Curl, the pirate publisher of letters, had " added a new terror to death " — a jest purloined by Lord Westbury. He it was who penned that touching epitome of Anne's troub- lous end — " I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her ; " he who mor- dantly observed of the South Sea Scheme that the Govern- ment had only locked up the national funds on a conviction of the nation's lunacy.^ He was genuinely attached to his royal mistress. After her death he, as it were, sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and made exit into the quiet shade of a proscribed circle in the new world. He bore no love to the House of Hanover, and had a spice of the platonic Jacobite, as also of the amateur gourmet about him. His brother Robin, however, a banker at Boulogne, was actively engaged in Jacobite finance. When some of the " New Whigs " were for bringing in the Pretender in the year 1714, it was he who was entrusted by Marlborough with the funds, and in 1715 he was again agent for the same accomplished traitor concerning the Scotch expedi- tion.^ In the autumn of 1713 we find him representing the interests of the Scotch merchants to " His Most Chris- tian Majesty " with a view to the repeal of the Union.^ In the days of George the First he seems to have carried on business at Rouen, but to have made frequent and pro- tracted visits to England, during one of which he married a Suffolk widow with a jointure of ;£6oo a year.* He was ^ Atterbury's Letters, vol. i. p. 65. Pope to Atterbury, September 23, 1720. " Spence, 237, 238. ' Boyer, p. 651. * Cf. the very curious information (quoted from the " Free Briton ") in the London Magazine of June 1732, pp. 116-121, where "Mr. Arbuthnott, Banker at Paris," is shown to be in correspondence with Thomson, who plundered the Charitable Corporations for the Jacobite cause. On p. 1 18 it describes the banker as "a subject of Great Britain and native of Scotland, and married a widow in Suffolk of ;^6oo per annum. He usually comes over from France to England every year. . . ." He was in Paris in the February of 1713 (Duke of Shrews- bury to Bolingbroke, Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 406) ; and in the September of the same year Prior entreats Bolingbroke's best offices on his behalf, owing to "his real zeal for Her Majesty's service and knowledge of mercantile affairs" (Ibid., p. 265). 20 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES a philanthropist, and is lauded by Pope as almost surpass- ing the Doctor in goodness of heart and brain. There was another brother, George, who had been in the army,i and married another widow, Mrs. Peggy Robinson ; neither of these widow- wives survived their husbands ; this George afterwards became an incurable hypochondriac,^ and there was a younger brother still, commercially employed in the East.3 The family of Arbuthnots, though always ready to serve a countryman,* were anglicised or cos- mopolitan. The Doctor himself grew disgusted with his compatriots.^ His wife died shortly before George the Second ascended the throne. He had two sons, one of whom — George — was snatched away by fever in youth, to the desolation of his father, while the other enjoyed the post of Seconder in the Remembrancer's office, and two daughters, the elder of whom — Anne — is described as "like Gay ,8 very idle, very ingenious, and inflexibly honest." She " does not degenerate from the humour and goodness of her father." ' She it was who exclaimed, when Pope insisted on sitting at dinner, though near his end, " Lord have mercy upon us ! this is quite an Egyptian feast." When the Tories entered on their kingdom in 1710, Arbuthnot soon became an important person. " Doctor Arbuthnot," says Swift in his Journal at Windsor, on August 10, 1711, "the Queen's physician and favourite, went out with me to show me the places." " Doctor Arbuthnot," writes Peter Wentworth on August 25, " who ' See Swift's Journal, September 26, 1711. ' Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 387. ' This brother has escaped the notice of the biographer of Dr. Arbuthnot in the "National Dictionary of Biography." But for his existence see Swift's Works, vol. xviii. p. 134. * " The Scotch are national, and there is no getting the Doctor in another interest." Wentworth Papers, p. 147. " See Pulteney to Swift, March 11, 1735. " The best character of Gay has never been reproduced. It occurs in a letter of Swift to Pope under date July 16, 1728 (Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 229). " I suppose Mr. Gay will return from the Bath with twenty pounds more flesh and two hundred less in money. Providence never designed him to be above two and twenty by his thoughtlessness and gullibility." ' Pope to Swift, May 1739. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 21 is a very cunning man and not much talk't of, but I believe what he says is as much heard as any that give advice now, and his opinion is that there must be a new ParHament."! Quite apart from the Doctor's native dis- tinctions, it should be remembered that a royal physician was immensely in request at a time when stocks fluctuated with the Queen's health. Two months after the Queen's death Arbuthnot wrote to Swift, " Garth told me his merit was giving intelligence about his mistress's health. I desired he would do me the favour to say that I valued myself upon quite the contrary ; and I hoped to live to see the day when His Majesty would value me the more for it too.^ I have not seen anything as yet to make me recant a certain inconvenient opinion I have, that one cannot pay too dear for peace of mind." Arbuthnot was elected one of the "Society of Brothers,"^ that sparkling confraternity whose three Dukes were, perhaps, the sole members who were not wits. He was petted by Lady Betty Germaine and Lady Masham. He became an asso- ciate of Harley, St. John, Swift, Prior, et id genus omne. His favour was solicited for promotions. He was courted and f^ted. But he preferred the flow of soul and continued unspoiled and unselfish. He "knew his art but not his trade." For Lewis, Skelton, Ford, the Queensberrys, Gay, and afterwards Pope, he maintained a warm regard. Little more than a month before Harley was dismissed, and about seven weeks before the Queen's demise dis- persed the circle, we find him writing to Swift : " The Dragon was with us on Saturday night last after having sent us really a most excellent copy of verses. I really believe when he lays down he will prove a very good ^ Gay celebrates him : — ' ' This leech was Arbuthnot yclept, Who many a night not once had slept, But watched our gracious sovereign still, For who could sleep while she was ill." * This hope was disappointed ; he was deprived of his court physicianship. ^ For the " Brothers " steJ>ost, chap. vii. 2 2 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES poet.i I remember the first part of his verses was com- plaining of ill-usage ; and at last he concludes — ' He that cares not to rule will be sure to obey When summoned by Arbuthnot, Pope, Parnell and Gay.' " It was due in part to him that Gay, in his blue and silver waistcoat, went as secretary to Hanover. When the Queen died, it was Arbuthnot who entreated his beloved Swift to reappear. When Bolingbroke at last returned from exile it was he who " found him much improved in know- ledge, manner, and everything else." His friends are never weary of his praises and his skill ; and Pope, who took his counsel of disguising the personalities in his Satires, has, of course, immortalised him. After the crash, he removed hurriedly from Kensington to Chelsea, and eventually to Dover Street (the " second door on the left hand") where he announces that Martin Scriblerus will be " glad to see his old friends to whom he can still afford a pint of claret." It is with some pleasure that he "contemplates the world still busy and all mankind at work for him." But he describes the old circle as " mariners after storm." Still, as he wrote much later, he had found the secret of being "unfortunate without ^ Arbuthnot was very charitable. Harley was always jingling miserable verses and imagining he was Dryden. Here are those he composed when he did "lay down" : — " To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved is above : But here below Th' examples show 'Tis fatal to be good." And here are some even worse which he enclosed in a letter to Lord Dartmouth appointing a meeting after the Queen's death with him and his children in Lincoln's Inn Fields. " And for those who did conspire For to bring in James Esquire And now hope to be saved by their own bonfire. Doctors agree they are never the higher Teste Jonathan." * * Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rep. App. pt. S; Dartmouth Papers, p. 321, August 18, 1714. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 23 being unhappy." In 1717 he escorts Miss Bennet, on whose beauty he penned a ballad, to France, and visits Bolingbroke.i In December, 17 18, he wrote to Swift : "... Did you ever expect to live to see the Duke of Ormonde fighting against the Protestant succession, and the Duke of Berwick fighting for it ? France in con- federacy with England to reduce the exorbitant power of Spain ! I really think there is no such good reason for living till seventy as curiosity," The secluded brotherhood associated in outlawed jollity like excommunicated free- masons. He soon resumed a lucrative practice. After Bolingbroke's return he is constantly with him, and in 1727 he writes to Swift that " Lord B. is so ill and so much alone that I have not left him one day." ^ Pulteney, Bathurst, and Chesterfield were added to the list. He was admitted into the coterie of the Princess of Wales. When George the Second acceded and a brief renaissance of Tory influence and aspiration recurred, he and Swift are basking under the pale sunshine of Henrietta Howard. He is interested in all scientific phenomena. He pioneers Peter "the wild boy." In 1724 he had been very ill ; from 1729 onwards, "when convulsions of the heart assailed him, his health declined." He is mentioned as "unalterable in friendship and quadrille " — that quadrille on which his ally, Congreve, indited a poem. He removed to Hampstead for the air. Here is his last letter to Swift on October 4, 1734 : — " My dear and worthy friend, — You have no reason to put me among the rest of your forgetful friends, for I wrote two long letters to you to which I never received one word of answer. The first was about your health. . . . I can assure you with great truth that none of your friends or acquaintance has a more warm heart towards you than myself. I am going out of this troublesome world, and you, among the rest of my friends, shall have my last prayers and good wishes. ... I am afraid, my dear friend, we shall never see one another more in the world. I shall to the last moment preserve my love and esteem for you, ^ Cf. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 339. " Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 164. 24 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES being well assured you will never leave the paths of virtue and honour ; for all that is in this world is not worth the least deviation from that way." He signs himself " Your faithful friend and humble servant." He died in the March following. It had been his instigation that urged Swift in vain to try the Spa waters for his distemper ; his again that arranged the French translation of "Gulliver's Travels." No wonder that Swift exclaimed that he would rather have burned a thousand travels/ that the news " has struck him to the heart." It was a wound that was never healed. Some one of that period well observed : " The loss of a friend is as the loss of a limb." Of all that gallant crew Arbuthnot is the kindliest. But we have lingered too long over an attractive per- sonality. The Queen twined herself round other male props besides doctors, especially those practitioners in ex- pedients yclept statesmen. When her autopsy was com- pleted, it was ascertained that her heart was the weak spot.^ These gentlemen had lacerated it to their profit. At Anne's coronation, two of her entourage, both men of affairs, exercised immense influence over her. The one was her uncle, Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester ; the other, John Sheffield, by her created Duke of Buckingham- shire and Normanby. Rochester had already been Lord Treasurer, and reason- ably expected the same honour in his niece's reign. He had watched over her early years, and had contributed much to heal the breach between her and the court. For these good offices he incurred the spleen of Lady Marl- borough, who wished to preserve Anne to herself. He was a smooth man of courtly presence and old-world • And in another place, " Oh, if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my travels." Letter to Pope, September 29, 1725, Works, vol. xvii. p. 40. He further there says : " Our Doctor has every quality and virtue that can make a man amiable or useful ; but, alas ! he hath a sort of slouch in his walk. I pray God protect him, for he is an excellent Christian, though not a Catholic." 2 Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staflf," p. 62. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 25 manners. He was the acknowledged head of the High Church interest, and yet he was moderate in tone. He perhaps acted more on principle than any personage among his contemporaries. Even Burnet does not treat him with disrespect, although Swift has hinted a " golden " reason. But if masterful, he lacked both the talent and the push for the times. Godolphin stTCceeded in winning the White Staff, and Rochester was put off with the Lord- Lieutenancy of Ireland, then the "grave of reputations." He threw up that office in disdain, and Nottingham re- signed with him in 1704. When the change of adminis- tration supervened in 1710, it was thought that he would have been Lord Treasurer. But Harley ousted him, as Godolphin did before ; he was so disgusted that he was even suspected of Republican designs.^ He was, however, appointed Lord President. He formed a party against the Lord Treasurer, and it was first on his decease that Harley definitely abandoned his Whig scheme.^ When the October Club was formed to consolidate the " High- flying " wing of the Tory party, Rochester was for a time its president, " to keep them in order." Archbishop King, writing to Swift just after his death in May 171 1, says of him, "he contributed much to keep things steady." To the last the Whigs preferred him to Harley. He and the Duke of Shrewsbury were the most respectable of Queen Anne's Tory patricians, and corresponded in this respect to Halifax ^ and Cowper in the Whig phalanx. Not so was "Jack" Sheffield, son of Lord Mulgrave, who had unexpectedly* been appointed Lord Steward in 1710, who succeeded Rochester as Lord President in 171 1, •who had been Privy Seal in Godolphin's Administration until 1705, who was also a friend of St. John, and a weak ^ Went worth Papers, p. 136. ^ See Prof. R. Pauli's article, " Die Aussichten des Hauses Hannover auf dem Englischen Thron im Jahre 1711." Deutsche Rundschau, March 1883, p. 366. ' It is not generally known that as late as the close of 1712 Halifax, who was never for the extreme expedients of the Junto, was in vehement favour of the Peace. He says, " . . . I am neither so obstinate or romantic to pursue things made impracticable." Portland MS., vol. v. p. 254. * Wentworth Papers, p. 141. 26 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES poet.i Obstinate and loose, he lacked the capacity which might have redeemed his defects. At one time, like the future George the First, he had aspired to the hand of Princess Anne, whose heart never lost its predilection in his favour. He had been her early intimate. Despite his mother's forebears, he aired that "nobleman look," which he shared with St. John. Vain of his one good line, he despised all but peers and poets. He was one of the few prominent men who remained a Jacobite in earnest. He pressed on the Queen the claims of her half-brother, but Anne replied, " No, Jack," the Pretender had " disobliged " her too much by refusing to turn Pro- testant.2 Throughout her reign his policy drifted with his personal pride. He corresponded with the Electress. He regarded himself as the buttress of the High Church.^ In June 1709 he even reconciled himself to the Duchess of Marlborough, when she was building her new palace on " the Queen's land in the Friary," which had been formerly granted to Boyle.* On Harley's Administration, he was furious at being discarded, and barely appeased by the sop of the Lord Stewardship. His imperious insolence was unbounded. In January 171 1 it stirred him to vote against his party in Galway's case. In October 1710 it brought him into curious collision with the then rising Walpole. He had married the daughter of the notorious Lady Dor- chester, and refused the child a nurse, " from apprehension there was no ' sound woman ; ' so he invented a sucking- bottle." " Mr. Walpole had a child at nurse, and that nurse got herself recommended." After examination, the Duke declared himself satisfied, but insisted on seeing Walpole's own child as a further security, "which she brought without asking Walpole's leave, and the Duke made her ' V. Pauli, p. 367. He collaborated with Dryden. * Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 389. ' In 171 1 Poulet pressed Harley to make him President for that very reason, and to keep Nottingham out. Portland MS., vol. iv. (Hist. MSS. Comms., 15th Rep. App. pt. iv.), p. 683. ■• This incident of the Garden Plot evoked Swift's satire of "Naboth's Vineyard." Cf. Wentworth Papers, p. 89, with the verses themselves. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 27 undress the child, and he examined it all over, stark naked — so he said he would have her. She vs^ent with joy to her master, Walpole, and told him all that had past, and begged pardon she had gone without his leave ; he said he would not have her lose her place, but charged her to tell the Duke that all the soundest nurses in Eng- land could never make a child of his sound." ^ Buck- ingham figures again discreditably in the Wentworth Papers.2 His wife had been Lady Anglesea. The late Lord had left a portion to their little daughter, on the wise condition that she never saw her mother or grandmother. The Duke regained possession of the child after eight years, when she was twelve. Her uncle actually brought the matter before the House of Lords. The Duke pro- tested in a passion that neither he nor his wife designed to sell the child. At the same time, there was " a private gentleman, who would have the guardianship of her, and had a son of her age." After an ebullition, he was " called to order." His Duchess — natural grand-daughter of James the Second — was so proudly punctilious that she was always known as the " Princess Buckingham." When she died, in 1743, she requested her attendants to remain standing until they were quite certain that the breath had left her body.2 On the Queen's death, Buckingham, like Somerset, sulked in state. He still consorted with the sacerdotal and ill-starred Atterbury, who buried him in 1720, not long before his own final disgrace. The funeral stang Prior into scurrilous epigram : — " ' I have no hopes,' the Duke he says, and dies, ' In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries. Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man. Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman? The Duke, he stands an infidel confess't. ' He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest. The Duke, though knave, still ' Brother dear,' he cries. And who can say the reverend prelate lies.'' ' For this episode, so significant of the respective insolence of the old and the new blood, see Wentworth Papers, p. 153. " Pages 254, 255. ' Horace Wal pole's Letters, vol. i. p. 234. 2 8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES We may add as a personal detail that the Duke was physi- cally as short-sighted as he was morally. The Duke of Somerset was another noble who possessed weight with the Queen. The popular opinion of him was that he was " whimsical and changeable." He, too, affected a patronage of letters,i but he was no bel esprit. He had more than Buckingham's hauteur, with none of Bucking- ham's amiability .2 The foundation of his favour with Anne was his " civility " to her while Princess. For some years after the Revolution he had absented himself from court, and it was Rochester who first presented him to WilHam.^ He was as ridiculously starched as a Spanish magnifico. During all the caressings of the Junto he maintained his patronising attentions to the Queen. But his "undigested schemes and imperious manner of obtruding them" soon rendered him distasteful. His resentment, however, was '' not against things but persons ; " and so, after his brief- lived coquetries with Harley, he was led to set up for him- self, in 1710, on the question of the dissolution of Parliament. He reconciled himself to Godolphin, whom he had helped to drive out, and was served, in 171 1, in the same way as Harley had served him in 1707 ; for St. John refused to sit in Council with one "who had so often betrayed them."* Swift's is a true synopsis of his career ; we shall single out some details. He was stiff, arrogant, and stupid. Selfish- ness duped him. He liked to imagine that he might one day be king of England. The Seymours were, in his opinion, the greatest family since the flood. It was he who had insisted on his pas of precedence when William first arrived ; he who had been deputed by the Queen to receive Charles of Spain when he landed at Portsmouth in Decem- ber 1703. The Queen favoured him from tradition. He ^ Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 140. ^ His insolence at the Lewes election of 1705 provoked the retort from the Sheriff, " I am as good a gentleman as yourself." (Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 185.) ^ Most will remember Sir Edward Seymour's retort on this head to King William when he landed — "Sir E., I think you are of the Duke of S. family." ' ' No, sir, he\% oi mine." Cf. Horace Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. p. 329. * Swift's Works, vol. vi. pp. 181-184. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 29 had defended Marlborough when Harley "laid down" in 1708. In the spring of 1710 he had been in constant con- fabulation with Harley as the momentary legate of Hampden and the "independent Whigs." ^ In the summer of the same year we find him again empowered by the Queen to treat with Harley.^ As a grandee he had a ratting pre- rogative, but the diary of Lord Cowper records the inner thoughts of the Junto. Somerset is there characterised as " - . . a false, mean-spirited knave ; at the same time he was a pretender to the greatest courage and steadiness." In the debate on the peace of December 171 1, which Anne, as was her wont, attended, a question of etiquette arose while she was quitting the House of Lords. Was she to bestow her royal arm on her Lord Chamberlain, Shrews- bury, or on the Grand Chamberlain, Lindsay, She rejected both, and chose the escort of Somerset,^ and yet Somerset only three years before had rallied the Whigs against her ecclesiastical appointments. She probably believed him too great to be self-interested.* Yet nothing was farther removed from the truth.^ Her Master of the Horse thought that he ought to have controlled the State. Incensed with Harley, he became Stanhope's "fast friend;"^ he persis- tently caballed with the Whigs, and eventually posted away in a huff to Petworth and was drummed out.' Windham ^ Hampden and his set were called "Peace Whigs" (Wentworth Papers, p. 309). He was at one time thought to be turning Tory {ibid. ) ; and in January 1709 he was at loggerheads with the Junto (ibid., p. 75)' ^ Portland MS. 535, 545. In the autumn of 1708 he had been at the New- market Council when Godolphin was offering terms to the Junto. He acted as go-between to the Lord Treasurer and the Queen {ibid., 506). And in 1710 he- assured the Queen he " would stand by her with his life and fortune, even against her insolent General." See Wentworth Papers, p. 108. ' Swift's Journal, September 8, 1711. * When he was taxed for his vote in favour of the peace, the Queen said he- would vote for anything concerning her interest. Wentworth Papers, p. 232. On January i, 1712, "his demission was 'recalled,' and the Queen was 'civil ' on her birthday to the Duchess." Ibid., 235. ^ In this very debate on the address he " was louder in calling for the question, than anybody, and pulled the Duke of Cleveland with him, and yet he keeps his place." Wentworth Papers, p. 223. In one breath he cried for peace and yet obstructed the dissolution of Parliament. « Wentworth Papers, p. 145. ' January 1712. 30 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES married his daughter, and owed his immunity to that alli- ance. This is the potentate who, when George I, slighted him, flung his liveries into the stable-yard of St. James's Palace, as he had done before at Somerset House when the Queen sent him packing.^ This is the tyrant who half disinherited one of his daughters for sitting down when commanded to stand sentinel over his afternoon siesta. His wife, Swift's " most insinuating woman," was the rival of the Duchess of Marlborough and the destroyer of Lady Masham. Never was a stronger example of influence with- out merit and ascendancy without ability. But the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lord Chamberlain, en- joyed the most consistent confidence of the Queen. He was a man of real talent, and he knew how to unbend.^ Indeed such was his mingled softness and caution, that De Torcy accentuates his timidity at the outset of the Peace. In 1713 Bolingbroke expressly praises "the sweet- ness of his temper, the strength of his understanding, and the happiness of his address." ^ Lord Strafford thus de- scribes him in 1710: "A man of great parts, of great family and great intrigue, very affable and obliging in his be- haviour, of very handsome person, though but one eye. He was mightily esteemed by King WilHam. He was twice Secretary of State, and at last Lord Chamberlain, which he quitted on pretence of spitting blood, occasioned by a fall from a horse ; upon which he went and lived for some years at Rome, where he married a lady, very poor and of an indifferent reputation, which lost him his credit among his old friends. I suppose that vexed him, and made him fall in with Mr. Harley, who procured him this employment, in which he has extremely insinuated himself with the Queen and manages all things. The Duke of Marlborough and the Lord Treasurer thought, after he was in this employment, to have gained him, but were mistaken, for 'twas he, I believe, brought in the Tories." * 1 Wentworth Papers, p. 257. ' Cf. Wentworth Papers, p. 199. ' To Prior, Sept. 8, 1713 ; Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 272. * Wentworth Papers, p. 134. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 31 Prince Eugene styles him "... as sanguine as the Duke of Buckingham, yet not so resolute, but more easily brow- beaten." 1 Shrewsbury had early been attached to Anne. He reconciled her to her father. He had been one of the iRevolution-pioneers. He was a national favourite.^ While Harley was feeling his way, the Duke of Shrewsbury governed in apparent concert with the Duke of Somerset. He hobnobbed with the discontented Earl of Rochester.^ He had by turns favoured and shunned Sacheverell.* In 1710 he was represented by the blabbing Gaultier as in the interest of the Pretender, though his assertions, which were the offspring of Jersey's wishes, must be taken with great reservation. "Are you aware," he writes in a secret letter to De Torcy of that autumn, "that Madame Protose has a very tender feeling for M. Montgonlin, and looks upon him as her own child ? Mr. Rolland (Jersey) assures me that all the changes . . . are made partly from the love of him, and that Messieurs Morand (Shrewsbury), Vivant (Bucks), and Vanderberg (Harley) are all working for him."^ He was constantly in backstairs conference with the Queen, and he, like St. John, did his utmost to retain the great commander by the sacrifice of his rapacious wife.^ But St. John, who knew the influence of the Duke of Bucking- ham in his favour,^ never knew quite how he stood with Shrewsbury, so often tempted to temporise with the Whigs, and so prompt to conceal both his partialities and aversions. Shortly before the Queen died, Shrewsbury endeavoured, though without success, to force Harley's hand, and ascer- tain " to what court " the Tories should go.^ At any rate, while he counselled "temper and moderation," he seems to have been in close party concert with Bolingbroke in July 17 1 3, while the feud between him and Oxford was raging.^ At Bolingbroke's own suggestion, he was for the ' Portland MS., vol. v. p. 157. ^ Swift's Examiner, No. 46. ' Ibid., p. 152. * Wentworth Papers, p. 141. ' See the letters quoted in Stanhope, 2, 209 (Tauchnitz ed.). « Cf. Pauli, pp. 352, 355. ' Cf. Pauli, p. 367. ' Cf. for this curious fact the Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 192. ' Pol. Corr., vol. iv. pp. 205, 206. 32 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES second time ^ presented with the White Staff by the dying Queen, and thus on George's accession was in the triple possession of that supreme honour, the Lord Chamberlain- ship, and the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, of which last office he wittily observed that it afforded "not enough business to keep one awake, but enough to prevent one falling asleep."^ For barely three months he had reluc- tantly ^ filled the gap of the slaughtered Duke of Hamilton as ambassador in Paris, where he caused poor Prior embar- rassment without emolument over the commercial treaty. He was almost the only grandee of the preceding govern- ment who fastened the favour of the new House, the only one who secured a permanent appointment at court. Though constantly suspected of relations with the Pre- tender, though a pervert in early life from Roman Catholi- cism, though on his self-exile under William protesting unalterable disgust for politics, he yet retained honours, honour, and honesty. Defoe, in his " History of the White Staff," dubs him " Lord John Bull." Bothmar and Bern- storff themselves could not baulk him of court considera- tion, and this he owed largely to the wife so contemptuously mentioned by Strafford. She was the daughter of the Marquis Paleotti of Bologna, and, on her mother's side, descended from Sir Robert Dudley, natural son of the Earl of Leicester. From policy, like the second Lady Bolingbroke, she abjured the Roman faith on her marriage. She was a woman of great coquetry and vivacity, and of many flippant attainments. She was withal very designing and diplomatic, always in with the rising and out with the 1 On Godolphin's dismissal, the Queen gave Shrewsbury the Chamberlain's staff, but the Treasury was put into commission. It was not till the beginning of 17 II that Harley became First Minister. Shrewsbury continued Chamberlain. ' Marchmont Papers, vol. i. p. 91. 2 "Seemed not much pleas'd with it ; spoke of the expense it would be to him, and how likely it was to keep him longer than he wish't. He must stay till the peace ... and then take a character, and make an entry." Went worth Papers, Nov. 25, 1712, p. 305. But Lord Berkeley afterwards ascribes this to. " affectation." " Only a copy of his countenance," iiiif., p. 308. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 33 setting light.^ It was she who dubbed Swift " Presto," she who chattered most and loudest among the duller fribbles of the Queen's Court ; ^ she who, on the change of Ministry, rushed up to Swift with her fan and sighed " on Somerset not being out ; " ^ she who was among the few great ladies who gave great balls.* There was no love lest between her and the Duchess of Somerset.^ In the next reign, although she pleaded for the twenty-four sentenced in 1716, she soon amused the phlegmatic king ; she was one of those " female politicians " of whom Ambrose Philips sang that he could " trust Britannia's safety to their eyes." She was pert to the Princess of Wales, of whose suite she was, and made bold to tell her that "gentlemen had kissed her hand when first she came to England." After the quarrel of the King with the Prince she did not scruple to say, "Je suis venue, sire, pour f aire ma cour, et je la veux faire." The Duchess of Marl- borough thus pictures her in a letter from Bath of Sep- tember 3, 1716 : " Her Grace of Shrewsbury is here, and of a much happier temper (than I). She plays at ombre upon the walks that she may be sure to have company enough, and is as well pleased in a great crowd of strangers as the common people are with bull-baiting or a mountebank." Before we briefly characterise Godolphin and Harley, a word must be said of the phenomenal Duke of Marl- borough, who still remains a psychological problem. He presents the rare spectacle of a splendid genius without heart outside his domestic circle. He would have sold everything and everybody except his wife and children. " Mambrino's helm adorned his head." * Long after he was dead Bolingbroke remarked of him that he "dare swear my Lord Marlborough never left his baggage on the ' Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 8. 2 On November 25, 1711, Lady Strafford writes: " I was at her Grace of Shrewsbury's, who I think is more rediculouse in her talk than ever. She told all the company as they came in that she was very much out of humour, for she had things growing upon her tooes like thumbs that made her so lame she could not stir." Wentworth Papers, p. 213. ' Scott's Swift, iii. 24. * Wentworth Papers, p. 297. = Wentworth Papers, p. 280. « Swift's "Midas." C 34 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES field of battle." i Cold by disposition, he was warm in his immediate interests. His head was unerring, yet those interests constantly warped his judgment. He made a trade of war and a war of administration. He was born to rule, yet he degenerated into the tool of a faction. Swift in the Examiner daringly applied to him the lines of Lucan : — " Hinc usura vorax avidumque in tempore fcsnus ; Hinc concussa fides, et multis utile bellum." Arbuthnot in the "History of John Bull " stigmatises him as "Hocus, an old cunning attorney, who seldom lost his temper, loved money, wasn't worse than an infidel, pro- vided plentifully for his family, but loved himself better than all." Mrs. Manley in the "New Atalantis," which is far better writing than those who have not read it imagine, portrays him with all his earlier intrigues as Count For- tunatus, a " graceful person " lolling in his chariot in " a chain of thought unusual at his years ; a length of view before him;" and harps on his "coolness of temper" — " allay of fire and passive moderation." She twits him — as was the party trick — with acquired courage, and, in her description of his wife as Jeanatin, does not scruple to revive the stale stories of " Mother Jenisa's " power of witchcraft, ascribing his success to the sorceries of his mother-in-law, which Swift too unworthily com- memorated in his " Mother Haggley." ^ These are all biassed and polemical accounts. Still, after investigation of the evidence, we can only regard them as travesties, not as libels. Macaulay styled him "a wise, brave, wicked man ; " but Macaulay detested a Tory. None the less of this extraordinary being we may justly ejaculate with Parolles, " Sir, for a quart d'^cu he will sell the fee- simple of his salvation, the inheritance of it, and cut the entail from all remainders, and a perpetual succession for it perpetually." In the few remarks that we shall submit we shall restrict ourselves to episodes that have been comparatively neglected. Of his first years we need ' Marchmont Papers. ' And cf. Arbuthnot's " History of John Bull." Swift's Works, vi. p. 32. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 35 say little. If he cherished any devotion to any cause, it was then to that of the Stuarts. If he held any political creed, it was then that of a " high-flying " Tory. Yet take the year 1692. Besides the two plots which Macaulay records, the one to set Anne, the other to set James on the throne, is a third, which he has omitted, and which com- pletes the tale of perfidies in twelve months. He betrayed the secret of the Dunkirk expedition,'- as afterwards in 1694 he marred the Brest expedition to brush away his rival Talmash. He deserted James II. twice, and the second time after procuring a written pardon. He plotted with Sack- ville in 1690 to betray William to James. With Rochester and Compton he had betrayed James to William, and was even rumoured to have harboured a design of assassina- tion under the cover of his attachment to the Church. Yet in 171 1 he was caballing against that very Church which he had stained himself to uphold;^ in 1712 against that very benefactress to whom he had sworn more than allegiance, and in 1714 against that very succession whose establishment had been his professional talisman.^ Well might the Jacobite Lord Caryll exclaim in 1703, "Yon well know how true that merchant is to his own interest." * No wonder that Bolingbroke in 1710 protested, "Who sup- ported him in the King's time but we ? Who gave my Lord Godolphin a party in the beginning of the Queen's reign but we?"^ His notorious avarice was displayed even towards his tools. Sir Scipio Hill, writing in 1712 to Oxford, remarks of Pettecum's "services at Gertruyden- berg, "... The Duke of Marlborough promised him ' Ralph, "The Other Side," p. 69. * "A New Vindication," Swift's Worlcs, vol. vi. p. 141 (by Mrs. Manley- — a prejudiced source, but she quotes Marlborough's letter to the King). ' At the latter date he joined with "some Whig lords" in a scheme for bringing in the Pretender. Before this, and after his disgrace, he had lent him- self to a plan for seizing the Tower and asserting the army, which, had the Queen lived longer, might have been tried. Cf. Marchmont Papers, vol. iii., Spence, p. 238, and Macpherson, vol. ii. passim. There is great truth in what Bolingbroke urged in his old age, "The zeal of the Whigs for Hanover was the zeal of party." Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 186. * Macpherson, i. 627-628. "^ Bol. Pol. Corr., i. p. 47. Z6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES golden mountains, but he got nothing." ^ When Anne ascended the throne, Marlborough and his wife were in the heyday of influence. William had restored him to favour, and, in entrusting the Duke of Gloucester to his care, had exclaimed, "Teach him to be like yourself." Favours and gifts were showered upon them by the grateful Queen. But the Duchess, to do her justice, was no more an Old Whig than a New Tory. She entered with avidity into the " New Whig " scheme which Somers, Cowper, Orford, and, above all, Godolphin, initi- ated against "the old principles in Church and State." ^ The enfeeblement of the Church and landed interests, abjuration and indemnity bills, the commercialisation of England, the corruption of elections, the restriction of the pulpit,^ the prolongation of the war as a battening-ground for contractors and jobbers, and the imposition of fresh burdens for the purpose — these were the key-notes of a scheme veneered by the colours of constitutional liberty and religious toleration. She was determined to tear her husband from his Tory moorings, and the alliances of two of their daughters, together with their family engrossment of the Queen and the Tory opposition in 1705 to the Duke's grant, favoured the occasion. Even in 1702-3 Marlborough was in communication with St. Germain. The Jacobite babble actually meditated an alliance between one of his daughters and the Pretender,* and in 1708, 1709, and 1715 he was again dabbling with the House of Stuart, the first time to bolster his waning home influence, the second to revenge himself on the callous George. All along he had perforce to leave exits open ; all along he was the leviathan of intrigue. But in the year 1702 his lean- ings were towards the moderate Tories, who were the anti-Dutch party. He had joined them in their impeach- ment of the promoters of Partition. He even endeavoured to induce the Dutch to entrust the command of their ' Portland MS. (Hist. MS. Comm.), vol. v. p. 179. " Cf. Swift, Examiner, No. 36. » Cf. " Letter to a Whig Lord." ■> Macpherson, ii. 627. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 37 forces to Prince George as a condition precedent to de- claring war on France, while on the other hand his rash republican son-in-law offended the Queen by opposing her consort's allowance bill.^ But the Duchess's Tory antipa- thies had been stifled by her hatred of William until the Queen's accession. Despite all her apparent supremacy at this date, Swift is'right in ascribing the beginning of the end and her dwindling influence to this cause. In 1703, when the bill against occasional conformity was revived by the Tories and rejected by twelve in the House of Lords, twenty-three Tory peers signed a protest, headed by Godolphin and Marlborough, who answered a previous letter from his wife, urging opposition, by the declaration, " I am firmly resolved never to assist any Jaco- bite whatsoever, or any Tory that is for persecution." The change had begun, and it was confirmed by the accession of Eugene to Marlborough's ideas, his emancipation from Hollander tutelage, and, above all, by the victory of Blen- heim. This was accepted by the Whigs as a triumph iover the Church party, and Marlborough became a general abroad for a faction at home.^ The war in Spain was starved to feed the successes in Flanders. The Tories, in their vote of thanks, paired him invidiously with Rooke ; but Buckingham was deprived of the Privy, and Wright of the Great Seal. Whigs were gradually introduced and Tories eliminated, till Harley and St. John found the position untenable, refused to act with Marlborough and Godolphin, and resigned their posts in 1708. In 1706 Marlborough had written to the Queen from Grametz. After threatening retirement,^ after expressing his con- fidence that the war would be concluded within a year, he thus concludes : " For I have had the good luck to deserve better from all Englishmen than to be suspected for not being in the true interest of my country, which I am in 1 Coxe, i. 211. ^ " Conduct of Duchess," p. 147. Bmnet Jiassim. * This threat of resignation was a pet device of Queen Anne's statesmen. Marlborough had himself employed it in 1703 when Leopold of Austria had proclaimed his son king of Spain and had renounced the Spanish crown for himself and his elder son, Joseph, 38 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES and ever will be, without being of a faction. And this principle shall govern me for the little remainder of my life. I must not think of being popular ; but I shall have the satisfaction of going to my grave with the opinion of having acted as became an honest man."^ And yet, after these fair promises, in that very year he declined a most advantageous peace ^ from the broken Louis, as he again did when the Sibyl offered another leaf in 1708-9. In 1707, with 100,000 veteran troops who a year before had taken and destroyed 20,000, the General did not move ; 20,000 men were detached to aid the Austrian designs on Naples. The Duke of Savoy's enterprise in Provence was crippled ; and Louis was spared by Marl- borough from yielding Spain and the West Indies, as he would then have readily done. " I wish you knew," ejacu- lates Mrs. Bull in Arbuthnot's allegory, " what my husband has paid at the pastry-cook's for Naples biscuits." He sacri- ficed his country to the profit of his clique. Yet that same year he perhaps lent himself to a counter-project of peace to the damage of his queen.^ He could not resist con- solidating a Whig predominance in the army itself, which soon resolved itself into the so-called Damnation Club,* that, under the presidency of Meredith, Honeywood, and Macartney, drank confusion to a scarecrow (Harley) and toasted the generalissimo at the expense of his sovereign. He could not resist demanding the supreme command for life — a request which diminished his influence in Holland as much as it did with the Queen.^ In the words of ' "Conduct of the Duchess," p. 163. '^ "All those among us here who are reckoned 'High Whigs,' or in with the Junto, as you call them, seem pleased at continuing the war, and reason on all occasions to persuade the world that all the offers and advances made by France were a trick to impose upon us, though indeed," &c. Lieut-Colonel Cranstoun to R. Cunningham, July 25, 1708, Camp before Tournay. Portland MS. , vol. iv. p. 496. Even Cadogan seems to have fallen out with Marlborough in this year, ib., 507 ; and cf. Swift, " Conduct of the Allies," Works, v. p. 51. He " refused advantageous terms after Ramillies, and so the Ministry were forced to take m a set of men with a previous bargain to screen them from misconduct." Wharton, on the motion against peace without Spain, had to assure the House ot Lords that It was impracticable and but politic I P T '!!^?c'''^'' of Tyrconnel's plan. See Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 479-480. Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 622. . cf. ibk, p. 326. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 39 Bolingbroke applied to Louis XIV., " He varnished am- bition with the most plausible and popular pretence." ^ As Mr. Bagehot has well said, " Marlborough was the Ministry." Godolphin and the Government were his partners. The Court of Hanover itself styled the Lord Treasurer and Captain-General "the two Kings." ^ The syndicate was daily dictating to the Queen promotions and appointments, and through the exorbitant Duchess "weaning"' her, as they termed it, from her political prepossessions. But they made a fatal error when they insisted on Sunderland's Secretaryship of State in the room of Hedges. The Duchess described Sunderland as " not a party man," and menaced the Queen with the resignation of Marlborough and Godolphin should she object ; " and when they are forced to leave your service, you will indeed find your- self in the hands of a violent party, who, I am sure, will have very little mercy or humanity for you ; whereas you might prevent all these misfortunes by giving my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Marlborough (whom you can so safely trust) leave to propose those things which they know and can judge to be absolutely necessary for your service." ^ Marlborough himself, who feared the moody and headstrong vehemence of his son-in-law,* was too astute to be in its favour.^ It caused the split between the Government and the Junto. It nearly caused Marl- borough's downfall through his friends some two years before it was effected by his foes. Sunderland circulated pamphlets alleging that the Ministry were a mercenary gang who prompted the Queen ; he accused Marlborough and the Court of complicity with the Jacobites to secure the Scotch elections.* The Junto itself suspected him of 1 "Study of History.'' Works, vol. viii. p. 203. 2 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 507. " " Conduct of Duchess," p. 167. * Sunderland was such a Red Republican that he " looked forward to the day when there should not be another peer in England, and swore he would never be called otherwise than Charles Spencer." Swift, Works, vol. v. p. 176. Yet this was the man who afterwards contrived the Peerage Bill. ^ " Conduct of Duchess," p. 163. * For this remarkable episode see "The Other Side" pp. 376-382 ; Coxe's 40 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES siding with Stuart more than Guelph.^ Not all the eulogies of all the triumphs on the field by all the bards on both sides, headed by Prior and Addison, not the young Walpole's sagacity in pressing on Godolphin to make his Ministry Whig instead of a motley mixture, and thus to " drive the nail that would go," ^ could wipe out the impression on the Queen's mind. In 1708 the Prince Consort died, and with him was removed at once a check ^ on Godolphin and a support for the Queen. Henceforward she began to regard the Marlboroughs and the Junto as her enemies, and the Ministry as her gaolers. Harley discerned his opportunity and instigated Abigail Masham to seize it for him. In vain did Sir G. Heathcote and the Bank interest have the presumption to remonstrate with Anne.* In vain did the despairing General press the Princes of the allies by circular letters to sway the Queen in his favour.^ The Whigs became discredited at Court. The campaigns them- selves grew less glorious and more fruitless in any in- terest but Austria's and Holland's. The Hanoverian Court Walpole, i. p. 40 ; Stanhope's History (Tauchnitz edition), ii. 92-9S ; and Went- worth Papers, p. 71, where Marlborough is said to have determined to break with the Junto, who had " betrayed " him. And cf. Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staff," partii. p. 58 : " . . . When upon a former difference between the old and the modern Whigs, the former, if fame lies not, scrupled not to accept the coalition of the Jacobite interest in order to overthrow the latter ; a, fact so well known to his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, and so recent in his memory, as . . . bid fair to have supplanted him in the favour of his royal mistress, and to have dismissed him from the service of his country by his friends, at least a year before it was effected by his enemies." 1 See Pauli, p. 355, and cf. Swift's " Public Spirit of the Whigs." But the Junto themselves were in coalition with the Jacobites to overthrow the New Whigs, if Defoe is to be trusted. Cf. " History of White Staff," ii. 7. ^ Coxe's Walpole, i. 39 ; " Conduct of the Duchess," p. 160. ^ Cf. Swift, Examiner, No. 43, vol. vi. p. 296. * Portland MS., vol. iv. Harley to A. Moor, June lo, 1710 : " This is a matter of a very extraordinary nature that . . . private persons they should have the presumption to take upon them to direct the sovereign. If so, let us swear alle- giance to these four men, and give them a right to our passive obedience with- out reserve." The Queen told them that all reports tending to lessen the credit of the nation proceeded from the enemies of the Government. They were to assure their friends in the City she had nothing more at heart than the good of her people. See Wentworth Papers, p. 120. ^ Cf. Wentworth Papers, p. 166. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 41 grumbled.^ Bromley moved a vote of thanks to General Webb alone. The poets ceased to sing, and instead ap- peared the passage — promptly suppressed — in Steele's own Whig Tatler, comparing Marlborough to Caesar at the Rubicon.^ The second great blunder of Sacheverell's impeachment, against the advice of the Junto, followed. Within three months of its close the Queen asserted herself, transferred the Chamberlain's wand from Kent to Shrewsbury, dismissed Sunderland and welcomed the Tories. The Duchess's game was foiled and the flouter flouted. Harley was installed and the peace prepared. Marlborough fought his last campaign and performed his last feat at Bouchain in 171 1. He was ousted from the Ordnance. By New Year's Day, 171 2, he was out of all his offices ; in January he was called to give an account of his stewardship, and those who, in the cant language, were " plumb for Queen and Church " ^ breathed once more. There is an episode, little studied, to which we wish to call particular attention as illustrating both Marlborough's character and Bolingbroke's. We allude to the former's last rapprochement with the Tories and his last bid for Court pre-eminence in 171 1. Bothmar's correspondence with Robethon at Hanover depicts the deferred return of Marlborough to England in January 171 1, his triumphal entry into London on January 28th, attended by links and flambeaux, and the acclama- tions of a crowd counter-demonstrating against Sache- verell ; * the family council at the Chelmsford Inn, the cabals of the Whigs, their pressure to sacrifice the Duchess so as to preserve the Duke's command, and his determina- tion to humour the Hanoverians and follow their advice, 1 Cf. Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 507. Lewis to Harley, Oct. 7, 1708. Great discontent at Hanover. "We have spent so many millions to find out this great secret, that our General does not understand the mitier de la guerre — he has twice or thrice thrown a lucky main, but never knew how to play his game — and that he is but a little genius of a size adapted to getting money by all sordid, dishonourable ways. ..." ^ No. 37, July 1709. The suppressed passage is cited by Swift in No. 20 of the Examiner. See Swift's Works, iii. 377. » Wentworth Papers, p. 237. *■ Cf. Boyer's History, p. 483. 42 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES which was the more feasible as Anne was notoriously the patroness of moderating schemes, and Harley was then trimming with Boyle and HaHfax. He proved complais- ance itself to the Queen, visited her at St, James's and Hampton Court,i ^^s in continual conference with Harley, Shrewsbury, and St. John, and generally behaved like a truant schoolboy who was promising his masters not to offend again. Already before his arrival, John Drummond, the confidential banker, and afterwards Paymaster of the Forces at the Hague, had been strenuously paving the way for a reconciliation through St. John's good offices. Marlborough had " promised to accommodate himself, and to live with you if you will make it practicable or possible for him." " That great man, for his success has made him so, and covers all faults here," must be gained.^ Poulet, too, urged the renewal of the old ties. The Junto, after the death of the Emperor, were proffering their services to the Lord Treasurer. It was owned on all sides that " Marl- borough and Godolphin shifted only by setting mankind against one another." ^ But Harley, with his vague guardedness, was doubtful. " Depend upon it, when he comes over he can't govern himself, and will enter into their animosities." This unfortunately proved the case. Still for a time things went smoothly. St. John wrote to the same Drummond : " He (the Duke) has been told by the Duke of Shrewsbury, by Mr. Harley, and by your humble servant, that, since the Queen agrees to his com- manding the army, it is our duty and in the highest degree 1 To single out one instance : " The Duke of Marlborough came alone here (Hampton Court) a Sunday (November i8, 1711), went up the back stair and about a quarter of an hour with the Queen, and went straight back again without dining, but he came again this morning, just as the Queen came in from taking the air and dines with Lord Halifax." Wentworth Papers, p. 213, and cf. Swift's confirmatory account in his Journal under date November 19. "^ Drummond's reward was that by 1712 he was well hated by the Whigs. Cj. BoUngbroke's "Political Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 261, where he invokes the Plenipotentiaries' protection for "one who has no fault but that which your Lordships are more guilty of than any two men I know— serving your Queen and country above all other interest." ^ Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 674. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 43 our interest to support him, if possible, better than he ever yet was ; and that he may depend upon this. He has seen in other instances that we are able to see and to pursue that which was right ; why should he think us capable of judging upon this occasion so wrong ? He was told at first he had nothing to reproach us with ; that his wife, my Lord Godolphin, and himself had thrown the Queen's favour away. ... He has been told that he must draw a hne between all that is past and all that is to come, and that he must begin entirely upon a new foot ; that if he looked back to make complaints, he would have more retorted upon him than it was possible to answer. . . . What is the effect of all this plain dealing ? He submits, he yields, he promises to comply." But, as Harley foresaw, the implacability of that wife soon transformed his mood. On the Queen's birthday Swift saw " Lady Wharton, as ugly as the devil, coming out in the crowd all in an undress. She had been with the Marlborough daughters, and Lady Bridgewater looking out of the window all un- dressed to see the sight." On that anniversary next year the Duchess designed to flout the Queen by flaunting a rival state ball, and was with difficulty persuaded by the Duke to convert it into an "at home," so as to mitigate •the public outcry. It was an old story. When the Queen, in April 1709, forbade colours in chapel, although the state mourning for Prince George was over, it was the talk of the town that the Marlborough daughters set the ex- ample of airing their finery in the Queen's face, while the Duchess was the only one who insulted Anne, on the first evening that she received in her bedroom, by attending with powder in her hair and patches on her face ; and again in 1710 she studiously absented herself from the chapel on the Queen's birthday.^ The consequences were soon manifest in Marlborough himself. His chaplain, Dr. Hare, was instructed to publish a pamphlet of Letters, the fourth of which indignantly demands, "With what heart can a man in these circumstances serve, or what 1 Wentworth Papers, p. 78 or io5. 44 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES success can be expected from him, when he is to depend on professed enemies for his support ? " ^ St. John, like Shrewsbury, had ever been his friend ; ten years before he might have been called his protege. The Wiltshire which the St. Johns had long represented adjoined the Dorsetshire of the earlier Churchills. Marl- borough had admired the youth's talent and spirit, nor was there room for that jealousy which he so often exhibited where an army career was solicited.^ In 1705 we iand him in familiar correspondence with the Duke.* He it was who introduced the bill which perpetuated Woodstock in the Duke's family. He was Secretary for War during Marlborough's most dazzling successes, and remained his correspondent until his disgrace.* As early as the death of Marlborough's only son, the great general, according to a statement in Macpherson, protested that the young St. John was now his only remaining consola- tion.^ " How comes it," writes Lord Raby from Berlin to Cadogan in March 1708, "that Lord Treasurer and my Lord Duke were so violent against Harley and all his party ? for I thought you told me that Harry St. John and his gang were all entirely my Lord Duke's." Long afterwards, when Marlborough was discredited at Antwerp, Bolingbroke's half-brother George,® who bitterly complained of the dis- graced Duke's ingratitude, who had waited on him twice ^ Cf. Boyer's History, p. 502. ' Cf. the instances both of Argyle and Raby. ^ Cf. especially Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 180, where St. John writes to Harley under date May 15, 1705, about the elections: "I was able to serve the Lord Duke in that of Woodstock ; " and ibid. 338, where he encloses for Harley's perusal a copy of the Obsei-vator, sent by the Duke in the hope that both printer and publisher will get both "well beaten" for this "barbarous usage." In 17 lO St. John asked Harley for a meeting between him and the Duke at his office, and to send Horse Guards over. Ibid., p. 655. ■* Besides the instances scattered through this volume, cf. a letter from Marlborough to St. John of November 7, 1710, where he regrets inability to proceed with an expedition on the sea coast. Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rept. pt. v. p. 301. ^ Cf. inter alia Cooke's Life, i. 72. » George St. John had been in diplomatic employment at the Hague (where he had the smallpox). Another half-brother, John, replaced Harrison after his death. Bolingbroke appears throughout very solicitous for both his half- QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 45 to the hazard of his place, before his premature death in 1716, thus announced Marlborough's parting message : " Mr. St. John, you are going to England. I have a favour to beg you. Pray give my humble service to my Lord Oxford and my Lord Bolingbroke ; I always had a respect for the one and an affection for the other." " My Lord," says Mr. St, John, " Lord Oxford and my brother?" " Yes, Mr. St. John," says the Duke, "I never was against him in my life ! " ^ Years afterwards, too, Bolingbroke, whose scheme, had the White Staff remained his, perhaps intended him for generalissimo,^ paid his homage of admiration to Marlborough ; that genius who by William's death " was raised to the head of the army, and indeed of the con- federacy, where he, a new, a private man, a subject, acquired by merit and by management a more deciding influence than high birth, confirmed authority, and even the crown of Great Britain had given to King William ; " that " great man, whose faults I know, whose virtues I admire, and whose memory as the greatest general and the greatest Minister that our country, or perhaps any other, has produced, I honour."^ And still later he praised "his consummate talents," * while at the very time of which we are treating he attributed, in a conversation with Swift, the Queen's disfavour towards him to his own partiality for Marl- borough, which hfe perpetuated on the Blenheim column,^ and which was in glaring contrast with Harley's hatred. It is not, therefore, to be supposed that the Duke's final downfall would have been furthered by a friend so attached brothers. In May 1712 we find him guaranteeing George's debts.; See Pol. Corr., voL ii. p. 307. He was anxious that John "might be fitted to serve his country and be usehil in his generation." Ibid., vol. iii. pp. 452, 455- ' Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 112. ^ Macpherson, ii. 534, and cf. Seward's Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 372 : " It is well known that Lord Bolingbroke used to tell his friends in the later years of his life . . . that the Duke of Marlborough had agreed to join the New Tory Ministry[after Oxford's dismission." And cf. a most important passage in Harley's Memoirs — " and whatever the scheme was, it is very plain that the Duke of Marlborough was to be at the head of it." Portland MS., vol. v. p. 662. 3 "A Sketch of the History and State of Europe." * Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 214, note. ' Spence, p. 127. 46 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES had not stringent reasons existed for the step. That they did exist is a certainty. The fact is that the Dutch, and still more the Austrians, who dreaded the British peace that the Government was brewing, the Austrians, who sought to annex Marlborough and monopolise his skill, the clique of Marlborough's Whig officers, the Duchess, smarting at her neglect in her magnificent new mansion, and striving "furens quid fcemina possit" all united in scheming cabals with the Junto. They resolved to play a trump card, Eugene was to come over in the Austrian interest. Riots were to ensue, the Tories were to be kicked out, and, if the Queen demurred, there was the possibility of a military dictatorship.! It is true that the most extravagant rumours were spread by the Tories, just as they had been by the Whigs before Godolphin received his congS. Then it was the Queen's abdication in favour of the Pretender ; now it was her dispossession by brute force. But none the less there was fire as well as smoke, for the event proved it. In the summer of 171 1 Townshend was deprived of the Tower-guard.2 In November arose the riots on Elizabeth's birthday, subscribed for by the Kit Cat Club. Effigies of the devil in the guise of Harley, of the Pope, of the Pre- tender, all carefully organised by the Junto leaders and the Marlborough faction, including the facetious Dr. Garth ("the best wild man I ever knew " »), who contributed five guineas and the jest "that he would bury Satan's effigy with a sermon on the text " His disciples came by night and stole him away."* Similar manifestations 1 Macpherson, ii. 454, 271-273. Cf. also Swift's Works, vol. v. p. 199. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. pp. 146-148. 2 V. Pauli, p. 367. Cf. Harley's " A Brief Account of Public Affairs to the Queen," quoted Boyer, p. 32, App. 3 Bolingbroke's phrase to Swift. ■* A popular Whig ballad of the day ran : — " You for your boniires mawkins dressed On good Queen Bess's day, Whereby much treason was expressed, As all true Churchmen say, Against the Devil and the Pope, The French, our new ally, And Perkins too, that youth of hope, On whom we all rely." QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 47 were prepared for the Queen's birthday in the ensuing February. Oxford and St. John had through one Clements^ covert intelligence of the Austrian machinations with Marlborough. The Guards were doubled. Patrols were sent to scour the suburbs for treason ; the train-bands were called out : — " What though some people did sneer, And called them the Pope's Life-guard, They stood to their arms and to their beer All night, and kept watch and ward." Eugene was put off, and at last banteringly informed by St. John that if he chose to come unofficially and chere entiire, he was welcome. The stroke of Marlborough's eclipse and the creation of twelve new peers was suddenly and secretly determined. Eugene was baffled. When he arrived to trouble the land, he was manipulated by nightly dinners at Tory houses. St. John was his cicerone. A medal of Cupid with sword and bottle was struck in his honour. At the Opera all the ladies rose and stared at him. The lion who was to devour the Government found himself only the lion of a gaping season. The Queen, under advice, made her ill-health a pretext for denying him an interview. He quitted England with her magnifi- cent present of a diamond-studded sword, but with nothing else. Marlborough was foiled^ his plot evaporated for the nonce ; the peace was signed in April 1713, and the Duke, to the national chagrin, quitted England in November,^ The Wentworth Papers afford a striking side-light on this conspiracy. The young Lady Strafford writing, after the Duke's departure, to her husband at the Hague — himself 1 Cf. Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 121. See Bel. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 293. ^ " 'Tis true his foes have gained their end, It cannot be denied ; But neither France's slaves nor friends His name can lay aside. True English hearts will still proclaim Great Marlboro's with Eugene's fame." Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 130, 48 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES behind the scenes, well-informed and well-affected towards Marlborough— says on December 2nd, " I think the Duke of Marlborough is gone at last. The reason is yet a mystery, and I have often reflected upon what a great Minister told you concerning him." Eugene's own letters to the Court of Vienna and to Count Zinzendorf at the Hague will solve the riddle. " He acquainted the Court at Vienna that he thought the present Ministry designed to ridicule him and his master, as their procrastinations do them, which made him listen to the proposals that his brother general and Godolphin made to him in the name of the party, namely, that they would firmly adhere to his Imperial Majesty in case they could be at the helm once more ; but that this cannot be effected without the removal of the triumvirate. To which Baron Bothmar said that the compassing thereof, without offending the populace, would be hie labor, hoc opus, whereunto Marlborough and Godolphin replied that rather than it should fail they should be De Witted, but that Bothmar's answering, this would be the only way to provoke the populace, Prince Eugene thereupon said that there might be a medium found whereby to avoid that danger, which could be d la negligence and in a frolicsome manner. Wherewith the Junto being made acquainted, it was by them resolved that Prince Eugene should print a memorial to the purpose following," namely (we abridge the sense), that the Queen should be reminded of Austria's sacrifices for the common cause, and of the Emperor Joseph's remonstrances at the intended change of Ministry. This proposed memorial was communicated to the Pen- sionary, whose reply was that it was " plausible," but would only stimulate the Ministry towards the peace, and that " it would be more proper either to get it inserted in Baron Bothmar's memorial (the better to please the people) or to reserve it till a more seasonable time." The letter then con- tinues : " Prince Eugene did withal acquaint Count Zinzen- dorf how that, finding the English to be full of projects, he had therefore made bold to propose one to the Junto, QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 49 which was that they should imitate Maitre Lewis in what he did by his emissaries at Prague in the year 1689, which Baron Bothmar having approved, he imparted it to the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Godolphin, who likewise approved very well of it, and did withal say, that th€ destruc- tion of a few worthless fellows now at the helm, ought not to stand in competition with the common cause ; and that we must not lose . . . the benefit of ten years' successful war. Yea, Bothmar said, smiling, that it were better that all at the helm zvere blown up in the air than that that should suffer ; adding that in case this project should take, though it might not prolong the war, yet it might be a means of procuri?ig a better peace for the allies ; however. Count Zinzendorf wrote to Prince Eugene that, in his opinion, it would not be proper for him to stay here to see the execution^ Eugene, in the very March before his departure to England, despatched two further expresses to Zinzendorf. " In one whereof he took the liberty to tell him that neither the Queen, nor durst her Ministers come to a separate peace ; that it was, therefore, the business of those who were her foreign allies to make and propose such demands to the king of Finance as he could neither, with his own honour nor in justice to his people, comply with. In the other, he desired the aforesaid Count to entreat of the present Emperor that he would offer security out of his hereditary estates for the loan of money ; and how thereupon endeavours would be used here with the Bank of England for his being furnished with such sums as should be needful in order to the further carrying on of the war." 1 And there is also collateral corroboration. Lord Dart- mouth thus informs the Queen on November 20, 1712 : "... The postboy from Dunkirk had his horse and mail taken from him last night near Deptford. Some of the letters were found this morning in a field, with the covers of others. Drift (Prior's secretary) writes from Paris that the mail had been robbed between Amiens and Abbeville, ' Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. pp. 147-148, note. The letters are transcriptions from the originals. They are dated the February and March of 17 12. D 50 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES but most of the letters recovered which came from Spain, and were the same taken here. Lord Bolingbroke will acquaint your Majesty with a letter M. Torcy has sent him, and the Duke of Ormonde has given me the three exami- nations taken before the Lord Chief Justice in Ireland (Coxe) that mention some ill designs against your Majesty's person they expected should have taken place the tenth — which is the more to be regarded for agreeing with the account from Switzerland." i It is clear that a dangerous conspiracy existed between the more desperate of the Marlborough faction and the Austrian interest abroad, a cabal assisted by City financiers. Eugene himself in this very year described Marlborough, Godolphin, and Sunderland as for "violent measures," and there is a note from Marshal Villars to Oxford to the effect that " immedi- ately after the affair of Denain the principal officers of the enemy taken in this action spoke very freely that all their friends in England assured them that a revolution was im- minent in that kingdom, that they were prepared for it, and that the expectation of it maintained the alliance." ^ If we compare these sources of information with a most remarkable statement by Lewis (Harley's adherent) in a letter to Swift so late as April 8, 1738,^ the probability of this plot, hitherto either glossed or blinked, becomes apparent. These authorities also confirm not only Eugene's com- plicity with a vengeful faction which jeopardised even the Queen, but also Bothmar's studied control of their machi- nations on behalf of Hanover, which led Bolingbroke to exclaim in the March of that same year, "The Elector is now head of a party," and to predict that the landed interest and the peace would undeceive him.* The asser- tion that terms should be demanded of France with which she could not comply explains without a doubt the ' Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rept., App., pt. v. p. 314. ° Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., vol. v. pp. 157, 218. ' Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 219. He is writing about the projected publi- cation of Swift's History. "... The projected design of an assassination they believe true," &c. * Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. ii. p. 210. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 51 Whig policy of 1709, while the fear of England's making a separate peace — that is to say, a peace in her own in- terest — offers the key to "that most violent opposition imaginable, carried on by the Germans and the Dutch in league with a party in Britain," ^ which, under the mask of Revolution principles, attempted to baffle patriotism and to wreck the national advantage for the rapacity of generals, the greed of courtiers, and the selfish designs of insatiable allies. We shall not pursue the Duke's further conduct — the revival of these very rumours shortly before the Queen died, his indecent and would-be triumphal progress through London on her death, the hisses of the crowd, the indiffer- ence and finally the contempt of George I., although Marlborough had so far signalised his recurrent zeal for the Pretender as to part with -£10,000 in a last effort for the cause ; nor shall we stop to refute Carlyle's impatient perversions of the facts in his " Frederick the Great." ^ One more glimpse of the Duke's cabals is afforded by Bolingbroke himself in the March of 1713. " It is hard for so old a gamester to leave off playing. It puts me in mind of a man I knew who, when he had lost all his money and was out of the party, because nobody would play with him, went home, and shuffled the cards, and tried tricks upon them alone all the rest of the night." * It is only fair to summarise his finer qualities — a married life but once, so far as we can discover,* blurred by the breath of scan- dal ; a consideration for the wounded as rare as the gallant strategy, and masterful creativeness that revolutionised the army by inventing a staff and eliminating the worthless cadets of nobility; a regard for the land he conquered,^ ' "Sketch of the History of Europe." Bolingbroke's Works, vol. viii. p. 350. ^ Vol. i. p. 346. The Treaty of Utrecht did not leave "the thing precisely as it would have been without any fighting." Gibraltar and Port Mahon secured, Newfoundland and Acadia and Hudson's Bay, as well as the demolition of Dun- kirk, and Austria in the Spanish Netherlands, are affairs that Carlyle might have pondered. ' To Strafford. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 454. * Wentworth Papers, p. 126. ' It was especially noticed that he spared the forest land at Blenheim. 52 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES even if thrift were the motive ; a genius, brilHant through experience rather than study ; i a chivalry to women in warfare ; a persistent patience seldom combined with such audacity in attack ; a long-suffering under the rebuffs from the inferior Dutch and Austrian generals which never missed its ultimate aim ; speed that was never precipitate, tact that was never affected, an indomitable will, and an invincible spirit. The Ulysses of his day, he was ever yearning to rejoin that loved Penelope and her tranquil garden. Though, in the fierce onslaught of Swift, " cove- tous as hell and ambitious as the prince of it," it was to propitiate that same Penelope, at once his curse and his inspiration, that he griped and grasped,^ that he became one of those who — " Triumphant leaders at an anny's head, Hemm'd round with glories, pilfer cloth or bread. As meanly plunder as they bravely fought. Now save a people and now save a groat." ^ Though his campaigns reaped no material advantage for England, and served mainly to retrieve a barrier for the Dutch and to aggrandise the Austrian, they certainly re- habilitated Great Britain's prestige and overawed the Con- tinent. Marlborough was a brilliant meteor, often ominous, but never dim. He scaled a colossal ladder of successes till he grew giddy by the ascent. He who never failed with the sword could not believe in discomfiture by the pen. He who had kept open so many gates for contingencies could not realise that they were all closed against him.* In the long event he closed the tragedy of his life by disappointing ' This point is admiringly discussed by Bolingbroke in his ' ' Letters on the Study of History," vol. viii. p. 23. ^ A less familiar instance of the money he constantly received is the " report " in 1709 that he received "this campaigne '' "each day two thousand pounds." Wentworth Papers, p. 75. ' Early editions of Pope's " Moral Essays," No. I. ' The main authorities for the foregoing statement are Bolingbroke's Works passim, and his Political Correspondence. Swift's Works, passim, " The Con- duct of the Duchess," "The New Atalantis." Ralph's "Other Side of the Question." Stanhope's " History of Queen Anne." Burnet's History. Macpher- QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 53 his heirs and dying an imbecile like his great adversary, whose words must form our epilogue: — " Come hither, all ye empty things ! Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings ! Who float upon the tide of State ; Come hither and behold your fate ! Let Pride be taught by this rebuke How very mean a thing's a Duke ; From all his ill-got honours flung, Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung." ^ We must now turn to Godolphin. In a subsequent chapter we shall discuss at length the real meaning of the labels " Whig " and " Tory," so far as principles were involved. With principles, Godolphin, like the " New Whigs," whom he headed from 1706 to 1710, had nothing to do. He was an opportunist and a party manager. A large section both of his party and their opponents were equally callous. At the outset of her reign the Tories offended Anne by their motion to invite the Princess Sophia. Towards its close the Whigs tried the same artifice by their determination to bring over the Electoral Prince. The Tories' persistence in two abortive anti-occasional con- formity bills at the beginning was capped by the Whigs' cabal with Nottingham, which carried the very Act which they had uniformly combated at the end. As Addison subsequently avowed, the one side set up the Church in danger, the other Popery and the Pretender, solely as a son's Original Papers, ii. 267, 318, 534. The Wentworth Papers, 71, 75, 126, 106, 248, 243, 246, 213, 208, 210, 211, 306, 258, 278, 237. Swift's Journal, Nov. 19, 1711 ; Oct. 20, 1711 ; Jan. 26, 1711. Prof. Pauli's article in the Rundschau, so often above quoted, pp. 353, 354, 355. The Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 474, 506, 526, 594, 634, 656. Coxe's "History of Walpole," vol. {.passim. Lady Cowper's Diary, pp. 112, 180, 733. Coxe's "History of Marlborough." Cooke's "Lifeof Bolingbroke," p. 120. Memoires of De Torcy. Prior's History of his own times, a work doubted on its first publication, but undoubtedly comprising genuine matter. ' Swift's poems (Aldine edition), vol. i. p. 174, written in 1722. We may be pardoned for adding (because it has been forgotten) that Marlborough was nicknamed " Silly," because that was constantly his answer to the suggestions of others. See Seward's Anecdotes. 54 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES means of rallying the nation. The political system which was then crystallising formed no exception to the develop- ments of later days. Pique, private interest, patronage, and profit played a large part in the decision of affairs, and the old order of government by Court favourites was then still in the ascendant. As Pope sang in the days of Walpole :— " But Britain, changeful as a child at play, Now calls in Princes and now turns away. Now Whig, now Tory, what we loVd we hate, Now all for pleasure, now for Church and State : Now for prerogative and now for laws, Effects unhappy from a noble cause." ' This national quarrelsomeness was not lost on Louis XIV., who professed the pohcy of " Divide et impera,"^ and who missed no opportunity of profiting by it, and he would certainly have profited more had not Godolphin's later association with Marlborough put a new colour on the complexion of intrigue. Godolphin passed for a Tory. Why, it is difficult at any stage of his career to explain. He joined the Whigs against the Church. The trusted adviser of William had at first declared for a regency. He had seconded James in his commitment of the bishops. Yet he had coun- selled Mary D'Este to entrust the education of her son to Sancroft, so that an Anglican nurture might disarm prejudices ^ to his future claims. His prepossessions throughout were for the Stuarts, yet when it became the Whig vogue to exalt William's prerogative, Godolphin had not been backward in doing the same. Up to 1700 the two parties were practically the rival milch-cows of the King, who needed funds for his grand scheme of balancing the scales of European power. Godolphin's Toryism was presumably based on his continual leadership of the country ' " Imitations of Horace," i. 155. '■' He always tried to embroil foreign states, Sweden and Poland, Austria and Turkey. To insulate England, party and the Pretender were his levers. Cf. Burnet, 716. ' Pauli, p. 362. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 55 as opposed to the town, and on his long disinclination to accept the new or Dutch order of things which Somers and his friends were sedulously preparing. They had arranged William's revenues in dependence on the two Houses. They had even driven him to the verge of abdication when he dissolved the Convention Parliament. The new assembly that settled the revenues was Tory and Orange, but it had no coherence. Its Speaker was expelled for bribery. Many Tories were still for King James ; many Whigs were " Compounders," or Jacobites, who reconciled loyalty to Liberalism. Marlborough and Russell, the re- spective heads of the Army and the Navy, the one a Tory, the other a Whig, caballed treacherously with the old against the new monarch. Somers, who had risen by the defence of the seven bishops, but who, since William's accession, propagated the " new lessons " of the Revolution, that " since we had accepted a new king from a Calvinistical Commonwealth, we must also admit new maxims in religion and government " ^ — according to Sunderland,^ " the life and soul " of the Whigs — was expected to form a new Adminis- tration. But his association with the East India Company, his share in the scandal of Captain Kidd, the mistrust of William over the Partition treaties, proved obstacles in his path. Though some years before the Whig artifice of a Title-bill and the battle of the Boyne had temporarily reunited them to the Court ; though the battle of La Hogue had in one stroke shattered the French navy and King James's hopes, the King could not trust his republican- minded supporters. William was popular with neither party. He had, in Bolingbroke's words, "committed the fatal oversight of neglecting to conquer the nation."^ In vain did Shrewsbury — a moderate like the young Mon- tague and the young Prior — urge a patriot party of " the honest-principled men " of both sides. Somers was de- prived of the seals, and the Tories offered an obsequious 1 Swift's "Four Last Years of the Queen." Works, vol. v. p. 170. ' Hardwick Papers, ii. 446. ' " Dissertation on Parties," Letter 8. 56 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES compliance. Godolphin was appointed Lord Treasurer, and Harley, Speaker. The two— both Presbyterian by origin— were ready to bid for the squires and parsons, and to appease the countless cliques of dissatisfied opposition. At William's death, and five years after his reluctant com- pletion of the Triennial Bill, eventually the Palladium of the Tories, Godolphin again became Lord Treasurer ; and two years afterwards arose the project to which we have already adverted, that created a novel Whig party composed of Court and Junto. Rochester, who aspired to rule his niece, resigned the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland in a rage. Nottingham and the "Highfliers" went off in a huff. A trimming policy and a masked dictatorship began. But Godolphin, while soon surpassed by Harley in the first part of the pro- gramme, was ill fitted by nature for the second. The sly "Volpone" was too volatile and too supple. "... He owed much more to his natural than acquir'd parts. His memory was good, so was his luck. To these were joined a great deal of ready wit, a volubility of tongue, ready sentiments, and a most plausible address. Religion in pretence, none in reality. He held it lawful for a man to attain by any methods either pleasure or riches. He was violent in the pursuit of both, quitting his interest for nothing but pleasure, and his pleasure for nothing but interest." ^ Arbuthnot ridicules him as " Sir William Crawley," an actual butt of the time.^ At first he gave Anne unmitigated satisfaction. Her cherished husband's interests were furthered, and she did not regard the two anti-occasional conformity measures as violent, or deplore them as, afterwards, the extreme utterances of Sache- verell. When the Tory trump card was played a second time in November 1703, she thus addressed the Duchess : " I should have been very glad if it had not been brought in the House of Commons, because I would not have had any pretence for quarrelling. I can't help thinking, now it ' "New Atalantis," vol. i. p. 152. ^ Swift's Works, vol. ii. p. 354. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 57 is as good as passed there, it will be better for the service to have it pass the House of Lords too. ... I can't for- bear saying I see nothing like persecution in this bill. You may think it is a notion Lord Nottingham has put into my head, but upon my word it is my own thought." 1 To rule by her own initiative was Anne's foible, and until about 1706 Godolphin flattered it adroitly. No family party could be more comfortable than that of himself, the Duke, and the Duchess. It was not to last. In 1704 the Act of Security was passed for Scotland, which provided for the Queen's death without issue. It yielded dangerous concessions when we remember that it had been preceded by the Jacobite plot of 1703 and the irritation of the " Squadrone Volante." ^ The most dangerous was the clause enabling the Scotch to arm themselves. Godolphin lent himself to intrigues with the Scotch peers ; the mess that he weakly or corruptly created necessitated the Union, which had been the dying desire of William of Orange.^ Burnet admits as much. Swift directly asserts that Lord Somers himself avowed that the Union was wholly " brought upon us by the wrong management of the Earl of Godol- phin." All the high Tories were against it, as originally had been Somers himself. The moderate Tories, following the lead of Harley, St. John, and Harcourt, only supported it from partisan policy. But Haversham compared it to ' "Conduct of the Duchess," p. 158. 2 This phrase — in itself a witness of how fashionable Italian was in Scotland about 1705 — denoted the faction of Lord Tweeddale and his ousted friend. While the Union was brewing, Queensberry — the Court manager — stood aloof under the plea of illness, and watched how the cat would jump with Argyle for catspaw. The "Squadrone" were the new Whigs of Scotland. They assisted the Court party to name Commissioners, but only on condition of the repeal of the Aliens Act. They assisted Somers and the Government in 1709 in spite of the Jacobites, Cameronians, and Nationalists like Lockhart and Belhaven, whose eloquence Marchmont answered by the famous retort ; — " Behold he dreamed, but lo ! when he woke he found it was a dream." They eventually contributed to the settlement of the succession and the adjustment of commerce under the Union. They were detested by the English Tories. They united with the "old Court" party in December 1710. Cf. Portland MS., vol. iv. 629. ' Luttrell, vol. vi., vol. iv. p. 147. 58 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Nebuchadnezzar's idol, with feet of iron and clay which would never incorporate, while Rochester and Bucking- ham detested it, and the Queen, who followed their lead. It evoked great discontents in the country which it was supposed to relieve. The Scotch complained that the stipulation for an equivalent for the customs was unper- formed ; that by the Test Act Presbyterians were excluded from office ; that commoners but not Lords were privileged to be English peers ; that Episcopalians were favoured ; that the wine and spirit trade suffered ; that the malt-tax was iniquitous. And further, it caused Godolphin himself to seek the protection of an Indemnity Act in 1709 to save his skin, and the aid of the Jacobites to prolong office. The wounded pride of a stiff-necked race lingered long after- wards and proved a mainstay of the foredoomed Jacobite cause. The ballad of "The Rose and the Thistle," with the refrain of " O were I Thistle again ! " gave the adherents of the Pretender a lasting expression, while that of the "Auld Grey Mare" enunciated the national resentment. The "wise old man" had three mares, but "this thrawart jade she was the best of all." " The auld mare's head was stiff, But nane so weel could pu' ; Yet she had a will o' her ain Was unco' ill to bow." The "auld man," in an evil moment, resolves to anni- hilate the mare, and the Duke of Queensberry — the " proto- rebel of 1688 " — is thus trounced : — " He hired a farrier stout Frae out the West Countrye, A crafty, selfish loon, That lo'ed the white moneye ; That lo'ed the white moneye, The white lint and the red ; And he hath ta'en an oath That he wad do the deed." QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 59 "The "grey mare" brings the house down on the " auld man's " head, and the satire thus concludes : — " Take heed, Queen Anne, Queen Anne, Take heed, Queen Anne, my dow ; The auld grey mare's oursel', The wise auld man is you." ' This was the rift within the lute. The aggrandisement of the Marlborough faction grew yearly, and at last the Whigs found that, to quote Defoe,^ deeming the Queen " would not venture to act without them, by this measure they lost the Queen herself." Staunch Tories like the Duke of Beaufort had absented themselves from Court ; the trimmers were afraid of Marl- borough's designs. In 1709 Godolphin began to "want friends." Never was the treasury worse muddled. His reputation for finance allured the City only, because it hinged on the continuance of the war. He had no head for figures, and the accounts, to the extent of thirty-five millions, were subsequently proved to have been scamped with culpable negligence. His mismanagement of finance hampered Harley's Administration in its payment of arrears to the Queen's servants. The " great debt which the Earl of Godolphin left upon the civil list" is expressly men- tioned by Bolingbroke in 171 3 as the cause of this back- wardness.^ The country was sick of the war, which en- riched the usurer, and angry at the incursion of refugee foreigners from the Palatinate,* which impoverished the artisan. A plague broke out at Blackheath, which was attributed to these unfortunates.^ The " Lord Treasurer's Whigs " grew inattentive. The Junto were at loggerheads. Godolphin was for capitulation, but the Queen was averse. 1 Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 62. 2 "Secret History of the White Staff," Part i. p. 9. ' Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 458. * On September 26, 1709, Sir J. Mansel writes to Harley : " Peace is what I long to see. . . . Our country, without the assistance of Palatines, will go near to be starved before the year comes about." Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 527. » Cf. Tatler, No. 41. 6o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES He tendered her his staff of office, which she refused,^ just as he had tendered it to William before the war. Sunder- land, as we have seen, mutinied. Sarah of Marlborough would have tossed back her groomship of the stole on the spot, if she could have secured it for Sunderland's wife, but the Duke of Somerset was determined to grasp it for his duchess. Lord Rivers and Jack Hill obtained regiments that Marlborough had reserved for his friend Meredith. There were, on the other hand, counter- rumours on all sides that Marlborough had insisted on being Captain-General for life, that Abigail Masham would be turned out,^ that there would be a clean sweep of the Tory ladies-in-waiting. Nor were matters proceeding well abroad. In vain did Godolphin asseverate that peace was secured. Marlborough; and Townshend, together with Horace Walpole — nicknamed "Little Torci" — were per- forming a solemn farce with Torci the Great, who, as through- out his M^moires, was unctuously ejaculating that "there was no resisting the hand of God." Indeed, famine and mis- fortune would easily have constrained Louis to treat, but the British demands were so purposely preposterous — including, as they did, the coercion by Louis of his grand- son — that they were indignantly refused by President Rouill^. Townshend meanwhile had arranged the Barrier Treaty with the Dutch, and entailed a fresh responsibility on England, and a fresh opportunity of intermeddling on Holland. In vain did Marlborough protest that in this he had had no hand.^ In vain also did Godolphin gain Par- liamentary credit for having delivered his country from the Pretender's attempt in the preceding year. All the world knew that he had connived at it, and that Harley saved him from impeachment on account of the Scotch Act of Security.* It was said that the Queen herself went ' Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 506. ^ Mordaunt actually meditated a motion on supply in the House of Commons to this effect. Wentworth Papers, p. 102. ' Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 690. * Swift, " Public Spirit of the Whigs," Works, vol. v. p. 410, and Works, vol. vi. p. 381 (Arbuthnot's "John Bull.") ..." Rather than keep a butler that QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 6i in fear of her half-brother, or of some new Guiscard. Marlborough felt the ground already slipping beneath him and his colleagues. He was denied the Constable- ship of the Tower for his ally Cadogan. He offered to lay down. He excused himself to the Queen ; he assured her that he had prompted no measures against poor Abigail. Somers and Godolphin had to dissuade him from being so extra-submissive. But his forced civility availed little with the Queen, enraged with the Marl- boroughs, with him, and with the ungovernable Hert- ford. It was Anne's habit, by her instinct of suspicion, to visit the sins of one member on the rest of a group.^ Then followed Sacheverell's trial in March 1710, caused by Godolphin's personal pique, against the better judgment pf the Junto. Great ladies squabbled for seats and rushed to the function at seven in the morning. A national reac- tion set in, despite Walpole's assurance that "compliments to the Duke were so many compliments to the Queen ; " despite the address of the House of Commons backed by the City interest to send the Duke to transact the peace. Sunderland was ejected and Godolphin was tottering to his fall. Shrewsbury supplanted Kent — consoled by a dukedom — in the Chamberlainship. Godolphin was ram- pant. On receiving a civil letter from this thin end of the wedge, he exclaimed, " Damn him, he is making fair weather with me ; but by G — d I will have his head." The Government strained their energies, but fruitlessly, for a new Parliament. Sacheverell's light sentence spread the beacon-fire of High Church sentiment from pulpit to pulpit. The London mob terrorised Whigs and burned conventicles. Rumours of change were rife in all the coffee-houses. The Duke of Beaufort was to be Master of the Horse, the Duchess of Somerset groom of the stole. Shrewsbury was politely — after his manner — promising loves my heir better than myself;" and cf. a most important passage in "A Letter from a Foreign Minister to M. Petticum, 1710." Somers' Tracts, vol. ii. P- 273- 1 Swift's Memoirs relating to the change. Works, vol. ui. p. 228. 62 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES both sides everything. Dr. Hescourt, "an old chaplain," preached before the Queen " a high and foolish sermon," and Lord Chancellor Cowper fired his parting shot in a snub.i On the 8th of August 1710 events culminated. The Queen sent her dismissal through a liveried servant. At nine in the morning Godolphin received the letter of cong^, which he kept secret till midday, and " then it flew about the town that he was by that turned out." ^ He flung the white staff into the fire and retired in dudgeon. That same evening the Marlborough faction held a council at Mr. Secretary Boyle's, and agreed that the new managers would sink under the weight of their own designs ; that without the Duke they could neither support public credit nor carry on the war ; that inextricable difficulties would compel the Queen to recall her old Ministers, and that their policy was to hold aloof till such recourse was forced by her distresses.^ In other words, Marlborough was to give them rope. By August of the following year Godol- phin was deprived of his Lieutenancy for Cornwall.^ The Treasury was put in commission.^ By August 22 Harley was congratulated on having "got over the black gentleman."^ In the autumn Rivers was despatched to Hanover. The only danger now lay in the schisms of the Tories. Even the City, where Godolphin's jobs were flagrant, where every effort was made to bolster monopoly and to hamper national finance for political obstruction,^ where stocks were lowered if the Queen in her speech used the word "indulgence" instead of "toleration,"* placed four of the Church interest at the head of the poll, and Heathcote with three of his clique at the bottom. By October 1710 Lord Haversham was able to say that " an opposition would look as vain as to attempt to stop the stream at London Bridge with one's thumb." ^ ' Wentworth Papers, p. 122. 2 Ibid., p. 130. ' Ralph, "The Other Side," p. 446. * Wentworth Papers, p. 140. ' Harley, Mansel, Paget, and Benson. Hampden refused a Lordship of the Treasury as his reward for being a " Peace Whig," » Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 573. r Ibid., pp. 617-618. 8 Wentworth Papers, p. 158, Nov. 1710. » Wentworth Papers, p. 150. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 63 Pope's verses have stamped " Patritio " as a trifler and a gamester; and Arbuthnot causes Mrs, Bull to complain, " Hocus (Marlborough) was urging ; mybook-keeper(Godol- phin) sat sotting all day playing at put and all-fours." ^ Swift, too, in Toland's invitation to Dismal, says that " wine can clear up Godolphin's cloudy face." But in truth, his attachment to Newmarket was fully as diplomatic as it was epicurean.^ There he could discuss his schemes in secluded conclave. Disasters had soured his temper. He was rough with the Queen. He played for his own hand against both Court and party, and the game was up. It was not pleasant for Anne to be advised by Parliament to marry again before the protracted mourning, "as for a father," had expired, and to hear pamphlets like the " Hasty Widow, or the Sooner the Better," cried aloud in the streets. Her confidence had been rudely shaken, and she managed by fresh favouritism to have it rudely shaken again. Godolphin, in truth, belonged to an old order which was gradually vanishing. He spanned the distance be- tween the Arabian Nights' Entertainment of Charles the Second, when a Minister was a vizier, and the half-fledged Cabinet system which three-quarters of the eighteenth century were to mature. He was an ambidextrous oppor- tunist : — " Yet still so happy was his fate, He caught his fish and saved his bait." ' For the people he cared little, for posts much, and, to be fair, considerably for prestige. But he was no states- man, only a mesh of expedients which ended by involving himself. On October 27, 1712, he was dangerously ill at Newmarket, his pet resort. When he died his body lay ^ "History of John Bull." Swift's Works, vi. 324. * Cf. Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 506. "October 5, 1708. — Lord Treasurer ■m'Ca. flambeaux about four o'clock this morning hence to Newmarket. The Duke of Somerset and Lord Rialton with him. It was generally believed that the Lord Treasurer would fix measures of capitulation with the Junto at Newmarket. But it is said now the work will be delayed some time." 3 Swift's " Sid Hamet." 64 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES in state. It was the week after the Electress's birthday ; Whig ladies were singing " Hanover, haste away ; " ^ reports as to the speedy conclusion of the peace which Godolphin had bartered were universal. These were ill voices round the dead man's ears. He had been originally intended for trade ; ^ he had been a page at Court ; he had been a manoeuvring shuffler of political cards ; he had prospered and waxed rich, but all his career had been but a little sound signifying nothing. To the last he had meddled and muddled. When the Scotch Dupplin was introduced on January i, 1712, into the House of Lords as "Lord Hay," Godolphin did his best to make party capital out of the " irregularity " which his own measures had caused. But he was never more to chicane in power. It was "a new world," ^ and the old properties and scenery were shelved in the dust. Other actors were to take the stage. It was Harley who wrested Godolphin's staff, and was in his turn displaced by Bolingbroke. Of Harley we have much to say, and do not now propose to notice more than a few salient points. Harley is not to be brushed away by Macaulay's "solemn trifler." His nature was so complex, his antagonisms so various, his affinities so diverse, that scant justice has been accorded. The man who could view death with indifference, whether by the knife of the assassin ' The whole of this curious ballad, so instinct with ignorant prejudice, is- given in Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 113. One of the stanzas runs — "Whoe'er is in place, I care not a fig, Nor will I decide betwixt High Church and Low. 'Tis now no dispute between Tory and Whig, But whether a Popish successor or no. Over, over, Hanover, over. Haste and assist our Queen and our State ; Haste over, Hanover, fast as you can over. Put in your claims before 'tis too late." ^ Cf. Swift's Works, vol. v. p. 174. ' Wentworth Papers, p. 242. "It is a new world since I had the honour to write to you. The Duke of Marlborough out of all his places, the Duke of Ormond in some of them. . . . Twelve new Lords. . , . They will have it the Duke of Somerset is to be out. . . . His Grace looks melan- choly." QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 65 or by the impeachment of the Minister/ who could inspire such devotion as he did in Swift, Lewis, Ford, Arbuth- not, Pope, Prior, and Gay, such detestation as he did in Bohngbroke, was the same who jingled doggerel on way- side signposts when in office, and caricatured Dryden in lame reflections when out of it ; who, like the Emperor Augustus, doled out shillings for stakes at his card-parties of one - and - thirty ; ^ who, in Bolingbroke's invective, " seemed to be sometimes asleep and sometimes at play," whose " activity became as hurtful as his indolence." ^ The same, who dallied through crisis to catastrophe, whose sentences were a shifty labyrinth, who never steered a direct course on principle; whose maxim was that "men might be made use of when they can serve us without any real design to serve them;"* whose policy was to keep sup- porters dangling, so that they might lose neither incentive nor humility ; who at once wished to engross all direction and to procrastinate till the way was lost ; who clung to the skirts of chance with an impenetrable air of providence. Bolingbroke in his " Spirit of Patriotism " has cruelly compared him to one of those " Buick Travellers" who " wander about from one object to another of vain curi- osity or inelegant pleasure. If they are industrious, they show their industry in copying signs and collecting mottoes and epitaphs. They loiter or they trifle away their whole time ; and their presence or their absence would be equally unperceived, if caprice or accident did not raise them often to stations wherein their stupidity, their vices, or their ^ Pope's enthusiastic but well-worn lines, " Heroic soul in each hard instance tried," &c., have been translated by Voltaire almost word for word into prose, and find their place in his Sikle de Louis XIV. ; and see Swift's letter to Oxford of October II, 1722 (Works, xvi. 419) : "In the two great scenes of power and persecution you have excelled mankind ; " and the tribute of Parnell : — " Through fortune's cloud one truly great man see, Nor fear to tell that Mortimer is he." ' Swift, Journal, October 9, 1712. Swift was reminded of Sir W. Temple. ' Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 42. * Defoe, " History of White Staff," pt. ii. p. 5. E 66 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES follies made them a public misfortune." And in his essay on " The State of Parties " ^ he thus further and brilliantly satirises him : "The minds of some Ministers are like the sanctum sanctorum of a temple I have read of somewhere ; before it a great curtain was solemnly drawn ; within it nothing was to be seen but a confused group of misshapen and imperfect forms, heads without bodies, bodies without heads, and the like. To develop the most complicated cases and to decide in the most doubtful has been the talent of great Ministers; it is that of others to perplex the most simple and to be puzzled by the plainest." Time could not alter his disgust. As late as 1734 he writes from Dawley to Swift : " You and I have known one man in particular who affected business he often hindered and never did ; who had the honour among some, and the blame among others, of bringing about great revolutions in his own country, and who was at the same time the idlest creature living ; who was never more copious than in expressing, when that was the theme of the day, his indifference to power and his contempt of what we call honours . . . ; who should, to have been consistent, have had this indifference and have felt this contempt, since he knew neither how to use power nor how to wear honours, and yet who was jealous of one and fond of the other, even to ridicule." ^ Such were the verdicts of his quondam . friend. By his ribald enemies " Sir Roger " was grossly bespattered. He was called Harlequin^ and Machiavel; "that double-tipped elf, Hermodactyl." The "awkward agitation of his head and body " " betrayed," according to the inveterate Duchess, " a turbulent dishonesty within even in the midst of all these familiar airs, jocular bowing, and smiling." The Whig versifiers are always wishing him hanged. Five years after Gregg's execution, the infamous ^ Bolingbroke's Works, vol. vii. p. 263. " Swift's Works, vol, xviii. p. 265. ' This punning sobriquet was not confined to print ; it was perpetuated in a medal of 1711, in which Harley and Raby appear as "Harlequin and Rabbin." Cf. Pauli, p. 352. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 67 libel that he was only the tool of Harley was perpetuated by the slang ballad of the " Raree-show : " — " Here first we present you with a dismal disaster ; De Sarvant be hanged for saving his master." In another he is twitted as " Endowed with every tricking air, With politics and pence." His moderation and mystification alike provoked the virulent odium which encompassed him. While he dis- appointed persons, he could not rally a party. The rancour of the few was recruited by the fury of the many ; and he remained one of " those sly, slow things with circumspective eyes." Harley sprang from a tough Roundhead and Presby- terian stock of standing. His pedigree pretended an affinity with the Veres and the Mortimers.^ He was educated first at a school in the neighbourhood of the Haymarket, kept by one Foubert, a French refugee, in whose family he seems to have maintained an interest. Hence he was among the few statesmen who understood French, and could interrogate Guiscard in his own lan- guage. He afterwards repaired to a school at Shilton, where Harcourt and Trevor were his fellow-pupils. King William had at first neglected him, despite his services at the Revolution, and this lack of recognition had embittered him against the Court ; ^ but Harley knew how to wait, and in the Tory Parliament of 1701, so convinced was the King of his ' Bolingbroke, himself connected with the Veres, ridicules these pretensions. Cf. Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 6l. ^ In some remarkable " Reflections on Public Affairs " jotted down by Harley at the Crown Inn, Farringdon, in the autumn of 1 707, he relates how he entered the House during the second session of William and Mary on his petition for Radnor ; how he was chosen Commissioner for the Bill of Accounts ; how the Duke of Montague pressed him to be Auditor of the Exchequer. Twice a year he waited on the King. The first conversation he had with him in the year 1691 was "upon a very extraordinary proposal about Toulon;" and he continues, "The Earl of Sunderland, while the King was alive, told me before others that I knew the King would have turned out Lord Somers to have had the sura of ;f200,ooo out of the Irish forfeitures. ... I would'never enter into that negotia- tion." Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 45i- 68 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tact and financial ability, that he used his personal in- fluence to secure the Speakership for Harley. Associated with Godolphin, and on the same lines, except as re- garded the anti-occasional conformity bills, he soon dis- tanced him in management, while he deprecated the partnership with Marlborough and opposed the Junto measures which they furthered.^ He contrived to keep his eventual place as Secretary of State till the events of 1708 rendered continuance impossible. For nearly three years he had set himself to win the Queen through the medium of his cousin, Abigail, and he now benefited by strategy and stratagem.^ Harley represented "how the monarchy was in effect reduced to an oligarchy — a council of six sitting on the life and death of the nation.^ The Queen listened eagerly to Abigail's authorised promises of emancipation. Her humility and persistence, to which we have already adverted, proved a spoke in his wheel. The daughter of a city merchant and the maternal great- aunt of the future Duchess of Marlborough, she inherited nothing but the bankruptcy of her father and an infini- ^ He, together with the "New Tories,'' opposed the grant to the Duke of Marlborough till he had done something to deserve it. He opposed the repeal of the test as levelling the Church with every "snivelling sect." Swift, vol. iv. pp. 154-155. He opposed the bill for general naturalisation because of the danger of being "overrun by schismatics and beggars." He opposed the bill for cancelling the College Statutes obliging Fellows to take orders. He opposed the Indemnity Bill in June 1710. He, of course, opposed the Sacheverell impeachment; v. " Letter to a Whig Lord." But he and Mansel exceptionally, did not oppose the Whig self-denial bill of January 1710. See Wentworth Papers, p. 106. ^ The Queen's reluctance to appoint Sunderland was attributed by the Duchess of Marlborough to Harley 's "interest and secret transactions with the Queen." After asserting that his succession in 1704 to Nottingham's post was due to her husband and Godolphin, after reflecting on his condolence at the death of her son in 1703, she lays at his door the appointment of the two High Church Bishops, Blackball and Dawes, without Godolphin's or Marlborough's advice. See "Conduct of Duchess," pp. I7I-I74- Burnet, 8i6. But she omits to relate that earlier Trelawny had been promoted from Exeter to Winchester ; that the Whig Bishop of Norwich took Patrick's place at Ely, while Sunderland's friend, Dr. Trimnell, succeeded to Norwich, and Dr. Potter was installed in the Divinity Chair of Oxford, at Marlborough's remonstrance, in preference to the Tory Smalridge. ' " New Atalantis," i. 195, under the character of "Don Haro." QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 69 tesimal portion of her mother's pittance ; and so, by a strange stroke, she was not only a connection of Harley, but also a cousin once removed of the Queen's spoiled intimate. Seldom has more romance centred round a personality so commonplace. The Whig ballad-mongers of the time reviled her as " a dirty chambermaid," and one of them recounts how — " Her royal mistress made her, oh ! A Minister of State ; Her Secretary she was not, Because she could not write ; But had the conduct and the care Of some dark deeds at night. The important pass of the back stairs Was put into her hand, And up she brought the greatest rogue Grew in this fruitful land." The Duchess contemptuously relates how, after Anne's marriage, while the young couple were residing at the Cockpit, a stray acquaintance informed her that she had poor relations. She generously rescued the son from the gutter and the daughter from the garret, if her account is to be trusted. Abigail Hill, after a menial situation in the household of Lady Rivers, became merely one of the Queen's dressers, like old Mrs. Danvers or young Miss Scarborough. Jack Hill was eventually promoted to a commission in the service. These bounties, according to the Duchess, were showered on ungrateful traitors, and her first instance is Abigail's clandestine marriage with Colonel Masham, which was avowed in 1706. The Duchess vouchsafes no account of why it was base to marry with- out her consent. Henceforward Abigail passes, as it were, into Harley's career until the split between them and her machinations in Bolingbroke's favour. Harley — or Oxford, as he then was — abused her in the coarsest language. She had brought him in and shoved him out. Her services became indispensable for success with the Queen. She was "visseted in crowds by Whigs and Torys, some of whom I have heard wish her damn. For my part, 1 haven't 70 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES courage to go with the crowd yet, because I know she reckons me in the number of those that rail'd at her, though I never did." Thus in the autumn of 1710 un- blushingly asseverates Peter Wentworth. By the summer of 171 1, such was at once her success and the unblush- ing jobbery of the day, that we read, "Her Majesty has appointed Miss Masham, daughter of Mrs. Masham, a girl of two years old, to be chief ranger of St. James's Park, which is worth about .£'1000 per annum, in the room of Lord Godolphin."! "Tq plough with the heifer" was a phrase in vogue. In her private relations this " she-artist," as Defoe contemptuously styles her, appears to have been a staunch, sensible, affectionate wife and mother ; she re- tained the friendship of the old set under George II. But to resume. At the earlier epoch we have reached, she was the very faithful humble servant of her cousin Harley, registering for him every phase of the Queen's moods, and meekly sympathising with her sovereign. Her attachment to Anne seems to have been genuine. It endured to the end, when she performed the last sad offices for her mistress. She pitied the distraught Queen, environed by extreme self-seekers, hampered at every turn by the chill irons of the persistent Junto and the hot airs of the Marl- boroughs and Godolphin. She knew that "my aunt," as Anne is called in her correspondence, thirsted for quiet at home and abroad ; that her soft heart abominated car- nage, and brooded over the loved memories of her dead husband, refusing, even after a year's mourning had elapsed, to occupy Windsor Castle ; that it still reproached itself for its infidelity to her father, and at moments wavered into atonement by some restitution to the brother she despised, if he would only hearken to Mr. Leslie and abjure his Romish errors. She saw by what factious calumnies the throne was encompassed, and that at best she could not hope to fill the void which the trusted and graceless confi- dante had left behind her. The Duchess represents the Queen as ungrateful, and misled by an unscrupulous de- ' Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., vol. v. p. 15. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 71 pendent, insinuating an ambitious adventurer up the bacii stairs by stealth, eluding frank overtures by ambush, and slimily serpentine over her enticed prey. Such is the pic- ture which the Duchess, in her extreme age and on a sick- bed, stirred her smouldering vengeance to contrive, and paid a mercenary tool five thousand pounds to paint. "The conduct of the Duchess" was to be a foil to Pope's Atossa.i How different is the contemporary version. "On the 22nd," writes Abigail from Kensington to Harley in September 1707, " I waited, and in the evening, about eight o'clock, a great lady came, and made a visit till almost ten. I was in the drawing-room by good luck, and, as she passed by me, I had a very low curtsey, which I returned in the same manner, but not one word passed between us, and as for her looks, indeed they are not to be described by any mortal but her own self. Nothing but my innocence could have supported me under such behaviour as this. When she had ended her conversation with the Queen, I was gone to my lodging to avoid seeing her again that night, but she was so full, she could not help sending a page of the back stairs to speak to me, and desired it might be the next day, either at her lodgings or mine, which was easiest to me, and then she would trouble me no more. I waited all day expecting to be sent for, but no message came. At last, between eleven and twelve o'clock, this letter was sent me by her footman, which I have taken the liberty to enclose, with a copy of my answer." ^ Let us add one more quotation, exhibiting Abigail as the feeler for Harley. The date is February 17 10. She asked Anne her opinion of Sacheverell. The Queen answered (with suspi- cious reticence) that she did not interfere one way or the ^ Hooke had been recommended by Chesterfield. For the episode cf. Ches- terfield's Memoirs, Miscellaneous VV^orks, vol. i. p. Ii6. The larger vindication of the Duke, which she entrusted to Chesterfield (who was a legatee), and he to Glover and Mallet, was never completed. Ibid., p. 134. " Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 154. Contrast with this the Duchess's own account of the "woman" she "had raised out of the dust," commented on in Ralph's '' The Other Side," p. 328 ; and consult the Duchess's insolent complaint of Abigail's installation in her lodgings, quoted in the Coke Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., I2th Rep. App. pt. iii. p. 83. 72 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES other, but acted on the advice of her friends ; and then follows an account of Anne's attendance at the trial. The mob huzza'd her, shouting " Church and Sacheverell ! " Parker spoke best for the managers. For the defence Harcourt spoke for nearly two hours, and so well that " had there been no watches, none had thought a third part of the time spent." She concludes by an excellent story of the notorious Lord Coningsby, who was " always talking." " I have always been against the father, and will be against the son," exclaims my Lord, meaning King James and the Pretender. " Aye, my Lord," he was answered, " and against the Holy Ghost also."^ Harley was more a Parliamentary manager than a public leader. His faults were those of head rather than of character. After his resignation in 1708, the breach between him and Marlborough became irreparable, and could never be salved, either by St. John or Poulet. Indeed, the efforts of the former to this purpose inaugu- rated his own antagonism to his once loved chief. The changes of 1710 were, so far as Harley was concerned, largely a personal revenge. To disable Marlborough he contrived the peace which Bolingbroke sought both from policy and statesmanship. But, like so many Ministers of his calibre, he was totally unacquainted with the foreign affairs which he professed to master.^ His was a micro- scopic and not a telescopic mind. The people were con- ciliated by the discharge of ten millions of debt, the clergy by the fifty new churches and the Schism Bill, the Jaco- bites by a sham connivance.^ Like most who strive to content all, he ended by pleasing none. By playing on ' Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 532-533. ' See a letter from Schulenburg to Leibnitz at Berlin on March 31, 1 7 14, Kemble's State Papers, p. 491 : ". . . Harley is an intrepid man, who knows England as thoroughly as he is ignorant of foreign affairs, and spends more in spies than Cromwell ever did." ' Such as doubt these motives for Harley's conduct, which Bolingbroke throughout his works endorses, should consult a very remarkable letter of "Jacob Mears the Jew," addressed from Cleves to the Elector in the autumn of 1713, and copied in Robethon's hand. He seems to have been a confidential agent for Hanover, and his statements therefore merit some credence with regard to the QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 73 the individual passions and prejudices of the Queen and his party, he produced a discord which ahenated both, while his " neglect of business," his disrespect and unpunc- tuality, which finally drove him from the Queen's favour, probably arose as much from his dwindling health as from the toping habits which even his dependent Lewis admits.^ Through petticoat influence Harley crept into back- stairs influence. On the wave of Sacheverell^ he floated into power, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards on vague assurances that he " intended a Whig game at bottom," and, in recognition of his popularity after Guiscard's attempted assassination, as Lord Treasurer or Prime Minister of England. It has hitherto escaped notice that Harley's triumph implied an extraordinary conquest of the Queen's pre- judices. Two full years before that triumph he had gained both her regard and her husband's.^ Unlike Godolphin, who never allowed his early Presbyterianism to infect him, Harley aired the twang in his talk. Macaulay* has men- tioned one instance in a letter to Carstairs : " My soul has Tory side. He exonerates the Tory leaders from any but a simulated Jacobitism "to alarm you," and he advises that Oxford, "who is not for the Pretender," should be conciliated, and that the Electoral Prince should go over to England. Oxford's motives, he says, are "out of hatred to Marlborough, and in revenge on one (Godolphin) who had disgraced him with the Queen." Cf. Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 500 ; and as to Harley's affected Jacobitism, cf. Leibnitz to Schulen- burg, June 7, 1714, Kemble's Slate Papers, p. 505 ; and set post, chap. ix. ' Lewis to Swift, July 27, 1714, Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 191. See also ibid., p. 195, Lewis to Swift, July 29, 1714 : "I have long thought his parts decayed, and am more of that opinion than ever." Cf. Lady Masham to Swift, ibid., p. 193 : " He has been the most ungrateful man to her and to all his best friends that ever was born. ... I think I may lay her illness to the charge of the Treasurer, who for three weeks together was teasing and vexing her without intermission." '^ A verse in " The Age of Wonders " runs — " The furiosos of the Church Come foremost like the wind. And Moderation out of breath Comes trotting on behind." 2 The Prince of Denmark was with difficulty persuaded to consent to Har- ley's retirement as "for the good of the nation." Wentworth Papers, p. 105. * Vol. viii. p. 91, note. 74 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES been among lyons, even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongues sharp swords." There is another in the letter of condolence on the young Blandford's decease : "I do feel that a limb is torn off ; therefore I think, for the preservation of the residue, the blood should be staunched." ^ Harley's middle-class first wife was even more pronounced.^ When the giddy Duchess of Shrewsbury at the beginning of 171 2 inquired of the homely old soul whether she knew a certain lord, Lady Oxford repHed, " I know no lord but the Lord Jehovah." "Oh, dear madam," rejoined the Duchess, "who is that? I believe 'tis one of the new titles, for 1 never heard of him before." Atterbury and the High Church party abused him as a "Presbyterian spawn," and all the Tories united in mis- trusting his loyalty to their party. It was entirely his own resourcefulness that brought him in touch with the Queen, that at first won Halifax as mediator between the extreme wings of both factions, by studying to humour the Queen's predilection for a coalition of moderate men on both sides,* that stemmed the tide of party violence, that manipulated all and gratified none. But he believed what Poulet pressed upon him. "You cannot keep the Tories on their legs as Tories, but only as you make them your followers."* A great party was beyond his ken. He never ceased trying to balance the extremes, and the same reactionary violence which installed him in his sovereign's favour eventually dethroned him.^ His adroit- ness worked by vacillation ; he kept adherents on tip-toe. When the clouds were darkest he would sit toying with an orange.® He " amused " the October Club, " bubbled " ^ Cf. Swift's tragi-comic allusion in his letter, Works, vol. xvi. p. 261, and Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 514. "^ Lady Strafford says : " I am to-day to go to a very odd figure of a lady, that is, L. T.'s, who is like an old housekeeper . . . seldom goes abroad. . . . L. T. takes it as a compliment paid to him." Wentworth Papers, p. 219. ' See, among many other and triter evidences, the remarkable letter of Anne herself objecting to Sunderland's Secretaryship and pleading for a coalition. Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comra., 9th Rep. pt. ii. p. 472. * Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 683. » " Eleven Opinions of Mr. H— y," p. 17. ' Swift, Journal, March 13, 1713. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 75 the Jacobites, and played with contending factions like an angler with a salmon. But he was capable of serious and striking industry. Had he been privileged under the Georges, he would have rivalled Walpole in finance. His original South Sea scheme, his reforms of the abuses with Exchequer bills and army contracts, were admirable. His thrift and economy were a proverb. " Now and then," comments Arbuthnot in his " History of John Bull," "you would see him in the kitchen weighing the beef and butter, paying ready money that the maids might not run a trick at the market, and the butchers, by bribing them, sell damaged and light meat. Another time he would slip into the cellar and gauge the casks. In his leisure minutes he was posting his books and gathering in his debts." His programme of measures in a letter to the Queen at the beginning of his Adminis- tration is as lucid as his apology on his dismissal is con- fused. He was too apt to trust his own subtlety and the wheel of fortune. He was " wavering, intricate, mys- terious, and puzzled." ^ That is why Swift terms (with reference to the title of Gay's comedy) his Administration a " What-do-ye-call-it." Himself a Whig spy on the Tories, he depended over-much on spies, assiduity, and cunning, on Defoe alias Paterson, and Ogilvie alias Gassion, a propensity which his deafness in the left ear perhaps favoured. He belonged to the old generation, and yet, if he could only have " gone thorough," he might have initiated something worthier of the new. The illiterate Strafford, who disliked him, annotates his career in 171 1 in a character which we thus abbreviate : " In King William's time he was always against the Court. I have heard it said that he had only ;£5oo a year, and spent half of it in clerks to copy out what papers were given into the House of Commons, so that Blathwayt was afraid to speak before him. On his becoming Secre- ' Boyer's expression in his " History of the Last Ministry," Introduction, p. Ixiv. 76 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tary he sent Tolandi abroad to give him the character of Ministers. He got in with Mrs. Masham, promoted her marriage, got her future husband the regiment of horse of Lord Windsor, whom he got the Lord Treasurer to put out because he had opposed the election of Lord Treasurer's son at Cambridge in favour of his brother. . . . The Duke of Marlborough and Lord Treasurer got him out for fear of his greatness with the Queen, not without great pains, for the Duke had to offer to lay down. They would have appropriated his place as Secretary but for the Queen. Despite the Gregg affair and the Pretender's de- scent on Scotland, he kept quiet with Mrs. Masham till he brought about this change, cunningly pretending to clip the power of these two lords by bringing moderate people on both sides. He gained the Whigs with the aid of Shrews- bury out of hatred to them. Though now he passes for a Tory, he was formerly a great dissenter. He did govern all till Lord Rochester and the crowd of Tories came upon him." Swift, who remained his constant and grateful sup- porter, refers to him at an earlier date in the "Tale of a Tub " as a " huge idolater of monosyllables and procrasti- nation ; " ^ though long after the crash came he sympathised with the most delicate respect.* A significant picture is furnished by his brother, Mr. Went worth, just after Harley's instalment in September 1710 : " He received me very civilly among a crowd of old-fashion, out-of-the-way gentle- men, faces I had never seen except Sir Stephen Fox, Sir Jacob Banks,* and Mr. Godolphin's of the Custom House, who I was surprised to see there. . . . Mr. Harley came up to me and ask't me if I had any commands for him, ' The famous freethinker, who invented the word " Pantheism." He was sent in 1707 to sound the Court of Hanover. Portland MS., p. 456. ^ Swift's Works, vi. 168. There are many allusions to Harley in Swift's " Advice to Servants," which is full of political double entendres. Harley is the Butler. ' Just before Harley's dismissal Swift, in a remarkable letter hitherto uncited, concludes, "I have said enough, and, like one at your levee, having made my bow, I shrink back into the crowd." Portland MS., vol. v. p. 470. ■* City interest. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 77 so I began my speech concerning you ; but before I had done, he stepped away to another lord, which discourag'd me a little. And so I saw him dispatch half-a-dozen, who made their bow and went off. But I was resolv'd to go through with it, though I had staid to the last man. But before that, he came to me very civilly, and ask what 'twas you desire, and beg'd my pardon he had left me as he did, but he told me it was with designe to have a good deal of talk with me." Another pointjthat deserves attention is the detestation of Harley by Sunderland, who seems always to have lent himself to the implacability of his mother-in-law. In 1708 a secret correspondent in- formed Harley that Sunderland was even instigating a plot against his life.^ It was Harley who had most resented his appointment as Secretary ; Harley again who contrived his expulsion. Sunderland's wayward fury contributed more than anything else to the disgrace of the Duke and Duchess. We must subjoin a word on his relations to the Dis- senters and to men of letters. Historians are mistaken who assert that the Nonconformists of this period were Whigs to a man. Their main meeting-house — " Calamy's " — at Westminster, was presided over by Mr. Stephen Cobb, who lived and died a Jacobite.^ Apart from the Quakers, who, as business go-betweens, were often Jacobites,^ the Dissenters contributed largely to Harley's success in the elections of 1710.* They looked to him, as they after- wards looked to Walpole, for some amelioration of their state, and in both cases they were wofuUy disappointed. As has so often since happened, they were regarded by statesmen in power as a prop, but by statesmen out of power as a burden. Swift dictated a " swingeing " letter for Harley in answer to one of their petitions. The " Highflyers " were resolved to make a clean sweep of their status, and the Schism Bill was the upshot. Yet 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 493. "^ Defoe's Tour, i. 173. 2 Cf. Macpherson Papers, /a^izOT. One Mr. Brorahead is especially mentioned. ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 151. Among the old Whigs. Sir John Barnard had been born a Quaker. 78 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Harley seems to have retained a sneaking good-will to- wards them, and, at any rate, he appreciated their poli- tical importance in the provinces. He is reported to have bribed and humoured them,i and they were certainly among the many classes whom he by turns elated and depressed. As regards literature, Harley acted con amove. He was not only vain of playing the Maecenas, but he was himself a sound scholar and an appreciative critic. His library is still famous. He was also a collector of pictures.^ His early discernment of Swift's genius and affectionate in- timacy with him kept the Dean on his side long after he deprecated the course of his management ; for Swift never forgot either a benefit or an injury. When the compli- mentary preamble to Oxford's patent of peerage had to be composed, the task of the " Latin perquisites " ^ was entrusted not to a great author, but to a great friend — the future headmaster of Westminster. He encouraged foreign talent. To Grabe, the Lutheran scholar, who joined the English communion, he erected a tablet with an elaborate inscription in Westminster Abbey. Nor is he occasionally without an antique aptness of terse ex- pression. Writing to Swift on July 27, 1714, he says, "... and I believe, in the mass of souls, ours were placed near each other." If we compare the two camps in this respect, the Tory is infinitely the more brilliant. Hahfax, himself an early collaborator with Prior, was a smatterer who relished the fumes of dedication more than the fuel of composition, and encouraged more than repaid. " While Montague, who claimed the station To be Maecenas of the nation, For poets open table kept, But ne'er considered where they slept. ^ Portland Papers, vol. iv. p. 640. ^ See the list of them given in the Dartmouth Papers. Hist. MS. Comia., 15th Rep. App. pt. i. p. 113. ' The expression of Erasmus Lewis, who drew up Godolphin's preamble. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 79 Himself, as rich as fifty Jews, Was easy though they wanted shoes,i And crazy Congreve scarce could spare A shiUing to discharge his chair. Till prudence taught him to appeal From Poean's fire to party zeal." Godolphin was scarcely lettered, and patronised only to be fashionable. The former's Addison and the latter's Dick Steele burned their little heaps of incense to the party idol and not to the fellow-craftsman. Harley sat in brotherhood with his "pen-men." He it was who counte- nanced Swift's project for an " academy " ^ for the literary genius as statesman, to Swift. And he owned a sense of humour — more human than the sarcasm of Godolphin or Wharton, more genial than the wit of Bolingbroke or the badinage of Peterborough and Bathurst, despite the reflec- tions of the first on the jests, "which savoured of the Inns of Court and the bad company in which he had been bred." ^ His Thursday evenings he christened "Whipping-day," from the censure of his friends. Swift he would tease as " Dr. Davenant," from a pretended ascription of a pamphlet to that high Tory writer, or as " Thomas," from the cousin who had pretended the authorship of the " Tale of a Tub ; " Prior as " Monsieur Baudrier," from Swift's jeu-d' esprit on the Paris journey. Nor should his treatment of an impor- tuner for diplomatic promotion be forgotten. "Do you know Spanish ? " urged Harley. After a time the applicant returned, protesting that he had mastered the rudiments. ^ Cf. Pope (Epistle to Arbuthnot) on "Bufo,"' whose application to Halifax has been doubted, but which this satire of Swift confirms : — " Proud as Apollo on his forked hill Sat full-blown Bufo, puff' d by every quill ; Fed with soft Dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song. Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh, Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye ; But still the Great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve." 2 Swift's Journal, October 30, 17 12. ^ Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 50. 8o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES "Ah, then," rejoined the Minister, "you have great pleasure in store. You can now read ' Don Quixote ' in the origi- nal." One of the pleasantest touches in Swift's Journal is when he dines with the Oxfords, and after the old couple had retired, makes merry with Tom Harley and his young wife. " Stealing away from the old folks," as he terms it to Stella.i On the whole, it may be said of Harley that he unites a fraction of the hero to a piece of the attorney. He could be both dignified and pettifogging. Like Peel, he was more dexterous than original. He was for ever cooking the dishes of others and hashing up an olla-podrida of alien ingredients. He was the plagiarist of policies that he lacked the courage to enforce and the imagination to com- bine. On the scene he fussed and finesssed, but his exit was noble and became him. That deterioration preceded it there can be little doubt. Instead of courageously breasting the sea of troubles which dashed around him, he shivered feebly on the shore with a curse on the supplanter.^ Had the Queen survived, he would, without question, have regained his footing. It was this ambling game that was his forte. To rush affairs impetuously through, to gallop along the political arena was the mitier of the impatient and imperious St. John. No wonder that, with tempera- ments so conflicting, their association should have split and their orbits clashed. Harley maintained his idiosyncrasies until his death. By escaping the clutches of the Whig impeachers — a stroke of luck owed as much to the then exclusion of Walpole from office as to the good offices of Harcourt and Notting- ham — he once more baffled and eluded Marlborough, who would have destroyed him if he could. He retained both his courage and his mystery, his finesse and his friendship to the end. He never surrendered the conviction that he might yet head a party. He participated in the intrigues ' Journal, December 31, 1712. " Cf. Lewis to Swift. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 187. "This impotent, womanish behaviour rexes me more than his being out" Gfuly 14, 1714). QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 8i that surrounded the " Peerage Bill.'' Over and over again Swift, Prior, and Arbuthnot rally and wonder at "The Dragon," while they laugh by turns and weep to think that " Sir Roger " remains so much himself. If we have been tedious, it is because these persons of the drama, their context and their perspective, necessitate elucidation before the curtain rises. In conclusion, we would emphasise some further char- acteristics of the Queen herself. She exercised a direct political influence ; not only did she attend debates, but she set herself to capture votes. The night before the Parliament met in December 171 1, she sent for the Duke of Kent, and next day he voted for the Tories.^ When Lord Cromarty, in December 17 10, was asked by the Queen how the Scotch lords would vote, he answered, " They were all agreed." On her insisting " agreed in what?" he replied, "To take as much money as Her Majesty was pleased to give them." ^ She had a trick of repeating one sentence over and over again, as if by rote, at any important interview. Thus, when the Duchess expostulated about Abigail, Anne kept reiterating, " It was very natural ; she was very much in the right." In public she was shy, " dissembling," and sometimes awkward ; she would gnaw the end of her fan when uncertain how to reply. She ate in private.^ She was devoted to music. She played herself on the guitar, and her voice was melodious. Mr. Clayton was constantly conducting for her at Windsor. The opera flourished throughout most of her reign. Though her luxury of bereavements deterred her from frivolities, in 1710 she resumed cards and even dancing, while her birth- day in 171 2 was celebrated with unusual splendour.* But in general she discountenanced the masquerades of her predecessors.^ Above all things she desired society to be 1 Wentworth Papers, 222. ^ lb., 162. ' " Social England," iv. 594. ^ Cf. Pari. History, vol. vi., under the date of February 6, 1712. 5 On her birthday in 1705 she " would not give them baul nor play." Went- worth Papers, p. 40. Even the opera began to languish in 1713. Portland MS., vol. V. p. 358. 82 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES decent. Her court was dull and ceremonious.^ Her sym- pathy with suffering is familiar. She was also singularly devoid of resentment. When, in 1708, Sir John Holt paid marked consideration to the aged Richard Cromwell, who had been called as witness at a trial, the Queen much com- mended his conduct towards the son of her grandfather's murderer.^ Nor must we omit her Dutchly frugal economy. In her first speech of 1702, she thanked the nation for her revenue, assuring it that "she would take great care" it should " be managed to the best advantage." " And while my subjects remain under the burthen of such great taxes, I will straiten myself in my own expenses rather than not contribute all I can to their ease and relief." She began by devoting ^^100,000 to the public service. Her civil list never averaged more than ;^5oo,ooo. She never bought a jewel during her reign, and during nine years her outlay on dress, including coronation robes, was only ;£32,050. In 1682 the future George I., then the Elector of Hanover, had asked Anne in marriage. He was her cousin twice removed, and his kinship to the Queen was made by Swift to account for his courage at Oudenarde.^ His mother, Rupert's sister, remained a devotee of the Stuarts, and violently opposed his match with the bal- lerina's descendant, Sophia Dorothea of Celle and Dol- breuse. How different might have proved the fortunes of England if the House of Hanover had thus early been naturalised ! How different might have been the lot of Anne herself ! Or if the future Queen Caroline had accepted the hand of the future Emperor and unsuccess- ful claimant to Spain : — ^ " . . . There is nothing but ceremony, no manner of conversation. . . . The Duke of Somerset sitting at a little table by . . . without one bit of meat upon it . . . ; the Duke of St. Albans a jesting, Lord Arran sleeping, my Lord Burlington eating with his eyes. We played after dinner, drank tea, bowed extremely, and so returned." Lady Orkney (1714). Portland MS., vol. v. p. 463. ' Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield, vol. i. p. 11. ' Cf. "Jack Frenchman's Lamentations." Swift's Poems, vol. iii. p. 6. QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES 83 " The pomp of titles easy faith might shake ; She scorned an empire for religion's sake." These two frustrated marriages would have altered the destinies of Europe. A straw may turn the scale. Such was the sovereign, and such her favourites in an era eminently "transitional." Before we open our narrative it will still be requisite for us to investigate, however cursorily, the social atmosphere of the "transition," removed at once from the days of the first Stuarts and the first Hanoverians. For, to judge how far Bolingbroke transcended or violated the standard of his day, we must learn what that standard meant. CHAPTER III THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE Dr. Johnson, in the Rambler, tritely devotes an essay ^ to a favourable contrast of the previous generation with his own. An income of -^2000 with a domestic wife, he asserts, meant more then than one of ;^io,ooo afterwards. Single women then never went in public unattended, except to church. In reality the Doctor was comparing the society which he frequented in his fame to that which had been his environment in obscurity. It is amusing to find Steele in the Tatler himself proving the praiser of the past. In Shakespeare's time, he observes,^ women were only " mothers, sisters, daughters, wives ; " they " were not then shining wits, politicians, virtuosae, freethinkers, and dis- putants. , . . Vanity had quite another turn. The most conspicuous woman at that time of day was the best house- wife." The Spectator's essay on the levity of young women was voted " pretty " by Lady Strafford.^ As a matter of fact, women in the reign of Queen Anne played a far larger and wider part than they had ever done before. Not that their education was as good as when the Renaissance made feminine learning fashionable. The foreign governess was incompetent ; the suburban boarding - school,* a mere forcing-house of pretentious ignorance and shallow ac- complishment. If we turn from the well-to-do to the well-born, it is only in rare instances that, as in the case of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with Burnet for pre- ' No. 97 ; but contrast Lord Chesterfield's essay, the World, No. 49, Dec. 7, 1753. 2 No. 42. 3 Wentworth Papers, p. 236. * Those at "Mile End Green" and "Windmill Hampstead," "for young gentlewomen," were advertised in the Spectator, Nos. 314 and 28. 84 THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 85 ceptor, a woman cared or dared to be a scholar. The Jacobite Mrs. Astell, authoress of an " Essay in Defence of the Fair Sex," had, prompted by her friend Atterbury,i endeavoured to found an establishment on a more solid basis, but she was derided. It was this lack of disciplined women that gave Swift an additional zest in his training both of Stella and of Vanessa. While the girls of the period were, as the pages of the Tatler and the Spectator copiously illustrate, often love-sick hoydens at home or minxish misses at the Academy — " That innocent delight he took To see the virgin mind her book, Was but the master's secret joy In school to hear the finest boy." Their conversation was— as ever — the ordinary chatter of " The School for Scandal ; " they " Gave hints of who and who's together, Then fell to talking of the weather." = A few pompous inscriptions to the ornaments of their sex, chiefly in the suburban churches,^ attest the rarity of anything like pedantry among women, if we except "the learned Lady Chudleigh," Mrs. Elstob,* and a few " blues," chiefly of Swift's schooling, later on. Nevertheless, the correspondence of these unlettered ladies teems with thought, with observation, with happy phrases. Addison,^ and after him Macaulay, have emphasised their ignorance, which the first tried to cure by the elegant generalities of " Discourses on Morality " and " Reflections upon Human ' In a letter to Smalridge he says, " Had she as much good breeding as good sense, she would be perfect." She wrote also " Reflections on Marriage," "An Impartial Inquiry into the Cause of the Rebellion," and " The Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England." Molly Astell, like many other Jacobites, was born in the North of England. She lived most of her life and died at Chelsea. Lyson's "Environs of London," vol. ii. p. 137. Atterbury's Letters, vol. i. pp. 19, 20. '^ Swift's Cadenus and Vanessa. ^ Cf. that to Miss Anne Baynard, quoted by Lysons (Surrey), vol. i. p. 24. ^ Luttrell's " Relation of State Affairs," vol. vi. p. 674. Portland MS., vol. v. P- 445- ' Guardian, No. 155. 86 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Nature ; " ^ but ignorance is not incompetence. The very dearth of systematic teaching enhanced their native wit and accentuated their striking individualities. Nobody can read the many letters of Lady Mary, of Lady Betty Germain, of Mrs. Delany, of the Duchess of Queens- berry,2 of Mrs. Howard, the few of Lady Orkney, of Lady Ormonde, of the first Lady Bolingbroke, the fragments of the Harley and Wentworth families, the diary of Lady Cowper, without realising the fact. Compare, for one instant, the latter and that of the Jacobean Countess of Warwick ; the gulf is manifest. Nay, more ; nobody can peruse the pages of Mrs. Manley herself, despite their coarseness and violence, without recognising a literary gift. She was a political caricaturist, but she had a talent for her trade. " She seemed to laugh and squall in rhymes, And all her gestures were lampoons." " And the frailties of her life were imposed by her surround- ings. It is hard that such a woman should have been forced into Lintot's protection, and have ended an unaided struggle in want and illness. The age of Anne was one of energy and originality, and women were conspicuous. Never under more favouring auspices has career been more open to talent. Voltaire notices the feature as peculiar to England. And in the case of the weaker sex, two further reasons contributed. A woman sat on the throne, Elizabeth and Victoria have fostered similar resvilts. A woman might gain Court preferment by cleverness without beauty. And again, political ferment was at boiling-point; Every month witnessed some new transformation. Women are naturally ' spectator, No. 215. ^ The famous patroness of Gay. She refused to change the fashions of her youth, and elicited this graceful compliment from Whitehead : — " Your Grace will contradict in part Both my assertion and your song, Whose beauty, undisguised by art, Has charmed so much, and charmed so long." " Swift's " Corinna." Poems, vol. iii. p. 36. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 87 high politicians, and here they found stimulus and occasion. They fought for their lovers and husbands. Children, however, incurred small danger of being pampered. Parents could still inspire awe. " Miss kisses her mama's hands," the great Duke, himself a most loving father, records in a letter to the Duchess.i The reaction, therefore, as adolescence emancipated the child from tutelage, was all the more forcible. This reaction, which so injured the vehement vitality of Bolingbroke, led him thus to insist in 1735, from his retreat at Chanteloup : " ... If our characters were determined absolutely, as they are certainly influenced by our constitutions ... all endeavours to form the moral character by education would be unnecessary. Even the little care that is taken, and surely it is impossible to take less, in the training up our youth would be too much. But the truth is widely different ; for what is vice and what is virtue ? . . . Ti:e former is, I think, no more than the excess, abuse, and misapplication of appetites, desires, and passions, natural and innocent, nay, useful and necessary. The latter con- sists in the moderation and government, in the use and application of those appetites, desires, and passions, ac- cording to the rules of reason, and therefore often in opposition to their own blind impulse. What now is education ? ... It is, I think, an institution designed to lead men from their tender years, by precept and example, by argument and authority, to the practice and to the habit of practising these rules. . . . " ^ A protest, surely, against determinism which our own age would do well to regard, and which his was little capable of appreciating. And in 1724 we find the Duchess of Queensberry thus writing to Swift, whom she had not seen since she was five years old, about the choice of a school : " . . . Mr. Locke makes a full stop there ; and I never heard of any others that were mentioned, or at least published, any ' As late as 1745 Mrs. Delany addresses her mother as " Dearest Madam.'' ' 1 ' Of the Study of History," Letter 3. Works, vol. viii. 88 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES helps for children at that time of life which I apprehend to be the most material." ^ To proceed to the men, the neglect of sound learn- ing comprehended most who could indulge in an eldest son. French tutors abounded ; deportment was more esteemed than diligence. Swift, in his essay on Modern Education, relates the story of Lesack, the dancing-master, who said of Harley, " Well, I wonder what the devil the Queen could see in him, for I attended him two years, and he was the greatest dunce that ever I taught." Continuous warfare swelled the evil. Officers, as the Dean records in the same brochure, would ejaculate, " D — n me, doctor, say what you will, the army is the only school for gentle- men. Do you think my Lord Marlborough beat the French with Greek and Latin ? D — n me, a scholar, when he comes into good company, what is he but an ass ? " The early age for resorting to a public school or university enhanced the want of discipline. " By these methods," continues Swift, "the young gentleman is as fully accom- plished at eight years old as at eight-and-twenty, age adding only to the growth of his person and his vice . . . the same airs, the same strut, the same cock of his hat and posture of his sword (as far as the change of fashions will allow), the same understanding, the same compass of knowledge, with the very same absurdity, impudence, and impertinence of tongue." Addison, too, inveighs against the vogue, and insists that pedagogues are worse paid than footmen.^ He devotes an essay to eulogising the schools of the Jesuits.^ The head-mastership of a good grammar-school, like Rochester, at the salary of j^ioo a year, was considered a prize.* Lord Gower, as late as 1738, recommended " Samuel Johnson (author of ' Laocoon, a Satire ') to the head-mastership of Appleby, at ;^6o per annum." '^ It was no appanage of a gentleman's nurture to frequent a public school, or even university. Prior, ' Swift's Works, vol. xviii. p. 249. ^ Guardian, No. 94. » Tatler, No. 1 68. ■■ Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 523. ^ Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 238. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 89 who was not gently born, and Halifax and Walpole, who were, rank among the very few prominent men who had been to both. Somers was educated at Bright's seminary in Worcester, and removed from Oxford almost as soon as he entered it for a stool in his father's office. The courtly Cowper went straight from a private school at St. Albans to the Middle Temple. Harcourt had been at Birch's Shilton Academy with Harley and Trevor. Even the accomplished Chesterfield was taught at home till he repaired to Trinity Hall. Indeed, many of the leading figures were men who had risen — in itself a phenomenon of the time. Somers was self-made; Harley himself was called a "new man." As for Benson, afterwards Lord Bingley, and brother- in-law of Lord Dartmouth, he is described as " of no extraction." Godolphin, and even Marlborough, had begun as adventurers. Addison and Craggs were of ordinary origin. As we shall note later, the mercan- tile class was leavening the aristocracy. Seats in Parlia- ment were publicly " bulled " and " beared." " Let any man," writes Swift in 1710,^ observe the equipages in this town. He shall find the greater number of those who make a figure to be a species of men quite different from any that were ever known before the Re- volution, consisting either of generals and colonels, or of those whose whole fortunes lie in funds or stocks ; so that power which, according to the old maxim, was used to follow land is now gone over to money." ^ Boling- broke observes the same in the sixteenth letter of his " Dissertation on Parties." Little scions of great houses repaired to petty seminaries, where they were treated with ridiculous respect. " My wife and I," writes Peter Wentworth, on April 5, 1709, "have resolved to give little Willie the preference as our best beloved . . . because he may give himself airs to his French master and thirty gentlemen's sons, his fellow-scholars, of the ' Examiner, No. 13^ ^ Cf, Gay's allusion in " Trivia "to " brokers and coaches," 90 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES honour he has to be so near related to one who possesses so many honourable titles." In the remoter districts a poor gentleman's son would be schooled with the peasantry, like young Warren Hastings shortly afterwards at Daylesford ; next some struggling chaplain would be deputed to instruct him as much as he condescended or pretended to learn. And such as were destined for army or navy had to enter the big world before there was time for them to progress, even if they were so minded. Swift — in this matter an excellent judge — has described the life such a chaplain led — his forced subservience, his precarious prospects, often his degrading end. The uni- versities were the only educational bodies that attracted students by emolument. But it cannot be said that their palmiest days were Anne's. Bentley was a profound scholar, but the loose Atterbury vanquished him in a false argument. Bull, eventually Bishop of St. David's, was, it is true, a theologian and a scholar. Beveridge adorned the diocese of St. Asaph, and Wake that of Lin- coln ; but Launcelot Blackwell, Dean of Exeter, the friend of Walpole, had been a buccaneer in his youth. The most accomplished of the Queen's bishops was Burnet, and he was not an English university man ; Sherlock, however, the son of that Master of the Temple to whom Prior had dedicated one of his earliest odes, and who adorned the Bangorian controversy and survived till 1761, hailed, like his father, from Eton and Cambridge ; so did Patrick, Bishop of Ely. Compton belonged to the old school of militant ecclesiastics. Robinson was the last who both wore the mitre and managed affairs of State. Lloyd 1 would awe the Queen by his appHcation of Daniel to the events of the hour. The fact is that a struggle between Church and State was in process, and by the accession of George was decided in favour of State and Church. The Universities, however, furnished the best ' Bishop of Worcester. A political skit of the time twits him as " Mysterio." " Thus old Mysterio shook his silver hairs, Loaded with learning, prophecy, and years." THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 91 passport for an active career, although their own province was still one of pedantry. Lord Chesterfield observes, in his "Letters to his Son," ^ "When I first came into the world, at nineteen, I left the University of Cambridge, when I was an absolute pedant. When I talked my best, I talked Horace ; when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial ; when I had a mind to be a fine gentle- man, I talked Ovid. I was convinced that none but the ancients had common sense.'' A Master of Arts, who had dabbled in the classics, could scrawl decent doggerel and concoct potent dedications, had a fair chance of twenty guineas^ and political preferment, since those of the " scribbling trade " were becoming invaluable to a Ministry. Ten pounds only was the price of a prologue.^ Addison was a real master of serene style, a scholar, but no poet ; his verses, however, and not his essays, secured him his lucrative posts, without any real aptitude for affairs. Prior was merely a desultory student, but, of his kind, a true poet. He might have written infinitely worse to attain the same outlets for a great business capacity. Steele,* Rowe, Diaper, Parnell, and Ambrose Philips (" Madrigal Namby " ^) all succeeded, though a hackney muse. Letters were not precious of themselves, but only, if we may be allowed the phrase, as letters of introduction. A satire in the " State Poems " is pointed at this feature : — " This vast success of verse our poets had, Statesmen at home and envoys all abroad." We may add that when Prior, in 1707, was called upon to lay down his employment, he was consoled by a secretary- ship to the Bishop of Winchester.^ Addison was a poor ^ Vol. ii. p. 174. ' This was the usual dedication fee. Cf. Swift to Gay. Works, vol. xvii. p. 191. ' Epistle to Arbuthnot, line 48 : — " My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pounds.'' * Cf. Swift's Horace, Book ii. Ode i. ; Poems, vol. iii. p. 65. ' Cf. Swift, " Bettesworth's Exultation." Poems, vol. iii. p. 169. This nick- name of " Namby " was given by Henry Carey. See DTsraeli's " Calamities of Authors,'' p. loi. * Luttrell, vi. 183. And this, after he had been Secretary at Ryswick and Paris ! 92 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES secretary, Steele notably incompetent and incorrect. Tickel and Gay were laughing-stocks in affairs. The witty secretary for Jamaica and the tiresome versifier who was made under-secretary to a Secretary of State evinced no practical ability. The writer of " little flams " ^ may be acquitted, but then he was merely a sub-registrar in Ire- land, as indeed in Arcadia. Poor little Harrison ^ died too young even for his salary to have been paid. Perhaps George Stepney^ was the sole poet-diplomatist, except Prior, who excelled in affairs. Under the illiterate George I. Young gained a post by beslobbering Walpole in a pre- posterous apotheosis, whose only excuse was that " In George's reign these fruitless lines were writ, When Ambrose Philips was preferred for wit." Science, however, and scientific " Philosophy " met with real recognition and achieved signal triumphs. Locke, who had been favoured by Cudworth's latitudinarian daughter, was appointed a Commissioner of Trade. Newton, the Master of the Mint, was universally appreciated. France, whose own muses were waning, joined the chorus. Holland, whose influence so affected every department of England except the landed interest, did the same. Desaguliers and Sgravesande lectured in London. The lofty and unalterable ideals of classical philosophy were vanishing. New and innumerable ideas were the mode. Helicon was deserted for the highway, the Academe for the laboratory, the pinnacles of poetry for the levels of prose, the ceremonial of criticism for the slap-dash of raillery, religious mysticism for commercial utility. The ^ Swift to Pope, September 29, 1725. Works, vol. xvii. p. 42. ^ He was 'a lovable character. Every one remembers Swift's kindness to him and his mother as he lay a-dying at Knightsbridge. It is not so well known that, with Bolingbroke's assistance, he continued to edit the Tatler after Steele's withdrawal ; nor that he improvised some Latin verses which must have sug- gested a famous simile to Macaulay — " Tarpeise virginis instar," &c. See Spence, p. 267. * Burnet assigns him "admirable natural parts." Swift, in characters of Queen Anne, qualifies Burnet's praise of Stepney by terming him "scarce of a third-rate poetical order." THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 93 very word "enthusiasm" was invidiously applied. The Muses sauntered in negligi. Even the stiff observances of warfare were revolutionised by the brilliant impromptu of Marlborough. The age was one of movement and material progress, not of contemplation nor of acquiescence. Philo- sophy had become the handmaid of science, creed of politics, art of decoration, literature of common sense. Expediency decided convention, and shifting conven- tionality ruled supreme. Rebels against it were contemned as eccentric or condemned as treasonous. It was a practi- cal epoch that understood its own profit, and brushed away all it was unable or averse to understand. There was, in Bolingbroke's fine phrase, "no profusion of the ethereal spirit among us." ^ " Nothing for nothing " was an accepted maxim. "Only fools and madmen," writes the author of a curious manual,^ " propose no interest in moral actions, and forget what they act for." The "parson" (to use the Whig phrase which Swift resented) who had succeeded at college, even if no writer, might secure a patron. The old-fashioned dowager indeed kept a priest on the premises as an oracle for her soul, just as she prepared " waters " and bitters as a panacea for her body. Bolingbroke's own grandmother used to vaunt her " cephalic drops." ^ A " widow-parson " was a term of the time. He need not necessarily teach or truckle for a pittance. If his pronouncements suited womankind he might even attain Court favour, and Court favour might secure a deanery. We shall consider the state of the Church at large subsequently. SufEce it to say that Steele himself admits the clergy to have been the most learned body in the kingdom.* In the country, then so widely distanced from the metropolis, education was the monopoly though seldom the possession of the wealthy. The squireling could just ^ " On the Spirit of Patriotism." Bolingbroke's Works, vol. vii. p. 13. 2 " Political Instructions for the Use of Gentlemen," 1708, p. 29. 5 See Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 294. Lady Kerry gave Swift a bottle of her bitters as a cure. Cf. Journal, October 10, 171 1. < Tatler, No. 66. 94 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES read and barely spell. The Dissenters, mainly traders, were Admirable Crichtons in comparison. The West of England, that great emporium for " Spanish cloth," fed by the wool trade as far as Kent, could boast Warren's Dis- senting Academy at Taunton. Of the seventy-two ministers there preaching, only six had conformed to the Church. The rest issued from this school.i Dissent may be said to have been equipped to fight and thrive throughout the trading centres of England. The country gentleman, how- ever, had enough knowledge, and often more than enough tact, for the worthy discharge of his responsibilities. " He understands his station," says Bickerstaffe ; " he is a father to his tenants, a patron to his neighbour. He divides his time between solitude and company. His life is spent in the good offices of advocate, referee, companion, mediator, and friend." But we are mainly concerned with the world of London. The most evident result of ill-schooling was the deplorable state of the language. Mincing abbreviations and fashion- able slang, latinisms which afterwards infected Johnson, and a total want of clearness and neatness were the mode.^ The Queen's English was in as parlous a state as the Queen's highways. There were Hounslow and Bagshot Heaths endangering conversation as well as locomotion. Even literally that " Queen's English " needed rectifica- tion. It is not without significance that we find Lord Dartmouth correcting Anne's composition in the July of 1713.* Swift's proposal of an academy "for cor- recting, enlarging, polishing, and fixing our language" met with no Government support; as Lord Chesterfield remarked some time afterwards, " Precision and perspicuity not being in general the favourite object of Ministers, and perhaps less so of that Minister than any other." Swift's own terse simplicity, Steele's invention of "this libertine manner of writing by way of essay,"* which Addison ' Defoe's Tour, vol. ii. p. 21. " Swift to Archbishop King, July 12, 171 1. 2 Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rep. App. pt. v. p. 316. * Tatler, No. 172. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 95 followed, and, by " fair-sexing " ^ it, popularised, helped much to purify the channels of thought. But Bolingbroke did even more. He created the modern oratorical prose. English in his hands became both malleable and mas- sive. Old Lady Wentworth, on the contrary, belonged to the generation who would rather mis-spell like people of breeding than spell like a scholar. " Equipage " is with her " ekopadge," " Italian," " etalyon ; " " extraordinary,' " exsterordinary ; " " reconciled," " recondsyled ; " " Prus- sia," " Prushee ; " and " Marlborough," " Molberry." She probably pronounced as she wrote, and so her mistakes are interesting. But Stella, too, was a sloven in orthography.^ Against the neglect of mental discipline royal prodigies were a protest. The weakly little Duke of Gloucester was overtaxed by intellectual study. His military tuition had been committed to Marlborough, and he had a boy- regiment of his own at Kensington. Burnet was his preceptor. He thus describes the curriculum : " I had been trusted with his education for two years, and he had made an amazing progress. I had read over the Psalms, Proverbs, and Gospels with him, and had explained things that fell in my way very copiously, and was often surprised with the questions that he put me and the reflections that he made. He came to understand things relating to religion beyond imagination. I went through geography so often with him that he knew all the maps very parti- cularly. I explained to him the forms of government in every covmtry, with the interests and trade of that country, and what was both good and bad in it. I acquainted him with all the great revolutions that had been in the world, and gave him a copious account of the Greek and Roman histories and of Plutarch's Lives. The last thing I ex- plained to him was the Gothic constitution and the beneficiary and feudal laws. I talked of these things at ^ Journal, Feb. I, 1712. ^ Swift writing to Mrs. Pendarves in 1736 notices the immense improve- ment, and says of a "woman of quality" and "excellent good sense," formerly his correspondent, that " she scrawled and spelt like a Wapping wench, having been brought up in a court," &c. Mrs. Delany : a Memoir, p. no. 96 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES different times nearly three hours a day; this was both easy and delighting to him. The King ordered five of his chief Ministers to come once a quarter and examine the progress he made." Hapless lad and unwise Bishop of Salisbury ! The child was only nine when the routine began. He had only completed his eleventh year when the " Gothic constitution " put the finishing touch to his own. He died of "a malignant fever," so malignant that "his little body turned green and yellow immediately," ^ the victim of Dutch thoroughness and over-anxiety for a stable and able succession. Fourteen years later, the Princess Anne — christened in compliment to the Queen — was put to the same torture in the intellectual grip of her grand- mother, the Electress, and Leibnitz. Lady Cowper records of her that she " at five years old reads and writes both German and French to perfection, knows a great deal of history and geography, speaks English very prettily and dances very well." ^ It was well for average children that their lessons were confined to the gingerbread horn-books celebrated by Prior in his " Alma " : — "... Begin we in our children's reading, To Master John the English maid A horn-book gives of gingerbread, And that the child may eat the better. As he can name, he eats the letter." We must quit education for surroundings, as we shall eventually quit surroundings for manners. The capital of that day was considered a miracle of size and grandeur. It had been swelled, says Defoe, by those whose residence in London was necessary for the signature of stock-jobbing contracts, and he therefore regarded its vastness as abnor- mal and temporary. The London of our own day contains ' Harley thus characteristically announces the fatal fact to his father : "... The Duke of Gloucester danced on his birthday, was ill the next Fryday. Dr. Harnes ordered him to be let blood and blistered. He had some spots, had eat fruit, smallpox was suspected. He died this morning (July 30, 1700) at one o'clock. God's ways are unsearchable." His body was brought to London in the King's barge, lay in state at the Prince's lodgings near the House of Lords, and was net interred for a week. See Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., 14th Rep. App. pt. ii. p. 624. ' Diary, p. 38. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 97 as many inhabitants as did then the whole of Great Britain. Oldham, which at that time scarcely existed, is now about as populous as Queen Anne's metropolis. Chelsea was a pleasant township, boasting a common and a pond near the Queen's elm, with a ferry over to the hayfields of Battersea, famous for fruit gardens, and the manor where Bolingbroke was born. Swift bathed in the Thames near the church. Beyond Battersea followed breezy Clapham, quaintly Dutch in character, the asylum of Pepys in his age. Knightsbridge was a village where invalids stayed for the air ; 1 Kensington a courtly suburb, whose fine new square adjoined the palace and mirrored the architecture of the Hague.2 Harley repaired to " Kingseaton for the air" in 1711.^ Hammersmith and Wimbledon (or Wim- bolton) were still country prospects with mansions and a famous palace. When Swift visited the Caermarthens at the latter, he was in ecstasies at the view. The road past Hounslow and Brentford to Staines and Windsor was dotted with stately seats and prosperous inns. Sion House flourished in all its glory, and at times sheltered the sulky Somersets. At right angles were struck the great Bath and Oxford highways, beset with perils at Maidenhead thicket ; and the Uxbridge Road with Dawley, where Bolingbroke found a nucleus of Tory peers towards the end of the first George. From the neighbouring Cranford a way mean- dered to the river-side of Twickenham, where Mr. Secretary Johnstone's garden adjoined Lord Raby's, now " Mount Lebanon," where dwelt the Bathursts, where in 1710 "May- pole Riots " with the hamlet of Whitton raged with a rustic fury, which Pope has made to live. Richmond and its Park were smiling neighbours. On the Green Hedges lived, and in the church Haversham was buried. Rich- mond Wells was gaudy with raffles, dancing, and quadrille. Ormonde inhabited what afterwards became the Lodge, ' Poor young Harrison, Secretary to the Congress of Utrecht (replaced by Bolingbroke's brother George) and Swift's protege, died in 1713. Cf. ante, 92, 94. '^ In Queen Anne's time Kensington was Icnown not only for its gravel pits, but also for James Ford, the quack-doctor, who at once professed to cure stammering and to teach French ' Wentworth Papers, p. 195. G 98 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES until his hurried flight. Roehampton was dignified with the house of the Devonshires/ that had recently become an alderman's. Hampton wore its royal mien. At Sheen Swift had been amanuensis for William, and Lady Gifford lingered. All round were stately pleasances. Only King- ston, which abutted on the Great Portsmouth Road, re- mained inveterately Whig. Kew was trim with villas and gay with boats of passage. Mortlake, still haunted by the weird memory and quaint mansion of the Elizabethan and encyclopzedic Dr. Dee, was another stage for the traveller by water. Barnes could show the Elms, which concealed as many duels as Hampstead, and the fabric which had been owned by Queen Elizabeth and inhabited by Lady Walsingham, but which now re-echoed to the toasts of the Kit Cat. The returner townward by Putney, which vaunts the grave of Toland,'' and the King's Road, would pass the great house of the Mordaunts at Parson's Green, with its spreading timber, luscious fruit, famous tulip-tree, and colossal arbour, where, on March 31, 17 12, the fantastic Peterborough regaled fifteen of the " Brothers " under a canopy in the open air, and made Swift exclaim "that he had never seen anything so fine and romantic." Swift did not, of course, notice the little dwelling at the corner of the Green, afterwards memorable for the sweet singer, Anastasia Robinson, who, years later, sacrificed herself for " Mordanto," and refused to share his title till his restive soul had nearly fretted its sheath away.^ Nor could he have foreseen that yonder house was not many years later to be immortalised by the author of "Clarissa." Peterborough ' Full of the memories of Monk's friend, the wise Countess. Sir Stephen Fox was brought up there. The alderman was Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys. " His epitaph is characteristic. It concludes : ' ' Ipse vero seternum est resurrecturus, at idem futurus Tolandus nunquam. . . . Ceetera ex scriptis pete." Putney seems the home of deists. Gibbon spent part of his youth, and Mallet lived there. ' He did not own his marriage till 1 735, the year of his death. In November 1726 he writes to Swift with reference to Gulliver, ". ., . I depended much upon a lady who had a good ear and a pliant tongue, in hopes she might have taught me to draw sounds out of consonants. But she, being a professed friend to the Italian speech and vowels, would give me no assistance." Works, vol. xvii. p. 121. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 99 House was constantly lent to its master's friends during his many and eccentric absences. In 1711 we find Swift enjoying its garden, and in May 1712 St. John writes from Whitehall to Peterborough himself, " I visit Parson's Green very often, and have indulged myself in all those pleasures which shady walks and cool retreats inspire. They have wanted nothing but the master to make me willing to continue ever there." ^ The West End of London proper commenced at Hyde Park Corner and culminated in Soho. Hard by was the " Ring," where even Oliver had condescended to relax, where Maids of Honour would ride in cavalcade, where Swift and St. John eyed the Marlborough curricle and its glowering inmates. " Hither," says Steele in No. 88 of the Spectator, "people bring their lackeys out of state . . . you shall frequently meet with lovers and men of intrigue among the lackeys as well," and he appends the story of a valet's assignation in his master's clothes. Oppo- site was Lanesborough House, the home of "sober Lanes- borow, dancing in the gout." A few great mansions, broken by gardens, some stray shops or tenements, led down Piccadilly to the Palladian splendours of Burlington House, which still vindicated Italian architecture. The avenue which conducted to St. James's Palace, the Mall, and the Park formed the high-tide of rendezvous, as the two last framed the twinkling flutter of fashion. It was Club-land. Here were White's and the Cocoa Tree, fre- quented by the Whigs, Ozinda's Chocolate-House, and St. James's Coffee-House, patronised by the Tories, and the Thatched House Tavern. Here also was a celebrated boot shop.^ The Mall, with its shade and glitter, was flanked by those fancy magazines then styled "toy shops,"* whose " hugeous batoons " Swift commemorates. 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 351. ^ Tatler, No. 143. 2 Charles Mather's was the best known. Cf. Swift's " Sid Hamet"— " No hobby-horse with gorgeous top, The dearest in Charles Mather's shop, Or glittering tinsel of Mayfair Could with the rod of Sid compare." lOO BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " O bear me to the paths of fair Pall Mall, Safe are thy pavements, pleasant is thy smell. Shops breathe perfume, through sashes ribands glow. The mutual ar7ns of Ladies and the Beau." ' There was the celebrated hostelry of the Star and Garter. The crowd was motley and flippant. This is the scene of that summer evening when Swift and Lord Radnor met the volatile St. John, who slipped away to the ill suspicions of the parson ; and of that other afternoon when pastoral Philips and Addison both looked " dryly," and eyed Swift askance from the animosities of party warfare. The Park was, of course, St. James's, with its pond, its lime-trees, and the only open-air restaurant in London — Lockett's. " The fate of things lies always in the dark. What cavalier would know St. James's Park ? For Lockett's stands where gardens once did spring, And wild ducks quack where grasshoppers did sing." ^ Crossing the Park through the still official Spring Gardens and Cockpit, past the once regal Whitehall, one lit on the giant Abbey with its Deanery and Close ; ^ the spacious hall where the majesty of the law was tempered by the fascinations of girl glove - sellers,* and St. Stephen's, Neither the pile which, amid cries of " Hear him ! " ^ was thrilled by the golden tones of St. John, nor that which vibrated to the impetuosity of Haversham or Peterborough, were in the least impressive, but their gables overhung the stage of English history. On either side stretched the river, still pure enough to reflect the greenery, but growing more tarnished as it ran eastward towards the Docks, past mart and factory to Tilbury, where Defoe's earthenware ventures had already collapsed. Southward marched the long Kent Road. All around were busy purlieus ; there 1 Gay's "Trivia." = King's "Art of Cookery." ' Here dwelt Addison's sister, who married a French clergyman of the Church of England, M. de Sarte. Swift in his Journal calls her "witty," and says she was very like her brother. * Tatler, No. 139. ° That this was the old form of " Hear, hear," appears from one of Boling- broke's essays, and also from Voltaire. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE loi stood the Bell Tavern, which was to hear the vociferations of the October Club ; there, too, had been the Rota, whose republican eloquence on the lips of Harrington, Sidney, and Wildman were firebrands in the face of St. Stephen's itself. In Channel Row rose the mansion of the Mon- tagues, and the humbler " Rhenish " House of Call, whence sprang their poet friend. Repassing Whitehall and regain- ing the farther end of the Mall, one struck the centre of residence, St. James's Square, the Faubourg St. Germain of London. There was the mansion of the Sunderlands and Ormondes ; that of parvenu Sir Richard Child, who offered ^£10,000 in 171 1 "for making a man that's no gentle- man a lord,"^ but had to wait till 1718 for his peerage.^ This was the house that Strafford bought. Around lay Great Rider Street, where Swift and once Stella had lodged, and — strange irony — eventually Vanessa; Bury Street, where Vanessa, too, had stayed ; Duke Street, which Swift also tenanted ; and Jermyn Street, where once Miss Eleanor Gwyn's unpaid milliner abode. The Haymarket showed grander tenements. There was Sir William Windham's, whose conflagration in 17 12 showed how helpless London was in fear of fire. Two of the maid-servants leaped down and were spiked on the railings. The Duke of Ormonde himself assisted with the buckets. Hard by was Her Majesty's Theatre — the triumph of Sir John Vanbrugh's art — which served for Opera House. Proceeding through Leicester Fields, where Swift also lodged, and turning up Dean Street,^ one struck the fashionable Soho. In Golden Square rose Bolingbroke's new mansion. There, too, lived Benson, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Wandering north- ward, one entered Holborn, a busy mart. Bloomsbury could boast the new Queen's Square, where afterwards resided Swift's and Bolingbroke's prot6g6. Barber — "Johannes Tonsor," and George Street, inhabited for some time by 1 Wentworth Papers, p. 203. ^ Lord Castlemaine. ^ One of the Spectators has the following advertisement : — " In Dean Street, Soho, a very good house, very good garden, with or without coach-house and Stables, at Robin's Coffee-house, St. Anne's Church." I02 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Lord Somers ; but Marylebone, with its spring and walk of trees, was countrified as Edgware. Hampstead was a miniature and suburban Bath, famous for its heath and some- what infamous for its Casino. The springs of Bayswater i fed the Palace of Kensington. The ghastly associations of Tyburn haunted what is now Tyburnia. In Clerkenwell tea-gardens had succeeded the bear-pits, and Hockley-in- the-Hole could boast its Dragon and amusements. To revert to London. If one roamed past the house of the Northumberlands and towards the palace of the Somer- sets, one came near Charing Cross on the great shops of the town. In Somerset Yard were held the principal picture auctions, at one of which Swift and his friend Dr, Pratt secured a " Titian ' for £2, 5s. Sales of books, whose quarter was Duck Lane,^ were frequent, and Swift bor- rowed from Bolingbroke to acquire a library. Pastry- cooks abounded. Swift speaks of the "clusters of boys and wenches buzzing about the cake - shops like flies." Between Durham Yard and York Buildings was "The New Exchange" — the Marshall & Snelgrove of the period, In Southampton Street was Brasier's shop, whose wares comprised " Bohee, Brazil snuff, and Spaw Waters." At the "Star" in Bedford Court was a similar emporium. Towards Lincoln's Inn, with its great stone mansions, one of which was inhabited by Lord Cowper, were the un- savoury purheus of Drury Lane, whose "soft recluses" Gay has satirised. Not far from Covent Garden were " Button's " and " Will's." In Ludgate was the " great shop " where Swift bought the spectacles for Mrs. Dingley.* Nor must we forget Doiley, the draper, who first introduced the napkin that bears his name, and saved the tablecloths from being smeared by the knives and forks.* In Fleet Street, and near St. Dunstan's Church, was the " Rose and ' Here was the fine house of Chirac, the Queen's jeweller, as well as one of Lord Shaftesbury, who (except when the east wind brought the London smoke) inhabited his mansion and celebrated gardens of Little Chelsea. » Cf. Swift's Poems, " On the Death of Dr. Swift." ' Journal, October lo, 171 1. * See "Social England," vol. iv. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 103 Crown," or Osborn's toy-shop, where, among other speci- fics, a " confect for stammering and stuttering " was to be procured. In York Buildings was a concert-room. In Beaufort Buildings was Mr. Lilly, the perfumer, who also sold concert tickets. The venerable Temple teemed with pert wits, who, to cite Swift, " followed the law at a dis- tance," and green-hugged pundits who hoped for higher emolument than legal fees could secure them. St. Paul's Churchyard and Cheapside, still farther citywards, were divided between books and drapery. There also was " The Angel and Crown," or Payn's toy-shop, whose " Angelick Snuff " professed to cure the small-pox, whose " Grate- ful Electuary " was a half-crown specific for " Loss of Memory," whose " Famous Bavaria Red Liquor " and " Delightful Chemical Liquor for the breath, teeth, and gums" were toilet requisites. In Exchange Alley was Brandreth, Swift's Toyman.^ And thus one's way was made by "Jonathan's" and "Garraway's" to the City proper, whose "High Change" the Spectator''' terms "a great council in which all considerable nations have their representatives." The merchants who did not ape their betters still inhabited their quarter. There dwelt the clever Stratford, whose smash by over-speculation on the Peace gave his friend Swift many an anxious hour, lost much for improvident Prior, and more for many more.^ In the City, too, was " Pontack's " (commemorated in the "Town Mouse and the Country Mouse "), whose wine was beyond reproach.* And here, with one glance at the new Bank of England and the Papist-libeUing Monument, which " Like a tall bully lifts the head and lies ! " we must close this most condensed and fragmentary glimpse. We should add to our light list of taverns and coffee-houses "The Smyrna," dedicated to musicians, poets, and poli- 1 Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 416. ^ No. 69. ' Lunn, a goldsmith, also failed about this time. Bolingbroke lost ;^5000 by him, and his friend Lansdowne the same in 1712. Wentworth Papers, p. 283. Boling- broke himself, however, says that his loss was ;^4000. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 257. *■ See also Swift's Journal, March 30, 1713. I04 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES ticians/ where Swift and Prior confabulated in February 1711, the "Globe" in the Strand, where Peterborough hurried Swift to dine, and the " Grecian," ^ celebrated for its "moving pictures." Nor must we omit "Child's," the house of the High Church parson, nor "Tom's," of the Low, nor "Truby's," another clerical resort.^ Our last word shall be of the sights of London which the country- man gaped to see. "One day," writes Flower to Swift in 1729, "my younger uncle . . . his wife and mine, and Parson Dingle made the tour of the city : we saw Bedlam, the lions, and whatnot ; and finished with a view of that noble engine under London Bridge." * These streets would present a strange sight now. By nightfall they were dark and even dangerous. Dr. Martin Lister, who attended the Earl of Portland to France in 1695, contrasts those of Paris, as, too, the French vehicles, most favourably with those of London.® The limited system of oil lamps — which was looked on as a miracle of illumination and private expenditure — afforded scant pro- tection from footpads, "Scourers," and eventually "Mo- hocks," who succeeded the " Rapparees," the " Hectors," the "Muns," the "Tityre Tiis," and the molesters of old Milton, those " sons of Belial " flown with insolence and wine : — " Who has not heard the Scourers' midnight fame ? Who has not trembled at the Mohocks' name ? " ^ Swift was considered rash for venturing homeward to Chelsea in his economical and solitary tramps. Lady Cowper's diary records that in 1715 the presence of the ' Tatler, No. 78. 2 /^^^ jj^ ^^^ 3 Of " Truby's " Swift sings :— "... where town and country vicars flock, And deal in vices of the graver sort, Tobacco, censure, coffee, pride, and port." * Swift's Works (Letters), vol. xvii. p. 266 ; and cf. "Mrs. Delany : a Memoir," p. no. ^ " A Journey to Paris," by Dr. Martin Lister. Jacob Tonson, 1699. " Gay's " Trivia." Cf. Wentworth Papers, p. 278, March 11, 1712. "... and they call themselves by some hard name that I can neither speak nor spell. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 105 camp in Hyde Park rendered the roads at Kensington " so secure that we might come from London at any time of the night without danger." And in daylight, besides the traffic, there were pedlars and " punchinellos," thimble- riggers and sharpers, jugglers and bullies. Lady Went- worth writes in 1710 that two of the seats were stolen from her carriage and one of the glasses broken. Drunkards molested the wayfarer. The expression of the end of the century, " Drunk as a lord," was at its beginning " Drunk as a beggar." The mud was abundant and unremoved. Stray tiles dropped on the unwary head. In the great tempest of 1704 roofs and houses were blown down. The main difficulty for the walker was " when to assert the wall and when resign." The chariots and the coaches splashed filth in shower-baths from the road, which was rough with cobble-stones.^ On the pavement (where pavement was) — " The kennel's edge where wheels had worn the place " ^ — swarmed the sedans. Their bearers molested passengers, and the swarms of Irish chairmen who damned and even bullied such as would not hire them, are mentioned as a special pest so late as 1736.^ Steele suggested a tax on chairs and chaises. And dirt in those days of gay clothes was expensive. The large influx of industrial French and German refugees contributed to the variety of their material. Printed calicoes and chintzes were competing with cloth, despite taxation,' but they were never popular from the prejudice of the wool merchants against them. Velvets, brocades, and silks were being manufactured by French workmen. Dress proclaimed the type. The soldier with his new-fangled sword-knot and his Ramillies wig ; the coxcomb with his " dragon " * cane or " jambee " 1 Until the days of George III. Cj. Prologue to Sheridan's "A Trip to Scarborough ." — " The streets some time ago were paved with stones, Which, aided by a hackney coach, half broke your bones." ' Swift's "Description of Morning." ' Ford to Swift, June 7, 1736. Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 40. * This name may be a possible explanation of why Harley was called the "Dragon." But Walpole^ was afterwards nicknamed the Leviathan, and Harley probably owed the sobriquet not to his wand of office, but to the cant phrase to io6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES on his fifth button, looped sleeves and bavaroy ; ^ the "smart" with his hat on one side and red-heeled shoes; the man of mettle with his good periwig in a twist and briskly cocked hat ; the coffee-house statesman, his upper lip besnuffed; the army swing and brandish of the cane which monopolised the Mall ; the rural squire, his red coat open to display gaudy calamanco and periwig in a bush on each shoulder.^ There were great varieties of cloaks. In summer the Doyley,^ in winter the "Joseph" or "wrap-rascal." The long wigs necessitated a weekly "shaving day" for the head, whose agonies were humor- ously bemoaned by Arbuthnot. Swift's riding suit on the gala day at Windsor was "light camelot faced with red velvet and silver buttons." Among the Spectator's advertise- ments is "To be disposed of a lady's riding suit of blue camlet, wastecoat, petticoat, hat, and feather, never worn but twice." Feminine fashion and indeed household furniture hailed from that France which now re-collects the bric-db-brac of Queen Anne. The ladies no longer wore their hair in those stiff towers which had been called " Fontanges," but in the natural waves with one drooping curl which Kneller's canvases exhibit. Light silk mantuas were all the mode. Powder was only applied on state occasions. Muffs and furbelows were large. Boas, too, were fashionable. Fans, patches, and patch-boxes, "rich Flanders lace and colberteen," were as much in request as in France, whence the vogue issued. Even men's under-linen was often costly. Mr. Gore's "wedding shirts" are described in 1709 as "laste with lace of eight pound a yard, the night- shirt lace three pound ten a yard." * The state wig often cost as much as ;^6o, but it was de rigueur at Court. When eat or compliment, or do anything "like a dragon," so often used by Swift. This expression was derived, we think, from the Dragon of Wantley ; but it may have arisen from the Dragon of Hockley in the Hole. Cf. Swift, vol. vi. p. 320. ' "Let the looped bavaroy the fop embrace." — Gay's Trivia. 2 Cf. Inter alia, Tatler, No. 96. ^ ". . . the Doyley habit fold, The silken drugget ill can fence the cold." — Gay's Trivia. * Wentworth Papers, p. 84. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 107 Bolingbroke appeared before the Queen in a " Ramillies " or bob wig, she observed, " I suppose his lordship will come to Court next time in his nightcap." ^ Mourning was so dear that relatives needed a certainty of death before they would order it. When Peter Wentworth's brother-in-law, Arundel, was ill of the small-pox, he defers "making my men's surtout coats till I see whether he lives or dy's. For a brother's morning all people put there servants in grey, and what one does in that kind like othere people is in respect of won's self more than those one morns for."^ But with much outward splendour and inward comfort there was a frequent dinginess even among grandees. Candles might blaze lavishly in boudoirs ; Lady Paulet might flaunt " all her fine true lovers' knots of diamonds set in as much silver as would make a pare of candlesticks."^ But Prince Eugene's lodgings in St. James's disgusted young Lady Strafford ; they reeked of coal, tallow, and onions. Her sister-in-law, Betty, " wou'd be very good-humoured, but my sister Aurundell governs her as won wou'd a child, and she is with her every day, and they get som little od body or othere to play at cards, and such a dirty place sure nobody ever went into, and they eat jelly and drink chockolet from morning till night." * The Spanish ambassador, too, played cards with grimy fingers. Rents, even allowing for the difference in money value, were not excessive. Three hundred a year for one of the best houses in the best quarter gives the standard. Mr. Hanbury's house in Golden Square, with garden, arbour, and stables, was £"]<„ including taxes. Lodgings were procurable for about ten shillings a week. But every- where was noise : — " The small coalman was heard with cadence deep, Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep." ^ The criers of street commodities and " Grub Street scream- ers " could rival the more varied nuisances of to-day. Swift ' "Social England," vol. iv. p. 606. 2 Ibid., p. 109. ' Ibid., p. 307, * Ibid., pp. 2, 14. ' Swift's " Description of Morning," which suggested a picture to Hogarth. io8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES wishes that one of the cabbages would stick in the throat of the shouter. Coals were dear, and sometimes as much as fifty-six shillings a chaldron. Bohee and green tea (which Dr. Ratcliffe denounced as "dangerous") ranged from ten shillings to twenty-four shillings the pound ; chocolate (which became fashionable from the patronage of Queen Mary) from half-a-crown to three shillings, or, unsweetened, to about one shilling and eightpence. Brazil snuff was as much as thirty-five shillings. But meat and fish were cheap and bread plentiful. The average table was content with the drink of beer and cider, but wines were abun- dant. Claret or " Margose," champagne and burgundy, Florence wine, Benicarlo, and port (already a Tory bever- age) 1 were largely quaffed by the richer classes. With the former it was customary to smoke a pipe of tobacco, which does not say much for connoisseurship. Swift liked white port and calls it a vulgar taste ; but then he also affected " small beer and wine mixed together." ^ There was an organised industry in the adulteration of wine.^ The dinner-hour for the better classes was five o'clock. The meal was solid rather than recherM. Next to the English beef, the English brawn was considered the most native emblem of British strength,* but epicures like " Duke " Disney and Dartquenave indulged in imported luxuries, " mangoes, potargo, champignons, caviare," ^ and in the daintier houses the dessert was especially elaborate. Steele, himself a slatternly bon vivant, has described a "... very beautiful winter-piece. Pyramids of candied sweetmeats that hung like icicles, with fruit scattered up and down ; cream beaten into snow ; little plates of sugar, plums dispersed like heaps of hailstones." ^ At a City banquet in 1712 there were twelve hundred dishes of ' Swift in his Journal says the Tories are "insupportable" for "bringing in claret," because ' ' they won't sup-port. " ^ Pulteney to Swift, September 3, 1726. Works, vol. xvii. p. 95. ' " They can squeeze Bordeaux out of the sloe, and draw Champagne from an apple." — Tatler, No. 131. * Cf. London Magazine, January 1734. " King's " Art of Cookery." « Tatler, No. 148. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 109 meat, and "the cost was four or five guineas apiece." ^ The "Brothers" were perpetually changing their tavern because of the expense. At one of their dinners the bill for four, exclusive of wine and dessert, was £21, 6s. Sd.^ At another, given by Swift, when Bathurst provided the wine, ;^i5 for four.^ But as a rule, entertainment was cheaper and simpler. Toasted oranges and chestnuts were served later in the evening when in season,* and drinking recommenced, often not to end till two o'clock in the morning.^ It was only in family parties or great banquets that ladies figured.^ We find no trace of their participation in the strong convivialities of the men, but it should be re- membered that Swift expressly says that to drink water was dangerous. In the country the labouring classes ate meat once or twice a week, nor were they, relatively, in want except in the leanest years of the war. The drinking habits of the well-to-do vied with London. " We constantly re- member you, I can't say in our prayers, for I fear we don't all pray, but in our cups, for we all drink," writes G. Granville to Harley in 1709.' And we hear of one, Mr. David Long, four years earlier at Exeter as a " comical High Sheriff," bred a farmer, but with some -^40,000, who drank daily out of " pulchers " or jars of claret, and toasted the Queen's health twice " By the name of the good old gentlewoman."^ Toasts were frequent and in sequence : — 1 Journal, March 25, 1712. ^ Journal, March 20. ^ Ibid., December 27, 171 1. * Cf. Swift's Poems (Verses for fruit women). Poems, vol. ii. p. 114. " Well roasted with sugar and wine in a cup, They'll make a sweet Bishop when gentlefolks sup." ^ Cf. Swift's Journal, October 29, 171 1. "Lord Hatton, Mr. Finch, and Sir A. Fountaine . . . till two in the morning ... all drunk ; " and ibid., February 10, 1712 : "Here are a parcel of drunken Whiggish Lords like your Lord Saul, who come into chocolate-houses and rail at the Tories. " ^ Swift in his Journal, under date February 22, 1713, speaking of a dinner at Sir Thomas Hanmer's, adds " She dined with us too" (the Duchess of Grafton). Cf. ibid., April 9, 1711 : "They let in some ladies," &c. ' Portland MS., p. 527. 8 Ibid., p. 219. In 1721 we read, "The great debauch which killed Stanhope and Craggs was at the Duke of Newcastle's. They drank excessively of New Tokay, champagne, Visney and Barba water, thirteen hours as it is said." Portland MS., vol. V. p. 616. no BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " The feast now done, discourses are renewed, The grace-cup follows to his sovereign's health, And to his country plenty, peace, and wealth." ' The intemperance was excessive, and it differed from that of a later generation in arising from mixed hquors. Even ladies thought four glasses a day a very sober allowance.^ Folks were elderly at thirty-five. Death after death is attributed to this cause. There is one from a "fever" following on "three bottles of usquebach,"^ and "Lord Rochester had been drinking usquebach at five just before he died." * Eugene's nephew died of " small-pox and drink " — a powerful combination ; the Duke of Beaufort, of an affection of the lungs brought on by " former drinking ; " Lord Pelham, of a stroke ; Lady Granville, of the same, while playing cards at Richmond ; the Duke of Leeds, of convulsions ; Lord Fitzharding, of the palsy. Two of the few instances of natural death among the ^lite is that of the Duke of Newcastle from a hunting accident in 171 1, and of Dempster while travelling north- ward in 171 2. Neither habits nor sanitation were healthy. A sort of influenza, which Swift terms a " feavouret," broke out disastrously in the summer of 1712. It began with the horses.^ It attacked Bolingbroke, who calls it "the prevalent fever.'' Longevity was rare. Bolingbroke, his father, who lived and trifled to be nearly ninety, Methuen, Chesterfield, Bathurst, Swift, Peterborough, and Camilla, Countess of Tankerville, who died in 1775 at the age of one hundred and five,^ are exceptions. At the age of thirty-seven Lord Raby could write from Berlin, " I grow old in a strange country." Swift calls Mrs. Ramsay "an old lady of about fifty-five," and himself " declined in > King's "Art of Cookery." " Lady Betty Germaine to Swift, Nov. 7, 1732. Works, vol. xviii. p. 117. ' It may be noted that whisky was the liquor discussed by Lady Jersey and Prior in the afternoon after their tea at Paris in the May of 1714. See Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 544. Cf. note 8 on preceding page. * Wentworth Papers, p. 196. " Ibid., p. 295. « See Horace Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. p. 50. Buckingham, too, should be added to the list. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE iii health, advanced in years''^ at forty-four. Eye disease was prevalent. Addison and Windham ^ both suffered from it. Apoplexy was a fashionable ailment, which Gran- ville constantly apprehended. Small-pox was frequent. People, including the great Duke of Shrewsbury, were per- petually " ill of a fever." In 1713 Harley suffered from " a severe fit of the gravel, an inflammation in his eyes, and a falling of the same, or some other humour, into his knees."^ Brawls in public and constant duels were notorious. Pulteney was concerned in one at the theatre, and the lackeys had to intervene ; * the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Conway in another in June 1712.® Lady Hamilton — Pope's "Narcissa" — in the spring of 1712 quarrelled openly at the playhouse with Lord Tyrawley's son. "Soe loud that everybody heard it, and with such language as is seldom heard but at Billingsgate."^ Indeed, great ladies were not particular in their conversation. Lady Montague and Lady Hervey exchanged amenities that would now exclude them from society. Lady Strafford's own letters contain some very coarse allusions. Even Mrs. Robinson, the wife of the Bishop of Bristol, spoke, as it would now be thought, indecently. Downright nastiness was not con- demned. Long afterwards Dr. Johnson styled Prior a " lady's book." But though nicety was banished from talk, it was not, as a rule, from behaviour. True, Bolingbroke could call ' Cadenus and Vanessa. ' Swift's Journal, August 23, 1711. Marchmont Papers. ' Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 208. ■* Another of these, between the Duke of Argyle and Colonel Court, in March 1711, for saying "Damn him, he would not drink the health of a man that had changed sides — one that had sold his country for a shilling and would sell his God for half-a-crown," took place in Hyde Park. Wentworth Papers, p. 185. Duels were common. Lord Blantyre fought Mr. Drummond at Hampstead in June 1709. Every one remembers Lord Mohuns aflfray, which happened in Hyde Park. The best account is to be found in the Dartmouth Papers (Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rep. App. pt. v. p. 311). But Marlborough also employed Mohun to challenge Lord Poulett, whose wife contrived that the Guards should be ready to arrest him. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 309. " Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rep. App. pt. v. p. 315. * Wentworth Papers, p. 276. 112 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the Maids of Honour " carrion " to Swift, and the smart set of Lady Jersey would be brazen enough. They pushed themselves into the men's places in the Queen's chapel ; they "carried on" with gallants like Nash and Howe; they were constantly "in pickell."i Nor were gross practical jokes thought unamusing. Captain Powell "hug'd and kissed" Bishop Robinson's common old wife, who protested she would turn all her pages into parsons ; and modest young Lady Strafford remarks, " I don't know which party was the most to be envied in those embraces." There was a great improvement on the manners of the Restoration. Vice was not paraded under Anne. There was less prurience without much prudery. But intrigues, banished from the market- place and unfavoured by masquerades,^ sought the shelter of City taverns and even of churches. Playhouses were the rendezvous of vulgar adventuresses and blackmailing bullies on the look-out for the cut of the countryman.^ Men were still privileged animals. We cannot exalt the prevailing standard of private morals. On the other hand, the age, if indelicate, was not soft. The gross- nesses of the time are those of energy, not of effeminacy. Not that there was no complement of swaggering fops. Prior describes one such admirably in his "Chameleon:" — " His wisdom sets all Europe right, And teaches Marlborough when to fight ; And if it be his fate to meet With folks who have more wealth than wit, He loves cheap port and double bub And settles in the humdrum club ; He learns how stocks will fall or rise, Holds poverty the greatest vice, Thinks wit the bane of conversation, And says that learning spoils a nation." 1 Wentworth Papers, pp. 214, 235. * There were very few even private ones in Queen Anne's reign. The Duchess of Shrewbury's was that of a foreigner ; so were Vryberg's and that of the Portuguese Ambassador, given at an empty house in the Strand. ^ Cf. a. rare and remarkable pamphlet with much curious information on these and kindred topics, " The Tricks of London Laid Open," T. Sabine & Son, Fleet Street [1 7 10?]. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 113 And Bolingbroke in his admirable letter of advice on a public career to the young Lord Jersey, in the autumn of 1713, urges him " to distinguish " himself " from the iUiterate crew of fops, who disgrace the name they wear." ^ The Ruelle, or toilet reception, was a feature of the time which prolonged itself to the days of George III. Grand ladies received friends of both sexes at their bedside. The Queen herself set the example. As she was robed, her chaplain read prayers in an adjoin- ing apartment.^ The season ended by the beginning of June, when the Queen usually repaired to Windsor. Swift could say then "the town is as empty as at Midsummer." Her London Drawing-Rooms were on Tuesdays and Fridays ; but except among the wealthy and distinguished there was no exodus from town. Those who did not repair to their country seats favoured Bath or The Wells. Little but walking or riding exercise was taken in Lon- don. We meet with some reference to tennis,' that pet pastime of the Second Charles, a passing allusion to billiards in one of Bolingbroke's later letters to Swift, but with only one to cricket. This sedentary habit doubt- less accentuated the unhealthiness of hard livers. Communication with the country was less facilitated by the highways than by the excellent inns. The roads were ill repaired and the tolls excessive.* Every heath had its highwaymen. The post was frequently tampered with, and correspondents had cautiously to veil their politics. The improvement in London postage, by which letters within the radius were forwarded for a penny, was esteemed prodigious ; but on saints' days, in this pious reign, the post-office was closed. The stage, that clearest contemporary comment, may be said to have been silent during this reign. The Queen ^ Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 275. ^ Lady Suffolk's Letters. 2 In "The Tricks of London Laid Open." * At Caystor the toll was half-a-crown. Defoe, " Tour," ii. 165. H 114 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES was no patroness of any art but music. Three great theatres in London and one in Greenwich ^ were mainly occupied in reviving the productions of the past, of which Booth, Betterton, Penkethman, and Mrs. Oldfield were excellent renderers. Congreve found no material in the subdued sallies of the time. The whole twelve years failed to witness one representative play. In comedy, both Steele and Addison attempted what Diderot towards the close of the century entitled Comedie Larmoyante, that is to say, ^ genre imbued with a moral purpose and illustrative of private or public duty. But the " Conscious Lovers " and the "Drummer" did not affect an audience who could not recognise themselves in the stilted characters. The subsequent " Beggar's Opera " only succeeded by being a political satire. Gay's other plays failed. In operetta " Rosamunda " was a fiasco. The opera itself was in high esteem. Valentin! was succeeded by Nicolini, who, in his turn, made way for Senesino. It was with respect to the last that Bolingbroke ironically remarked that the descend- ants of the ancient Romans were now only to be dis- covered on the English stage. Nicolini received as much as eight hundred guineas for singing in "Camilla." And there was the native songstress, Mrs. Henrietta Tofts, who, at a gala-night of the Duke of Somerset's, actually sold her kisses to thirty gentlemen at a guinea apiece. Every one remembers Pope's epigram : — " So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song, As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus along ; But such is thy av'rice, and such is thy pride, That the beasts must have starved and the poet have died." ^ It is noteworthy that, despite the continuance in England of Handel, who arrived in 1712, with the death of Anne and the first years of George, when Senesino and Attilio 1 Penkethman opened one later ( 1 7 1 9) at Richmond on the declivity of the hill, and in his prologue alluded to the site, which was a "hovel for asses." Read's Weekly Journal, June 23, quoted Lysons, vol. i. p. 469. '^ See Wentworth Papers, p.' 67. Swift's Works, vol. xv. p. 297. (Letter to Hunter.) Bolingbroke in the Craftsman, THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 115 were the pets, the opera, "that most rational entertain- ment," as Lord Chesterfield styles it, suffered a partial eclipse, and only emerged late in the reign of George II., and even then, as Horace Walpole notices, with oratorio for a powerful rival.'^ In tragedy, " Cato " ^ proved merely a party stalking-horse and is without charm. De la Manley's exuberant tragedies and Rowe's sentimental bombast only survive in name because of the prologues or epilogues affixed to them. The theatres were popular. Their side- boxes sheltered flirtation ; the gallants lolled on the stage ; and the pit vociferated with their cat-call,^ but they lent no voice to the England which had responded to the wit of Congreve and Vanbrugh, the force of Lee and Dryden. The Essayists and the pulpit made public opinion and made it audible. It has been repeatedly observed that the former created the modern novel. By their ease, by their conformity to contemporary life, by the neglige, so to speak, of their pitch, they initiated the reader, however remote, into the London of the time. All who read the Tatlers or Spectators became Cockneys for the nonce, and were cheered or censured by feeling themselves the cynosure of a crowd in which few of them habitually moved. This is the metier of modern fiction. It ought not to be disregarded that to Steele more than to any one author belongs the honour of this departure. The meed has been so constantly be- stowed on Addison, whose even tertiperature of self- complacency and whose tranquil daintiness of style have succeeded in "bearing no brother near the throne,"* that justice ought to be rendered to the true originator, who 1 Cf. The World, No. 98, contributed by Lord Chesterfield, November 14, 1754- ^ Swift notes his attendance at the rehearsal of "Cato" in his Journal on April 3, 1713. ' Tatler, No. 361. * It may here be stated that this phrase of Pope's and the simile of the "Turk" comes through Bolingbroke {,cf. Letters on Philosophy to Mr. Pope, Works, vol. i. p. 172) from Bacon, and not through Denham, as is generally supposed. ii6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES bore much the same personal relation to him that Goldsmith did to Dr. Johnson. The blame of Addison descends through Pope, but Swift's censure is less familiar : — "At Will's you hear a poem read, Where Battus from the table-head, Reclining on his elbow-chair, Gives judgment with decisive air, To whom the tribe of circling wits As to an oracle submits ; He gives directions to the town To cry it up or cry it down." ^ Steele was the converse. The Tatler — Swift's own sug- gestion to Steele^ — is full of happy illustration and com- munication of ideas. Dated from coffee-houses, it was the first paper to unite the record of news with the portrayal of manners, to disseminate at once fact and fiction, to publish Whig principles and puff friendly authors.^ How good is his description of the " Club ! " Sir Geofrey Notch, who appropriates the "right-hand" chair, and "calls every thriving man a pitiful upstart;" Major Matchlock, who "has all the battels by heart . . . and brags every night of his having been knockt off his horse at the rising of the London apprentices." Dick Reptile, the "good-natured indolent man, who speaks little himself, but laughs at our jokes;" the Bencher, who is "the greatest wit next to myself," and " shakes his head at the dulness of the present age." They meet at six and disperse at ten. The maid comes with a lantern " to light me home." Literature for the first time descends to the people. Not without reason does Swift, under the nom de plume of Humphry Wagstaffe, boast that the Staffian style is " to describe thi7igs exactly as they happen!' * Realism made its bow to the world ; and then, too, for the first time women claimed the lion's share ^ Swift's Poems (Aldine ed.), vol. ii. p. 71. ^ Swift objected strongly to the subsequent insertion of a News Letter in the periodical. ' Cf. the praise of Swift's " Project for the Advancement of Religion " in 1709. "The man writes much like a gentleman, and goes to heaven with a very good mien," Tatler, No. 5. * Tatler, No. 9. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 117 of attention, and button-holed mankind. Steele's letters from flirts and prudes, scolds and shrews, languishers and rebels, are the lineal precursors of the Spectator. Chil- dren, too, win an audience. That really wonderful essay (which Thackeray has mentioned), where Steele records the impressions of his early fatherlessness, abounds in pathetic touches — the same that soften us in his Spectator paper about the poor Anonyma in the Piazza of Covent Garden. Does not the sentence of his " delight in stealing from the crowd " reveal the whole nature of the sensitive lad ? There is a sob in the style. To Steele and Prior belong the domain of childhood. We cannot imagine Addison in that kingdom. He was too primly perfect, too statuesque in his worth. The requisite simplicity was his, but not the indispensable sympathy. At times Steele bursts into actual story. One instance is that affecting episode where in one week he sees his sweetheart in her ball-gown and her shroud ; another that of the preaching Major. And all the tenderness of indignant humanity imbues his pages. He gently chides the cock-fighters, the brawlers, the drunkards, the misbehavers in church.^ He heralds philanthropy, at a time, too, before Sir William Fownes gave Swift the first hint for his legacy, and when the Royal hospitals and Bedlam were mismanaged and without proper organisation. " How might a man furnished with Gyges' secret employ it in bringing together distant friends, laying snares for creating goodwill in the room of godless hatred, in removing the pangs of an unjust jealousy, the shyness of an imperfect reconciliation, and the tremor of an awful love."^ It is thus that he hallows conviviality; and wher- ever benevolence is manifest, he chronicles it ; as, witness " the citizen," who has instructed " Mr. Rainer, the writing- master of St. Paul's, to educate at his charge ten boys . . . in writing and accompts till fit for trade." He praises the country and its pleasures. He protests against the " Free- thinkers," and proposes a farcical remedy.^ He would ' And cf. Guardiatt, No. 94, and Swift's Sermon on Eutychus. 2 Guardian, No. 138. ^ /^^^^.^ Nq. 135. ii8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES institute a "New Bedlam" for incurable social offenders. He trounces the sentimentalities of second-rate rakes. " I know at this time three goddesses in the New Exchange." He piques the critic as "a sort of Puritan in the polite world." He reiterates that " a wag is the last order even of pretenders to wit." He banters auctions and lotteries ; and he spices the whole by the piquancy of personal allusion. The city ladies, who ran a race at the Wells for a suit of clothes, for example, in No. 36, is an allusion to the Turners ; the man who bets on his own death is Sir Scipio Hill. Aurungzebe, the man of luxury, is Tom Colson ; Atterbury is complimented in No. 66, and Oxford satirised in No. 291.^ The reader discerned the references, and he also very often perceived the authorship of insertions. The Tatler was not only a lay sermon, it was also a society paper, while it invented a new criticism, which appealed far more poignantly than those cumbrous reviews known as " The Works of the Learned." We have insisted at such length because it is precisely on these lines that the Spectator triumphed beyond pre- cedent. Its themes are the same as those we have re- counted, and its original types were of Steele's express creation. Its armoury was that of the toy-shop rather than of the gunsmith, of Lilliput more than of Brob- dingnag. Its light fence sought to cure what it wounded. And this was the very arsenal of the Tatler ; the trifles of triflers, " whom folly pleases and whose follies please." ^ Addison, it is true, had the constructive power to modify and the perseverance to pursue the strain. Addison, too, strikes a higher note of grateful piety in his Saturday " Reflections ; " but for all that, Steele was the initiator of this revolution in the press. Addison's bump of self-esteem was enormous. He was " Callisthenes ; " Swift, " Acetus." ^ Steele himself was no model of propriety like Addison. Indeed, he resembled Hogarth's "bad apprentice" in com- parison. He had been a shuttlecock on the battledore of ' Cf. Tatler, Nos. 36 and 46, with Wentworth Papers, pp. 93, 97. ^ Pope, "Imitations of Horace," Ep. i. ' Spectator, No. 422. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 119 chance. He had dabbled in lotteries, in the philosopher's stone, in political intrigue, in what you will. He was fond of pleasure and display ; he was indiscreet ; he was ever falling, and always repenting. Debt, and even dissipation, were his concomitants. But nevertheless he loved his home and humbly adored his God. He was human to the core, in frailty as in generous aspiration. Politics drummed him out of his office, as his patron, Mainwaring, had drummed him in. He was no politician, and in this sphere merely a mouthpiece. He was intemperate in his quarrels, especially with Swift. He lacked self-control. But he was irrepressible and inexhaustible. " D'ye see that black beau," venomously wrote Mrs. Manley in a passage for which she afterwards apologised,^ " (stuck up in a pert chariot), thick- set, his eyes in his head with hanging eyebrows, broad face, and tallow complexion. ... I long to inform myself if that coach be his own. . . . He is called M. L'Ingrate." And then, after signalising his " falsehood, insincerity, world of wit," and " genteel repartee," she continues, " Though he's a most incorrect writer, he pleases in spight of his faults. ... I remember him almost t'other day but a wretched common trooper. He had the luck to write a small poem, and dedicated it to a person he never saw. . . . His morals were loose. . . . He affected to be extreme religious when . . ." And then scandal follows. But neither these sneers, which are not wholly calumnies, nor Bolingbroke's at " that moral philosopher, Steele," can efface his claims on the gratitude and affection of posterity. Steele, as we shall afterwards show, was a poor and meddlesome politician, but he was a genius in letters. He had to hack for the Whigs and subserve their vanity, as great artists have often to paint portraits for a living ; but his pen, though loose and unmethodical, translated with responsive charm the language of the heart. Mrs. Manley had reason to say that one of her characters was a "bigotted Christian, a different religion from that established in Atalantis." With all his faults nobody can deny the underlying Christianity ^ "New Atalantis," i. 131. I20 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of Steele— a Christianity in contrast with his time. It incHned to be that of the pubHcan, as Addison's did to be that of the pharisee ; but it was equally genuine, at a period when religion was apt to be formal and political. This " wretched common trooper " infused warm compassionate blood into the veins of literature. When the Examiner, the Medley, the Freeholder, the Craftsman shall wither in the limbo of oblivion, the Tatler and the Spectator will still remain green and blossoming. If Steele be the father of fiction, Defoe is the parent of journaHsm. Defoe, again, is no paragon. He was a struggling man of restless enterprise, who lived from hand to mouth — a manufacturer, a merchant adventurer, a reformer, and an author. He mastered every practical department except success. William had listened to his schemes of finance. A bankrupt himself, he projected bankruptcy reforms. In the days of the Second George he was still inditing manuals of trade. In Queen Anne's time he conducted the Review. It would be difficult to define his politics. He spied for Harley as he had spied for Godolphin. It would be difficult to define his creed. The indignant Dissenter who penned the " Legion " pam- phlet was the same who assured Harley, " Nay, even the Dissenters, like Casha {sic) to Caesar, lift up the first dagger at me. I confess it makes me reflect on the whole body of the Dissenters with something of contempt." ^ The in- former against Sacheverell to the Whigs was the same who, in the autumn of 1710, "was concerned to see people spread the grossest absurdities, by which they would make their disgusts at the late changes appear rational." But, with all inconsistencies, he was a patriot and a reformer. By perpetual projects of improvement, by a voluminous trick of emphatic expansion which suited his audience, he appealed to the bourgeoisie and the artisan. That religion should be real, that law should be simplified, that com- merce should walk honest and erect, he wrestled like a giant and roared like a Stentor. His newspaper differed 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 6i. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 121 from the lucubrations of the Tory Roper and Leslie or the Whig Ridpath and Tutchin, from the Postboy or the Flying Post, from the mere News Letters of Boyer, from the Obser- vator or the Rehearsal, much more than these did from the surviving Daily Courant or the obsolete Mercuries. It was a broad sheet full of sense and suggestion, over-ambitious rather than unpresuming. A Democrat, he was also an Imperialist ; an anti-Churchman, he abhorred fanaticism. A man of the people, he invented a kinship with the De Beauforts of Warwick,^ and smacks his lips over the ducal glories of Canons. With a vivid speed of graphic presenta- tion he flutters off from scheme to scheme and from criti- cism to criticism. Himself our first actual, though too often our dreariest novelist, he, in fiction as in journalism, was long-winded, and never knew when to pause. He was inartistic ; he was devoid alike of sentiment, tact, or elegance ; but he could scent and stimulate the national feeling ; he could prick and strengthen the national con- science. His industry is without parallel. Whether roam- ing at will across England or ferreting for the Government in Scotland, whether dealing in wine or exploiting pottery, or improving manufactures, or inveighing against abuses, or propounding heroic remedies, the pen was always in his hands and the ledger always on his desk. He, like Dickens, travelled for the great " Firm of Human Interest Brothers." Steele, then, appealed to the parlour and Defoe to the study ; the one to sensibility, the other to sense ; both to the coffee-house. The immense increase in authorship led to a corresponding plethora of publishers. Lintot, Curl, Tonson, and Barber all battened on the wits, and still more on the hacks. The last is^famous for his spirited protest against Walpole's excise scheme. After count- less vicissitudes of fate and fortune, he died rich at the age of sixty-five, on December 28, 1740, and is buried at Mortlake. He bequeathed ;£300 to Bolingbroke, £ioq to Swift, and ;^ioo to Pope. 1 Defoe's "Tour," iv. 129. 122 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES The pulpit appealed to the kingdom at large : — " The pulpit thunders death and war To heal the bleeding nation, And sends Dissenters to the Devil To keep the Toleration. The High Church Clergy, mounted high, Like sons of Jehu drive, And over true religion ride To keep the Church alive." ^ Steele himself, in the Tatler, has deplored the clergy's lack of trained elocution. "You would think," he ob- serves, "they were pleading the contents only of some discourse they intended to make." ^ Swift as late as 1725 writes to Pope that "cast wits and cast beaux have a proper sanctuary of the Church," ^ and Swift was par ex- cellence the champion of his order. Atterbury is cited as an exception. But, without art, they were not without artifice ; the parson at once rebuked and flattered his patron.* Sermons that struck home were constantly poli- tical harangues fomenting the passions of partisanship. As early as 1703 the Archbishop of York animadverted on this invasion by ministers spiritual of things temporal. "... If indeed," he urged in his sermon before the Lords, " a preacher should in the pulpit presume to give his judgment about the management of public affairs, or to lay down doctrines as from Christ about the forms and models of kingdoms or commonwealths, and to ad- just the limits of the prerogatives of the prince and of the liberties of the subject in our present government — I say if a divine should meddle in such matters as these in his sermons ... he is practising in state matters . . . usurping an office that belongs to another profession . . . every whit as indecent ... as to determine titles of land in the pulpit." ^ Whig ballads of the day hooted at parsons 1 "The Age of Wonders." Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 69. 2 Tatler, No. 66. ' Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 49. 4 cf. State Poems. ' "The History of Resistance as Practised by the Church of England," &c., by John Withers, 17 10. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 572. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 123 as "Pulpit Physicians." Sacheverell's discourse on "perils from false brethren " is only an exaggerated sample of their prescriptions. If, latterly, at any rate, the town pulpit was restricted to ethics,^ the country clergyman, remote from chances of preferment, was unchecked in his criti- cism. At a time when Manchester, Warrington, Bolton, Rochdale, Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield, and Sheffield, among many others, had no public officer but a constable, when the demarcation, moreover, between classes was sharp, the Sunday sermon proved the sole intelligencer and the fre- quent provocative. The Whigs were for "roasting" the " parsons ; " so the provocation was usually on one side, especially as the triennial elections approached. At Scar- borough, for instance, in 1710, it was the parson who disseminated and interpreted the Examiner. It arrived on Sunday, and after the evening service he invited such friends as " were weak in the faith ' to read it while he counteracted the " babel " of the Observator and Re- view?- Swift, in one of his verses enumerating the duties of a country clergyman, particularly mentions to " explain the news." Outside the pulpit the parson, so miserably paid and ill-considered,^ was often a cringing dependent, in it constantly a blustering bully. In England alone he was one of over ten thousand.* He belonged to an order rooted in the soil, which had pioneered the Revolution and had since been denied recognition. Latitudinarians and fanatics usurped his High-Church portion. Sly Presbyterians were sapping his authority. Jacob was 1 Cf. Pauli, p. 364. ^ Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 640, ^ Guardian, No. 65. For the wretched condition of chaplains, cf. ib. 163. Burnet, in 1704, speaks of " some hundreds of cures that have not of certain pro- vision £20 a year and some thousands that have not ;^50." When Lord Raby was Ambassador at Berlin in 1705, he enumerates, in his suite of fifty-four, the " Chaplain " between the French mattre d'hdtel and the English valet. As regards a chaplain's pay, Bolingbroke, writing in February^i7i2, says : " I have spoken to Mr. Breton about the proposition of taking Mr. Csesar as his chaplain to Berlin, to which he is enough inclined ; but, as he tells me, this gentleman is willing to go only for six months on the whole, and expects ^^150 for his service." Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 174. ^ Macpherson, ii. 207. 124 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES supplanting Esau. The kingdom was being overrun by schismatics and foreigners. The Church was in danger and the corporations must do their duty. He would "cry aloud and spare not." ^ For he belonged also to an order who had heavenly power to absolve and remit, whose unction was the anointment of sovereignty, whose ban could still excommunicate his fold. If submission to the powers that were could not proceed peaceably, it must proceed by tumult. When Sacheverell made his triumphal progress into Worcester, even women swelled the riots. If the rector was of the Low Church, as the new- fangled denomination ran, he would wrest Scripture against France and the Pretender. He would repudiate "passive obedience," and stir the people by humorous invective, if such were his bent. He would approximate to the fami- liarities of the conventicle. Daniel Burgess — the house- hold favourite of Bolingbroke's grandparents, like Dr. Patrick, Rector of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and afterwards Bishop of Ely, the former chaplain of Lord Orrery — main- tained that the Hebrews were called Israelites because " God ever hated Jacobites." " If a man," he once preached, "would have a suit for a twelvemonth, let him repair to Monmouth Street ; if for his lifetime, to the Court of Chan- cery ; if for eternity, let him put on righteousness." ^ He defined " thorough-paced " doctrine as that which went in at one ear and out at the other. It was a punning era, and such facetiousness was at least equal to Swift's " Fringe- ship " and " Pewterborough." Burgess's Spurgeon-like style ' " Perhaps some hot-headed clergyman may also cry aloud and spare not, as Sacheverell, Walton, Higgins, Trap [Bolingbroke's chaplain], and the rest of them have done for the last three or four years," &c. " The False Steps of the Ministry," &c. (1714), Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 76. ^ Noble's continuation of Granger, ii. 159. "A New Ballad," of the time of Sacherevell's trial, compares Harley to Dr. Burgess : — " Like Dr. Burgess, much renowned, Of one he did take care ; Then slipt his cloak, and left the rest All in most sad despair." — Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 81. His son turns up in 1713 at Hanover as u Whig spy. Portland MS., vol. v. P- 344- THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 125 lingered long in the popular tradition. Bolingbroke seems to have imbibed from him some of his patriot doctrines.^ Dr. Manton, once Rector of St. Paul's, but who had been expelled for nonconformity, was another of these Presby- terian divines. He was the delight of Bolingbroke's grand- mother, and had put the young St. John out of joint with piety by his hundred and nineteen^ discourses on the hundred and nineteenth Psalm. The Low Church cleric would follow the lead of my Lord of Salisbury, that " Yan Ptshernsooker " in Arbuthnot's fable, who "peached his partner " and mixed the dram for John Bull. If any peace were made without wresting Spain and the Indies from Philip, the Queen and kingdom were undone : in less than three years' time Anne would be murdered and the faggots relighted at Smithfield.^ No quarter must be shown to Papists, and no terms made with Harley or the devil, who were synonymous. The clergy, too, were great conservers of superstition. Swift was himself very superstitious, and always believed a coach would be upset unless the moon was shining. Bottled baptismal water was, according to one, a sovereign remedy against sore eyes.* It was a credulous time. Lady Wentworth believed a wolf's tooth an invaluable amulet for infants. When Lady Windham and Lord Dal- keith died in 1705, she gravely and quaintly mentions, " - . . and there is two strange fishes taken up, and fower sons was seen by several and a flaming soard." ^ Touching for the king's evil was first discontinued by George I., from anti-Stuart policy ; but stroking the hands of dead criminals, and even eating the baked body of a toad or drinking quicksilver water were also considered specifics. Astrologers like Partridge flourished, despite the banter of satirists like Swift. Charms were constantly worn. Divina- 1 Cf. a remarkable "Letter from Paradise, subscribed by Dr. Burgess of face- tious memory," in the London Magazine of January 1734. " Passive obedience," it says, "is a ridiculous doctrine, but a Riot Act, it seems, is a good thing." ' Bolingbroke thus phrases it. There were, in fact, however, a hundred and twenty. ^ Burnet, p. 874. * Lady Cowper's Diary. ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 41. 126 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tion was fashionable. Bay leaves were pressed into its service on Valentine's Day. The spell of witchcraft — still a capital crime — pervaded the whole peasantry ; witches were both legally executed and illegally drowned. Innes and Psalmanazar cooked up false tales of wonder which deceived the town in 1704, under the auspices of Bishop Compton himself. Monotony and remoteness foster superstition. Folks had to distract themselves when so few distrac- tions were provided. Charles II. had abolished valentines because of their expense.^ In agricultural districts there were fairs and festivals, as well as race-meetings in July and August.^ Defoe mentions a " mop " or servants' fair ^ at Bloxham ; and there were cock-fights and trials of strength and skill ; but amusement was rifest in the provincial capitals. Indeed, Bath* and Bristol^ seem to have been often gay even in com- parison with London. But in London there was move- ment and energy expending itself in love and war. Money-making was universal, and by whatever means. Gentlemen who sneered at the stock-jobber profited by the stock-jobbing. Officers would avoid their debts by foisting tradesmen, who were dubbed " Romans," into the Guards, or discharge them by selling their regiments. Against the "false musters" an Act had to be passed,^ as also against excessive gaming. Though there was a tax on cards (as on leather, soap, and candles), the rage for play was as high, if the stakes were lower than in the ensuing genera- tion. Everything was bought and sold, and a trader's heiress was the unabashed ambition of most public men. The new Whigs publicly protested their contempt of birth ' Sydney's "England and the English in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. chap. viii. ^ Cf. a curious list, Portland MS., vol. v. p. 326. ' Defoe's "Tour," vol. iii. p. 46. ■* As late as 1736 Mrs. Pendarves (afterwards Mrs. Delany) writes to Swift : ' ' I think Bath a more comfortable place to live in than London. All the enter- tainments of the place, and you are at liberty to take them or let Ihem alone just as it suits your humour," &c. Works, vol. xix. p. Z2. ' It contained twenty-one churches, many meeting-houses (especially of Quakers), a cathedral, 100,000 inhabitants, and 3000 ships. ' See Examhur, No. 44. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 127 and their worship of mammon.^ As Swift complained in " Cadenus and Vanessa " — " Now love is dwindled to intrigue, And marriage grown a money league.'' Miss Booth, the daughter of a citizen, became the first Lady Cowper. Lady Delawarr was the heiress of John Freeman, a London merchant, and her mother married a coachman en secondes noces} Sir William Decker's daughter became Lady Fitzwilliam. Alderman Sir William Gore's son wedded Lady Mary Compton, who, when he rebuked her for assembling half-a-dozen of either sex at Bath to dance twice a week and blowing out the candles, retorted by " If citizens pretend'd to marry quality, they must take it for their pains." ^ Thomas Onslow, son of Sir Richard, married the heiress of Mr. Knight of Jamaica, " the Indian Queen." Lord Villiers, afterwards Earl of Jersey, was united to Judith, daughter of Frederick Heme, a city merchant, and maltreated her. The Duke of Bedford, in George III.'s time, married the nouvelle riche Lady Daval. Lord Strafford — for whom his devoted mother planned innumerable matches * — won sixty thousand pounds with his bride, the daughter of Sir H. Johnson, who had retired from business to Bradenham Manor. The Duchess of Argyle was the niece of that Croesus, Sir Charles Duncombe, and herself did the honours for her uncle at the Mansion- House. Lady Wentworth is full of fortunes and weighs her gold-fish by the pound. " Lady Brownlow's youngest daughter is run away and nobody knows yet with whom, though 'twas ever since the twelfth ' Cf. Examiner, No. 40, where the story is told of Sir Henry Furnese, the tin contractor. 2 According to T. Coke, her "postman." Hist. MS. Comm., 12th Rep. App. pt. iii. p. 64. ' Wentworth Papers, p. 219. Cf. for such inequalities. Toiler, No. 36. * Among these was Lady Tufton's daughter. " For ;^5oOD you may by her hous and one or twoe may be bated if you take her daughter." In another case the old lady actually professes her willingness to pretend to be dead, as the lady dislikes a mother-in-law. In yet another case she wishes "you would inquier about this Sir William or Sir Robert — I forget which, Trotman's daughter, al say she is a vast fortune but very ugly.'' 128 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES day. Somebody has got a good fortune ; they reckon her worth -£30,000. Lord Wembs last week was married to Lady Robson's daughter, a twenty thousand pounds for- tune." " I hear your master " (the King of Prussia), writes his "infenit affekshenit " mother to Lord Raby in 1705, " is going to be marryed ; if soe, pray gett Betty to be made of honor ; she is very handsom and will soon gett a good husband. Hall ses thear is a niece of Lord Portland's in Holland, a handsom young woman worth thirty or more thousand pound. I wish you had her. If you was marryed, although I levd twenty milse of you, yet it would be an unspeakable happyness to pore me, for sartainly I should never desier to liv with a daughter-in-law, for although themselves ar never soe good, yet sum tattling sarvents or acquantenc will put jealosies in their head to breed discontents." Alliances with Dutch ladies were also not uncommon. The Duke of Ormonde's mother was herself a Dutch- woman. Lady North and Grey was the daughter of Elmet, the States Receiver-General. Lady Holdernesse was Dutch, as also the second Lady Windham — Lady Blandford. Nor were these the sole sensations in the marriage market. Noble, the attorney, eloped with an heiress of high degree, and furnished Hogarth with material for one of his most tragic morals. The notorious Lady Harriet Vere — who had been the sinister star of Cowper's life — blackmailed young Onslow when he re- fused to espouse her. Young " Beau " Fielding wedded the elderly Lady Diana Howard, who only begged "he might be civil to her," but in vain. Matches, too, with inferiors were frequent. There were ladies in England, as in France, whom Voltaire wittily named " Valet-udinarians." The other sex was not backward. The infamous Lord Mohun owed his marriage to " Duck Griffin," and we hear of the nuptials of " Count Vienna, the Sharper." The greatest anxiety was used to ascertain a salaried acquaint- ance's death, so as to solicit his preferments. The East India Company was another bone of con- THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 129 tention for the Tories, especially after the failure of the Darien Corporation. They and the New Guinea Cor- poration, as well as the Turkey traders, influenced votes and distributed comfortable berths to partisans.^ The South Sea Company was founded as a rival institution for the other side. France was already a formidable com- petitor with her Ostend Trading Association, which was afterwards to give Austria such a formidable handle. The new men usurped the old acres.^ Helmsley be- came Buncombe's ; Osterley, Child's. " Heathcote himself, and such large-acred men, Lords of fat E'sham or of Lincoln Fen." These were those of whom Pope also truly sang : — " The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule That every man in want is knave or fool." The City was everywhere paramount. Merchants sat in Parliament.^ Sir W. Scawen, Sir G. Heathcote, and Sir J. Banks were a triumvirate who, with Messieurs Eyles and Gould, bolstered the Junto and battened on the war. Portuguese and Amsterdam Jews played their part. Sir Solomon Medina* — who convicted Marlborough of the contract bribes — was to Godolphin what Sir Sampson Gideon was afterwards to Walpole. When, in 1707, Lady Wentworth stood godmother to " Mr. Hanbury's boy," she was quite proud of her co-sponsors, "twoe rich sitissons, on Sir Ambrose Croly,^ the other Marchant Morgin, each ar worth above a hundred thousand pound a peic." ^ State ' Addison got his elder brother to be Governor of Fort St. George. Went- worth Papers, p. ^6. ^ Cf. especially for the sale of ancestral estates, Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 213. ' At Lancaster, for example, Bradley, a London merchant, opposed the " two Heyshams" in 17 10. Churchill, the bookseller, sat for Dorchester in 1705. Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 578, 270. * He afterwards retired to Leghorn, where he died, after having formed a fine collection of intaglios. There was a mania for collection. Pope's verses on Addison's medals are familiar. 5 A Tory Alderman of Greenwich, M.P. for Andover, 1713. One of his daughters married the celebrated Sir J. Hinde Cotton ; another, Bolingbroke's cousin. Lord St. John of Bletshoe. ' Wentworth Papers, p. 62. I 130 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES lotteries were frequent and demoralising. Betty Went- worth implores her cautious brother for ten pounds more that she may have another chance, as she has spent her savings in " littel jewels." Lady Wentworth puts in for her pet dog, " dear, charming Fubs." There was the million lottery, the half million, and the million and a half. The bitterest political animosities did not preclude the greed for prizes. On March 29, 171 1, Bothmar wrote to Robe- thon at Hanover, "Vous, Monsieur, et tons nos com- patriotes sont venus trop tard pour la lotterie," 1 and this was Harley's scheme, which the Electoral Prince was combating. The Bank of England itself, with its allied political jobbers, made a "corner" in this very lottery, which was thus over subscribed by ^£266,000 ; but, on the general outcry, the directors had to disgorge one-fifth.^ Sir J. Lambert was knighted by Harley for his money support ; there was an open traffic in boroughs. " It was nothing uncommon for boroughmongers to buy ships and hire them out as transports to the Government, which re- quired their votes, at vast profit to themselves."^ There was further the open traffic in land. The "land-jobber " rose into prominence, and Morley, a famous one, who had begun as a butcher, proved the ruin of the second Lord Oxford.* Nor did the upper classes disdain to em- bark in trade, for all their pride in "looking like quality." We are told of a Mr. John Anderson, " of as considerable a family as any in Lincolnshire," who had served an appren- ticeship with a linen-draper, but likes better to take some place than to set up that trade now we have war." ^ Turning from detail to causes, it is important to note that all this mammon-worship was one symptom of the ' Pauli, 348 ; and cf. "Eleven Opinions about Mr. H — y," p. 42, where the Whigs, who " damned the credit," are stated to have been equally keen after the gains. ^ Examiner, No. 37. It is amusing to contrast the Whig version. "A re- markable instance of the great wealth of this nation and an undoubted proof of the recovery of ih.e publick credit." Boyer's History, p. 489. ' See Sydney's "England in the Eighteenth Century," chap. x. * Swift's Works, vol. xix. (Letters), p. 241. " Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 623. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 131 silent revolution that had occurred by the Parliamentary control of the King's revenue, which William had so keenly resented. It was part of the Whig plan to make the monarch a marionette, who should only dance to the tune of an oligarchy, and, as they had to play the tune, it resulted that they must become musicians. In other words, the members of both Houses were now forced into becom- ing, or trying to become, financial experts and fiscal critics. Odious taxation was necessitated by continued drains on the revenue for the purposes of the Court, the placemen, and the war. The money-jobbers asserted that unless foreign troops could be subsidised and domestic trade benefited at the same time, it would be better to sue Louis for peace.^ They sought to compass both objects by tabooing French imports. The duties on French wines were £■};} a tun heavier than on Portuguese and Spanish under the Methuen treaty. Brandy and rum as well as claret became articles of luxury, and the Whigs are respon- sible for the degradation of a whole people by gin. The necessaries of life were taxed, and the superfluities — over- weighted by the customs — were smuggled. Discontent, fraud, and adulteration resulted from the policy which Bolingbroke's great commercial treaty vainly strove to overthrow, and which the blind faction who kept it alive succeeded in frustrating. Again, the land and property tax, which was designed — on a Dutch model — to apply to ■realty and personalty alike, fell with exclusive incidence on land, for it was evaded by all other incomes. The war, therefore, between the monied and the landed interest was sharply aggravated. It was an age of avarice, but it was also an age of philanthropy. The Socinian Firmin had set the example under the auspices of Queen Mary, and the more liberal section of the Church continued it. " Societies of Refor- mation," or a sort of Young Men's Christian Association, had been established by Beveridge and Horneck. The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge was ^ See the remarks in " Social England," vol. iv, p. 517 rf sej. 132 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES founded. Queen Anne assured her protection to that for the Propagation of the Gospel among Infidels. Schools and missions for the West India Plantations flourished.^ Dr. Willis, of Lincoln's Inn, gave ^6000 towards one "to instruct the Indians." ^ Charity schools and parochial libraries were directly fostered by Convocation.^ Ogle- thorpe did not benefit Georgia until the reign of the Second George, but the "strong benevolence of soul," which Pope's panegyric embalms, was active at the outset. Bishop Berkeley's golden dream for the education of America, and the establishment of an ideal state in the Bermudas, which Walpole's subservience to the greed of the First George, in the matter of the St. Kits estates, frus- trated in 1726, drew its inspiration from the reign of the Queen. Had it been countenanced, America might never have revolted from England. In the noble verses of this poet-philosopher occurs the subjoined passage : — " Then shall be sung another golden age, The rise of Empire and of arts, The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts. Not such as Europe breeds in her decay. Such as she bred when fresh and young. When heavenly flame did animate her clay By future poets shall be sung. Westward the course of Empire takes its way ; The first four acts already past ; A fifth shall close the drama of the day : Time's noblest offspring is the last." But just as Parliamentary reform was mainly occupied with corruption instead of representation, so benevolence seldom attempted to grapple with the wider problems of the poor. Sir Josiah Child was the first to point out that employment instead of doles would abolish vagrants, and that the radical defect of the Poor Laws was the obligation of each parish to support its own destitute only. His treatise • Burnet, 709. ' Luttrell, v. 146. ' Boyer, p. 492. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 133 will still repay attentive perusal.^ Churches were built and tithes remitted, but the Poor Laws remained a crying scan- dal. Inundations of French and German refugees caused riot and discontent. Vagabonds infested the streets and the roads. Under-populated as was then Great Britain, there was as yet no science in charity. Swift's project for fostering Dublin thrift is the sole other forerunner of our present charity organisation. Criminals were burned in the hand for trivial offences, whipped for petty larceny, and hung for horse-stealing without shocking the public con- science.^ Protracted warfare and the spirit of discord were the insuperable obstacles to any serious efforts in this direction. Never did the fury of faction rage so high. It was already traditional. "Whig or Tory," Prior had written in November 1699, " are as of old implacable. . . . Dr. Davenant is coming out with another book in which he attacks the Government, and is . . . very scurrilous against the Lord Chancellor (Somers) and our dear friend Charles " (Montague). In the debate on the Protestant Succession Bill, Tory Granville called out to Whig Dudley, " How do you. Mynheer Dudley ? " to which he retorted, "Thanks, Monsieur Granville."^ The bitterness was at once a spur and a blight. It infected the press ; it de- voured literature ; it penetrated the army and the navy. Galway and Stanhope were Whig idols, Peterborough and Ormonde Tory heroes. Rooke had been furiously assailed by all the supporters of the Junto ; Hardy was his rival in the Whig interest. To be Whig or Tory, or rather to be in Godolphin's or Harley's favour, was as keen and natural a distinction as to be a white or a negro. It invaded the learned professions. Arbuthnot was the Tory prescriber of medicine and of wit ; Garth, the Whig " physician who neglects ^sculapius for Apollo."* Parker introduced political prejudice even on the Bench ; Trevor studied 1 Somers Tracts, vol. iv. p. 537. "Proposals for the Relief and Employment of the Poor." 2 Luttrell, vi. 630. ' Prior's " History of his Own Time," p. 138. •> " New Atalantis," i. 150. 134 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the Tories in his administration of the Rolls. Whatever his avocation, every one was a Greek or a Trojan. Money -was ranged against land ; the Venetian against the British Constitution. There vi^as schism in the theatre ; there were "sides" in the opera-house. "When a man changes his party," says the Spectator, " he must infallibly count upon the loss of his mistress." Muffs, fans, furbelows, and patches were pressed into the division. The very footmen, as they waited at Westminster, formed their own Parliament and elected their own Speaker. Convocation modelled its Upper and Lower Houses on lords and commons, and servilely followed the disastrous wrangles of Parliament.^ The coffee-houses, too, were the citadels of party as well as the parents of journalism. Arbuthnot, in his "John Bull," says of "Discordia" that her "ill complexion was occasioned by her bad diet — which was coffee morning, noon, and night." Even the shops were political. "Street politics " was a common phrase of the day. Steele has penned an essay for the benefit of " those worthy citizens who live more in coffee-houses than in their shops, and whose thoughts are so taken up with the affairs of the Allies that they forget their customers. . . . Our streets swarm with politicians ; there is scarce a shop which is not held by a statesman." ^ Men were followed rather than measures, and private friendships were sacrificed to public animosity. Swift mentions with regret the growing cold- ness of Addison, and with surprise his acceptance of Bolingbroke's invitation on the Good Friday of 17 13. Corruption had already inaugurated her reign ; it was evenly practised by both parties. Trevor, who died in 1717, refused to sell his place to Harley for ^20,000, be- cause "by leases out" he expected in a year, as Master of the Rolls, to receive -^30,000. All Chancery Lane was in his interest. Walpole — the future arch-master of these revels — is mentioned as the first to receive bribes for his ' Cf. inter alia, Burnet, p. 727, &nd passim, the Spectator; passim, the Exa- miner, Nos. 3, 28, 31. ^ Taller, Nos. 155, 160. THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 135 servants.! Cowper^ and Somers, who refused the annual tribute of solicitors, stand out as honourable exceptions.^ Espionage and fraud were the consequences. Dyot was convicted for forging the public stamps ; Gregg betrayed his country and very nearly his master. The race for gold was an epidemic that contaminated every department. No wonder that the standard of public Hfe was low. Bolingbroke, the least venal as he was the most impulsive of statesmen, afterwards avowed that he entered political life with no other plan but party advantage. Over and over again comparatively respectable leaders openly adver- tised that, as they had snatched a majority, they must utilise it for their friends. The voting corporations bribed with effrontery, and one of the objects of the bills against occasional conformity was to counteract their influence. The Whigs granted bogus quit-rents of 40s. per annum resignable on the tender of 6d. to secure votes.* Elections were also controlled by the device, of renewing election charters,^ and by the tyranny of every Government official — a fact which in 1733 proved one of the most forcible means of wrecking Walpole's Excise Bill.^ Peterborough's ' Wentworth Papers, pp. 155, 256. ^ Cf. Ambrose Philips' just encomium : — " He the robe of justice wore, Sullied not as heretofore, When the magistrate was sought With yearly gifts. Of what avail Are guilty hoards ? for life is frail, And we are judged where favour is not bought." He succeeded to his dignity without any intermediate steps. So acceptable was his plausible presence to the Queen that she pressed him to retain the seals in 1710. ^ It may be mentioned that this corruption was fully as prevalent under Cromwell. See Somers Tracts, vol. i. p. 422, "Catalogue of Pensioners in the Long Parliament." * Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 188. " Wentworth Papers, p. 70. ^ Cf. the ballad of "Britannia Excisa " :— "An Excise for all knaves yields places most fit. And will furnish our fools with stores of bought wit ; 'Twill enable each justice f oppress or protect All who vote, or vote not, as he shall direct. 'Twill increase the supplies And the number of spies, And strengthen Sir Blue's hands to bribe our Allies." Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 240; and cf. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 521. 136 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES undue influence on the Malmesbury election of 1702 drew down the censure of his own party,^ who, as we shall afterwards relate, were indefatigable in endeavouring to maintain the purity of election. The haughty Duke of Somerset himself and the valiant Marlborough tampered with boroughs. The Bishop of Carlisle was censured by the Tories in 171 1 for endeavouring to procure the election of Sir James Montague.^ Such was society, so far as a superficial glance may comprehend it. The epoch differed from its successor by its universal struggle. The lethargy attendant on nearly a quarter of a century of inactive peace had not yet set in.' England was an Atlas with the world on its shoulders. The nation that could, with a revenue of two millions only, support a national debt swelled in fourteen years from ■^300,000 to ;^5o,ooo,ooo, in the five years alone between 1706 and 171 1 by an increase of -^30,000,000, and in thirty- five more years to ^80,000,000, a civil list that grew from some -^500,000 a year to the gigantic expenditure of the Walpolian Georges,* and a royal allowance that rose from Anne's modest ^28,000 to the profusion of her successors, may well deserve the encomium of Steele : " Methinks a man cannot without a secret satisfaction consider the glory of the present age, which will shine as bright as any other in the history of mankind. It is still big with great events, and has already produced changes and revolutions which will be as much admir'd by posterity as any that have happen'd in the days of our fathers or in the old times ' Luttrell, vi. 137. ^ Boyer, p. 502. ^ Cf. the very curious " Political Instructions for the Use of Gentlemen,'' London, printed for C. Smith, \ 708, p. 23 : " None but sluggish country gentle- men who degenerate from the glory of their ancestors make it their choice to dream away their lives upon whimsical pleasures ; that employ themselves in no business but chasing wild beasts, or the like ; or your effeminate sparks, who cannot find it in their heart to leave their wives, nor forsake their own dunghill." * Cf. " Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation " (written in 1749), Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ix. pp. 325-326, and "Letters on History," Letter viii. vol. viii. pp. 342-343, THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE 137 before them. We have seen kingdoms divided and united, monarchs erected and deposed, nations trans- ferred from one sovereign to another, conquerors rais'd to such a pitch of greatness as has given a terror to Europe, and thrown down by such a fall as has moved their pity." CHAPTER IV EARLY DAYS In the February of the year 1701 a young Alcibiades, who was barely a year and a half past his majority, might have been seen taking the oaths and his ancestral seat for Wootton Bassett in the new Parliament. He was of middle height, full coloured, and neither dark nor fair. His eyes were light, and by turns arch and pensive. His bearing was graceful and digagi, affecting the lettered libertinism of Rochester.^ Frank and impetuous, good-natured ^ if not warm-hearted,* he sought to mask immense application by an appearance of licentious leisure. Haughty, with the pride of his order, vain, with the vanity of his fellows, he had already jour- neyed, and was a man of the world. Old for his years, he could not help realising that he was qualified to emerge from the herd with whom he feigned identity. Eloquence sat on his lips and intellect on his brow. His brain was ripe with study and rife with ideas, while an abnormal memory easily banished all appearance of effort from his tours de force. " He had early made himself master of books and men," wrote one who knew him well,* "but, in ' For an excellent description of Bolingbroke's personal appearance see Lord Lytton's "Devereux " (Routledge's edition), p. 41. ^ In January 1712 Earl Rivers thus writes of St. John to Oxford : " . . . He is so good-natured that he is easily influenced upon. ..." Portland Papers (Hist. MS. Comm.), vol. v. p. 136. ' Bolingbroke, writing to St. Pierre in June I7i3i avers, "Je me pique d'etre un homme franc. Mes ennemis vous diront peut-etre que je le suis trop." See Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 167. In a letter to Peterborough of May 2, 1712, St. John says, " My love and my hate are so far from not appearing in my words and actions that they generally sit in my face." Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 303. Cf. Swift's Works, vol. vi. p. 31 ; " My Lord Bolingbroke was of a nature frank and open, and as men of great genius are superior to common rules, he seldom gave himself the trouble of disguising or subduing his resentments, though he was ready enough to forget them." * Orrery on Swift, p. 155. 138 EARLY DAYS 139 his first career of life, being immersed at once in business and pleasure, he ran through a variety of scenes in a sur- prising and eccentric manner." Harley, who was now Speaker, seemed the predestined leader of a new party, and "Harry" was already addressing him as "Master." The advice given him by Henry Guy (whose heir Pulteney became in 1710) "to be very moderate and modest" in his applications for his friends, and " very greedy and impor- tunate" when he asked for himself,^ was not only disre- garded but reversed. From first to last St. John was too proud to beg and too generous to deny ; relentless to a foe, yet easily flattered by a friend.^ " Appalling, charming, haunting St. John shone, And stirred that age as Byron thrilled our own ; Sighing for ease, yet ever keen for strife, Zeno's his creed, yet Aretin's his life ; With Protean grace through every change he sports, Now awing senates, now perplexing courts ; A soul of flame, though both a brand and torch, Firing the camp or dazzling from the porch. Behold him now, not in his autumn day, But in the flowering of his dainty May." ^ That first Parliament was born in tempest. Prior (then member for East Grinstead),* who professed himself as "rather for supporting the Crown than obliging either party," speaks of "the madness of either faction," and observes, " Sure never was there so much work as at present in securing parties and bribing elections." The Tories at last seemed to be secure of the King, though a large infusion of Whigs presented the semblance of a coalition. That year and the preceding were big with fate. The secret of the Partition treaties had already leaked out, and the second of these compacts, necessitated ' See the allusion in Bolingbroke's Letters to Swift of January I, 1722. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 411, ^ " I do not dislike being cajoled." Letter to Swift, July 24, 1725. Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 22. 3 Bulwer Lytton's " St. Stephen's." * His name does not appear in the Parliamentary Returns published in 1878, but his "History of his Own Time" expressly mentions the fact. He was only member for some four months, which perhaps explains the omission. HO BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES by the death of the Elector of Bavaria, was denounced both as a breach of faith with the English nation and a violation of the Dutchman's engagement to support Austria. The death of Charles of Spain heralded a war of succession abroad ; the death of the Duke of Gloucester imperilled the succession at home. His grandfather's decease nerved Louis to proclaim Philip king of Spain and the Pretender king of England ; while it emboldened William to set up a counter-pretender in the Chevalier De Courtenay, and to maintain the balance of power by the Grand Alliance, while vindicating the Peace of Ryswick. A weak but pacific Pope^ intrigued with those Italian duchies for which France and Austria contended. Holland looked to the most powerful of her sons for the mainten- ance of her commerce and her barrier. The Electress was already studying Macky's " Characters of the English and Scotch Nobility," while her son professed indiffer- ence to the English reversion. Robethon was the King's Secretary. Bothmar was representing Hanover at the Hague. Manchester — in full correspondence with Prior — was Ambassador at Paris. There was not a foreign event which did not concern Great Britain and emphasise the turbulence of contending factions. Somers had been deprived of the Lord-Chancellorship and the confidence of the King. In his disgust, that father of our constitution was, with Montagu, even concocting its reversal and the erec- tion of a Commonwealth.^ The Government was Tory, and in marked antagonism to the House of Lords. The Partition impeachments were already brewing. Notting- ham was still a power ; Prior had been rewarded by a Commissionership of Trade. Godolphin was Lord Trea- svu-er ; Hedges was Secretary of State ; Blathwayt, Secre- tary of War ; Seymour, Controller ; Jersey was Lord ' Innocent XII. ' Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 3. "A council of five lords and ten commons to be chosen by Parliament to execute the regal power. . . . The moderate men may be alarmed with fears of the Prince of Wales. . . . Many will go into it being a new thing. . . . The generality have been and will be persuaded that all wrongs done of late years proceeded from the obstinate temper of the King." EARLY DAYS 141 Chamberlain ; Sir Nathan Wright, Lord Chancellor, and Rochester, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Marlborough was anxiously watching events and awaiting supremacy ; William, who had thrown over the Junto in 1698, was feeling the pulse of the Tories and counting on supplies. The associates of the young member were Hungerford, his first wife's uncle ; young Harcourt, the cadet of an ancient family ; elderly Jack Howe, a reckless and privileged '-' Highflyer ; " Davenant, a violent Tory pam- phleteer of the school of Sir Christopher Musgrave ; Anthony Hammond, whom Bolingbroke styled "silver- tongued," ^ and of whom Chesterfield said that he possessed " all the senses but common-sense ; " ^ Sir Thomas Mansel, afterwards Controller, of ample fortune, good family, and clear intelligence ; ^ his colleague was Pinnel, and later Popham.* His intimate was Thomas Coke (afterwards Vice-Chamberlain ^ of the Queen's Court), with whom we shall shortly make acquaintance. In 1702 we find them in close companionship, pohtical and social, with Bromley, Brydges (St. John's cousin^), and G. Granville (afterwards Lord Lansdowne). So far as any principle can be said to have ruled the clique, it was for the compatibility of the Revolution settlement with the pre- ponderance of the Church and the land ; for frequent par- liaments ' and against a standing army ; for the resumption of grants to favourites and against the exaltation of Pre- rogative ; for commons and country against lords and king ; for peace and against partition.* But the immediate game was to keep the ball rolling and at the feet of the Tories. Henry St. John sprang from a noble lineage on both ' Disraeli's "silver-tongued mediocrity" will be remembered. " Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield, vol. i. p. 47. ' Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 257. * See State Poems and Parliamentary History, vol. vi. pp. 46, 449, and 594. ° Eventually became Lord Lovel. * See Coke Papers, pp. 13, 33, where see especially the letter written by Granville from " North End" to Coke. For Hungerford's relationship to the first Lady Bolingbroke, see Portland MS., vol. v. p. 381. ' Letters on History, No. VHI. ' C/. Sir W^. Windham's speech, cited Coxe's W^alpole, iii. 142, and c/. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 106. 142 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES sides. His paternal ancestry reached the Conquest through the marriage of Mabel de St. John with Adam de Port of Basing. His heir assumed the maternal name. By the age of Elizabeth the Wiltshire family had amassed the lordships of Bletsoe, Tregoze, and Grandison, and the manors of West Greenwich, Carshalton, and Beckenham; by the age of Charles the manors of Earl's Court, of Paddington, and of Battersea. It would be profitless as well as irksome to pursue all the ramifications of this illustrious house, that was allied to the best blood of England, and whose ancient possessions lay in many counties and many parishes. It was constantly winning peerages and losing them ; and in this respect, as well as in childlessness, Bolingbroke continued the family traditions. Oliver St. John, Viscount Grandison, his great-great-grand-uncle, who died in 1630 without issue, and who had been Lord High Treasurer and Lord Deputy of Ireland, was the first to obtain the grant of the Battersea manor through his marriage with Joan Roydon, the relict of Sir William Holcroft — two names immemorially associated with that village. It was a peculi- arity of this manor, which included the ferry of Chelsea, to descend to youngest sons, and thus the eccentric course of the St. Johns asserted itself even in their property. William Villiers, the son of Bolingbroke's great-grand-aunt Barbara, inherited the Grandison title and Battersea estate from the Lord Grandison aforesaid, and himself dying in the King's cause at the siege of Bristol without issue, granted the manor to his uncle and BoHngbroke's great-grandfather, the baronet Sir John St. John. His son, Sir Walter St. John, third baronet, inherited it from his nephew John, who died in his minority, and whose mother was a daughter of Lord Vere, thus curiously associating Bolingbroke with the very family to which his rival Harley vaunted affinity. The St. Johns were also related to the Paulets, the Lees, and the Wilmots. Bolingbroke's father succeeded on Sir Walter's demise in 1708, nor did he himself enter on his patrimony until 1742. At his own death he was succeeded by his nephew Frede- rick (the son of John, second Viscount St. John), who had EARLY DAYS 143 married Lady Diana Spencer, his divorce from whom furnished Dr. Johnson with matter for moralisation. In 1763 the estate was acquired by the Spencer trustees ; and thus by another strange irony the St. John patrimony re- verted to the heirs of the Marlboroughs. Of Bolingbroke's paternal predecessors in title alone, no less than eight deceased without lineal successors. Besides the Cromwell peerage of Oliver, there were as many as three extinct peerages in the family — that of St. John Grandison afore- said, the BoHngbroke Earldom of Oliver Lord St. John of Bletsoe, and that of the Paulet-St. Johns, a Hampshire branch. Still another fatality of the St. Johns is to be found in the fact that the Riches, with the daughter and co-heiress of whom Bolingbroke's father contracted his first alliance,^ had absorbed the manor of Earl's Court, which had originally been a demesne of the Oxfords. The St. Johns had all along been proud and turbulent, whether fighting for King Charles or contriving for Cromwell. Sir John St. John the second was buried with such pomp in 1648 that the heralds prosecuted his executors. Nor was the line on his grandmother's side less illus- trious and distinguished. Through her father, Oliver, Cromwell's Chief-Justice, it remounted to that Margaret Beaufort who was the mother of Henry VII. Oliver's grandfather had been the Lord St. John of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who was the first to gain the Earldom of BoHng- broke, which devolved on his son, the Lord St. John of the reign of James I. The inheritability to this earldom ex- pired with the Paulet-St. John who died in 1711, and whose decease inspired Bolingbroke with the disappointed desire of reviving the title which had been the pride of his family ; though he was forced to be contented with the name with- out the earldom. During Bolingbroke's own lifetime we hear of several members of the family. One Mr. Paulet- St. John was a court chaplain, who, on the anniversary of King Charles's martyrdom (January 30, 1712) preached before the Queen ; ^ another was a Catholic in service ' His second wife was Angelica Madeleine Pillesary, a French lady. ' Boyer, p. 542. 144 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES abroad, whom Bolingbroke recommended to Lexington in Spain ; i a third was in France, and is described by Prior as "your little relation, who is, as it were, one of this nation." ^ Two branches of St. Johns championed opposite sides in the Civil Wars. Sir John St. John was the Cavalier; Oliver St. John, above mentioned, the Roundhead. The latter was " Ship-money Oliver," Cromwell's Chief-Justice and Cromwell's cousin's husband,^ who, in Clarendon's words, had ever "a cloud on his brow" and was "never known to smile." That he knew how to thrive is evidenced by the record of his emoluments. He had the passing of all pardons on commission, worth ^40,000 ; he was both Attorney- and Solicitor-General, with indefinite perquisites "out of the ruins of king and kingdom."* The two main branches were consolidated by the intermarriage both of Bolingbroke's great-uncle Henry with his great - aunt Catherine, and by that of Bolingbroke's grandparents, Sir Walter, the descendant of Sir John, and his Presbyterian wife, the descendant of Oliver.^ Their son, Sir Henry, a Restoration rake, who had purchased his pardon for killing a boon comrade in a brawl, but flourished like a green bay tree far into the reign of George II., who himself captured a peerage, and who survived to defend the rights of Batter- sea against the commoners of Clapham in 1718,* succeeded to the baronetcy. He first married Lady Mary Rich, the co-heiress and daughter of the Earl of Warwick. So good a match was this considered that the saintly stepmother thanks God for Lady Mary's bestowal on a youth of honour and virtue ; "> but indeed Sir Walter was the benefactor of * Pol. Corr., iii. 342. He was appointed to a post in the Spanish court. See i6. vol. iv. p. 92. ' Pol. Corr., iii. 392. ' Daughter of his uncle Henry. Oliver St. John had first married her sister. * Somers Tracts, vol. i. p. 422. ° She died in January 1705, after her grandson had been "very ill of ague and fever," and while he was under promise to "look after" Mr. Cadogan's Naturalisa- tion Bill. Coke Papers, vol. iii. p. 56. * Lyson's "Environs of London," Supplement, p. 18. His peerage (1716) was that of Viscount and Baron St. John of Battersea. ' Lady Warwick's Diary. EARLY DAYS 145 the place, as the charity schools he founded attest. This alliance added to the St. John domains, which already included large property in Hampshire and Wiltshire, as well as holdings of value in the parish of Kensington,^ while their only son's union to Frances Winchescombe brought a fresh accession of fortune in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex. Let us for one moment anticipate by dwelling on the character which, in the ringing periods of his " Spirit of Patriotism " (1736), Bolingbroke assigns to the '^few who are distinguished by nature so essentially from the herd of mankind that (figure apart) they seem to be of another species." They " come into the world, or at least continue in it after the effects of surprise and inexperience are over, like men who are sent on more important errands. They observe with distinction, they admire with knowledge. They may indulge themselves in pleasure ; but as their industry is not employed about trifles, so their amusements are not made the business of their lives. Such men cannot pass unperceived through a country. If they retire from the world, their splendour accompanies them and en- lightAis even the obscurity of their retreat. If they take a part in public life, the effect is never indifferent. They either appear like ministers of divine vengeance, and their course through the world is marked by desolation and oppression, by poverty and servitude ; or they are the guardian angels of the country they inhabit, busy to avert even the most distant evil, and to maintain or to procure peace, plenty, and the greatest of human blessings, liberty." It will be noticed that, embittered and energetic, at once powerless and powerful, he will not conceive of genius except as dedicated to extremes. I Henry St. John was bornj under the Battersea roof- tree^lon October i, 1678. He was an only child. His austere grandparents superintended his education. The ' Lyson's " Environs of London." Bolingbroke himself acquired the Rochester property in Twickenham, forfeited on his attainder. 2 It was an ancient house. In offering it, in 1740, to Lord Marchmont, he calls it " an old and decayed mansion." Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 289. K 146 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES gloomy Puritanism of Patrick/ the facetious Presby- terianism of Burgess, the droning foUies of Manton, in- spired his eariiest aversion. He was sent to Eton, but ex- cept for his supposed rivalry with the boy Walpole, we have no record of his school career. The tradition that he after- wards entered Christchurch is without foundation,^ and probably arises from the degree bestowed al^the Queen's accession and his association with Atterbury. j We may be permitted to imagine the boy Bolingbroke, Headstrong and mercurial,^ home for his holidays from Eton. He sits chafing in the room-like pew of old Battersea Church while Patrick discourses of sin and judgment. Through the jewelled window steals the autumn light, gilding the painting of his royal ancestress. By his side are the stern grandparents, the pale, pietist mother, the careless, Hber- tine father, who seldom troubles the household except by his mature escapades, and who squanders time and for- tune in chocolate-houses or taverns. All around is the hum of cheerful nature. What quick dreams of hope and fear flit through the little fellow's mind 1 The past of his race is a phantasmagoria of knights and paladins, of sour-faced Puritans and "Nell Gwynn defenders of the faith." At home his grandmother, with her doses "little and often," does the same with her minims of "saving grace " and reprobations of Belial. The mother sighs and awaits the scapegrace father's return. The frowning grand- father points the bad example, and busies himself with his townsfolk, his charities, and his hayfields. Everywhere, over-discipline and under-discipline ; a training rigorous, but not vigorous ; and through it all a proud sense of high birthright ; while, as perchance that crushed, deserted mother kisses him, the well of warped affection springs ' For Patrick, cf. ante, p. 124, and post, ch. vi. He was born at Gains- borough ; went to Queen's College, Cambridge; was first (1657), on Sir Walter St. John's presentation. Rector of Battersea and chaplain to the St. Johns, and Rector of St. Paul's," Covent Garden. He was afterwards made successively Prebendary of Westminster and Bishop of Ely. He died in 1707. He took part in the debate on the " Church in danger " of 1705. Cf. Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 495. = Churton Collins' " Bolingbroke." 3 The adherents of Harley afterwards dubbed him "The Man of Mercury.'' The lampoons, too, against the Craftsman call him " Mercury." EARLY DAYS 147 untainted in his eyes, and he vows devotion, obedience, and amendment. I While Lord Jersey, a kinsman of his mother, was ambassador at Paris, the young genius was sent, between 1698 and 1699,^ t° graduate in the dangerous schools of the Continent, j We know that his travels ex- tended to Milan and Turin, where he made acquaintance with the Court of Savoy ; we conjecture their motive to have been some scheme of diplomatic advancement. We are certain that to them was due his mastery of French and Italian, but nothing further can be gleaned about them. Before he started on his wanderings his behaviour had been fashionably loose. He was an admirer of the notorious Miss Gumley, and his father's example offered redoubled allurement owing to his grandfather's severity. But he had also courted the Muses and patronised the poets. Dryden's translation of Virgil in 1697 contained a flattering poem from his pen, one line of which — " Young spite of age ; in spite of weakness strong " — the Chevalier de St. Hyacinthe purloined in 1714. He appears to have been one of the young bloods who presumed to honour the battered giant by precocious condescension, just as Prior and Halifax rose into prominence by bantering him. iTn 1700 he published an extravagant ode, headed " Almahide," ^ who, if not Miss Gumley, was probably one of her sisterhood. Another of his effusions once more re- echoes the mingled license and gallantry, while a prologue to the Earl of Orrery's " Altamira " betrays nothing more than the prevalent knack. The " State Poems " of 1704 comprise some productions from the pen of " Henry St. John, Esqre." Poetry was never his gift, though it was his ' Cooke's " Bolingbroke,'' vol. i. p. 17. ^ We may mention that in 1734 Pope, in his " Sober Advice from Horace," says : — " And yet some care of St. J should be had ; Nothing so mean for which he can't run mad ; His wit confirms him but a slave the more, And makes a princess whom he found a wh — e." It is this to which Bolingbroke alludes in a letter of this date to Swift : ". . . The rogue has fixed a ridicule on me which some events in my life would seem perhaps to justify." Cf. our remarks, ch. vii. 148 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES foible, but fluency was always his/orU. Folly was then his badge, but Wisdom disdained to letirer wayward son run wild. Though he has avowed a thoughtless partisanship on the threshold of political life, he does not seem to have been without definite and original conceptions of foreign policy. As late as 1744 he avers that forty years before he "had studied William's design against the West Indies." Rooke and the "ablest seamen in Holland" were to be conjoined; "we were to let loose all our buccaneers and assist them with the King's ships and land forces," so as "to secure retreat." "The French would not be able to prevent the Martinico men from joining us." And he presses a scheme which must thus early have engaged his meditation into a practical lesson for the days of Carteret.^ In his essay "On the True Use of Retirement and Study," he asserts that " this love and this desire I have felt all my life, and I am not quite a stranger to this industry and application. There has been something always ready to whisper in my ear whilst I ran the course of pleasure and of business, ' Solve senescentem mature sanus equum.' " ^ / His continental tour had afforded him insight. From a passage in one of his letters on the use and study of history ^ it is clear that he descried the true path of England's foreign policy to lie in defensive measures ; and that he deplored the stupid lethargy of the Emperor^ who might easily have installed the Archduke on the throne of Spain had he promptly acted with British sup- port when the will was published, and before Spain had resented the treaties and adopted the Bourbon.* From ' Cf. Marchmont Papers, vol. i. p. 43. '' Works, vol. viii. p. 414. The quotation occurs more than once in his works. ' Letter viii., and cf. post, pp. 261, 262. * Cf.a most important passage in Letter viii. of " Letters on History : " " The King of Spain was ready to declare the Archduke Charles his successor. He was desirous of having this young prince sent into Spain : the bent of the people was in favour of Austria. ... At Court no cabal was yet formed in favour of Bourbon, and a very weak intrigue was on foot in favour of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria. Not only might Charles have been on the spot ready to reap the succession, but a German army might have been there to defend it ; for the Court of Madrid insisted on having twelve thousand of these troops, and rather than not have them offered to contribute to the payment of them privately. . . . EARLY DAYS 149 another source it is evident that he had long discerned the natural aversion of the Spaniards to the French, as well as the futility of Austrian ambition.^ His " Letters on Jiistory," written from Chanteloupin the year I7357evince a grasp of broad tendencies and long developments, at the time unique, and at any time extraordinary. It is, in our These proposals were half refused and half evaded ; and in return to the offer of the crown of Spain to the Archduke the Imperial Councils asked the Government of Milan for him. They thought it a point of deep policy to secure the Italian provinces. ... By declining these proposals the House of Austria renounced in some sort the whole succession." Works, vol. viii. p. 262 and following. Cf. "Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation," Bolingbroke's Works, edit. 1753, vol. ix. p. 333, and also "The Occasional Writer," No. i. "... We might have been engaged, as I said before, in a defensive war for preserving the dominions of our old allies and the liberties of Europe against the usurpations of our ancient enemy. But instead of waiting, we Auxiliaries in a defensive war, we put ourselves under a necessity of being Principals in an offen- sive one ; and by affecting to secure the balance of power when we had neither call nor right to meddle, we reduced our affairs to this absurd alternative, that we must either make an offensive war as principals against the Emperor and Spain, in order to conquer for France, which was equally impolitic and unjust, or against France and Spain in order to conquer for the Emperor under the greatest disadvantages possible, which happened to be the case." And further the very full and convincing arguments on the policy of inviting Charles of Austria to Spain during the lifetime of Charles II. in " On the State of the Nation." Works, vol. ix. pp. 330 and 331. "... The war King William waged was not very successful ; and yet, if the Emperor would have consented to send his second son into Spain during the life of Charles II., King William would have succeeded in both the objects of this war. He had maintained himself on the throne, and had obliged France to promise that she would not disturb him in the possession of it. As to the other object, no treaties of partition would have been thought necessary by him in that case ; neither would this nation have had anything more to do, when the Spanish succession was open, than to support, with the concur- rence of the whole nation, an Austrian prince who was actually on the spot with an Austrian army, and who had been already declared presumptive heir. Thus we might have had a defensive war to make with great advantages on our side ; and the events of the offensive war, which we were obliged to make afterwards, show sufficiently what would have been the success of the other. The Councils of Vienna laid us wantonly, if I may say so, under great disadvantages : and King William therefore resolved, like a wise prince, to expose neither this country nor his own to the hard task of recovering the whole Spanish monarchy. . . . He . . . aimed at no more now than to force the French and Spaniards to come into some composition about the Austrian pretensions, about trade, about barriers, and about effectual means to hinder a future union of France and Spain under one monarch." All this was effected by the Utrecht Treaty. ^ " Letters on History, " No. vii. The eighth letter, however, shows internal evidence of being composed earlier. See the events referred to therein in his Works, vol. viii. at p. 382. 150 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES judgment, the best of his works, jts brilliance, condensa- tion, and insight are unsurpassed/] The correlation of events to inevitable movements, aira of isolated policies to consistent motives, is masterly ; while his inner informa- tion — as, for instance, that the dying Cromwell was about to reverse the fatal policy which precipitated the Pyre- nean treaty — betrays the meditative use he made of his exceptional opportunities. Thought and originality per- vade the whole, and consistent thought and originality. "... As far as I am able to recollect," he told Swift in 1731, as an answer to the Dean's objection that his philo- sophy had " changed by the several gradations of his life," " my way of thinking has been^hiforA enough for more than twenty years. T^fYP it is, to my shame, that my way of acting has not beei/ always conformable to my way of thinking. My own passions, and the passions and interests of other men stUJ more, have led me aside. I launched into the deep ^D^ore I had loaded ballast enough. If the ship did not sink, the cargo was thrown overboard. The storm itself threw me into port." ^ He seems also to have foreseen that England's mission was to be a Mediterranean" 'power.^ At any rate, he approached the labyrinth of politics with confidence, with ambition, and with energy. " You will see," he wrote more than twelve years afterwards to his young kinsman Jersey at the dawn of a public career, "the fawning, tell-tale rascal caressed, and detraction from the merit of others made equivalent to real merit in himself ; " but there was all the more need, " in this dearth of capacity," for " those few who have genius to the present and future service of their country."^ The impeachment of Somers, Orford, Halifax, and Portland was the first partj' move. It is beyond our ' Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 423. Bolingbroke to Swift, August 2, 1731. ^ Cf. "Political Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 456. Letter to Peterborough, July 18, 1712. It is not likely that this fixed idea, which constantly recurs, was matured during ten years only. VPe quote other instances hereafter. It recurs as late as 1743 in his correspondence. See Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 314 ' Pol. Corr., vol. iv. pp. 275-276. EARLY DAYS 151 province to investigate the patchwork treaties of Partition, which very truly, in Swift's words, "begot the will in favour of the Duke of Anjou,"i and in Bolingbroke's, "forced the King of Spain to make a will in favour of the House of Bourbon ; " ^ and eventually necessitated a re-partition when that House retained the throne of Spain. The three original claimants to the throne of Spain were, as is well known, Louis the Dauphin, son of the King's elder sister ; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, a grandson of his younger sister ; and the Emperor (through whom the Archduke Charles claimed in 1700), who was the King's cousin. By the first Partition treaty the Bavarian was to possess Spain while the Austrian was to take the Milanese territories, and Guipuzcoa and the Sicilies were to fall to France. On the Bavarian's death, the second treaty provided for the Archduke's succession to Spain, the Netherlands, and the Indies, while the whole of the Italian domains, with the exception of the Milanese, to be exchanged for Lorraine, was to pass to France — an accession of territory most dangerous to the balance of power. There was an important clause against the pos- sible junction of the Spanish and Imperial crowns. If the Emperor refused to join the treaty, his share was to be enjoyed by the Duke of Savoy. It is this last provision that we wish to accentuate. The House of Savoy was later the fosterling of Harley and Bolingbroke as a counterpoise to the French cham- pionship of the Bavai'ian prince. Historians have missed a clue by omitting to dwell on the tangled relation- ships of the former family, one of whose princesses had protested her rights to the throne of England.^ The Duke of Savoy, who in earlier times by turns helped and hindered Louis, did not at once accede to the Grand 1 Cf. Prior :— " That stroke, for all King William's care, Begat another tedious war, Mathew, who knew the whole intrigue, Nor much approved that mystic league." 2 Occasional Writer, No. I. ■* In 1689. Anne Marie. 152 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Alliance. He was an adroit time-server. But on the Austrian proclamation of the Archduke and renunciation of the Spanish crown in 1703, he, together with Portugal, joined the confederates. It was this Portuguese alliance that involved the complication of the Catalans. Hence- forward his barrier against France (who had tricked him just before his decision to enter on the war), and his purpose that the French should never occupy Milan,^ became his chief concern. His Mediterranean importance was of the greatest consequence to England. Bolingbroke afterwards insisted on his aggrandisement as a check also to Austria's Italian possessions. On the death of the Emperor Joseph in 171 1, St. John renewed his exertions on behalf of the House of Savoy. He wished the Duke to have Spain ; but this was repugnant to the Electoral family, owing to his religion and connection with the House of Stuart.^ By the Treaty of Utrecht Sicily was assigned to him, but by the Quadruple Alliance it be- came Austria's in exchange for Sardinia, and in 1735 it reverted to Spain. Had it remained, and Bolingbroke's ideas been realised, England might have enjoyed a second Gibraltar against both Spain and Austria. Now, the wife of Victor Amadeus, as grand-daughter of Charles I. of England, was at once Queen Anne's and the Pretender's cousin, while her sister, Marie Louise, was the first wife of Charles II. of Spain. Daughters of their house had espoused both the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Philip v., and the Due de Bourgogne. The Savoy family was therefore connected with the dynasties of Austria, Spain, France, and England, and the two combatants for the Spanish crown were actually in affinity through this kindred. The Bavarian and Brunswick unions^ were ^ Cf. Burnet, p. 715. The provision in the second Partition treaty that Milan should be exchanged for Lorraine was in his interest. He it was who originally declared that he would absorb the Milanese territory " leaf by leaf, as one eats an artichoke." 2 Pauli, p. 365. ' Of Charles's two sisters, one married the Emperor Joseph of Austria, the other Louis XIV. The Dauphin married Marie Anne Christine of Bavaria ; EARLY DAYS 153 chiefly with France and Austria. Savoy alone was related to every reigning and jarring sovereignty. Nothing rendered William more unpopular than these high-handed partitions. Jack Howe, like all perverts a fanatic, ventilated his violent Tory ^indignation in the House of Commons by branding the second treaty as " felonious," ^ and compared it to " the distribution of other men's goods among highwaymen." The nation was over- weighted with taxes, and " Prince Naso " had been ren- dered doubly unpopular by the imposition of the poll-tax to meet emergencies in 1696 and the capitation in 1694.^ The Tories were a peace party, and they entered with malevolent zest upon the impeachments. Somers had been too astute to be other than a very reluctant conniver at William's statesmanship. His answer to the King's letter from Loo in 1698 stated " that there is a deadness and a want of spirit in the nation universally" which militated against a new war. It asserted that " if Sicily was in French hands they would be entirely masters of the Levant trade ; if of Final," that " they would isolate Milanese com- merce and relief ; if of Guipuzcoa," that " they could invade Spain as easily as from Catalonia." He added that some while the second wife of Philip, Duke of Orleans (Monsieur), and the mother of the " Regent " Orleans, was niece of the Electress Sophia. The " Archduke " Charles, claimant for Spain and inheritor of the Empire, married the Brunswick grand-daughter of Anton Ulrich. ^ Cf. the animadversions of the Whig pamphleteers. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. P-75- ^ Howe, in a " Ballad of the Capitation," sings : — " O James ! were thy party As wise as they're hearty. And thou thyself fit to be trusted, What a blest occasion Gives this capitation For matters to be rightly adjusted." And Ward, in another ballad : — " We pay for our new-born, we pay for our dead, We pay if we're single, we pay if we're wed ! To show that our merciful Senate don't fail, They begin at the head and tax down to the tail." (Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. pp. 42, 58.) 154 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " advantage for England " was to be desired, and he sug- gested a trade to the Spanish plantations.^ The much- censured Treaty of Utrecht yielded England far greater concessions, and France far less. Nevertheless, William had concluded the second Partition treaty in the teeth of remonstrances, from Canales alike and the Lord Justices. The succession was thus diplomatically divided between the Bourbon and the Hapsburg without the consent of Spain or the knowledge of England. The French published the mystery in order to strengthen Porto Carrero and to force the Bourbon pretensions. Then came the thunderstroke of the will in favour of Philip, second son of the Dauphin. Despite the treaty itself, William in April 1701 penned to the Duke of Anjou a letter of acknowledgment and con- gratulation. The second Partition treaty had been signed, with Jersey and Portland for plenipotentiaries, on March 15, 1700. But Louis, if he did not purpose treachery, was compelled to it by the attitude of Spain. Dissatisfied with the diplomacy of D'Harcourt at Madrid, he concluded a treaty with Sweden, and sixty thousand men marched to the frontiers of Catalonia. No sooner had Charles of Spain breathed his last in November, than Louis insolently answered the general remonstrance that the spirit of the treaty was to prevent the union of the two crowns and not to invalidate his grandson's title under the will. It was with reason that William had withheld the treaties from Parliament. By the Conference of Carlowitz the fifteen years' war with Hungary was closed. A filmed peace overspread Europe. Before Christmas 1698 the two Houses had reduced the army and dismissed the Dutch guards. Great was the national indignation over the treaties of partition. Lords and Commons wrangled over the im- peachments as they did in 1716 over those of Oxford and his confederates. Albemarle, Portland, Orford, Somers, ^ Prior's "History of his Own Times," p. 47. This compilation, though doubted on its first publication (1739) [see Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rep. pt. V. p. 329], contains much internal evidence of authenticity, and important genuine matter. EARLY DAYS 155 and Halifax were charged, and retorted that Marlborough, Lonsdale, Pembroke, and Jersey were equally cognisant. They admitted that they had seen the draft, but denied its communication to Council. To their impeachments were joined charges of bribes, of grants, as well as of misfeasance in Captain Kidd's commission. The Commons addressed the King for and the Lords against the removal of the de- fendants. The Commons insisted that a Committee of both Houses should adjust the preliminaries ; the Lords claimed the sole right to appoint the trial. The two Houses bickered like spiteful school-girls ; at length a " free conference" was agreed to. Even the Tory Havers- ham offended the Lower House, whose spokesman on this occasion was the Tory Musgrave, by insinuating that Jersey, Williamson, Fox, and Pelham, the King's adherents, were left unaccused. Haversham was himself charged by the Commons, but all the charges were eventually dismissed. The Lords resolved that they had a right to "do justice on the House of Commons," while the Commons retorted that the Lords had " insulted " them. The Lords rejoined by a resolution tending to make trials and impeachments impracticable. It was the sorry farce of 1698 repeated. St. John, with all the Harleyites, including Prior, personally devoted as the last was to Somers, voted to uphold the King and the Commons against his Whig advisers and the Lords. Louis' acceptance of the will and proclamation of the Pre- tender — " that breach of truth and treaty " ^ — stung England into energy. Already by March 30th Stanhope was instructed to require from the French Ambassador at the Hague " a reasonable satisfaction for the Emperor," the evacuation by the French of the Spanish Netherlands, and the garri- soning of Ostend and Nieuport by the English, besides guarantees for equal privileges of commerce in all the Spanish dominions. In vain did Louis retort that he would observe the Treaty of Ryswick. The contest already resolved itself into one between two remote but pos- sible successors to the thrones of two great dynasties. ' Prior's " History of his Own Times," p. 182. 156 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES The Grand Alliance was in sight. On July 3rd William set out to confer with the States ; the French and English Ambassadors were recalled ; Eugene penetrated to Milan ; Sweden declared war with Russia. The stucco of concord had crumbled away. Europe was in flames. Before the death of the King of Spain, the Tories, vigilant over prerogative, had been forward in proposing " Articles for the limitation of the Crown." The Princess Sophia, Duchess Dowager of Hanover, was announced next in succession in the Protestant line after King William and Princess Anne. The ten clauses of this Act were closely followed in 1701 by the bill for securing the Protestant succession, which the young St. John was already thought worthy of introducing with Sir Charles Hedges in the Lower House ; and to which he afterwards referred with pride when Walpole pelted him with infamy.^ It should be borne in mind that the second, sixth, and seventh articles of the former became discarded ; and that thus the Whigs were led to sanction foreign favouritism, an absentee monarch, and a venal Parliament. In one thing, at any rate, the Tories were consistent and sincere. They demanded a constitutional as opposed to an arbitrary prerogative. Long afterwards Bolingbroke defined it as "a discre- tionary power in the King to act for the good of the people where the laws are silent . . . never contrary to law." 2 St. John's eloquence ^ and capacity found instant counte- nance. In the March of 1702 he was chosen by ballot to be a " commissioner for taking the public accounts," with a salary of ;^Soo a year and an allowance of ^^2000 for ' "A Final Answer to the Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication" (1731). Bolingbroke's Works (Collection of Pamphlets, 1748), vol. vi. pp. 364-365- 2 Works, vi. 261. "The Freeholder's Political Catechism," and cf. p. 248, against "raising prerogative " one step higher. ^ Cf. Swift's great tribute in his " Inquiry,'' Works, vol. vi. p. 8. It is curious that Swift adds that he himself never heard him speak in Parlia- ment, so rigorous was the exclusion of strangers from the sacred precincts. EARLY DAYS 157 "clerks and contingencies." His colleagues were Sir Godfrey Copley, Scobell, Bromley, and Bruges.^ He was thus early initiated into business, with which his future post of Secretary for War, necessitating the continual pre- sentation of estimates, still further familiarised him. The conflict between the Upper and Lower Houses, started by the impeachments, soon assumed an absurd malice. The Commons moved for an inquiry into Ranelagh's mal- versation of naval finance. The Lords traversed it. The contest raged more between Lords and Commons than between Whigs and Tories. It reached its climax in the famous " Kentish petition," which recommended the House to turn its " loyal addresses " into " bills of supply ; " and thus lent popular voice to the impatience of the mercantile interest at the supineness of the Tories and the torpor of the country. The recent importation of bullion from France gave a pretext for Whig insinuations of bribery. The obstinate distaste of the old Tories to the King was exposed as a bar to patriotism. But the Commons re- sented the interference as a party trick, resolved that the petition was "scandalous, insolent, and seditious," and eventually committed the deputation to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. St. John distinguished himself by cham- pioning the rights of the assembly in which he sat, and by so doing declared himself the enemy of irrelevant war and usurping innovation.^ We have already summarised the events which led to the Grand Alliance. It is well to remember its aims, which were afterwards curiously garbled. They are expressed in the second clause as the settlement of European peace and tranquillity, to which " nothing can more conduce than to procure satisfaction to the Emperor for his pretensions 1 Luttrell, V. 154. ' For this he incurred the odium of the Whigs. "No sooner," says a Whig pamphleteer, "was St. John qualified by his age, but he listed himself with them (the Harley-Foley-Winnington-Musgrave-Harcourt group), and one of the first votes he ever gave in Parliament was for violating the rights of the people in voting the imprisonment of the Kentish petitioners," &c. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 75. 158 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES on Spain, and security to England and Holland for their dominions and commerce." For Dutch trade a barrier in the Spanish Netherlands was to be conquered. Naples, Sicily, "the islands and places on the coast of Tuscany which may be advantageous to the navigation and trade of the English and Dutch," were to be subdued. It was only "for greater security" that the Spanish Indies might be attacked and possessed. The Allies further stipulated for sincere communication " unto each other " of " everything relative to their interest, and that none should make peace without the consent of the other, nor without a reasonable satisfaction to the Emperor and a security for the dominions and trade " of the two maritime Powers. In the autumn of 1701 William arrived in London, and was welcomed by the City with enthusiasm. Parliament had voted greater sup- plies than in any previous year. It was dissolved on the ground of the squabbles with the Lords. The new Parlia- ment again saw the Tories in their places. Both Lords and Commons were iinited in the common zeal. Godol- phin, it is true, was personally for peace, and even ten- dered his resignation to the King, as he did in 1709 to the Queen. Rochester proposed that England should only act as auxiliary to the Allies ; but Marlborough, whose darling ambition was to humble the French and dictate to Europe, overbore them both. The nation was aroused and shook itself free from languor. Four hundred thousand men were empowered to be raised. Six per cent, was offered for the loan of ^^650,000 for forces by sea and land. But some three months afterwards, in the midst of awakening effort, the mare " Sorrel " killed the Dutch hero. William died on March 8, 1702, and his last actions were to urge the Scotch Union, abhorred by the Tories, and to sign the Abjuration Act, which became a strong Whig weapon against them. So far we have watched St. John voting with his party and with his House, displaying his abilities but only nurs- ing his originaHty, following his leaders but not as yet " educating " his party. All this was to change by the con- EARLY DAYS 159 federacy of Marlborough and Godolphin with the Junto ; and to vanish with his future antagonism to Harley. It is time that we should briefly mention his marriage, which occurred in 1700. It seems to have been origi- nally one of convenience, though, as we shall see, there exists direct evidence that his home was much happier than the babble of chroniclers has supposed. Frances Winchescombe, the daughter of Sir Henry, a baronet who sat in King William's first Parliament for Berks,i was an heiress descending from the renowned Jack of Newbury, who had succoured Henry VIII. with his fortune at Flodden. Through her he became the proprietor of Bucklebury, near Reading, where he at first resided with his wife and sister-in-law,^ where in after days he played the squire, where he took Swift in 171 1 for a brief visit, whither he retired in 1708 and in 171 2 before and after his brilliant mission to France. It may be interesting to recall Swift's account. " Mr. Secretary was a perfect country gentleman at Buckleberry ; he smoked tobacco with one or two neighbours ; he inquired after the wheat in such a field ; he went to visit his hounds, and knew all their names : he and his lady saw me to my chamber just in the country fashion." ^ We shall find him ruralising in the same way some fifteen years later at Dawley. Buckle- bury decided his future membership for Berkshire. Through his wife he enjoyed an income of some ;^3ooo a year. This union has been represented as ill-assorted, but without real foundation. St. John, though hbertine, only differed from the majority of his class in being so openly. The gentlewomen of that day were schooled both by Church and society to be patient under marital infidelity, in the hopes of its reformation. The diaries of the time, with their chronique scandaleuse, never tattle about the St. Johns. In 1706 John Philips actually hymned their felicity in an ode of obsequious flattery, which he adroitly Latinised : — ■' Cf. Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 322. ^ Portland MS., vol. iv., passim. ^ Swift's Journal, August 4 and 5, 1711. i6o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " O say, to bless thy pious love, What vows, what offerings shall I bring ? Since I can spare, and thou approve No other gift, O hear me sing. The sober glass I now behold. Thy health with fair Francisca's join, Wishing her cheeks may long unfold Such beauties, and be ever thine. No change the tender joy remove, While she can please and thou canst love." It is true that the Wentworth Papers retail the gossip of St. John's attentions to Mrs. " Britton," and hint that Briga- dier-General Britton's promotion was its rumoured result. But even the prying Peter Wentworth calls it an evil world where such constructions are sustained ;i and we know that Swift was the Secretary's companion at dinners in this family on at least two occasions ; ^ nor does Jonathan ever refer to the scandal. Breton, as his real name was, became ambassador at Berlin, and in the May of 171 2 we find St. John addressing him in the most friendly terms as "Dear Will . . . may health of body, peace of mind, and every other sort of happiness be your perpetual lot."^ At any rate, there is no trace either of Mrs. St. John's resentment or of any incompatibility between the couple. Neither Steele nor Mrs. Manley, nor Prior, nor Lewis, nor Arbuth- not so much as guess at it. As late as the. summer of 1713 Bolingbroke writes to Prior that for three years past he has been soliciting preferment for his wife's uncle in vain.* And further, in the stray letters and notices that survive there is not a spark of adverse testimony. When Mrs. St. John quits town, which we have her own authority for saying never agreed with her,^ and leaves her husband toiling and carousing, she playfully entrusts him to the ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 203. " Swift, Journal, October 31 and November 17, 17 11. 3 Pol. Corr., vol. ii. pp. 331-333 ; cf. vol. iii. p. 491, where Breton is apos- trophised as "Dear Willy." * Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 204. ^ Lady Bolingbroke to Swift, August 4, 1716 ; Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 281. EARLY DAYS i6i care of Swift, on whom she had already bestowed an ivory snuff-box, promptly transferred to Stella. She was one of Swift's especial favourites, and her beauty was such that when Parnell dined with " Mr. Secretary," and she came down, he " stared at her as if she were a goddess." ^ On Swift's first encounter with her he healed a misunder- standing between her and Lady Stanley,^ and bantered St. John for detaining him so long from a love at first sight.^ It was her that Swift met in her chair on that memorable 8th of March when Guiscard stabbed Harley, and Swift's " heart was almost broken " — her to whom he " designed to have presented the fan had he won it in the raffle."* Her unselfishness was as striking as her charm.^ In her own two letters that succeed Boling- broke's escape, she is ready to fly out at any one who assails her " dear lord." We can see her frown and stamp her foot with petulant gesture.* It is only by vague sug- gestion that she wishes for death unless "he may be re- stored to his country with honour." ^ Bolingbroke's rash and piqued espousal of that forlorn hope in all likelihood accounts for the revocation of her will. Poor soul ! she was indeed in straits, sick both in mind and body, with Walpole and Townshend for arbiters, with Ormonde's duchess reduced to abject poverty.^ There is a phrase in a much earlier note where she describes herself ' Swift discerned a likeness to Parnell's dead wife. ^ Mary Granville's (Mrs. Delany's) aunt. The Stanleys lived at North End. ^ Journal, January 9, 1711. * Ibid., April 10, 1711. ^ Cf."\ never thought myself or my health of any consequence till lately." Lady Bolingbroke to Swift, August 4, 1716 ; Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 281. ^ " . . . If it is possible, I am more insipid and dull than ever, except in some places, and there I am a little fury, especially if they dare mention my dear lord without respect, which sometimes happens ; for good manners and relation- ship are laid aside in this town." Lady Bolingbroke to Swift, May 5, 1716 ; Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 274. She probably alludes to Bolingbroke's father. ' " I hope, one time or other, His Majesty will find my lord has been mis- represented ... or else, however harsh it may sound out of my mouth, I had rather wear black." Ibid. ^ Writing on September 14, 1716, the Duchess says: ". . . I am forced to live upon the borrow ; my goods all taken away, that I shall not so much as have a bed to lie upon but what I must buy, and no money of my own to do that with." Ibid., p. 287. L 1 62 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES as " a poor discarded mistress," but this is a laughing travesty of her footing with Oxford, which seems to have been most friendly, and doubtless towards the close exasperated her unforgiving husband. In the July of 171 1 we find her writing to enlist Harley in favour of a protdg^ — "a deed of charity," and her signifi- cant postscript is, " I beg the Secretary may know nothing of this letter." ^ The few glimpses we gain of her are all bright and winning. But Bolingbroke never returned to her after the spring of 1715, and in 1717 or 1718 she pined away and died. But neither did Ormonde ever rejoin his duchess, nor was he reproached for abandonment. It must never be forgotten that such virulent aspersions were fastened on Bolingbroke's name as to invent crimes and magnify lapses. On the other hand, it seems likely that his association with the Marquise de Villette, that second fascinatress, occurred towards the close of his first wife's days. Nor in his known correspondence do we find a mention of her. Bolingbroke was not a tender man. It is a blot on his character. She must have been much fonder of him than he of her, and there were doubt- less bickerings between them.^ But in fairness we ought to remember that his letters are equally silent as to his own family. A few fleeting recommendations of his brother George, to whom he is known to have been attached, are all that remain ; only a word of his brother John, who eventually inherited Sir Henry's peerage.^ He must have destroyed his private papers, which would have shed so much light on his home affairs, together with that projected " History " which unfortunately never saw the light. It may be that his ambition to revive an illustrious lineage never forgave Frances Winchescombe for being childless. ' Portland MS., vol. v. p. 43. In 171 3, when Harley was ill, she writes to his son that there is " nobody in this world who has a greater respect and veneration for him than I." Ibid., p. 310. ^ Cf. Swift's Letter to Barber of April 19, 1739, where he asks even of the second Lady Bolingbroke where they are now living and "how they agree." Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 281. ' He died in France, 1749. EARLY DAYS 163 But Clara de Marcilly was childless also, and we know that to her he was a devoted and considerate husband. His first wife upheld the Oxford set ; but so did Swift. What- ever estrangement there may have been, its true cause is a mystery. The friends who announce the second marriage are silent as to the first. And in any case, if differences there were (and Bolingbroke was " gae ill to live with "), they do not figure during the Queen's lifetime. But we possess direct evidence that at the outset of his career his domestic relations were cordial. St. John's correspondence with Thomas Coke of Leicestershire, pub- lished in the 12th Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,! concerns the years 1704-5, and has, so far as we are aware, never been noticed. At first it is evident that the two young men have been companions in their pleasures. " Dear Rake," writes St. John (then new Sec- retary for War), on May 17, 1705, "... if you do not call at Bucklebury when you leave the Bath, you and I shall quarrel. I go down thither on Friday, but return the Monday following, and in about ten days afterwards hope to be there some time. I have but little news to entertain you with. The town is very dull, or I am so." (Here follows a very indelicate passage.) "... Lord Marl- borough is got to Treves, and I have a letter from him of the 27th. . . . Dear Tom, divert thyself, continue to love me, and be persuaded no man on earth is more entirely yours than Harry." But on September 19 follow- ing the tone changes. His sister-in-law had meanwhile died of the small-pox, and St. John took the loss deeply to heart. " Dear Tom," he writes from Whitehall, " the hurry I was in during poor Betty's illness, and the con- fusion of my family since her death, will I hope excuse me to you, if I have not writ since we parted. 1 have nothing from hence to entertain you with. T grow every day less and less a man of pleasure, and my last misfortune, which affected my body less than any of the former, has made a deeper impression on my mind. ... I should be ' Appendix, pt. iii. 164 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES glad to knowwhat temper you find gentlemen^ in; whether they will think it reasonable to support the Queen, who has nothing to ask but what we are undone if we do not grant, and who, if she does make use of hands they do not hke, has been forced to it by the indiscretion of our friends. The real foundation of difference between the two parties is removed, and she seems to throw herself on the gentlemen of England, who had much better have her at the head of 'em than any ringleaders of fashion. Unless gentlemen can show that her administration puts the Church and the State in danger, they must own the contest to be about persons ; and if it be so, can any honest man hesitate which side to take ? I shall be settled in town in a fortnight. A month I suppose brings you up. You will be welcome to all your acquaintance, but to none so much as, dearest Tom, your ever faithful H. St. John." We have quoted thus much to show how consistent his earliest political views of England's interest are with his latest, for these utterances chime with all his published pronouncements. As regards our immediate point, how- ever, we have more to say. Among the coterie that cen- tred round the youthful St. John was one Stratford, a Fellow of Christchurch, Oxford ; " " the fat Levite," as St. John calls him. This don and clergyman was a tame cat at Bucklebury, and an excellent type of the easy-going, rank-worshipping dilettante, book-collecting, time-serving on-hanger of the day. In 1704 he had written to Coke, " Mr. St. John and his family are gone to Wiltshire." Now that one of that family was dead, he thus writes on September 11, 1705, from Bucklebury to the same mutual correspondent : " The friendship you have for this family will make you willing, I know, to take part in all that con- cerns them, even in their misfortunes. They had a very heavy one on Friday last in the death of poor Mrs. Winch- combe. . . . Mr. St. John was pleased to summon me here on Thursday morning. I had the honour to perform the last offices to her, as far as she was capable of receiving ^ i.e.. Members of the House. EARLY DAYS 165 them ; but she had very few and very short intervals of sense after I came there. I need not tell you that the great advantage the master of this place has by her death does not in the least allay his grief for it. She had made no will, by which means her fortune comes equally between the two sisters. ..." Seventeen days later, Mrs. St. John herself takes up the pen for the satisfaction of her husband's great friend. " Mr. St. John not being able to write himself, I am to return you his thanks for your kind concern for him. He has been ill of a fever, but now begins to mend pretty fast, and will I hope be able some time next week to go into the country in order to re- cover such a stock of health as may carry him through the winter. He supposes you very busy among your country friends and in your garden, and that you will hardly be in town till his return from Bucklebury, which will be about the 20th of October. I shall conclude by assuring you that I am your humble servant, Fr. St. John." There are other and favourable glimpses of the group in this collection. St. John writes in the most natural and unaffected strain ; he is evidently most popular with his associates, and we find also that Mrs. St. John had a "day at home" to receive visits, just as ladies have now. As regards his profligacy, to which we shall again advert, we close by quoting a remarkable and hitherto uncited passage of his middle age. " It is now six in the morning," he assures Swift in the spring of 173 1, after observing "what hurt does age do us, in subduing what we toil to subdue all our lives," — " It is now six in the morning ; I recall the time (and am glad it is over) when about this hour I used to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure or jaded with business ; my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune that I rise at this hour, refreshed, serene, and calm ? " ' But we must recur to events. One of the earliest acts of Anne was a proclamation against vice. It struck the keynote of her reign — formal decency. Of this the ' Swift's Works (Letters), vol. xvii. p. 374. 1 66 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Whigs availed themselves in a prosecution of the press,^ which burst out against the memory of William. "Tom Double Returned out of the Country, or the True Picture of a Modern Whig," and the like were trounced.^ The Tory millennium had not yet arrived. The Queen toured through the provinces and St. John was in her train, although so wild a spark could not enjoy her favour ; but he was a friend of Marlborough, and at this time that sufficed. He received a doctor's degree, however, from the University of Oxford — a rare distinction for so young a stranger. The result of the new elections was eminently pleasing to the sovereign. The Tory majority was twice the strength of the Whig remnant, who once more had to rely on the Upper House. One Whig and four Tory barons were created, and the first year of the reign was thus signalised in the same manner as the close of the penultimate.^ Everywhere the paramount hand of Marlborough was manifest. But Nottingham was Secretary of State, and if there was one Tory more obnoxious at this time to Marlborough's wife than an- other it was he. For Nottingham, self-seeking as he was, headed the Church interest, and became at once the butt and the bugbear of the Whig latitudinarians. He re- solved that Godolphin's Administration should start with a decisive blow against the Dissenters and freethinkers, who had been obstreperous enough under the aegis of William ; and the bill against occasional conformity was the consequence. St. John and Bromley were its in- troducers in the House of Commons.* Dissenters were no longer to be permitted, for the purposes of the voting corporations or of political preferment, to bow the knee once annually in the house of Rimmon, as the ^ In this regard, and as the Tories are often misrepresented as monopolising press persecution, we may recommend the student to consult " The False Steps of the Ministry," &c. (1714), where a press persecution is emphasised as the Whig policy. It is quoted in the Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 78. " Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 22. ^ The Tory Barons were Gower, Finch, Granville, and Seymour. The Whig Baron was Hervey- ' Coxe, " Life of Marlborough." EARLY DAYS 167 Harleys themselves begun by doing.^ The modifications of an " indulgence " in the requisites of attendance at the parish service once a month and at Communion thrice a year were rejected, with the result that the peers temporal and spiritual threw out the bill by a large majority, although the Lutheran Prince George himself voted in its favour. St. John and the new Attorney- General, Harcourt (his " dear Sim "), were among the " tellers " for the Commons in their conference with the Lords on this occasion.^ As we shall see, this enactment was twice in vain revived, and only passed eventually in January 1712 through Nottingham's manoeuvres with Wharton. The real significance of these bills has been constantly misread. Nothing appears more unjust or illiberal to our own generation than the exclusion of a large body of Englishmen for their religious opinions. In most his- tories the Whigs who opposed these bills, but who at last united with Nottingham by a party trick to pass what they had anathematised, are magnified as glorious de- fenders of liberty and tolerance. In reality, tolerance, as we now understand it, was never at stake. All the inhuman and proscriptive measures against the Papists had emanated from the Whig party — measures which deprived them not only of political privilege, but also of property and testamentary rights, and whose very severity defeated their effective enforcement.^ Defoe's " Legion " pamphlet * had even demanded a persecution of the Socinians, whom Harley too abominated. Writing ^ Cf. the virulent Whig pamphlet, " The False Steps of the Ministry " (1714), Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 75. "... Is not his brother Edward a leading mem- ber ? Does he not attend all ordinances, and as constantly every week-day fre- quent the services of the Church (for his is a Church party) in St. Stephen's Chapel as he does the conventicle every Lord's day ? " ^ 19th January 1702. See Luttrell, v. 258. ^ If any one doubts the Whig spirit of vindictiveness in these enactments, let him read Bishop Burnet's own remarks on the Irish Papists' Bill of 1703 in his History, p. 739. * There was a second " Legion Memorial" by " T. G.," published in 1702 ; cf. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 114. It was entitled " Legion's New Paper." 1 68 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES in 1699 to his father he observed : " . . . The Socinian cause as well as the Deisme, which hath made so much twinkling and showed so many ignes fatui, cannot appear now the light shines out."i In the next reign Walpole voted against the repeal of the Schism Act, wishing to conciliate the High Church by the time he could return to power; while Addison himself vehemently supported Lord Guernsey's clause, which made an acknowledgment of the Divine inspiration of the Bible and of the doctrine of the Trinity a test indispensable to the oath of abjura- tion. Chesterfield upheld the first measure, though he voted with most of his party against the second. Neither side, therefore, interpreted tolerance as applicable to par- ticipation in government ; and the Tories were infinitely the more tolerant of the two factions, inasmuch as they only withheld political privilege. " On this head you may assure yourself and others," wrote St. John during Harley's premiership^ to Drummond, "that the principle of the present Ministry is neither to oppress the Dis- senters under pretence of securing the Establishment, nor to suffer them, under the specious colour of moderation, to gain spirit and strength enough to provoke and insult the Church," We have already witnessed the Queen writing in a similar strain. Persecution, we repeat, was not the motive of these bills, nor were the Dissenters ^ Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., 14th Rep. App. pt. ii. p. 606. "^ We may take this opportunity of exploding the fallacy, often repeated, that " Prime Minister " is a modern phrase, dating at earliest from the time of George III. It is to be found, among other places, in Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staff," and in Bolingbroke's dedication to Walpole of his " Dissertation on Parties," and in the pamphlet "Eleven Opinions about Mr. H — y" (1711), p. 14: " ... And as some men are pleased to call him, is the Prime Minister of State, though indeed by the constitution of our affairs the Administration admits of no such title." And cf. for " Premier Minister " Swift's " Discovery " and his "Epistle to Gay :"— "Thus families, like realms, &c., Are sunk by Premier Ministers of State." Also his " Atlas : ''— " A Premier Minister of State, Alcides, one of second rate." And cf. post, p. 243, note 4. EARLY DAYS 169 a down-trodden body. A large number were already associated with the Whigs, and paramount among the moneyed interest. In the November of 1703, for in- stance, the Quakers had actually, in modern parlance, " made a corner " in coals, and were summoned before the bar of the House of Lords.^ They made common cause with freethinking republicans or fantastic fanatics, like Toland, Tindal, Asgill, Monmouth, and Collins, when they were not caballing for the Pretender.^ In 1704 the " Grand Essay concerning the Soul " had been censured.^ There was a license rather than a liberty of religious opinion. Sects multiplied like mushrooms. There were French Shakers. If the High divines, like Dodwell and Leslie the loquacious,* taught that the immortality of the soul depended on the Episcopal clergy, and that Dissenters would only live hereafter to be damned, Asgill believed in bodily translation, and Toland com- bined virulent scepticism with political and mercenary shamelessness. Not long afterwards the Whigs, prompted by Collins and represented by Cowper (whom Swift, in his zeal for the Church, ironically designates " a most pious lawgiver"), attempted, but in vain, under the veil of a bill for "the encouragement of learning," to wrest education from the grasp of the clergy and to relieve the Fellows of colleges from the obligation of holy orders.^ Long after the acrimony of those times, in the days of WoUaston — as late as 1731 — Swift could sing " Some try to learn polite behaviour By reading books against their Saviour." ^ " The reason," asserts Swift,' " why the Whigs have taken 1 Luttrell, vi. 359. ^ The association of freethinking with the moneyed interest is well evidenced by the fact that Collins married a daughter of Sir Francis Child. 5 Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 354. " For Leslie's talkativeness cf. Swift's Works (Letters), vol. xviii. p. 413. 5 Examiner, No. 19. " Strephon and Chloe." Poetical Works, vol. ii. p. 13. ' Preface to Bishop of Sarum's Introduction. lyo BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the atheists or freethinkers into their body is because they wholly agree in their political scheme and differ very little in Church power or discipline.'' And again/ " The Revolu- tion was wholly brought about by Church of England hands, so they hoped it would retrieve them from the encroachments of Dissenters and Papists. . . . But the Dissenters just made a shift to save a tide when they found all was desperate with their protector, King James, and, observing a party then forming against the old principles in Church and State under the name of Whigs, they Hsted themselves under it . . . for no party would favour Theoc- racy." Lest Swift's authority should be doubted on this head, we may quote the confirmation of " a foreign Minister " in a " letter " to Pettecum, the sworn enemy to the Tories; it is dated 1710, and asserts that "... The Whigs do also fortify themselves by the fourth party, viz., the Republicans or Commonwealth men. This party is a spawn of the Oliverians or Cromwellists, and consists of a few Presbyterians and all the Independents, who would make no manner of figure by themselves, but that they would join themselves to the true Whigs." ^ We need not, as we could, multiply authorities to show that the rancour both of Dissenters and freethinkers was fully as violent as that of Churchmen and Nonjurors, though all latitudinarians of whatever denomination were confused with them in the popular imagination. It formed a ground for the remonstrance of Convocation in 171 1. Indeed, as Archbishop Tillotson, nonjuring Sancroft's successor, remarked, the public estimatioii re- garded "all considerate, inquisitive men that are above fancy and enthusiasm " as " either Socinians or atheists." It was under his primacy that the ballad was current : — ^ Examiner, No. 36. Cf. Burnet, p. 708 : "After the death of King William III. the clergy began to hope that all preferment would be monopolised by those who had made a stir about the Convocation being adjourned wholly by the Arch- bishop." ^ Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 272. EARLY DAYS 171 " For holy cause, sir, You may break laws, sir. Nor treason then nor perjury will signify two straws, sir : So sad our fate is, Worser far than Papists, For Socinus rules the Church, and is ruled by an Atheist. The nation's damnation Was this last reformation, For you must either take the swear, or starve, or lose your station.'' Burnet, himself a bishop, who may be said to have led the Dissenters, reviled the Tory clergy as "a parcel of blind, ignorant, dumb, sleeping, greedy dogs," — forgetful of the Seven Bishops — forgetful of Hough, Bishop of Lich- field, who had so heroically braved the arbitrary preten- sions of James. As late as 171 1 we find "one Fleming, a famous Scots Presbyterian minister, who has a considerable meeting-house behind the Royal Exchange at London," touring Holland, and politically " praying that God would divert Her Majesty's mind from, and remove from her person, that sad society of Highfliers who seek for the ruin and blood of the people of God."^ Unctuous agitation abounded. The psalms were ransacked to support the Junto. If the Whigs, with the Dissenters at their back, denounced and proscribed the Papists, the Tories, with the Church to gratify, were convinced that — once more to repeat Swift — " - . . The Presbyterians and their clans of other fanatics or freethinkers and atheists that dangle after them are as well inclined to pull down the present establishment of monarchy and religion as any set of Papists in Christendom." Swift, an old Whig in State, but a self-styled High Tory in Church, never relaxed his antipathy to the "insolence of the Dissenters." ^ They were held " Protestant enemies, much more able to ruin us, and full as willing." To this — which, with all allowance for party acrimony, is a true statement of the conditions^ — the extreme upholders 1 Portland MS., vol. v. p. 48. 2 Swift's Letter to Barber, December 8, 1736. ^ We may note, for example, that the notorious Wharton protested in the " Church in Danger " debate, that ' ' though born and bred a Dissenter,'' yet he "soon conformed to the Church" when he "grew up," and was now "firmly 172 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of divine and hereditary right on their side contributed. The "Tantivies," Hke Leshe with his "good old cause," were exploited by the Tories for election purposes, just as the latitudinarians were by the New Whigs. In the trench- ant words of Bolingbroke,! they " . . . reduced themselves, and would have reduced their country, to the absurd necessity of altering the constitution, under pretence of preserving it. No king except a Stuart was to reign over us ; but we might establish a doge, a lord archon, a regent. And thus these warm asserters of monarchy, refusing to be slaves, contended to be Republicans." The dread, then, of constitutional upheaval and the resolve to reward the Church were the larger motives for these measures. Nor should it be forgotten, as Boling- broke so late as 1717 pointed out to Windham,^ that the same argument of the Government being in harmony with the Establishment applied, however erroneously, "to keep a Presbyterian from being mayor of a corpora- tion" as "to keep a Papist from being its king." This was a principle pressed by Whigs and Tories alike. Its use shifted according to tenure, not tenets. But the prevailing intention was, without question, political expediency. Here, again, the true point seems to have escaped recognition. These bills were, in fact, a sort of party registration. The Corporations, which in so many districts almost monopolised the decision of elections, had been largely swelled by conforming Dissenters. To preclude Nonconformists from member- ship in these Corporations was to consolidate the Tory party. The existence of the test could not deter weak resolved, by God's blessing," &c. Cf. Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 495. Sir John Barnard too, as we have noticed, had been born and bred a Quaker. He was baptized by Compton at the age of nineteen. In the Somers Tracts are many refuting the charge of the Republicanism and anti-Church proclivities of the politician-Dissenters ; but they deal in vague generalities, and do not make out their case. ^ " Dissertation on Parties," Letter viii. ^ Letter to Sir W. Windham, Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ix. p. 302 ; see also Lord Lansdowne's speech on the " Schism Act," quoted in Bell's Poets ; and cf. our remarks on the Dissenters, post, ch, vi. , and on the Schism Act, post, ch. xii. EARLY DAYS 173 consciences from nominal observance, but it was just this class of conscience that might easily find a dishonest haven in the orthodoxy of the Church and Toryism. Moreover, there had been arbitrary attempts by the Whigs to remodel the Corporations, and, in the case of Bewdley, to impose a charter on a borough — a complaint which furnished a ground of representation to the Queen in June lyii.^ The Whig phalanx in the House of Lords and the Whig minority in the House of Commons of themselves attest the power of these Corporations, which often had not so much as seen their nominees,^ to control elections, and the preponderance of Commoner interest. At Blandford, for example, where there was no Corporation, the town was entirely governed by Seymour, Portman, and Colonel Strangeways.^ At Dorchester the Whig member was a bookseller, but the Tory was the nominee of Strangeways again.* At Bath the people in 1705 conflicted with the dictation of the magistrate. Everywhere county sheriffs, and even tax-gatherers, influenced the polls. This was one of the reasons afterwards for the national aversion to Walpole's Excise scheme. In 1701 the Tories brought for- ward resolutions against peers or lords-lieutenant intermed- dling with elections ; ^ and before this the Tories had carried a bill for preventing excise officers from being members of Parliament. Peterborough's interference at Malmesbury and Somerset's at Lewes have already been commemorated.^ r_St. John seems at this epoch to have been at the best a Gallio in theology ; as he was afterwards certainly a theist and a formulator of a theory of natural religion,' which was not, however, far removed from the Broad Church 1 Boyer, p. 499. 2 Cf. Bolingbroke's " Political Catechism.'' Works, vol. vi. p. 277. ' Strangeways (or Strangways) is classed with the Harley group, who in 1689 refused the Voluntary Association. Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 74. * Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 270. « Luttrell, vol. v. pp. 17, 18, 45. « Pp. 28, 136. ' We shall hereafter investigate how far this theism supports the vulgar re- proach of atheism. SufSce it now to call attention to a remarkable passage in a letter to Swift, of September 12, 1724, where Bolingbroke indignantly repudiates the appellation of " esprit fort." "Such," he says, "are the pests of society, 174 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES anti-Pauline Christianity of the Georges.^ He was free in thought as in life; but not with the flippancy of Peter- borough, who was " civil to all religions." In common with his fellow-statesmen, he took the early sacrament at St. James's, as Swift described, simply out of compliment to the State. It seems a shocking profanation, but it was not then so considered. Swift, an extreme Churchman, insisted that the Church was dependent on the StateTl Among the Whig leaders who had "parsons to roast ""there was equal compliance and worse cynicism. They flouted the clergy ^ and attended their services. " LillibuUero " Wharton,^ the most brilliant of their peers, was perhaps the most profli- gate and profane of his generation ; and the sins of the father were matched by the superstition of the son. Somers, the calm and "balancing," claims more than a passing mention. Bolingbroke forty years afterwards observes that there was "never a wiser or a better man."* He was grateful for his clemency in 1715 and his vain attempts to moderate the insensate and indiscriminating vengeance of his party. Addison in a familiar eulogy has singled out his "good sense and politeness." Swift, in an appreciation equally familiar, has tempered admiration of his head by criticism of his heart. He animadverts on his violent passions disguised, but not always concealed. Somers never forgave Swift for his desertion. Swift, in a less familiar passage, says that his "timorous nature, joined with the trade of a common lawyer and the consciousness of a mean ex- traction, had taught him the regularity of an alderman or gentleman-usher." ^ The " New Atalantis," « like the Tatler, because they endeavour to loosen the bands of it. . . I therefore not only dis- own, but I detest this character ; " and he quotes as his rule, " Omnia probate, quod bonum est tenete." Works, vol. xvi. pp. 476-477. ^ See Mr. Harrop's very sensible remarks on this head in his " Bolingbroke." ^ Cf. Swift, "The Sentiments of a Church of England Man," and "Remarks on a Book ; " the Examiner, passim, and especially Works, vol. viii. pp. 358-372. ' " One Adario . . . great . . . little ; something so very high yet so very low in his character." Ibid., vol. i. p. 115. He was Addison's first patron. * Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 214, note. ^ Swift to Bolingbroke, December 19, 1719. Works, vol. xvi. p. 360. ° Vol. ii. p. 31. ff ar/iers . ^Jivm aji arwMM oti-mMui/ure m -Ou:, pam^Mum. orJyn£-..yuiMi» EARLY DAYS 175 dubs him " Cicero," but extravagantly exaggerates his faults and disingenuously dissembles his virtues. "By birth," Mrs. Manley avers, he was " a plebeian ... he learnt to have principles in no estimation, and even to despise those who had any ; to study the corruption of the Roman law. . . . In the face of day he grew angry, lustful, proud, and in- exorable." But the " New Atalantis " was composed to flatter Harley, to whom it was sent in lyioji while Swift was warped by friendship curdled into enmity. Somers in truth was a great intellect but a mixed character. He was just and public-spirited, but his calmer qualities were allied to marked violence and his patriotism to changeful expediency. He was without fear, but even in private life not always without reproach. His standard was far higher than his day commended, but his astuteness often humoured that day. Cowper was decent, but the reverse of religious. The taunt of " Bigamy Will " always adhered to him. Nobody can twit either them or Halifax with piety, though the former were benevolent, and the last was good-natured. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with her aversion to the Church and to everything that trans- cended her own faculties, is no bad example of their spirit at its loftiest. It was one of conventional common-sense. At its lowest it was sheer materialism. Many professing Churchmen were Presbyterians, and many Presbyterians were concealed Socinians or open freethinkers. And if there were occasional Conformists, there were occasional Noncon- formists also. Ht is easy to taunt Bolingbroke on the score of private practice at variance with public profession ; but throughout his maturer works he is a strong stickler for a State rehgion as the only possible means of securing national morality.^ We do not think him unprincipled 1 Portland MS., p. S4i- ^ .Cf. his " Philosophical Works," passim, and " Remarks on the History of England," Letter xviii., quoted infra in chap, vi., and more especially the pas- sage already referred to in "A Letter to Sir William Windham," where he asserts the principle that "no man ought to be trusted with any share of power under a Government who must, to act consistently with himself, endeavour the destruction of that very Government." Works, vol. ix. p. 302. 176 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES in his advocacy of these enactments. A State Church, he would have urged, is better than a Church-State, and even a Church-State than no Church at all. Long afterwards, when Walpole had disappointed the Noncon- formists, Bolingbroke, with riper views, pointed out that the true gist of the measures against Dissent was political, and from the disappearance of any but Court and Country parties he argued as follows : " Experience hath removed prejudice. They see that indulgence hath done what severity never could ; and from the frankness of these, if I was a Dissenter, I should sooner entertain hopes of future favour than from the double-dealing of those who lean on the Dissenters when they are out of power, and who esteem them a load upon them when they are in it." ^ Long afterwards his true opinion with the singular con- sistency embodied in his philosophical works : " To make a Government effectual to all the good purposes of it there must be a religion ; this religion must be national, and this national religion must be maintained in reputation and reverence, and all other religions or sects must be kept too low to become the rivals of it. J In the following year his party returned to their charge. The bill was introduced with mitigations, and it passed the Commons by a thumping majority. But in the Lords, although Prince George abstained from voting, and his wife herself attended the debates, it was lost by a majority of twenty — a number insignificant in itself, but enhanced by the protest of the Tory peers, headed by Marlborough. It should be noticed that Peterborough, who had hitherto been reputed a Whig, yet was to become the caressed general of the Tories, voted for the bill on this occasion.^ In November 1704 it was again pressed forward in a moderated form, and unscrupulously " tacked " to a money bill, a device resorted to by them in the previous reign ; but by this time Marlborough's change of front 1 " Dissertation on Parties," Letter i. ' Works, vol. iv. p. 330. ' Swift's Works, vol. xv. p. 251. Letter to Tisdale. EARLY DAYS 177 was in process, and it was defeated by one hundred and sixteen. It is noticeable that on this occasion St. John and his cHque seem to have voted against the "tack," which gave its name to this ParHament. " There's Hammond and Harcourt and Howe, And St. John and Mansel and Moore, Have now forsaken their friends, The 130 and 4." 1 But as a staunch supporter of the measure and its original pioneer, he did not escape the satire of pamphleteers. The " State Poems," in a mock " Catalogue of books to be sold by auction," include " Patience under Sufferings, in five volumes octavo, by H. St. J., Esqre., occasioned by his losing ;£'5oo on the Lords damning the Occasional Bill," and " Puss in the Corner, or the Old Game Revived, written by Heraclitus Ridens, and dedicated to Harry St. J. . . . Esqre." Another measure in which the young St. John distin- guished himself was that for extending the time for the oath of abjuration.2 Prince George's allowance had at last been settled, and both factions veiled their manoeuvres under forms of loyalty to the throne and servility to its heirs presumptive. Every fresh clause proposed covertly insinuated the opposite party's delinquencies, and on this occasion the Lords suggested amendments making it high treason to defeat the succession or set aside the next suc- cessor. The Garter was presented to the Elector. The following year (1703) saw the miscarriage of Eraser's plot for the Pretender and the abortive treason of Lindsay 1 State Poems, iv. 109 ; and cf. Pari. Hist., vol. i. p. 366. ^ Walpole, in 1731, made this the false pretext for virulent calumny. He asserted that in the year 1702 Bolingbroke was "one of the virtuous 117 who gave their votes for throwing out the bill for settling the Protestant succession." But this bill was, as we have noticed, the very one which, in 1701, St. John seconded Hedges in introducing. It passed without division, and the division alleged refers only to a clause added by the Lords in 1702 to the Abjuration Bill. The clause regarded only "such persons as had neglected to take the abjuration oath in time," and provided that if such persons had forfeited any office or benefice to which any other persons had been preferred, the former should not be restored by taking the advantage of this Act. Cf. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. vi. p. 365. M 178 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES and Maclean. Godolphin was still looked to by St. Ger- main. The Queen herself was alleged to be " in danger," ^ and with the Queen the Church. In 1704 Rochester, who had sulked since his resignation of Ireland in favour of Ormonde, openly proposed an invitation to the Princess Sophia. This, though known to be offensive to Anne, was a trap to catch the Whigs, who, if they acquiesced, would share the Queen's disfavour, and if they opposed would fall out with the Electress. Nor had the Tories lost sight of their future rulers, whose favour their opponents so sedu- lously propitiated. In 1702 Stamford had visited Zell, and presented prayer-books to the Electress, with her name inserted in the prayer for the royal family as "Princess Sophia."^ The House of Hanover, at first indifferent to their English reversion,^ and not yet called upon to subsi- dise Whig peers, were growing more alive to English affairs; and their interest is reflected in the motions brought forward. In 1704-5, when Marlborough's triumph was supposed to have dealt a blow to the Tories ; when, in the words of one of Bolingbroke's friends, the Whigs seemed as if they were Jacobites, "Their looks, their blood, and their goodwill to the Government are the same,"^ Haversham, supported by the Tory Junto of Buckingham and Anglesea, proposed to invite the "next successor," which the Whig Lords capped in 1705 by the Regency Bill. That same bill the Tories, under Rochester, again ^ endeavoured to limit by clauses preventing any future repeal of the Triennial Act and the Act of Uniformity, but these wholesome provisions were rejected. The Elec- tress thought fit to address the Archbishop of Canterbury, and incurred the reasonable wrath of the Queen. Move and countermove made St. Stephen's resemble a chessboard, 1 Burnet, pp. 747-749. ° Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 57. ' Bothmar to Ilten, April 15, 1701, Bodemann, p. 198. Their succession had, in the Bill of Rights, been championed by Burnet, but opposed by Wildman and the Republicans. * Coke Papers, p. 41, Albert Street to T. Coke. Hist. MS. Comm., 12th Rep. App. pt. iii. " Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 473. EARLY DAYS 179 in which Church and loyalty were played off against Papists and the Pretender, and " checkmate " was perpetually being shouted by both antagonists at once. Another struggle, in which St. John bore a part, was the cause celebre of Ashby against White, which, under the instance of an Aylesbury election, put the power of the House of Commons into conflict with the Courts of Justice in January 1704. It was the fight that lasted throughout the reign between the monopolies of caste and the civil power. St. John's cham- pionship on this occasion was characteristic. "... I shall be as tender," he is reported to have urged, " as any man alive of doing anything against the liberty of the people, but I am for this, because I take it to be the greatest security for their liberty. ... I cannot think that the liberties of the people of England are safer in any hands below, or that the influence of the Crown will be stronger here than in the other courts." ^ He was also pioneering " the bill for natu- ralising Mr. Cadogan," but had to beg Thomas Coke to take his place for a time owing to old Lady St. John's death.2 About this period St. John writes to Coke, "... It is most certain that our patriots design some gallant thing to open the session with, and that is what, out of kindness to them, every patriot should oppose." He also refers to the capture of Gibraltar. " Sir G. Rooke has done an action which all the world ought to admire, and which the generality blame," His critical discernment further noticed that "... The Jews are publicly buying horses in Germany for the King of France, who, without this recruit, would not remount his cavalry, and no notice is taken of it." * In all these various ramifications St. John concerted with his party. He was still a child of fortune, favoured both by Marlborough and Harley, and his path to promo- tion was clear from the clouds which the fringe of his party descried in Blenheim. He was appointed to the important post of Secretary of War, in the place of Blathwayt — an appointment kept secret by him some time, even from his 1 Pari. Hist, vol. vi. p. 312. ° Coke Papers, p. 56. ^ Ibid. , pp. 49 and following. i8o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES friends, p,nd very popular with the army, while Harley became Secretary of State. One Captain Pope, writing to Thomas Coke, at St. James' Place, from Bois le Due, on April 9, 1705, observes : " I hear Mr. St. John is to succeed B — t (Blaythwayt), which I am doubly rejoiced at ; that we shall have a man of so good sense and manners to apply ourselves to when we require it, and secondly, that we shall get rid of a drag which always did us harm when- ever it was in his power." ^ Smith replaced him as Speaker. Nottingham, who had pressed for the dismission of Somer- set, himself, to his surprise, received his congi. Jersey sur- rendered the Lord Chamberlain's staff to the Earl of Kent, and Wright the seals to the Earl of Cowper. Mansel became Controller in the room of Seymour. Kent was a " Moderate Whig," and Seymour had been one of those Tories who, like Musgrave, had helped Marlborough to become Duke in the December of 1702, but he was a "tantivy" for the Church. The High Ecclesiastical clique was broken up, and the second act, as it were, begins. The real meaning of these removes was the declaration of the Marlboroughs against the Church, in revenge for the tardiness of the Tories in adulating theif genius, and their resolve to force the House of Commons into sub- jection as complete as that of the House of Lords. This change of front carried with the triumphant general the Whigs, the Dissenters, the disaffected, and the freethinkers. The great Duke had patiently secured his emancipation from Dutch tutelage, feigned the Moselle campaign, and burst away with the Margrave of Baden towards the Danube. Eugene had at length been won to his ideas. A coup of Schellenberg secured the gratitude of the Emperor and an Austrian princedom. In vain did the Margrave's jealousy divert him from Munich. He was despatched to Ingolstadt, and peace was made with the Elector, who fell back with his reinforcements. Marl- borough played the waiting game, deferred his concentra- tion with Eugene till the last, and the battle itself by the ' Coke Papers, pp. 33-57. EARLY DAYS i8i false news conveyed through prisoners to Tallard. He scorned cumbrous precedents, and adapted his manoeuvres to the ground. The fifty grenadiers who led the onslaught were cut to pieces, but the Hessian bravery vied with the English. Eugene's magnificent generalship redeemed the poverty of his material, and Marlborough's master-mind directed the whole to a purpose. Over forty thousand were lost to the enemy, and only eleven hundred to the con- federates, although each army numbered about fifty thou- sand apiece. In despair the Navarre regiment destroyed their colours. All Bavaria was reduced to the Emperor's obedience. Ulm, Landau, Treves, and Traerbach were captured. The French gains were restored, and at last Louis was humbled, and had to confess that the vanquish- ing army were not the raw levies of the preceding wars, but had been " disciplined by defeats." ^ So ended that memorable Wednesday, August 19, the precursor of even more memorable events, hymned by expectant bards of either faction, although Prior sang that "Silence is the soul of war," His succeeding line of "Virtue is its own reward " is far more applicable to the chattering choir of venal flatterers.^ But the great Duchess gained her Blenheim also. She, too, had gradually emancipated herself from Tory tutelage, feigned a smiling complaisance, and burst away with ^ This expression of Marlborough's is quoted by Bolingbroke in his " Sketch of the History and State of Europe," Letter 8, Works, vol. viii. p. 298. The foregoing account of Blenheim is chiefly derived from Coxe. ^ Every one remembers Addison's ode, with its picked passages of the Angel in the storm and the " mounting spirits " of Eugene and Marlborough. Prior's contribution was professedly bantering, and it contained a couplet purposely as bad as any of the " Think of three thousand gentlemen " order — " In one great day, on Hochstedt's fatal plain, French and Bavarians, twenty thousand slain. But it also contained two noble lines — " To prop fair Liberty's declining cause, And fix the jarring world with equal laws.'' On the poets of the time cf. Swift's remarkable tract, " A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet," reprinted in the Somers Tracts, vol. iv. p. I. He calls them "Poetasters," "Poetitos," "Parcel Poets," "Poet Apes," and " Philo-poets," and he recommends a " Corporation of Poets " to the City. 1 82 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Godolphin towards the Whigs. Somers and Cowper had at length been won to her ideas. The coup of promoting Prince George's captaincy of the forces and securing his allowance had increased the royal showers of gold and gratitude. In vain had Nottingham striven to rally the Church or Haversham to enlist the Electress. In vain had Rochester essayed to divert her course. He had been driven to Ireland, as Nottingham was now driven from the Council. Buckingham, their satellite, was deprived of the Privy Seal. The House of Hanover was assured of her power and support, and was content to watch in the back- ground. She, too, had played the waiting game, was deferring her concentration with the Junto till the last, and the fight itself, by false rumours of Harley's treach- eries, until Sunderland could be foisted into the Ministry, and her second daughter's discontents appeased. She too had scorned cumbrous precedents and adapted her manoeuvres. Behind the mangled remains of Anti-Occa- sional Conformity Bills the Junto lurked in ambuscade. Harley was rising, but Harley was still a trimmer. The seeds of disunion lurked in coalition. As the rhyme rang — " When Seymour, Harcourt, and Jack Howe Agree the nation to undo, Who each would hang the other two ; When parties carry matters faii-ly. And trimming is left off by Harley."^ Ah"eady a reinforcement of Junto emissaries were strength- ening her hands. Cowper held the scales. " The Church in danger" debates of 1706 proved the hostility of the Whigs to the Church, by their very vote that it was in "no danger." Wharton could hardly be suspected of supporting either creed or religion. "In those we love not we no danger see." ^ A new party was to be formed — the Marlborough party. The die was cast, and the Queen must be hectored to obey. ^ State Poems, vol. iv. p. 59. ^ Swift, " On the Church's Danger." Poems, vol. iii. p. 77. EARLY DAYS 183 Lest we should be taxed with fanciful [exaggeration let us hear the Duchess herself. " .... It was imagined, mstead of beating the French we had beat the Church. His first successes in the war had been complimented by this very House of Commons as 'The retriever of the glory of the British nation,' being then reputed a High Church- man. But now that he was thought to look towards the moderate party, his complete victory at Blenheim was in the address of congratulation to the Queen ridiculously paired with Sir George Rooke's drawn battle with the French at sea. The last great wound given to the Church this year was by the Queen's taking the Privy Seal from the Duke of Buckingham, And the next year I prevailed with her Majesty to take the Great Seal from Sir Nathan Wright, a man despised by all parties, of no use to the Crown, and whose weak and wretched condition the Court of Chancery had almost brought his very office into con- tempt. His removal, however, was a great loss to the Church, for which he had ever been a warm stickler. And this loss was the more sensibly felt as his successor, my Lord Cowper, was not only of the Whig party, but of such abilities and integrity as brought a new credit to the nation."! The "Memorial of the Church of England" appeared. Now that the Anti-Occasional Conformity Acts were squashed, it recommended the device of inviting the Electress as a means of precluding the Whigs (with whom Godolphin began now to be identified) from bringing in Popery and the Pretender. Halifax's motion, in 1705, for inquiries into the Tory resolutions that "The Church was in danger" ended in a large concurrence of both Houses to the contrary. But the Queen was sensible of a double annoyance. On the one hand she realised that the Tory proposal for inviting the Hanoverians was dictated by the discontents of the Church she idolised ; on the other, that a new party of despotism was arising and that her own famihar friend was manacling her in its bondage. In the 1 " Conduct of the Duchess," pp. 147-149. 1 84 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES words of Prior, " Slavery was to pursue her into her bed- chamber." ^ Towards the spring of 1705 the new elections found the Church in a minority, but St. John's set in their ac- customed places. St. John was still attached to Harley, and indeed seems to have been so until 1710. Even after- wards, while the breach between them was widening, he repeatedly, as Bolingbroke, defended him in the House of Lords. And here we may note one other instance of historical prejudice. Pulteney was equally attached to Walpole. In 1716-18 they and Stanhope were styled the "Triple Alliance." Only two years afterwards Pul- teney and Walpole became and remained sworn enemies. Yet Pulteney is never blamed, while Bolingbroke is held up to obloquy. Not without cause have the French styled history La Fable Convenue. The Portland Manuscripts exhibit several of his letters to his chief. As early as 1703 he characteristically wi^ites of a debate ". . . . no more than one of Sir Chuffer's speeches. There never yet was more gravity and less thought, more noise and less mirth." He mentions his interest in the publication of Clarendon's History, and concludes, "Your faithful unalterable friend." In May 1705 "Harry" again writes to "his master." He has received a letter from Marlborough, who hopes " the Solicitor-General will appear for him ; that is the expres- sion at Woodstock. I did not fail to show it to Harcourt." This of course refers to the grants for Blenheim. ' On May 15th we get another glimpse. He acknowledges "the letter my good-natured Robin writ me." " Part of it translated into English," he takes to signify that the Queen thinks well of his " services." " All the fools and knaves in England are secretly in opposition " to the Tory elections. " From this time to winter I have as little to do as a teller." He restively suggests that he, as Swift once suggested to Temple, might be sent on a mission to Vienna. " Adieu, dear Master. No man loves you more entirely than Harry." In August he defends himself against some rebuke for ' "History of his Own Time," p. 316. EARLY DAYS 185 " irregularity," of which he " would not be guilty even in the most trivial matters of form," and in October he writes from Bucklebury enclosing an " Observator " received from the Duke of Marlborough with directions to show it to Harley. He believes Tutchin will be " soundly drubbed " for his insolence in print, and wishes he " could get author and printer both well beaten, for he cannot and will not bear any longer this barbarous usage from this rogue nor from his patron " (Lord Haversham). This letter is im- portant. It establishes the close relations between St. John, Harley, and Marlborough, and it shows that Haversham and his following were dissatisfied. Neither St. John nor Harley yet discerned what havoc was being manufactured by the Duchess, and it is only two years afterwards that Harley began deliberately counteracting her through Abigail. St. John, as Secretary of War, was thrown into close communication with the conquering hero. We find due record of "Mr. St. John" presenting "an account of the charges of the office of Ordnance. "^ Nor does he seem to have neglected the classics, if we may judge from a letter^ of July 1705, addressed to some nameless clergy- man, who appears to have been one of the twitterers over Blenheim. We subjoin it, because we have seen it stated that Bolingbroke was superficial in Latin and ignorant of Greek — like Shakespeare before him. " Reve^pend Sir, — ' Atj/xoSok' €^oxa Stj ere Bporav aii/ifi/i' ^ airdvTav 'H ere ye Moi/cr' e'SiSafe Aioy Hals, fj ore y'KiroWaiv. " The compliment Ulysses made Demodochus you will give me leave to begin my letter with. He sang the Grecian heroes, and was equal to the task, but our age has the advantage of them in having produced a greater captain and a better poet. You have done me an honour I did 1 Cf. Luttrell, v. 486. 2 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 213. St. John, too, was sent by Anne to con- ciliate Marlborough when she wished to expel Godolphin (1708). Swift, iii. 228. 3 The recipient converts the " i " into "0" when he re-quotes the line to trans- late into Latin in a note at the end. 1 86 ^BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES not deserve in dedicating your 'AvaKpecov ■x^pianavo^ to me. I shall be very happy if it lies in my powrer to be useful to you. I am sure I shall be so to the world in encouraging your muse, to which end I desire you to accept of some wine which I have just received from Portugal. ' O'ivovSe fir]K.iT ovtos {sic) oix ya-Tiv kvitsis OvS' aXXo Tepnvov oiiSfv dvdpamois rJTi.' " (sic). ' One great English achievement of 1704, which passed almost unnoticed at the time, must be at any rate recorded, since to it afterwards Bolingbroke alone attached infinite importance. We allude to Rooke's capture of Gibraltar. It is curious how blind England remained to the vantage of her Mediterranean stronghold. It was Marlborough's policy throughout to starve the Spanish war at the expense of his gaudier triumphs. But Gibraltar still survives, while Blen- heim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet have left not a wrack behind. Stanhope and Walpole years afterwards belittled the position, and George I. was ready to barter it away to Spain. Horatio, Lord Walpole, shortly before the Peace of Aix directly counselled its surrender ; but Boling- broke made its retention a main proviso of the Utrecht Treaty.^ He repeatedly emphasises its advantage, both for trade and arms. He alone seems to have descried that foreign affairs are "British interests abroad." On the ^ The mistakes in the " etas," &c., may be due to transcription. * We shall recur to this subject. For the present we draw attention to the fol- lowing, from the Craftsman of Nov. 24, 1739 (No. 698). It occurs in an ironical impeachment of Walpole's attribution of all England's woes to the Treaty of Utrecht, whose policy he began by continuing. " To it was owing the last siege of Gibraltar, and suffering the Spaniards to erect walls close to it ; for not having secured a sufficient territory 6ji that Peace we had no right to interrupt them in carrying on their trenches and fortifications. . . . But when we were doing such eminent service for Spain in consequence of the Treaty of Seville, did the Treaty of Utrecht restrain us from insisting on a proper territory round Gibraltar, or better security for our trade ? " We may add that Lord Portman was Governor of Gib- raltar in 1706, and the Duke of Argyle of Minorca in 1709. Writing to the former on March 29, 1712, Bolingbroke says that, in event of the Queen's resolution no longer to bear the whole load of the war, "Gibraltar and Port Mahon will . . . be all we have left to show for those immense sums which have been expended, and for that blood which has been shed in those parts. By retaining of these places we may hope to acquire some recompense to Britain." Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 243. EARLY DAYS 187 same principle he desired Dunkirk to be a Gibraltar of the North. In the elucidation of St. John's career we must glance at the Tory programme between the years 1705 and 1708. The Whig conquests at the elections, the temporising mood of Harley, the secret stratagems of the Marlboroughs and the Junto, the prepossessions of Godolphin, all united in obliterating the party distinctions for a space. But the Church was the grand exception. Though it was now voted "not in danger," the peril lay in the simmering ecclesiastical ferment. Nothing had been done for the clergy. They were paupers or parasites. They were re- viled by the Whigs in England and persecuted by the Presbyterians in Scotland. Marlborough and Godolphin had ceased to be in their interest. Harley was the head of a group, and not yet the leader of a party ; nor was much expected from one whose heart veered the other way. Mus- grave and Howe might rant in debate ; the old followers of "the seven candlesticks" might preach or protest; but their indignation fell on apathy. They had no champion, still less one whose voice was rational. Swift had not yet appeared, on the scene. Atterbury might fulminate, but he could not yet be called " tutor to a Prime Minister." ^ Nobody discerned in St. John a general of the Church army. The removal, however, for the nonce of party distinctions happened more through Whig Toryism than the converse. In this regard we cannot do better than cite a telling passage from Ralph's "Other Side of the Question "^ — a work of real power which has not met the attention it deserves. He asks " How this majority proved Whig ? " "... Why, they carried the Court candidate for the chair by upwards of sixty ; they most faithfully echoed back the words of the speech in their address ; they vied with the Tories in precipitating the supplies ; they addressed the majority to preserve a good correspondence with the allies'; they voted the Church not to be in danger ; they committed Mr. Caesar, one of their members, to the Tower 1 Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staff," pt. ii. p. 40. * P. 245. 1 88 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES for only dropping in one of his speeches that there was a noble Lord (meaning Godolphin) without whose advice the Queen did nothing, who in the late reign was known to keep up a constant correspondence with the Court of St. Germains ; they thanked the Duke of Marlborough for his services ; they agreed with the Lords in repealing that clause in the Act of Settlement which disabled placemen from sitting in the House of Commons ; they voted the public revenues to have been duly applied ; and, not- withstanding their boasted attachment to the House of Hanover, they voted Sir Roland Gwynne's letter to the Earl of Stamford, relating to the motion for the Princess Sophia's being invited to reside in England, to be a mali- cious libel." Indeed, like the conspirators in the "Critic," their unanimity was wonderful ; but the truth is, it was a party without principles, and therefore a faction ; a confederacy instead of a creed ; an oligarchy instead of a national representation ; and there were abortive bills of this Parliament which indicate how the Tory wind was blowing. The Whigs introduced one for the naturalisation of the French refugees, who always recorded their vote against France, and the Tories added a clause disabling them in such a case from voting. The Lords introduced a bill against Papists. The Tories, another of general "self-denial," which the Lords threw out. And, consistent with their uniform tenor of endeavouring to purge elections, the Tories brought in one Act more for the "qualification of justices of the peace." ^ Marlborough arrived at the Hague on April 4, 1706, and the battle of Ramillies marked another stage of his triumphal car. Louvain was abandoned to the Allies. Brussels, Ghent, Oudenarde, Bruges, Antwerp, and Coutray fell without a struggle. Ostend, Menin, Dender- mond, and Aeth were invested and taken. Brabant and Flanders acknowledged Charles III. of Spain. But the monarch himself was waging a hard struggle to occupy ' Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 436. EARLY DAYS 189 the throne. No Marlborough or Eugene assisted the gallant Peterborough, struggling alike with an obstinate colleague, the greedy Austrians, and an inveterate Castile. "There cannot be worse company," he wrote in ironic rodomontade to Halifax, "than a beggarly German and a proud Spaniard;" he predicts "that you shall see orders from a king to abandone kingdomes, which, by disobedience, I have preserved for him ; " and then he con- soles himself more suo by the reflection that if the "men are disagreeable," the " ladies " are the reverse.^ Yet what miracles he performed ! The previous year, when he was in command both by sea and land, had witnessed the storming of Montjuich with twelve hundred foot and two hundred horse ; the present, saw his dashing relief of Barcelona, the revolt of Saragossa, a flutter of Valencian heroism and of gallantry before the beaux yeux of the Marchesa di Popoli, a stroke of diplomacy by restoring the " Fueros," a futile opposition to the weak and tactless Galway.^ Peterborough's whole plan had been concerted with the Duke of Savoy. When, therefore, Marlborough's influence with the Government ordered him away, he hurried off to Genoa for remittances, meaning, after his manner, to rush, by parenthesis, to Turin and rescue Amadeus. But Eugene had anticipated him before he started. With characteristic impetuosity he left his forces behind him, posted back, and endeavoured to heal the feuds between Castile and Arragon, which were the main support of the French Philip. By this time Sunderland had been forced into the Ministry and the Marlborough syndicate had begun to operate. Peterborough was brusquely recalled, and brought to account before the House of Lords. A resolution was moved that no peace should be procured until Spain and the West Indies had been wrested from the Bourbon. And Somers had prepared a master-stroke in his amendment of "«// the Spanish possessions." 1 Kemble, State Papers, p. 445. ^ He was for yielding precedence to the Portuguese this year as in the suc- ceeding. I90 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Nothing could be less in harmony with the spirit of the Grand Alliance, especially since the death of the Emperor Leopold and the accession of Joseph in 1705. To unite Spain, the West Indies, and the Spanish Netherlands to an Austria already aggrandised would be to entirely upset the balance of power so dear to the late King's heart, as well as to controvert the second Treaty of Partition. Wharton himself, in this very debate, affirmed that the project was " impracticable " although politic. Somers' design was not one of statesmanship but of state manoeuvre. It was the "Writ of Ejectment," so humorously handled by Arbuthnot ;^ and Somers, when pressed for an explanation, could only reply that he " had been bred up in a hatred of France." ^ By this clause he declared openly for Godolphin and Marl- borough, who dishonestly protested that Eugene had ar- ranged for the reinforcement of the Spanish campaign. In Bolingbroke's own trenchant sentences : " . . . Such a declaration was judged necessary to second the resolution of our Ministers and our allies in departing from the principles of the Grand Alliance, and in proposing not only the reduction of the French, but the conquest of the Spanish monarchy, as the objects of the war. This new plan had taken place, and we had begun to act upon it two years before, when the treaty with Portugal was concluded, and the Archduke Charles . . . was sent into Portugal first and into Catalonia afterwards. . . ."^ The war was practically henceforward restricted to Flanders, and carried on as a business under the style of " Marlborough, Godolphin and Co." for the benefit of the Austrians and Dutch abroad, and the shareholders, with the moneyed interest at home. The disaster at Almanza proved how right Peterborough had been in opposing Galway and advocating defensive measures, and in again withstanding 1 "John Bull," Swift's Works, vol. vi. p. 286. * The story is given on Lord Oxford's authority by Bolingbroke in his "Sketch of the History and State of Europe," Letter 8, Works, vol. viii. p. 339. His comment is, "A poor reply for a great minister." ' "Letters on History," No. 8, vol. viii. p. 302. EARLY DAYS 191 the surrender of the post of honour to the Portuguese. His letter to the Portuguese ambassador at Charles's court shows that he, Charles, and the Austrians were united in declining action until succours should arrive. Charles himself was constantly worrying Anne with exorbitant requests.^ The refusal of the Portuguese to yield the command even to the King, and Galway's partisan obsti- nacy precipitated the worst misfortune of an unfortunate year, to which the Emperor's treacherous treaty for the evacuation of Lorabardy, and the consequent release of French regiments to recruit at home and march into Spain contributed.^ Three years afterwards Peterborough re- ceived the thanks of the nation and Galway the blame for the very deeds which now provoked the converse verdict ; so dominant was Marlborough, so paramount the ply of partisanship. "We were blessed with success," writes Prior, " under this Administration, but sure never was such an ill use made of victories." ^ We have called the year 1707 unfortunate. The Em- peror failed on the Rhine, and defended his own domi- nions with difficulty. He omitted to reinforce Flanders. He even attempted a secret understanding with France, which paved the way for the catastrophe at Almanza. Marlborough and Vendome stood idly confronting each other. The Duke of Savoy's grand enterprise with Eugene and Shovel against Toulon came perforce to nought. Yet Marlborough headed one hundred thou- sand veterans who a year before had captured twenty thousand of the enemy. Had the Duke of Savoy been able to enter Provence with that very number in addi- tion to the forty thousand allowed him, instead of a large detachment being drawn off to Naples for the indul- gence of Austrian ambition, Louis would readily have actually sacrificed Spain and the Indies just as, before the ' Cf. one quoted of a later date in the Dartmouth Papers, 303. Hist. MS. Coram., nth Rep. pt. v. " Bolingbroke's " Sketch of History," Letter 8, Works, vol. viii. p. 362. ' " History of his Own Time," p. 266. 192 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES will, Harley had mistakenly believed him ready to sacrifice the Italian possessions secured to him by the second treaty of partition.! To so low an ebb had he been brought. He would have been even more humiliated had his fleet been hindered from trading with the South Sea and importing treasure, as Bolingbroke most sagaciously points out.^ The address of both Houses to the Queen on the 23rd of December 1707 actually contained the following passage : " A much greater impression might have been made upon the enemy before this time if some of our allies, who seem principally concerned and have reaped the most immediate advantage, had seconded your Majesty with like vigour, whereby France might have been equally pressed on all sides. . . . But the frequent disappointments we have observed on the part of the Emperor and the Empire to the great prejudice of the common cause urge us to beg you to press the Emperor ... to make good twenty thousand men under the command of the Duke of Savoy and to strengthen the Rhine army." How much more readily would Louis have suc- cumbed in 1706. On October the 21st of that year, the Elector of Bavaria had written to Marlborough that Louis (who had previously approached both the Duke and the States General) would renounce all secret negotiations and openly confer with the allies after September. Louis addressed the Pope to the effect that the King of Spain had entrusted him to transfer to the Archduke those Italian possessions, Naples and Sicily, which remained the main bone of contention between France and Austria till the close of the reign of the Second George, together with the Spanish islands in the Mediterranean ; that Phihp meant to reign over Spain alone, and the Dutch barrier should be secured. Chamillard, his secretary, informed Marlborough's nephew, the Duke of Berwick, French Captain in Cas- tile, that France must "repair her own losses." A par- tition, in fact, on the terms of the Grand Alliance was ^ Robert Harley to Lord Weymouth. Portland MS., vol. iii. p, 634. * " Letters on History," Letter 8. EARLY DAYS 193 offered.^ But Marlborough answered on November 20 that "the Queen would conclude with all her allies" on terms that might ensure them from fighting again "after a short interval, as happened last time." We do not imagine that Marlborough's rejection of terms so favour- able was due to the fear of peace being propitious to the Pretender, who was about this time approaching him.^ Anyhow, to this refusal of Marlborough Swift directly ascribes the necessity of the Government "to take in a set of men with a previous bargain to screen them from misconduct." ^ It occasioned the retirement of Hedges and the secretaryship of Sunderland, that gusty republican, who had opposed Prince George's allowance, and who was now pressed into his father-in-law's plans. Already in 1705 the youthful Walpole had urged on Godolphin to make the Ministry Whig in lieu of " a motley mixture of Tories and Whigs perpetually at variance." * We have seen that Whiggery was now a misnomer for the ascend- ancy of Marlborough. The Scotch imbroglio and the intrigues attendant upon the Union, to which we have already adverted, supervened. Harley had all along been well apprised of Scotch affairs by Defoe and Ferguson. Harley, as we have recorded, was in favour of the Union from policy. So was St. John. Years afterwards he wrote, dealing with the attempts in the same direction of James I., " It was too great an undertaking for so bad a workman. We must think that the general arguments against it were founded on prejudice ; on false and narrow notions."^ But neither of them could condone Godolphin's conduct, which required the blunder of an indemnity to rescue him from the crimes which succeeded the Jacobite manoeuvres of 1703. Harley was now driven to shape a party of his own. He perceived that for this purpose the 1 " Letters on History," Letter 8. " Such a treaty of peace would have been a third treaty of partition indeed, but vastly preferable to the tvi^o former." Cf. also Voltaire's " Louis XIV." ^ Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 477-478. ' '■ Conduct of Allies." Works, vol. v. p. 56. « Coxe's " Walpole," vol. i. p. 39. = "Remarks on the History of England," Letter 20. N 194 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES High Church prodivities of the Queen must be humoured and shielded from the Duchess's machinations. Abigail was of course the instrument. He also discerned that St. John was his ablest lieutenant, and he set him as watch-dog in the House of Commons. In 1707-1708, when Somerset and Devonshire strove to bring pressure on Anne with regard to the new bishoprics, it was St. John who urged Hanmer, Bromley, and Freeman "in the Queen's interest," and assured them " her heart was with them." ^ It was St. John who, though Marlborough's nursling, already deplored his designs and foresaw the absolute necessity of peace. In his later political works he harps on the year 1706 as a golden opportunity which the great commander wantonly sacrificed. But St. John as War Secretary had no power to enforce his prescience. The only record of his action at this time is a recommendation to Harley that some provision should be formed for " the widows and fatherless children of officers who have been slain ... in the service of this war," and " stand in great need of relief." Meanwhile the Junto redoubled their efforts, and all the more because Somers was at this time being ill-used both by Marlborough and Godolphin.^ There were even rumours of an intended suspension of the Triennial Act.* The treasonable correspondence with France of Gregg, a clerk in Harley's office, increased the odium against him despite his protestation of his master's innocence on his execution, and the sympathy of the Queen herself. His own life was in danger. The Junto distorted his every action. But he was master of the back-stairs, and could afford to be stealthily patient. Toland was despatched by the Whigs to Hanover, and was received with em- pressement.^ "That wise and valiant prince, the Elector of Hanover,"® had already been entrusted with the com- ^ Burnet, p. 817. * Swift's Memoirs relating to the Change. Works, vol. iii. p. 231. 3 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 480. * Ibid., p. 456. His vanity and self-importance are well illustrated by a later letter (171 1) where he says, "Instead then of your Priors and Swifts you ought to dispatcli me privately this minute to Hanover." {Ibid., vol. v. p. 127.) ° Address of both Houses, December 23, 1 707. EARLY DAYS 195 mand of the Rhine army. At length Marlborough actually impugned Prince George's administration of the Admiralty. Marlborough disdained to sit in Council with Harley, and Somerset abetted and defended the Generalissimo. St. John was sent by the Queen with a letter to Marlborough insisting on Godolphin's resignation. The Duke "returned a very humble answer," but continued to prosecute a " moderating scheme which, by taking in some of Harley's friends, should exclude Harley.^ To ensure Harley's ex- pulsion Godolphin and Marlborough proffered their joint resignations. Anne's last shred of resistance was overcome by her husband, who persuaded her that Harley's departure was for the good of the country. In secret the Queen comforted herself by nocturnal interviews and promises of return. The Duke of Somerset waited in a chamber ad- joining the council-room at Windsor. The Harleyites refused to sit with him.^ Harley resigned and St. John as well as Mansel* with him. Walpole, at Marlborough's instigation, succeeded to the secretaryship of the latter, and a year afterwards to the lucrative post of Treasurer to the Navy. Boyle supplanted the former. Somers became President of the Council, and Orford head of the Admiralty. It will be interesting to subjoin the contemporary account — never, so far as we know, cited — given by Swift, at that time still an adherent of Somers, in a letter of February 12, 1708, to Archbishop King: — "Yesterday the seals were taken from Mr. Harley, and Sir Thomas Mansel gave up his staff. Mr. St. John designs to lay down in a few days (though advised to the contrary by a friend [? Harcourt]) and Mr. Coke, the Vice-chamberlain . . . will do the same. Mr. Harley had been for some time with the greatest art imaginable carrying on an intrigue to alter the Ministry, and began with no less an enterprise than that of re- moving L. T., and had nearly effected it by the help of Mrs. ^ Swift's Memoirs relating to the Change. Works, vol. iii. pp. 227-228. ^ This account, slightly diflfering from Swift's, is a correction by the second Earl of Oxford in a letter to Swift. ' Cf. the observations in Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 244. 196 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Masham, one of the Queen's dressers ... of much industry and insinuation. It went so far that the Queen told Mr. St. John a week ago that she was resolved to part with L. T., and sent him with a letter to the Duke of Marlborough which she read to him, and she gave Mr. St. John leave to tell it about the town, which he did without reserve, and Mr. Harley told a friend of mine a week ago that he was never safer in favour or employment. . . . On Sunday evening Mr. Harley delivered a memorial about the Emperor and the war to the Queen at Council. L. T. and the Duke of Marlborough left. The Duke of Somerset rose and said, 'If her Majesty suffered that fellow to treat affairs of war without the advice of the general, he would not serve.' He proceeds to relate that Lord Pembroke spoke to the same purpose though ' milder ; ' that Mrs. Masham was ' reported, forbid ; ' that, seven lords being appointed to examine Gregg, ' certain lords said Harley's impeachment was endeavoured by a certain lord [SomersJ ' whom Harley had been chiefly instrumental in impeaching some years ago ; and finally, that 'my Lord Peterborough's affair is yet on the anvil.' " But there was a more secret cause of Harley's with- drawal. Both Marlborough and Godolphin were at this time endeavouring to hatch some plan for the restoration of the Pretender, and Harley, it would seem, refused to connive,^ and so " lost his good opinion of them " and was " left out of their scheme." The curtain had fallen on the second and risen on the third act of the drama. The campaign was limited to and languished in Flanders. Ghent and Bruges had been delivered to the French, but the battle of Oudenarde did much to redeem the stagnancy of affairs. Webb won the battle of Wynen- dale. Lille fell just before the abnormal frosts of De- cember. The horses' hoofs froze to the ground. But Spain and Portugal were neglected. The eight thousand raised for service in the latter were despatched to protect supplies at Ostend ; and though Starenberg quitted Italy for Cata- ' See " Eleven Opinions about Mr. Harley,'' p. 21 and ff. EARLY DAYS 197 Ionia, his reinforcements were too small to act. The Duke of Orleans captured Tortosa. Leake's reduction of Sardinia and Wager's successes against the West Indian galleons made the sole amends. The war degenerated into a party scuffle. Its true glory was extinct.^ As Bolingbroke long afterwards acutely pointed out, it would have been more effectually compassed by the British navy, than the army occasioned by all the victories from Malplaquet to Bouchain.2 An abortive descent of the Tretender on Scotland, encouraged by the trade-discontents of the Union and attributed to Godolphin's countenance,^ together with the Prince Consort's death, complete the tale of the year. The "Turtle," as Prior sang in his elegy, was now dis- consolate. The fresh elections occupied St. John, who had retired philosophically -to Bucklebury.* Pylades-St. John deter- mined not to stand. It was rumoured that " he had no mind to apply." ^ Orestes-Harcourt, who had been elected for Abingdon, was petitioned against, so were Brydges and Jack Howe.® Bathurst and Cox were unseated for Ciren- ^ Cf. the very fine and just passage in Bolingbroke's "Letters on History," Letter 8. Britain "had triumphed indeed to the year one thousand seven hundred and six inclusively ; but what were her triumphs afterwards ? What was her success after she proceeded on the new plan? . . . Here let me say that the glory of taking towns and winning battles is to be measured by the utility that results from those victories. Victories that bring honour to the arms may bring shame to the Councils of a nation. To win a battle, to take a town, is the glory of a general and of an army 1 Of this glory we had a very large share in the course of the war. But the glory of a nation is to proportion the ends she pro- poses to her interest and her strength ; the means she employs to the ends she proposes, and the vigour she exerts to both." Bolingbroke's Works, vol. viii. pp. 306-307. 2 "A Sketch of the History and State of Europe." ' " I find the Tory's designe as soon as the House meets again to be very strick in the examination of those that were in concern in the late intended invasion, and they talk that they shall be able to bring strange things to light." Peter Wentworth to his brother, December 8, 1704. Wentworth Papers, p. 68. * A very indecent rhyme retailed by Swift insinuates that St. John's philo- sophy at this time was more epicurean than stoical. But see our remarks, fast, ch. viii. 5 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 491. * Wentworth Papers, p. 68. Howe afterwards stood for Gloucestershire. See Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 551. 198 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES cester, but both re-elected in the following December.^ Harley's nephew writes to his Aunt Abigail on December 23 that " the Court give out that the House of Commons is to be purged ; no quarter for Harcourt, Harley, and what more of that kidney." He subjoins an amusing story of Wharton, who had been appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and for whom, it appears, the bailiffs were wait- ing. The bailiff was instructed by some Tory to tell the Whig peer's porter that he came from Lord Sun- derland to announce the capture of Lille ; away walked the porter ; in stepped the bailiff, and the " bite " was suc- cessful. Meanwhile Harcourt was moving heaven and earth to secure a seat for his friend : Weebly was suggested as the borough and bribery as the means ; but St. John was not so eager. " In my opinion," he writes to Harley on December 20, "it is of small importance whether I am in Parliament or not." But the possible unseating of Harcourt provokes him to a generous outburst. "This is the first moment, dearest Sym," he exclaims in January, " in which I have grieved that I am not in Parliament. I know too well the character of the men and the circum- stances of the time to imagine that any condition or argument could have prevented the resolution that has been taken. But methinks it is no small misfortune to be quiet here whilst my friend is under persecution. At least, I might have had some share in exposing what I could not help, and if you are to be thrown out I might have provoked them to expel me in so good company. . , , I expect it from your friendship that, if you are to go out, care may be taken that I may not come in. For God's sake consent to be chosen at the place now intended for me, and let me take my chance in another. . . ." ^ In the event Harcourt lost his seat and had to wait till 1710, when he was returned for Cardigan.^ St. John's persistence in 1 Wentworth Papers, p. 98. = Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 517. ' "Yesterday (January 20, 1709) was a long day in the House of Commons. They were resolved to turn Sir Simon Harcourt out, right or wrong. 'Twas de- EARLY DAYS 199 retirement, on the other hand, was voluntary. He seems to have devoted two years to study and reflection. But his abstinence from political life meant more than this, and does him honour. He thoroughly disapproved of the course which Godolphin was shaping. Indeed, he found much to censure in Harley's obstinate clutch of office. As to himself, nearly twenty years afterwards he indignantly repelled in the Craftsman the accusations of " his ingra- titude and treachery to the late Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Godolphin " as " first in the roll of his sins " — " I believe no man acknowledges more sincerely than he the superior merit of these two illustrious men, or wishes more ardently that they were now alive and had the conduct of affairs of Great Britain ; but I know no obligation of gratitude or honour which he lay under to continue in their administration when the measures of it were altered." St. John himself resigned on principle. He could have persevered. His office was not one of initiative. But he was ambitious, and would be ill con- tent with any subordinate post again. He was deter- mined when he emerged to do so with hands unfettered, and in a position to develop the ideas he had matured. He had not yet broken with Harley. He was still an admirer of Marlborough. But he was coming fast, and, in view of Harley's insincere protestations to the Marl- boroughs, justly, to regard the former as one who "when anything was to be got could wriggle himself in, when any misfortune threatened him . . . could find a way to wriggle himself out," ^ and to dread the sinister influence of the Duchess over the latter. With the mid- night machinations of Abigail both at Kensington and the late Prince's httle back-room in the garden-house at Windsor, no evidence connects him. The implication is the contrary. Until the " Assiento " affair he seems to bated till past two in the morning, but at last they threw him out." Wentworth Papers, p. 72. He tried Wallingford, but " let him be chose never so, 'tis resolved to throw him out." Hid., p. 75. ^ " Remarks on the History of England," quoted Cooke's Life, p. 82. 200 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES have been out of Mrs. Masham's good graces ; while his reputation for excesses, and afterwards his partiahty for Marlborough, debarred him from the Queen's respect. To Harley alone belongs the bed-chamber plot which unwove in the night the web spun by the Government during the day. Independence and a free course were his aims. Already through the wrack of faction in the political horizon he discerned the guiding light of a party which should be wholly "national," which should translate the constitution into word and deed instead of refracting the distortions of greed and vengeance in the broken mirror of public dissensions. Such, if we read his later works aright, was his mood at this period. That Harley already feared, and Walpole hated him, is more than probable. Four years later, when at the zenith of his political power, he was styled by Prince Eugene "the bull-dog of the party." i At an age when most are opening a career, he had become a force to be reckoned, and a name to con- jure with. ^ The passage further runs, " He ... is of a bold and daring spirit, of an aspiring temper, of good parts enough, acquired by the advantage of being con- cerned in business more than his age allows of." Portland Papers, vol. v. p. 157. CHAPTER V INTERMEZZO— 1709-17 lo The first session of 1709, like the last of 1698, presented the spectacle of a Ministry without a working majority, and a country largely in favour of what we now style " the Op- position." The Queen was not in unison with "the Court," ^ and the House of Lords itself was agitated by the disaffec- tion of those Scotch peers who claimed, after the Union, to sit as English peers also. The Upper House, however, and the bankers remained props of the Marlborough fac- tion. Harley set himself to divide both, the former by attracting the moderate Whigs like Halifax, the latter by winning over the plutocrats. In each regard we may quote interesting excerpts from the Wentworth Papers.^ The first bears date August i, 1710 : "I have been told again that Lord Halifax has had several meetings with Mr. Harley, so much that it gave the High Church a jealousie that he was making terms for himself and to drop them, but now they seem to be satisfied that those two can't agree in their politics. Lord Halifax is said to be employed as a mediator, having no place but for life, so what he said would seem more from principle than ' After Sunderland's appointment she had to promise she would "o6Fend no more," and, having filled up the two vacant bishoprics and the Chair of Divinity at Oxford, would cease to appoint Tories. "And though she only demurs, she is reproached with the glory bestowed on her by my Lord Marlborough, who, not content with the army for his province, the household for his lady's, the treasury for his friend Godolphin's, the Admiralty for his brothers, and the Secre- tary's office for his son-in-law, writes a moving letter to convince the Queen that her piety was of no manner of use, that the Church ought to be left to abler hands, and that the only way to make her reign easy was to prefer none of them who appeared against her service — a cant name for the Ministry" ("The Other Side of the Question," p. 300). The case could not be more trenchantly stated. = Pp. 128, 151. 202 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES interest." i The second belongs to October 27, two months after Godolphin's dismissal : " . . . Mr. Harley was very joious with the rich men Sir Charles Duncomb and Sir Francis Child, the first of whom they say crys everything that's now done very well, and talks as if they shall never want money, but the divil a penny does he lend." The squirearchy was still more estranged from the Government by the increase of the land-tax to six shillings in the pound. The parson shared the squire's depression and discontent. Harley could have easily precipitated a crisis had not his policy been to give his enemies rope. Already "the great Whigs" began to oppose Godolphin in the House of Lords, They were trying to capture the Duke of Hamilton, while Somerset was reported to be " breaking loose." In Feb- ruary there were even rumours of the resignation of the Lord Treasurer and the Commander-in-Chief. It was alleged that in the present campaign Marlborough was receiving ;^20oo a day. In September Mansel wrote to Harley, " Peace is what I long to see." But it was pre- cisely peace that Marlborough, over-persuaded by Eugene, repudiated. The severe winter following the reduction of Lille had tasked an overstrained France to the utmost. Bernard and other great bankers suspended payment. Louis once more renewed his offers. The Duke arrived in London in February, a month after Bromley had moved a vote of thanks to Webb, omitting all mention of Marl- borough, and amid the silence of the Duke's own friends. He repeated to her Majesty all that the Pensionary had permitted him to know of his delegate's discussions with Rouill6. Both Houses addressed the Queen that Louis should be compelled to acknowledge her titles and those of the Protestant succession under a guarantee from the allies, and disown the Pretender by removing him from his dominions ; and further, that Dunkirk should be dismantled on the conclusion of a peace. ^ Cf. ibid., July l8, 1710, p. 122 : "I have seen Mr. Harley's coach at Mr. Boil's door. They say Halifax and Somers have been often with Mrs. Masham, and Halifax was to have gone over as plenipotentiary, but would not accept it unless there was to be no new Parliament." INTERMEZZO— 1709-17 lo 203 On March 27 Pettecum had prevailed on the French to send Rouilld, after private conferences with Buys and Van- derdussen at Moerdyke, to negotiate a peace at the Hague. Eugene vsras despatched by the Emperor on the same errand. Marlborough, after consulting the Ministers, re- turned with Townshend in the middle of May, when they were all joined by De Torcy. To the Moerdyke Con- ferences Marlborough had no access. His influence with the Dutch was on the wane, and neither he nor Towns- hend had ever seen Rouilld until presented by De Torcy on May 19. Even afterwards neither Eugene nor Marl- borough were, except rarely, in conclave with the Franco- Dutch negotiators. It will be observed that this was a violation of clause seven of the Grand Alliance. Marl- borough's instructions violated clause eight also, for he and Townshend were to notify the Pensioner that no negotiations should be entered into with France till the preliminaries were first adjusted between England and the States without reference to the other allies. In these measures the States were only pursuing their old tactics. At Munster they had thrown over France in their nego- tiations ; at Nimeguen they had sacrificed Spain. But how could the party that acquiesced in these breaches after- wards incriminate the preliminaries of Utrecht ? Nor is this all. The demands formulated by Marlborough in concert with the Junto were, as is familiar, preposterous. Louis was to be required to evict Philip, if recalcitrant, in two months. The French concessions were rejected, and De Torcy, three weeks before his return to Paris, declared the preliminaries inadmissible. And yet these very pre- liminaries were drawn up with mock solemnity and farci- cally forwarded for ratification in May. It was alleged that De Torcy himself had assured Marlborough and Townshend that he was ready to consent to everything that the allies might demand, provided that Spain was not united to the Empire. There was no "resisting the hand of God," but France would in this case soon be able to stop the violence offered to the liberty of Europe. 204 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Yet this was precisely the position which Marlborough's party had taken up. They entered into a negotiation which purposely spelled failure in advance. They conducted it in a manner which falsified their professions. They hood- winked the country by a sham set of invahd prelimi- naries. They pretended to treat without treating in 1709, as they had refused to treat while affecting to do so in 1706.1 We wish to notice these matters in their order with reference to our subsequent comments on Bolingbroke's conduct of the celebrated negotiations which succeeded ; and, in this regard, it will be perti- nent to briefly criticise the Barrier Treaty, which was concluded on October 29 of this year. The Queen offered to stipulate with Holland that France should be treated with by neitjier power before the entire monarchy of Spain was yielded as a preliminary. This, it will be borne in mind, was the Junto's own enlargement of the " reasonable " reparation imposed by the Grand Alliance — a reparation which, in view of the preceding partitions, could not include the whole which William and Louis had arranged to divide. But the Dutch absolutely rejected this condition, alleging that their people would never consent. Yet, in the next year, the Imperial Minister himself declared against any partition of the Spanish dominions whatever. Austria at this time desired to prolong the war, although she did not maintain more than one-twentieth of the forces engaged (while England supported half), although she had not six thousand troops of her own, although she had selfishly refused the detachment which would have cap- tured Toulon and ruined the French navy,^ just as in 171 1 she was to begrudge even eight thousand men for the diversion of the war into Italy. Arbuthnot, in his "John Bull," summarised the situation when he makes "Squire ' Cf. Bolingbroke's brilliant criticism in his "Sketch of the History and State of Europe." ^ "They (the Austrians) sacrificed to an idle Refinement in Politicks the greatest opportunity which we ever had, or must ever hope to have. I mean that of destroying the naval force of France by the taking of Toulon. This they de- liberately and almost avowedly hindered." Occ. Writer, No. i. INTERMEZZO— 1709-17 lo 205 South " exclaim, " I promise to furnish pen, ink, and paper, provided you pay for the stamps." Nor had the Dutch fulfilled their quota under the Alliance. No sooner had it been struck, than Marlborough had entered into an arrange- ment whereby England and Holland were to raise ten thousand men each in contravention of the Alliance, which provided that the English contribution was to be one-third less than the Dutch. A condition was attached that the Dutch should renounce their commerce with France. It remained unexecuted, and was cancelled, by concert, in 1703. Indeed, the Dutch were the greatest consumers of French wines,^ and went out of their way, after the Barrier Treaty, to disclaim their patent invasions of English trade. The Barrier towns were themselves fortresses for Dutch monopolies. Holland's policy was to stave off concession by obstructive delay ; to deprecate with pain the just suspicions which her conduct engendered ; to sue in forma pauperis in order to avoid her treaty obligations.^ Moreover, the Dutch never desisted from attempting private arrange- ments, while Austria had already a secret understanding with France ; and the Partition Treaties themselves obliged both France and Holland to compass a dismemberment, and not a transference of the whole Spanish dominions ; while the second of these compacts expressly stipulated against any possible union of the Austrian and Spanish crowns. Two further effects of the Barrier Treaty should be mentioned. The inclusion of Nieuport and Ostend — points crucial for commerce as for campaign — had to be undone by the Treaty of Utrecht. The guarantee of the Protestant succession on the terms of being requisitioned to introduce Dutch troops into England was a standing menace. The Dutch guards had been William's stumbling- block. The Whig plea of fighting for the entire kingdom was false in fact. But there is more. The campaign in the Low Countries ' " The Dutch better friends than the French," 1713. 2 Cf. Bolingbroke, Pol. Corr., vol. i. p. 53, and, among others, the States. Letter to the Queen of June 1712, beginning " Lay aside those hard thoughts of us," &c. Their methods seem the ancestors of ex-President Kruger's. 2o6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES had issued in the victory of Malplaquet, and, by October, in the surrender of Mons. Even in Spain the castle of AHcant had been blown up. During the course of the year Louis re-proposed terms through Pettecum, while the Dutch wrote and the House of Lords moved inciting the Queen to continue the war, and to place the arbitrament of peace in the hands of Marlborough. It must never be forgotten that, just as at Versailles there was a faction in favour of resistance, so at the Hague the fear of provincial disunion caused fluctuations in the policy of the Pen- sionary.^ War and Marlborough were now afresh in favour. The Queen herself addressed the Diet to spur the Emperor. Uxelles and Polignac arrived at Gertruy- denberg. March 1710 was fixed for the ineeting between the French ministers, Marlborough, Buys, Vanderdussen, and Zinzendorf. The French proposed a partition. They would accept Sicily and Sardinia, and actually subvent the war until Spain and the Indies were handed over by Philip. A more abject recognition of the Whig perversion of the Grand Alliance could not be conceived. But the Pensionary maintained his solid isolation. He constituted himself the sole channel of communication. After the private con- ferences in May 1710 even the Imperial Minister was denied admittance, on the ground that the other envoys might arrogate the same right. England was again condemned to bear the brunt of the war for the Dutch, while they pre- sumed to control the disposal of peace. Prior well exclaims that it was a game of "Cross I win. Pill you lose."- But to return homeward. In March 1709 Godolphin was in better hopes. The House of Commons gave him the glory of having delivered England from the futile in- vasion of the Pretender. It was more than suspected, however, that he had connived at the plot.^ Arbuthnot styles him "... a butler that loves my heir better than myself." The quack physician who in one stroke pro- cured and cured the malady was the same who in this 1 Burnet, p. 7 12. '' " History of his Own Time," p. 455. 8 Swift's " Tublic Spirit of the Whigs." INTERMEZZO— 1 709-1710 207 very year himself demanded a salve for the sore he had occasioned by the Union of Scotland ; who, having unjustly achieved justice and exacted an indemnity for his mis- feasance in the cause of wisdom, had lapsed into virtue and supplicated forgiveness. The secret history of this trans- action is usually withheld. Wharton had in his possession a letter which implicated Godolphin with the Pretender, Under this drawn sword Godolphin "durst refuse the Junto nothing." Sunderland was sacrificed, and had to retire in dudgeon. But in Wharton's absence Godolphin ^ obtained the Act of Indemnity, and thus by a stroke of legerdemain escaped his persecutor's clutches.^ The Pretender's designs, as usual, miscarried. An amnesty j was proposed. The Lords voted that the pardon, instead of beginning in June, should await the death of the Pretender. This amendment came down to the Commons, and was passed, to the indignation of Tories, "Old Whigs," and Scotch, who were now in coalition against "my Lord Treasurer's Whigs." Bromley went so far as to hint that Marlborough alone needed a pardon. It was known that he desired the governorship emoluments of the Spanish Netherlands, that he had refused an insufficient bribe from Louis for peace, that he could intrigue in four quarters at once, that the needle of his compass pointed unveeringly to his own aggrandisement. His duchess was growing more and more furious and out of favour. The splendours of the rising palace at Woodstock flaunted the wealth of war in the face of a people groaning under its burdens. The "garden plot" of Naboth's vineyard as insolently proclaimed her luxury to the town. His son-in- law had mutinied against and openly charged him with Jacobitism in securing the Scotch elections.^ Harley was slowly but surely rendering himself indispensable to the country gentlemen who despised, and the Church that mistrusted him. The Parliament's address to the Queen entreating her to marry again ^ was resented as a mortal 1 Cf. Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 104. " See ante, p. 39. 3 Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 778. 2o8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES insul't, and confirmed Harley still further in her graces. Pre- judice succumbed to necessity. Hard pressed, Godolphin decided on the fatal step of Sacheverell's impeachment. Sacheverell, less than three years before, had adver- tised himself as High Church champion in a sermon before the Lord Mayor. Every one recalls his character. He was coarse and stupid. He is the " Bungey " of the contemporary ballads. Swift begged a post for his brother, but vowed that the doctor himself " should be none of his acquaintance." ^ Defoe, who served and supported the Ministry he had popularised, was ready to denounce his drunkenness, as he had before been ready in rapid turns both to denounce and to defend^ the Dissenters. The Tory leaders derided their tool. But it would be a mistake to regard him as insincere or insignificant. He was a Doctor of Divinity and a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford. Those who read his defence, coupled with his sermon, will see that his awkward loyalty was wrested into clumsy treason. It was true, as Swift twanged it in his " ballad," that Sacheverell " By bringing old doctrines in fashion, Hath, hke a damn'd rogue, Brought rehgion in vogue, And so opened the eyes of the nation.'' Where an Atterbury had failed, a Sacheverell could succeed.* In eras of mute excitement Stentor often excels Ulysses. If we pierce below the slime of faction, and dive beneath the mud of superstition, we shall find that, half-uncon- sciously, the Church was speaking, or rather stammering, the great principle of divine duty against the great doctrine of human rights. Divine right and passive obedience are crude absurdities and grotesque figments ; but the belief in the former proclaimed allegiance to a more than mortal majesty, while adherence to the latter was a standing protest against capricious revolution. That for every man to do what was right in his own eyes was against ' Journal, January 22, 1712. ' In his " Short Way with Dissenters." ' Higgon in Ireland was his counterpart. INTERMEZZO— 1 709-1710 209 the divine ordinance, that rebelHon was as the sin of witchcraft, were at least convictions that could stem anarchy and cope with chaos. The Tories were quick to seize, some asserted sharp to contrive, their opportunity. In vain did Bromley suggest Convocation or the Queen's Bench as the fittest tribunals. Godolphin, stung to the quick, was bent on impeachment, which Somers and Cowper disapproved, but Walpole and Stanhope promoted. Of course the House of Lords immediately came to logger- heads with the House of Commons. The Lords debated whether the Commons had substantiated their charge. Haversham, Nottingham, Jersey, and North and Grey spoke in the Doctor's favour. Shrewsbury was enlisted on the same side. Argyle was favourably inclined, and, though wavering, advised the two parties to compound. The Tories regarded a change as certain. On March 8, 1710, St. John thus writes to Harley : " From you to Court, where I met Rochester and Argyle. ... I am indifferent what employment is reserved for me, but I must own that to succeed Mr. Cardonnel upon the same foot as Mr. C. was is not coming into the service a second time with so good a grace as I came in the first, and keeping one's present situation is a good deal better than sinking while one affects to rise." ^ It will be noted that this firm re- monstrance is dated five months before Godolphin was really out. It shows how clear the prospect was, and how resolved St. John was not to be shelved by Harley again. Harcourt addressed his future chief in a similar strain. If Harley was to count on the St. John group, he must promote them. The weak Poulet, too, was not slow in urging his own claims, which had been slighted by Sunderland. He had eventually to refuse a secretary- ship before he accepted the Privy Seal. He knew that Harley was trimming with the Whigs. He insisted that the Tories must above all things be united against the Whig divisions. As for the Duke of Newcastle, who was endeavouring to make his peace, Poulet writes : " Will not 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 535. O 2IO BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES half a score of half-crown Whigs make up the loss of him, and may not you have as many more as you want ? " Later still, Orrery also addresses Harley, on his behalf and Argyle's, for army promotion and a speedy dissolution of Parliament ; while Monckton, afterwards Lord Galway, and now a converted Whig, sends a long letter on the situa- tion, recommending the conciliation of Halifax, Cowper, and Newcastle.^ Defoe was furnishing his master with constant political, and commercial information. Harley had forced his access to the Queen, and persuaded her that the country was with Sacheverell.^ Of one thing Harley was convinced. He must steer between the shoals, but on no account should his project of dissolution leak out. The Queen was in its favour, as the sole means for freeing her hands in appointments. A new Parliament meant emancipation. While the Tories were secretly can- vassing the constituencies, the Whigs might vaunt an inexpugnable majority. The Capitol would be more cer- tainly subdued if the geese were emboldened to cackle without a qualm. There is no need for us to recount the sensations of this trial — the impeachment in the Commons by Dolben, son of the Archbishop of York,^ the Queen's regular attendance, the crush of fashionable ladies* eager for places, Newland's glass chariot, in which the red-faced Defender of the Faith drove daily to Westminster Hall,^ the excited • Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 542, 553, S70-S7I- ^ Swift's Memoirs, relating to the change. Works, vol. iii. p. 234. " The following epitaph on him was penned by a Tory wit : — " Under this marble lies the dust Of Dolben John, the chaste and just : Reader, tread softly, I beseech ye, For, if he wakes, he'll straight impeach ye." Cf. Wilkins' Political Ballads, vol. ii. p. 84. '' A ballad of the time sang : — "The mob of his side, the ladies appear All over the town in his favour ; Which galls the poor Ministers hanging their ear. Like Garrard or a false brother." " Oldmixon's History, p. 434. INTERMEZZO— 1 709-1710 211 mobs, the downfall of the scaffolding which Wren had erected for privileged spectators, the eloquence of Atter- bury on the lips of Sacheverell, the moving harangue of Harcourt, which made him as prominent as that for Queen Caroline did Brougham more than a hundred years later. The lightness of the sentence,^ capped by the Whig vote of thanks to the latitudinarian Hoadley, was hailed as a triumphant acquittal. Bonfires blazed throughout the kingdom. It was not only the Church party that exulted. All who detested the foreigner, from whatever motive, including the riotous weavers at Spitalfields, all who groaned under the Marlboroughs, all who were for agri- culture as against trade swelled the chorus. On the other hand, the enemies of the Church, of France, of Harley, of the Pretender, of "arbitrary power," by which was meant the Tories in office, the friends of a Venetian oligarchy, of stock-jobbing, of discord, of war were as vehement in protest. The Whigs, in Bolingbroke's phrase, "had a sermon to condemn and a parson to roast," and they " roasted him at so fierce a fire " that they " burned themselves." ^ The effect was instantaneous. Three weeks after the trial the Queen, on her own initiative — and during Godolphin's absence at Newmarket ^ — transferred the Chamberlain's wand from Kent, who had voted against, to Shrewsbury, who had voted for the martyr; she had already disposed of the Colonelcy of Lord Essex to Mrs. Masham's brother instead of to Marlborough's nominee. Two months afterwards she was rid of Sunderland. The Bank and the States-General sullenly protested. The latter even ventured interference through Buy's "Memorial of 1 He was suspended for three years, and, by one vote, he was not incapaci- tated from preferment. ^ Dedication to Walpole, "Dissertation on Parties." Swift long afterwards compared in a letter the popular excitement over Walpole's excise scheme to the Sacheverell ferment. ' The Queen's letter to him of April 13, 1710, said she was sorry to find him "so much in the spleen," and hoped the change would "meet" with his "approbation." 212 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Remonstrance." They dreaded the degradation of Marl- borough, who entertained the presumption of demanding to be Captain-General for life. By the close of August Godolphin was out. Wharton and Orford resigned their posts, though Marlborough clung to his with tenacity. The Treasury was put in Commission, with Poulet as First Commissioner, and Mansel, Paget, his brother-in-law,^ Benson, and Harley as his colleagues. Harley himself became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Rochester President of the Council, and Buckingham Lord Steward ; Ormonde, who with difficulty stooped to solicit Harley, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Harcourt was soon raised from his Attorney-Generalship to the dignity of the Chan- cellorship. By the close of September St. John became Secretary of State for the Northern Department, as it was termed, instead of Boyle, and Lord Dartmouth Secretary for the Southern instead of Sunderland. St. John appears to have hesitated before he again resolved to serve Harley. In March 1719 he thus, in a letter to Swift, recurs to the situation : " I make good at this hour the motto ^ which I took nine years ago, when I was weak enough to list again under the conduct of a man, of whom nature meant to make a spy, or at most a captain of miners ; and whom fortune, in one of her whimsical moods, made a general." * While Swift, in his answer of the following May, thus graphically portrays the relation of the rising to the waning star: "When I think of you in relation to Sir Roger, I imagine a youth of sixteen marrying a woman of thirty for love ; she decays every year, while he grows up to his prime, and when it is too late, he wonders how he could think of so unequal a match, or what is become of the beauty he is so fond of." His appointment gave general satisfaction. "... Nor is any man in the three kingdoms," writes a pamphleteer in 1710,* "better qualified for that high and busy employment, whether we consider his ' Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 257. ' " Nil Admirari." ilh father's was "Nee quserere, nee spernere honorem." ' Bolingbroke to Swift. Swift's Works, vol, xvi. p. 345. * Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 257. INTERMEZZO— 1 709-1710 213 natural talents, vivacity of wit, penetration of judgment, or his mastery of languages, flowing eloquence, affability, and address ; so that Her Majesty cannot have a more useful Minister, either with respect to the public business in the House of Commons, or in relation to the management of affairs abroad ; and I dare prophesy that he will never be guilty of such a false step as was made in the business of the Muscovite Ambassador,^ or expose the Crown and nation to so inglorious a submission to retrieve it." The " Heptarchy " ^ of the Junto did not submit without grumbling protests ; they died hard. Godolphin had remon- strated with the Queen. Walpole, the cadet of their party, as St. John was of the other, had been one of the Whig managers in the Sacheverell trial. He now published " Four Letters to a Friend in North Britain." It was in truth a reply to Atterbury, who had composed Sacheverell's speech. It endeavoured to establish that Sacheverell's adherents were conspirators for the Pretender. By August 18 it was known that the Parliament was to be dissolved. Mainwaring showed small perspicuity in assert- ing to Jack Pulteney, member for Hastings and Commis- sioner of Trade, that there would be a Whig majority. " No, by God ! " ^ was the emphatic answer, which the elections in October abundantly testified. The Tories streamed in for the constituencies. Even the Noncon- formists gave them their votes.* By the close of the month the Tory majority was so great in the Commons that it was alleged they could spare some for the Lords. The late Ministry had fallen into Harley's trap, and allowed Tory sheriffs to be nominated throughout the country, reserving their strength for the following year. But before their appointments, Rochester, Nottingham, and Buckingham, who considered themselves " left out in this new scheme," openly allied their disgusts against Harley and Shrewsbury. 1 His servants were arrested for debt, and an abject apology had been tendered. 2 Godolphin, Marlborough, Orford, Wharton, Somers, Cowper, Sunderland. ' Wentworth Papers, pp. 144 and 35. " Very whimsical and changeable as to his resolves," ibid., p. 140. The Whig bard Rowe dedicated his Shakespeare to him. He was the protector of Mrs. Oldfield. * Ibid., p. 151. 214 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES The first was even suspected of Republican leanings. Somerset, too, till sopped by the retention of his Master- ship of Horse, sulked at Sion or Petworth, charged Harley with betrayal, defended Stanhope, and caballed with the Whigs. Harley, by playing his fish, ascertained their weight. The lame General Webb was treated as a Tory hero, and fought Stanhope for Westminster till he was made Governor of the Isle of Wight, the withdrawal of troops from which Marlborough had deprecated to St. John.^ Shrewsbury invited and then evaded Sacheverell. St. John was elected both for Wootton Basset and Berk- shire, but preferred the county of his wife to that of his family ; ^ all his clique regained their seats. Lord Rivers was forthwith despatched to Hanover, but he stopped at the Hague with a message from the Queen. There Townshend pressed him as to further changes and the chances of Marlborough's removal. Rivers denied any such intentions, and in a letter^ to Harley thus delivered himself : " As far as I am able to judge of the inclination of people here, they are for the most part prejudiced to the present proceedings in England, so that, in my opinion, it will be necessary either to gain the person who resides here,* which I wish you could, he being very well liked here, or send another who may satisfy them that the late change in our Ministry will not be in any way prejudicial to the common cause." As a matter of fact, the Pensionary himself was satisfied, but exacted a promise that Marl- borough would be retained, which Rivers was not em- powered to give.^ Indeed, the Queen's eagerness for peace* was on this occasion due as much to irritation against the Marlboroughs as to temperament. On reaching Hanover Rivers explained the crisis to the Electress, who appeared very sceptical of the stories regarding Godolphin and the ' Dartmouth MS., nth Rep. pt. v. p. 302. ^ His colleague on this occasion was Sir John Stoneham. Cf. Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 918. Bolingbroke's father had also sat for Basset. ' September 12, 1710. Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 580. * Townshend. " Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 617. ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 106. INTERMEZZO— 1 709-1710 215 Duke.^ She had been primed by Robethon, who in 1711 described the new Administration as " Un ministere com- post de novices et de gens qui sont ravis de trouver besogne faite. Le seul St. Jean travaille et my Lord Raby a un grand ascendant sur lui." ^ On December 8 the British repre- sentative urged on Harley the need for diplomacy in trifles. He suggests that presents from the Queen to her god- daughter would be fruitful in results.^ His reception was alleged to be favourable, but he returned without any material token ; and he was again despatched towards the close of the year to persuade George to lead the troops in Flanders, and so allay the Whig cries of Tory Jacobitism, But Bothmar — taking advantage of Hanover's neutrality in the Russo-Swedish war — was speedily to come over as the watchdog of the succession. If Wellington could not have won Waterloo without Bliicher, it is equally true that without Bothmar the Whigs could not have succeeded in monopolising George I.* It is ominous that Marlborough's inactivity abroad coincides with this reverse in his fortunes. Douay, Aire, Bethune, and St. Venant — all barrier towns — were reduced. The Elector of Hanover resigned his command of the Rhine army. Nothing of moment occurred. In Spain Charles won the battles of Almanara and Saragossa, but Stanhope was surprised by Philip near Brihuega and made prisoner, nor could Staremberg reap any advantage from his victory at Villa Viciosa on the succeeding day. Charles had to abandon Madrid, and Louis began to rejoice that Dutch obstinacy and Marlborough's ambition had frus- trated the conferences at Gertruydenberg. The Whigs had played his game and overreached themselves. Nor was Marlborough's army in entire good - humour with him. 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 627. ^ Meiners in Spittler's Gott. histor. Mag., i. 565, quoted in Pauli's article "Rundschau," March 1883, at p. 366. The last statement about Lord Raby is ludicrously untrue. Strafford was a kinsman of Bolingbroke. 8 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 644. * Cf. Pauli, " Die Aussichtungen des Hauses Hannover." Bothmar's avarice remained insatiable to the end. Cf. Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 48, note. 2i6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES The pay was irregular. Lord Teviot wrote to Harley complaining of Marlborough's treatment.^ Argyle mur- mured that he was always "put upon the most desperate services. "2 Faction ran high in the camp. Meredith, Honeywood, and that Macartney so infamous afterwards in the duel of that desperado who had run through his wife's fortune, and was one " that will get money at any rate and . . . spend it as fast as he gets it," ^ were peremptorily dismissed for drinking confusion to the Ministry and Queen. Townshend was recalled. St. John, it was said, would succeed him. Endless and absurd rumours were rife. The Electress was dead. Cadogan's regiment was to be given to Lord Windsor. Marlborough had even cir- culated letters among the foreign princes to enlist their offices with the Queen. In November Argyle, disappointed of promotion, had opposed the annual vote of thanks to the Duke of Marl- borough. Such blasphemy against the god of war was enough to evidence the magic transformation of affairs. Four towns, he said, had been taken, but only one of those four was of any use to the Allies ; the other three having cost more blood than they were worth. Lord Ferrers, who praised the Duke, thought it more proper " to defer thanks till he came over," which was a motion his friends were glad to close in with.* In the Commons, Sir Thomas Hanmer presided over the Commission appointed to draw up the address of thanks for the Queen's speech. Walpole was present and made notes. He was called to order and required to deliver them up. But he vociferated his right to use the materials provided, and "took his paper and wrapt it up very deliberately and went away with it into his house and showed it to Lech mere and some more, who set their heads together how they would desire to have it amended."^ The results were a foreshadow of coming events. Lechmere — one of the most violent but most sincere among the Whigs — insisted on the insertion of a 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 650. ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 159. ^ Ibid., p. 85. ■• IHd., p. 147. ^ Ibid., p. 160. INTERMEZZO— 1709-17 lo 217 clause favourable to Hanover. Hanmer himself — the most pronounced of the Electoral Whigs — moved to insert a representation to Her Majesty that should "discountenance all persons of such principles and avoid all measures of such tendency as might weaken Her Majesty's title and Government." 1 Walpole further leaped into the breach by demanding a mention of the Pretender. Harley had the tact to comply, protesting that "the Protestant succes- sion was already sufficiently established." One more debate of these stormy times must be men- tioned. It was on the " Commitment of Place Bill," which St. John had moved to be taken together with that for qualification. We quote Peter Wentworth's account : ^ " Mr. St. John's speech was pretty remarkable, for in setting out how necessary this bill was to be enacted, he gave some touches on the late management as that we might see a time when the mony'd men might bid fair to keep out of that House all the landed men, and he had heard of societys of them that joint'd stocks to bring in members, and such a thing might be an administration within an administra- tion, a juncto ; and then mony'd men might arise to such a pitch of assurance as to oppose the Crown and advise in matters that did not belong to them." Already Walpole and St. John are face to face in opposed relief. St. John's speech is a prophecy of Wal- pole's Administration. Walpole's decision preludes the character that foiled St. John's genius. In the great council of seventeen held by the Whigs in 171 1, Walpole was the only commoner present.^ He had already affixed the stigma of Jacobite to the name of Tory. The hare was already being out-distanced by the tortoise. When Marlborough, who had despatched his fore- runners to feel the pulse of afifairs,* at length returned, it 1 Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 930. ^ Wentworth Papers, p. 167, December 21, 1 710. 5 Portland MS., vol. v. p. 166. ' Wentworth Papers, p. 141, September 12, 1710. "The old soldier Harry Weathers at White's ... to reconnoitre for the Duke of Marlborough." 2i8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES was to enlist his deserted friends in his favour, but to forfeit their services by the intractability of the Duchess. The succeeding year first reveals St. John in the prime of ascendancy, and we may pause awhile before the struggle begins. The whole political landscape had been trans- formed. As Swift, who had just opened that wonderful journal, exclaims : " I never remember such bold steps taken by a Court ; I am almost shocked at it, though I did not care if they were all hanged. We shall have a strange winter here between the struggles of a cunning, provoked, discarded party and the triumphs of one in power." CHAPTER VI CHURCH AND STATE We propose as concisely as possible to explain the real division of parties in England, for their alteration is unin- telligible without a knowledge of their development. We cannot appreciate St. John's handicraft if we ignore the tissue of his material, nor Walpole's supremacy without appreciating its real gist by retrospect. The nicknames "Whig" and "Tory," as all the world knows, were derived from Scotch drovers and Irish robbers, and formed the slang employed by the friends and foes of the Duke of York. The one meant " sour leaven, " the other " Hand me your purse." They did not become current till the close of the reign of Charles II. A Tory was then one who complied with a would-be arbitrary monarch, and a Whig one who sought to thwart his indolent caprice. The ecclesiastical policy of James II. introduced a fresh distinction. The Tories were for the Church, and the Whigs for the Dissenters. The former upheld and the latter withstood the Exclusion Bill. The old cleavage had been "Court and Country." If Charles "trotted," in BoHngbroke's phrase, James "gal- loped." His bigotries confronted the Church with the Conventicle. In the witty sentence of the Duchess of Marlborough, he sacrificed his country to his desire for dragging it to heaven with him. Clarendon, in the judg- ment of Loyalists, had undone and democratised England by defrauding the King of his own revenues and making him dependent for his private property on Ministers and Parliament. Charles II., in their opinion, was just becoming a king instead of a caballer when he died. James I. had dissipated the Crown income by his grants S19 220 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES to Scotch favourites, and had thus facilitated a royal subservience and a national enslavement to Ministers and Privy Councils. William of Orange could never weld together the factions artificially united by anti- Popery during the forced tolerance of James. The last four years of Anne afforded the Tories a lucid interval, which proved transitory because they never had the spirit to " play all their game and fix their fortune." The Whigs would ever despise them "as a rope of sand."^ While the monarch possessed an unshackled inheritance and there was no standing army, he lacked the motive for frequent ParHa- ments, so that the Triennial Bill assured the free expression of the popular voice, which the " New Whigs " mistrusted.^ In a word, the ascendancy of Ministers was a Whig device which dissolved the union of Crown, Church, and People ; Parliament became a tool for Ministerial aggression, and England the prey of dominant groups assisted by the background of military menace. Under a system which pensioned the King and gagged the nation, Cromwell's armed usurpation might easily recur. The abuse of power was ever the source of despotism, but the tyranny of many was less remediable than the tyranny of one. Such was the old Loyalist creed which inclined many to Jacobitism, but certainly not Bolingb.oke, who was a persistent ad- mirer of Clarendon^ and Southampton. "These great and good men . . . who, far from taking advantage from the heat and fervour of the times to manage Parliaments into scandalous jobs and fatal compliances with the Crown, to their immortal honour, with gratitude and reverence to their memories be it spoken, they broke the army, stinted ' For these opinions, see the Chevalier Wogan's long and very remarkable letter to Swift (Works, vol. xviii. p. lo), which embodies the creed of an old Irish Cavalier, and Bolingbroke's comments in " Remarks on the History of England," Letter i8. Works, vol. ii. pp. 266-267. ^ Cf. the arguments of Sir William Windham and of Sir Robert Walpole, in their speeches on the Triennial Parliaments in 1734. Coxe's Walpole, vol, iii. p. 142. ' Clarendon, we may point out, and for the first time, figures as "Rutilius" in Bolingbroke's essay on the ' ' True Use of Retirement and Study." CHURCH AND STATE 221 the revenue, and threw their master on the affections of his people." ^ But the Church movement did not manifest itself until the Revolution. Neither the Tories nor the Church could ever forget their instrumentality in its settle- ment,^ which the latter's resentment against James' invasion of ecclesiastical freeholds had done so much to popularise. "... The Whigs," wrote Bolingbroke in the first letter of his " Dissertation on Parties," " paved the way for the Revolution ; and whatever the Tories may have professed, they acted on the same principles, or they acted upon none, which would be too absurd to assert, when they brought about that great event, in concert with the rest of the nation." Mordaunt had been among the first to personally solicit William's presence. Churchill and Nottingham^ — both double dealers — paved the way for the Invitation. Of its signatories at least three were Tories. Ormonde and Buckingham supported the new arrangement. When the Prince demanded at Exeter a written subscription. Rivers had exerted his utmost influence ; Shrewsbury, a moderate Whig, who afterwards brought in the Tories, who voted for the Church and Sacheverell, who was trusted both by the Queen and the people, had been a prime mover through- out. The Whig coterie that reaped the credit were not the main harvesters. Nor must we forget that political pro- fession was constantly divorced from individual conviction. The Earls of Monmouth and Montgomery, who were Whig leaders, invited the abdicating King to return.* Godolphin, the confidant of William, was for a regency. Somers, the Nestor of the Whigs, conspired, as we have ' "Dissertation on Parties," Letter i. 2 See " Social England," vol. iv. p. 531. 3 Both with double dealing. Cf. Swift's Works, vol. v. p. 178, and cf, for Nottingham, Swift's " Excellent New Song : "— " When I and some others subscribed our names To a plot for expelling our master, King James, I withdrew my subscription by help of a blot. And so might discover or gain by the plot." ^ Burnet, p. 545. Swift's Works, vol. v. p. 410. 2 22 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES seen, for a republic. Lord Haversham, privately rather Republican, in religion, like Harley, a Presbyterian, may serve as a Tory type. He continually supported the High Church party. He had voted for exclusion ; he voted for the Partition impeachments ; he was to vote for Sacheverell. Like Shrewsbury, an old Whig, he became, like Prior and like Swift, a new Tory. The old and moderate Whigs of the Revolution became the new Tories of Queen A nne. There was little to differentiate them except foreign policy. William's Whigs had been for, Anne's Tories were against the Dutch. William's Whigs were for war, Anne's Tories for peace. The new or " Lord Treasurer's " Whigs were, as we have found, the offspring of Marlborough's confederacy with the Junto. In Swift's language, they were "a faction raised and strengthened by incidents and intrigues. They assailed the Church and land, and bolstered the moneyed corporations." ..." Some were for a king under the limitations of a Duke of Venice ; ^ others for a Dutch Republic ; a third party for an aristocracy ; and most of all for some fabric of their own contriving." " I am not sensible," asserts Swift, who, even in 1716, told the Arch- bishop of Dublin he was " always a Whig in politics,'' " of any difference between those who call themselves Old Whigs and a great majority of the present Tories" The position was analogous to that of our now dissentient Liberals. In Bolingbroke's own striking words : " The best of those who were engaged in the party will quit the faction, and then the latter will stand confessed to view." ^ The Tories themselves were divided. There were the new Tories who were being "educated" by St. John. There were the trimming Tories, manipulated by Harley. There was a sort of old Tory Junto controlled by Rochester, Bucking- ham, and Haversham. There was the tail of Non-Jurors ' This comparison with the Venetian constitution, originated by Harrington, is frequent in the treatises of the time. We find it in the "New Atalantis" and in "The Secret History of the White Staff." Disraeli's "Venetian Oligarchy" is abundantly justified as a Whig ideal. 2 Dedication to Walpole, " Dissertation on Parties." CHURCH AND STATE 223 and Jacobites who looked to the October Club. But this was in 171 1. In 1699 the main distinctions were as follows. The old Whigs approved the Revolution and the Hanoverian succession ; considered the monarchy limited by laws with which the executive could not dis- pense ; allowed indulgence to scrupulous consciences. The old Tory asserted hereditary right ; held the person of princes as sacred and lawful authority irresistible ; con- sidered breaches of succession dangerous ; schism an evil both per se and in effect ; believed the ruin of the Church to involve that of the State ; and deprecated the commit- ment of power to any persons not of the established re- ligion. But if it is true that the Whigs of 1699 were the Tories of 171 1, it is equally true that the novel Whigs who threw in their lot with " the new confederacy " were led by those ancient Tories, Marlborough and Godolphin. " The persons who had now signalised themselves as Whigs," says Lord Orrery,^ "had renounced those principles by which the old Whigs were denoted, and had embraced several of those tenets of which their forefathers had either a i-eal or a pretended abhorrence." Some time after the Queen's accession, declares the penetrating Swift once more,^ " it pleased certain great persons who had been all their lives in the altitude of Tory opinion to enter on a treaty with the Whigs, from whom they could get better terms than from their old friends, who began to be restive and would not allow monopolies of power and favour, nor consent to carry on the war entirely at the expense of this nation that they might get pensions from abroad, while another people more immediately concerned in the war traded with the enemy, as in times of peace. . . . Whereas the other party, whose case then appeared as desperate, was ready to yield to any conditions." The position was here analogous to the Home Rulers who seceded with Mr, Gladstone. But the Revolution boundaries of the political map had been very different. " To be against a standing army in time of peace was all High Church, Tory, and 1 On Swift, p. 25. ' Examiner, No. 43. 224 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tantivy; to differ from a majority of bishops, 'twas the same. To raise the prerogative above law for serving a turn was Low Church and Whig. The opinion of the majority in the House of Commons, especially in the Country party or landed interest, was high-flying and rank Tory. To exalt the King's supremacy beyond all precedent was Low Church, Whiggish, and moderate. To make the least doubt of the pretended prince's being supposititious and a tiler's son was, in their phrase, top-gallant and per- fect Jacobitism. To resume the most exorbitant grants that were ever given to a set of profligate favourites and apply them to the public was the very quintessence of Toryism." ^ Even those who assail Swift as an unscrupulous partisan cannot cavil at these statements, which every student re- cognises as accurate. The Orange Tory was against a standing army and the enrichment of royal favourites at the expense of the people.^ Narrow as he was in his Church opinions, bigoted as he was in his adherence to divine right, he held that the hereditary title of the Stuarts could only revive by their espousal of the popular liberties, the popular religion, and the popular will. The Orange Whig, on the other hand, was for flattering the royal prerogative and for pocketing the royal bribes. As for Jacobitism, if there were Tory Non-jurors, there were also Whig " compounders." " Box it about and it will all come to my father," was the factious pretext among both. "The power and majesty of the people," urges BoHng- broke in the first letter of his " Dissertation on Parties," " an original contract, the authority and independency of Parlia- ment, liberty, resistance, exclusion, abdication, deposition ; these were ideas associated at that time to the idea of a Whig, and supposed to be incommunicable and incon- sistent with the idea of a Tory. Divine, hereditary, in- defeasible right, lineal succession, passive obedience, slavery, nay, and sometimes Popery too, were associated ^ Examiner, No. 43. "^ Cf. " The Exorbitant Grants of William III. Examined and Questioned." Somers Tracts, vol. iii. p. 106. CHURCH AND STATE 225 in many minds to tiie idea of a Tory, and deemed incom- municable and inconsistent in the same manner with the idea of a Whig." But the new Whigs forfeited their prin- ciples by their actions. The new Tories were no longer the timorous advocates of the constitution that they had been just after the Revolution, Whig and Tory alike meant very different things in 1710 to what they did in 1690. " Qui color est albus nunc est contrarius albo." It remained for Bolingbroke to reconcile the best principles of both professions with the true spirit of a faction-for- gotten constitution, and to proclaim what he was doomed never to organise — the promised land which he foresaw, but might not enter. "... It was n-ot a year after the Revolution,'' writes a new Whig partisan in 1714, "that the Harleys, the Foleys (his first wife's relations), . . . the Win- ningtons, the Harcourts, I know not for what reason but their private pique and interest, quitted the Whig party in which they had been bred and fell in with the Tory ; and ever since your Lordship will find them in all the black lists of the Seymours, the Musgroves, &c." ^ But, indeed, there were two distinct motives besides "pique and in- terest," which, even before Godolphin's partnership with Marlborough, decided many to relax their Whig opinions. The first was their view of Continental politics in relation to an over-taxed population. The second was more im- portant. The Church and the Dissenters were becoming pawns in the political game. They now appeared as parties within a party, and their most insignificant sections gained a factitious importance by their spurious association with the players of the pieces. "... From these intrusions it comes to pass that upon any contentions and disputes that arise between the two great parties of the nation . . . they mutually asperse one another under the odious appellations of the minor party which sometimes lurks among them." ^ We could not adduce stronger instances than the pas- sages we have chosen of how the Junto and the Bank contrived within ten years to transform and confound the ' Somers Tra cts, v ol. iii. p. 74- ' Hid., vol. ii. p. 272. P 226 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES cant catchwords, nor a stronger vindication of Boling- broke's eventual endeavour to reconstruct a "national" party. As a last word on our contention, let us cite three apt paragraphs from Bolingbroke's works. " The Whig party in general acquired great and just popularity in the reign of Charles II. by the clamour they raised against the conduct of that prince in foreign affairs. They who succeeded to the name rather than the principles of this party after the Revolution, and who have had the adminis- tration of the government in their hands with very little interruption ever since, pretending to act on the same principles, have run into an extreme as vicious, and as contrary to all the rules of good policy, as that which their predecessors complained against. The old Whigs complained of the inglorious figure we made whilst our Court was the bubble and our King the pensioner of France, and insisted that the growing ambition and power of Louis XIV. should be opposed in time. The modern Whigs boasted and still boast of the glorious figure we made whilst we reduced ourselves by their councils, and under their administration, to be the bubbles of our pensioners, that is, of our allies ; and whilst we measured our efforts in war, and the continuation of them, without any regard to the interest and abilities of our own country, without a just and sober regard, such an one as contem- plates objects in their true light and sees them in their true magnitude, to the general system of power in Europe ; and, in short, with a principal regard merely to particular interests at home and abroad. I say at home and abroad, because it is not less true that they have sacrificed the wealth of their country to the forming and maintaining a party at home, than that they have done so to the forming and maintaining, beyond all pretences of necessity, aUiances abroad." ^ " One party had given their whole attention, during several years, to the project of enriching themselves and impoverishing the rest of the nation, and, by these and other means, of establishing their dominion, and under the ^ Works, vol. vii. pp. 340-341. CHURCH AND STATE 227 Government and with the favour of a family, who were foreigners, and therefore might beheve that they were estabhshed on the throne by the goodwill and strength of this party alone. This party were so intent on these views , . . that they did not advert in time to the necessary consequences of the measures they abetted ; nor did they consider that the power they raised, and by which they hoped to govern their country, would govern them by the very rod of iron they forged, and would be the power of a prince or minister, not that of a party long. Another party continued sour, sullen, and inactive, with judgments so weak, and passions so strong that even experience, and a severe one surely, was lost upon them. They waited, like the Jews, for a Messiah that may never come ; and under whom, if he did come, they would be strangely disappointed in their expectations of glory, triumph, and universal do- minion." ^ But "a country party must be authorised by the voice of the country ... a party thus constituted is ■ improperly called party. It is the nation speaking and acting in the discourse and conduct of particular men." ^ The breakwater, so to speak, against the new party in Church and State was removed by the death of Prince George. Marlborough and Godolphin had been con- strained to court him, and he had perpetually checked their depredations. It is in 1708 that we first hear the new-fangled terms. " Winnington is what they call an Old Whig, Lord Herbert (of Cherbury) what they call Lord Treasurer's Whig," ^writes Peter Wentworth of the Bewdley election in the January of that year. Anne was left defence- less against her old friends and new enemies. Hence- forward the bulk of the Whigs were believers in a set of men rather than in a series of measures, and became a solvent in the State rather than a consolidation of its forces. The composition of this party was as miscellaneous as that 1 Works, vol. viii. pp. l6 and 1 7, and cf. " Eleven Opinions about Mr. H y," P- 35- ' " Dissertation on Parties," Letter 4, ' Wentworth Papers, p. 69. 228 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of their opponents. There were the personal partisans of Marlborough and Godolphin, like Stanhope, Townshend, Lechmere, and Mainwaring, who, by the way, had once been Jacobite. There were old Whigs as anxious as the Tories to turn them out.^ There were the adherents of the Junto like Walpole, Wharton, Portland, Bolton, Rutland, Burnet, and Stamford.^ There were the violent Republicans whose head was Sunderland. There were such of the old Whigs as did not desert. Among these should be ranked Scarborough, Richmond, Stair, Kent, Barnard, and above all Pulteney. Jekyl, too, who is a typical specimen, lived until 1738, and disdaining the new Whiggery of Walpole Pacha, voted against the Court of the first two Georges. And there were oscillators like the vivacious Mansel, who from being a violent Harleyite became a convert to the Junto in the autumn of 171 1, but again returned to the fold; or the " dismal " Nottingham, that " Don Diego " who in the same year capitulated to the Marlboroughites, that " Habakkuk Slyboots " who " persuaded the Dissenters into acquies- cence,^ who caballed alternately with Wharton, Schiitz, and Kreyenberg, who was the hero of Swift's " Excellent New Song," who "neglected too much both to advance a singing creature at the opera," * who will " quit my best friends while I'm not-in-game ; " and survived amphibious during the reign of the first George ; on the one hand promoting the exiled Bolingbroke's return, on the other intriguing for Bernstorff against Bothmar, and with Lechmere, Bolton, Cadogan, and Roxburgh against Sunderland in 1720.* Besides these, there were also such as supported the Junto simply from disaffection to the throne or disgust with the Church ; those who promoted the battlefield as an arena 1 Cf. "Eleven Opinions about Mr. H y," p. 37. "^ See Pauli, p. 353. " Cf. Arbuthnot's "John Bull." * Cf New Atalantis," p. 120, and the rhyme : — " Say can base Greber's Peg inflame The sober Earl of Nottingham," &c., which refers to Mrs. Tofts. ' Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 144. CHURCH AND STATE 229 for premiums; those, who had been too highly obliged to quit ; those who had been guilty of corruption and dreaded inquiry ; and a section who believed that all Tories were Jacobites, but most of whom were subsequently themselves perverts to Toryism. If we examine the Tory muster, elements no less motley, though far more definite, bewilder us. The old Tories of the previous reign were represented by Musgrave, Howe, Seymour, and Paget. The new Tories, by Harleyites like Orkney, Dartmouth, or Anglesea, Portmore and Rivers, who had to reckon even more with Rochester, Buckingham, and Shrewsbury than with the moderate Whigs. There were inveterate Jacobites like Jersey or Atterbury ; and occasional ones like Ormonde. There were indifferent intriguers like Beaufort. There were the Whimsicals or strong Hanoverian Tories, presided over by Sir Thomas Hanmer, one of the ablest men in the House of Commons, who had married the Duchess of Grafton, who was also taunted with cabals for the Pretender .1 There was the October Club^ or extreme Church and Country party, largely leavened with Jacobites both platonic and actual. And above all there were the followers of Bolingbroke — Granville, Harcourt, Windham, Phipps, Bromley, and Moore, who designed to break the Whigs and present a national phalanx to the successor. Outside both parties were the grandees who imagined that predominance was their fee-simple, and who bullied each party by turns to perpetuate their im- portance. Such was the notorious Earl of Mar, who changed sides no less than four times in fourteen years before he headed the Jacobites against George I. Such in a less degree those who were all "for money, and offices." ^ They resembled that Gascon mentioned by Bolingbroke, " who, being turned out of the Minister's door, leaped in again at his window."* Of these the Whigs made far cleverer use than the Tories. Argyle's 1 Macpherson, ii. 369. ^ See^ost, ch. viii. ' Macpherson, ii. S74-' ■• " Spirit of Patriotism." Works, vol. vii. p. 35. 230 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES defection and agitation for the repeal of the Union did more during the last two years of Queen Anne to baffle Bolingbroke than all the deep-laid concert of the Junto strategists with the Hanoverian emissaries. On each side pique and ambition, as always, often swayed opinion. " Out of power, out of humour." i The House of Commons that in 1702 barely affirmed the clause that made any attempt on the Hanoverian succession high treason, a few years afterwards discovered a flaming zeal to invite over the Princess Sophia. The party that protested its disinterestedness most smugly by the Self-Denial Bill of 1710 had been the uniform antagonist of the measures which disqualified members from posts of profit under the Crown. As one group supplanted the other they mutually stole their clothes. So meaningless and false had the conventional distinctions become that we find Dartmouth in 1713 remarking that the pamphleteers had vacated the ancient boundaries, and spoke only of " English Tory " and " French Tory," of " Hanover Tory " and " Pretender's Tory," of those "for trade and against it," without any classification of the then completely downcast Whigs.^ It may well be asked how it happened that, of two parties equally spht into discordant cliques, one should have steadily prevailed. In the first place, to single out the lowest ground, the Tories effected less for their friends than the Whigs. The grapes were kept constantly dangling before Tantalus. The Church was for a considerable time no participator in the profit, and even after Cowper's de- prival and Marlborough's disgrace, the greater rewards of the Law and the Army were bestowed on comparatively few. Among the Whigs, on the other hand, not only was the recompense instant and wholesale, but the party regards were directed towards the apathetic Elector. Over and over again, towards the close of Anne's reign, we find Schiitz appealing to the Electoral money-chest for subsidies 1 Ralph, " The Other Side," p. 246. 2 Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Coram., nth Rep. App., pt. v. p. 318. CHURCH AND STATE 231 to content the hungry Scotch peers.^ Over and over again George was assured that writhout a more liberal disburse- ment his chances would be annihilated. But the frugal and wary German spared at once his confidence and his coffers. He was much too concerned with the Brandenburg pretensions or the Duchy of Luneburg to scheme for a reversion which only interested him as a bargain. Robe- thon, King William's foi'mer secretary, an excellent English scholar, the Earl of Pembroke's friend, and Bothmar, re- lieved him of all anxiety. As early as 1706 all the important bills of the Whig party went through Bothmar's hands. A further reason with reference to Hanover consists in the Electoral predilections, Sophia was the patroness and pupil of Leibnitz. George was brought up in a latitudi- narian atmosphere. His family could have scant sym- pathy with a party of bigoted clericals and insular loyalists. Another cause of the Whig success was that their feuds were not internecine. While Bolingbroke was pursuing Harley, and Hanmer contravening both ; while Jersey, Ormonde, and Atterbury went one way, Windham and Harcourt another ; while Strafford was too proud to serve with Prior ; while the October Club itself comprised such opposites as Hanmer and Shippen, Bathurst and Mostyn, the Whigs, with all divergences, cohered in their main purpose. Moreover, the generality of the Whigs had better heads, and, until Bolingbroke's precipitate displacement of officers, complete control of the army.^ The reason lies deeper than the causes advocated or the energies displayed. While the Tories resembled numberless detachments march- ing in conflicting directions, though with simultaneous step, the Whigs, though with conflicting step, marched to a simultaneous rendezvous. It was this note that Swift struck ' Cf. Macpherson, vol. ii. passim. These proved very expensive to every Government. They farmed the Post Office to such an extent that it was ironi- cally called "The Scotch Office." See ibid. In November 171 1 the Duke of Beaufort had a thousand-pound note sent him by a messenger. The Duke told him 'twas certainly meant for some Scotch lord, and gave it back. Wentworth Papers, p. 216. 2 Kemble, State Papers. Schulenburg to Leibnitz (March 31, 1714), p. 491. 2 32 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES in his telling simile of " the faggot." The bundle of the Tories was as loose as that of the Whigs was compact. In Bolingbroke's own description " the two parties were in truth become factions in the strict sense of the word. I was of one, and I own the guilt ; which no man of the other would have a good grace to deny. In this respect they were alike, but here was the difference ; one was well united, well conducted, and determined to their future as well as to their present objects. Not one of these advan- tages attended the other. . . . The Whigs desired nothing more than to have it thought that the successor was theirs, if I may repeat an insolent expression which was held at that time. . . . The Jacobites insinuated industriously the same thing, and represented that the establishment of the House of Hanover would be the establishment of the Whig party. . . . The cause of the succession was supported more for the sake of the party or faction than for the sake of the nation. . . . The art of the Whigs was to blend, as undistinguishably as they could, all their party interests with those of the succession, ... as no man is reputed a friend to Christianity beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees who does not acknowledge the Papal supremacy ; so here no man was reputed a friend to the Protestant succession who was not ready to acknowledge their supremacy."^ And the Whigs were never constrained by theory or cramped by doctrines. Such as imagine that they saved their country, as it were, by book, and referred every move to a written constitution, cannot have studied their policy. Somers ^ and Cowper were the cool and collected players of a deep-laid game. Their moves were determined silently, in conclave, and years in advance. The Tories, on the other hand, unprincipled as the majority were, were con- ' Essay, "Of the State of Parties." Bolingbroke's Works, vol. vii. pp. 266-274. ^ To what we have already said about Somers should be added Swift's dictum of this " extraordinary genius," that " whatever attempt has hitherto been made with any appearance of conduct or probability of success to restore the dominion of that party was infallibly contrived by him." "Last Four Years." Works, Vol. V. p. 172. CHURCH AND STATE 233 stantly invoking history and precedent. They were the party of etiquette. They were hampered by mediaeval doctrines. For them there was no open slate ; and when BoHngbroke endeavoured to rationalise their prepossessions and to concentrate their aspirations, he did so to deaf ears and with short shrift. The struggle of the reign, viewed in broad aspect and denuded of private motive, was between the supremacies of impersonal law and personal prerogative, between a Revolution title and a Scripture title both in Church and State, between the secularisation of the holy and the sanctification of the secular, between the middle ages and the middle classes. That struggle is not yet con- cluded. We have said that the Tory Churchmen were hampered by " mediaeval doctrines." ^ It becomes neces- sary to consider, however briefly, what these doctrines were. "Passive obedience" was a dogma that, like so many others, sprang from a perversion of St. Paul. It was what Bolingbroke termed^ "false law, false reason, and false gospel." "Subjects," preached Sharp, "must obey pas- sively when they cannot obey actively." ^ His text was the 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where, however, " resists the power " bears out the constitutional view which we shall shortly see was taken by Bolingbroke and Swift. " F'or a man," wrote Bishop Sanderson, " to take up arms (oiJensive or defensive) against a lawful sovereign, being a thing in itself unlawful, may not be done, . . . no, not for the redemption of the whole world." The word " lawful " begs the whole question. Bohngbroke rationahsing, and Swift* legalising, the doctrine, maintained that the obe- dience of the subject was owed to the whole legislative power delegated by all the people, in scriptural phrase, to 1 Cf. " Political Instructions for the Use of Gentlemen," p. 51. "No sove- reign has a lawful authority but what is derived from Heaven." 2 "Dissertation on Parties," Letter i. " Sermon before the House of Lords, 1 700. * Cf. passim, and especially Swift's " Sentiments of a Church of England Man," and Bolingbroke, "Dissertation on Parties," Letters 2 and 9; and " Idea of a Patriot King." Works, vol. vii. pp. 90 and 91. 234 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the "magistrate," and not to some occupant of the throne, who might have outraged the people or defied the Legisla- ture. Sacheverell's speech before the Lords expressly denied that " non-resistance " was " applicable " to the Revo- lution, the " supreme power " not being then resisted.^ As Bolingbroke himself expressed it, the Church of England " had been made a law of the country." ^ . . . " The Refor- mation was established, not only in outward form, but in the hearts of men. It was grown up to be a part, and a favourite part, of the constitution. The spirit of liberty had blended our civil and religious rights together, and was become equally jealous of both. Let us add (for we may add it with great justice) that the Church of England was, by the sobriety, wisdom, and sanctity of her institution, established on a rock ; that this rock was defended by the greatest number of excellent men which any Christian Church could boast of ; and from all this let us conclude that, as she was able to resist the attacks of those sects, which private conceit, mistaken zeal, some enthusiasm, and perhaps some faction, had nursed up in her own bosom, so she was better able than any other Protestant Church to defend herself, and the State too, against the fallacies, the seductions, and the violence of Rome."^ Ralph, in his " History," * speaking of the clergy in 1689, affirms that " they took oaths in no other sense than a peaceable sub- mission to the powers that were." In fine, "passive obe- dience," which supplied at once the stalking-horse for hypocrisy, the stumbling-block of conscience, and the stone of offence with which the Whigs mauled the Tories, was really the tribute of the Church to Caesar, the recognition of authority embodied in the three estates of the realm. These very clergymen to whom Ralph refers were the Non-jurors, the henchmen of the Bishops of Ely, Bath, ^ Sacheverell's Speech, London, 1710, p. 7. ■^ " Remarks on the History of England," Letter 18. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii. p. 218. ' "Remarks on the History of England," Letter 18. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii. p. 220. * Vol. ii. p. 166. CHURCH AND STATE 235 Canterbury, and Chichester. Sharp himself, who had thus excused "active" obedience, was among the ten bishops who that very year assembled for a scheme of toleration, comprehension, and revision of the liturgy. Allegiance was owed to the State as a whole, and not to the symbols of a sovereign. It was political, not personal ; to the Crown, and not to the King. If " passive obedience " was a misinterpretation of the Epistles, " Divine right " was a mystification of the Penta- teuch. "The Lord's anointed" was a reluctant compro- mise with a theocratic ideal. But, except in Cromwell's experiment, England had never approximated to "the kingdom of grace ; " least of all had the Church Pro- testant ever yielded it her sanction. Bolingbroke afforded Pope his phrase of " the Divine right to govern well," ^ and most acutely maintained that the ridiculous distinctions of de jure and de facto are opposed not only to sense but to experience. Hereditary right, he argues, is itself a proof of a national choice, which must agree to the selection of a family before succession can be perpetuated. Whether the Legislature confers a title on one or on many is immaterial to the principle.^ It is a mistake to suppose that the great mass of the clergy deceived themselves by a scholastic phantom. Doubtless the followers of Lake of Exeter — the " High-flyers," and afterwards Leslie Hicks, Brett, and Dodwell, nourished the illusion from prejudice and policy ; but the taunt of " indefeasibility " can no more be fastened ^ "Patriot King." Works, vol. viii. p. 92. Bolingbroke contends that the " right divine " of the kingly ofifice, the just authority of kings, and the due obedience of subjects, is " discoverable by so clear and so simple an use of our intellectual faculties, that it may be said properly enough to be revealid to us by God." . . . " It follows, therefore, that he who breaks the laws of his country resists the ordinance of God, that is, the law of his nature." "The office of king is, then, of right divine, and their persons are to be reputed sacred. As men they have no such right, no such sacredness belonging to them ; as kings they have both, unless they forfeit them. Reverence for government obliges to reverence governors, who for the sake of it are raised above the level of other men; but reverence for governors, independently of government, any further than reverence would be due to their virtues, if they were private men, is preposterous and repug- nant to common-sense." Ibid., pp. 91-94- Cf also pp. 95-96. 2 " Patriot King." Works, vol. vii. p. 132. 236 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES on the Church at large than that of repubhcanism on the whole body of Dissenters. There is a fine passage in Arbuthnot's "John Bull," where the Church is figured as John Bull's mother. She is an old-world dame, whose household must be kept decently and in order. Her clothes are laid in lavender. She detests both tinsel finery and pretentious plainness. Dignified holiness and gentle home- liness are her virtues. She is neither scold nor slattern. She seeks to reform by example rather than to punish by correction, but she will not countenance usurpations nor compound with fraud. She neither arrogates nor derogates. All she claims is the exercise of her pieties in peace with her neighbours. Such was the mission of the Church till she renounced it for partisanship. She was tossed, though fortunately she was not wrecked, by the storms of secular controversy ; she was corroded, though she was not dis- solved, by the salt waves of acrimonious faction ; she was rent, though she was not riven, by the bolts of colliding dynasties. Her new-fangled opponents saw "no necessity for a national faith, and styled it ' the religion of the magis- trate.' " 1 It was an affair of policy. On the one hand the Whigs, who made tools of the Dissenters, scoffed at any curtailment of complete worldliness ; on the other, Atter- bury, a minion of priestcraft, sought to involve the State in the sacerdotal Caesarism of a miniature Rome. "Ten or fifteen of this number," writes Sir Rowland Gwynn, in 1710, to Robethon, for the information of the Hanoverian Court, " have made it their business to preach that the Church is in danger, though the Church enjoys all the privileges that the law does allow them ; but the clergymen in England would have the same power over the people that the Church of Rome had in the time of its dominion over us. The Queen and Parliament have now declared that they will maintain the Church as established by law, so that they will not gain anything by their noise, only this Ministry have blown them up to recommend them and their party ' Swift's Works, vol. iv. p. 62. Let us here add in proof of Swift's general truthfulness that his private letters re-echo his public pamphlets. CHURCH AND STATE 237 to govern the helm, which point they have gained, and the poor ambitious priests will be left in the lurch. The priests handle edged tools which any prince may cut them with when he pleases, for the laws are so severe against their encroachments that they are in danger of treason or prce- munire upon the least fault ; and the civil government hath been so jealous of their impertinence that the Convocation of the clergy cannot do anything but by commission from the King and Queen, and they cannot debate upon or resolve any points but such as are permitted in their com- mission, and which resolved, they are not valid unless the Queen approves them, so that you see our Church is limited by law." 1 " By prerogative " would have been the logical in- ference. Had Anne been of her father's mind, how easily would the nation have risen against these decisions of Convocation ! But Whig misrepresentations, like those of this letter, carried conviction to Erastian ears. Long afterwards, when. Dr. Robinson, the Bishop of London, and Court rival of Dr. Clarke, waited on the Princess Caroline (herself, at this period, a Tory) to convince her, if she had religious scruples, she answered, " it was very impertinent considering she had refused to be an Empress because she remained a Protestant." ^ The secular protest of Protestantism always caught the popu- lar breeze more than the spiritual. Politically, English Protestantism was and is an enforcement of the lesson of the tribute money — a moral scouted by Rome and eluded by Ritualism. But its heavenly protest is against selfishness, and this was and is constantly frustrated by the self-seeking of dignitaries and the subtleties of theo- logians. The very dispute, in 1702, about Convocation, to which Gwynn refers, hinged greatly on preferment.^ It was waged by an upper and lower house that mimicked the greater houses of Westminster. The lower body taxed the upper with Presbyterianism, because the claim of being ^ Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 207. '^ Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 41. ' Boyer, p. 490. 238 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES summoned by hierarchic power alone was disallowed. But their protest engendered a ludicrous dilemma. They opposed the bishops, and by such opposition shared the reproach they hurled. "To purge themselves," they came suddenly into a conclusion that Episcopacy was of Divine and apostolic right.i The "Divine right" then of the Primate was actually put into conflict with the " Divine right " of the sovereign, and, since the same theory supported both, a stultifying solecism was the result. But though faction was the fiend both of the Church and of the State, the esprit-de-corps which banded the Church against State dictation also preserved it from Papal aggression. The real champions of St. Germain in the Church were as few as, for the most part, un- influential.^ A stray Jacobite parson might be employed as a spy 8 abroad, but the Court regarded the Pretender as " impracticable." If the Romanist Lady Jersey con- sistently intrigued for the Pretender, the Protestant Lady Masham* — despite assurances to. the contrary — seems not to have influenced Anne in favour of her half-brother.^ Aldrich, it is true, who was Dean of Christchurch — a Jacobite hotbed — was a zealot who de- scended so low as to contrive the " hieroglyphical figures " (with allusions to the Pretender) of the Oxford Almanack ; * but even Leslie (himself the son of an Irish bishop) wrote in 1713 : " The case stated between the Church of Rome and the Church of England." If Brett defended Confession, and Hickes the sacrifice of the Mass, Dodwell was contented with attacking Lay Bap- tism. All these writers were more concerned with the independence of the Church on the State than with 1 Burnet, p. 727. ^ " ... The Jacobites consist of some members of the Church of England and of all the Roman Catholics of the kingdom, the first of whom upon a prin- ciple of conscience, the others of duty, inclination, and interest, &c. . . . This party is of itself hardly considerable enough to be mentioned." Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 270. ' Cf. the case of Taylor mentioned in Portland MS., p. 692. ^ Cf. Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 593. ° Ibid., vol. ii. p. 593. ' Beyer, p. 490. CHURCH AND STATE 239 Romanising encroachments, or even that union with the Gallican Church which one of them proposed. Only a section of the " high-flying " element were for the Pretender, and even these not unless he would abjure his faith. The fifty new churches — one of the first manifestations of Harley's close relations with the Queen in the spring of 1711 ; the proposal of Convocation by which coals were levied under contribution to kindle the fires of worship ^ — were as much a counterblast to the Papists (who in London numbered sixty thousand,^ and whose "agents and missionaries," in Sacheverell's words, " swarmed about this great city "),^ as they were to the schisms necessitated by a population, three hun- dred thousand of whom were unaccommodated by the Establishment.* And the same instinct of self-preserva- tion confederated them also against the very disappointed Dissenters whom they had in 1689 been willing to include. As late as 1714, Smalridge, the Bishop of Bristol, was in league with Nottingham " to set all things on the right foot," as they called it.^ The Dissenters outnum- bered the Papists by the proportion of forty to one.® They formed " the most spreading branch of the Whig party that profess Christianity, and the only one zealous for any particular system of it." ^ Add to this that many of the Presbyterians professed Socinian latitude. True, 1 A duty of one shilling per chaldron. Boyer, p. 493. ^ Cf. Bothmar's letter to the Electress of April 21, 171 1, quoted in Pauli, p. 364, and Kemble, State Papers, p. 479. " On voudroit floigner les Catholiques de Londres. Cela ne paroist pas practicable. On les a conte a cette occasion et on a trouve m : 60 personnes de cette religion dans cette ville. . . . Les ecclesi- astique auroient en meme temps grand besoin d'une reforme mais personne veut toucher icy a une corde si delicate ; ils se m^lent tous de politique," &c. ' Sacheverell's Speech, London, 1710, p. 12. • Swift, in Examiner, No. 42, says that Sir W. Petty as early as 1666 com- puted that some London parishes were two hundred times larger than others. Since that date, he continues, and the immense increase of population and building, chapels of ease had been made. In 171 1 at least 300,000 were without churches and driven to worship with the Dissenters. 5 Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 18. ^ Swift's Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction. ' Examiner, No. 36, Apiil 12, 171 1. 240 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES they supported Harley in the elections of 1710, but they were soon brought by Nottingham and Wharton to acquiesce in their introduction on the Whig behalf of the measure most odious to them. They were " bubbled " by the very leaders whom they served, and who pro- fessed to serve them. It was not long after their con- gregations rose in thanksgiving at the signal of the Queen's death that they had reason to repent their adhesion to Walpole, who begrudged them grace at the expense of quiet. True also, that some of the Quakers were Tories and even Jacobites ; but the majority counteracted the Tories because the Tories were for the Church. The Dissenters smarted not so much under political as social disabilities. The Presbyterians, who in the time of Charles II. clamoured for "the kingdom of grace," were now vociferous for the goods of this world. They persecuted the Church by whom they were ostracised. We do not for one moment defend the in- justices that they had suffered ; but the days of Queen Anne were not those of their martyrdom. When the " Church in danger " debate was raging in 1706, Sharp asserted that the " academies " of the Dissenters were a standing peril to the Church, and provoked Wharton's retort of the " Non-juring Schools." ^ Moreover, the new-fangled distinction of " High " and " Low " Church lent the Dissenters additional party strength. In the same debate Hooper, Bishop of Wells, deprecated the division as " invidious " and jeopardising the Church. Sacheverell himself repeated Sharp's accusation.^ The broad schemes of William for a comprehensive Church had evaporated, and the Church was driven by self-de- fence into bigoted contempt and sullen isolation. Such, then, was the condition of parties in Church and State when the Tories regained the reins in 1710. It remains that we should epitomise their few principles, and indicate Bolingbroke's view of their mission. In the first ' Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 494. "^ Sacheverell's Speech, p. 9. CHURCH AND STATE 241 place/ they aimed at "the monarch and the multitude," while they disbelieved in the governing capacities of the rising bourgeoisie. " If I was a Minister," writes a corre- spondent of Harley in the autumn of 171 1, " I would despise all the artifices of the modern Whigs on this head, and I would retrieve the prerogatives in relation to peace and war." 2 They desired that the monarch should exercise his constitutional prerogatives,^ as opposed to the extravagant abuses to which the Whigs of William gave real, and those of George II. a simulated assistance. This was the kind of which Bolingbroke poignantly observes, in his "Remarks on History,"* as to Henry VIII., "Because he had governed ill, it was put in his power to govern worse, and liberty was undermined for fear it should be overthrown." But this was not the kind safeguarded by the Tories.^ There is not one of these prerogatives which does not now subsist," and yet there was not one which the Marlborough-Godolphin Administration, falsifying the old Whig traditions, had not sought to annul and assume.'' They are a bulwark against predominant influence. They would still prevent us from any temptation " to confound the cause of the King with the cause of his Minister ; " ^ and, except for them, the Crown is unrepresented in the Constitu- tion. The monarch's first personal prerogative is to appoint and dismiss his Ministers, "a right of appeal from the Cabinet ^ Swift asserts, in No. 35 of the Examiner, that the Tories are singularly unaffected by prosperity and do not flatter the Crown. ■^ Portland Papers (Hist. MS. Comra.), vol. \. p. 94. ' Cf. the remarkable pamphlet, " Eleven Opinions about Mr. H— y," p. 20 : " Those Hereticks in Politicks who think Kings and Queens have nothing to do, to take cognizance of their national affairs, but are to sit still, give themselves up to supine, sleepy enjoyment, and leave their great officers to manage for them," &c. * V^forks, vol. ii. p. 107. = (y " On the Spirit of Patriotism." Works, vol. vii. p. 44. * Swift would have agreed with Mr. Gladstone's comments compressed below. Cf. Examiiur, No. 35 : "The Tories think that without a due share of power the sovereign cannot protect them. The lawful authority of the prince is not to be contravened." It is supported "by many known laws, both statute and common." 7 "They are for clipping the prerogative, and their vote would be for a Commonwealth." Swift's Works, vol. iv. p. 62. ' Dedication to Walpole. Q 242 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES to the Parliament, or the nation, or both."^ As Mr. Gladstone has pointed out, this right was unsuccessfully, but neither unfairly nor unwholesomely, exercised by William IV. in November 1834. It secured to the Conservatives "tenure without power," but he might have added that it unmasked and exploded "an enlightened-spirit-of-the-age Liberal- moderate-Reform Government." When Anne exercised it by recalling Harley,^ she gave expression to the popular will that was drowned by a Government which had over- turned the constitutional balance of power and shifted its centre of gravity to the House of Lords. The second pre- rogative is that of influencing Ministerial deliberations. Queen Anne presided over her councils, but her voice had been neutralised. We shall again cite Mr. Gladstone : " The . . . power which gives the monarch an undoubted locus standi in all the deliberations of a Government . . . remains as it was." ^ And whenever a Ministry is changed, "the whole power of the State periodically returns into the royal hands." The renewal by George IV. of the Charter of Administration of the day in 1829 was the first surrender of this " independent kingship " which Queen Anne had exercised when, by a movement of her fan, she made the reluctant Bolingbroke acquiesce in the cessation of hostilities by the Duke of Ormonde.* But the Crown possesses also what may be termed impersonal rights. There is the appointment of bishops, of which the Whigs tried to deprive Queen Anne. It was, as Mr. Gladstone instances,* enforced in our own time by the appointment of Dr. Hampden against the remonstrance of the Primate. There is the prerogative of the Royal Warrant, which Mr. Gladstone himself utilised in the repeal of the Pur- chase Act. There is the prerogative of peace and war. » " Gleanings," by W. E. Gladstone, vol. i. p. 77. ' Anne dismissed Godolphin by her own initiative and without Harley's knowledge. Cf. Bolingbroke's "Remarks on the History of England," Letter 24. Works, vol. ii. p. 328. 5 " Gleanings," by W. E. Gladstone, vol. ii. p. 77. ^ Cf. Hardwicke Papers. » "Gleanings," by W. E. Gladstone, vol. i. p. 80. CHURCH AND STATE 243 Of this the Whigs persistently struggled to despoil the Queen, who yearned for peace years before it could be made. Mr. Gladstone, again, cites the instance, not fifty years ago, of the Chinese War, which was carried on despite its condemnation "by the representatives of the people, the stewards of the public purse." ^ And there is the prerogative of dissolution, which the Whigs strained every nerve, even to the extent of conspiring with foreign interference, to abrogate in 1710. Mr. Gladstone once more quotes the case of 1852, which "enabled the Govern- ment, supported only by a minority, to perform the work of the session and to carry the supplies before asking the jvidgment of the constituencies on its title to exist." ^ One prerogative — that of disapproving the choice of Speaker — Queen Anne deliberately dispensed with in the perturbed state of Ireland towards the close of 1713, when Shrews- bury was at the helm in Dublin.^ As to that for proposing grants of public money, which, according to the same authority, "has been seriously and increasingly infringed, to the great detriment of the nation,"* Queen Anne dis- carded its necessity by her private munificence, which not even the Marlboroughs could impoverish. It has been stated, and again by Mr. Gladstone,^ "that the ofHce of First Minister only seems to have obtained regular recog- nition as the idea of personal government by the action of the king faded and became invisible." But though Queen Anne presided over her councils and even instructed them, never was a "First Minister" more absolute than Harley.^ He advised and conferred with his sovereign, whereas his predecessors had contradicted and bullied her. But his own rule ended when he followed their example. It was Queen Anne's desire to prove a " patriot queen." 1 " Gleanings," by W. E. Gladstone, vol. i. p. 80. "^ Ibid., p. 84. 3 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 380. * " Gleanings," by W. E. Gladstone, vol. i. ^ Ibid. ' Cf. Bolingbroke's own statement in his essay "On the State of Parties," Works, vol. vii. p. 264 : " This gave him the sole confidence of the Queen, put him more absolutely at the head of the party that came into power, and invested him with all the authority that a First Minister could have in those days." 244 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES These, then, were the prerogatives upheld and respected by the Tories, impaired and derided by the Whigs at a time when " the Parhament decided what should be done, the Court and the Queen, who should do it." ^ They were the more important because a large proportion of the people was devoid of representation. And this leads us to a second head of the subject. Professor Goldwin Smith, in an Appendix to his "Three Enghsh Statesmen," has indulged in severe strictures on a celebrated speech of Disraeli which asserts that the Tory statesmen of Anne were the originators of " Parliamentary reform." The Professor can find not a vestige of foundation except the qualifying bill of 1710, which was in the landed interest, and the turgid protests of the Jacobite Shippen. Not a measure, he indignantly protests, touched Parliamentary representation. But Disraeli did not speak without know- ledge ; and the Professor's invective is impatient of study. In the first place it would be absurd to expect either from Whigs or Tories of the century's beginning even a glimmer of an enlargement of direct representation undreamed of by either till towards its close.^ Parliamentary reform for the politicians of Queen Anne meant the purity of ' Bagehot's Essay on Bolingbroke. A most imperfect, but suggestive treatise. ^ In a pamphlet, "The Representative [i.e. Representation^ of London and Westminster in Parliament, Examined and Considered" (1702), the Tory efforts in this direction are expressly noticed and commended (pages 7 and 8). There is also a bill mentioned " which provided that in such burroughs as have fewer than five score votes of electors, the freeholders of the hundred should be allowed to vote. For what reasons the said bill was dropt the author knows not, but that gave the first life and motion to these thoughts of his." The representa- tion of England is there given as 80 knights for 40 shires, with 12 for the 12 of Wales elected by the freeholders of the several counties, and '409 "deputees" for the 204 "cities, burroughs, and ports, with 12 for the 12 of Wales." "Every housekeeper contributing to the Church and poor . . . has a vote, but in some that right of electors is restrained and in others enlarged profusely." He urges the increase of boroughs based on taxation, while he shuns "any parallel of Oceana's Agrarian." He proves the most unrepresented to be Leicester, Essex, and Middlesex. "Those who bear the burden should enjoy the privilege," is his maxim (p. 31). Yet London has no more members (four) than Oxford and Cambridge. The tract appears to be written by a very moderate Whig. This is the only instance I have found of any practical scheme for the enlargement of representation. It is interesting as showing that Disraeli's Reform Bill was based on the rating principle of the days of Queen Anne. CHURCH AND STATE 245 election and the diminution of undue influence which made representation genuine ; for the member of Parlia- ment is, as Bolingbroke expresses it, a " trustee." ^ We have already mentioned several of these measures. No less than seven Acts were passed in King William's reign to prevent undue influence, and one of them was grounded on the threats and promises of officers of the Excise.^ In a passage shortly to be quoted we shall see what store Bolingbroke set by them. According to his constitu- tional view, the province of private (which we now term "public") opinion is "to represent such things as they judge to be of use to the public." It may support its representations by "all the reasons that have determined their opinions. . . . All beyond this belongs to their superiors." * It is for Parliament to consider, decide, and enact. The same party who alternately impugned or exaggerated the prerogative paid scant attention to the inviolacy of election and the incorruptibility of the candidature. The upholders of a lawful prerogative were also those of unbribed constituencies. Already towards the wane of William's career bills against bribery had been brought in by the Tories. On February 13, 1701, they introduced resolutions against bribery and frivolous petitions, which at that period of unseating by majority did so much to destroy representation ; on February 15, resolutions against the intermeddling in elections by peers and Lords Lieutenants of the counties.* Throughout, moreover, and from its vetoed inception, the Tories championed the Triennial Bill as the truest shield against Ministerial despotism.^ On May 3 of 1701, the Tories brought in an Act for taking away the privilege for debt.^ 1 "Dissertation on Parties," Letter 4. * Ibid., Letter 18. ' Dedication to Walpole, ' ' Dissertation on Parties." < Luttrell, V. pp. 17, 18, 45 ; and cf. Henry Carey's lines — " For when election is not free, In vain we boast of liberty," &c. Cited Disraeli's " Calamities of Authors," p. 102. s Cf. Burnet. ^ Luttrell, V. p. 1 74. Cf. also ibid., p. 65, where Harley in a speech of June 1701 records the purgation of "members guilty of bribery and corruption." 246 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Tory bills against bribery also recur in the Februaries of 1708, 1710/ and of 1712.^ In December of the latter year, it was ordered that "on instruction to committee they have power to alter the oath taken by the freeholder." For the whole question of Tory reform of Parliamentary corruption the pamphlet of " Faults on both Sides " ^ may be consulted. Similar provisions were proposed for Ireland in the autumn of 1713.* The very bill of this same year, which provided that knights should be qualified by estates of ;£6oo and burgesses by estates of ;^300 ^ value, was an effort to demolish the dictatorship of corporations. The Tory view of these corporations was that they were as much trustees for the freeholders as the knights of the shires. " The inheritance of this privilege is in the whole corporation aggregate, but the benefit, possession, and use is in the persons of those who by the constitution of those charters are appointed to elect." ^ The ballot (unmentioned by the Professor) was already employed by the House in the choice of commissions. To extend the system to elec- tions had been a specific of Wildman and a vision of Har- rington. The Tories held it the thin end of the republican wedge, and opposed it as a measure of secrecy. Sir Peter King's motion for it in December 171 1 was negatived by a majority of 212, and precisely because the Tories regarded it as inimical to liberty.^ And yet Professor Goldwin Smith has the hardihood to declare that Bolingbroke " stood forth to uphold the prerogative of a corrupt and tyrannical House of Commons against the freedom of election," and argues from the absence on both sides of any scheme for suffrage 1 Luttrell, vi. pp. 263, 547. ' Boyer, p. 546. ^ By Harley. Someis Tracts, vol. xii. p. 687. ■* Boyer, p. 652. ° Cf. Boyer's "History," p. 489. The objections raised to this bill "for securing the freedom of Parliament by the further qualifying of members " were (i) the exclusion of unlanded men with skill in business ; (2) it might cause either real or occasional splitting of freeholds and so encourage ' ' land-jobbing ; " (3) it altered the constitution by making the landed interest the trustees of trade ; (4) it would dangerously strengthen the landed military interest. * Proceedings in the Aylesbury Case (1704) on the writ of error. Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 306. ' See Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., vol. v. p. 127. CHURCH AND STATE 247 against the Tories, who alone at this juncture endeavoured to amend the representation ; and all this, although Wal- pole's main argument against reverting to triennial Parlia- ments was that they would democratise England. (TI we turn to Bolingbroke's own works we find an aerial perspective of that verbal solecism — a " national party." " . . . . Whilst a real difference of principles and designs supported the distinction, we were divided into national parties ; and this was misfortune enough. . , . But if the distinction should remain when the difference subsists no longer, the misfortune would be still greater. . . . National interests would be no longer concerned ; at least on one side. They would be sometimes sacrificed, and always made subordinate to personal interests ; and that, I think, is the true characteristic of faction." ^ Detail is our sub- stratum. We shall here sketch a general outline. He designed to restore " The British Spirit." ^ Throughout he admits party motive and private interest, and regrets that at the dawn of his career they should have been conceded so fierce and fatal a play. But one sordid incentive he disclaims — that of lucre ; nor could Harley in all the venom of resentment convict him of it. Bolingbroke maintains in all his political disquisitions that the Whigs of Queen Anne and the combinations of the Junto formed a fresh and insidious distortion even of the violence he deplores. With imaginative energy he transmutes the past in the crucible of the present, and he remoulds, as it were, the shapely relics of the constitution,^ its association ' Dedication to Walpole. Cf. also "Remarks on History," Letter 2: "A spirit of liberty will be always and wholly concerned about national interests and very indifferent about personal and private interests. On the contrary, a spirit of faction will be always and wholly concerned about these, and very indifferent about the others." 2 Cf. inter alia, "The Patriot King." Works, vol. viii. p. 73. Cf. especi- ally "On the Spirit of Patriotism." "Though we have preserved the armour, we have lost the spirit of the constitution." "All is little, and low and mean among us. " Works, vol. viii. pp. 36, 38. 5 In " The Patriot King," p. 135, he says, "Thus we shall imitate the great operations of nature, and not the feeble show and imperfect operations of art ; " — of nature, who " throws out altogether and at once the whole system of every being and the rudiments of all the parts." 248 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of estates in interdependence and not in independence,^ its balance of class representation, its vigilant civil super- vision of either military ^ or sacerdotal encroachment ; while he contrasts the venal reign of stock- jobbing place- men, the turbulent whimsies of new-born nostrums, the dislocation of the ancient orderj ". . . . The trade of Parliament and the trade of funds have grown universal. Men who stood forward in the world have attended to little else. The frequency of Parliaments, that increased their importance, and should have increased the respect for them, has taken off from their dignity ; and the spirit that prevailed, whilst the service in them was duty, has been debased since it became a trade. Few know, and scarce any respect the British Constitution ; that of the Church has been long since derided ; that of the State as long neglected ; and both have been left at the mercy of the men in power, whoever those men were. Thus the Church, or at least the hierarchy, however sacred in its origin or wise in its institution, is become an useless burden to the State ; and the State is become, under ancient and known forms, a new and undefinable monster, composed of a king without monarchical splendour, a senate of nobles without aristocratical independency, and a senate of commons without democratical freedom." * So far we have seen him justified. Walpole's unblush- ing viziership will vindicate him still more ; and, again, Sunderland's attempt to govern England by the peers will unmask the family compact which posed as republican freedom. The question is not whether in the long event England has not benefited by the commercial system. Undoubtedly she has ; but its beginnings were corrupt and hypocritical, and as such they presented themselves to contemporary statesmen, " If," insists Bolingbroke, " a principal end of the Revolution was to secure the nation for the future against all the dangers to which liberty as ' "Dissertation on Parties," Letter 17. '^ Hid., Letter 10. ' Bolingbroke's "A Sketch of History." Works, vol. vii. pp. 368-369. CHURCH AND STATE 249 well as religion had been exposed before the Revolution ; if one of these dangers arose from the corruption that had been employed to create a dependency of the two Houses of Parliament on the Crown ; if this corruption might have succeeded very probably then, had the means been sufficient to support it ; if no provision was made at the Revolution to secure the independency of the two Houses and the freedom of elections against corruptions ; if no provision had been made against this danger since the Revolution proportionable to that increase of the possible means of corruption which hath happened since the Revolution . . . how can it be pretended that all the ends of the Revolution have been already obtained ? They have not most certainly." ^ Walpole freed himself and in part his country from venerated prejudice, but he did so with callousness and cynicism. Never for a moment did he relax the most unscrupulous efforts to blast an en- thusiasm which, if obsolete, was at least sincere.^ He proscribed a fallen party, rose on its ruins, and farmed an unrepresented country with dexterous persistence. That England prospered under the peace which he assured was due in great measure to the gambler's luck which so frequently attends compromise. An absentee monarch, who could not speak the language of a country which bored and puzzled him ; an inherited feud of royal son against royal father, which replaced the war of succession by the wars of the successor, and confined a bloodless conflict to the limits of the palace ; a people worn with dissension and glad to be listless or wallow in gin ; a Continent shredded into ribbons of jealousy and tatters of family complication ; a Church soothed, after unwhole- some irritation, into unwholesome lethargy ; a France bereft of its "grand monarque" and peddled with by a ^ Dedication to Walpole, "Dissertation on Parties."; ^ To the question, " In what instances have the laws been broken, or hath the constitution been invaded by those who govern?" Bolingbroke retorts, "Why do the writers on one side eternally labour to explain away liberty, and to distinguish us out of our constitution ? " He proceeds to urge " Principiis obsta." Ibid. 250 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES servile Regent ; a great General worsted and disabled ; a crowd of intriguing Germans, whose paltry court of grasping mistresses lent stepping-stones to power and emolument ; the " whole swarms of little, noisome, name- less insects," who " hum and buzz in every corner of the court ; " a clever Queen, who, with Tory sympathies, at first detested the man on whose mind she came to rely in her manipulation of a devotedly unfaithful husband, — all these elements, and many more, surrendered England to Walpole and gave him the opportunity of displaying his colossal management of finance. " If the King keeps some Tories in employment," wrote Lewis to Swift on August 10, 1714, "the notion of Whig and Tory will be lost, but that of Court and Country will arise." The prediction came true : only the Court swamped the Country, which was left to welter, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." With better finance England throve and was lulled asleep oblivious of her imperial mission until the clarion of Chatham^ awakened her from her slumbers. And that bugle blew the note of Bolingbroke, the strain that long before proclaimed that England's navy was her weapon and her defence,^ her ocean her barrier and her frontier, her colonies her children, her home-farms, and her capital.^ TThe problem of monarchy repeatedly engrossed Boling- broke. For him there was no spell in the name of king. ' Pitt and his family early consorted much more with Bolingbroke than is usually supposed. (See Marchmont Papers and Suffolk Correspondence.) The passage in the Dedication to Walpole, " A British spirit and the spirit of the British Constitution are one and the same ; and therefore, if ever there arises a British spirit in the British Parliament, vengeance will not overtake the former ; it may be the latter," points prophetically to Chatham, who rose out of the ashes of Walpole, who knew Bolingbroke in his youth and perused him in his age, who in one of his earliest and greatest speeches indignantly asked " Is Britain still a nation ? " ^ " . . . . Like other amphibious animals, we must come occasionally on shore ; but the water is more properly our element, and in it, like them, as we find our greatest security, so we exert our greatest force." Works, vol. vii. p. 216, and also a passage towards the close of his life which repeats the lesson. Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 314. ' "The Patriot King" will "improve and keep ip heart the national colonies, like so many farms of the Mother Country," vol. viii. p. 211. CHURCH AND STATE 251 At the divinities which hedged it round he scoffed.^ But he is never tired of asserting that a mixed constitution under the presidency of a person representing an inbound and integral factor of the whole — " a supreme magistrate,^ having a negative voice in the Legislature"^ — is, by prin- ciple and practice, the best.^ " If a divine, indefeasible, hereditary right to govern a community be once acknow- ledged . . . if the people once acknowledge themselves bound' to such princes by the ties of passive obedience and non- resistance, by an allegiance unconditional, and not recipro- cal to protection ; if a kind of oral law or mysterious cabala, which pharisees of the black gown and long robe are always at hand to report and interpret as a prince desires, be once added, like a supplemental code, to the known laws of the land, then I say such princes have the power, if not the right, given them of commencing tyrants ; and princes who have the power are prone to think that they have the right.'^£j But the sovereign's influence had been cramped by Ministerial dictators, and mauled by cut- throat partisans. Since his maintenance was dependent on Parliament, it was necessary that he should be in sympathy with the country. Education and environment could not be abandoned, as it had been, to haphazard. The Stuarts had sunk from a neglect, now of nurture, now of the nation. The first Pretender intensified both their faults. The first two Georges disregarded them. To behold a sovereign trained to exercise his due prerogatives, worthy to choose, to confer with, and even to correct his coun- cillors ; unwarped by party prejudices, and still less by private ambition, unspoiled by the favouritism of would-be deliverers, who "make a private court at the, public expense," and whom the author compares to " those savages who worship the devil, not because they love him or honour 1 Cf. "Patriot King," Works, vol. vii. pp. 8l, 82, and 83, and introduction to "The Idea of a Patriot King," Works, vol. vii. p. 68. 2 "Remarks on the History of England," Letter 6. Cf. Letter ix., "The supreme member or the head of a political body." ' Ibid., Letter 16, and "Patriot King," Works, vol. viii. p. 97. * "Dissertation on Parties," Letter 9. 252 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES him, or expect any good from him, but that he may do them no hurt ; " if checked, yet "formed in that school out of which the greatest and best of monarchs have come, the school of affliction ; " if welcomed, the re-inspirer of the constitution, the trustee of the people ; the " snatch of fair weather at sea, to repair the damages sustained in the last storm, and prepare to resist the next ; " the distinguisher between cunning and wisdom, aware that the one "knows how to pack the cards," while the other, " how to play the game better ; '' the regarder of his administration " as a single day in the great year of government ; '' the espouser and the proscriber of no party, which " is a political evil," still less of any faction, which " is the worst of all parties ; " the listener to the " voice of his people," as opposed to factious " clamour " and " calumny ; " the establisher of his throne in the hearts of the people ; the winner of a popularity which implies affection, but which absolute monarchs receive " gratis " and apart from the people ; in fine, the national embodiment, as well as the nominal ruler — this was at once an ideal and a prophecy. The ideal produced the " Patriot King ; " the prophecy has been accomplished in our own Patriot Queen. " A new people will seem to arise with a new king. ... A people unoppressed, undis- turbed, unalarmed ; busy to improve their private property and the public stock; fleets covering the ocean, bringing home wealth by the returns of industry, carrying assistance or terror abroad by the direction of wisdom, and asserting triumphantly the right and honour of Great Britain,'^ as far as waters roll and winds can waft them." The " Patriot King" concludes with a pathetic appeal, which should at least disarm its revilers : " Those who live to see such happy days, and to act in so glorious a scene, will perhaps call to mind, with more tenderness of sentiment when he is no more, a man who contributed his mite to carry on so good a work, and who desired life for nothing so much as to see a king of Great Britain the most popular man in 1 This was a phrase which Swift reprobates in his later letters. Cf. Works, vol, xix. p. 242. CHURCH AND STATE 253 his country, and a Patriot King at the head of a united people." Its inspiration, we doubt not, was partly the character of that Elizabeth whom he is never weary of extolling,^ and of that William who would have been sublime had he been able to acclimatise himself to the British air.^ If it was addressed to " Poor Fred," it was certainly not founded on the fact, though it may have been on the possibilities of the dilettante, who must have hugged it as flattery long before the public welcomed it in earnest. The old objec- tions of " impracticability " are as pointless as the censures of "Utopia" or "Oceana." It is a dream, but it is instinct with life. Parties in England cannot be eliminated, we may concede, any more than wars in Europe. Both are vents — the chimneys, as it were, of inextinguishable passion. But both can tend to be less virulent and pro- vocable. The parties of to-day may be said with truth to have lost their venom. The modern warfare which science has rendered trebly terrible, is by that very terror quelled, if not yet quenched, and by that very science mitigated and humanised. Nor will England again be ever engrossed by one insolent and inexorable faction. The impeachment which Burke belauded as an amulet of the constitution is dead and buried. A partiless kingdom, and a paternal king, is to apply the miniature of the Patriarchs to the cartoon of civilisation. But the simplest draughtsmanship may underlie the intensest colours. Modern England goes far to realise the " Patriot King." The derided enthusiasm of the " Young England " party, based on Bolingbroke by Disraeli and Smythe,^ has borne fruit. The standing army, against which Bolingbroke inveighed, though it was only at 1 Cf. his "Remarks on the History of England," and "The Patriot King," Works, vol. viii. p. 198. " She inflamed them with one national spirit." From a contrast between her reign and that of James I. he infers ' ' that a wise and good prince can unite a divided people, though a weak and wicked prince cannot." ^ C/; Bolingbroke's eulogy of William at the close of Letter 10 of the "Dis- sertation on Parties." He " delivered us from Popery and slavery." * The latter's fine poem, in which Bolingbroke predicts the rise of the people, may be consulted. " Historic Fancies." 254 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the most forty thousand men, can no longer terrify 'the normality of law. Justice can no longer be contaminated by hopes or fears. The National Church, quickened to en- lightened responsibility in a manner then unknown, cannot usurp a temporal dominion. A reformed national assembly is in touch with the people ; and even the Argus of the press which watches it is tamed by the Hermes of opinion. The Court respects the State, and by consequence the State the Court. The way has been paved for a monarch who shall rule as well as reign. Hallam has taunted Bolingbroke with "Whig opinions." The old Whiggism proved, as we have shown, the new Toryism of Queen Anne ; and further, it was possible to be a Whig in State and a Tory in Church. If by "Whig" Hallam means the Whiggery of Somers or of Walpole, he is wrong ; but if he means that of Burke, he is right. And to those " Whig " leaders assuredly does not appertain the honour of brushing away the excrescences without annihi- lating the organism, of demonstrating that Tory prejudices were fallacies, but that Toryism, purged and revived, was the triumph of the original Constitution. " Whether," says Bolingbroke, "the Revolution altered our old Constitution for the better, or renewed it, and brought it back to the first principles, and nearer to the primitive institution, shall not be disputed here. I think the latter. . . ." ^ Cowper and Somers tried to denationalise England and to substi- tute a tabula rasa, but the former at any rate lived to repent his game. In 1720 he told Walpole that "the very thing they engaged in was betraying the liberties of the people, for what use was it having a civil list if they could run into debt and have it paid as often as they would ? " Wal- pole stammered and said, "Truly it is not quite right." "No," says Lord Cowper, "for 'tis quite wrong." ^ Nay more. To Bolingbroke by inheritance belongs the old Whig theory of Ministerial responsibihty which the Junto and Walpole did so much to invade. "Though," he urges, " our kings can do no wrong, and though they cannot be 1 "Dissertation on Parties," Letter 9. ^ Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 133. CHURCH AND STATE 255 called to account by any form our constitution prescribes, their Ministers may. They are answerable for the admini- stration of the Government ; each for his particular part, and the prime or sole Minister, when there happens to be one, for the whole." ^ To Bolingbroke also belongs that fine definition of the Legislature — " The wisdom of the nation assembled in Parliament I"'' which may be coupled with Burke's fine definition of Parliament as "the express image of the feelings of the nation."^ His endeavour was to pierce below the surface of ingrained prepossession ; to separate, as he says, " the vinegar of faction from the oil of liberty " in the political salad. " 1 think on these sub- jects," he declaims in his " Idea of a Patriot King," " neither as the Tories nor as the Whigs have thought. At least I endeavour to avoid the excesses of both. I neither dress up kings, like so many burlesque Jupiters^ weighing the fortunes of mankind in the scales of fate, and darting thunderbolts at the heads of rebellious giants ; nor do I strip them naked, as it were, and leave them at most a few tattered rags to clothe their majesty, but such as can serve really as little for use as for ornament. My aim is to fix this principle ; that limitations on a crown ought to be carried as far as it is necessary to secure the liberties of a people, and that all such limitations may subsist without weakening or endangering monarchy." ^ He sought to concentrate a dense and divided party — to bring his " scheme to them, since they would not come to it." ® But Bolingbroke's maturer thoughts were those that succeeded his return from exile. His plan, while in power, was to amend and consolidate his party so as to confront George with a national Toryism.^ He was still a 1 Dedication to Walpole, " Dissertation on Parties." 2 Ibid. ^ "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent." ^ He must have had "Political Instructions for the Use of Gentlemen" (1708) in mind, p. 33. " If they would rule like Jove, that is like visible gods." And cf. "The extravagant Jupiterisation of kings," on p. 43. * Works, vol. vii. pp. 103, 104. ^ Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 276. ' Cf. "Letters to Sir W. V^imlham." ". . . To improve the Queen's favour, to break the body of the Whigs, to render their supports useless to them, 256 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES party man. But amid all the jar of warring names, he desired to tear the mask of principles from the selfishness of oligarchy ; to prevent an undue pi^eponderance of Parliament under the sway of a sole Minister. He as- pired to power as the representative of a creed, instead of as the leader of a confederacy. " I cannot help saying in the fulness of my soul," he wrote to Shrewsbury just before the peace was signed, " that if we do not establish ourselves and the true interest of our country, it is the Queen's and Treasurer's fault. The clamour of Jacobitism seems to be the only resource of our enemies, and I am sorry to tell you that the Duke of Argyle gives too affectedly in to that poor artifice." 1 It was a Whig maxim to com- pare electioneering to sharpers — " If you cannot cheat as well as he, you are undone." ^ To anticipate the Whigs and unite the country was Bolingbroke's endeavour. Harley had no such aim. He waited on the banks and smiled at the current. The Queen's death was imminent. "Your Lordship's proposals," wrote Swift on August 7, 1714, "were always the fairest in the world. I was con- fident you had not a quarter of the time left for the work you had to do . . . that we should be put in such a con- dition as not to lie at mercy on this great event, and I am your Lordship's witness that you have nothing to answer for on that matter. . . . Such who left us upon the subject of the peace and affected jealousies about the succession " were the cause. " Yet after all, to resume a little courage to be at the head of the Church interest is no mean station." "The rabble have become trimmers." "The cry of trade, wool, and Sacheverell has cooled their zeal." Such then was Bolingbroke's programme, which certainly, and to fill the employments of the kingdom, down to the meanest, with Tories. We imagined . . . that we shoxild soon become too considerable, not to make our terms in all events which might happen afterwards ; concerning which, to speak truly, I believe few 'or none of us had any very settled resolution." Works, vol. ix. pp. 21, 22. ' Pol. Corn, vol. iii. p. 489, and cf. vol. iv. p. 70: ". . . The Queen has it now in her power to establish such a plan as she may pursue for the rest of her reign, and as those who wish well to their country have long desired to see." ^ Examiner, No. 19. CHURCH AND STATE 257 as we shall show, did not contemplate the Pretender. Naturally headstrong, he was driven by events to precipita- tion. Six weeks more, he afterwards averred, would have sufficed for George to have met a Tory army, a Tory bench, and Tory officers of state when he landed. This might have proved a national misfortune. A strong national feeling would have easily collided with foreign indifference, and have renewed a tempest ; although Swift had instanced the French Huguenots as " many thousand witnesses " against " the reproach of treating foreigners with haughti- ness and contempt," which he styles " an infamous scandal upon the nation in general and the clergy in particular." 1 But since, with full knowledge that the Tories were doomed, the Whigs' predictions of tumult were neverthe- less falsified ; and George came to the throne, as Boling- broke expressed it, " in a calm," and as if he had been " the son of the late Queen instead of her successor," it is not likely that they would have occurred. In foreign policy who will deny that Bolingbroke had been abundantly justified ? We shall cite in this connection a few extracts from "Mr. St. John's Letter to the Examiner" on which Lord Cowper ineffectively retaliated in the Tatler, and which is wholly consistent with his pronouncements in his later and riper publications. "To restore the Spanish monarchy to the House of Austria, who by their own supineness and the perfidy of the French had lost it, and to regain a barrier for Holland, which lay naked and open to the insults of France, were the wise and generous motives which engaged England in the present war. We engaged as confederates, but we were made to proceed as principals — principals in expense of blood and treasure, whilst hardly a second place in respect and dignity is allowed to us. In the year 1706 the last of these two motives was effectually answered by the reduction of the Netherlands, or might have been so by the concessions which it is notorious that the enemy offered. But the first motive remained still in its full force ; and we 1 Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction. R 25 8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES were told that though the barrier of Holland was secured, the trade of Britain and the balance of power in Europe would still be precarious. Spain, therefore, was to be conquered before we laid down our arms ; and we were made to expect that the whole attention of our Ministers would be applied to that part of the war. . . . Just enough has been done to serve as a pretence for estimates and demands of supplies. ... In the meantime the French king has withdrawn his troops from Spain, and has put it out of his power to restore the monarchy to us, and he was reduced low enough really to desire to do it. The Duke of Anjou has had leisure enough to take off those whom he suspected, to confirm his friends, regulate his revenues, and to increase and form his troops." The Dutch, he continues, have eluded their obligations at England's expense. If the war continues much longer, Louis will find an ally in the monarch who hitherto de- pended for existence only on French succour. "The Emperor having already obtained the advantages which he wished, will easily abandon his relative, and Britain may expect to remain exhausted of men and money — to see her trade divided amongst her neighbours, her revenues antici- pated even to future generations, and to have this only glory left her — that she has proved a farm to the bank, a province to Holland, and a jest to the whole world." These words were written in the autumn of 1710, and they are followed by a forecast that from the errors of the late Ministry Louis will "find himself in a situation to demand higher terms." The criticism and the forecast alike chime with events. We shall afterwards investigate the Treaty of Utrecht, which Bolingbroke frankly confessed did not obtain for England all the advantages which might have been secured in 1706, in 1708, or even in 1709 ; but it outlined a definite foreign policy, cramped though it was by circumstances. It was based on Bolingbroke's consistent conviction that Britain's destiny was on the seas, that they were her natural barriers, and that others were of small concern. Each province of concession was offset by solid CHURCH AND STATE 259 safeguards of her naval and commercial power. Friend- ship with France was counterbalanced by the clause for the demolition of Dunkirk, and by the treaty for reciprocal trade, which the revenge of the Whigs rendered abortive. The former advantage, which Walpole lost when Pope sang " And Spain robs on, Dunkirk is still a port,'' fell far short (and this has never been noticed) of what Bolingbroke intended to obtain. His purpose was to gain " the sovereignty and propriety of Dunkirk," ^ to make it, as we have said, a northern Gibraltar. The Fifth Philip's peaceable possession of Spain and the West Indies was outweighed by the material guarantees of Gibraltar, Port Mahon, and St. Christopher. The curtailment of the Dutch barrier — though insufficient because thwarted by intestine feud and faction — was in the direct interests of English trade. The Assiento contract paved the path for the South Sea commerce. The provisions as to Campeachy were material. Despite the eventual surrender of Cape Breton, the possession of Newfoundland and Placentia, the rights over the shore of Cape Buonavista up to Point Riche, the restitution of Hudson's Bay, the renunciation of the French claims on Nova Scotia, the pacification of Canada laid the foundations on which our colonial supremacy was, fifty years later, to be reared ; and the assignment of Sicily to Amadeus of Savoy provided England with a naval station on which Bolingbroke laid ihe greatest stress. Let us add to these counterpoises the fact that, by the secret instructions of February 1712, Ostend, on which Austria's mercantile ambitions already turned, was to be handed in pledge to the Queen ; while the King of Prussia — the lack of alliance with whose grandson ruined Walpole's plans — was to be (and was) conciliated by an acknowledgment of his monarchy and the fief of Neuchatel. Such was Bolingbroke's pur- view of the balance of power. Austria supported but countervailed in her seaboard, and only partially powerful in Italy ; Holland isolated and precluded from mercan- • Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 283. 26o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tile monopoly ; Spain and France with clipped claws, and, so far as renvinciations could be valid, never to be (as they never have been) united under one crown. This is the peace that inattentive critics have belittled, whose commercial clauses Mr. Bagehot himself has mis- understood. Bolingbroke, prompted by Moore, was the first free, or rather fair trader in Europe ; and that, in the teeth oithe Tories ; while the Whig financiers who frustrated him were blind to the benefit of unhampered trade and ready to encourage the City monopolists, who decried the arrangements with Spain and twined wool round their banners in the elections of 1713. He discerned the benefits of reciprocal tariffs in commerce as of insular aloofness in diplomacy. "An island," he writes,^ "under one government, advantageously situated, rich in itself, richer by its commerce, can have no necessity, in the ordinary course of affairs, to take up the policy of the Continent, to enter into the system of alliances we have been speaking of ; or, in short, to act any other part than that of a friendly neighbour and a fair trader." He proceeds to urge that only an extraordinary crisis on the Continent affecting British interests justifies an alliance with foreign Powers, and then only for common advantage and without permanent entanglements. Addison, the accredited ex- ponent of Whig sagacity, has left it on record as its monu- ment that "all trade in commodities that hinder the consumption of a like quantity of ours is bad."^ Sir Gilbert Heathcote argued before the House in 1715 against Sir William Windham that " imports being only consump- tion, are our loss, not gain ; " that " only exports " keep up manufactures, employ the poor, and bring in a return of money.' Where is the Liberal economist who would now back these opinions ? As regards the treaty's commercial clauses, let us listen to Bolingbroke once again. " Instead of gathering strength either as a Ministry or a 1 " Remarks on the History of England," Letter l6. Works, vol. ii. p. igi. 2 Guardian, No. 170. 3 Pari. Hist., vol. vii.p.49. "History of the Impeachments," Introduction, p.xlii. CHURCH AND STATE 261 party, we grew weaker every day. The peace had been judged, with reason, to be the only soHd foundation where- upon we could erect a Tory system, and yet, when it was made, we found ourselves at a full stand. Nay, that very work which ought to have been the basis of our strength was in part demolished before our eyes, and we were stoned with the ruins of it." And Bolingbroke differed from the majority of his party in their policy of peace at any price. There is a telling passage in his " Letters on History " ^ (nervous with the swing and resonant with the rhythm which must have thrilled his hearers), that deals with the vote in 1698 for disbanding the army. " . . . I have sometimes considered, on reflecting on these passages, what I should have done if I had sat in Parliament at that time, and have been forced to own to myself that I should have voted for disbanding the army then, as I voted in the following Parliament for censuring the Partition treaties. ... I am forced to own this, because I remember how imperfect my notions were of the situation of Europe in that extraordinary crisis, and how much I saw the influence of my country in a half-light. But, my Lord, I owii it with some shame, because in truth nothing could be more absurd than the conduct we held. What ! Because we had not reduced the power of France ^ Letter 8. In the same letter he admirably shows that the war of 1688 was precipitate. "We entered on this great scheme of action, as our nation is too apt to do, hurried on by the ruling passion of the day. . . . We were soon awakened from these gaudy dreams. ... As we run into extremes always, some would have continued this war, although the discontents of those who were averse to the established Government, uniting with the far greater number of those who disliked the Administration, inflamed the general discontents of the nation, oppressed with taxes, pillaged by usurers, plundered at sea, and dis- appointed at land." But " the moneyed interest was not yet a rival able to cope with the landed interest either in the nation or Parliament. The great cor- porations that had been erected more to serve the turn of party than for any real national use, aimed even then at the strength and influence which they have since acquired in the legislation. ... In short, the other extreme prevailed . . . our martial spirit became so specific that we seemed resolved to meddle no more in the affairs of the Continent . . . and accordingly we reduced our troops in England to seven thousand men. " 2 62 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES by the war, nor excluded the House of Bourbon from the Spanish succession, nor compounded with her upon it by the peace ; and because the House of Austria has not helped herself, nor put it into ^our power to help her with more advantage and better prospect of success — were we to leave that whole succession open to the invasions of France and to suffer even the contingency to subsist of seeing these monarchies united ? What ! Because it was become extravagant, after the trials so lately made, to think ourselves any longer engaged by treaty or obliged by good policy to put the House of Austria in possession of the whole Spanish monarchy, and to defend her in the pos- session by force of arms, were we to leave the whole at the mercy of France ? If we were not to do so, if we were not to do one of the three ^ things which I said above re- mained to be done, and if the Emperor put it out of our power to do another of them with advantage, were we to put it still more out of our power and to wait unarmed for the death of the king of Spain ? In fine, if we had not the prospect of disputing with France so successfully as we might have had it, the Spanish succession, whenever it should be open, were we not only to show by disarming that we would not dispute it at all, but to censure likewise the second of the three things mentioned above, and which King William put in practice, the compounding with France, to prevent, if possible, a war in which we were averse to engage ? " None the less he also lays stress, both in the "Patriot King"^ and in the passage above quoted from his " Letters on History," that " Great Britain is an island, and whilst nations on the Continent .are at immense charge in maintaining their barriers, and per- ' i.e. (i) to put Austria in possession and to exclude the Bourbons; (2) to support the Partition Treaty ; (3) to support Austria in an occupation on Charles II.'s death, which Spain would willingly have accorded him. Cf. ante, p. 148, 3.\i&post, p. 378. " "Patriot King," Works, vol. vii. pp. 211-213, and especially p. 217, where he says, '^h. Patriot King, seconded by Ministers attached to the true interest of the country, would . . . save a great part of this expense, or apply it ... to the maintenance of a body of marine foot and to the charge of a register of thirty or forty thousand seamen. " CHURCH AND STATE 263 petually on their guard, and frequently embroiled to ex- tend or strengthen them, Great Britain may, if her governors please, accumulate wealth in maintaining hers ; make her- self secure from invasions, and be ready to invade others when her own immediate interest or the general interest of Europe requires it. ... The general interest of Europe, because it seems to me that this alone should call our councils off from an almost entire application to their domestic and proper business." I^nough has been urged to prove Bolingbroke's crea- tiveness and originality. His was a constructive mind. He resolved, in his own words, the constitution into its ele- ments ; and in foreign affairs he traced the tributary issues to their primary springs. "In this case, therefore, as in all those of great concernment," he writes in " The Idea of a Patriot King,"i "the shortest and the surest method of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearfi the lessons we have been taught, to remount to first principles, and take nobody's word about them ; for it is about them that almost all the juggling and legerdemain employed by men whose trade is to deceive are set to work." From these rudi- ments he evolved a true and often a new aspect of affairs, which he handled and shaped to the exigencies of the moment. Above his compeers he seems to us to tower both in thought and expression. Not one of them could compete with him in the House, which followed him, to employ his own metaphor, borrowed afterwards by Byron, as the hounds follow the huntsman. His concentration is only matched by his rapidity, and the charm of his eloquence by the clearness of his perceptions. He was independent, but he was also impetuous and imperious. Like all spirits which are at once eager and original, volatile and solid, he was misunderstood, and the calum- nies which served a party twist have been perpetuated. The race was not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. To sum up, Bolingbroke "educated" his party by teaching, or rather preaching to them that at home they ^ Works, vol. vji. p. 83. 264 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES must become "national," and respond to a Constitution which upholds a balance of estates.^ The old catchwords of divine right and non-resistance he explains by common- sense. The corruption both of electors and elected he denounces in scorching diatribes. The just prerogatives of the Crown he defends against the aggressions of indi- vidual ambition, while he guards them from dangerous enlargements. He denounces standing armies as contrary both to the mission and the liberties of the nation. He inveighs against faction, and, most of all, that insidious form which invoked the principles of Revolution-Whiggism to support conduct in distinct and express variance with them.^ He believes in the " old good-humour and the old good-nature " of the English people. He describes clearly England's maritime, commercial, and colonial destiny. He discerns the necessity for a regulated navy. He champions fair, if not free trade. Abroad he makes the insular situa- tion of Great Britain his pivot. She is never to interfere in Continental embroilments unless her own immediate interest and the common European necessities demand it.* Throughout he proves himself a true statesman. Nor can we better illustrate his political creed than by citing one of our most eminent contemporary political think ers. / " It is the constant peril of the State that its authority should be misused for the exclusive or undue promotion either of individual or class interests. If this happens, whatever be its form ... its true end, the maintenance and amplification of public and private rights in general is more or less defeated. When, in the place of that end, the 1 These, as is too often forgotten, are the Lords temporal and spiritual and the Commons. * "Who could have expected that attempts to revive the doctrines of old Whiggism and spirit of the Revolution, in opposition to such manifest contradic- tion of them all, would give any umbrage or cause any alarm among men who still affect to call themselves Whigs, and pretend zeal for a Government that is founded on the Revolution? . . ." Dedication to Walpole, " Dissertation on Parties." ^ " Ne Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus incidat " is a quotation he con- stantly applies. In his "Reflections on the State of the Nation" he definitely assigns this reason, after the death of Joseph of Austria and the remonstrances of "some of the principal allies " against the union of the Austrian and the Spanish Crowns, as the main reason for the Peace of Utrecht. CHURCH AND STATE 265 advantage of the ruler or ruling class is solely or unduly pursued, it becomes a perversion. The monarch is con- verted into a tyrant, the aristocracy into an oligarchy, the democracy into an ochlocracy."^ We could instance parallels to each of these statements in Bolingbroke's political disquisitions ; as also to the same writers ascrip- tion of the prototype of our limited monarchy to the early Saxon model, and his emphasis of "natural reason" in the ethics of Roman law. It is surely no small honour that this pioneer of thought should have anticipated the reflections of an epoch enriched by startling experience and instructed by acute criticism. And if we are to find another modern echo of Bolingbroke's Parliamentary creed, it exists in Hazlitt. "... In all governments the great desideratum is to combine activity with a freedom from selfish passion. But it unfortunately happens that in human life the selfish passions are the strongest and most active, and on this rock society seems to split." ^ But in his social theory he found a bridge of reconciliation, for "true self love and social are the same." Lest our praise should be considered extravagant, or our blame partial, let us briefly examine that compact treatise misnamed "An Impartial History of Parties," to which reference has been already made, concocted by Cowper for Hanoverian consumption, translated by his wife into French and German before confiding it to Bernstorff.^ It is a tissue of misleading innuendoes, ex- aggerated assertions, and latent inconsistencies. We will single out two of the former, which may stand for a whole series. This is how Lord Cowper describes the recourse by Marlborough and Godolphin to the Junto, and their approximation after 1705. They approached, he says, "some of the principal Lords who had been in business under the late King and were of the Whig party, who 1 "First Principles in Politics," by W. S. Lilly. Summary on p. 40. 2 " Conversations with Northcote," p. 208. ' Reprinted in extenso in the Appendix to Campbell's " Lives of the Chan- cellors," vol. iv. p. 421. 266 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES very willingly undertook to endeavour the carrying on of the Queen's business in Parliament on this very reasonable consideration, that some of the offices of principal trust, if not the greater part, should be in the hands of their friends, since experience had shown they had so little deserved to be oppressed and run down as they had been ; that, on the contrary, they were the only persons who were willing and able to carry the Queen with success through that just and necessary war." Not a word of the moneyed interest ; not a word of the departure from the spirit of the grand alliance in 1709 ; not a word of Marlborough's Jacobite manoeuvres in 1707 or of Godolphin's in 1708 ; while the covert avowal of the price for the contract glosses a bargain for office and a vengeance for the Partition im- peachments into a "very reasonable consideration." And this is how he construes the changes of 1710 : "There ensued a manifest attempt, by addresses and other occa- sions encouraged by the Court, to sap the very founda- tions or principles on which the Act for securing the Protestant succession was built." The sole proofs adduced for this astonishing perversion of the truth are that " Papists and Nonjurors grew remarkable for their insolence," and that "peace was concluded with France in a clandestine manner." Not a word of the repeated declarations for Hanover and against the Pretender ; not a word of the "clandestine" precedents of the Nimeguen and Ryswick Partition treaties ; ^ not a word of the secret accommo- dation by Austria with France in the flood-tide of the war ; or of the at least three occasions on which the Dutch endeavoured to negotiate apart with De Torcy, and which eventually forced the English hand ; not a word of the notorious exclusion by the Dutch and French of the English and Austrians in the abortive confer- ences at Moerdyke, the Hague, and Gertruydenberg. It was habitual to open the diplomatic tangle by private understandings, and Walpole's own guarantee of the Prag- 1 Between Boufflers and Portland, Calli^res and Viljiers respectively. See Coxe's " Life of the Duke of Shrewsbury," p. 345. CHURCH AND STATE 267 matic Sanction in 1730 was resented by Fleury as "secret articles derogatory to the just interests of France." ^ Not a word, too, of the transformation of the political land- scape by the successive deaths of the Emperor Joseph and of the French princes 1 He proceeds to urge that though " the Ministry say that the interest of Great Britain is aimed at . . . time and experience have shown even that pretence to be untrue. . . . Trade was almost oppressed in all its branches, and had been entirely ruined if the bill for confirming the French treaty of commerce had not been successfully opposed." Lord Cowper must indeed have presumed on the crassness of George if he expected this to convince him. A continuance of war for the preponder- ance of Austria, the maintenance of Dutch taxes on com- merce in the barrier towns, and the destruction of the silk trade with France were ill purchased by slight advantages in the wool and leather trade with Spain and the pro- tection of the jobbing middleman at home, who traded on the war and licked the shoes of the Junto Whigs with lucrative adulation. And there is complete silence about Dunkirk and Gibraltar, Newfoundland and Canada ; not a glimmer of England's maritime and colonial supremacy. All that was shown by "time and experience" was the lethargy of a nation under the monopoly of a Minister. But the recital grows worse as it grows longer. It is thus that he adverts to the " Pretender's hopes : " " One cannot avoid suspecting all this favour could not be shown to France withoiit a design of assisting the Pretender by that means. However it was meant, sure it is, nothing could more weaken the Protestant succession than the pro- moting of the interest of France," which " was done by a series of contrivances zealously applied, and unwearied industry. . . . Not that I would have it believed that many of the Tories are not perfectly against restoring the Pre- tender, by force at least, or that some few of them did not make it appear by their actions the last year they would not have concurred to the bringing him in, even in a party ^ Coxe's " Life ofWalpole," vol. iii. p. 195 ; and see post. 268 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES way ; but the true reason was they beheved their religion and liberties could not be secured if they should ; and their consciences not accusing them of having done any- thing towards the Protestant settlement, they were well contented to enjoy the security arising from the act of others, which, though very useful, had something of unjust in it." So then, because peace was contrary to the private interests of the Whigs, the Tories were traitors in attaining it; because the extreme wing of the October Jacobites lent countenance to the futile dreams of St. Germain, the whole Tory body was tainted ; because that body in the main was sound, their adherence to the Church was to preclude them from an adherence to the Protestant settle- ment ; because they " believed that their religion and liberties" would be imperilled by any other, they were cuckoos in the Whig nest. It was a case of " Codlin, not Short." With the Tory relations to the Pretender we shall deal in some detail hereafter. Suffice it now to say that the mere fact that in his proclamation from Bar after the Queen's death he expunged the adjective "blessed" in mentioning her " memory " is very significant as to his knowledge of Anne's predilections. So much for innuendo ; and now for misstatement. The Whigs, he asserts, as his experience of twenty-four years of Parliamentary life, were not merely actuated by a "personal interest for place," but by "toleration of the Dissenters and exclusion of the Popish line.'' "They would venture all for the Protestant succession in your Majesty's family. . . . On the other hand, many of the Tories would rejoice to see the Pretender restored, even by a French power," and "your Majesty will find the Tories dangerous," unless " by prudent measures under your Majesty's government they shall be brought really and from their hearts, as well as in outward compliance, to part with those notions which are so inconsistent with a government founded on the Revolution." The Pretender may even now be "converted, or some other Papal claimant succeed him." By consequence he recommends CHURCH AND STATE 269 the King to taboo the high-flying clergy. Were the Whigs either for the " toleration " or the indulgence of Dissenters in 1712 ? Was their career up to 1710 devoid of " personal interest for place ?" Where was their zeal for the Hanover succession when Somers designed a commonwealth at the beginning of the century? Was Sunderland ever recon- ciled to a monarchy ? Did the Junto ever contemplate a king except as the puppet of an oligarchy ? And yet he declares in another passage that there were "hardly ten in the kingdom for a commonwealth." If it was true that the majority of noisy agitators against kingship were so in words only, it was equally true of the Jacobite fulminators against the Whigs. Even Cowper has to con- fess, against his contrary arguments, that " Papists and Nonjurors were few," that there were " a few melancholy Nonjurors." And what are we to say to his contention that " the raising of debt by funds " was a " Tory device" because, under King William, "they opposed easier methods ?" The argument is preposterously illogical. Because a set of men oppose any species of debt, there- fore the particular species of debt obnoxious to them, and peculiar to the Dutch, was of their doing. He might as well argue that people who on principle refuse a physician are responsible for deaths by physic. Nothing, again, can be more disingenuous than his remarks on the royal pre- rogative, which he says the Whigs defended against the Tories, who "made hereditary right the only prerogative." Were the appointment of bishops, the dismissal and choice of Ministers, a voice in their councils, the decision of peace and war — were these prerogatives dependent on " hereditary right ? " If so, neither William nor George could claim to exercise them. Once again he stultifies the whole tenor of his text when he attributes the Schism Bill to the failure of the Tory leaders to bring the party into their measures for not intending " to concur in the repeal of the Acts limiting the succession of the Crown to your Majesty's House . . . much less to bring in the Pretender with the assistance of France." By this loyalty to Hanover, he avers that they 2 70 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " visibly lost the affections of their party." In a word, to prove the Tory leaders enemies to toleration he will con- cede that they are friends to the succession, and for this purpose he will transmute the October Club extremists and the Nonjuring fanatics into synonyms for the Tory party at large. Could he farther go ? He does go farther. His crowning stroke is his last. After presuming that the King's favour cannot be evenly distributed, he supposes that "whichever party receives less" of it may "never- theless be used in power with very great tenderness and affection," " as a father does a child whom he dearly loves, but does not totally approve ; " and then he contrasts the Tory treatment of the Whigs (as a spur to George's pa- ternal mercies), and bitterly resents their imputation of " faction " to these impeccable guardians of the sacred ark. " Affection ! " — " As a father does a child ! " Prior was already trembling when these words were written. Boling- broke had plunged into treason, smarting under impend- ing attainder. Oxford and his friends were being pro- scribed. The discrepant atoms of the whole party were being welded in a sour and sullen leaven of obstinate hostility, and being goaded into the Jacobitism which most abhorred and hardly any meditated in earnest. For our own part, we prefer Cowper's malice to his charity, and his future cabals against Walpole to his honeyed tenderness for his routed enemies. Nor should we have lingered so long over his brochure if its and kindred assertions had not been, as it were, pasted upon history, and attached to the deliberate pronouncements of later generations.^ The grave assertions of some chroniclers and critics who figure the Junto as angels of light and St. John as an imp of darkness ; who, re-echoing Walpole, treat St. John ' Those who wish to read the stock and stale Whig arguments should read "A Dialogue betwixt Whig and Tory" {1710), the repetition of a pamphlet pub- lished in King William's reign, and " The Whigg's Address exploding their Republican Principles" {1710), which contains eight pages of abuse without argument. Those who would consult equally poor defences of the other side should refer to " A Fair and Full Answer by an Honest Torie " (17 10). It is only by perusing such tracts that the immeasurable superiority of Swift, Steele, and Addison in this field is proved. CHURCH AND STATE 271 ■just as the Lake school treated Byron, as the founder of a " Satanic school," amaze us by their lack of proportion. In Bolingbroke's own words, "... The historian per- petuates the slander which the politician broached, and triumphs in the contemporary authority upon which he writes to serve the present turn or to satisfy resentment of party. . . . Posterity is imposed upon as well as the present age, and the children continue the father's vengeance without having the father's provocation."^ As we proceed we shall not disguise Bolingbroke's most glaring blemishes nor blink his many defects. They were those of character, not of intellect ; they set his head at vari- ance with his heart. His intractability frequently belied his wisdom. He was frank and fearless, but his candour often sprang from a lack of self-control, and his courage sometimes from a scorn of his fellows. But these glorifications and detractions imply a strange oblivion of the phases through which England was passing and had passed.^ Not forty years divide the downfall of the First Charles and the Second James ; only thirteen years sunder the parenthesis of Anne from the inauguration of the Georges. Those fifty-three years may be said to have witnessed four suc- cessive Englands, yet a single man might easily have outlived them all. David Mispler, whose tomb is in Barnes Churchyard, was waterman to Charles II., James II., King William, Queen Anne, and George I. On the latter's accession, four mistresses of his predecessors still figured. The France of 1793 was not further removed from the France of 1833 than the England of 1689 from the England of 1715. An entirely new order of men had arisen, with whom the old were in constant friction. A ruler had wrecked his house, and an heir become a Pre- • The Occasional Writer, No. I. '^ Bolingbroke in his essay "Of the State of Parties " fully admits that the Old Whigs were a national party. " Now thus far the Whigs acted like a national party who thought that their religion and liberty could be secured by no other expedient. . . • But this national party degenerated soon into faction ; that is the national interest became soon a secondary and subservient motive, and the cause of the succession was supported more for the sake of the party or faction than for the sake of the nation." Works, vol. vii. p. 273. 272 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tender. A faction had usurped the power of the throne and the name of a once national party ; while they exacted allegiance rather to themselves than to the alien line which they called on the country to acclaim as well as acknowledge. Cromwell and Marlborough had dictated ; Milton and Pope had sung. Under such varying types and sudden changes in so short an intei-val, fixity both of purpose, of party, and of property vanished. Men recked little what might next happen and cared less. To be stable was impossible, and the instability aggravated the passionate partisanship. The mania, moreover, for money-making had evoked a set whose prosperity had not as yet taken root in the soil. While England was still agricultural, the purveyors of scrip, the jobbers of loans, and the speculators on crises carried their fluid profits where they would ; there was nothing to rivet them to the country in which such a crew had no binding or permanent stake. " The landed men," wrote Bolingbroke thirty-nine years later, " are the true owners of our political vessel ; the moneyed men, as such, are no more than passengers in it." ^ In this they differed from the merchants, whose ventures helped the national purse and whose public spirit pleased the national pride. Against productive trade Bolingbroke never rails. On the contrary, he expressly distinguishes between merchandise and speculation. "The proprietor of the land and the merchant who brought riches home by the returns of foreign trade had during two wars borne the whole immense load of the national expenses ; whilst the lenders of money, who added nothing to the common stock, throve by the public calamity and contributed not a mite to the public charge." ^ " The Bank, the East India Company, and in general the moneyed interest," he argues, "have certainly nothing to apprehend like what they feared, or affected to fear, from the Tories — an entire subversion of their property." "The situation of Great Britain," he ' " Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation." Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ix. p. 407. Cf. also " Dissertation on Parties," Letter 16. ^ Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 27. CHURCH AND STATE 273 maintains, " the character of her people, and the nature of her Government, fit her for trade and commerce. Her climate and her soil make them necessary to her well- being. By trade and commerce we grow a rich and powerful nation. ... As trade and commerce enrich, so they fortify our country. The sea is our barrier, ships are our fortresses, and the mariners that trade and commerce alone can furnish are the garrisons to defend them. France lies under great disadvantages in trade and commerce by the nature of her Government. . . . The United Provinces have the same advantages that we have in the nature of their government, more perhaps in the temper and char- acter of their people, less to be sure in their situation, climate, and soil. . . . Great Britain stands in a certain middle between the other two with regard to wealth and power arising from these springs. A less and less constant application to the improvement of these may serve the end of France; a greater is necessary in this country, and a greater still in Holland." From the natural inequalities of the Dutch, and their acquired superiority, he argues that its cause is because they " have been from the foundation of their commonwealth a nation oi patriots and merchants. The Patriot King will ' give ease and encouragement to manu- factory at home,' and assist and protect trade abroad." ^ Remembering these facts, it is not a little remarkable that Bolingbroke, who inherited the prejudices and the powers of a caste, should not only by his native power have emancipated himself from them, but should even have distanced his own, and forestalled a future genera- tion. Compare him for one moment with Peterborough, a striking specimen of the old regime ; that impulsive genius, at once, as Swift has termed him in a letter, " volatile and fixed ; " whose life was one long and brilliant bustle, whose escapades were quixotic, whose vagaries were ubiquitous, as inconsistent, as instantaneous, as evanes- cent as himself. " Mordanto," the " Conde," who roamed ' "Patriot King," Works, vol. vii. pp. 203-211. To the whole idea Plato's republic well applies, "If one son of a king were a philosopher," &c. S 274 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES everywhere and stayed nowhere, at and not to whom the Ministry used laughingly to say that they wrote ; who was now in Frankfort, now in Vienna, now in Turin, and always in the one when he was expected to be in the other ; ^ who, in Swift's words again, was " evangelical in the sense that he had not where to lay his head ; " that " skeleton in outward figure," who invited comparison with " his great namesake, Charles of Sweden ; " who could dictate to nine amanuenses at once ; ^ who, wherever he went, schemed to make a war or unmake a king ; who was now a knight - errant and now a knight - erring, before whom, in Spain, " castles and kingdoms were reduced to the obedience of King Charles even faster than the couriers could bring us the intelligence;"^ who outstripped even his exploits by his eccentricities, and his eccentricities by his exaggerations ; whose career was an impromptu more sparkling than the dashing verses and fantastic letters which he scattered in his wake ; whose gallantries were alike conspicuous in campaign and chamber, by sea, by land, and by boudoir ; in whose paste was the oddest amalgam of candour and charlatanry ; who was now a comet and now a rocket ; now a cynic and now an enthusiast ; who was always ' Every one remembers Swift's verses, but not every one recalls the picturesque passage in the "Journal" which describes Peterborough's return, after a year's absence, on January lo, 1713. " At seven this evening, as we sat after dinner at Lord Treasurer's, a servant said Lord Peterborough was at the door. Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke went out to meet him and brought him in. . . . As soon as he saw me, he left the Duke of Ormond and other lords, and ran and kissed me before he spoke to them ; but chid me terribly for not writing to him. . . . He left England with a bruise by his coach overturning that made him spit blood, and was so ill we expected every post to hear of his death ; but he out- rode it or out-drank it, or something, and is come home lustier than ever. He is at least sixty and has more spirits than any young fellow I know of. ... I love the hang-dog dearly." Swift over-states his age by five years. His conference with Fenelon should be read in Spence, p. 24, and also his retort to the question, " Sacrez vous vos rois?" — "Si nous les sacrons. . . ! Parbleu nous les mas- sacrons." Ibid. p. 33. '^ Spence, p. 223. ' Ralph, "The Other Side,'' p. 266. Part of the passage seems to be a quotation from the pamphlet of " Faults on both Sides " (ascribed to Harley ). Cf. Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 491. CHURCH AND STATE 275 the centre of affairs in his own estimation, but whom no Government would take seriously. The whimsical who dragged Pope out to sea to test his protestations of sea-sickness.^ The staunch friend of Swift, the generous ally of Eugene, the benignant idol of the people, whom even George I. dared not disregard and had to make " commander of the marine forces." Yet Peterborough deemed it no dishonour, in his youth, to promise Fenwick his life if he would accuse Shrewsbury and Orford of a conspiracy to bring in King James, or to publish a book ^ with the assistance of Dr. Davenant to convict the former. Even so late as 1713^ he was hatching some addled egg of mystery in the garb of a labouring man at Dover. And Peterborough was not ashamed in his ebbing age to philander in dorimantesque hyperboles * with Mrs. Howard, herself over forty, who procured Gay to indite her answers to the more than sexagenarian lover she ridiculed. Imagine Bolingbroke for one instant gushing into " My soul is in a mutiny against those powers that suffer it, and my heart perfectly melts away in tenderness," or exclaim- ing " O for so many shares in the South Sea as I could name of flattering female gypsies ! " ^ But then neither could Bolingbroke ever have composed those unique verses — " I said to my heart between sleeping and waking, Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching," whose second line so aptly portrays its composer, the ' In 1729. Cf. Swift's Works (Letters), vol. xix. p. 291. 2 " Memoirs of Secret Service," by Matthew Smith of the Inner Temple, October 1699. ^ Macpherson, ii. 514. He was probably then caballing for the Pretender with some of the " great Whigs " whose design was to restore him. Cf. Spence, P- 237- * Cf. his letter to Mrs. Howard (Suffolk Letters, i. pp. 74, 144-145). " Milla- mant, in Congreve's ' Way of the World,' pouts and tosses up her nose in the English way at a declaration of love, and yet does all in her power to procure it." » Suffolk Letters, i. 128. 276 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES idea of whose fourteenth was appropriated by Pope,^ and whose first and last were misquoted by Horace Walpole. Nor could Bolingbroke die as Peterborough died, when Pope wrote of him, " No body can be more wasted, no soul can be more alive." ^ His final letter to Lady Suffolk from Bevismount, before, racked with pain and invincible by disease, he embarked on that weird journey to Lisbon from which he never returned, exhibits him fantastic yet heroic to the end. He had, he says, been reading the life of Julian, " showing how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of Lady Suffolk's ought (only with juster notions of the Deity) to die. ... I want to make an appointment with you, Mr. Pope, and a few friends more to meet upon the summit of my Bevis Hill, and thence, after a speech and a tender farewell, I shall take my leap towards the clouds to mix among the stars." ^ Ten years before, Lady Hervey had seen him at Bath, and thus describes him : " . . . By his dress one would believe he had not designed to make any stay ; for he wears boots * all day. It is a comical sight to see him with his blue ribbon and star, and a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his hand, which, after he himself has purchased at the market, he carries home for his dinner."^ The bombastic comedy as well as the romantic pathos belong to the grandee of the ancient school who still imagines that the earth and heaven are his province. So does the sublime selfish- ' " Prudentia as vainly would put in her claim, Ever gazing on heaven though man is her aim," &c. Cf. Pope on Chloe— " Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, Content to dwell in decencies for ever," &c, 2 Swift's Works, vol. xviii. (Letters), p. 404. ' July 1735. Suffolk Letters, ii. 127. * i.e. riding-boots. ' Ibid., i. 45. Cf. Lord Orrery's account of Peterborough to Lady Kaye at Bath. He had lost his shirts and had to borrow them. Dartmouth Papers, iitb Rep., Part v., p. 327. CHURCH AND STATE 277 ness : " It were as ridiculous as unjust," he writes to Mrs. Howard/ "to expect any person should part with their own quiet to give another ease." Carlyle would surely have christened him " Quixote-Dorimant-Julian Peterborough." Bolingbroke communed with the past, but he con- sorted with the future. " I turn my eyes," he sighed in 1736, "from the generation that is going off to the genera- tion that is coming on the stage." ^ The distance is not vaster between Somers and Peterborough than between Peterborough and Bolingbroke, although there were strong affinities between the last, and insuperable antipathies between the former. When we peruse the sham labels which historical partisanship so obstinately affixes, we cannot but recall Swift's " Fable of Fame." ^ "The Goddess flies with a huge looking-glass in her hands to dazzle the crowd, and make them see, according as she turns it, their ruin in their interest and their interest in their ruin. In this glass you will behold your best friends clad in coats powdered with fieur-de-lys and triple crowns, their girdles hung round with charms and beads and wooden shoes, and your worst enemies adorned with the ensigns of liberty, property, indulgence, moderation, and a cornucopia in their hands." ' Suffolk Letters, i. 183. In 1721 Senesino, the opera-singer, had insulted Miss Anastasia Robinson, and Lord Stanhope, who defended the offender, was challenged by her staunch old admirer. Lady Mary Wortley, in describing this curious episode, speaks of him as " having signalised his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dulcinea." Cf. her Works, vol. iii. pp. 116, 117. ^ "Spirit of Patriotism." Works, vol. vii. p. 40. ^ Swift's Works, iii. 327. November 9, 1 7 10. CHAPTER VII THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE— UP TO MARCH 17 1 1 The Court and the Country were now united. Never was the pohtical kaleidoscope so variegated as in the year 171 1. The last months of the year preceding had witnessed the foundation of the Examiner and the establishment of the "Brothers" and the "October" Clubs. January saw the long debate on Lord Galway's case, which reasserted the Tory view of the war and rehabilitated the laurels of Peterborough, as well as that on "the thirty-five millions unaccounted for," which destroyed Godolphin's reputation for finance ; March, the dastardly ruffianism of Guiscard, which immortalised Harley and raised him to the peerage. The summer and autumn months beheld the preliminaries of the peace and the election by the Diet of Charles as Sixth Emperor of the West. Lord Raby, soon to be Earl of Strafford, replaced Townshend at the Hague, and was afterwards designated plenipotentiary at Utrecht through St. John's influence rather than Harley's. Marlborough, who at the beginning of the year had paid his court to the Tories and made his obeisance to the Queen as "her humble creature and poor worm,"i who, almost on the day when the key was taken from his Duchess, had exacted the enlargement of his commission and became generalissimo of the forces, fought his last campaign and was drummed out and baffled at its close. With all these developments St. John was largely concerned, some of them he directed. We shall examine them in succession. The Examiner was St. John's project. Its professed ' Swift's Letters. Works, vol. xv. p. 376. 278 THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 279 object was " to examine some of these writings . . . with an evil tendency either to rehgion or government."^ St. John struck the keynote in his celebrated and stirring letter^ which provoked Cowper into ineffectual retort. "The Observator, the Review, the Censor of Great Britain,^ who resembles the famous Censor of Rome in nothing but espousing the cause of the vanquished, with the crowd of hireling scribblers, will hope, by a few false colours and a great many impudent assertions, at last to persuade the people that the General, the quondam Treasurer, and the Junto are the only objects of the confidence of the Allies and of the fears of the enemies. For the Queen and the whole body of the British nation — ' nos numerus sumus'. . . . France has continued like a great town, invested indeed on every point, but attacked only in one. Ostend may be a part of the Barrier. The Emperor has Bavaria, the Duchy of Mantua, the state of Milan, and the kingdom of Naples, Sicily, and some other places dependent on these. . . ." Its cry was " For the Queen and the people." This was St. John's dibut as prose author ; he was shortly ^ to assist Harrison in the continued Tatler by his pen as well as his patronage. Neither Halifax, Cowper, Somers, or Buckingham had been forcible in polemics. Harley was a writer, but he cannot be termed an author. For the man of letters as statesman we must turn to Swift ; for the states- man as man of letters, to Bolingbroke. He indeed inaugu- rates that long, though broken, succession of literary lights in Parliament which numbers Chesterfield and Granville, Burke and Sheridan, Frere and Canning, Brougham and Macaulay, Gladstone and Beaconsfield ; which, if we regard oratorical quality rather than published quantity, may be said to include Carteret and Pulteney, Chatham and Fox, Shell and Grattan, Lyndhurst, Cairns, Cranbrook and Westbury, Bright and Churchill. Ministers had hitherto, so far as we can judge, been seldom conspicuous for the form of their deliverance, and had certainly kept aloof from the 1 Examiner, No, 41. '^ i.e. The Tatler. 2 8o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES pen. Toland, in aspersing the Oxford Administration, terms it " a poetical Ministry."^ The scheme would scarcely have been feasible without the magic vitality of Swift, who, within a fortnight of his appearance in the preceding spring, had become the controlling confederate of the Tory chiefs. It was facilitated by the versatility of that Westminster cluster which had budded from the rod of Dr. Busby — Prior, Skelton, Freind, and Oldsworth. It was a starthng de- parture and a formidable array. Neither Steele nor Yalden in the Tatler, nor Addison in the Whig Examiner, nor Mainwaring in the Medley were a match for this combi- nation of pamphlet without pedantry, appeal without obscurity, ironical incisiveness, acute disquisition, and in- genious apologue. It lent the sting and fire of an Opposi- ^ tion to the strength and finesse of a Government. It con- joined attack with defence ; it was at once a bayonet and a buckler. It is significant that its decay coincided with , ' Bolingbroke's translation to the peerage.^ There is a ^ bridge between the Examiner and the "association" of "The Brothers." Exasperated by his expulsion from the Kitcat Club, Prior had contributed a biting criticism on Garth's ode to Godolphin, to which Addison replied.^ The ' Portland MS., vol. v. p. 260. '^ Swift, on his return to a "Hedge-lodging"' from Eton in August 1712, in- forms Stella, " The Observator is fallen, the Medleys are jumbled together with the Flying Post, the Examiner is deadly sick, the Spectator keeps up, and doubles its price." ^ "'Tis here," writes Prior in the Examiner, No. 6, for September 7, 1710, " that Wit and Beauty are decided by plurality of voices. The child's judgment shall make H y pass for a fool, and Jacob's impudence shall preserve Lady H 1 from the tallow candle." He concludes with the rebus — "What stranger creature yet is he Who has four legs, then two, then three, Then loses one, then gets two more. And runs away at last on four ? " Addison's retort is in the Whig Examiner of September 14, 1710: "... I allow he has a happy talent at doggerel when he writes upon a known subject. When he tells us in plain, intelligible language how Corisca's ladle was lost in one hole, and Hans Carvel's finger in another, he is very jocular and diverting ; but when he wraps a lampoon in a riddle, he must consider that his jest is lost to every one but the few merry wags who are in the secret." There were only five THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 281 Kitcat Club was soon offset by a combination more dis- ciplined and intellectual, which dispensed with toasts and inscriptions on glasses, but which abounded in wit, in glamour, and in purpose. The Brothers' Club presented the social, as the Exa- miner the polemical side of the new Tory coterie. It, again, was St. John's invention. Its Thursday assemblies were partly an outcome of and partly an offset to the " Saturday Club," under the presidency of Harley. There is a striking passage in his " Spirit of Patriotism," which seeks to illustrate how. conviviality may subserve public spirit. It instances what Cato called " vitcB conjunctionem." ..." Cato's virtue often glowed with wine ;" and so did St. John's, Windham's, Harley's, Prior's, Freind's and Arbuth- not's, Granville's and Harcourt's. Besides these associates of a close and lettered clique, the " Society '' included the Dukes of Ormonde, Shrewsbury, and Beaufort ; the Earls of Peterborough, Arran, Jersey, Bathurst, and Orrery ; the Lords Dupplin arid (afterwards) Harley and Masham ; Sir Robert Raymond, and Colonels "Jack" Hill and "Duke" Disney. St. John, in one of his letters to Orrery,^ thus accounts for the inception of the " Society" : " I must . . . give your Lordship an account of a club which I am form- ing, and which, as light as the design may seem to be, I believe will prove to be of real service. We shall begin to meet in a small number, and that will be composed of some who have wit and learning to recommend them ; of others who, from their own situations or from their relations, have power and influence, and of others who, from accidental reasons, may be properly taken in. The first regulation proposed, and that which must be most inviolably kept, is decency. None of the extra- vagance of the Kit Cat,* none of the drunkenness of numbers of the Whig Examiner. Addison, Steele, Hone, and Oldmixon then essayed the Medley, which dropped in its turn after the Examiner, August 1711. ' Cited in Cooke's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 183. 2 Founded in 1699, and to which Orrery, Prior, Congreve, and Vanbrugh once belonged. Somers, however, transformed it into a " New Whig " club. 2 82 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the Beefsteak^ is to be endured. The improvement of friendship and the encouragement of letters are to be the two great ends of our society." It also subserved a politi- cal purpose. If the Examiner represented the " Hastati " or heavier troops, the Brothers stood for the " Velites " or lighter skirmishers in the guerilla warfare. Swift drew up the rules for the fraternity at Windham's in the following June.^ It was here that Swift recited his party skits with the printer in attendance ; here that Prior bantered and was bantered on his verses ; here that Peterborough defied fate and dynasties during his rare re-visits ; here that St. John sparkled and Harley punned; here that the "very polite " boon companionship of the first four ripened into attachment. Granville, soon to be Lord Lansdowne, the uncle and "Alcander" of Mrs. Delany, was himself a poet, and a poet dieted on champagne.^ Bathurst, Orrery, and Harcourt were at least literary appreciators, while the former was a laughing philosopher after Swift's own heart.* On them, and especially on St. John, Swift could count for subsidies to starving talent. The " Brothers " held a small retinue in train of grateful poets. Of St. John's open- There was also another noted Vi^hig club, "The World," in Pall Mall, where Young wrote his best epigram — " Accept a miracle instead of wit ; See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ." — Spence, p. 287. ' The theatrical club — still alive. Estcourt, the actor, who died in 171Z, wos its first "providore." Cf. — " He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes May be a fit companion of beefsteaks. His name may be to future times enrolled In Estcourt's book, whole gridirons framed of gold." King's "Art of Cookery.'' The newer "Sublime Society of Steaks" was founded by Henry Rich in 1735. Dr. Johnson also in 1749 founded a " Beefsteak Club " in Ivy Lane. 2 Journal, June zi, 1711 : " . . . We design to admit the Duke of Shrews- bury. The end of our club is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward deserving persons with our interest and recommendation. If we go on as we begin, no other club in this town will be worth talking of." 5 Cf. Mrs. Pendare's letter to Swift of July 21, 1733. Swift's Works, vol. xviii. at p. 200. •• Cf. Bathurst's letter of March 29, 1733; ibid., p. 164: "I am resolved to laugh as long as I live." THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 283 handed generosity at least there is no dispute, and it con- trasted with Harley's close-fistedness. He is always empty- ing his pockets for those he never saw, and in this respect, as in many others, he resembles Byron. He was one of Pope's first supporters. To his friends he was princely. Swift constantly commemorates his readiness to disburse, and himself characteristically husbanded the case of "Florence wine" till its contents became bad. It must never be forgotten that his very impatience for peace is a proof of his contempt for money, for the perquisites of his office depended on war,i and when he visited Paris in 171 2, his largess was as profuse as it was politic.^ At this epoch St. John's mere acquaintances were treated as friends. Long afterwards — in March 1719 — he thus adverts to them : ^ " At that age of life, when there is balm in the blood, and that confidence in the mind which the innocency of our own heart inspires and the experience of other men destroys, I was apt to confound my acquaintance and my friends together. I never doubted but that I had a nume- rous cohort of the latter. . . . The fire of my adversity has purged the rest of my acquaintance, and, the separation made, I discover on one side a handful of friends, but on the other a legion of enemies, at least of strangers.'' On Swift himself, whose character so largely impressed itself on events, we would gladly expatiate. He was wronged by contemporaries. The Whig Boyer brushes him aside as " an ingenious but ambitious clergyman." * He has been much wronged by a careless posterity. Swift's diary of two worlds — his own and hers whose letters have unfortunately perished — stands out unique, the most entrancing and the most tragic of all extant journals. It is the Pompeii of diaries. It embalms the true Swift.^ ^ Cf. Pol. Corn, vol. iii. p. 134. ^ Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 55. ' Letter to Swift, March 17, 1719. Works, vol. xvi. p. 344. For Boling- broke's own disbursements on public service, cf. Spence, p. 240. In 1714, writing to Harley, he encloses an "exact account" of his advances to Queen's messengers." Portland MS., vol. v. p. 379. ^ Boyer, History, p. 517. ' Cf. the author's essay, " Men who have Kept a Diary," in Maga, January 1899. 284 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Of Peterborough and Arbuthnot vignettes have aheady been given. Prior, as a man of affairs, will appear pro- minent in our future chronicle, but something must here be said of his personahty. On February 21, 1711, he might have been descried in St. James's Park talking and walking rapidly with Swift. Their friendship was recent but real, and it had been cemented by the gift of a " Plautus " from the elder to the younger. Prior was senior to Swift, not only by the three years dividing their ages, but also by conversance with affairs, to which he affected to think his " loose scribble " and " furbelow bad poetry " ^ was a mere by-play. He had done more, and yet even then he had not achieved so much. The two, like so many others coupled in history, were in truth of opposed temperaments. Prior was vain. Swift proud ; Swift uncompromising. Prior accommodating ; Prior fanciful. Swift imaginative. Swift was the same electric force whether business or pleasure engaged him. Prior was solemn (" Dutch," De Torcy afterwards termed him) in routine, madcap — indeed reckless — over his cups. Outward appearance heightened the contrast. Swift was of middle height, inclined to be stout, darkly sanguine in complexion, with arch eyes of a piercing blue. He walked "like lightning" to be lean. Prior was tall and thin, lantern-jawed and cavernous. His eyes were dreamy, though his expression was alert. His visage seemed carved out of wood, and he coughed much as he went. He walked to be fat. Swift was a stoic aflame ; Prior, an epicurean with dashed ambitions. In Swift's heart of hearts hid Stella, and already lurked Vanessa ; in Prior's, Mrs. Anne Durham and the marionettes of vulgar intrigue whom he dignified as " Chloes." Pangs tortured the one, while the other sighed sentiment. Both cried "Vive la bagatelle," 2 but Prior's " bagatelle " was a bubble, Swift's a bullet. In four things, however, the comrades were • Cf. Prior to Swift, May i, 1718. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 330. * Cf. Swift's letter to Archbishop King, September 28, 1721, and Prior's to Swift of May 29, 1718. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 285 united— in devotion to the Church interest, in detestation of democratic clamour, in the endowment of a signal style, and in personal admiration for Harley and St. John.^ Yet even here contrasts were manifest. On the preceding New Year's Eve Harley had made Swift read aloud a copy of Prior's latest verses. " I read them," he declares in that immortal Journal,—" I read them plain, without any fine manner. Prior swore I should never read any of his again, but he would be revenged and read some of mine as bad." To which Swift rejoined that he was famous for reciting poems "the worst in the world," which were usually snatched away by his friends. Indeed, Swift's impatience, his habit of " staring, hauling his wig, and biting his paper," and even his nails,^ were bantered by himself and Boling- broke in their later correspondence,^ and in Swift's later poems ; while Bolingbroke's way of seizing a manuscript from the grasp of a friend is directly noticed in Swift's congratulatory letter of May 11, 171 1,* as his trick of biting his pen is quizzed in Swift's verses on his own death.^ Swift also nursed the oddest whims. To his dying day he had an aversion to the words "mob" and "behaviour." In the gayer side of the Brothers' confraternity Prior must have been more congenial, though less important, to St. John than Swift. We can see this in Prior's Chaucerian poem on " Erie Robert's Mice," which belongs to this period : — " As guests sat jovial at the board, Forth leaped our mice ; eftsoons the Lord Of Boling, whilome John the Saint, Who maketh oft propos full quaint, ^ For the whole subject, cf. the author's essay in the Quarterly Review, October 1899. * Cf. verses to Stella on her birthday in 1723 : "I bit ray nails and scratched my head." 2 Cf. Bolingbroke to Swift, October 23, 1716. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 290. * " I will disparage your snuff, write a lampoon on Nably Car, dine with you on a foreign post day, nay, I will read verses in your presence till you snatch them out of my hands." ^ "St. John himself will scarce forbear To bite his pen and drop a tear." 2 86 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Laughed jocund, and aloud he cried To Matthew, seated on t' oth' side, ' To thee, lean bard, it doth pertain To understand these creatures twaine. Come, frame us now some clean device Or playsant rhime on yonder mice ; They seem, God shield me. Mat and Charles.' Replyed the friendlike peer, ' I weene, Matthew is ang'red on the spleen.' ' Ne so,' quoth Mat, ' ne shall be e'er With wit that falleth all so fair.' " Prior slyly expounds the fable otherwise. The mice, instead of being himself and Halifax, are Harley, Chan- cellor, and Harley, Auditor of the Exchequer. In "St. Stephen's Court " — " Therein is space enough, I trow. For elke comrade to come and goe, And therein eke may both be fed With shiver of the wheaten bread. And when, as these mine eyne survey. They cease to skip and squeak and play. Return they may to different cells. Auditing one, while t' other tells. ' Dear Robert,' quoth the Saint, whose mind In bounteous deed no men can bind, ' Now, as I hope to grow devout, I deem this matter well made out. Laugh I, while thus I serious pray .' Let that be wrought which Mat doth say.' 'Yea,' quoth the Erie, 'but not to-day.'" In the future we shall witness what dire disasters sundered the two companions. To St, John belongs the merit of discerning and exalting Prior's practical ability, to Bolingbroke the stigma, though not, we believe, the stain, of desertion ; but after the Queen's death he tabooed Prior. The episode will demand consideration in a future chapter. Prior was never contented. He repined at his home appointments because they " spoiled his wit " — "... The small genius which my youth could boast In prose and business lies extinct and lost." Though at present he is a jovial " Brother," addressing THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 287 his impromptu invitations to Oxford for the Thursday on which they gathered — " At Matthew's palace in Duke Street, To try for once if they can dine On bacon, ham, and mutton chine," melancholy is never distant from his mirth, and, throughout, pathos mingles with his preferments. It is the old moral of the jester when his cap and bells are doffed. In the tradition of French drollery, in the fantasies of Watteau, stands the figure of Pierrot. Long and lean, prodigal and pale, he joins gaminerie to repentance, the goblet of to-day to the headache of to-morrow, the impulsive carelessness of a child to the dull cares of a man, a light pocket to a heavy heart. Prior is the Pierrot of English literature. He trifles in earnest, he sports with industry ; he strays and regrets, he regrets and strays. He is lovable even when least respectable. A third of these " Brothers," who deserves but has eluded notice, is " Duke " Disney or Desn^e. Disney was a Huguenot refugee who had entered the English army. Piety, however, was not his prevailing feature. Swift calls him " an old man, but not an old rake ; " yet when he was "ill of a fever" in 1712 he says, "we all love him mightily, and he would be a great loss." He spoke with a broken accent, and in the Wentworth Papers we find his conversa- tion liberally interlarded with " By Gar " and the inter- jection which gave him his nickname. It was he who said of the old maid of honour, Jenny Kingdom, that the Queen "should give her a brevet to act as a married woman." ^ Gay sings of him — " I hear facetious Disney say ' Duke ! that's the room for Pope and that for Gay.' " He was a crony of the gallant General Withers, with whom he lodged, and whose epitaph Pope composed. He lived at Greenwich when he parted company with the General. After the Queen's death he is often affectionately mentioned I' Journal, March 15, 1712. 2 88 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES by Gay and Pope. He lies buried near him in West- minster Abbey. He died in 1731, and left legacies of ^£500 apiece to Bolingbroke and Hill, Pelham, Sir William Windham, and Lord Masham.i when Jack Hill went to take over Dunkirk for the Queen, Disney was with him, and returned to announce the occupation. After the Queen's death he lost his regiment. He was a bon- vivant,^ but seems to have been sufficiently influential to have pro- voked the Whig spleen, Wharton taxed him with disre- spect, and one of the earliest verse performances of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (whose after wisdom points to a somewhat later date of composition) was directed against him and Bolingbroke. As this "unfinished sketch of a larger poem " ^ has never, so far as we are aware, been quoted, and as it throws light on a young Whig enthusiast's view of St. John, we subjoin an excerpt : — " Now with fresh vigor Morn her light displays, And the glad birds salute her kindling rays, The opening buds confess the sun's return, And, rous'd from night, all Nature seems new-born. When ponderous Dulness slowly wing'd her way. And with thick fogs oppos'd the rising day. ' Shall mortal men escape my power ? ' she cried. ' Nay, in this town, where smoke and mists conspire To cloud the head and damp the poet's fire, Shall Addison my empire here dispute, So justly founded, loVd and absolute ? No — better things my destiny ordains. For Oxford has the wand and Anna reigns.' She ended, and assumed Duke Disney's grin. With broad, plump face, pert eyes, and ruddy skin. Which show'd the stupid joke which lurk'd within. ' From Gay and Pope to Swift, December i, 1731. Swift's Works, vol. xvii. P- 457- 2 Cf. Wentworth Papers, p. 181. "Duke Desney said that letters of re- vocation had gone to Lord Townsend (in March 1711), and your (Lord Raby's) credentials were sent that week for you to succeed him. He had been drinking with Mr. St. Johns, who told him, but he bid me take no notice I had it from him." ' Works, vol. V. p. 156. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 289 In this lov'd form she knock'd at St. John's gate, Where crowds already for his levee wait ; And wait they may, those wretches that appear To talk of service past and long arrear ; But the proud partner of his pleasure goes Through crowds of envious eyes and servile bows. And now approaching where the statesman lay. To his unwilling eyes reveal'd the day.. Starting he wak'd, a"nd waking, swore by God ' This early visit, friend, is wondrous odd ! Scarce have I rested two full hours in bed, And fumes of wine oppress my aching head. By thee I'm sure my soul is understood Too well to plague me for the public good. Let stupid patriots toil to serve the brutes. And waste their fleeting hours in vain disputes. The use of power supreme I better know. Nor will I lose the joys the gods bestow ; The sparkling glass, soft flute, and willing fair. Alternate guard me from the shocks of care. 'Tis the prerogative of wits like mine To emulate in ease the pow'rs divine ; And while I revel, leave the busy fools To plot like chemists or to trudge like tools.' ' Believe me. Lord ! ' (replies his seeming friend) ' Some difficulties every state attend. Great as you are, no greatness long is sure ; Advancement is but pain if not secure ; All your long schemes may vanish in an hour. Oh ! tremble at the sad reverse of pow'r. How will then slaves that waiting watch your eye Insulting smile or pass regardless by. Nor is this thought the creature of my fears. Approaching ruin now most strong appears ; Men must be dull who passively obey And ignorance fixes arbitrary sway. Think of this maxim, and no more permit A dangerous writer ' to retail his wit. The consequence of sense is liberty, And if men think aright they will be free. Encourage you the poet ^ I shall bring, Your Granville he already tries to sing. In verse his phlegm, in puns ^ he shows his fire. And skilled in pimping to your heart's desire.' ' Steele or Addison. ' Pope. ' If Pope be meant, this is singularly false. TAtre is only one pun in all his verse — " Party-coloured wings." That Pope is meant appears in the succeeding T 29° BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES ' I thank thee, Duke' (repUes the drowsy peer), ' But cannot listen to thy childish fear. This Addison, 'tis true, debauch'd in schools, Will sometimes oddly talk of musty rules, Yet here and there I see a master-line, I feel and I confess the pow'r divine. In spite of interest, charm'd into applause, I wish for such a champion in our cause. Men can but say wit did my judgment blind, And wit's the noblest frailty of mankind.' " Dulness unmasks herself and prophesies : — " The time shall come, though now at court ador'd. When still a writer, though no more a lord, On common stakes thy darling works be spread. And thou shall answer them to make them read." The same noble, or ignoble, authoress, envenomed even then by her hatred of Pope, still pursues Bolingbroke in a succeeding " Epistle of Pope to Lord B ." Ungenerous taunts like — " With blushless front you durst your friend betray. While with sly courage you run brisk away ; " and " Successless fraud and useless infamy," with which she vilifies Bolingbroke, are capped by her calumny of Pope in " My first subscriber I have first de- famed ; " while the pair are made to exclaim: — " We who with piercing eyes look nature through. We know that all is right in all we do ; " and " Yet this remains our more peculiar boast, You 'scape the block, and 1 the whipping-post." fragment, "The Court of Dullness," where, after saying "shall sing of worms in great Arbuthnot's strain," she thus proceeds : — " My Lansdowne (whose love songs so smoothly run, My darling author and my favourite son), He shall protect the man whom I inspire, Anfl Windsor Forest openly admire ; And Bolingbroke with flattery shall bribe Till the charm'd lord most nobly shall subscribe, And hostile Addison too late shall find 'Tis easier to corrupt than mend mankind." "Windsor Forest" was dedicated by Pope to Lansdowne in 1713, and con- tains the familiar eulogium of the Peace. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 291 So much for Lady Mary, whose libels have tempted us to anticipate events by digression. The first extract holds up St. John and Disney as heartless, cynical libertines. There is no doubt that at this period the friends were boon companions, and that the former used sometimes both to blab^ and to boast over his cups. It is related by Mrs. Delany in her Autobiography that Bolingbroke, while in office, sat up whole nights drinking, and hastened, sleepless, in the morning, with a wet napkin round his head, to his routine of duty and business.^ There is a passage in the " Wentworth Papers " which represents him as going down to Greenwich * and vaunting both his licentiousness and his power. There is another in his later correspondence with Swift which admits that his life had been very irregular.* Disney may well have been the associate of his pleasures. It was a regretable phase, but a phase it was. He outlived it. A large part of it he had already outlived : even in 1710 Swift says that he had been a great rake.^ Nor was he a whit worse than the leaders of his class, whatever their professions. He was only more open and overbearing. At this period he was intoxicated with success and impatient of opposition. But, despite the profligacy which gossip has exaggerated and malice monopolised, he never allowed it, as Lady Mary insinuates, to clog his work. The man who with truth averred that a groom led a happier life than his, and who, to Swift's cognisance and confession, drudged ^ Swift derives this not from any " incontinency of talk," but "from the mere contempt of multiplying secrets." It was said of Bolingbroke, as of Alberoni, that he was not so impenetrable as penetrating. ^ Cf. Sydney's " England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. c. iii. ' Bolingbroke's saturnalia at Greenwich were long remembered. Cf. the article in the London Journal, quoted in the London Magazine for September 1731, where "Arcadia" of the fable is said to be "Greenwich, where he had a set of profligates about him." * Cf. also the passage quoted above, p. 163. In the Wentworth Papers occurs a reference to " Bell Chuck," a "blackguard girle," whom St. John about this period "protected." The skit of "'A Merry Letter from the Ld. Bol — ke to a certain Favourite Mistress near Bloomsbury Square," publi.shed in 1715, pro- bably points to her. As late as 1736 there were rumours that Bolingbroke was " playing the Celadon " in France. Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 76. ' See the domestic correspondence in the Coke Papers, quoted ante, pp. 163-65, and our remarks thereon. But cf. also another scandal abour him in 17 14. Port- land MS., vol. iv. p. 463. 292 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES whole days and nights Uke any common clerk,^ who was constantly "tied to his desk" till three in the morning," was a different being from the " wicked nobleman " type of "the missionaries of faction." "The faults and defects," he urges in "The Patriot King," "that may be thus covered and compensated are, I think, those of the man rather than those of the king ; such as arise from constitution and the natural rather than the moral character ; such as may be deemed accidental starts of passion or accidental remissness in some unguarded hours ; surprises, if I may say so, of the man on the king. When these happen seldom and pass soon, they may be hid, like spots in the sun, but they are spots still." And after instancing many classical examples and praising the " decorum " of Elizabeth, who " did great things, and knew how to set them off according to their full value by her manner of doing them," he asserts that " decency and propriety of manners are so far from lessen- ing the pleasures of life, that they refine them and give them a higher taste ; they are so far from restraining the free and easy commerce of social life, that they banish the bane of it, licentiousness of behaviour. Ceremony is the barrier against this abuse of liberty in public ; politeness and decency are so in private." * The last two "Brothers" who claim a flying mention are Windham, "just to freedom and the throne," and Harcourt, "the mouth of justice, oracle of law."* Wind- ham was Bohngbroke's junior by nine years, and reputed his pupil. More than any other of his associates he repre- sents his views. He was of old family and allied to the Duke of Ormonde. By his early maixiage to the daughter of the proud Duke of Somerset he secured his future from > Cf. Swift's Works, vol. vi. p. 8. ^ Sgg poi_ Corr., vol. iii. p. 464. ' To such as still think St. John a notorious profligate for his day, we recom- mend Lord Chesterfield's analysis of the fashionable notions of a "gentleman " in 1753. The World, No. 49. * Gay, Ep. to Pope :— "... I see for eloquence renowned, The mouth of justice, oracle of law. Another Simon is beside him found, Another Simon, like as straw to straw.'' THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 293 the inexorable Whigs and emphasised his connection with the county which he represented. He was successively Minister of War and Chancellor of the Exchequer in Anne's last Administration, and had his close ally been successful, the very highest posts would have been his. During Anne's final Parliament Windham constantly acted with St. John, and on one occasion, when they were suddenly summoned from dinner to attend a debate, he hurried back to fetch Bolingbroke's surtout, in which im- portant notes had been left. So much associated was he with his mentor, that Mr. Speaker Onslow does not hesi- tate to describe the tie as an "intimacy of pleasure and gallantries." 1 In 171 1 he was made "Master of the Queen's Hart and Buckhounds." ^ He was very popular, and after the Queen's death alone ventured to vindicate Bolingbroke in the House. There is a story that his silence from emotion did more for his fallen friend than any eloquent harangue could have effected.^ In one of his speeches defending the Utrecht Treaty, he was greeted by shouts of "To the Tower!" But Walpole stilled the storm, and condoned him as "a young man of promise" who had been led astray. His temporary arrest in 1715, when the White Horse of Hanover was persuaded to kick and trample the Tories under its hoofs, was a direct violation of a solemn promise made to his august father- in-law.* He was soon released. We shall meet him again at many Philippis, and always as Bolingbroke's mouthpiece. In the year 1734 alone no less than eleven speeches of his are recorded.^ His honesty was unquestioned and his brilliance undeniable. While Jacobites like Shippen and Hinde Cotton, and irrepressibles like Sandys, injured the Tory cause by wooden and stubborn stupidity or mis- placed enthusiasm, Windham soundly championed the constitution which Walpole was undermining. Such fragments of his speeches — especially those on the Sep- 1 Hist. MS. Comm., 14th Rep. App. pt. ix. p. 467. ^ Boyer. ' Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. * Marchmont Papers, vol. i. p. 91. ' See the London Magazine for that year. 294 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES tennial Bill^ and on his famous secession in 1739, are elevated and inspiring. He is the " Marcus Furius Camillus" in the debates of "The Political Club." In 1721 he was very ill and expected to die. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes in this year to the Countess of Mar : " My father is going to the Bath ; Sir William Wind- ham is dying ; Lady Darlington and Lady Mohun are pack- ing up for the next world, and the rest of our acquaintance playing the fool in this a F ordinaire." "^ When at length his end came in 1740, Bolingbroke wrote to Lord March- mont in a letter instinct with restrained pathos : " . . . We lament our own loss, but we lament that of our country too." We may conclude by quoting Mr. Speaker Onslow : " He was, in my opinion, the most made for a great man of any one that I have known in this age. Everything about him seemed great. There was no inconsistency in his com- position. All the parts of his character suited and were a help to one another. There was much of grace and dignity in his person, and the same in his speaking. . . . No acquirements of learning . . . but his eloquence im- proved by use, was strong and without affectation." ^ Harcourt was of a different complexion to the chivalrous and impulsive Windham, but they were united in two acci- dents. Their sons were both distinguished, and they both secured the respect of their opponents. Windham's eldest son was the founder of the Egremont family, Harcourt's the formal and pedantic instructor of the future George IIL Harcourt was Bolingbroke's senior by some seventeen years. When in 1708 the former was addressing him as "dearest Sym," he was thirty and his brother-in-arms forty-seven. He was an " old parliamentary hand." His maiden speech had been delivered in 1690 on the Recog- nition Bill. In 1701 he had been one of Somers' im- peachers. In May 1702 he was appointed Solicitor-General, and he received his knighthood in the June of the same year. In July 1703 he had prosecuted Defoe for the ^ It is in this speech that he makes use of the old maxim, " Every man has his price," usually attributed to Walpole. " Works, vol. iii. p. 107. 3 Hist. MS. Comm. , 14th Rep. App. pt. ix. p. 467. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 295 Government, and in 1704 he was retained in the Aylesbury election case. In 1706, when member for Bossiney in Cornwall, he had drafted the Ratification Bill for the Union of Scotland, and in April 1707 he blossomed into the Attorney-Generalship, in 1710 into the Lord Keeper- ship, and in June of 1711 into a peerage. In the April of 1713 he was created Lord Chancellor, and the Seals were again entrusted to him on the Queen's death ; but in the September of 17 14 he was forced to surrender them to Cowper, and retired to Collethorpe and a literary inter- course with Pope, Swift, and Gay. Though he had warmly espoused the side of Boling- broke, he still, however, like Dartmouth, whom he somewhat resembles, remained influential and in court favour. He was in consultation with Walpole during the latter's op- position of 1717. He was able to procure Oxford's acquittal and Bolingbroke's pardon. But he never seems to have resumed cordial relations with his old set, and Swift's later correspondence contains at least one bitter allusion to his desertion. We may point out (since it is for the first time) that Bolingbroke satirises him as " Atticus " in his essay on "The True Use of Retirement and Study." The passage contains the feigned character of " Tully," who is Ormonde. "Nay," he continues, "Atticus judged him too meanly at- tached to his former fortune, and reproached him for it. Atticus, whose great talents were usury and trimming, who placed his principal merit in being rich, and who would have been noted with infamy at Athens for keeping well with all sides and venturing on none." ^ He was created a Viscount in the summer of 1721, and readmitted to the Privy Council in that of 1722. He was made a Lord Justice during the three absences of King George in Hanover from 1723-1727. In the July of that year he was stricken with paralysis while calling upon Walpole, and died on the 29th of that month at Harcourt House, Cavendish Square.^ ^ Bol. Works, vol. viii. p. 456. ''■ Cavendish Square was part of a big scheme to metropolise Marylebone in 1715. The Duke of Chandos (then Earl of Carnarvon) took the whole north side, Lords Bingley and Harcourt some ground on the east. A chapel and a 296 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Harcourt was a much -married man, the first time clandestinely in the i68o's, the third time in 1724, only three months after his second wife's death, and three years before his own. The son of the first marriage was secre- tary to the " Brothers' Club." Harcourt was calculating and cold by temperament. It was he who gave, though St. John endorsed,^ that excel- lent advice to his party, that " it ought to be either much better or much worse with the court of Hanover than it was." Exonerated both by Defoe's pamphlet^ and Boling- broke's protestations' from any complicity with the Pre- tender, his exoneration ought to have cleared his friends as well as himself. That it did not was due to their greater weight and smaller prudence. He did not sit on the fence, like Harley, but, like Hanmer and Dartmouth, he always managed to be on the right side of the hedge. Had there been any real substance in the charge that Queen Anne's last Ministry designed a restoration, the presumptions were as strongly against Harcourt as against his colleagues. In the June of 1713 Prior reports "little brother Sim" as figuring in Paris.* But the Whig resentments were against the main contrivers of their discredit, and not against Har- court, who was nothing but a successful advocate. His prosperity was inexpugnable, and the mansion in which he died was acquired in the very year which ruined so many of his friends. Swift himself called him "trimming Har- market were projected. The South Sea failures stopped the improvements for a time, but they 'were finished in 1732. Cf. Lyson's " Environs of London," vol. iii. p. 257, and Portland MS., vol. v. p. 550. 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 491. "What Harcourt said was that he believed no other Minister (than Oxford), at the head of a powerful party, would not be better at Hanover, if he did not mean to be worse there. " Cf, "Of the State of Parties," Bol. Works, vol. vii. p. 271. 2 Cf. "The Secret History of the White Staff," pt. ii. p. 35. ^ Cf. " Remarks on History," Letter 24, Works, vol. ii. p. 329. Bolingbroke appeals ". . . . particularly to a noble lord, who, by the post he was in when most of these transactions passed, must have had the best opportunities of know- ing the truth of them, and by whose testimony I am willing that the gentleman I defend should stand or fall ; " and his remarkable letter to his father (Feb. 1715)) quoted in Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 178, and corrobora,ted, as to Harcourt, by Portland MS., vol. v. p. 508. * Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 181. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 297 court." 1 Some forensic eloquence, more shrewd geniality, and most dexterous moderation were his endowments. He knew how to reconcile intemperate profession with tem- perate conduct. His relation to men of letters was due rather to his association with Swift and Bolingbroke than to his own affinities ; to the former he owed his introduc- tion to Pope, and to the latter his appropriation of John Philips, to whose memory he raised the pompous inscrip- tion, "Uno Miltoni secundus, primoque psene par." He afforded Pope a study at Stanton Harcourt in 1718 ; he afforded Philips not only sanctuary but sustenance. When " Gulliver " appeared, he " commends it very much, though he thinks in some places the matter too far carried" — a criticism characteristic of his unsympathetic and pedantic type.2 He joined the Prince of Wales' set, and was one of those who took Swift to Mrs. Howard. His Toryism be- came fainter as his comfort grew more assured. Writing of Atterbury in the spring of 1721, Prior says, " He cannot be lower in the opinion of most men than he is, and I wish our friend Harcourt were higher than he is." ^ Bathurst also deserves a mention. An Oxford man, the member for Cirencester before he was one of the twelve Tory peers, an advocate for Atterbury, he yet lived to be a member of the Privy Council, captain of the band of pensioners under Pelham, and to receive a pension on the accession of George III.; while he survived to know Sterne and to sit for his portrait in " The Letters to Eliza." A wit in town and a gardener at Oakley Wood, a good friend and a placid companion, he remained unruffled to the last. He was the cousin of Strafford, and he married his own cousin, Catherine Apsley. It was he who said of Swift that "with sitting still in his own study" he had "often made three kingdoms drunk at once."* To him Bolingbroke dedicated his fine essay on " The True Use of Retirement and Study." • In the Fag-ot {1713). " Gay to Swift, November ij, 1726. Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 119. 3 Prior to Swift, April 25, 1721. Hid., vol. xvi. p. 389. * Swift's Works (Letters), vol. xvii. p. 337. 298 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Such, then, was the Brotherhood. Its ways were nomad. It met now at Beaufort's, Peterborough's, or Bolingbroke's, where the hosts suppHed the wine ; now at Ozinda's or the Thatched House. It dwindled with the Examiner, and for the same reason. By December 1712 Swift records in his journal that "we do no good." The meetings became fortnightly and died out altogether. There was no longer coherence. In March 1713 Oxford dined with Halifax " and four principal Whigs," and Boling- broke invited Addison with Swift and proposed Somers' health. But the famous band — the most famous in all clubland — still saluted each other fraternally far into the coming era of their outlawry, and their womankind con- tinued to subscribe themselves " sister " in their letters. The " feast of reason and the flow of soul " still hovered round the dregs of the charmed chalice. The October Club has purely a political interest. It was no new institution ; rather an early association modi- fied. In King William's time it had been a nest of Jaco- bites. By 1703 it had rallied some 150 discontented or malcontented members, and its meetings, .held formerly at the " Bell " in King Street, were transferred to the "Crown." But it was in 1710 that it f^rst became a serious organisation. " This loyal. 0!aiJJ?fty elub," writes Peter Wentworth on February^Sf^iyii,' "is a great dis- turbance to Mr. Harley, who! finds they are past his governing ; their number is increased to 150. They are most of them young gentlemen of estates that have never been in Parliament before, and are not very close, but declare to everybody that they designe to have every Whig turn'd out, and not to suffer that the new Ministry should shake hands as they see they do with the old. I was told by two or three of their club last Sunday that they begin to send the old Fellows among them, but damn they won't be bite so, and that neither their weadles nor threats shall bring them under Government. What has once been carried by the majority of their Club they will ' Wentworth Papers, p. 180. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 299 stand to a man in the House ; they don't care for their telling 'em they will be dissolved, for 'tis what they know they dare not do, for they will be all choose again. Mr. Bathurst, who is of this club, tells me they talk of exa- mining into the grants, and he ask't me the nature of yours." It was a kind of " Fourth Party." They were political Ishmaelites. The old fellows were men like Bromley and Hanmer, who had been set as watchdogs over them. Rochester was countenanced by Harley, as their president, in April 1711.1 Swift's " Some Advice Humbly Offered to the Members of the October Club " was pub- lished in January, but the second edition must have been later, as it accentuates the grievances of the Dissenters against the Whigs on Nottingham's occasional conformity intrigues. It was at the time generally accredited to Harcourt. It was a strenuous appeal for Tory union. Swift foresaw that a constellation of cliques must be quenched in the political firmament, just as he foresaw that the wrestling match between the two Tory prota- gonists would be a fatal waste of skill and strength. In vain did he preach patience, temper, and insight. "The perpetual discord of factions," he urges in this remon- strance,^ " with several changes of late years in the very nature of our Government, have controlled many maxims among us. The Court and Country party, which used to be the old division, seem now to be ceased, or sus- pended for better times or worse princes. The Queen and Ministry are at this time fully in the true interest of the kingdom, and therefore the Court and Country are of a side ; and the Whigs, who originally were of the latter, are now of neither, but an independent faction, nursed up by the necessities or mistakes of a late good though inex- perienced Prince. Court and Country ought therefore to join their forces. . . ." We may consult also " Eleven Opinions about Mr. Harley " in several places. The author compares the October Club to the tinker of Exeter, who comforted himself on being hung in the reflection that ' Pauli, p. 364. ^ Swift's Works, vol. v. p. 246. 300 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES he had made some noise in the world. He styles its members "self-contradicting, moon-blind High-Flyers." Defoe, in his "Secret History of the White Staff," empha- sises the fact that the club consisted of rebels to their party setting up to be independents — " High, hot, out of temper politicians, whose view was within themselves, and who, acting upon principles of absolute government, pushed at establishing their party in a power or capacity of govern- ing by the severity of the law ; to say no further." He adds that Harley found out methods " to untie this knot, and by silent, quiet steps, in a little time, he so effectually separated these gentlemen that in less than six months the name of the October Club was forgotten in the world." ^ This last statement is inaccurate. The club was partly a drag on Harley, partly a cave for discontented Tories, and partly an ambush for retrograde Jacobites, who wished to revive the mistakes and misgovern- ment of the Stuarts. Another point pressed upon the club by Swift was the importance of ejecting the Somersets. " It was obvious to suppose that in a particular where the honour and interest of a husband were so closely united to those of a wife, he might be sure of her utmost endeavours for his protec- tion, though she never loved nor esteemed him." But, as we have noticed, the wife remained a Whig spy in the Tory Canaan, even after the husband had been dis- possessed. By March 171 2 the extreme October men formed the " March Club," which thus became a faction within a faction. All the Tory efforts to moderate or manage these extremists failed. Rochester's presidency was succeeded by St. John's in 1712, but, beyond protecting his friend Arthur Moore against Sandes, that friend's father-in-law, he was powerless and perhaps reluctant to restrain them. They bickered with the Government and among them- selves. They frittered their energies in trumpery obstruc- ^ Pages 22 and 23. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 301 tions.^ They, more than any other element, wrecked the Tory party. The fact is that St. John played with them, and, in so doing, he played with fire. On the one hand, as his broil with Harley increased, he found in the October Club a formidable engine of embarrassment for his manoeuvring rival ; on the other, he humoured their ex- travagances to conciliate the squirearchy of the kingdom. Hanmer, who defeated the Treaty of Commerce, for which he had moved the thanks of both Houses, who was at once a platonic Jacobite and a "Whimsical" Hanoverian, an orator who had influenced a division ^ and a Tory who had married a Whig Duchess ; who was by turns caballer. Speaker, and editor of Shakespeare; who in March 1712 drafted the representation as to the insufficient contribution by the Allies to the war ; who in the same year spied on Ostend with a supposed view to its annexation, and yet who in the next seceded with Anglesey ; ^ this same nonpareil of loyalty, sedition, and interest issued from this club. And while it proved the Trojan horse of the Tories, it also afforded a vantage-ground to the Whigs for fomenting the divisions which weakened their adver- saries. Swift * well compared their emissaries of schism to those of the Jesuits, from whose " schools " he hints they had improved a lesson. But it is high time to resume our chronicle, and, before we do so, to mention some circumstances material both to the party at large and to St. John in particular. In Scotland, the Whigs, who had been baulked in the election of peers, had grown insolent. The " Squadrone " 1 Cf. their demand that letters should not be tampered with in June 171 1 (Pauli, p. 369) and their opposition of supply in March 171 1 (Wentworth Papers, p. 189). 2 In "Lord Peterborough's affair," 1708. See Swift to King, Swift's Works, vol. XV. p. 263. 3 Vanessa at the time thus criticises their conduct: "Lord ! how much we differ from the ancients ... but now our greatest men will at any time give up their country out of pique, and that for nothing." To Swift, June 23, 17 13. Works, vol. xix. p. 408. * Examiner, No. 30. 302 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES united with "the old Court party," and yet, writes the Earl of Islay in 1710, the aversion of the Tories to the Squadrone was "inexpressible." The fact was, as Defoe under the alias of "Guilot" informed Harley, the Scotch Tories "differ from the English in being universally Jacobite," and all "drink to the Pretender's health." It is thus that a valetudinarian welcomes a quack. But as regards England, he mentions the rumour of the Queen's dissolving the succession as "absurd." "The gentlemen," remarks John Drummond, writing from Holland, "now employed by the Queen were as hearty for the Revolu- tion as any in England, firm Protestants, men uninterested, with good landed estates to lose, which they cannot re- move like some new acquired sums of money." These were the views of common-sense. Marlborough himself, at this time relying on St. John for an accommodation with the Tories, seems to have shown his agreement by in- vesting ;^6o,ooo in the English funds. Meanwhile St. John himself, engrossed with schemes for West Indian and Quebec expeditions, saw the necessity, which he pressed on Harley, for propitiating the army. " If the Queen does not exert herself," he writes in January, " the army will be none of hers. ... I hope you will support me since I have gone so far. ... I am preparing a state of the general officers, and, if she pleases, will break Lord Marl- borough's faction by doing what is right in its own nature without giving him any just mortification as general." ^ The Tories led off by the debate on Galway's conduct in the Spanish war. As soon as the Commons met, " Mr. St. John delivered to them a message from the Queen, acquainting them that there had been an action in Spain very much to the disadvantage of King Charles's affair, which having fallen particularly on the British forces, the Queen had immediately given directions for sending and procuring troops to repair this loss, not doubting but the Parliament would approve thereof." ^ The disaster of 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 622, 629, 639, 652, 656, 660, 666. The Scotch Jacobites were taken unawares by the Queen's death. Ibid., vol. v. p. 499. '^ Boyer, p. 485. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 303 Almanza in 1707 having been thus cleverly linked with the present emergency, the same message was sent to the Lords and the " thanks of both Houses procured." But the party did not intend to rest here. It was the House of Peers that had most affronted the Tories under Godolphin ; in that House they were resolved on revenge. The Duke of Beaufort moved that Peterborough's impending mis- sion to Vienna should be stayed. The affairs of Spain were referred to a committee of the whole House. Gal- way, whose infirmities necessitated his being seated, and Tyrawley, formerly Sir Charles O'Hara, were summoned to attend. Galway's relation of his conduct was modest,^ and delivered in the broken English^ which had made his generalship of British forces against Berwick, Marl- borough's nephew, so curious a sign of the times. Tyrawley declared that, as a soldier, he " carried neither pen nor ink about with him, but only a sword which he used, the best he could, upon occasion." The generals withdrew, and a debate began in which Marlborough, Wharton, Godolphin, and Halifax warmly defended them. On the nth, therefore, the censure was passed and Peterborough's conduct approved in the presence of the Queen. Peterborough desired that his opinion in the council of war should be shown ; and eventually both Stanhope's letter, confirming the Tory view, and Sunder- land's, proving the intervention of Godolphin's Ministry, were read. A characteristic passage of arms accompanied the latter. The resolution affirmed " that the design of an offensive war in Spain was approved and directed by the Cabinet Council." Cowper at once sprang to his feet with a legal quibble. The distinction between the Ministers and the Cabinet Council was, he said, " unknown to the law." But Peterborough was ready with his retort. The Cabinet Council, he admitted, was not so proper a term as the Ministers. He was reminded of another distinction — that between the Privy Council and the Cabinet Council. The ' Wentworth Papers, p. 170. ^ He was Rouvigny, one of William's Frenchmen. 304 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Privy Council thought to know everything and knew nothing ; the Cabinet Council thought nobody knew any- thing but themselves. So here the same contrast applied. The " Cabinet Council " was indeed too copious a term. "They disposed of all, they fingered the money, they meddled with the war ; they meddled with things they did not understand ... so that sometimes there was no Minister in the Cabinet Council." i With this parting shot at the domineering Junto and the subservient coalitionists he was content to enjoy his triumph. The Lord Keeper returned him the thanks of the whole House " for his eminent and remarkable service" to his "Queen and country" during his command in Spain.^ A short time afterwards the affair was pressed still further. Argyle moved that the generals had " lost the honour of England." The Duke of Marlborough argued ad misericordiam, alluding to Galway's age, eye, and arm, but Argyle ridiculed the appeal and insisted on the motion, which was carried, although on this occasion the Duke of Buckingham divided against his party .^ It is impossible not to discern St. John's hand in these high-handed proceedings which he introduced in the Commons. They served a double end — to intimidate Marl- borough and to prepare the way for a peace. But Peter- borough himself, like most soldiers, was not so readily won over to the cessation of war. On July 12th of this year Swift writes : * " My Lord Peterborough and I have had a good deal of talk ... or rather he has talked. . . . He is mightily discontented with what I writ him." This refers to Peterborough's own letter from Hanover on June 2nd, where he denies that Swift's " loving principle " will be a success as regards Harley and St. John. He protests that unless he can be of use, he will retire from public life and leave England "for a better climate, or marry in a rage and become the hero of the October Club." Swift in the first quoted letter proceeds : "He thinks his successful 1 Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 974. ^ Boyer, p. 487. ' Wentworth Papers, p. 185. " Works, vol. xv. p. 417. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 305 negotiation with the Emperor and the Duke of Savoy have put us in a better condition than ever to continue the war, and will engage to convince me that Spain is yet to be had if we take proper means." Vanity, blindfolded prudence, and pique counterfeited patriotism. The next great Tory onslaught was in the affair of the thirty-five millions. It related to the money mismanage- ment of Godolphin. It met with universal opposition, and the Court party, to their consternation, lost on a division by forty. St. John, as too often, appeared too late on the scene. He spoke long and forcibly, urging " of what a fatal consequence it was to the affairs of the nation to re- fuse so good a fund for a supply, and that our credit, which was just reviving to a great height, this vote would throw it all down again ; so that several politicians that could not endure Mr. Harley say they see now there's no man the Court employs has address enough to manage the House of Commons but him." " If he had been well," adds Peter Wentworth, "he would either have had intelli- gence of what was intended . . . or at least when there he would have seen how 'twould have gone and could have put it off for a better opportunity. But ever since somebody has bestirred themselves and have brought the House into the temper desired." ^ That " somebody " was of course St. John. Already the differences between him and Harley were being aggravated. This was not the last time that the latter overreached himself by allowing a division to be snatched by his enemies so as to make his friends the more dependent upon himself. An " imprest account " of the thirty-five millions, with Thomas Harley and Mainwaring for auditors, revealed very culpable negligence, and it was resolved that "the not compelling the several accountants only to pass their respective accounts was a notorious breach of trust." ^ For the inquiry itself St. John had been most urgent, "maintaining that none but those who were enemies to their country, or who would themselves plunder the Trea- 1 Wentworth Tapers, pp. 189-190. "■ Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 1018. U 3o6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES sury, would be so bold as to oppose it." ^ Walpole, who had sprung into such prominence as to have lately been associated with Cowper in declining Harley's overtures, rose to reply. His point was that affected Tory zeal only masked factious animosity. Unless the House rejected this inquiry and addressed themselves to remedy the civil distempers, he left it to " conjecture the situation to which this kingdom and Government are likely to be exposed." The report above referred to passed the House on April 12th. It asserted "that of the monies granted by Parliament, and issued for the public service to Christmas 1710, there remains unaccounted for the sum of ;£35,302,io7, for a great part of which no accompts have so much as been laid before the auditors ; and for the rest, though some accompts have been brought in, yet they have not been prosecuted by the accomptants and finished." The irregularity of the accountants, it will be noticed, was all that the resolution eventually censured. St. John, how- ever, who had headed the attack, now proceeded to defend Brydges, who had been one of the accountants and a great personal friend.^ Harley could not feel surprised at the mouse which the mountain had brought forth, for he was already jealous of St. John, and had approached the young Walpole to supplant him. St. John himself was at this very time "a little ticklish with the rest of the Ministry," ^ and was already beginning to enlist adherents of his own. As so often occurs, the enhancement of one prominent political figure was attended by that of his rival also. Walpole gained credit as " the best master of figures " by the pamphlet which he published on this occasion. All, however, that he was able to prove was that some account could be given of the whole sum except four millions — rather a large sum assuredly for the protesters of rigid financial purity. But the laurels of both these captains were put into the ' Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 57. ^ Pari. Hist., vol. vi. p. 1019. ' Swift's Journal, April 27, 1711. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 307 popular shade by the immense reaction in Harley's favour which succeeded Guiscard's attack on March 8th. The Marquis de Guiscard, originally Abbd de la Bourlie and brother to the Governor of Namur, had enjoyed for some time a Whig^ commission in the army and a not too enviable reputation. He had undertaken the cause of the Protestant Camisards in the Cevennes. He had been third envoy to Turin.^ He had fought on the disastrous field of Almanza. In appearance he was "of a dark, melancholy countenance and cloudy complexion." ^ He was a spendthrift and a debauchee. He had been in receipt of a pension from Holland, and on its dis- continuance obtained the scanty supply of ^£200 from the English Government. Through his brother's friendship with the Duke of Ormonde and his own with Count Brian^on, Envoy Extraordinary from the Duke of Savoy, he frequented the society of diplomats as a gambler and a man of pleasure. It was thus, probably, that he was first introduced to St. John, with whom, it was said, he quarrelled about a mistress. On the Count's death he became desperate, dismissed his servants, put down his coach, and pawned his plate. Some three months before his arrest he was often even in want of food, living the life of a morose parasite and adventurer. He had afterwards solicited a pension from the Queen. For this purpose he importuned St. John, and, on what the Whig Boyer terms " his faint recommendation," obtained an annual allowance of ;£5oo, which Harley promptly reduced, occupied as he ' Swift went so far as to assert in Examiner No. 32 that he was " invited over" by the Whigs. The Medley retorted on this, and by the Whigs Guiscard was misrepresented as a Jacobite accomplice. In the ballad, for in- stance, of "Guiscard stabbing Robin," a line runs "Two of a trade can ne'er agree." Swift, in the same Exaviiner, describes Guiscard as "raised from a profligate Popish priest to be a Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel of a regiment of horse," and as "extremely prodigal and vicious." Cf. Works, vol. iv. p. 36. Archbishop King even quoted the cases of Fenius Rufus and Scevinus from the 15th book of Tacitus — "Accensis indicibus ad prodendum Fenium Rufum quern eundem conscium et inquisitorem non tolerabant." 2 In 1708. Portland MS., vol. iv. p. 502. ' Swift's Works, vol. iv. p. 36. 3o8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES was with the South Sea scheme for paying off over seven milHons of pubhc debt by six per cent, annuities whose interest was charged on a monopoly of Peruvian trade. Mortified, and afraid that the pittance would be precarious, Guiscard opened a treasonable correspondence with Mor- eau, a banker in Paris. His letters were intercepted by means of the Countess of Dorchester; and on March 8th, the Queen's inauguration day, Guiscard was arrested in the Mall on a warrant which St. John had signed. Such was the unscrupulous man whose wicked deed established Harley in power. The scene is so dramatic that we shall reproduce it in unity from the various contemporary records, only premising that the most authentic is the account of Harley 's own sister,^ who was staying with him at the time. That of Peter Wentworth ^ was obtained from the Duke of Argyle the same afternoon at Wills' coffee- house, although the Duke only arrived on the scene after the assassination had failed. He had been dining at Lord Mar's in the " Prive garden," together with Lord Rivers, and came running to the Cockpit. He was, however, an eye and ear witness of the confusion at the door. That of Boyer seems to have been largely derived from Bussiere, the compatriot-surgeon who first attended Harley.^ The tract attributed to Swift * can hardly have wholly been by him, for Harley's own words to his sister seem to explode the current Harleyite version, that it was St. John that Guiscard first sought. We say "seem," because Harley's character is quite compatible with a jealous monopoly of the blow which was to popularise him. In the Coke Corre- spondence^ occurs a mysterious if jocular effusion, which, in our judgment, points to the probability that St. John's 1 Portland MS., vol. iv. pp. 668 and following. 2 Wentwovth Papers, p. 1 86. ^ Bussiere is usually styled "Bewsher" in the correspondence of the time. In the Dartmouth Papers (Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rept., App. pt. 5, p. 312) we read that after the duel between Mohun and Hamilton in Kensington Gardens, Ferguson fetched "Busher." He probably resided at Kensington. ■• Works, vol. vi. p. 77. ^ Hist. MS. Comm. 12th Rept., App. pt. iii., p. 109 ; and for other rumours ezposl, p. 310. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 309 life was also in danger. As it has never before been quoted, we subjoin it in full : — "[Temp. Anne] H. St. J., Sir John Stanley, B. G., and G. G. [probably Granville]. — Squire Chamberlain [i.e. T. Coke, who was then Vice-Chamberlain], the inclosed will inform you that we are to save Signor Saggione's [we conjecture St. John's] life to-morrow : therefore this is to let you know that 'tis agreed we meet to-morrow at ten of the clock at the Secretary at War's [at this period Gran- ville] in Golden Square [where St. John also resided]. From thence to proceed to the place appointed in the inclosed paper, which is all at present, from, dear derivative Tom [we guess " Son of a sea cook"], yours ever [probably St. John himself]." If our construction is true, and it is certainly plausible, St. John was taking measures for his own safety. Our authorities for the scene we are about to represent are numerous. These acccounts, in trifles contradictory, amend and supplement each other. It was, as we have said, the anniversary of the Queen's accession. It was a Thursday, and that evening doubtless the " Brothers " would have met. Harley's sister, who was on a visit from the country, had "designed" "to go in the morning to Cousin Bridges, and dine at Mr. Braddle's, and then in the afternoon to Mr. Cotton's lecture." But on the Wednesday evening Lord Bellamont begged her to go the next morning and " speak to Harley on his behalf." " So soon as his door was open," she proceeds, " Mr. Secretary St. John came to speak with him." Harley was dressed in gala finery — " a new cloth coat and a rich waistcoat — it was blue and silver ground, flowered with rich gold brocade flowers." It had already done duty on the Queen's birth- day, and with a little additional silver fringe " looked very well." Between the cloth and the silk lining of his coat was "a buckram," and he also wore "a thin flannel" under-waistcoat and "a flannel on his stomach," all of which characteristic fortifications afterwards broke the force of the blow. He repaired first to the Queen, as was generally believed, to beg her to forbear her public attendances. At any rate, for the first time she absented 3IO BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES herself from chapel ; but it must be also remembered that she was indisposed. " My brother waited on her while she was at dinner. I take it, as he came to St. James's, he saw Guiscard walking in the Mall,i and he, with the Lord Chamberlain and others of the Cabinet, filled up the warrant for seizing him." That very day and the day preceding Guiscard had been "at the Queen's backstairs." Mansel had seen him there at one o'clock and wondered that he had spoken " mighty kind," because of " his persecution to the Lords of the Treasury," about his pension. It was darkly reported that he carried a bottle of poison about with him. After his arrest the " Lords of the Cabinet Council " met at St. John's office in the Cockpit. All the great officers of state were present except the Duke of Shrewsbury and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The former entertained the foreign Ministers. Harley, Poulet, and Ormonde sat together, the prisoner behind them, St. John and the rest fronting them, the clerk's table between them. St. John motioned Harley to change places with him so that Guiscard's face might be scrutinised in the full light. It had been observed that he fixed his gaze on Harley as he entered. After his arrest he had requested some sack, some bread and butter, and a knife. These had been furnished him, but the woman of the shop omitted the knife. As he was brought in he filched, unobserved, a penknife from the writing-table in front of him. It was whispered that he had a bone to pick with Mr. Secretary ; that he was equally resentful against the Duke of Marl- borough, who had used him "like a footman," and had not deigned to answer his applications ; that against the first he meditated mischief, and had actually presumed to chal- lenge the last. Harley opened the inquiry by demanding if Guiscard knew Moreau. Guiscard shifted from foot to foot, fumbling with that " French air " which was now ' Swift had also seen him in the Mall, and wondered that he took no notice of him, as he had known him some years. He looked on him as too weak a man for such a desperate act. Swift's Memoirs relating to the change, Works, vol. iii. p. 251. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 311 fashionable, and made trifling answers. Harley called him to order, bade him be serious, and reminded him that he was under examination. Then St. John impetuously took up the tale, and, " with that force of eloquence inseparable from what he speaks," ^ taxed him with " double villainy," exhorting him to open out his inmost mind and atone for his " baseness and blackness." Both the Lord Treasurer and the Secretary plied him in French, and it was noticed that he rolled his eyes at St. John's rhetoric. The bell was rung, and the messengers bidden to take him to the ad- joining room while the Council discussed his case. " Voila qui est dur," he muttered, " pas un mot ! " After a short interval Guiscard was reconducted to his place. He found the opportunity by a sudden movement to stoop down over Harley's right shoulder, as if intending some communi- cation. As he did so he hissed out, " J'en veux done a toi ! " and stabbed him with a double stroke, and with such violence that he stunned his victim. The first blow pierced the triple covering, beginning with the coat, which was "open at the breast," and penetrating the gorgeous waistcoat, " just in one of the gold flowers," which arrested its force, " it stuck into the breast-bone, a little above the gristle that is at the bottom of the breast. The penknife broke off short, near half an inch above the handle, and no doubt when the knife broke his hand jobbed down upon the right side of the wound, for there was a great bruise. He, not finding him fall, and not knowing the knife was broke, re- peated his blow (without drawing back his hand) further on the left side, as appears now by a bruise there, though my brother had no notion of the second blow. Had not the knife broken, the second stroke would have been fatal, for it was aimed near the heart. The first was only one inch from the diaphragm ; the penknife struck aslant and was buried in the wound."^ Harley sank speechless upon the floor. The consternation and confusion that ensued were in- describable. The Duke of Queensberry ran out and summoned the messengers to pinion him. The Duke ^ Swift's Works, vol. vi. p. 87. ^ The penknife was presented to Swift. 312 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of Beaufort " got up a stool and threw at him." ^ St, John drew his sword, sprang upon Guiscard, and wounded him in the arm.^ Guiscard grappled with him, and so vehemently that the clerk's table was overthrown and the sword broken ; he made perpetual passes at St. John with the empty handle. St. John hurried off, swordless, to call Bussifere, the French surgeon of the neighbourhood. Ormonde and Newcastle both drew, the first striking him in the belly, and the second in the shoulder. In rushed the messengers, with the stalwart Wilcox at their head, who dealt Guiscard a fresh blow. Guiscard was secured, his clothes torn, and himself battered by the struggle. Meanwhile, Harley alone was calm. The smart of the wound revived him. " He took out the penknife himself, wiped it in his handkerchief, and I think put it up, wrapped in his handkerchief, into his pocket, then took Lord Poulet's handkerchief, held it to the wound, and rose up and walked. He continued pacing the room. The seeing him alive, they say, only could have prevented them killing Guiscard. Bussi^re arrived and was surprised by his fortitude. My brother, before he dressed him, obliged him to tell him if the wound was mortal or not. Having dressed him, he bid him dress the Frenchman whom they had knocked down and tied neck and heels." As he was being bound, he turned to the Duke of Ormonde and said, "My LordDuc, pourquoi ne me d6p6chez vous?" "Ce n'est pas I'affaire des honn^tes gens, c'est I'affaire des autres," was the answer of his quondam patron. Guiscard was dragged out into the vestibule. There Argyle heard him ejaculate that he intended St. John, who, with Marlborough, had used him ill. The fact was denied by Harley, but the words seem certainly to have been employed. Beaufort taxed him about the Queen. He replied that she was "a good woman and always treated him civilly." Poulet waited until Bussi^re had performed his ofHce, and then accom- panied Harley home^ in a sedan. ' W^entworth Papers, p. 186. = Swift's Tract says "the belly." ' Near St. James's Palace. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 313 St. John, excited and frantic, had sallied forth, rested awhile at Mrs. Masham's in St. James's, and then gone straight to Dr. Arbuthnot, who informed the Queen. So perturbed was Anne, that she refused to believe Harley was alive until she had spoken with Bussiere. The latter was dismissed, greatly to Boyer's indignation, and Arbuth- not took his place. Suspicion infected even professional service. St. John himself seems now to have returned to his house, for shortly afterwards Swift heard the news from Mrs. St. John in her chair. It soon spread all over the town, with the infinite decorations and additions of scandal. It was a French plot, a Papist plot, a Whig plot, no plot at all but a scuffle of conspirators ; St. John had saved Harley, St. John had ruined Harley ; Guiscard was his spy, his accomplice, and his enemy. London tingled with the two names of Harley and St. John. Guiscard was conveyed to Newgate, where he refused nourishment, languished and died before he could be put upon his trial. The Queen showed her consideration by sending the poor wretch two of her own physicians and two of her surgeons. It was remarked that Guiscard refused the ministrations of a priest. The last time that the Lords of the Council examined him, he addressed St. John. " Pardonne, pardonne ! " he supplicated ; " Je vous pardonne, Dieu vous pardonne ! " was St. John's answer. " Content, content ! " gasped the dying man. And with these last words he vanishes from earthly sight.^ No event made a greater impression at the time. Swift improvised a sympathetic verse and left the paper with Harley's porter. It was lost, and only repeated long afterwards.^ Prior penned some really noble stanzas. ' He died March 17. On March 15, Swift says in his Journal, "A poor wench that Guiscard kept sent him a bottle of sack, but the keeper would not let him touch it, for fear it was poison." Dark hints as to his death are thrown out in a pamphlet, " Eleven Opinions about Mr. H y " (1711), p. 65. 2 Journal, February 19, 1712 :— " On Britain Europe's safety lies ; Britain is lost if Harley dies. Harley depends upon your skill : Think what you save or what you kill." 314 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES The whole swarm of parasite poets were busy with their pens. St. John repeated to Swift — " and he was but an ill dissembler" — that Barley's life was "absolutely necessary." For himself he " was not master of the scheme . . , nor had credit enough with the ^ueen." ^ By April, Harley recovered and received the address of thanks in both Houses. When it was brought in by the Lords, all the Whigs but one walked out. Guiscard had converted Harley into a Tory of the Tories. For the nonce, he dis- continued his confabulations with Halifax. The Queen could not do enough for her mangled saint. She shut her ears to the siren voice of Somers.^ Shortly afterwards she created her deliverer Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, leaving St. John to fight his battles at St. Stephen's. Harley was at his zenith. He became a hero. If he had himself con- trived the dastardly outrage, he could not more cunningly have captured the popular admiration. It confirmed him in his faults, it exalted his virtues. It did much to exag- gerate the divergence between his brilliant subaltern and himself. The contrasts of temper, of temperament, of talent, of tendency, even of appearance (for Harley was uncouth while St. John was graceful), were intensified by the event which ensured Harley a free hand. The precise time of the rupture is difficult to fix. St. John afterwards assigned the summer of 17 12 as its date. Harley himself The best verse in Prior's contribution runs : — " Great as thou art, thou canst demand no more, O breast bewailed by earth, preserved by Heaven ! No higher can aspiring virtue soar ; Enough to thee of grief and fame is given." ' "An Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's Last Ministry.'' Works, vol. vi. p. 22. ^ Swift's Journal, March 4, 171 1. "Lord Somers has been twice in the Queen's closet, once very lately, and your Duchess of Somerset, who now has the key, is a most insinuating woman, and I believe they will endeavour to play the same game that has been played against them." In the June following, the Somersets exerted their utmost to prevail on the Queen to make him Privy Seal. Buckingham and Shrewsbury were the rival grandee-candidates, and the former was so disgusted on Bishop Robinson's appointment that he retired to the country. THE PRELUDE TO THE PEACE 315 gives the date of February 1711, when "there began to be a division among those called Tories in the House, and Mr. Secretary St. John thought it to be convenient to be listing a separate party to himself."^ Swift on several occasions hints the close of 1710 and the time of which we are writing, in the March of 171 1. The probability is that the breach grew to a head when the earldom of Bol- ingbroke and the Garter, promised by the Queen, were denied.^ At any rate, henceforward, until 1714, their natural roles were to be reversed. St. John was to be Saul, and Harley, David. The one was to slay his thousands, the other his tens of thousands. It is just this dividing line of significance that must excuse us for having presented the sole circumstantial account of the scene that has yet been detailed. 1 The Earl of Oxford's " Brief Account " to the Queen of June 9, 17 14. He adds that "to prevent this" it was contrived that Rochester and Harley should be invited by St. John to dinner — " vi'hich was the last time he ever invited Robert Harley." Shrewsbury and Poulet were among the guests, and Rochester was the pacificator. Oxford, however, met Bolingbroke at Buckingham's shortly before July 27, 1714. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 476 ; and cf. post, p. 486. ^ Cf. especially Portland MS., vol. v. pp. 194, 19S, 231, 234. CHAPTER VIII THE PRELIMINARIES It remains that we should investigate the actual pre- liminaries of the peace in which St. John's controlling hand is most conspicuous. Sacheverell's defence, which had echoed so many notes of Harley's future policy, had already preluded that of the peace.i It was well known that Louis had been sounded in 1710, but at this time Harley was feeling his way and did not yet stand firm on his feet. The death of the Emperor Joseph in the April of 1711 pre- sented a golden opportunity. Peterborough was de- spatched to Vienna to test Austrian sincerity in fulfilling their complement of troops. The question arose of the election by the Diet of Charles — the " laborious futility " of Carlyle — as Emperor. The Queen wished to write her wishes in his favour with her own hand, but was hindered by the gout. Bolingbroke himself penned the despatch for Whitworth. The Queen, he said, was agree- able to the election of Charles, but deprecated the union of Austria and Spain as disturbing the balance of power, contrary to the express stipulation in the second Parti- tion Treaty and the spirit of the grand alliance. This, as we have seen, had been and remained his fixed idea. He saw Bothmar and praised his exertions for the com- mon weal. But Bothmar was on his guard. He wormed out of Maffei, the Savoyard envoy, that St. John wished the Duke of Savoy to have the reversion of Spain. This was distasteful to the Elector on account of the Duke's relationship to the Pretender. Bothmar also affected ' Sacheverell's speech, 1710, p. 16. 3.5 THE PRELIMINARIES 317 to disrelish it because the Duke was a Papist, but this is hardly consistent with his predilection for Austria. At the same time Harley paid Bothmar a visit in which he carefully eschewed any reference to the juncture. In the following June St. John endeavoured to reassure Bothmar/ who not long afterwards was to write him one of the most impertinent letters in the whole annals of diplomacy.^ St. John acquainted the Hanoverian envoy with the fact that, despite the Jacobites in Scotland and the feuds of Scotch ecclesiastics, Convocation had there declared for the Protestant succession, and ordered all congregations to pray for it and the Electress after the Queen, as empowered by Act of Parliament.^ These facts have never before been repeated in English records, and we advert to them here for a double reason. In the first place, to show how early the peace was wilfully associated by Bothmar and his British confederates with the prejudicial taint of Jacobitism — a taint which gained false colour from the pamphlet " An Oath to an Invader and Abjuring the Invaded Dissected," and the postscript to the Postboy of July 5, 171 1 (circulated among the Irish coffee-houses, and especially at Dick's in Dublin,* and founded on the false report that the Pretender, who had only gone to meet the Duke of Berwick in Dauphind, meditated a visit to Switzerland) .^ And in the second, to emphasise the immediate impetus of the negotiations, a union of Spain and Austria under a Hapsburg ; a conjunction as ominous to the equilibrium of Europe as the consolidation of France and Spain under a Bour- ' In view of the Duchess of Gordon's " Cujus est " Jacobite gold medal, which St. John had both denounced and suppressed. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. i. p. 393. ^ See Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. pp. 168-171. He actually asked St. John to direct Parliament that the guarantee in the Barrier Treaty should not be infringed. ^ Pauli (Rundschau — Die Aussichten des H. Hanover's 8th March 1883), pp. 365-366. The usual presumption is made by Pauli from the second passage, " Man sieht aucht St. John war noch immer darum zu thun, sich beide Thure oifen zu lassen." * " We are informed that Mr. White alias Lesley is gone to Swisserland in order if he can to convert a certain YOUNG gentleman," &c., though the post- script deprecates a "COME OVER." = Boyer, p. 513. 3i8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES bon. In April, moreover, the Dauphin and two of his family died. By the following February the position was to be intensified by the deaths of the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany — in Bolingbroke's words, " three Dauphins in one year." The French, for their part, were anxious to restore the Bavarian Elector to his dominions. It was high time to begin taking measures in earnest. Two abortive expeditions also contributed to the de- sirability of peace. The Tories had all along deprecated the neglect of England's natural weapon, the navy ; and Marlborough's preponderant care for an army largely subserving foreign interests. In July the expedition to the West Indies — a project pressed on Harley both by St. John and Defoe — miscarried ; and shortly afterwards, the ill-fated design on Quebec, afterwards the ground of recrimination between Oxford and Bolingbroke, the cause of the former's rupture with Mrs. Masham, and one of the heads of Oxford's impeachment. It had been inaugurated ^ by St. John though projected by Lieutenant- General Nicholson, who in 1710 had succeeded in his attempt upon Port Royal in Nova Scotia and had brought over the four Indian Princes, who acquainted the Ministry with the danger our American possessions were under from the French. The design was to secure Quebec and Placentia and to win the fisheries of Newfoundland for Great Britain ; and it failed, under the leadership of Mrs. Masham's brother, whose appointment to this high com- mand and withdrawal of regiments from Marlborough in Flanders increased the odium of the failure. It is curious that one of the unlucky vessels was called the Dunkirk. Storm, fog, treachery,^ and an imperfect com- missariat did their work, and after the loss of eight ' "... As that whole design was formed by me, and the management of it singly carried on by me, you will easily imagine that I have a sort of paternal concern for the success of it." To Drummond, June 26, 1711. ^ Swift, " Conduct of the Allies," Works, vol. v. p. 30. The expedition was kept a secret and was supposed to be against Peru. The real bias of Holland and Austria was significantly shown by their insolent complaints against a design THE PRELIMINARIES 319 transports and some eight hundred men, the fleet re- turned ignominiously to Portsmouth in October. The disgrace was the more resented as in September the French had been victorious at Rio, and only the prowess of Sir John Norris, who protected British commerce in the Mediterranean, vindicated the navy. The aims thus lost might be, and were, regained by diplomacy, and afforded a fresh spur to the negotiation. Towards the close of ApriP De Torcy, on Louis's behalf, transmitted some "propositions" to England, though at the same time he deprecated their construction as any sign of weakness, and alleged as their pretext his preference for addressing England rather than the present Government of Holland. That this reason was untrue is evident from the very important fact that the Dutch had for some time been manoeuvring a separate arrangement with France. In Prior's words, " they had never desisted from doing so " ever since the conference of the Hague and Gertruydenberg had broken up.^ When Prior arrived at Fontainebleau in the August of 171 1, he saw no less than three letters expressly written under the Pensionary's authority. They promised Louis every advantage if Torcy would " renew the conferences so unhappily broken off at Gertruydenberg and send an authorised person to meet Pettecum at Amiens. The negotiations must be secret and separate. His Christian Majesty need only name his own terms. Intestine divisions would paralyse England, while the Whigs had great interest with one of our parties in Holland."^ It must never be forgotten that both France and the States possessed Dutch and English factions. The race throughout was between an Anglo-French and a Franco-Dutch accommodation. The six French proposi- tions were in the most general terms, and merely sketched which, even as they misunderstood it, was warranted by the Grand Alliance. Their real object throughout, despite the protestations in Bothmar's memorial, was to preclude any separate British benefit. ^ April 22. ^ Prior's "History of his Own Time,'' p. 440. ' Cf. also the detailed account by Prior of his journey in the Portland MS., vol. V. p. 34 and seq., which strikingly confirms that in his "History." 320 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES out the objects of the Dutch Barrier and the Spanish monarchy. St. John immediately communicated them to Raby, assuring him " that the Queen, in making peace or war, was resolved to act in perfect concert with the States." On May 29 St. John had written to Raby to come over, " since we must now expect to have very soon on the tapis many intrigues, concerning which the Queen thinks it expedient that you should confer." The man fixed upon both by Harley and St. John to begin the tentatives for peace was Prior. Swift, at Windsor, in August, notes that Prior had been hiding away for some two months, and that the Secretary professed ignorance. In fact, propositions had been framed for Louis to con- sider, and Prior had been sent across the water in July under the Queen's authority. The propositions were in brief as follows : (i) No peace without satisfaction for all the Allies ; (2) Barriers for the Dutch, the Emperor, and the Duke of Savoy, who was to have his possessions restored to him both by Austria and France ; (3) the crowns of France and Spain never to be united ; (4) all the Allies who come into the treaty to be satisfied, and the trade of Holland substan- tially secured. Then follow the famous articles in relation to Great Britain in particular : (i) A treaty of trade and commerce to be negotiated ; (2) the Government and suc- cession " as now settled to be recognised ; " (3) Gibraltar and Port Mahon to remain English possessions ;^ (4) Dun- kirk to be demolished ; (5) the Assiento contract to be entirely in the hands of Britain ; (6) Newfoundland to be ceded to Britain, the trade of Hudson's Bay to continue shared, with a status quo as to America ; (7) Equal com- mercial privileges both with France and Spain ; (8) the secret of these articles to be kept till divulged by mutual consent. The Queen's authorisation lacked a date, and was not countersigned. None the less, as Hallam admits, they were under the Queen's signet.^ Prior was commissioned to ^ It is significant that Prior emphasised this point of importance. Portland MS., vol. V. p. 35. '^ Hallam's Const. Hist. (Ward, Lock, & Co.'s edition), p. 762. THE PRELIMINARIES 321 communicate to France our preliminary demands, and to bring us back the answer.^ Such, at the outset, was the rough draft of a scheme which — to employ a phrase of Bohngbroke — had been " crayoned out." It necessitates some material comments. In the first place, the event proved its practicability. All the general demands were attained, and the only one of the special articles that was withdrawn was the English advantage of fifteen per cent, in Spanish trade ; this was yielded in concession to the Dutch.^ As regards the. Colonies, even larger favours were secured. Nor was this all. The Treaty of Utrecht is among the very few alive at this hour. The crowns of France and Spain, despite the denunciating cavillers of a hundred and eighty-six years ago, have never been united. The succession has never been impaired by France. Nor is it either fair or true to attribute this fact, as some sciolists have done, to the mere non-failure of inheritable issue on either side right up to the French Revolution. Bolingbroke himself, with consummate foresight, designed to create " an interest " in all " the other French princes of the bloodj' and " by conse- quence a party in France itself for their exclusion." ^ He directly contemplated the non-failure of issue, and points out that his expedient was not more ineffectual than one which must have been taken to exclude Charles of Austria on the death of his brother. And further, " that he who should go about to ridicule it after our experience (1736) would render himself ridiculous." This being the case, what happened.? Lewis, Oxford's adherent, had to admit in 1727, while endeavouring to dissuade Swift from the publication of his " Last Four Years of Queen Anne," that "the conditions of the Peace of Utrecht have been applauded by most part of mankind, even in the two Houses of Parliament ; should not matters rest here, at least for some time ?"* But, as a crowning argument, so far ^ Prior's "History of his Own Time,'' p. 347. 2 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 262. ^ "Sketch of the History and State of Europe," Works, vol. viii. p. 311. * Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 173. X 322 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES from the continuance of issue being a cause of the per- manence of the Utrecht treaty, direct endeavours were exerted to compass the union of the two crowns in 1724, when the Duke of Bourbon, " in consequence of his enmity to the House of Orleans," supported the claims of Philip V.^ It was the very jealousies sown by Boling- broke between the rival French branches that defeated this attempt. And it is evident that, at any time, the same renunciations which his grandfather had made at the Pyrenean Treaty might have been wrung or bought from Philip or his descendants. It was Bolingbroke's creation of the " interest " above cited that thwarted and pre- cluded this contingency. And the clauses regarding the fisheries of Newfoundland are still operative. New- foundland is still ours. The very provisions of trade that the Whigs rejected are now their orthodox. «reed. The factious boast in Bothmar's memorial, that the projected peace would tend "to the ruin of the victorious Allies and to the destruction of the liberty of all Europe," was never fulfilled. Moreover, the scheme showed an intuition into the real character of the Allies ; it treated them psycho- logically. The sole object of the Dutch was commercial. For King Charles of Spain they cared not a rap.^ In 1709 they had offered to surrender his kingship, and had de- murred to enter on the Barrier Treaty, on the express ground that they were opposed to the cession in all events of the Spanish monarchy to the House of Austria.^ Their only desire was to distance Enghsh trade by the revenue and restrictions of the Barrier towns.* "They" (the Dutch), writes John Drummond to the Earl of Oxford in June 171 1, "see a necessity of sinking considerably under the preliminaries ; they see no hopes of driving King Philip out of Spain, and therefore a partage must be thought on and concerted in conjunction with the Queen. . . . They desire ' Coxe's Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole, vol. i. p. 150. ^ Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. ii. p. 142. " " History of the Impeachments of the Last Ministry" (1716), by Boyer, p. 269. * Cf. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 8. THE PRELIMINARIES 323 of their friends that the treaty of Barrier may be secured and confirmed to them, that England may abandon Gibraltar, Port Mahon, and all other possessions they may at present be possessed of within the King of Spain's dominions in Europe} Yet, despite their grumbHng cabals, they eventually secured more than the Barrier Treaty had bestowed. Not only did they gain a commercial advantage which the Barrier Treaty — the cause, in Bolingbroke's words, of "our being sold by a faction"^ — never conceded, but they reaped a full advantage by the fact that eventually less was yielded to Philip than even the second Partition Treaty had offered. Their caution was phenomenal. They feared their new general, Eugene, because he was a Papist.^ It was with the greatest difficulty that the Junto induced them to join their cabal with Austria for the prolongation of the war. Nor did they fully support her until the cessation of arms and Zinzendorf's memorial to the States General.* And, we may add, that, of the Junto, Somers was opposed to the course, thinking it better policy to let the peace proceed till it entangled the Government.^ Further, during the very progress of these negotiations. Buys presented a memorial averring " that his masters . . . were resolved not to con- tinue the war for the recovery of Spain, provided the Queen would consent that they should garrison Gibraltar and Port Mahon jointly with us, and share equally the Assiento, the South Sea ship, and whatever should be granted by the Span- iards to the Queen and her subjects." ^ So that, be it noted, almost every objection which afterwards formed the grotesque ground of the impeachments could be urged against the Dutch — in Carlyle's phrase, "a people apt to • Portland Papers (Hist. MS. Comtn.), vol. v. pp. 23, 24. i* Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 172. s Ibid., vol. ii. p. 267. * Ibid., vol. ii. p. 343 ; Boyer, pp. 583, 584. = Swiff. « See "Sketch ofthe History of Europe," Letter 8; Bol. Works, vol. viii. p. 352; Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 59, and Oxford's peroration in his masterly answer to the impeachments (" History of the Impeachments," p. 332), where he omits Gibraltar, thus showing how far more present this English advantage was to the mind of Bolingbroke. 324 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES be heavy in the stern-works" — who had stipulated for a clandestine peace of their own, and were willing to abandon Austria for an enlargement of their trade. Indeed, Godol- phin himself had so prophesied in his letter to the Queen of April 15, 1710, deprecating the proposed change of Ministry. "These considerations must certainly make Holland run immediately into a separate peace with France, and make your Majesty lose all the honour and all the reputation your arms had acquired by the war."i It is strange that Godolphin's own faction persecuted and im- peached the very men who had frustrated this separate Dutch peace, who had, against immense and artificial obstacles, constituted the Queen the dictatress of her own terms and the mediatress for the Allies ; and at a time when France, so far from being paralysed as she was in 1710, was not only reviving in wealth through the abundant harvest and vintage of 171 1, but was actually succeeding on the field both in Flanders and in Spain. The negotiations kept also in view the temperament of Austria, for which Horace Walpole invented the word " Austriacity." ^ It had been the main ambition of the Emperor Joseph to recover Spain, which he regarded as an appanage of his house, and with Spain the West Indies, which Cromwell had designed for England. Not content with these immense possessions, he coveted a firm footing both in Tuscany, which already excited the rivalry of France,^ and the Milanese territory, while Naples and Sicily he regarded as his ancestral right. The Spanish Netherlands he did not so much covet as the Whigs, in- fluenced by Marlborough, affected to imagine. Nor was England really ever in earnest to render these Austrian, As late as 1746 a proposition was made, during the Austrian War of Succession, to cede these to France. The death of Joseph and the union of the two crowns in Charles ' " History of the Impeachments,'' App. p. 362. ' Horace Walpole's Letters, p. 327. 3 John Drummond to the Earl of Oxford, Portland Papers (Hist. MS. Comm.), vol. V. p. 33 : "The French Court is willing to settle the Tuscan succession on the Duke of Berri, and it is said the Pope favours it." THE PRELIMINARIES 325 transformed the situation, but not the disposition of Austria. Charles himself was no unfit embodiment of the national idiosyncrasy. He was punctilious, solemn, and a pompous insister on petty precedences. For him, as Carlyle has pointed out, the Pragmatic Sanction was afterwards a creed. When Prince George of Denmark met him on his way to Windsor in the winter of 1703, Burnet thus describes him : " . . . He had a gravity beyond his age, tempered with much modesty ; his behaviour was in all points so exact, that there was not a circumstance in his whole deportment that was liable to censure ; he paid an extraordinary re- spect to the Queen, and yet maintained a due greatness in it. He had an art of seeming well pleased with everything, without so much as smiling once the whole time he was at court, which was only three days ; he spoke but little, and all he said was judicious and obliging." ^ The Whig his- torian adds of the Whig idol that "he charmed all that were there." Such, too, was Austria — the Turveydrop of diplomacy. In long arrear with her subsidies, in wilful default with her contingents, she still profited by the dis- union of the Allies to enforce demands which, now that the would-be king of Spain was actual Emperor of Austria, must have yielded her a preponderance against which the second Partition Treaty had expressly stipulated; and which the terms of the Grand Alliance never regarded as a reason- able satisfaction. "That the Imperialists," wrote Boling- broke,^ " meant no treaty, unless a preliminary and imprac- ticable condition of it was to set the crown of Spain on the Emperor's head, will appear from this, that Prince Eugene when he came into England, long after the death of Joseph and elevation of Charles, upon an errand most unworthy of so great a man, treated always on this supposition : and I remember with how much inward impatience I assisted at conferences held with him concerning quotas for re- newing war in Spain, in the very same room at the Cockpit where the Queen's Ministers had been told in plain terms 1 Burnet, p. 732. ^ " Sketch of the History of Europe." Works, vol. viii. p. 350. 326 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES a little before, by those of other Allies, ' that their masters would not consent that the Imperial and Spanish crowns should unite on the same head.' " The objection, more- over, raised by faction at the time, and repeated by fiction ever since, that the Queen's Ministers were treacherous at the outset in urging the surrender of Spain and the West Indies to Charles, is ungrounded, because the whole case altered when Philip decided to renounce his right of succes- sion to the French kingdom, a decision which Harley was short-sighted enough never to contemplate.^ It was to pre- vent the assertion of that right in the person of a Bourbon and to enforce the balance of power that the war had been waged and Austria's pretensions supported. If William of Orange had been at first contented to acquiesce in a younger branch of that House ruling Spain, if the death of the Dauphin had largely increased Philip's chances of profiting by that right, surely the same argument applied to the younger branch of the House of Hapsburg, which would now actually have thus secured the conjoined dominion. Such then being the attitude of Austria, an attitude only rendered possible by confederacy with the English Whigs, who professed to act as if " putting an end to the war, or Magna Charta was the same thing, and as if "the Queen on the throne had no right to govern independently of her successor," how did Bolingbroke address the situation ? He gave Eugene distinctly to understand early in 1712 that the Queen would take her own measures, and that she was aware that Austria could not fulfil her new promises any better than her old engagements. After the renuncia- tions were in progress, he insisted that some Italian posses- sions and the governorship of Spanish Flanders were the utmost that the House of Hapsburg could be granted. He was aware that Austria during the conferences at Utrecht was herself meditating a design against one of the Dutch Barrier towns ; ^ that she strove to detach the Duke of Savoy himself by promising an archduchess to the Prince of Piedmont ; ^ that, notwithstanding, she played at ' " Sketch of the History of Europe.'' Works, vol. iii. pp. 370, 371. ' Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 148. ^ /did., p. 214. THE PRELIMINARIES 327 the same time upon Sicilian susceptibilities in order that the island might refuse to accept Savoy as its ruler ; ^ that, as in November 1712, he had to report to the Queen, Austria was conspiring with the Allies, " either by suborn- ing your Majesty's guards or by gaining your sei-vants to poison you or carry you off ; " ^ that even when the Dutch themselves became more compliant, the Whigs at home, instigated by Austria, rose in their demands ; ^ that the Imperialists openly based their hopes and their policy of obstructive delay on the failing health of Anne and the advanced age of Louis:* that, after they refused to join the Allies in signing a peace which secured them the govern- ment of Spanish Flanders, and persisted in carrying on a war for which they could not pay, they sought to disturb a treaty which they were powerless to undo, poured troops on the Rhine, and defied the neutrality of Italy ; ^ that the Emperor, baffled in this futile cabal, sought to check- mate the Queen by endeavouring to " get the mediation of northern affairs ; " ^ that, had it suited his purpose, he was fully as likely to have abetted the Pretender as Louis ; and yet a Popish Emperor " was to be invited into the guaranty of a Protestant succession ; " ^ that he " entered on the truly Austrian resolution of continuing war when he had neither allies, magazines, money, nor troops." ^ All this he successively scrutinised and defeated ; nor would Walpole have been able to have navigated the shoals of the Pragmatic Sanction had not feolingbroke's resolution shattered the overweening and gaudy schemes of Austrian ambition. So too with Savoy. Victor Amadeus was by no means eager for the peace, any more than his adviser, the Earl of Peterborough. Even the distant reversion of the crown of Spain could not attach him to Bolingbroke's ideas. But when Sicily was to fall to his share, and he began to see I Bol. Pol. Cor., vol. iii. p. 156 : " Qu 'il vaut niieux choisir un maitre, que de soufifrir qu'on dispose deux comme un troupeau de moutons." » Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 184. ' Ibid., p. 386. ^ Ibid., p. 415. ' Ibid., vol. iv. p. 201. Cf. Ibid., pp. 95, 96, 99, and pp. 457-4^0. « Ibid., p. 236. ' Ibid., p. 501. » Ibid., pp. 95, 96. 32 8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES how much better it was to compound with France than to be devoured by Austria, he changed his mind. With remark- able adroitness, BoHngbroke turned his Barrier pretensions as a foil to the French demands for the Elector of Bavaria ; and throughout maintained the interest of Britain by the double relation of Amadeus both towards France and Austria. So again with Portugal, whose deficient supplies of troops were condoned that her commercial rights on the Amazon might be made a lever for compelling Philip of Spain to favour British trade. So, once more, with Prussia. The student of Bolingbroke's political correspondence cannot fail to notice what infinite pains and adroitness were employed to conciliate Marescalch, and, through him, his master, who at that period was regarded by Austria as a pawn on the chessboard, and by the rest of Europe as a petty German prince, but by Bolingbroke as a rising military power. On July 25, 1712, he deprecates Prussia's attitude, and makes the following significant comment : " L'unique but des Imperiaux et des Hollandois a et^ de forcer la Reine, en se liguant avec les plus factieux de ses sujets, de poursuivre une guerre inutile a la cause com- mune, onereuse et inegale, particulierement a la Grande Bretagne, et apres cela de commencer une nouvelle n^go- ciation avec la France dans le cours de laquelle sa Majesty auroit assur^ment eut I'honneur de traiter sous leurs auspices, mais elle n'auroit pas eu celui d'avoir voix en chapitre." Whatever may be thought of the Utrecht treaty — and most of its modern critics have neither followed its intricate negotiations nor studied its final text — this much is certain, that Bolingbroke, in directing it, displayed a rare discernment of the aims, the character, and the foibles of the contending Allies. The next consideration that we wish to discuss before resuming the thread is the stale hypocrisy that they were carried on by a double front, the one clandestine and con- cealed, the other avowed but insincere. Let us first examine the facts. Prior, as we have seen, had carried the Queen's propositions for a general peace to THE PRELIMINARIES 329 Louis. On August 3rd he returned with the Abb^ Gaultier, a French spy of standing, who had been successively chaplain to Tallard and Gallas (the afterwards disgraced Austrian ambassador), and on-hanger to the Jerseys ; and of whom Bolingbroke afterwards retained no good opinion.! M. Mesnager — subsequently Marquis de St. Jean — accompanied them, vested with full powers to treat. They were detained by mistake at Canterbury, but soon released. Swift met them soon afterwards, and calls them "good rational men." Subsequently, however, he found reason to term the first "a puppy." Every one remem- bers Swift's jeu d' esprit on the journey, which incensed Prior and made Swift tease him about the liberty of the press. On the emissaries' return to London at the end of the month, frequent conferences took place, authorised by the Queen and the " Lords of a Committee of the Cabinet." They were notoriously public. The first recorded was on September 20th at Prior's house. Special preliminaries were signed between Great Britain and France, chiefly relating to colonial and commercial benefits. These were only to become effectual on condition of a peace satisfac- tory to all the Allies being secured by the Queen's media- tion. At the same time general preliminaries — in their rough state binding on France alone — were signed, and after some alterations " to be palatable abroad," despatched and notified to Holland. The States, from the first bent on no peace that gave Britain an advantage, grew alarmed and suspicious. Buys was commissioned to remonstrate and negotiate, but he was armed with no full powers to treat. Austria, as we have seen, was determined at all hazards — even at those of playing into Dutch hands — to stop the peace. Meanwhile Prior accompanied the envoys to Paris. St. John gave the Dutch clearly to understand that the Queen would concert no plan for the further pro- ^ Bol. Pol, Corr., vol. iii. p. 125. Cf. the account of him in the Mimoires de Berwick (Paris, Montard, 1780), vol. ii. p. 122, where his description, " Sa naissance etoit toute des plus ordinaires et ses facultes, a I'avenant, c'est i dire, tres pauvre," does not look as if Berwick had found in him a Jacobite envoy of credit. 330 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES secution of the war unless they would drop " artifice and delay," and agree to open the Congress by the New Year at a place where Marlborough's Hague intrigues should be powerless.^ Austria was answered by Marlborough's dismissal and Eugene's hospitable neglect. Prior soon returned with the King's answer to Gaultier's "mdraoire," and by the middle of January the Congress was opened at Utrecht. Now, to begin with, these private preliminaries only followed the invariable practice of the day. It had been so, long before, with the Treaty of Crespy in 1544 between Charles V. and Francis I., attended, like that of Utrecht, with renunciations ; like that of Utrecht, also denounced, not by a party in England, but by the whole Austrian Empire. The parts of England and Austria were reversed, and the one instance is a converse facsimile of the other. It was so in the case of the first Partition Treaty and Ryswick negotiation, which was a secret compact.^ It had previously been so at Nimeguen and Munster. While the War of Succession was at its height the Austrians, as we have seen, manoeuvred a separate and secret accom- modation with France ; they repeated the experiment with Holland and Hanover in the spring of 1712,^ and the Dutch, on at least three occasions, negotiated apart with De Torcy. In 1711 "the Grand Pensionary seemed to hint as if there was some one who endeavoured to insinuate in England that they were dealing underhand with the enemy. ..." * Were these " insinuations " ? Prior relates in his History how he had seen at Paris the letter of Pette- cum offering a private peace to the French. It was this very letter that Swift endeavoured to obtain from Gaultier in the winter of 1712.''^ There still exists a "long paper in ' Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 12. ^ Coxe's "Life of the Duke of Shrewsbury," p. 345 ; and cf. ante, p. 266. 3 Cf. Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., vol. v. p. 152. "The Elector being at present the richest Prince in Europe, was to be at the expense of their fleet" * Portland Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., vol. v. p. 23. ^ Swift's Journal, Dec. 12, 1712. Works, vol. iii. p. 129. Wanted "for some particulars for my history." " I don't value anything but one letter he has pf Pettecum's showing the roguery of the Dutch." THE PRELIMINARIES 331 the handwriting of Matthew Prior," which gives the very unambiguous purport of " three letters " from Pettecum which De Torci "had on his table " in July 171 i.i Further than this, the Dutch again, at the close of 171 2, essayed a fresh separate understanding with Bavaria by the bait and for the consideration of the Elector being Governor of the Low Countries ^ — a proposal tantamount to an agree- ment with France herself. It was this attitude which forced the English hand ; and, moreover, the Dutch them- selves asked England to stipulate with them under " private articles " sub spe rati? Nay, in the very December follow- ing this conditional anticipation of commercial advantage for England, we find Buys fully cognisant of it, and striving to tempt the Ministers to share it with Holland.* If we glance further ahead, we find the compact between George I. and the Regent (managed by Dubois at Hanover in 1716) which caused Walpole's exclusion from office, pro- cured by the secret intrigues of Stanhope and Sunderland ; while Walpole's own guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction in 1730 was, as we have already noticed, resented by Fleury as "secret articles derogatory to the just interests of France ; " and the truce of France with Austria in 1735 was in like manner contrived without the knowledge of her Spanish ally.^ It was not, therefore, against the secrecy of this arrangement that the Whig recriminations could with any show of justice be levelled.* Still less against the stipulation for separate advantage in advance ; for in the abortive conferences of 1709 not only was it notorious that the Dutch and French had excluded the Austrians and the English, but the Whigs themselves had instructed Town- shend and Marlborough to put negotiations on precisely the same double foot — private preliminaries between Eng- land and the States — without which no negotiations should 1 Portland Papers, vol. v. p. 34 and following— a remarkable confirmation. ^ See^osi, chap. ix. ' Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 59. * Hid., p. 76. " Coxe's Walpole, iii. 195. " /Sid., ii. p. 361. See the observations and quotations /orf, chap. ix. 332 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES be entered into with France.^ The true causes of resent- ment were the revenges of baffled faction. But the course pursued is justifiable on broader grounds. In face of the Whig confederacy with Holland and Austria — each bent on its own particular advantage — no other plan would have been practicable. No other ally, besides Austria and Holland, murmured against it. And in Bolingbroke's own words, "he must play a very dangerous game who shows all the cards to the man who bets openly on the other side." ^ Again, the denial of a right to stipulate for conditional private advantage stultifies itself. As Prior long after- wards insisted, " If at the outset the enemy offers any advantage to England when the treaty is finally concluded, shall the Ministry be accused of hearing ? If so, no trumpet or hostage can be sent without the consent of all the Allies." Furthermore, the assurance of the Queen in her speech, and of Bolingbroke in his secretarial correspondence,^ that no separate treaty had been compassed, was accurate. It was not a treaty, but its condition precedent. Unless the general peace to the satisfaction of all the Allies was con- cluded, it had no operation. But the fact, soon divulged * and never deeply concealed, acted as a provocative to the Allies. The cumbrous delays and phantom performances of simple congresses are a byword, and Europe not long afterwards had a taste of their quality in that of Cambrai. Unless Britain had secured some advantage in advance, no peace would have been secured at all. And it was a unilateral proposal. We must draw attention to an im- portant passage in the Earl of Oxford's answer to his im- peachment. It runs as follows :— " And the said Earl doth not observe how Her Majesty can be charg'd with uttering ' See ante, p. 203. * Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 17. ' Ibid., p. 19. * The Plenipotentiaries were only to be ambassadors on the conclusion of the peace, "since from the first moment it was always understood and agreed that the negotiation was carried on singly with France." Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. I7- THE PRELIMINARIES 333 any falsity in her message of 17th January, wherein she takes notice how groundless the reports were that had been spread of a separate peace being treated, for which report there was not then, nor at any other time, the least founda- tion, since only some few points were adjusted relating to the particular interest of her own kingdom, and even those were to have no effect but upon the conclusion of a general peace, and were likewise, before such conclusion, communicate to her Allies." ^ The great point of the treaty was the renunciations. With them the object of the Grand Alliance was obtained, and it was only fair that England, who had made all the sacrifices, should reap some material benefit. The unforgivable offence of the Tory Administra- tion, both in the eyes of the Whigs and of the Allies, was in real truth, as Bolingbroke expressed it, that " we have at last thought fit to set up for independency."^ None the less, the double negotiations — those at Utrecht and those in correspondence with De Torcy — proved on more than one occasion the source both of impediment and misunder- standing,* but they wielded a power which alone could force affairs to an issue.. It was as if in prosecuting a law- suit the plaintiff should be simultaneously in correspond- ence with the solicitors and with the defendant in person. To baffle the attorneys is often the best means of winning a case. The last theme of preliminary discussion that we shall consider is the Whig charge that the treaty was a stalking- horse for a restoration of the " Pretender," who, be it noted, had been first so called by the Queen herself in the spring of 1708.* This was, in truth, the bait by which the House of Hanover was hooked. It has been a common- place ever since, and it has given rise to a famous passage in Hallam's " Constitutional History," which has inspired sub- sequent commentators. This passage^ must engage our 1 "History of the Impeachments," pp. 302, 303. 2 Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 132. 3 Cf. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 60. ^ Burnet, p. 826. 5 Pages 753-759- 334 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES attention, and we do not shrink from asserting, with all de- ference to so eminent and usually so impartial an authority, that it is full of misconception and lack of discrimination ■ as indeed also, his denunciation of the Treaty of Utrecht which entirely omits the machinations of Holland and Austria. Nor is it an unprejudiced account. With this last statement we will deal first. In the balance of authorities— differing greatly in claims to credence but quoted without distinction — wherever a conclusion is tenable against the Tories it is pressed home; but, on the other hand, wherever it is almost irresistible against the " New Whigs," it is deprecated. " It may be reason, but it is not man:- For example, Bolingbroke's nominal com- plicity, which, if it existed at all, was purely for a party pur- pose,! ig roundly asserted ; yet Godolphin's in 1708, which is much more forcibly illustrated, is naifvely condoned by the sentence, " yet it seems almost impossible to suspect Godol- phin of plain treachery." Had Hallam studied human nature as closely as written documents, he would have known that wounded ambition is a stronger motive than political loyalty— if, indeed, at that time such an expression can with any truth be applied to the professed zeal for the House of Hanover. Oxford is acquitted because he caballed with the Whigs, while Bolingbroke — "more sincere probably and zealous " — is involved together with Buckingham and Ormonde (the first, as a matter of fact, a willing, the second a forced Jacobite) without a shred of genuine evidence. Defoe, again, who is quoted in Oxford's favour, is not invoked in favour of others in the Ministry. Indeed, his " Secret History of the White Staff " has apparently not been consulted. Once more, to implicate Bolingbroke, he cites the false memoirs of Mesnager which he himself discredits, and letters from Jacobite agents quoted in Macpherson, uncorrected by the much more important ■■ ICemble, State Papers, p. 512. Drummond, writing to Oxford from Utrecht in October 17 12, retails the tattle abroad as to the cause for the breach between the Premier and the Secretary ; " Several advances in France in favour of the Pretender," which Oxford had repudiated. Such, we now know, was not the reason; but it is fair to cite the passage here. Cf. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 235. THE PRELIMINARIES 335 disclaimers included in the same collection.^ But the partiality of Hallam's account is as nothing in the scales when we weigh it against his misconceptions and lack of insight. Two main threads pervade the whole of his criticism. In the first place, a confusion between the asseverations of Jacobite agents — whose wishes fathered their words — and the facts on which their fancies were founded. In the second, an entire ignorance (or oblivion) of the personal springs of action. Hallam (citing the M6moires of Berwick, which he had read only in translation) says, " Mr. Harley, about the end of 1710, sent the Ahh6 Gaultier to Marshal Berwick . . . with authority to treat about the restoration. . . . The con- clusion of peace was a necessary condition. The Jacobites in the English Parliament were directed in consequence to fall in with the court. . . . Harley promised to send over in the next year a plan for carrying that design into effect." Now, Berwick himself, like the generality of Frenchmen, was extraordinarily ignorant of England. That he was so will appear from nothing more strikingly than in the project which, when he found that Oxford was "amusing" the Jacobites, he seriously propounded. It was that the Queen should invite her half-brother to reside in England ; that then she should go to Parliament, explain his incon- testable right, and avow her resolution to restore him to his inheritance by laws human and divine ; demand the re- vocation of all Acts passed against him, and assure them that, while he should be brought up as her son during her lifetime, he should accede on her decease, promising to keep inviolable the constitution in Church and State.^ Such was the plan that, after the conclusion of the peace, Berwick considered "easy, certain, and even unique." 1 Cf. Macpherson, vol. ii. pp. 510-534, which go to show that Bolingbroke's scheme when Oxford was dismissed was for Hanover with Marlborough as General and Ormonde as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; while his plan a few days later, on the death of the Queen, was the same, the Pretender being "an im- practicable man." And also p. 593, where Oxford protests that even Lady Masham was for the succession. ' " Memoires de Berwick," vol. ii. pp. 201-203. 336 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " This sudden stroke," he continues, " would have dumb- founded the factious and charmed the well-intentioned, so that beyond a doubt it would not have encountered the least opposition." Such was the inability to look facts in the face that lured, soothed, and ruined the Jacobites. Berwick hugged the flattering unction to his soul and evolved a dramatic moment that in " Esmond " lends piquancy to romance, but is absolutely out of gear with the condition of things.i And such as he was, in their varying degrees, were all the Jacobite intriguers. Berwick, then, was admirably fitted to be played upon by Oxford, whose one aim was to secure the peace and then to recur to the Whig coalition with which he had set out.2 So far from the conclusion of that peace being the condition precedent to the return of the Pretender, it was the excuse for deferring his interests.^ As all readers of Swift and Bolingbroke are aware, it was the peace which Oxford always used as an anodyne to his chafing supporters. After the peace all would be well and everybody provided for. The Jacobite co-operation in England was necessary to preserve his majority and to secure the peace. Insignifi- cant as they were in affairs,* from the parliamentary point of view they were, like the modern Irish Home Rulers, a lever of importance. After the peace, therefore, they too would be satisfied. " Nothing can be more certain in the nature of the thing than that while Mr. H — -y was acting in the first scenes of this new settlement . . . they thought they had him. ... How is their note changed 1 Their praises are all turned into revihngs, their blessings into 1 Bolingbroke afterwards expressly denied that the Pretender was ever in England. See " Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield," vol. i. p. i6. 2 " Secret History of the White StafF" (Defoe), pt. i. p. 20. 8 Ibid., p. 123. * The "Foreign Minister," writing to Pettecum in 1710, terms them "... hardly considerable enough to be mentioned, but that on all occasions they intrude themselves upon and mix with High Churchmen, who, although they differ in principle and are firmly zealous for the Protestant succession, yet in elections do not scruple to accept their votes. ..." Somers Tracts, vol. ii. p. 271. The notorious gullibility of the Jacobites is illustrated by Tickell's " From a Lady in England to a Gentleman at Avignon." THE PRELIMINARIES 337 curses, and their street shoutings into bitter reproaches, reflections, and these rising up to murther and assassination." Thus comments the author of " Eleven Opinions of Mr. H y'' in 1711, one of the few pamphleteers of the time worthy of serious consideration. We are convinced he is right. Defoe's view tallies, "Perhaps," he remarks, "they might be so far imposed upon as to believe that the design of altering the succession was entertained by the managers with whom they acted, though it was very strange men of any sense could be so weak. . . . Indeed, nothing could be more absurd than this phantome of the Jacobites of believ- ing the White Staff was in their interest ; and by being made to entertain that dream, they hamstringed their cause and suffered themselves, both within doors and without, to be made the instruments and agents to make that impossible which they fancied they were bringing to pass." Oxford's management of the Scotch Jacobite peers — the only Jacobites who were in grim earnest — by getting them their seats and then nominating them of the committee to draw up the loyal address to the Queen expressing their steady adherence to her interest " against all pretenders whatever," at once disarmed and disgusted them ; and at the same time lent a colour to the artificial calumny "that the Staff was for the Pretender ; nay, that the Queen herself was for the Pretender ; things equally absurd, and the one as probable as the other.i The Jacobites, not being able to contain their joy, were not only weak enough to believe it, but in their first transports delivered them- selves in boasting terms to one another . . . and so assured they thought themselves to be of this, that, as I have been told, they wrote to that purpose into France ; and where they met with the greatest though not the first mortification in that affair . . . for when the Marquis de (Torcy ?) reading a letter to the French King, which the Pretender had received from ^ The Duchess of Marlborough herself admitted in 1712 that "all the time she had known the Queen she had never heard her speak a favourable word of the Pretender." Portland MS., vol. v. p. 338. Y 338 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES (Gaultier ?) to the same pvu-pose as above, viz., the Staff was in their interest, His Most Christian Majesty smiling answered. They were young men, and did not know the Staff." '^ We shall see that the same view applies to Bolingbroke. To coquet with and " bubble " the Jacobites was a means to the peace instead of the peace being a pretext for the Jacobite cause. In 1713 the Jacobites were Tories ; in 1716 the Tories were Jacobites. As Berwick himself confessed when the promised plan never appeared, "Ainsi il ^toit moralement certain que toutes les avances qu'il nous avoit faites jusqu'^ present n'avoient eu pour motif que son propre interfit, afin de joindre les Jacobites aux Torys, et par la se rendre le plus fort dans le Parle- ment et y faire approuver la paix." ^ It is evident from Berwick's own words that he was himself undeceived. The conclusion of the peace, therefore, was not a necessary condition. Indeed, so far from so being, that peace on which Bolingbroke was so intent, and about which no reader of his Political Correspondence can fail to feel that he was passionately in earnest, would have been wrecked by any real measures for a restoration. With all its drawbacks, it undoubtedly secured — to quote the words of the most recent writer on the subject — "the objects at which England had aimed at the outset of the war." 3 Louis would certainly not have conceded so much had he thought that the re-introduction of a Papist and arbitrary ruler was within the domain of practical politics ; * while the commercial clauses— the offspring of Boling- 1 " Secret History of the White Staff," pt. ii. pp. 23-24. 2 "M^moires de Berwick," vol. ii. p. 205. s A. Hassall in " Social England," vol. iv. p. 516. As a corollary to this we may here point out that the assignment of Sicily to the Duke of Savoy was in pursuance of that article in the Grand Alliance which stipulated lor its recovery " as a reasonable satisfaction " to Austria, and for the " trade and navigation " of England. The first reason became unfeasible by the fact that Chailes, at the period of the Articles a younger branch of the House of Austria, had now become Emperor. The second was equally obtained by the provision. Cf. " History of the Impeachments," p. 298. « C/. a striking passage in Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staff, pt. 11. PP- 31. 32- THE PRELIMINARIES 339 broke's brain ^ and so dear to his heart — were first mutilated and afterwards annihilated by even the affected suspicion of a "Frenchified" plot, which faction artfully assumed and malignly imposed on itself and the Hano- verians. Berwick himself does not venture directly to incriminate Bolingbroke, but asserts that, after the break- down of his overtures to Oxford, he re-opened them with Ormonde " et plusieurs autres." ^ In his answer to the impeachments Oxford denied most distinctly that Gaultier was employed by the Ministry as a go-between in relation to the Pretender's interests; and exposed the flimsy pretence of imputing the Queen's payment of her debt to the Queen Dowager out of her own funds to any treacherous design.^ Bolingbroke, it is true, in his haste and his rage at the perfunctory shifts of his rival, is rumoured to have declared that Oxford was in the Pretender's interest when he laid down ; * but this need be taken no more seriously than Oxford's alleged statement that Bolingbroke's own violence contributed to the affront which the Queen received by the studied insult of the irregular demand of the Duke of Cambridge's writ in 1714.^ And anyhow, the fact that Oxford "could not keep his word which he had given the Pretender and his adherents, because he had formed no party to support him in such a design,"^ is a proof that such a design was never seriously enter- tained. At all events, there is no reason to doubt Boling- broke's own solemn denial twenty-six years later to Lord Marchmont of any plan entertained by him to install James III., or the remarkable incident, there preserved, of Gaultier's leaving a letter on his official desk sealed with the Pretender's arms, and of his returning it unopened ^ Shrewsbury, in a letter of March I7'3j speaks oi "y, ur American articles." Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 474. 2 Memoires, vol. ii. p. 206. 3 Ibid., pp. 313, 314. Cf. " Of the State of Parties," Bolingbroke's Works, vol. vii. p. 271. " He had some private intrigue for himself at hanaver, so he had at Bar. He was the bubble of one in the end : the Pretender was so of the other." * Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 630. ' Ibid., 612. ^ Letter to Sir William Windham. Bol. Works, vol. ix. p. 64. 340 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES and bidding him to take it away or quit the country within twenty-four hours ; ^ nor to impugn his equally private assurance to Chesterfield that "he never had any fixed scheme in relation to the Pretender, and that he had always avoided speaking of him to the Queen, who, he said, did not like to hear anything of a successor." ^ Nor can we doubt Bolingbroke's annoyance at Harley's Scotch appointment of the Jacobite Findlater in 1713.^ Peter- borough too, averred, in his last illness, that Bohngbroke harboured no such design, and that Burnet's misrepre- sentations were scandalous.* Nay, more, the political necessity of excluding a Papist and an arbitrary ruler was paramount in his mind. " 1 cannot forget," he writes in 1717 to Windham,^ . . . "what passed when, a little before the death of the Queen, letters were conveyed® from the Chevalier to several persons, myself among others. In the letter to me the article of religion was so awkwardly handled, that he made the principal motive of the confidence we ought to have in him to consist of his firm resolution to adhere to Popery. The effect which this epistle had on me was the same which it had on those Tories to whom I communicated it at that time ; it made us resolve to have nothing to do with him." Nor, to repeat his further assertions, did his subsequent experience dispel the conviction that James would never abjure the religion, as some of his friends tried to convince the Tories he was ready to do. He had "all the superstition of a Capuchin," none of "the reli- gion of a prince." It is to his honour that he refused to be a renegade ; but it was his misfortune that his fidelity was rooted not in loyal devotion, but in abject fear. It was his disgrace that he would give no effective pledges for the security of the Establishment, but only illusory prevarications. ' Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 241. " " Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield," vol. i. p. 26, and cf. Spence, p. 237 note. 3 Dartmouth MS., nth Rep., pt. v. p. 318. " These things make Lord B. stare." * Spence, p. uS- ' Works, vol. ix. pp. 261, 262, 263. 8 From Berwick. THE PRELIMINARIES 341 The Jacobites consisted mainly, as Hallam must have known, of men strangely ignorant and prejudiced, while their emissaries and spies were, many of them, adventurers and adventuresses. When Bolingbroke actually arrived in Paris at the end of July 1715, he especially noted that there was "no subordination, no concert. . . . The Jacobites had wrought one another up to look on the success of the present designs as infallible. . . . Care and hope sat on every busy Irish face. Those who could write and read had letters to show, and those who had not arrived to this pitch of erudition had their secrets. No sex was excluded from this ministry. Fanny Oglethorpe, whom you must have seen in England, kept her corner in it, and Olive Trant was the great wheel of our machine." ^ During the very negotiations for the peace. Prior, in a private letter to Bolingbroke, complains of the Jacobite intrusion, and rails at " the complaisance of two French dogs and one Walloon, in new liveries, that call everybody Marquis, and furnish me with a lev6e of spies, projectors, and beggars, that bring Jacobites in to me before I wake in the morning." ^ Shrewsbury, when Ambassador at Paris, met even Berwick at the Due de Noailles' dinner-party under protest, and absolutely declined to meet the fringe of St. Germain.^ One cannot peruse the Jacobite correspondence in Mac- pherson's Stuart Papers without realising that while the more honest portion of them credulously and sedulously swallowed every assurance that something was turning up, the plotters who duped themselves and the knaves who duped them were constantly announcing the enlistment of the most important and the least likely personages in their cause. In France, too, there was a party eager to turn the Jacobites to political account, and with this party Gaultier perhaps allied himself. It came into full force in 1715 1 Letter to Sir William Windham, Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ix. pp. 123, 124. Mrs. Trant had been to England and cultivated Ormonde about the date of the Queen's death. Ibid., p. 145. ''■ Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. iii. p. 141. 3 Ibid., pp. 373, 374- 342 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES under the Regency ; it indefinitely encouraged, but could not definitely assist, the Pretender .1 It is, therefore, impossible to found any charges against the English Ministry on the vapourings of a reckless and foredoomed clique, who were in truth the pandemonium of a conspiracy and the mere pantomime of a party. It would be just as safe for the future historian to rely on the in- trigues and assertions of the Parnellites in 1882 as to trust to the Jacobite sources of groundless hopes and boastful effrontery. There is a famous letter from a Jacobite agent which has been much pressed against Bolingbroke.2 It is on a par with the other hollow boasts of these unpractical self-deceivers. " Your friend Mr. Gary (Lockhart)," it says, " writes to me from Porter's quarters (London) that he is in friendship with Mr. Bruce (Bolingbroke), and has lately had much freedom of conversation with him, by which he thinks Mr. Bruce an honest man and much in your uncle P'rank's (the Pretender's) interest ; but at the same time he thinks Bruce is not altogether well with Mr. Goner's suc- cessor (Harley), and by what Gary draws from Bruce, he doubts ' of Goner's good intentions.' " That Bolingbroke, Hke the Queen whom he humoured, might have abetted the Pretender if he would have abjured Romanism,^ seems probable ; but he was under no illusions on this head at this time. That he may have played with the Jacobite busy- bodies to frustrate Oxford seems possible. But that he meant anything serious, or that his expressions were not distorted and exaggerated to suit their visionary dreams by the Pre- tender's recruiting -sergeants, is more than questionable. It clashes with policy, facts, and practicability. The same view applies to this evidence as to the French documents discussed below. ' Cf. Letter to Windham, Bol. Works, vol. ix. pp. 141-148. He there says the Abb^ Tesieu, the Regent's .secretary, " . . . . while he concerted measures on the one hand to traverse the Pretender's designs, he testified on the other all the inclination possible to his service." ^ Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 36. ' Cf. the important and interesting passage contrasting the Tory Jacobites of 1717 with the Jacobite Tories of 1715 in his letters to Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 256. THE PRELIMINARIES 343 Moreover, one of the first services that BoHngbroke was called upon to perform when he went to Bar was to ex- tract a subsidy from the Court of Versailles. Can it be supposed that if he had seriously meditated a Jacobite revival while he was in power, this money would not already have been in his hands ? But Hallam's misconception of character and of facts does not stop here. He admits, for example, that the Queen had no serious inclination towards her half-brother. Yet he does not perceive that this absolves Bolingbroke. His Political Correspondence of the years 1713 and 1714, when he was in constant attendance on Anne and in steady ascendancy over her, displays a genuine devotion to his mistress. Yet he could not have displeased her more than by favouring a cause which excited her repugnance. The mere fact that she summoned him to replace Harley is an argument that he enjoyed her confidence, and con- firms his repeated and consistent deliverances about the Pretender in his later writings. Further, Hallam asserts that "the Tories were as truly a faction as their adversaries," and that " it is rather amusing to observe that those who called themselves the Tory or Church party seem to have fancied they had a natural right to power and profit." A faction, we take it, is a party without principles ; and some of the Tory components, and most of the Whig, seem certainly to have been so. But Bolingbroke's idea was a national party, and so far as any Tories responded to his call, they are entitled to a different criticism than Hallam's. With the Whigs a "national party degenerated soon into faction ; that is, the cause of the succession was supported more for the sake of the party than for the sake of the nation." ^ And Bolingbroke forcibly elsewhere points out how the Whigs, making common cause with the Dutch and the Austrians against the Queen and the people, were disentitled at this time to be called "national" at all. Hallam again declares it to be false that at the accession of George " the Tories as such 1 Cf. "The State of Parties," Bol. Works, vol. vii. p. 273. 344 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES were proscribed." The evidence is entirely against him, and entirely in favour of Bolingbroke's assurance that despair succeeded to hopes extinguished by violence. "Our party," he observes in one of many passages,^ "began soon to act like men delivered over to their passions and unguided by any other principle, not like men fired by a just resentment and a reasonable ambition to a bold undertaking." If there was no proscription, why was it a fact of common knowledge that the King was induced to change his mind and his measures at the Hague on the way to his new throne ?^ Why did Somers depre- cate the impeachments ? Why were the examinations on those impeachments conducted with indecent haste, in ignorance of the very materials for accusation, and in a spirit more worthy of an inquisition than of a trial ? Why was even Arbuthnot deprived of his professional office ? There is nothing more certain than that the Tory leaders were precipitated — and that designedly by the Whig managers — into the arms of the Pretender. Bolingbroke, whatever his threats in 1713, under the affront of the wrecked commercial clauses,^ never dreamed of his rash resolve until the impeachments were in swing. Would Ormonde have quitted all that life had to offer if the Whigs, who were determined to bind up all their party interests with those of the succession, had not hounded him away ? Walpole, as we have seen, had long before schemed to convince the Hanoverian House of deliberate Tory disaffection. It was part of a plan of campaign con- ' Letter to Sir William Windham, Works, vol. ix. p. 80. Cf. inter alia, on "The State of Parties," vol. vii. p. 278, and ibid., p. 18, "On the Spirit of Patriotism," where he terms the Tories " marked out, like the Jews, a distinct race, hewers of wood and drawers of water, scarce members of the community, though born in the country." And " Patriot King," vol. vii. p. 191 ; and especi- ally " Remarks on the History of England," vol. xi. p. 328. " His (Walpole's) ambition, his causeless jealousy, and private interest continued a sort of pro- scription with much cruelty to the person conceired, and little regard to the declarations which his royal master had been pleased so frequently to make." 2 Cf. Letter to Sir William Windham, Bol. Works, vol. ix. pp. 79, 85. ' As to the " threats" above mentioned cf. post, ch. xi. ; and, generally, cf p. 385. He believed that misfortune would unite, as prosperity had divided, his party. To Swift, Aug. 3, 1714 : Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 204. THE PRELIMINARIES 345 cocted with Bothmar. Yet of Bothmar's dictation to the Junto, as of the Duchess of Somerset's cabals in the palace, and Eugene's with the Marlboroughs, Hallam makes no mention at all. Still less does he even quote the catalogue of Whig and Tory peers included in Macpherson's collec- tion, and drawn up to admonish the House of Brunswick of their friends and enemies : in this list Bolingbroke's name does not even appear. Nor could he be aware that the same evidence, which has been since emphasised by Sir James Mackintosh, attaches as much to Shrewsbury, of whom he says there can be no "reasonable doubt" that " he was steady to the Protestant succession," as to Boling- broke. Nor, again, did he perceive that George's indif- ference to coming over in 1714 arose from his dislike of disbursements to the doubtful and bribable peers.^ Nor does he, nor subsequently has Mr. Harrop, appreciated the change that came over the Queen's mind during her serious illness in 1713, when the indecent joy of the Whigs disgusted her with Oxford's " comprehensive " scheme and foiled the Duchess of Somerset's intrigues for the reinstatement of the Junto, which very nearly happened at the close of 1711. Even as late as July 22, 1714, her " uncertain, timorous nature " ^ afforded the Tories great anxiety ; but two days afterwards Anne was so personally piqued that, apart from Lady Masham's influence, she was eager to dismiss the Minister whose offer of resignation she had not many months before re- jected.^ Had not Oxford's delays and evasions provoked Bolingbroke's impatience and resentment, she might, in 171 2, have been induced to part with the Duchess of Somerset altogether. This is the clue to a consistently misunderstood passage in Swift's letter to Bolingbroke of August 7, 1714, where he says :"...! was confident you had not a quarter of time left for the work you had to do, having let slip the opportunity of cultivat- ' Cf. ante, p. 230. ^ Charles Ford to Swift, Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 184. 5 Arbuthnot to Swift, ibid., p. 189. 346 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES ing those dispositions she had got after her sickness at Windsor." i A discernment of character can alone give proportion to events, and Swift's works are a great aid to such discern- ment. Hallam repudiates Swift, while he relies upon Burnet, and in so doing evinces his worst want of intui- tion. " He pretends," observes Hallam of Swift, " in this tract " (" Some Free Thoughts ") " to deny entirely that there was the least tendency to Jacobitism, either in any one of the Ministry, or even any eminent individual out of it ; but with so impudent a disregard of truth, that I am not per- fectly convinced of his own innocence in that intrigue." But Hallam quite ignores that Swift's most vehement denial occurs not in any party pamphlet, but in a private letter to Archbishop King of December i6, 1716, where he defends Bolingbroke as well as himself. " Had there," he insists, " been ever the least overture or intent of bringing in the Pretender during my acquaintance with the Ministry, I think I must have been very stupid not to have picked out some discoveries or suspicions; and although I am not sure I should have turned informer, yet I am certain I should have dropped some general cautions and immediately re- tired." Nor has Hallam cited a very convincing passage from BoHngbroke's tract " Of the State of Parties," 2 ad- dressed to the young Lord Cornbury : " Whatever anec- dotes you have been told . . . and whatever prepossessions you have had, take these facts for undoubted truths : that there was no design on foot during the four last years of Queen Anne's reign to set aside the succession of the House of Hanover, and to place the crown on the head of the Pretender to it ; nor any party formed for this purpose at the time of the death of that princess, whose memory I honour, and therefore feel a just indignation at the irre- 1 Swift's Works, vol. xvi.p.213. Cf. Bel. Pol. Corr., vol. ii. p. 75. where, writing to Strafford of the Queen in December 1711, he observes, " The only difficulty she laboured under, besides a little natural slowness, was the habit which she has with the Duchess of Somerset, and the apprehension of not finding somebody to fill a place so near her person whom she could like." ^ Works, vol. vii. p. 256. THE PRELIMINARIES 347 verence with which we have seen it treated. If such a design had been on foot during that time, there were moments when the execution of it would not have been difficult or dangerous enough to have stopped men of the most moderate resolution. Neither could a design of that nature have been carried on so long, though it was not carried into execution, without leaving some traces which would have appeared when such strict inquisitions were made ; when the papers of so many of the Queen's servants were seized, and even her own papers, even those she had sealed up to be burned after her death, were exposed to so much indecent inspection. But, laying aside all argu- ments of the probable kind, I deny the fact absolutely ; and I have the better title to expect credit, because it could not be true without my knowledge, or at least suspicion of it, and because even they who believed it, for all who asserted it did not believe it, had no proof to adduce, nor have to this hour, but vain surmises, nor any authority to rest upon but the clamour of party." As late as May 1714, Bolingbroke wrote to Anglesea, " I will not say that the inclination of the House of Hanover is to the Whigs. I intend to be for them, and therefore hope better things of them." 1 In other passages Bolingbroke has supplied the solution to the question why the odium obstinately pro- pagated as obstinately adhered. It consists in a triple cause. The shuffling duplicities of Oxford, which alienated the Jacobites, implicated the Tories, and exasperated, while they sought to conciliate, the Whigs.^ The manoeuvres of Bothmar and Schiitz, of which George himself often dis- approved. The organised ingenuity and pertinacious am- bitions of the Whig managers, which went so far as to trump up a forged letter of the Duke of Lorraine ^ in the alleged interests of the Pretender ; and to meditate a plot, 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 443. 2 A passage in the " Secret History of the White Staff," pt. i. p. $8, hints that Oxford on his dismissal taxed the Ministry in the Queen's presence with their dangerous measures, and insinuated that they were in collusion with the Pretender. 3 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 564. 348 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES had the Queen Hved longer, by which the party would have taken up arms. Stanhope was to have commanded the army, Cadogan to have seized the Tower. The dismissed officers had actually signed the association. The place of rendezvous was appointed behind Montagu House. Of this conspiracy even Bolingbroke never heard until Chester- field divulged it on his return from exile.^ That this plan existed as early as the spring of 1714 is confirmed by the assertions of Boyer,^ a dismissed and spiteful spy of Harley's, who always attributes the expulsion of the Whigs from office to a zeal for the Pretender, and who waxes most indignant about the very measures which Walpole afterwards adopted. It is noticeable that Boyer himself maintains that " in either House of Parliament scarce one in twenty was at bottom for altering the present settle- ment." If this statement be true, with what show of justice can he accuse the party leaders, who would thus cease to lead a party, of such a conspiracy ? But throughout the Whigs were always imputing treason against herself to the Queen, and professing to save her from her friends. The whole problem is not to be discussed in the light of those historians who survey mankind as if — as a wit once observed — "their Creator was a moderate Whig." That there were individuals engaged for the Pretender, Boling- broke always conceded, and these were certainly not re- stricted to the Tory side.^ When, in June 171 1, Lord Cler- mont and his brother. Captain Middleton, who in 1708 had been arrested on board the Salisbury (as conspirators in the Pretender's intended invasion of Scotland in 1708, which Godolphin had both abetted and frustrated), were freed, the Earl of Wharton appears as bail, together with the Dukes of Hamilton, Bolton, and Beaufort.* Even Burnet admits that the Jacobites were "not the true bulk of the 1 "Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield," Miscellaneous Works, edition 1777, vol. i. pp. 15. 16. 2 Page 681. 3 Cf. {inter alia) " Of the State of Parties." Works, vol. vii. p. 258. * Boyer, p. 515- THE PRELIMINARIES 349 Tory party." The passage ^ is so striking that some of it shall be quoted. "... Many infidels who hate all religion and all churches aUke (being only against the Church of England because it is in possession), do join with the Whigs and Dissenters and appear for them. . . . The principles of the Whigs lead them to be for the Revolution. . . . The Whigs are indeed favoured by the Dissenters, because they see their principles are for toleration. . . . On the other hand, the Whigs . . . conclude that they (the Tories) are all equally concerned and alike guilty. ... So great a disease will not be cured until a prince of spirit and autho- rity manages with temper and discretion to undertake the cure." What does this imply but Bolingbroke's Patriot King ? That there was ever a party enlisted in his favour he persistently and consistently denied. And as he himself aspired to be a party leader, this is perhaps the most cer- tain argument for his truthfulness. In the last year of the Queen's life Shrewsbury could not prevail upon Oxford to decide " to which court they should go ; " ^ but the very day before her death Bolingbroke was preparing to send John Drummond — Marlborough's old friend — to Hanover.^ One of his last official letters was dictated by a wish to see " the kingdom put into a condition of passing quietly under that government which the law has established.* Even in 1716 and 1717 Bolingbroke endeavoured to purge the high Tories of their Jacobite predilections.^ Bolingbroke indeed has been visited with the incurable Jacobitism of Atterbury, whose assistance had been neces- sary in consolidating the Church party. But Boling- broke himself has pointed out that the debates so violently raised by the Whigs about the succession were splitting up the Church party itself.* The Whigs were ' Burnet, Hist, (the Conclusion, written in 1708), p. 917. ^ Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 193. ' Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 530. ^ Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 581. To the Lords Justices of Ireland, July 31, 1714. ' Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 420. » Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 549. 350 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES successful. The Jacobite cry was at once echoed by Ches- terfield,! at that time fresh from the Hague, and shortly afterwards, by a strange irony, the member for St. Germains. It lived in the insinuations of Carteret and the invectives of Walpole. The cant has been gravely perpetuated. The dogs — who had had their day — have had bad names given them, and have been hung accordingly. Besides the fact that Oxford " was in a secret with our enemies," ^ and the " zeal of a party ^ at home and abroad," another determining cause of the stigma proved the conduct of Hanmer, as head of the " Whimsicals," or so-called Hanoverian Tories, in the year 1714. Up to the signature of the peace, Hanmer and his section co-operated, Hke Anglesea and his, with Bolingbroke. In 1712 Hanmer, himself a relative of Ormonde, went over to France to settle those commercial clauses, "conceived more in the char- acter of statesmen than of merchants,"* which he contri- buted two years later to overthrow. He played into Oxford's hands when Oxford allowed the motion in their favour to be made a case of " the Court against the Country," ^ and employed his spurious and unpatriotic sagacity to gain a commercial advantage for the Dutch at the expense of England.* But the peace once attained, in Bolingbroke's phrase, possession cooled enjoyment. Hanmer obstructed ^ Letter to Jouneau, December 7, 1714 ; Chesterfield's Letters to his Friends, Misc. Works, vol. ii. pp. 11, 12: ". . . When I see how far matters were already advanced in favour of the Pretender and Popery, and that we were on the very brink of slavery, I absolutely look upon the death of that woman as the happiest thing that has ever befallen England, for had she lived three months longer she was certainly going to establish her own religion, and of course tyranny. . . . The Pretender's declaration, and a thousand other things, are convincing proofs of the design of those conspirators, the Ministry, to bring him in." On such shallow foundations did the young Stanhope found his presumptions. It may be mentioned that he had been some considerable time from England, and was now at Paris. 2 Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 519. ' Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 186. " Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 138. Cf. p. 152. ^ Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 187. ^ Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 165. Cf. p. 264 : " Holland will profit a million by the trade our thrown bill secures." THE PRELIMINARIES 351 the Administration and its measures. Anglesea voted against them on the "succession in danger" debate. Both were actuated by private pique and the chances of the coming elections. The former had been disappointed of a post and baulked of a mission to Italy.^ The latter had not been included in the promotions of August 171 2. Boling- broke was indeed justified in calling the last session of the reign "a confused session."^ His endeavour to render "the Court and Church interest synonymous"^ was being thwarted. He had not yet made "the Queen a party."* He was a " sea-captain in a storm," ^ and he was justified in telling Strafford, on July 14,^ that there were "new plots day after day concerted against me, and that those in the service of whom I have drudged these fifteen years were the proposers of new confederacies, the cement of which was to be my ruin." In this connection Bolingbroke has suffered from two quarters. In the first place, the partisans of Oxford sought to vindicate him at the expense of his rival. In the second, the Tory contempt of a new and foreign family was construed into a sympathy with a forlorn and falling cause. But there is one most weighty fragment of evi- dence that we have never yet seen adduced. Leibnitz, who was naturally entirely for Hanover, writing to Schu- lenburg on June 7, 1714, roundly asserts : "... I am ready to believe that my Lord Oxford will not lend his hand easily or heartily to bring in the Pretender, for I do not think he would mend his position that way, but rather make it worse." And Schulenburg, in his answer, while he admits that Bolingbroke's "credit rises in proportion as that of the Treasurer sinks," does not, though in a confidential letter, venture to incriminate the Secretary, but only hints that he " is strengthening himself by the Jacobites." '' 1 Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. iii. p. 340. ^ Ibid., p. 497. ^ Ibid., p. 420. * Il/id., p. 511. ^ Prior to Bolingbroke, August 12, 1714. JiiiL, p. 543. ^ Ibid., p. 562. ' Kemble State Papers, pp. 506, 512. 352 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES In fine, who are likely to be best instructed, Boling- broke himself and his friends, who were actors or spec- tators of the drama, in familiar converse with each other long after motives for concealment had perished ; ^ or modern historians relying on the Articles of the Secret Committee of 1715, which were concocted and confused, which, in fact, failed to make out their case as regarded complicity, which were uncorroborated at the time, and which formed the sole basis for Horatio, Lord Walpole's " Refutation " nearly forty years afterwards ? When to these broader considerations we add the other favourable evidence that we have collected, and especially the letter of Leibnitz above cited ; when further we remem- ber the confessed and continuous motives that the brothers Walpole, aided by mercenary scribblers like Arnall, had for propagating the prejudice of Jacobitism against the whole Tory party, and for crippling the only leader whom they really dreaded, we may well pause before accepting the received version, which it is so easy to leave uncriticised. The Hanoverian House was unpopular. Its collusion with the New Whigs had placed it in direct opposition to the Queen. Indeed, it seemed its pohcy to affront her and to slight the affections of her people. Lord Strafford, himself a firm friend of the Electress, had entreated her not to be "tied to party," and had assured her that she must "govern by the bulk of the people."^ English poli- tical principles are seldom impersonal. The national imagination clings to champions and abhors the abstract. To the nation the Brunswicker was a callous and selfish foreigner, who would at once farm and foul his chance heritage. Anne, on the other hand, symbolised the nation- ahty. At her death the people felt themselves lost. But it does not follow that because the White Horse was odious the White Rose was welcome. The mob blamed Oxford's 1 It should be remembered, too, that Swift, who was insulted even in his soli- tary rides in 1715 by insolent peers, was never proceeded against by the Govern- ment, though he never ceased throughout his life to maintain his contentions alikfi and his attitude against and towards it. 2 Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 602. THE PRELIMINARIES 3S3 aversion to make a clean sweep of the Whigs. They re- spected Shrewsbury, but they cheered Bolingbroke ; ^ they idolised Ormonde. Marlborough was "hissed by them more than huzzaed." Military glory without national benefit is seldom acceptable to Britain. Before concluding this examination, let us touch on some presumptions against Bolingbroke, and the facts that rebut them. Immense capital has been made of the few letters dis- covered by Sir James Mackintosh in the " Archives des Affaires Etrangeres.^ Those written on Gaultier's mere motion were manufactured for French consumption, and are no more to be trusted than the braggadocio of the Jacobites. The greater portion belong to the autumn of 1710. Gaultier was evidently prompted by Jersey, who figures in the correspondence as " M. Rolland," and is stated to be in concert with two or three of his col- leagues. Of the persons mentioned under false names, Bolingbroke is not one, though Oxford, Shrewsbury, and Buckingham are included. It was evidently an abortive scheme, for Gaultier expressly mentions as a condition the Chevalier's change of religion. But there is one later letter, of the autumn of 1712, in which Gaul- tier professes to intimate Bolingbroke's desire to serve " Montgoulin." It is significant, however (and especially bearing in mind his bad opinion of Gaultier), that "he presses to know who are those among the Whigs who, about eighteen months ago, offered Montgoulin to do him service." This quite tallies with Bolingbroke's letter to Swift of August 3, 1714, after the Queen's demise : "The Whigs are a pack of Jacobites ; that shall be the cry in a 1 On the proclamation of the King. Charles Ford to Swift, Augusts, I7i4' Swift's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 207-209. "He (Oxford) was hissed all the way by the mob, and some threw halters into his coach. . . . This was not the effect of party, for the Duke of Ormonde was huzzaed throughout the whole city. . . . There was an attempt to affront the captain (Bolingbroke) in the cavalcade, but it did not succeed ; and though a few hissed, the acclamations immediately drowned the noise." 2 Cf. Stanhope, vol. ii. pp. 210, 284. Z 354 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES month, if you please." His grand scheme^ was a national party instead of a cabal, and it explains ambiguity after ambiguity in Swift's correspondence. The Queen herself, the reader will remember, had, long before, declared to Buckingham, a warmer Jacobite even than the Electress of Hanover, that she would do nothing for James, since his conduct had been so " disobliging." He would not abjure his religion for all the Leslies in the world, and there was an end. Defoe, in 17 12, adds his vehement testimony that the popular impression to the contrary was the result of art- ful Whig propagation.^ Lord Jersey himself wrote to Oxford that he feared his imputed Jacobitism stood in his way at court. Swift says, the sole opportunity was about 1712. Again, the Jerseys were Jacobites, and, through the Riches, the Jerseys were Bolingbroke's kindred ; while Prior, his fidus Achates, was their "creature." The Earl, moreover, had himself advised William of Orange to prefer the Pretender to the Electress.^ He had been designed to attend the Utrecht Congress as Privy Seal, and, had he lived to do so, a stronger Jacobite turn might have been given to the negotiations. Barton, again, the Queen's messenger, of whom we hear so much in Bolingbroke's Political Correspondence, seems also to have been one of Jersey's dependants.* But when, in 1713, the widowed Lady Jersey abducted her son to Paris, that he might be brought up in the Roman faith, her parting inter- view with the Queen, immediately surmised to be treasonous, did not deter Bolingbroke from doing his utmost, and successfully, to baffle her ; nor Prior from cursing the hour when she came to bore and cabal.® How 1 Cf. Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staff," pt. i. p. 25. " They told him (Oxford) that it was time to strike home, as it was called, at the whole party ; to give the Whigs the coup de grace" Cf. ibid., p. 37. ^ Portland MS., vol. v. p. 280 ; and cf. Swift, vol. xvi. p. 298, and/w/, p. 385. ' Pauli, p. 367. * Wentworth Papers, p. 265. " Cf. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 323. Prior writes on October 17, 1713: "I hear by chance that little Widow Jersey designs to come to France; cela ne vaut pas ; le diable empechez-la, my Lord, de le faire autant que vous pouvez." On October 22 (N.S.) Bolingbroke writes a letter of remonstrance to Lady THE PRELIMINARIES 355 the intriguing little dowager was foiled, how her son was reclaimed, and eventually received Bolingbroke's letter of advice on entering public life, need not be recounted here. Suffice it to say that the whole romantic episode might be admirably treated by the novelist. Once more, it is often stated that the Queen's dying confidence in Shrewsbury was in spite of Bolingbroke. The evidence, however, goes to prove just the contrary.^ Shrewsbury's one divergence from Bolingbroke was on the score of his ambition to be Prime Minister; that jealousy allayed, Bolingbroke might hope for his co-operation. It was that very Shrewsbury who, as we have seen, had, in Bolingbroke's presence, pressed Oxford to tell them which way the Tories were to look, though he could not prevail upon him to decide ; ^ that very Shrewsbury who was nominated ambassador after the death of the Duke of Hamilton, whom the Whigs regarded as the probable re- storer of the Stuarts ; that Shrewsbury with whom Boling- broke was in complete accord in party matters.^ Lans- downe, it is true, communicating with Oxford two days before Anne's death, asserted that the staff was handed on Jersey. Cf. post, p. 445, and Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 507. Swift says of this in- triguing woman, "... I do not much like her character, but she is very malicious, and therefore I think I must keep fair with her." Journal, Jan. 25, 1713, Works, vol. iii. p. 162. When Lady Jersey refused Prior access to the child, whom she hurried off under the pretext of health into the country, and the house of one the Abbe Gouvernet, Prior thus describes her : ". . . You say right that you imagine this Medea will give us all trouble ; nothing can give more. She cries and sighs ; but I know her sighs to be wind and her tears to be water. The little devil, her husband, had once a knife in his hand to go and kill her. What a puppy was I to hinder him ! Adieu, my dear Lord. God keep us all from such wives, and, above all, from such widows." Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. iv. pp. 373- 374- 1 Cf. Charles Ford's Letter, Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 207. "The Whigs were not in council when he was recommended. Lord Bolingbroke proposed it there as well as to the Queen." And cf. Macpherson, vol. ii. passim. ^ Cf. ante, p. 31. This was communicated by Bolingbroke in 1741. March- mont Papers, vol. iii. p. 192. 3 On July 25, 1713, he thus writes to Shrewsbury : " It is on many accounts great satisfaction to your servants here to know that your Grace will soon be amongst us. No measures will be fixed upon till you arrive ; and all join in think- ing that it is high time some resolution was taken for retrieving our affairs, or for securing our retreat." 356 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the Council's unanimous resolution ; ^ but that does not preclude Bolingbroke's initiative, which was intended to dish the Whigs. Again, Bolingbroke was attached to Marl- borough, though he suspected and countervailed his pro- jects, for he realised that "it was hard for so old a gamester to leave off playing." ^ But his personal attach- ment did not preclude St. John from concurring in Marl- borough's disgrace. All this Bolingbroke knew, and he further knew what he wrote to Prior on November 6, 1713, that "the collec- tive sense of the nation " required that Louis should not protect the Pretender. How could he hope to found a " national " party if he outraged the national feeling ? It is to be regretted that Bolingbroke's native contempt should have under-estimated the value of the Whig in- sinuations. In the spring of 1713 he assures Orrery that the "clamour of Jacobitism" and the "danger of Popery" are things nobody " except a few old women " is in earnest about.^ That the Pretender was "impracticable" soon became evident when Bolingbroke, maddened by persecution and stung by ingratitude, took the one fatal step of his career ; and, having crossed the water, accepted the invitation of the man he had so often denounced. But the very violence of this step shows the counter-violence of his opponents. His passions outran his judgment and decided his actions. But his judgment was sound ; and to convict him, before that rash decision, of definite and dehberate conspiracy, is to impugn his judgment as well as his character, to con- stitute him an enemy to his career and a demolisher of his ambitions, to arraign him as a fool as well as a knave. " Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise ; The fool lies hid in inconsistencies." ' Portland MS., vol. was perhaps the same whence he turned the tables on the Whig demonstration. Meanwhile the Lords were considering the "state of the nation," or, in other words, insulting the Queen and her Ministers. Wharton, Nottingham, Sunderland, Cowper, and Halifax mooted afresh the Pretender's non-removal from Lorraine, and moved for an account of what requisi- tions had been made and what answers given. Oxford, however, characteristically met this stage thunder by moving for leave " to bring in a bill for the further security of the Protestant succession by making it high treason to bring in any foreigner into the kingdom." This appeared to be aimed at the guarantee clause of the Barrier Treaty ; and Bohngbroke came to his chief's rescue, observing that " he doubted not but the noble peer who made the motion meant only such foreign troops as might be brought into the kingdom by the Pretender or his adherents." This • As to this, cf. Defoe's " Secret History of the White Staff," pt. i. p. 17, which tallies with Oxford's own account. ' Boyer, pp. 674-677. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 459 move of his is also liable, however, to the construction that he thus obliquely insinuated Oxford's disloyalty. At any rate, he doubtless profited by the fact that, in the face of the Whig violence, Oxford would be forced either to declare himself or forfeit their support, which he was trying to mould into a coalition. His uncertain cajoleries would be exposed. On animadversions by Anglesea the motion was dropped. Next day the State of the Nation debate was r-esumed. The Catalans, the outlawed Jacobites permitted to come over, the debts of the Navy were all pressed into the fray, which culminated in addresses for papers relating to the indulgence shown to the friends of the Pretender. Oxford's sanctimoniousness in moving for an adjournment till March 31, owing to the approach of Easter Week, was hooted by Wharton, who taunted the Treasurer for a piety and religion which found no echo in his charity and humanity towards the urgent case of the Catalans. The Lords having imitated the conduct of the Commons in excluding strangers the day before, Argyle caustically exhorted them to be better bred and more courteous than the Commons. With these amenities the House adjourned till the close of the month. Outside the Houses of ParHament the same reckless recriminations were hurled. Even in Holland the Whig industry was assiduous, and an official denial of Jacobite complots had to be published in the Postboy, But in the Lower House, at any rate, time was not all frittered in party quarrel. Acts for " securing the freedom of Parliament by the further qualifying the Members to sit in the House of Commons," and " by Hmiting the number of officers in the House of Commons," ^ maintained that reputation for reform which, in a previous chapter, we have shown was then the monopoly of the Tory party. The internal jars of the Cabinet, however, grew more violent with the violence of the times. There is a letter from the Duchess of Ormonde to Swift of April 24, 1714, which may well have suggested his fable of the " Faggot." ' Boyer, p. 674. 46o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES " You cannot imagine," she says, " how much I am grieved when I find some people I wish well to, run counter to their own interests, and give their enemies such advan- tages, by being so hard upon their friends as to conclude, if they are not without fault, they are not to be supported or scarce conversed with. Fortune is a very pretty gentle- woman, but how soon she may be changed nobody can tell. Fretting her with the seeing all she does for people only makes them despise her, may make her so sick as to alter her complexion ; but I hope her friends will find her constant, in spite of all they do to shock her, and remember the story of the arrows that were very easily broke singly, but when tied up close together, no strength of man could hurt them. . , ." ^ It would be tedious to recapitulate all the stormy de- bates of this implacable session. One of the reasons for the increased rancour of the Whigs is to be found in the policy of "Thorough "2 which Bolingbroke, contrary to Oxford's wishes, was now pursuing. Argyle and Stair were removed from their military employments ; Peter- borough was made governor of Minorca; Orkney, the governor of Edinburgh Castle. One by one, either by purchase or dismissal, most of the important regiments fell to staunch Tories, and some even to suspected Jacobites. Bolingbroke was driven to precipitation both by Oxford's behaviour and by the renewed fear that the Queen might not survive the summer. The Elector of Hanover was, meanwhile, strengthening his position by entering into engagements by which the Dutch were, under contingencies, to furnish him with additional troops; and at home, Argyle, Stanhope, and Cadogan, incensed at the remodelling of the army, were secur- ing the assistance of the French refugees and laying their plans for seizing the Tower should a military de- monstration become necessary. The whole situation was alive with complot, counterplot, menace, and danger ; and ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 131, 132. ^ This was publicly known. Cf. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 401. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 461 at the close of March even the sanguine and contemp- tuous Bolingbroke thus dehvers himself to Strafford : "... The Whigs pursue their plan with good order and in concert. The Tories stand and gaze, expect the Court should regulate their conduct and lead them on, and the Court seems in a lethargy. Nothing, you see, can come of this but what would be at once the greatest absurdity and the greatest misfortune. The minority, and that minority unpopular, must get the better of the majority who have the sense of the nation on their side. All that can be done is doing to prevail on our friend, my Lord Treasurer, to alter his measures, to renew a confidence with the Tories and a spirit in them, and to give a regular motion to all the wheels of government. I am sanguine enough to hope that we shall prevail. Indeed, it would be a pity to lose by management what none can wrest by force out of our hands." ^ When the Houses resumed their session, the State of the Nation debate was the staple in the Lords, and the Catalan question took precedence. Wharton, Sunder- land, Halifax, and Cowper represented that "the Crown of Great Britain having drawn in the Catalans to declare for the House of Austria, and engaged to succour and support them, those engagements ought to have been made good." Bolingbroke replied with dignity. He urged that " Her Majesty had made all her endeavours to procure to the Catalans their ancient liberties and privileges ; but that, after all, the engagements Her Majesty had entered into subsisted no longer than while King Charles was in Spain ; but that Prince being advanced to the imperial dignity, and having himself abandoned the Catalans, Her Majesty could do no more than interpose her good offices in their behalf, which she had not been wanting to do." On the other hand, it was indignantly objected that " God Almighty had put more effectual means into the Queen's hands." Cowper made a motion that, Britain's good offices being ineffectual, the Queen ' Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. pp. 493, 494. 462 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES should be requested to interpose in a more pleasing manner. Harcourt moved to strike out the word "in- effectual," which was done. The Queen's answer to the address thanked the Lords for the satisfaction they had expressed in the endeavours she had used for securing the Catalans their just liberties. " But at the time she concluded her peace with Spain, she resolved to con- tinue her interposition upon every proper occasion for obtaining those liberties, and to prevent, if possible, the misfortunes to which that people were exposed by the conduct of those more nearly concerned to help them." 1 At a later date this subject was revived, but it will be convenient to discuss it here in the light of hard fact, instead of under the cloud of sentimental sawdust, which the coveters of office so constantly throw into the eyes of the liberal and chivalrous. The stock phrases of debate were that, "The Catalans were given up as a sacrifice to the implacable resentment of their enraged and powerful enemy ; and the honour of the British nation, always renowned for the love of liberty and for giving protection to the distressed asserters of it, was most basely prostituted, and a free and generous people, the faithful and useful allies of this kingdom, were betrayed in the most unparalleled manner into irrevocable slavery." ^ Such invectives, which, if true, rightly justify execration, have been bandied from his- torian to historian, as if Oxford and Bolingbroke were cruel and treacherous monsters, and their accusers noble and disinterested paladins. By the same analogy, Lord Beaconsfield's Government, if only the language of the Gladstonian debates were preserved without evidence, might be held up to obloquy in the matter of the Bul- garian atrocities. The gravamen of the accusation is that the Queen ' Boyer, pp. 681, 682. " Article 22 of Oxford's impeachment, Boyer's " Hist, of the Last Ministry," TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 463 had secured the services of the Catalans on the express understanding that she would stand by them to the end, and that she betrayed her trust. Let us examine the facts. The Catalans were a pecu- liar people in Spain. They were always vigorous and insurgent, stiff-necked and rebellious. They had joined Louis XIII. to shake off the yoke of Arragon. Some fifty years afterwards they joined Peterborough to shake off the yoke of Bourbon. Every one remembers that the war of the Spanish succession was in truth a civil war between Castile and Arragon. Arragon and Catalonia were the only provinces in favour of the Austrian, and the strength of Philip rested on the genuine affections of the majority of his adopted countrymen. It was not until 1705 that, through Mitford Crowe, the Catalans enlisted on the side of the Allies, and resolved, in the language of the time, " to return to the obedience of the House of Austria." The Queen, through Crowe, gave them assurances of her utmost endeavours to procure the establishment of all such rights and immunities as they enjoyed formerly under the Austrians, and the confirma- tion of such titles as had been conferred on them by the Duke of Anjou. She further guaranteed to Charles III. that such rights should be gained. On these con- ditions they were desired, in common with any other Spaniards who should join the pact, to give faith to every- thing Crowe should tell them in her name, and Peter- borough and Shovel afterwards issued a manifesto to that effect. The Catalonian Miguelets were freebooters after Peterborough's own heart. Few will forget his dashing advice to the dragoon at Tortosa : " Dear Jones, prove a true dragoon : preach this welcome doctrine to your Miguelets — plunder without danger." At Montjuich, the year before, he was obliged to personally interpose so as to save the garrison from their fury ; from their fury also he rescued his inamorata, the beautiful Marchesa di Popoh. Peterborough took upon himself, under the wide discretion granted to Crowe, to promise the Cata- 464 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Ionian province the restoration of its " Fueros," or " rights and hberties, which the Crown of Castile had set aside." With the aid of the Catalans, for two years the campaign prospered under Peterborough. Madrid was twice entered by the confederates. But afterwards, as we have seen, nothing but reverses were in store. The Whigs at home, notwithstanding, in 1707 enlarged the mission of the Allies to the complete reduction of Spain to the Hapsburg, and the final ejection from all Spanish dominions of the Bourbon. In 171 1 Charles became Emperor of Austria, and the whole perspective of European power was altered. The negotiations for peace already begun were pursued with determination. Lord Lexington was ordered to acquaint the Catalans that the Queen would do her utmost for their liberties on the conclusion of the peace, but meanwhile the Catalans were to desist. In 1712 the Emperor himself entered into a convention with the Queen for the evacuation of Catalonia, for which she became guarantor. In this convention Charles neglected any stipulations for the liberties of the Catalans. There- upon Bolingbroke pressed the Catalonian rights re- peatedly on the French, who reluctantly yielded to his importunities, with the result that a clause in the eventual Anglo-Spanish treaty provided for a perpetual amnesty to the Catalans, the full possession of all their estates and honours, and a grant of all the privi- leges which the Castilians enjoyed ; and, since these did not content them, they received as compensation the advantage of trading directly to the West Indies, and other completely new privileges. Their obduracy, how- ever, and obstinacy in continuing what was now a re- bellion, in reliance on the Austrian, who had not even agreed to help them, proved a great hindrance to the accommodation in progress between Spain and Portu- gal. "The delay of the peace," writes Bolingbroke to Lawless in the November of 1713, "gives present encou- ragement, and may, without dispute, give future advantage to the Catalans : the resistance of the Catalans may prove TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 465 of still greater moment, and of worse consequence than it is now apprehended to be, if the Ministers of Spain, by exacting terms too rigorous of those of Portugal . . . should drive the Court of Lisbon into a sort of generous ■despair and make them resolve at all events to risk the continuance of the war. ... It was on a confidence that , . . the Catholic King would, instead of raising any new demands, have complied with the few which then remained, that Her Majesty withdrew her own forces out of Catalonia, stopped the supplies which she used to furnish to the Im- perial troops, and laboured so zealously and so successfully to deliver Spain of all foreign troops, and as far as in her lay, to put that kingdom in absolute peace." It was, there- fore, because the Catalans continued to infringe the treaty for evacuation which the Emperor, who connived, had made, that no more could be done for them.- They refused to join the general peace, and the Queen, who had procured them great advantages, became unable to prevent them depriving themselves of the benefit, unless she had chosen, for their sakes alone, to renew the war. After the debate in the House of Lords in 1714 Sir James Wishart was despatched with a squadron to the Mediterranean, pre- sumably to carry out the Queen's guarantee for the evacua- tion of Catalonia. Yet the Whigs objected that he ought to have succoured the Catalans, that is to say, to have abetted, after a solemn treaty of general peace, a civil war which brought in its train plunder, despair, and rapine, to the gallant but ungovernable people, who so little valued the rights that the Queen had ensured for them, that they tossed them away in subservience to Austria, for the futile pro- longation of an impossible warfare. None the less, the •Queen remonstrated, though in vain, with Philip of Anjou ; and although the Whigs cast the infamy which belonged to Austria for abandoning, and to the Spanish monarch for persecuting them, on her and her Ministers, so that their names have ever since been tarnished as at once the seducers and abandoners of a confiding and heroic people, the indignant virtue of a faction culminated in an 2 G 466 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES address of thanks to Her Majesty for the care taken of the Catalans.! The peers, disappointed in their Catalan diversion, recurred to their everlasting Pretender. Early in April they complained once more of his continuance in Lor- raine. Sunderland protested that, notwithstanding their solicitations, Baron Forstner, the Duke of Lorraine's Minister, had assured him that as yet his master had received no remonstrance. This was more than Boling- broke could bear. He said he wondered the Baron should make such a declaration, since he himself had, in the Queen's name, remonstrated with the Baron. Halifax flatly denied Bolingbroke's statement, and Whar- ton averred "that, for his own part, he was an old man and could not expect to live long, but that he had a son who he hoped would see his country revenged upon those wicked Ministers." The Protestant succession was thereupon voted out of danger "under the present Ad- ministration " (the minority refusing to add " Her Ma- jesty's") by a bare majority of twelve. The feature of the debate was the defection of Anglesea, who, admit- ting that he had voted for the cessation of arms, took "shame" on himself and asked God, his country, and his conscience pardon. He had supposed the intended peace to be good and glorious; as it was, if he found himself imposed upon, he durst pursue an evil Minister from the Queen's closet to the Tower, and from the Tower to the scaffold.^ This tirade meant, in effect, that he had joined not the Whigs, but the " Whimsicals." It is curious to find that, after this outburst, he still remained in sympathy with Bohngbroke,^ who, reporting ' The authorities for the foregoing are, besides Boyer, his " History of the Late Ministry," Bolingbroke's Pol. Corr., Defoe's "Secret Hist, of the White Staff," and Stanhope's "Queen Anne." Cf. also Portland MS., vol. v. p. 401 : "... They act the most cruel and inhuman things, such as none but madmen and desperadoes would be guilty of," &c. » Boyer, p. 683. s Cf. the letter to the Primate of Ireland, July 27, 1714, Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 572, where Bolingbroke alludes familiarly to Anglesea and says, "My heart has gone along with his in this whole affair" (Ireland). And cf. p. 550 for Anglesea's share in the Schism Act. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 467 his conduct to Shrewsbury a week afterwards, simply observes : "... I have obeyed your commands to Lord Anglesea, with whom I think it very desirable to main- tain a good correspondence, though we have had the misfortune lately to see him differ from us in a very public and remarkable manner." ^ Some explanation may be found in the fact that at the close of this evening's debate, when Halifax, undeterred, moved that an address should again be laid before the Queen requir- ing her to demand the Pretender's withdrawal, and further to enter into guarantees with foreign Powers for the succession, Schiitz alone was permitted to remain in the strangers' places. That he reported the debate to Han- over is beyond question, and Anglesea was noted down as a regent on Anne's demise under the Act of Settle- ment ; nor is it less curious to note that the same advocate for the Tower and the block little more than a year afterwards declared that such violent measures "would make the sceptre shake in the King's hands." ^ So true is it, as Bolingbroke in his bitterness afterwards remarked, that "when those at the head of Government are in distraction, subordinate Ministers will take the liberty of acting as their passion drives them or their interest entices them."^ The poor Queen was pelted with addresses, which were in fact requisitions instead of requests. Halifax, producing these embarrassments like a conjuror does tape, "in reams from his mouth," moved to execute the laws against " Jesuits, Popish priests, and bishops, except those belonging to foreign Ministers." It was finally resolved next day, with a view to Sir Patrick Lawless, that none not included in the Articles of Limerick or who had borne arms in France or Spain, should be capable of any employment, civil or military, and further that no natural-born subject of the Queen should be 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 497. » " Hist, of the Last Ministry," p. 171. Bol. Pol. Corr,, vol. iv. p. 572. 468 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES received as Minister from a foreign potentate. Lawless had once been the Pretender's envoy at Madrid, On the same day Oxford's conduct towards the Highlanders was approved. Lord North and Grey now moved that the debate should be cleared of the Pretender and be relegated to the Commercial treaties. The House was adjourned for a week, and the Queen's answer to the address about the Pretender was previously read by the Lord Chancellor. It evinced her displeasure and adminis- tered a tacit rebuke. Perhaps its curtness precipitated matters. At any rate, the Whigs now determined to strike a blow for which their previous manoeuvres had been a rehearsal, the blow carefully laid with a train of preparation by Schiitz in concert with the old Electress, though not, as we have already noticed, by the sanction of her son or grandson.^ It was resolved to demand a writ for the Electoral Prince to sit in the House of Peers as the Duke of Cambridge. The motions to bring him, or one of his House, over, had been the stale device of the opening years in Anne's reign. It was now re- verted to, as a certain means of affronting the Queen, and a cap to the demand of Mary of Modena for her arrears of allowance. The episode is familiar and its details are recorded at length.2 "The Queen," writes Bolingbroke to Strafford about this time, "has forbid M. Schiitz the Court, and surely with reason ; this gentleman thought fit to demand of 1 A further confirmation of this is to be found in the fact that, shortly after the Queen's death, George I. assured Lord Clarendon at Herrenhausen that "he was unacquainted with the demand made by the (late) Electress of the writ for calling his son to the House of Peers." Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. loi. The Electress was the sole member of her family consistently in earnest about the succession. Spence, p. 55. - See Boyer, pp. 686-701. And cf. T. Harley's account from Hanover. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 417. Oxford himself in his various "Accounts," the fullest of which is cited in the Family Memoirs, tallying with the Lansdowne MS. (British Museum), ii., p. 662, insinuates that Ae prevented the Prince's arrival, and that Bolingbroke, by printing his letter to the Electress, transmitted by Marl- borough, prejudiced him with the Queen. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 469 my Lord Chancellor the writ for the Duke of Cambridge without the decency of giving Her Majesty the least in- timation of it, or so much as making her a compliment, which she might expect from a Prince of her blood who intended to come into her kingdom. Indeed . . . at this rate the dispute will not be between the House of Hanover and the Pretender any more ; the Queen will become a party, and they are no friends to the Protestant succession who advise such measures as force her to be so. Whether the Duke of Cambridge will come, now his writ is delivered, or whether it was asked only in hopes it would be refused, I know not, but surely to come hither with an air of defiance to the Queen, and on the foot of a party, is the unwisest and most unnecessarily desperate resolution that ever yet was taken. The bulk of this nation will be true to their oaths, but they will, among these oaths, in the first place remember that of allegiance to the Queen. Mr. Harley is ordered to demand the recall of Schiitz, and Lord Paget will be going to Hanover very soon to bring that Court, if possible, to a better notion of their own interest. Since I wrote thus far Schiitz is gone from hence ; the purpose of his voyage we know not, but if we may believe what is given out, his errand is to press the coming of his young master. ... As to the disputes between my Lord Treasurer and me, it is certain we were not of the same opinion. I hope and believe my Lord is my friend ; certain it is that I have in this session shown myself his friend. . . . Among friends it may be owned that there was some talk of laying down, but the Queen overruled that start of passion, and my Lord has now the ball at his feet to drive as he pleases. I own to your Lordship I think we are now, though less in number, stronger than we ever were, because the utmost detachment of wavering people is made, and the troops that remain are firm and to be depended upon. We have it in our power to give the law at home, and in great measure abroad 470 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES too." 1 In the like strain he addresses Prior.^ Boling- broke was, in fact, struggling that the Queen's "govern- ment should be carried on." The incident of the writ had strengthened his court position — so much so, that Oxford afterwards insinuated that Bolingbroke's violence had contributed to the affront.^ To his party position he now addressed himself in earnest. His policy was to purge it of waverers or traitors, and to constitute it the express image of the Queen, the Church, and the people. "The little I could do," he tells Strafford on May i8th, " I have done honestly, zealously, indefatigably, towards this end ; the conscious- ness of which will be a reward to me, and I have learned to expect no other. ... I am heartily glad to find by your Lordship's of the 25th that there are at present no further thoughts entertained of sending the Duke of Cambridge over, and I am glad of it, because I wish well to the Protestant succession. Parties may find their account in a contest between her ally and the House of Hanover, but surely the plain interest of this House is to live well with the Queen, and, after her decease, to ascend the throne with a national concurrence, and not to be handed to it by any particular set of men. For my own part, my duty and allegiance are to the Queen during her time, and my respect shall be paid the suc- cessor in no manner which is inconsistent with that first obligation. After the Queen, if I live after her, I will be true to my principle and to my call, at the expense of all I have. ... I am not fond of speaking on any subject concerning myself, and especially on this, because he that believes me to be against what I profess and swear to be for, shall never make me think it worth my while to go about to convince him. But to you in friendship I say this much, because, among those arti- fices which I detest and despise, it has been thought proper to insinuate to the world that I leaned to another 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., pp. 512-514. ^ IH^; PP. SoS-SU- ' Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 612. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 471 interest, and that the disputes which have lately happened at Court were occasioned by the favour of some men to the Pretender's cause ; and then your servant has been named with such others as desired method, concert, perspicuity, steadiness and vigour in the Administration." ^ We commend this remarkable declaration, unquoted by historians, to such as doubt as to the springs of Boling- broke's divergence from Oxford, or insist on lacerating him with the inveterate brambles of traditional prejudice. We cannot discern the necessity for even the show of dissimulation on his part at this time in this confidential communication and to this correspondent. He was the one man of the Ministry who knew his own mind ; that he was not speaking it out when every circumstance encouraged him to do so is a more untenable hypothesis than the contrary, because the recorded facts fit with his assertions ; while his steadily increasing power and im- portance gave him an authority which even a hypocrite would not abuse. That he was now abusing it would seem a greater miracle than that his detractors and calumniators were abusing theirs ; and it is precisely their abuse that has been meted out as justice. The incident of the writ was designed not only to provoke the Queen and further disunite the Administration, but also to draw the Jacobites, and, if possible, to fasten their stigma upon the Tory chieftains.'' That the in- cident meditated the disunion of the Tories is best proved by the Whig Boyer's remark on the second defection of Anglesea, together with that of the Bishops of Bristol and London, when the Lords nearly gained their second address about the Pretender, on the discussion of the Queen's answer to the first. It was, he declares, " un- doubtedly owing to Baron Schiitz's demanding a writ 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. pp. 530, 531. 2 Cf. the pamphlet of "Hannibal at our Gates," a dialogue between " Pan- nick " and " Steady," p. 30. "Steady: ' Who is to be bamboozled ? ' Pannick : ' The House of Hanover, while the cousin plays the popish game at home ; but we know our man, and design to address the Queen to send over for the young prince.' " Cited Boyer, p. 687. 472 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES for the Duke of Cambridge which visibly gave life and consideration to the Whig party.'V But the actual result of the measure was the aggrandisement of Bolingbroke. Who were the real "knaves and villains," as the ele- gant oratory of the promoters of the impeachments after- wards ran, may be opportunely evidenced by the next great debate which concerned the peace, towards the end of April. At its outset Lord Clarendon proposed an address of thanks to the Queen, "for having by a safe, honour- able, and advantageous peace with Spain, delivered these nations from a long, consuming land war ; and to desire Her Majesty, notwithstanding any obstructions that may be thrown in her way, to proceed to the settlement of Europe." Lord Cowper then rose and said, " My Lords, this is the most barefaced attempt that ever was made by this or any other Ministry to secure themselves by endeavouring to get the sanction of this House for themselves. ... I cannot remove my finger from the original of our misfortunes, the cessation of arms. . . . Would to God it had ruined this peace." And Lord Halifax, in supporting him, averred "the highest re- sentment of the vile usage given my Lord Duke of Ormonde, a lord for whom I have the most profound respect." If there was a Tory with Jacobite sym- pathies, only stifled in loyalty to the Constitution, it was Ormonde. And four months afterwards these same Halifax and Cowper joined in impeaching him with every expression of extravagant abuse. Yet now, for- sooth, because it served their party turn, he was to be adulated and the Ministry denounced. Clarendon's address was, however, carried by a majority of thirteen. On the previous day occurred the State of the Nation debate in the Commons, where Walpole repeated the role of Halifax, and Hanmer of Anglesea. The latter was fluent, unsteady, and time-serving. Swift in the earlier "Scriblerus" jingle rhymed his name to "who prates like his gran-mere." ^ He was of opinion that ' Boyer, p. 689. ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 129. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 473 this was the proper, perhaps the only time for patriots to speak ; that great pains were taken to screen some persons ; that in this debate so much had been ad- duced in favour of the danger to the succession, and so little against it, that he could not but believe the first. The audience of Lawless with the Queen was, to his mind, proof presumptive. A majority of forty-eight in a House of four hundred and sixty-four affirmed the contention of the Tories, and Hanmer was left to seek his salvation with the Whigs. It is not a little curious that, whereas the cant invectives against the French and a " Frenchified Ministry " were current, no Whig ever affected anxiety with regard to the Pretender on the part of Austria, and yet a marriage was projected for him with one of the Archduchesses, and the Emperor was certainly as Catholic a monarch as the King. The Jacobite Leslie went so far in his ill-judged "letter" of this date as to press into the fray the Hanoverian doctrine of Lutheran Consubstan- tiation — " as erroneous and contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England as Transubstantiation." As if any of the Junto cared one rap about dogmas or Church discipline ! Things had come to such a pass by the close of May that the Queen addressed both the Electress and her grand- son in her own hand. She also wrote to the Elector. Oxford, too, indited a very weak epistle to the Duke of Cambridge, in which he doubted not "but the accident that happened about the writ may be improved to in- crease the most perfect friendship between the Queen and your most serene family." It was rumoured that the Princess Sophia's decease, which occurred on June 8th, was occasioned by the shock of this correspondence. This is another Whig myth which has grown and flourished. She was nearly eighty-four years of age, and she expired of apoplexy as she was walking in the gardens of Herrenhausen in the evening. It might as well be urged that the Duke of Berri, who died three weeks before, had been killed by the Whig animadversions on the renunciations of the Spanish crown. Sophia was a 474 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES woman of acute intellect. The affection of her daughter recompensed her for the hereditary disobedience of her sons. She sought solace in metaphysics, and she died as serenely as she had lived, " sans medecin et pretre." Her grand-daughter-in-law, afterwards Queen Caroline, in a letter dated the day preceding the Electress's death, makes no mention of any indisposition.^ We may here mention that Caroline herself seems to have seen Bolingbroke's Political Correspondence, though by what means except by improbable copies, or by the equally improbable report of spies, it is difficult to guess. Perhaps Sophia's daughter, however, the Duchess of Orleans, who was in constant correspondence with Herrenhausen, may have heard the mot in Paris and conveyed it to her niece. Writing to Leibnitz on October 14, 1715, she evidently quotes his witty expression to Prior that " the French were as bad poets as the English were politicians." ^ The strain on Bolingbroke was enormous. He had converted internal disasters into public victories. He had concentrated the Tory ranks on the enemy's position. He had "turned diseases to commodity," and made even the apostasy of adherents an occasion for looking facts in the face, and unmasking the position so as to unite the nation. The short time available, of which he became daily more aware, stimulated him to disregard Oxford's shifts and excuses, to evict all waverers, and to replace them by cham- pions of the Queen and people. The one weakness of his position was the folly of leaderless Jacobites and of the High Church party, itself rife with dissension and disunion. Abroad there was the interest of the Protestants under the Treaty of Westphalia to be safeguarded at Baden ; the barrier of the States to be adjusted, if possible without the influence of Austria ; the importance of unhappy Sweden ' Kemble, State Papers, p. 47. ''■ Ibid., p. 532. The quotation occurs in a despatch of September 12, 1712, which begins, "For God's sake, dear Matt, hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brains will furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much better politicians than the French are poets" Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iii. p. 64. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 475 to be preserved. The situation demanded a clear judgment, and a talent for employing, as well as a power of pro- moting, the right men in the right place. Throughout this tangle Bolingbroke was conspicuous for these qualities. His health again broke down.^ Lawless, against whom no definite charge could be brought, who was so necessary for the adjustment of the commercial treaty, had been hurried away. Foreign affairs wore a threatening aspect, and Bolingbroke did not relax his vigilant outlook on the map of Europe. " I see,'' he writes to Strafford on April 27,2 " the settlement of Europe hangs ; I see a new air of superiority assumed by the Imperialists, yielded to by the French, and submitted to by the Dutch. Nothing, in my opinion, can put an end to old differences and prevent new ones but a vigorous way of acting in our Court, and showing our Allies either that there is no opposition to the Queen's measures, or that the strength which is formed will be so steadily and vigorously exerted as to render all opposition vain. To this purpose I have laboured this session more than ever I did in the whole course of my life, and in the utmost confidence I will say to you that the stand which was made, which occasioned such rumour abroad, and which I never expect to see forgiven by some at home, forced us out of our sleeping indolence, and occasioned that new turn which affairs in both Houses have taken. If good use is made of this advantage, we may restore our credit and give a due weight to the Queen's influence. If we revert into our former management, we shall grow con- temptible both here and everywhere else. . . . Let us act like men of courage and public spirit ; let those who guide the helm answer for the course of the ship, but let us hand the sails, and do our part of the work without reproach. Mr. Whitworth will be immediately despatched into the Empire : I prevailed last night that he should not be ordered directly to Baden, which might have exposed him to make a very mean figure, the French and Imperialists being locked up there, as they were at Rastadt. . . . The 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 519. ^ Ibid., vol. iv. pp. 522-528. 476 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Protestants will see that the Queen is in good earnest to support them, if they are not wanting to thenaselves. . . ." The letter closes with a cold-blooded reference to the Catalans. That Bolingbroke was kindled neither by ad- miration nor pity for them does not redound to his credit. None the less, his position, on the facts which we have reviewed, is perfectly sound, and France and Austria must share the blame before the tribunal of history. Then there was the question of the payment of arrears to the Hanover troops, which had been introduced into the estimates. It became, therefore, a part of the year's supply. The Queen, however, had previously denied payment to any of the allied forces which had deserted Ormonde. The Queen, and even Bolingbroke, were ignorant of the item which had crept into the specification. He proposed, therefore, that, as a particular under a general demand for supply, it should await the Queen's pleasure, and if she consented, it should be voted separately with the unani- mous consent of the House. But the Whigs precipitated the debate with some dexterity in the middle of May, so that on division it was laid aside without being rejected, by the resolution of leaving the chair. Bolingbroke there- upon advised Kreyenberg to apply in form for the Queen's recommendation to the House for its payment.^ It was eventually voted a fortnight after the Queen's death, when all Tory opposition became futile.^ Bolingbroke had now determined on a step which should prove the lengths to which he was preparing to run in favour of the extreme Church party. It is impossible to excuse the Schism Act itself. It was illiberal in the extreme, and it proved fatally impolitic. It was one thing, as we have seen, to refuse conforming Dissenters political power, quite another to rob them of the education for which they were growing famous. We cannot and we shall not palliate this persecuting measure. On the other hand, we can and we shall deny to its Whig denouncers 1 Cf. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. pp. 531-534. ' Ford to Swift. Works, vol. xvi. p. 226. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 477 one spark of any generous feeling in the matter. It in no way shocked the callous conscience of politicians whose propaganda was Catholic persecution, and for whom the Dissenters were mere pawns on the chessboard of faction. That very Walpole who scathed the bill with such irony of Liberal enthusiasm was the same Walpole who, a very few years afterwards, voted against its repeal. That very Walpole who now masqueraded as keeper of the Noncon- formist conscience was the same Walpole who refused the Nonconformists any measure of reform when the disturb- ance of prejudice imperilled the continuity of his reign. From posterity the act deserves reprobation, but not from those contemporary defenders of a faith neither of their time nor their convictions. We cannot absolve the Tories, but neither can we sympathise with the Whigs, whose virulence provoked a measure which their cunning de- nounced. The bill was purely a move which hoped to checkmate the adversary. So far from its proving a check to the King, Nemesis decreed that it should be check to the Queen. In Bolingbroke's surviving papers there is but one distinct reference to the Schism Bill. But there is an unfamiliar passage in a letter of May 20, 1714,^ to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, which goes far to ex- plain its raison d'etre. After emphasising the ill effects of the late want of concert between the Court and the Party, after pointing out that the recent violence of the Irish Whigs should have opened the eyes of the lethargic and have roused " a spirit of keeping no measures with that faction which kept none with the Crown," he continues, "... I hoped, therefore, that the whole Church interest would as one man have laid hold of this favourable conjuncture to support the Queen, exclusive of all other assistance, to vest all power in themselves, and by these means to establish themselves for the present age and for futurity. To these purposes the best I could do was done ; and my Lord Anglesea, who was privy to all transactions, and in con- iidence with whom I assure your Lordship I have always • Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. iv. p. 550, 478 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES been particularly desirous to act, is able to tell you that some of us were empowered to give from the Queen the utmost assurances that an honest Tory heart could wish to receive. It happened that this made no impression, and as long as the succession remained in danger nothing else was, it seemed, to be regarded. This danger of the suc- cession was the subject of many private debates, and very fatally, in my opinion, to the Church cause, of some public debate too. I could never hear any symptoms of danger advanced which were in any degree proportioned to the apprehensions expressed, and when it was asked what remedy, what farther security should be provided, those who expressed their fears had none to offer, but expected that they who saw no distemper should prescribe a method of cure. I confess . . . freely that this appeared new to me, and forced me to make several reflections which I was unwilling to entertain in my thoughts, and which never shall go farther." The bill then was politically necessitated by the tactics of those who had endeavoured artfully to split the Church and the nation on the subject of the suc- cession. Its violence was due to the brief space into which Bolingbroke was condemned and compelled to cram his methods of cementing a crumbling party and consolidating a divided nation. The Church, in the opinion of that nation to which Bolingbroke gave voice,^ was its mainstay, and with the Church was bound up the land. He wished, as he afterwards wrote to the Irish Primate, to " act a clear game with the Tories," ^ and to make them confront reali- ties instead of phantoms. But he had not time enough to be patient, nor patience enough to take time. The October Club forced his hand. Oxford, too, who by turns 1 That this was so is ably shown by Swift in his " Free Thoughts," Works, vol. V. p. 402, where he says, " The general wishes and desires of a people are perhaps more obvious to other men than to Ministers of State. There are two points of the highest importance wherein a very great majority of the kingdom ap- pear perfectly hearty and unanimous : first, that the Church of England should be preserved entire ... all schisms, heresies, and sects discountenanced . . . and her secret adversaries under the names of Whigs, Low Church, Republicans, moderation men and the like receive no marks of favour." ' Works, vol. v. p. 572. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 479 used the Whigs and Dissenters and betrayed the Tories, whom he cajoled instead of leading, both incensed the temper of his rival and irritated him into extremes. The Act ought to have been entitled " An Act of retaliation on the Whigs for setting up the Dissenters to tar the Tories with Jacobitism, for disarming the adversaries of the Crown, and for compelling the Church to be united and the nation to realise its position." The odium raised by the Whigs concerning the Pretender, while it disturbed peace at home, bade fair to ruin the peace abroad ; and one of the strongest arguments against Bolingbroke's Jacobitism is that the commercial treaties which he had created and cherished were practically ruined by the mere suspicion of it. He has himself defended the measure by the same arguments he applied to the repeal of Conformity bills, and it is only fair to quote the passage : " In order to bring these purposes about " {i.e. the consolidation of a national party), he observes in his letter to Sir W. Windham,^ " I verily think that the persecution of the Dissenters entered into no man's head. By the bills for preventing occasional conformity and the growth of schism it was hoped that their sting would be taken away. These bills were thought necessary for our party interest, and besides were deemed neither unreasonable nor unjust. The good of society may require, that no person should be deprived of the pro- tection of the Government on account of his opinions in religious matters, but it does not follow from hence that men ought to be trusted in any degree with the preserva- tion of the Establishment, who must, to be consistent with their principles, endeavour the subversion of what is established. An indulgence to consciences, which the pre- judice of education and long habits have rendered scrupu- lous, may be agreeable to the rules of good policy and humanity, yet will it hardly follow from hence that a Government is under any obligation to indulge a tenderness of conscience to come, or to connive at the propagation of these prejudices, and at the forming of these habits. The ' Works, vol. ix. p. 22 and following. 48o BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES evil effect is without remedy, and may therefore deserve indulgence ; but the evil cause is to be prevented, and can therefore be entitled to none. Besides this, the bills . . , rather than to enact anything new, seemed only to enforce the observation of the ancient laws, which had been judged necessary for the security of the Church and State at a time when the memory of the ruin of both, and of the hands by which that ruin had been wrought, was fresh in the minds •of men." ^ This is the logic of one trained by fanatics ; it is the casuistry of reaction. The whole month bristled with rumours and tumults. One Kelly (who reappears as a Jacobite in the subsequent reigns) was apprehended through Wharton for enlisting men for the Pretender, and thereupon was issued the Queen's proclamation for the capture of her half-brother whenever he should land or attempt to land in Great Britain, with a promised reward of j^Sooo. But, in the address of thanks, the cantankerous Commons proposed to add ;£ioo,ooo more to the reward. In the Lords, Wharton was bold enough to bemoan the condition of their " unhappy Princess," whose remonstrances with Lorraine were now ineffectual, though once she gave a king to Spain and an emperor to Austria, besides awing both France and Holland. As soon as their address was voted, Bolingbroke appeared, and staggered them by an unexpected stroke. Protesting that better means were available to secure the succession, he proposed a bill rendering it high treason for any person to list or be listed in the Pretender's service. Halifax and the Whigs declared this unnecessary, and deprecated any danger from the Pretender, except through the French. Amendments making it treason to join the service of any foreign powers were proposed, but the Commons eventually passed the bill stripped of these amendments. Colour was given to these alarms by the Jacobite banquet, over which Lord Fingal presided, at the Sun Tavern in the Strand, on June 24, whose ticket of ' We may point out that these arguments defend the Anti-Occasional Acts rather than the Schism Bill. Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy (1559) made the oath obligatory only on persons holding spiritual or temporal office under the Crown. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 481 admission depicted the Pope treading heresy under foot. Writing on the enlistment scare to the Lords Justices of Ireland so late as July 28, Bolingbroke observes, "One would imagine that the vigilancy used in discovering, and the severity used in prosecuting such as were listed, or as listed others, for the Pretender might be sufficient to calm the minds of men, by showing them they are safe through the care and under the protection of the Government."^ But this was the very question which the Whigs were banded to beg.^ On July 2 the Spanish commercial clauses were debated by the peers. Oxford actually joined with the Opposition, who insisted on hearing a packed deputation of thirty Spanish merchants regarding the exception of the " four species." This Bolingbroke strenuously opposed. Shrews- bury, be it noted, and eight or nine other peers, stood by Bolingbroke. Ford, writing to Swift, observes that " the clamour of the merchants. Whig and Tory, has been too great to have passed a vote in vindication of it, as it stands ratified. But my Lord Anglesea and his squadron seemed willing to oppose any censure of it, and yet this representa- tion was suffered to pass — nobody knows how." ^ It was resolved to address the Queen for all the papers relating to the negotiations, with the names of their advisers. The Queen answered by ratifying the articles and ignoring the requisition. Halifax openly complained of her conduct, and moved a representation which might force her to do so. This fresh affront, however, was disallowed. On July 6 the "three explanatory articles"* of the Treaty were 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 576. '^ In like manner they had managed the imperfect empowerment of Buys to treat for peace. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 659. Cf. ante, p. 329. ' Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 163. * The first of these was explanatory of the third Article of the Treaty with Spain, which stipulated that the Queen's subjects should enjoy the same privileges in all the Spanish dominions as subsisted in the reign of Charles TI., and that Philip's subjects should enjoy corresponding privileges. The new article provided for fresh rates and the regulation of the customs in the offices of entry, after which the goods might freely be transported to any other parts of Spain. The 2 H 482 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES taken into consideration, and Arthur Moore was accused of bribing foreign emissaries to procure their ratification. The Lords came to no resolution in this matter, but the South Sea Company expelled Moore from their directorate, on the ground of his privity to a clandestine trade. Arbuth- not, writing to Swift, thus comments on this ugly affair : "... We gained a glorious victory at the House of Lords the day before : the attack was made immediately against Arthur Moore, who appeared at the bar, with the other Commissioners of Trade. The South Sea Company had prepared the way for a censure by voting him guilty of a breach of trust, and incapable of serving them in any office for the future. This passed without hearing what he had to say in his defence, and had the usual fate of such unreason- able reflections. . . . Court affairs go on as they did. The cry is still on the Captain's side . . ." ^ On July 8th the Assiento contract was discussed, and Bolingbroke, Lady Masham, and Arthur Moore were openly accused of having pocketed the quarter -part reserved for the Queen. She was petitioned to restore, if she did not retain for herself, "not only the quarter- part, but also the 7J per cent, granted to Manuel Manasses Gilligan, Esquire, and any other profits arising from the said contract." This was negatived by a majority of only twelve, and Anglesea's motion of thanks to the Queen carried by twenty-six voices. Arthur Moore escaped censure by the lateness of the hour, which was nine o'clock. What Defoe had in 171 1 written to Oxford was quite ignored by a heated faction employing the City leaders as their tools. "All our merchants Alcaralas and Cientos and Millones, however, were to stand on a separate footing. The second of these related to these special duties provided for by the fifth Article. Goods in bond were now declared free of these prescriptive duties, which were, however, to be paid when the goods were transported or sold. The third referred to the eighth Article, respecting the " Millones," or duty upon fish and domestic provisions. All these had been ratified in February 1714. See the Treaty of Navigation and Commerce between Anne and Philip (London, 1714), p. 121 and following. ^ Letter of July 10 (Friday), 1714. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 164, 165. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 483 know," he had said, "that the Spaniards (I mean by Spaniards the Government of Old Spain), in whatsoever circumstances considered, whether in peace or war, under Philip of Bourbon or Charles of Austria, will never be brought to consent to a general liberty of commerce with any colony or settlement the English may make on the coast of America." "Liberty of commerce" was the cry of Bolingbroke and his following. " Liberty of conscience " was the retort of the Whigs and the Dis- senters. Oxford alone had no cry, but sought to steer crookedly between the shoals. A new lottery bill, however, momentarily soothed the spleen of the most indignant, and after it, when some other minor bills had been passed, the Queen closed the session by her speech to both Houses. She hoped in the winter to meet them again ; she was never to meet them more. The Whig response to her dignified appeal was a re- quisition by the Deputy-Governor of Portsmouth for the strengthening of the defences in view of informa- tion that preparations were being made at Havre for the embarkation of troops ; this seems, however, unfounded.^ Thus ended the last session of the Queen's last Parliament. Halifax, who aspired to and was disap- pointed in the Premiership,^ had been the persistent leader of the Whig attacks in the Lords ; Walpole, who, though much younger, was equally ambitious, in the Commons. The Tory successes had been those of con- vulsive desperation, too sudden to survive. The feud between Bolingbroke and Oxford was at its height, and the Ministry, in Swift's expressive phrase, was "like a ship's crew quarrelling in a storm." ^ Nor was it astonishing. Oxford's latter part had been shabbily mean. He had conciliated Cowper by making him umpire in a family dispute ; he had set up Robert Monckton to ' Cf. Louis's assurance to Peterborough somewhat earlier. Portland MS., vol. V. p. 485. '^ Cf. Coxa's Walpole, p. 103, and "History of the Last Ministry," Intro- duction, p. V. » " Some Free Thoughts." 484 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES wreck the treaty of commerce with Spain ; he had nearly procured the censure of Moore.^ Afraid of his rival's talents and growing ascendancy, he was prepared to sacri- fice his party in order to oust its captain. "Our leader," angrily ejaculated Bolingbroke, "is in a secret with our enemy." 2 He complained to Strafford that those for whom he had drudged fifteen years were contriving his downfall. His one fault, he reiterated, had been that "when the party which was at our feet had been nursed up and rendered formidable ; when the party that only could support us was under the utmost dissatisfaction . . . I presumed, among others, to beg of one man and friend that he would alter his conduct, and to represent to the Queen, as a faithful friend, that her Government was on the brink of destruction." ^ Let us contemplate one other utterance of this time to Prior : * " . . . These four or five months last past have afforded such a scene as I hope never again to be an actor in. All the confusion which could be created by the disunion of friends and the malice of enemies has subsisted at Court and in Parliament. Little or no public business has been trans- acted in domestic affairs, and as to you and your Con- tinent, we have not once cast an eye towards you. We never could so justly be called divisos orbe Britannos." ' Here Bolingbroke was unjust towards himself. Little did those who slandered him as "Frenchified," and after- wards denounced him as ir2di''M^^^^^0' he had not communicated the " special preiini^a^!^e?" of the treaty to the Dutch for some months after they were arranged, realise the spirit of this man. "The open trade," he writes, and to Lawless, "which the French continue to carry on to the Spanish West Indies, as well in the North as in the South Seas, begins to make a very great noise ; and, although this practice may be mag- nified in some instances, yet we certainly know that there 1 Boyer, p. 712. ^ Bol. Pol. Corn, p. 519. ' Ibid., p. 563. Substantiated ante, p. 433. ■" July 9, 1714. Ibid., p. S6l. « Ibid., pp. 562, 563. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 485 is but too much foundation for complaint according to those particulars which you see I mention in my letter to M. Grimaldo."! The mention of the last-named Spanish representative reminds us of a small matter which shall here be set right. Spence tells us that Bolingbroke in a few weeks mastered the Spanish lan- guage. In his letters to Grimaldo Bolingbroke says that being unable "to write the Spanish tongue," he has recourse to English.^ The Ministers left town ; affairs were growing to a head. The Queen intended to leave London for Windsor on July 27,^ but Oxford's misconduct detained her in the little room at Kensington Palace, up the back stairs to which he had so often and so obsequiously crept. A thousand rumours were in circulation. Some said that Marlborough, who was at Ostend, and whose house was fitting up at St. James's,* made Oxford's dismissal a condition of return. Some, that his conferences with the Whigs were offensive, and that he was even suspected of betraying the Queen to Hanover, or of demanding an invitation for the Duke of Cambridge. Some, that he was equally in the way of remodelling the army, and of an offensive and defensive league between herself, France, Spain, Sweden, and Sicily, which Bolingbroke's fertile brain was rumoured to have conceived. Some, that he had incurred the Queen's displeasure, not only by his irregular and even disrespectful attendance, but also by his pre- sumption in giving orders to Ireland without consulting her or her Council. Some, that the Duke of Shrewsbury insisted on his removal. All these considerations, and others, may have had weight. It is perhaps more natural to seek for the immediate cause in the slighter fact of his quarrels with Lady Masham. Court crises usually hang on straws. Be this as it may, on July 20 and 21 Bolingbroke and Harcourt were closeted with the Queen ; I Bol. Pol. Corn, p. 557. ^ Hid., p. 555. ' Erasmus Lewis confirms this. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 183. * Ford to Swift, July 13, 1714. Ibid., p. 170. 486 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES and shortly before, the former dined with Buckingham.^ It was rumoured that when Oxford returned to Court he would be dismissed with the mitigations of ;£5ooo a year, the Duchy of Newcastle for himself, and the Earldom of Clare for Lord Pelham. But on Tuesday, July 27, the staff was peremptorily wrested from him, and that same even- ing Bolingbroke entertained at dinner, together with his henchman, Windham, and his opponent, Craggs, his bitterest military foes, the Generals Cadogan, Stanhope, and Palmer, and his arch-enemy Walpole.^ His object was probably to recall the Duke of Marlborough, and thus completely alienate the army from the factious Whigs, Walpole, however, if Etough ^ is to be trusted, afterwards asserted that Bolingbroke's motive was a coalition, but that he refused the Whig terms of the Pretender's removal further afield on the ground that the Queen's consent could not possibly be extorted to so offensive a plan. If Etough's recollection is right, then Walpole's assertion is untrustworthy. Headstrong and high-handed, the man who despised his foes in adversity was not likely to court them at the summit of his hopes. Besides, the scheme was unpractical, which he was not. This very story is told of Oxford by Ford,* and may perhaps account for its trans- ference to Bolingbroke. Oxford had given a dinner to cele- brate the arbitration between Lord Harley and Lord Pelham. Townshend and Cowper were guests. " However," writes Ford, " we look upon him as lost to our side ; and he has certainly made advances to the Whigs, which they have re- turned with the utmost contempt." The subterfuge accords more with Oxford's character than Bolingbroke's. More than a month before, on June 9th, Oxford had laid before the Queen his " Brief Account of Public Affairs from August 8, 17 12," entreating her to do with him what ^ Portland MS., vol. v. p. 476. Oxford was a guest, though he denied meet- ing Bolingbroke at dinner that summer. ^ Boyer does not mention him as a guest, but Erasmus Lewis does in his letter to Swift of July 29. C/. ibid., p. 195. ' Etough's Minutes of a Conference with Sir R. Walpole, cited Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 82. * Ford to Swift, August 14, 17 14. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 225. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 487 she pleased ; to place him " either as a figure or a cypher," to " displace " or " place " him as might best serve her will. This document,^ which we commend to the student's perusal, affords a remarkable commentary on his own character and motives. In view of the facts we have been at pains to detail, the malice and artifice, as well as the self-contradictions of its recital, are manifest. It is the impeachment of Bolingbroke, not the vindication of Oxford. It is the revenge of mediocrity upon genius. It craftily insinuates that the Treasurer shared the ungovernable outbursts of his supplanting rival with Lady Masham, who was at this very time the butt of his own coarsest abuse, and with the Queen herself, who had the best reason for knowing how often of late her measures had been thwarted by Oxford's craft and indecision. It hints that Shrewsbury had been baffled by the same sinister influence. It arrogates the whole glory of the negotiations which Bolingbroke had notoriously alone conducted ; and yet it admits that for a year he had been sick of a burden which under a new scheme he was for shelving on other shoulders. That new scheme comprised names mostly Jacobite, and yet he covertly taunts Boling- broke with leanings towards St. Germain. The Bill of Commerce, which his neglect, both casual and deliberate, had wrecked, he pretends to have championed. The per- sonalities in which he indulges regarding the Quebec money are aggravated by his profession of burking an inquiry which Bolingbroke would have welcomed. His flattery of his offended mistress is too extravagant to be even adroit. Throughout he announces to the Queen, " I am your only great and good Minister. My subordi- nate has mutinied, plotted, and cheated ; every one is his victim. Do with me as to your infinite wisdom may seem right, but at all events eject him — the snake in my political Eden, the Jacob to my Esau." In brief, do without me, and you undo yourself. ' Quoted Boyer, App., p. 31, and Pari. Hist., vol. H^ App. The first draft of this appears in Portland MS., vol. v. p. 464. 488 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Arbuthnot informs Swift on July loth, that "We are indeed in such a strange condition as to politics, that nobody can tell now who is for who. , . . The Dragon holds fast with a dead gripe his little machine. If he would have taken but half so much pains to have done other things as he has of late to exert himself against the Esquire, he might have been a Dragon instead of Dagon. . . . He has paid ten pounds for a manuscript of which I believe there are several in town. It is a history of the last invasion of Scotland. . . . This by a flaming Jacobite,^ that wonders all the world are not so. Perhaps it may be a Whig that personates a Jacobite." ^ The astute Treasurer was now attempting to confabulate with Shrewsbury, who in the recent debates had inclined to Bolingbroke,^ and still refused the Treasurer's advances — " I suppose," writes Ford partially, "because he is against every chief mini- ster." * Bolingbroke was still trying to get Swift the post from Shrewsbury. Lady Masham was " bidding defiance " to her old protector, who still " visits, cringes, and flatters." ^ Gay was in Hanover by Oxford's interest, after " dancing attendance for money to buy him shoes, stockings, and linen, of which, now that the Duchess of Monmouth had deprived him of her secretaryship, he was much in need."* Swift had retired from the hurly-burly to the Letcombe vicarage, where he was anxiously awaiting the proof-sheets, now in Bolingbroke's hands, of his " Free Thoughts." In his letter to Prior of July 9th, Bolingbroke asserts with warmth, "... What the Queen will do to extricate herself from these difficulties, and she alone can save herself, I do not know. This I know, that there is no danger, no labour, I decline to serve her, except one, which is that of trusting the same conduct a fifth year which has deceived herself these four years." ^ He grew daily more impetuously zealous, even to reminding the commander at Minorca on '^ Lockhart. ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 1 66. » Arbuthnot to Swift, July 17, Works, p. 176. * Ibid., p. 181. '^ Ibid., p. 177. ^ Ibid., p. 145. ' Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 568. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 489 the day of Oxford's dismissal that the Emperor's picture was hanging in the Town Hall and " some appearance of his authority subsisting in the island." ^ When the end came, Erasmus Lewis, one of Harley's most devoted and most precise officials, the "shaver,'' as his friends, following Swift,^ called him, an honest but pedantic specimen of "red tape," thus vents his grief for the departure of "our Don Quixote." "The triumph of the enemy makes me mad. I feel a strange tendency within myself, and scarce bear the thoughts of dating letters from this place, when my old friend is out, whose fortune I have shared for so many years. 'Qui fiat voluntas tua! The damned thing is we are to do all dirty work. We are to turn out Monckton,^ and I hear we are to pass the new Commission of the Treasury. ... I intended to have writ you a long letter ; but the moment I had turned this page, 1 had intelli- gence that the Dragon had broke out in a fiery passion with my Lord Chancellor, sworn a thousand oaths he would be revenged, &c. . . . quantula sunt kominum cor- puscula."^ Three days afterwards the same correspondent adds the following comments : " The Queen has told all the lords the reasons of her parting with him, viz., that he neglected all business ; that he was seldom to be under- stood ; 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, he behaved himself toward her with bad manners, indecency, and disrespect. Pudet hcec opprobria nobis, &c. ... I am distracted at the thoughts of this, and the pride of the conqueror. . . . The runners are already employed to go to all the coffee- houses. They rail to the pit of hell. . . . The stick is yet in 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., p. 574. ' " This Lewis is an arrant shaver " (" Imitations of Horace," Ep. vii. Bk. i), and cf. Arbuthnot's letter to Swift, Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 451. ' The new Commissioner of Trade before referred to, who was foisted in by Oxford to inform against Moore. * Swift's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 186-187. The "disrespect" alluded to in the next letter refers to the " Writ " incident. 490 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES his hand, because they cannot agree who shall be the new commissioners. ... I hear he (Oxford) goes out of town instantly to Wimple, and my lady to Brampton ; that he will join her there, after a few days at Wimple. Adieu." Bolingbroke now touched the crisis of his fate. Although the Treasurer's staff was to be put in commission, he could feel little doubt that, if the Queen lived, the supreme power would be his. Shrewsbury, it is true, might prove, in name, the premier ; and the remodelling of the army was not yet complete, but should Marlborough return, — and Marlborough had a weak spot in his heart for Harry St. John, — what changes might not happen ? The peace abroad was not yet general, and Bolingbroke was the only man who possessed the qualifications for enforcing it. The Jacobites, it is true, were the Achilles' heel of his power. Atterbury was at their head, ready, as soon as the Queen had breathed her last, to bully Ormonde in his lawn sleeves ; and the dictatorial prelate of Rochester would press, should the Queen expire, for the proclamation of James III. and a primacy of priests, i But with the army and the people at his back, with the non-Jacobite clergy in his favour, Bolingbroke could defy Atterbury. Besides, despite the mistrust of his cleverness and the suspicions of his character, Shrewsbury might after all be on his side.^ Oxford had been dished over the Chvirch interest. That interest supported Bolingbroke. The Whigs perhaps knew now that Bolingbroke desired the new dynasty to enter a united England. Even the Duchess of Somerset — that sole surviving malign influence around the Queen — seems now to have been amenable. As late as July 29th Boling- broke promised to reconcile her to Swift, and so procure ^ Cf. the anecdote from Dr. Birch's papers now in the British Museum, quoted in the notes to Dr. Maty's edition of Lord Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works (London, 1787), vol. i. p. 279; Spence, p. 55 ; and Defoe's " White Staff," ii. p. 46. " " I never heard of any pique the Duke had to him, but that he was to be chief Minister ; and that being at an end, why may not they be reconciled ? " Ford to Swift, August 5, 1714. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 207. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 491 the office which he coveted.^ What Bolingbroke at the time did not realise was that the seeds of disunion were inherent in the body politic. The " Whimsicals," the " October Club," the Junto, were all symptoms of a disease which the broils of Tory leaders aggravated. "... I have heard," wisely reflects Swift, " a physician pronounce with great gravity that he had cured so many patients of malignant fevers, and as many more of the small-pox ; whereas in truth nine parts in ten of those who recovered owed their lives to the strength of nature and a good constitution, while such a one happened to be their doctor." 2 Hot as he had been in the chase of power as of pleasure, Bolingbroke, as now acting Chief Minister, did not for one moment lose his self-possession, or, amid the univer- sal disorganisation, relax his control. " The removal," he writes to the Lords Justices of Ireland on July 28th, "of the Earl of Oxford . . . the constitution of a Commission of the Treasury, and several other incidents which attend such a change, have for a few days interrupted the regular course of business, I hope we shall soon settle into order, and carry on the service with more vigour and despatch than has been usual ; and then one of the first cares must be to secure the peace of Ireland." On the succeeding day he addresses De Torcy firmly and clearly, drawing his attention to the rumours that Louis intended to break the treaty of renunciations.^ On that very night of July 27 a Council, which was resumed early on the following morning, was hurriedly held in the palace precincts, to consider the composition of the Commission. Bolingbroke and Windham were certainties, eleven others were mentioned as a choice for the four remaining.* Hanmer had retired to Wales.^ On ' From Barber to Swift, August 3, 1714. Ibid., p. 205. '^ Cf. the whole passage, " Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs." Swift's Works, vol. v. p. 392. 3 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. pp. 575-578. "■ Boyer, p. 714. Lewis to Swift, Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 196. ' Barber to Swift, ibid., p. 196. 492 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES July 29, in the absence of agreement, another consultation was summoned at the Cockpit, but the critical condition of the Queen intervened, and it was deferred until Friday the 30th. The deliberations of the Ministry had been loud and furious. Their disputes had penetrated the ears of the miserable Queen. Disordered by a gouty tumour, in anguish and anxiety, she could ill bear this fresh agitation of her spirits. On Thursday, July 29, she complained of shooting pains in the head, which were relieved by cupping. She retired at her usual hour, apparently much better, but at three o'clock she awoke with a violent sickness. At seven she woke again, and, with ingrained regularity, in- sisted on her head being combed, telling Mrs. Danvers, one of her bedchamber women, that she wished to look on the clock. Before the clock she sat for a long time with a fixed gaze — a circumstance which afterwards gave birth to the myth that she kept sighing " My poor brother I" Mrs. Danvers asked her " what she saw in the clock more than ordinary ? " " The Queen answered only with turning her head and a dying look." 1 Was she perhaps musing on that darling son, who had expired on that very day fourteen years ago ? 2 The affrighted Mrs. Danvers called for help, and the Queen was bled by her physicians. She again recovered herself, and seemed mending until nine o'clock, when she was seized with a second fit, and for an hour became speechless, motionless, and insensible. So alarming seemed her condition that the Duchess of Ormonde sent off a messenger to her husband at the Council to say that her mistress was dying. The Council immediately broke up in confusion and repaired to Kensington. At the same time the Dukes of Argyle and Somerset, who had been notified of the crisis by the latter's duchess, hastened to the Council Chamber and surprised the assembled minis- ters. Although they had exceeded their privileges, Shrews- bury thanked them for their attendance. The physicians ' ^ Boyeir, p. 714. "^ The Duke of Gloucester died July 30, 1700. ' Blackmore, Mead, Shadwell, and Arbuthnot. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 493 assured the Council that the Queen was sensible and might be seen. "... As soon as she recovered," writes Ford, " my Lord Bolingbroke went to her, and told her the Privy Council was of opinion it would be for the public service to have the Duke of Shrewsbury made Lord Treasurer. She immediately consented, and gave the staff [the disap- pearing symbol of an office which perished under her suc- cessor] into the Duke's hand, bidding him use it for the good of her people." With graceful courtesy the Duke tendered her his Chamberlain's wand, which she refused to accept. Boyer adds this to the details of Ford's account.^ "The great seal was put to the patent by four o'clock. She continued ill the whole day. In the evening I spoke to Dr. Arbuthnot, and he told me he did not think her distemper was desperate. Ratcliffe was sent for to Car- shalton about noon, by order of Council, but said he had taken physic, and could not come.^ This moi-ning(July 31) when I went there before nine, they told me she was just expiring. That account continued above three hours, and a report was carried to town that she was actually dead. She was not prayed for, even at her own chapel and St. James's, and, what is more infamous, stocks rose three per cent, upon it in the City. Before I came away she had recovered a warmth in her breast and one of her arms, and all the doctors agreed she would, in all probability, hold out till to-morrow, except Mead, who pronounced several hours before she could not live two minutes, and seems uneasy it did not happen so. I did not care to talk much to Arbuthnot, because I heard him cautious in his answers to other people ; but by his manner I fancy he does not yet absolutely despair. The Council sat yesterday all day and night, taking it by turns to go out and refresh them- selves. They have now adjourned, upon what the doctors ' Boyer, p. 714. " For this refusal, prompted by his cold-blooded caution, he became the object of popular execration, and received threatening letters. He only survived the Queen three months. 494 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES said, till five." i They were indefatigable. Already on the Friday they had summoned all the Privy Council. A missive was penned to the Elector, acquainting him with the Queen's state, and requesting him to repair with all speed to Holland, where a British squadron was being put in readiness to attend him and bring him over, " in case it pleased God to call the Queen to His mercy." James Craggs, Junior, its special bearer, also carried orders to Strafford to require the States, if needful, to execute their guaranty of the succession. Frederick William of Prussia, George's son-in-law — whose father's enlargement of the House of Brandenburg had been watched by Bothmar with jealous eyes,^ who himself was included in the entail of the Act of Settlement — had already repaired to Hanover.^ The state of the seaports was considered ; reinforcements were despatched to Portsmouth ; the Earl of Berkeley was appointed Commander of the Fleet. The Whig Major- Generals were sent to Scotland to guard against the Pre- tender there. The Speaker and Lord Chief-Justice Parker were summoned with all speed. The Hanoverian envoy was ordered to attend with his black box, in which were sealed the Regents' names. The Heralds were notified to be at hand to proclaim the new sovereign. A troop of the Life-guards was also to await commands. While out of doors all was confusion, tumult, rumour, and ill-concealed triumph or defeat, within Kensington Council-Chamber the routine and collectedness of a matured plan followed the ebbing breath of the Queen. At eleven that night she was reported as reviving, and the Council adjourned until eight on the following day. Around the Queen's bedroom, what a scene ! Anxious 1 Ford to Swift, July 31, 1714, pp. 198-201. The same correspondent, writ- ing on August S, says distinctly of Shrewsbury's appointment, " The Whigs were not in Council when he was recommended. Lord Bolingbroke proposed it there as well as to the Queen." Ibid., p. 207. Cf. ante, p. 355. * Quite early in the century Bothmar had advised " II ne pourra pas laisser en arri^re ceux qui sont par naissance devant le Prince de Prussie." Aiisserung des Grafen v. Platen. Bodemann, p. 193. ' See Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 88. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 495 whisperers, repulsed tale-bearers, eager spies. When were the doctors coining out ? Had Ratcliffe arrived ? What was the latest bulletin ? Had my Lord Bolingbroke dis- closed the issue of his conference ? Who was the new Treasurer ? and why had Shrewsbury descended the great stairs so serenely ? Whose sedans with coronets were those beyond in the paved courtyard ? And there were pale and sobbing women, with icy glances, amid their tears, towards that proud, red-haired Duchess. She herself, too, was per- haps not wholly unmoved. All along the corridor, where the fatal clock was ticking, you could hear the unrestrained grief of her Grace of Ormonde, and above all the deeper, simpler sorrow of Lady Masham. " He," she had written of Oxford to his devoted Swift on July 29, " has been the most ungrateful man to her, and to all his best friends, that ever was born. I cannot have so much time to write all my mind, because my dear mistress is not well, and I think may lay her illness to the charge of the Treasurer, who, for three weeks together, was teasing and vexing her without inter- mission, and she could not get rid of him till Tuesday last. . . . Will you leave us and go into Ireland ? No, it is im- possible. Your goodness is still the same, your charity and compassion for this poor lady, who has been barbarously used, will not let you do it. I know you take delight to help the distressed, and there cannot be a greater object than this good lady, who deserves pity." ^ And there, too, is sweet Lady Bolingbroke, hasting forthwith to find her husband, who that very Saturday, amid all his mixed emotions, must announce in solemn phrase to the Irish Lords Justices, "... The Queen draws apace to her latter end. All possible care has been taken to put the kingdom into a condition of passing quietly under that government which the law has established." After three days of nominal supremacy, he had himself conferred the Staff. Would Shrewsbury remain his friend ? In all those concerted plans to preserve suspected safety the Duke had agreed. But he had been the cynosure of those cold, mistrustful ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 193, 194. 496 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES eyes. If his wife asked him what was coming, he could still reply with composure, " A king and I.'" Within that small and curtained chamber at midday lay the Queen. The remnants of health which the wrangles of her servants might have spared, her many physicians with their clysters, blisters, and " sal ammoniac " had con- sumed. They had even shaved her head, and cut off that dark brown hair dashed with grey — the remembrancer of trials and conflicts.^ With the intrepidity of her race, she still, though with effort, gave her orders, but her hps almost refused her words ; every inch a queen. Ah ! if she could only sign her will ; but, after all, to-morrow would suffice, when the bustle below had subsided, and prayers could again be read, and the Eucharist adminis- tered. Robinson need not come till Sunday. What had she thought when gazing on that clock, still audible ? Was it not how long is time, and when begins eternity ? The end surely was not yet. A few things done, a few friends comforted (for underneath a chill exterior her heart beat warm), and the tired traveller would be glad to rest.^ How would her father greet her ? Alas ! alas ! what memories arose ! She had ever hugged a grievance, but her grievances had been griefs and struck the heart. You may still see that little room^ where the sands of life were running down. Puzzled children and eager sight- seers, admiring the pictures, saunter near its haunted walls through the small private chamber where she dined alone with Abigail, and up to which the mysterious back- 1 Ford to Swift, July 31, 1714. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 198. ^ Every one remembers Arbuthnot's phrase in his letter to Swift of August 12, 17 14. ". . I believe sleep was never more welcome to a tired traveller than death was to her ; only it surprised her too suddenly before she had signed her will, which, no doubt, her being involved in so much business hindered her from finishing. It was unfortunate that she had been persuaded, as is supposed, by Lowndes, that it was necessary to have it under the great seal." Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 222. ' The room is not shown except by request. It abuts on Queen Mary's bedroom. TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN 497 stairs — still visible — tortuously creep. That moment is still there. It broods over the place. At last a numbing lethargy stole over her. At six her pulse beat higher. She had taken nourishment ; there was perhaps some hope ? If so, the doctors with fresh remedies dispelled it. The Council were still sitting while the sands of life were running down. Two of her ladies-in-waiting with Lady Frechville and Lady Rothes were summoned, but in vain ! A little after seven of that August Sunday morn- ing, the last of the Stuarts who governed England was no more.^ There, in the hushed apartment, lay asleep that weary form. The summer sun warmed in vain those features, firm yet regular. The ruddy face was hardly bleached by death, and the few wrinkles that betrayed the past were smoothed away. All her children had gone before her. Dead graves but living sorrows ! The will was never signed. And outside from Kensington to Whitehall, from White- hall to Whitechapel, the clatter of the Life-guards, the blaze of heralds, the blare of trumpets, the hum of many voices swell the symphony — "The Queen is dead; long live the King ! " It was the day, as the superstitious noted, of an eclipse of the sun.^ "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday: the Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this ! And how does Fortune banter us ! " ^ 1 Sir R. Jenkinson, writing on August i, 1714, at " two of the morning," to a Duchess unknown, says, " At this present there is life in her. Ladies Frechville and Roth (Rothes?) is now gone to Kensington. Counsel sits night and day." Hist. MS. Comm., 14th Rept. App., pt. ix. p. 472. 2 Swift to Pope. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 257. The Queen died at half- past seven; the King was proclaimed at half-past one. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 482. 3 Bolinghroke to Swift. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 204. 2 I CHAPTER XII "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" Thus far Bolingbroke has, as it were, been on his trial. To establish point after point in a singularly complicated career, and during thirteen years whose every day was eventful, we have been compelled to drudge through de- tails often wearisome and sometimes oppressive. But to beat down time-worn prejudice, its outworks must, battle- ment by battlement, be demolished ; and if the reader has found the patience to peruse and consider, he will at least be able to pronounce judgment. Henceforward it be- comes unnecessary to be so minute. The proclamation of the King was attended by no dis- order ; 1 the town filled rapidly ; Peterborough ^ returned on the yth ; Marlborough in haste, with his Duchess, on the 3rd. The twenty-five regents wielded their authority without opposition. The reception of the Ministers by the mob was a touchstone of their popularity. Oxford was hissed, and halters were even thrown into his coach. Ormonde was huzzaed, and, under protest, escorted home. A few endeavoured to affront Bolingbroke in the cavalcade, but ringing cheers drowned the attempt. The day after- wards Marlborough made his would-be triumphal entry. Considering that his mistress and protectress still lay in state, it was hardly decent. Two hundred horsemen and a company of train-bands with drums preceded the chariot where he sat with the Duchess ; sixteen coaches with six horses, and between thirty and forty with two, followed. ^ Lewis to Swift. Works, vol. xvi. p. 210. ^ In December he again flitted off to Turin vid Paris. Portland MS., vol. v. p. 508. P'or the dates of return, cf. ib. p. 483. 498 "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 499 Pall Mall was half empty. At Temple Bar, where the utmost preparations had been made to welcome him, he was hissed, and in the City the plaudits were whelmed in the groans. People could not forget their Queen, and that the family which had fawned on and plundered her had been excluded even by the new King from the triple in- strument which now constituted the regency.^ Bonfires closed the festival, and Bolingbroke's in Golden Square was one of the biggest. The very day of the death the Parliament met, and, despite Bromley's motion for an ad- journment till the Wednesday, re-assembled next morning. The administration of the oaths occupied them till the Tuesday. On the next morning — that of Ford's letter just quoted — the Lords Justices, on whom now devolved the executive, solemnly, through Harcourt as Chancellor, an- nounced the accession of George, and recommended the Commons to provide supplies for the dignity of the Crown. The address of condolence on the Queen's demise, pro- posed with feeling by Windham, was seconded with heart- lessness by Walpole. He desired something " better than words," in one word — cash. Onslow even remarked that the force of the address ought to consist in "congratula- tions." The Tories here made a false move. Hoping to tie their conquerors to a dilemma, and to flatter the monarch into a compliance, they pi^oposed a large addi- tion to George's civil list. Horace Walpole improved the opportunity by inserting two additions — one the payment of the Hanover troops, the other the issue of the ;^i 00,000 reward for the arrest of the Pretender if he should land.^ The money being voted, and the royal satisfaction ex- pressed by the Chancellor on August 23rd, the Parliament was prorogued till the same day of next month, by which time it was hoped that his Hanoverian Majesty would have arrived. Meanwhile, Bolingbroke was not dispirited. Oxford was irremediably fallen. Bolingbroke was still at the head ' Ford to Swift, August 5, 17 14. Swift's Works, pp. 208, 209. ^ Coxe's Walpole, pp. 99, 100. 500 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of a Church party, which the King could not despise.^ Clarendon, his ally, was at Hanover, and it was thought that the resentment of Halifax, who had been thwarted by Townshend of his reward of the premiership, would prove a propitious influence with the King. The exclusion of Marlborough, Sunderland, and Wharton from the regency seemed to indicate that George had not been wholly swayed by the Whigs.^ Besides, the existence of two parties at Herrenhausen, the pro-Whigs, headed by Bernstoril, and the pro-Tories by Goerz, while it perhaps explains the repeated failures of the Queen's emissaries, held out ex- pectations of intrigue and postponement. Under the Succession Acts too, no foreigner could enjoy employment, civil or military, nor any foreign peer vote; so German favourites would be politically helpless until and unless the statute was repealed. . , , " As prosperity divided, misfortune may perhaps to some degree unite us," wrote Bolingbroke ; " the Tories seem to resolve not to be crushed, and that is enough to prevent them from being so." ^ The transition to the new order, too, had been tranquil* — a disappointment to the Whigs and a verification of the Tory forecast throughout.® The reputation which the new King bore for prudence was an element of good augury. " I hope," he wrote to Strafford on August 13, "for the King's sake, and for our country's sake, that the violent measures of those who will not be found able to support them when they have advised them will not be pursued. . . . The nation never was in a better temper, it would be a pity not to improve such a disposition. For my own part, I doubt not but I have been painted in fine colours to the King ; I ' Swift to Bolingbroke, August 7, 1714. Works, vol. xvi. p. 215. ^ Ibid., p. 220. ' Ibid., p. 204. ■* " Such little fellows as you mention, who want virtue enough to take the laudable ways of raising themselves in the world, and have, therefore, recourse to all the vile arts of sycophants and parasites, may talk of plots in favour of the Pretender, but sure there was never yet so quiet a transition from one government to another." Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 582. " Cf. Arbuthnot's remarks in his letter to Swift of August 12, 1714. Works, vol. xvi. p. 223. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 501 must trust my conduct to clear me : I served the Queen to the last gasp as faithfully, as disinterestedly, as zealously, as if her life had been good for twenty years, and she had had twenty children to succeed her. I do not repent doing so, nor envy those who did otherwise : on the same principle will I serve the King if he employs me, and if he does not, I will discharge my duty honestly and contentedly in the country and in the House of Peers." ^ Moreover, by the law, new elections were imminent. Spirit and manage- ment might effect much, and it was yet to be seen if the King would let the Tories lie at the complete mercy of the Whigs and let the latter " engross all." ^ Oxford believed that time would fight for the Tories.^ It was even bruited that a reconciliation between him and " Mercurialis " was at last feasible ; * but this rumour can have had as little foundation in fact as the former one of Bolingbroke's accommodation to the Whigs. Nottingham was for the moment inclined to rat once more,^ and this of itself implied that he scented success. There were even those who affected to believe that a pure Whig or a pure Tory Administration was alike impossible, and on this Oxford, who was now in constant converse with Dartmouth, pinned his hopes.^ The only appointments yet made were those of Berkeley to command the fleet, Argyle to go to Scotland, Dorset to compliment the King, Bolton to be Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, Derby of Lanca- shire, and Mr. Joseph Addison to be secretary to the Lords Justices. Delay was inevitable, and delay was in Bolingbroke's favour. Such reflections, however, were only uncertainties and guesses in the dark. Bolingbroke could not but be sensible that " he had lost all by the death of the Queen except spirit," though he adds, " I feel that increase upon me." The Whig Jacobites might transfer 1 Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 582. ' Lewis to Swift, August 7. Works, vol. xvi. p. 210. ^ Ibid., p. 217. ^ Ibid., p. 206. "■ Ibid., p. 226. ' Dartmouth Papers, Hist. MS. Comm., nth Rep. App., pt. v. p. 321. 502 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the Tory reproach to themselves.^ The Queen's death had, after all, been a great surprise at a moment when her health was better than before. " Though I did not imagine she could hold out long, yet I hoped she would have got over the summer."^ Surprises unhinge, but novelty en- courages if it does not perplex. Meanwhile, he had made his bow on paper to the coming monarch. "... Quant a moi, j'ose supplier votre Majesty d'etre persuad^e que les m^mes principes d'honneur et de conscience, qui m'aient portd a servir la feue Reine jusque a sa mort, avec confiance et avec fid61it6, m'attacheront inviolablement a elle, et que, soit a la cour, soit au parlement, soit dans ma province, je t^cherai en tout, et par tout, de mdriter le titre de. Sire, de votre Majesty, le tres humble, tres fidele, et tres ob^issant serviteur. . . . " ^ No doubt as yet crossed his mind that no " province " might be his. But he did hesitate as to the means by which it might be attainable. Reviewing his term of power, in one of his most magnificent passages,* he exclaims : "The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government, and the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances, the conduct of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the appearing in- consistencies are reconciled, and when it is once consum- mated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done the same." Such was his force ; and on this he relied, as on his eloquence, to illustrate which we will quote a simile as fine. " Eloquence has charms to lead mankind, and gives a nobler superiority than power, that every dunce may use, or fraud, that every knave may ^ Bolingbroke to Swift. Works, vol. xvi. p. 204. 2 Bol. Pol. Corn, vol. iv. p. 582. » Jbid. * Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 52. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 503 2mploy. But eloquence must flow like a stream that is fed by an abundant spring, and not spout forth a little frothy water on some gaudy day, and remain dry the rest of the year."i This was the eloquence that had led both Houses, and might yet constrain them. Nor, in estimating the present condition of the Tory party, should it be forgotten how unforeseen Oxford's catastrophe had been, and how lavish of promises in all quarters had proved his latter end. " He would not, or he could not, act with us," most truly asserts Bolingbroke, " and he resolved that we should not act without him as long as he could hinder it. . . . By a secret correspondence with the late Earl of Halifax, and by the intrigues of his brother and other fanatical relations, he had endeavoured to keep some hold on the Whigs. . . . He was the spy of the Whigs, and voted with us in the morning against those very questions which he had penned the night before with Walpole and others. . . . He could not keep his word, which he had given to the Pretender and his adherents, because he had formed no party to support him in such a design. He was sure of having the Whigs against him if he made the attempt, and he was not sure of having the Tories for him. . . . The Queen's health was very precarious, and at her death he hoped by these means to deliver us up, bound, as it were, hand and foot to our adversaries. On the foun- dation of this merit he flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened at least the rest of the party to him. By his secret negotiations at Hanover he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled to that Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty's reign, have as much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the Queen. He was weak enough to boast of this, and to pro- mise his good offices voluntarily to several. ... In a word, you must have heard that he answered to Lord Dartmouth and to Mr. Bromley that one should keep the privy seal, and the other the seals of secretary ; and that Lord Cowper makes no scruple of telling how he came to offer him the ' " On the Spirit of Patriptism." Works, vol, vii. p. 48. 504 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES seals of Chancellor." ^ When at length the crash came, the Tories were more split into divided camps than ever. The Queen's funeral had been fixed for the 22nd, but it was delayed till the 24th, " by reason the ladies could not get their clothes ready." The Duchess of Somerset was chief mourner ; two duchesses followed by seniority ; two more held her train ; ten countesses and all the peers or their eldest sons came last. The bier was carried from the " Prince's chamber " by twenty-four " Yeomen of the Guards," and the canopy by " the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber." Anne's jewels were transferred to the Tower for safety. Lady Masham's rooms at St. James's were already being fitted up for the Prince of Wales, and the Duchess of Somerset's for his children. At Anne's death the Ipswich Whigs ordered the bells to be rung. On the very day of the funeral a Glasgow Episcopahan church was pulled down. Every effort was made to fulfil the false prophecy of conflict. Bolingbroke waited till the obsequies were over and till the blow of his deprival fell. He then held " a lev6e of the nobility of the first rank, as also a great concourse of the clergy," and betook himself once more to Bucklebury.^ Nor should we omit that Gaultier, now French Resident, quitted England for the last time on the 28th. Meanwhile the eyes of all had been bent on Hanover. Craggs arrived with the Council's missive on July 27. Three more — two to the King and one to Clarendon — were deli- vered at the same time. The King's demeanour was in- scrutable. To soothe the Tories, he did not betray to Clarendon the least disfavour towards them. To blandish the Whigs, he continued his correspondence with Bothmar in London as to the impending Administration. Gay, who was "such a true poet" that he "had not one of his own books to give the Princess that asked for one," ^ writing to Swift on August 16, says : " My Lord Clarendon is very ' Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol, ix. pp. 59-66, passim. ' For the foregoing details cf. Portland MS., vol. v. pp. 488-493. ' Arbuthnot to Swift. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 224. " LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 505 much approved of at Court, and I believe is not dissatisfied with his reception. What we did yesterday and to-day we shall do to-morrow, which is, to go to Court, and walk in the gardens at Herrenhausen." ^ The keynote of Georgian routine had already been struck. When the King quitted Hanover in his progress to London, he left in the apparent resolution that the Tories should remain unmolested.^ But if, as was almost certain, the Whigs were to influ- ence, though they might not sway him, Bolingbroke knew that he must prove the scapegoat. He was too conspicuous to elude revenge. He alone had manufactured the peace so offensive to the Elector and so ruinous to the Junto. He alone had been the marplot of the Whig intrigues. More- over, he had not stooped to intrigue at Hanover. While Oxford had been burrowing like a rabbit, he had resembled an eagle. " I might have justified myself, by reason and by great authorities too, if I had made early provision, at least to be safe, when I should be no longer useful. How I could have secured this point I do not think fit to explain ; but certain it is that I made no one step towards it. I re- solved not to abandon my party by turning Whig or, which is worse a great deal, ' Whimsical,' nor to treat separately from it. I resolved to keep myself at liberty to act on a Tory footing. . . . ' Honestius putabam offendere quam odisse.' " ^ But on his way the King stayed a fortnight at the Hague, and there his bias began to emerge.* "George," observes Warton, transcribing a manuscript letter of Boling- broke, " set out from Hanover with a resolution of oppress- ing no set of men that would be quiet subjects. But as soon as he came into Holland a contrary resolution was taken at the earnest importunity of the Allies, and parti- cularly of Heinsius and some of the Whigs. Lord Towns- hend came triumphing to acquaint Lord Somers with all ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 237. ^ Bol. Works, vol. ix. p. 79. ^ lii'd., pp. 75, 76. * Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 103 ; Letter to Sir W. Windham ; Works, vol. ix. Warton's note in Swift's Works, vol. xiv. p. 257. 5o6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES the measures of proscription and persecution which they intended, and to which the King had at last consented. The old peer asked what he meant, and shed tears on the foresight of measures like those of the Roman Triumvirate." " I went," writes Bolingbroke, " about a month after the Queen's death, as soon as the seals were taken from me, into the country ; and whilst I continued there, I felt the general disposition to Jacobitism increase daily among the people of all ranks ; among several who had been con- stantly distinguished by their aversion to that cause. But at my return in the month of February or March 1715, a few weeks before I left England, I began for the first time in my whole life to perceive these general dispositions ripen into resolutions, and to observe some regular work- ings among many of our principal friends, which denoted a scheme of this kind. These workings indeed were very faint ; for the persons concerned in carrying them on did not think it safe to speak too plainly to men who were, in truth, ill-disposed to the Government, because they neither found their account at present under it, nor had managed with art enough to leave them hopes of finding it hereafter; but who at the same time had not the least affection for the Pretender's person, nor any principle favourable to his interest. . . . The Whigs came to this Parliament full of as much violence as could possess men who expected to make their court, to confirm themselves in power, and to gratify their resentments by the same measures. I have heard that it was a dispute among the Ministers how far this spirit should be indulged, and that the King was deter- mined, or confirmed in a determination, to consent to the prosecutions and to give the reins to the party by the representations that were made to him that great difficulties would arise in the conduct of the session if the Court should appear incHned to check this spirit, and by Mr. W.'s undertaking to carry all the business successfully through the House of Commons, if they were at liberty. Such has often been the unhappy fate of princes — a real neces- sity sometimes, and sometimes a seeming one, has forced " LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 507 them to compound with a part of the nation at the expense of the whole. . . . The Council of Regency . . , acted like a Council of the Holy Office." 1 The rise of the brothers Walpole was at once heralded by the public appointment of Townshend, their brother-in-law, as secretary, with the power of nominating his colleague. Charles, Viscount Townshend, was the eldest son of Sir Horatio, who was raised to the peerage for his instru- mentality in restoring Charles Stuart. He had been at Eton with St. John. Hard, stubborn, industrious, plain- speaking and plain-thinking, he was opposed by tempera- ment to his Cavalier traditions. His testiness, however, though restrained by his common-sense in public, was often ungovernable in private, as Walpole had afterwards reason to know. He had early attached himself to Somers, whose influence was now paramount despite his failing health, which precluded official activity ; and the redoubtable George, himself a general, was unlikely to invest a soldier with civil command, nor would his interests in Europe in- cline him to choose one who had not distinguished himself in foreign diplomacy as well as in domestic politics. These conditions Townshend fulfilled. The Walpole group which he headed was quite unmilitary. In 1709 he had been joint plenipotentiary with Marlborough at Gertruydenberg, and in the same year Ambassador to the States-General for their Barrier Treaty. At the Hague he had then recommended himself to Heinsius ; while, if we may trust Macpherson, he had, for two years before the Queen died, completely captured Bothmar, and outbid the Sunderland and Halifax coterie who were in touch with Marlborough. In home administration he had, in 1706, been one of the Com- missioners for the Union of Scotland. The result was evident eleven days before the King arrived at Greenwich. Stanhope, another of the Wal- poleites, was made companion secretary. Cowper was the new Lord Chancellor, Devonshire Lord Steward, Orford First Lord Commissioner, and Walpole Paymaster ' Letter to Sir W. Windham. Bol. Works, vol. ix. pp. 82-87. 5o8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES of the Forces, an office so lucrative that its emoluments enabled Brydges to build Canons. To this was shortly added the Paymastership of Chelsea Hospital. The Hali- fax section had to be conciHated, but was put off by smaller rewards. Halifax himself was created First Lord Commis- sioner of the Treasury, Wharton, Privy Seal. Marlborough was for the moment appeased by the temporary Comman- dership of the Forces, while Sunderland was relegated to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. Somerset's pride was flattered by the Mastership of the Horse, which, however, he soon resigned in mortification. Of the Tories, Notting- ham alone figured actively as Lord President of the Council. Shrewsbury, who had surrendered his three offices, had to be content with being Groom of the Stole. Bolingbroke's old friend. Brigadier Breton, was, with George Fielding, made a Groom of the Bedchamber.^ Addison's Philips was made tutor to the Prince's children. The Cabinet comprised Marlborough, Sunderland, Halifax, Townshend, Cowper, Stanhope, and Somers. A new Privy Council was formed, and it has been noticed that henceforth the office of Lord Treasurer ceased to exist. The Bolingbroke section was now doomed. Oxford himself was conspiring against them.^ On August 28 an express came from Hanover. Two days afterwards Bolingbroke was removed from his office, its doors locked and seals taken — a duty disagree- ably discharged by the regents Cowper, Somerset, and Shrewsbury. Thus, in his own words, his " fruit turned rotten at the very moment it grew ripe." ^ "... The sealing up of your office," writes Swift * from Dublin to Bolingbroke at Bucklebury on September 14, " and especially without any directions from the King, dis- covered such sentiments of you in such persons as would make any honest man proud to share them. ... I must be ^ Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 250. " Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 650. ' To Swift, June 24, 1727. Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 150. * Ibid., vol. xvi. p. 243. " LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 509 so free as to tell you that this new office of retirement will be harder for you to keep than that of Secretary ; and you lie under one great disadvantage, besides your being too young, that whereas none but knaves and fools desire to deprive you of your former post, all the honest men in England will be for putting you out of this. ... I know not what motions your Lordship intends ; but, if I see the old Whig measures taken up in the next elections, and that the Court, the Bank, East India, and South Sea, act strenu- ously and procure a majority, I shall lie down and beg of Jupiter to heave the cart out of the dirt. . . . The poor dead Queen is used like the giant Longaron in Rabelais. Pantagruel took Longaron by the heels and made him his weapon to kill twenty other giants, then flung him over a river into the town, and killed two ducks and an old cat. ... I will cut all short, and assure you that if you do not save us, I will not be at the pains of racking my invention how we shall be saved ; and yet I have read Polybius. They tell me you have a very good crop of wheat, but the barley is bad. ... I hope you found your hounds in good condition, and that Bright has not made a stirrup-leather of your jockey belt. I imagine you smoking with your humdrum squire (I forget his name), who can go home at midnight and open a dozen gates when he is drunk." Arbuthnot, too, was as sympathetic, if not so hopeful. "... This blow," he tells Pope on September 7,1 " has so roused Scriblerus that he has recovered his senses, and thinks and talks like other men. From being frolic- some and gay, he is turned grave and morose. His lucu- brations" lie neglected among the old newspapers, cases, petitions, and abundance of unanswerable letters. I wish to God they had been among the papers of a noble lord sealed up, then might Scriblerus have passed for the Pretender ; and it would have been a most excellent and laborious work for the Flying Post, or some such author, to have allegorised all his adventures into a plot, and found out mysteries somewhat like 'The Key to the Lock.' " ^ Works, vol. xvi. p. 241. 5IO BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES The hopes of the Tories were now turned on the elec- tions. " Nil desperandum Teucro duce, et auspice Teucro." The Church and the Land against Wool and the Pretender. The Whigs began to act like an inquisition. " The Queen's poor servants " were " like so many orphans exposed in the public streets ; and those whose past obligations of gratitude and honour ought to have engaged them to have represented their case, pass by them like so many abandoned creatures, without the possibility of ever being able to make the least return for a favour ; which has added to my theory of human virtue." i Townshend was bent on his game of " thorough," not so much for a party as for a family. Eng- land was now to be carried on under the style of Townshend and Walpole, Brothers. We have said many hard things of the Whigs, but hitherto much of their conduct has been intelligible, and even laudable. It sprang as much from a difference of temperament as from the party plans which its conse- quences forwarded. Most of what was imaginative among intellectual Englishmen gravitated towards Bolingbroke. Imaginative men are seldom liked, often hated by prosaic men in public life. Their schemes are scoffed at as fan- tastic till history vindicates their insight. Walpole could understand Bolingbroke less in his meridian than Pitt in his decline. Gladstone could never understand Disraeli. The mutual barriers are natural. There is partisan affinity, as well as party faction. We see the same now. It would be possible to point out public men who must have been Whigs in the times we are treating, though they would be surprised at the tenets they would then have professed. The meaning of the trite proverb that "history repeats itself," is merely that human nature is ineradicable : " Tamen usque recurret." But the chapter that now opens 'is different. It is inexcusable and indefensible. It was neither excused nor defended by the best men of the time. It was even deprecated by the King, who was safe without excesses. ' Arbuthnot to Swift, October 19, 1714. Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 246. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 511 It led to rebellion, to treason, to civil war. It led to the Venetian era of the Whigs. As Arbuthnot ejaculated, " Sed nunc ferox Jupiter transtulit omnia ad Argos." ^ At six in the afternoon of Saturday, September i8th, George set foot in the capital. Ormonde, who attended his landing — Ormonde, the popular idol — Ormonde, who had recently been in conjunction with Oxford and Shrewsbury,^ was harshly forbidden a private con- ference, and the next morning Townshend announced his dismissal, tempered by a license to appear at court. But his proud and generous spirit, galled to the quick, disdained such treatment. " Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." In misguided rage he fled to France, for a season now,^ and in the following August for ever. Harcourt, Trevor, and Bromley met the same sour hospitality. Bolingbroke abstained from attendance. Oxford followed the same course, but paid his respects on Sunday morning. He kissed hands in silence. " I am told," comments Arbuthnot, " that the great person of all has spoke more contemptibly of the Dragon than of anybody, and in very hard terms." * Defoe's " Secret History," which was published about this time, did him no service by vilifying his colleagues. Arbuthnot denies that Bolingbroke and his set noticed it, so that the pamphlets ^ which appeared in answer, and were attri- buted to him and his, are unauthentic. Contempt was his reply.® Oxford, however, remained unalterable and self- complacent, "the greatest example of an unshaken tran- quillity of mind that I ever yet saw. . . . You know we have often said that there is but one Dragon in rerum ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 254. 2 Dartmouth MS., Part v. p. 320. ' Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 254. * Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 250 ; Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 103 ; " History of the Last Administration," Introduction, pp. ii. and iii. 5 "Considerations upon the Secret History," &c. (London : Moore ; no date); "A Detection of the Sophistries," &c. (London, 1714) ; and "The History of the Mitre and the Purse" (London, 1714). Mr. Cooke is therefore mistaken in his theory that the first of these is attributable to Bolingbroke. ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 249. 512 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES naturdr ^ The Princess was, however, popular and affable. There was a chance in store of Tory worship at her shrine ; and it is well known that her subsequent friend- ship with Walpole was preceded by detestation. Hanmer, it is true, was offered the Exchequer, and Bromley the post of Teller, but both declined. Webb was warned to be reconciled to Marlborough, and discreetly com- plied. Peterborough was in request. "The Conde," adds Arbuthnot, "acts like a man of spirit, makes up to the King and talks to him, and would have acted with more sense than any of them could he have had anybody to have acted along with him : nos numerus sumus, &c." Marl- borough — "Haly Bassa," as Arbuthnot dubbed him^ — was fighting for Sunderland and Halifax against the Walpoles. To further his son-in-law's fortunes he risked a quarrel with Nottingham. Sunderland's subsequent intrigues at Hanover, and short installation in office two and a half years later, were the upshot of this duel. October 20, 17 14, witnessed the King's coronation. Bolingbroke was in his place, and Lady Cowper has given a spirited picture of the glittering scene, with a portrait of Lady Nottingham "overdoing her High Church part." Bolingbroke saw the King for the first time. " The King, seeing a face that he did not know, asked his name when he did him homage ; and he (Lord B.) hearing it as he went down the steps from the throne, turned round and bowed three times down to the very ground."^ All the foreign favourites were there to take possession of the Promised Land. The King himself, despite his protestations, was never enthusiastic for England. He objected to the lan- guage, the climate, the restrictions and the precedents. One of his first complaints was that he must pay the servants for bringing him some carp caught in his own canal in his own park. One of his first acts was to refuse payment ' Arbuthnot to Ford, Nov. 1714 ; tiid., p. 252. On p. 254 he makes the pun cited anie, p. 19. That " Fuimus Tores " is intended is clear from its repetition in Goldsmith's "Life of Parnell." ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 253. ' Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 5- "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 513 to Jane Spencer and the charwomen who cleaned the palace. Walpole the younger remembered well when Melusina, Lady Walsingham — niece of the Duchess of Kendal, and afterwards wife of Deportment Chesterfield — brought him, then ten years old, to see this pattern of royal affability, shortly before his last journey to Hanover, thirteen years afterwards. " I remember that, just beyond his Majesty, stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady." ^ This was the Schulemberg — Carlyle's " Maypole " — who, with the corpulent Countess of Darlington, divided the late Queen's plate and the new King's favour. And this inter- view occurred in the very year when she was intriguing to displace Robert Walpole and reintroduce Bolingbroke. In the provinces, however, Church-in-danger riots occurred, and the result was a royal proclamation in- criminating the late Administration.^ Jacobite libels were sown broadcast. The Lord Mayor was directed to inter- fere. It is a favourite reproach of historians that Boling- broke was so severe on the press. The Whigs had done the same with printers of diatribes on them, though these were in England only, whereas the Tories had to reckon with the Leyden Gazette^ as well. On this occasion Townshend invoked with the utmost vigour "the laws in force against printers, publishers, and spreaders of false and scandalous libels ; which orders were so well executed that, in a few days, the City of London was almost entirely rid of the pestilent vermin of libel-cryers and scandalous ballad-singers." * The Pretender now deemed the occasion opportune. He accordingly issued a long manifesto from his "Court at Plombi^res," in which, after characterising the Revo- lution as the ruin of the English monarchy, he was ill- advised enough to declare "that he had no reason to doubt of the good intention of his sister, which was the ' Walpole's Reminiscences (ed. 1819), pp. 9, II. ' " History of the Last Administration," Introduction, p. v. ' Cf. Bol. Pol. Corr., vol. iv. p. 537: "I would give a good sum to know whence the villain got it," &c. * "History of the Last Administration," Introduction, p.'vi. 2 K 514 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES reason that he sat quiet in her time; but now was dis- appointed by the deplorable accident of her sudden death." He further inveighed against Anne's successor. No sooner had copies reached Townshend's hands than the Marquis de Lamberti, the Lorraine envoy, came over to pay his master's compliments to the King. On the suspicion of the Duke of Lorraine's connivance, the Marquis was refused an audience. Townshend's letter of rejection was transmitted to the Duke, who, at the commencement of December rejoined by an answer ex- culpating himself from harbouring the Chevalier de St. Georges, and averring his total ignorance of the docu- ment. Townshend, however, reiterated his condition of the Chevalier's removal before the King would receive Lamberti, who had stated that Lorraine was "surrounded and cut through on all sides by France," and that as the Chevalier was uninvited and a mere traveller in a free country, so neither could he be forced to depart. Towns- hend thereupon produced a despatch from De Torcy,^ in which the Most Christian King declared "that he neither did nor would in any manner concern himself with the Pretender " — a true statement, and one quite as damag- ing to the pretexts of the Whigs as to the excuses of the Duke. Hereupon, Lamberti was recalled and went home. Townshend's influence now began to bear upon the offended King. The 20th of January next — the anni- versary of King Charles's trial — was appointed for a solemn and public thanksgiving for his accession, in spite of the Pretender's designs ; while his tolerance was at the same time signalised by a proclamation putting in force the laws against Papists and Nonjurors. The incident of one Carnaby, a Jacobite actor, apparently in his cups, insulting the King at St. James's, and declaring James III.'s right to the crown, was eagerly exploited for all that it was worth, and by the close of the month Strafford was recalled from the Hague, After protesting his services ' Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 253 ; " History of the Last Administration,'' Introduction, p. viii. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 515 o the States-General, he arrived on January 10 in London. He was not received till four days afterwards, and then ^ery coldly. Townshend peremptorily demanded his papers. StrafTord expostulated and refused. Thereupon tie was summoned to attend the Council, and a formal Drder was made to impound his documents. In vain iid Shrewsbury remonstrate against these unprecedented and tyrannical proceedings. A deputation from the City was introduced 'by Townshend to the King, and the farce of an address, asseverating that trade had been ruined by the peace, and that rights civil and religious had been jeopardised, was performed. All England became now conscious that impeachments were in the air ; that the Whigs purposed a clean slate and a revenge for the Partition prosecutions at the beginning of the century. The rumbling thunder did not dismay Bolingbroke, who promptly reappeared in town and conferred with Har- court, Atterbury, Strafford, and Arthur Moore. The Tories still believed in his undoubted ability to triumph, as they did, not a year afterwards, in his magic power to return ; ^ and, in view of the elections, the " English advice to the freeholders of Great Britain " was circu- lated, which was instantly proclaimed as seditious by the King. Townshend's hand is very apparent in these con- stant royal proclamations, which replaced the loyal ad- dresses of the Whig peers in the preceding reign ; as is evidenced by another towards the end of the month professing to be one "for calling a new Parliament." "... If the ensuing elections," declares George Towns- hend, "shall be made by our loving subjects with that safety and freedom which by law they are entitled to, and we are firmly resolved to maintain to them, they will send up to the Parhament the fittest persons to re* dress the present disorders and to provide for the peace and happiness of our kingdoms and the ease of our people for the future, and therein will have a particular regard to such as showed a firmness to the Protestant ' Arbuthnot to Swift. Works, vol. xvi, p. 263. 5i6 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES succession when it was most in danger." It breathed the absolutism without the devotion or the superstition of Charles I. To top this came the Day of Thanksgiving at St. Paul's, where Willis of Gloucester thanked God that Whigs were not as other men were, Jacobites, Re- cusants, and Nonjurors. It was a dazzling conclave of rank and royalty, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, whose Court was shortly to spHt the Whig ranks themselves and eventually to convert the style of the firm into Walpole and Townshend instead of Townshend and Walpole. The clergy, however, were not compact in their subservience. On the same day a sermon was preached at St. Andrew's, Holborn, which denounced the debauchery of the Court, the City, and the Army. Amid these discords the elections took place. The Tories at first made way. They carried the City, put forward by Townshend as their despiser, and that too in the teeth of a disputed poll ; they carried Brentford by storm. They carried about half of the English counties. But in the country towns and boroughs their antagonists defeated them by the proportion of two to one.^ In Wales too — Oxford's stronghold — they were almost uniformly defeated ; while in Scotland, where the Jacobites were in- surgent, they could only capture one out of seven con- stituencies. Riots and disorders were constant. In Kent the clergy marched to the poll with a pasteboard church in their hands. In Leicestershire the Under-Sheriff was assaulted and his clothes burned. On the other hand, the Whig means to success were abnormal. Following the royal interference, many electors assumed to dictate the terms of election to candidates. The event was a Court majority, and Bolingbroke, self-confident and ever san- guine, had shot his last bolt. Both his and Oxford's models had been dashed to fragments. The Tories were branded as Jacobites till the days of Chatham, nor could Pulteney's " Whig Trunk grafted with Tory Branches " arise until it failed in the example of the " Broad Bottom Adminis- ' Attesting the W^hig handling of corporations. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 517 tration." "... This political inquisition went on," reflects Bolingbroke in his celebrated letter to Windham,^ " with all the eagerness imaginable in seizing of papers, in ransacking the Queen's closet, and examining even her private letters. The Whigs had clamoured loudly, and affirmed in face of the world that the nation had been sold to France, to Spain, to the Pretender ; and whilst they endeavoured in vain, by very singular methods, to find some colour to justify what they had advanced without proof, they put themselves under an absolute necessity of grounding the most solemn prosecution on things whereof indeed they might have proof, but which would never pass for crimes before any judges but such as were parties at the same time. . . . The ferment in the nation was wrought up to a considerable height, but there was at that time no reason to expect that it could influence the proceedings in Parlia- ment in favour of those who should be accused. Left to its own movement, it was much more proper to quicken than slacken the prosecutions ; and who was there to guide its hiotions ? The Tories who had been true to one another to the last were an handful, and no vigour could be ex- pected from them. The Whimsicals, disappointed of the figure v/hich they hoped to make, began indeed to join their old friends. One of the principal amongst them (Anglesea) was so very good as to confess to me, that if the Court had called the late servants of the late Queen to account, and had stopped there, he must have considered himself as a judge, to have acted according to his con- science on what should have appeared to him ; but that war had been declared to the whole Tory party, and that now the state of things was altered." The dissolution took place on January 5. The new Parliament met on March 17.^ The King's speech asserted that the established constitution in Church and State should be the rule of his government. It deprecated "unhappy 1 Works, vol. ix. pp. 89, 92, 93. ^ Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 109 ; Beyer, "History of the Last Administration," p. xxxiii. of the Introduction. 51 8 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES divisions." It exhorted his people against " wicked insinua- tions." It flattered them, like a jury, by informing them that the " eyes of all Europe " were on this first session. The address of thanks by the Peers expressed a hope that the Parliament " might be able to take such further mea- sures as would secure what is due to us, by treaties, ease our debts, preserve the public credit, restore our trade, extinguish the very hopes of the Pretender, and recover the reputation of this kingdom in foreign parts ; the loss of which we hope to convince the world by our actions is by no means to be imputed to the nation in general." Bolingbroke's apprehension at this time was that "those who ought to stand together in supporting the Queen's Administration are likely to be brought in to accuse the one the others." Ormonde, now the rallyer of the Tory peers, asked John Drummond "to preach up courage to him." He was also alarmed for Harcourt. He was soon reassured.^ A hot debate ensued. Bolingbroke, Trevor, Anglesea, Buckingham, and Shrewsbury, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of London and Bristol took an indignant part. The words were declared an outrage on the Queen's memory, and inconsistent with the speech from the throne. Boling- broke especially, in moving for the substitution of the vvord " maintain " for that of " recover," and the cancellation of the rest, called them to witness that he had been a devoted servant to the Queen, whom he would ever vindicate. For anything he might have done amiss he would be content to accept punishment, but to be censured and condemned unheard was a gross hardship which he was certain would be by no means agreeable to his Majesty's equity and justice. So august an assembly might well imitate so great a pattern. Strafford attacked the clause as a national exposure abroad of the honour which his negotiations had respected and adorned. Shrewsbury made a bland appeal. He conjured them to remember that the peers should consider the ' Impeachments were " the general discourse. '' " But even Lechmere says they cannot find treason." Drummond to Oxford, Portland MS., vol. v. p. 508. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 519 source of their own lustre by a zeal for the dignity of the Crown. That, on the insertion of similar language in the address to the late Queen on the death of King William, he had publicly protested his dislike to any reflection on the deceased monarch's memory, and that the same argument held good now. To all this Wharton, Nottingham, Devon- shire, and others retorted by the stock distinction between the Queen and her Ministers, who were now trying to screen themselves under her buried mantle. Bolingbroke's motion was lost by sixty-six against thirty-three. The address of the Commons was equally indecent and more artful. It concluded impudently, considering Godolphin's past and Walpole's future, by astonishment at the increase of the pubhc debt, which, however, should be no impediment to their grants of supply. Shippen, Windham, and others on one side, Stanhope, Heathcote, and Pulteney, on the other, repeated the platitudes of the Lords. But Walpole betrayed his animus in a violent speech, wherein he avowed his in- tention of "exposing and punishing those evil counsellors who deluded the Queen " into pernicious measures. When the peace was debated, Windham defended the articles of commerce, and Heathcote in answer aired his pet solecism, that exports were the wealth of nations. On the last day of March the Commons presented no less than seven addresses to the King, supplicating for letters and papers relative to all the transactions of the Treaty. There could now be no doubt of what was purposed. Already at the close of February Swift had written in bad French to M. Giraldi, the Secretary of the Duke of Tuscany, of " La faction dominante." " . . . . Ces messieurs sont tout-a-fait r&olus de trancher une demi- douzaine de tetes des m^illeures d'Angleterre." At the close of the June following he writes to Pope in question- able English : " . . . . You know how well I loved both Lord Oxford and Bolingbroke, and how dear the Duke of Ormonde is to me. Do you imagine I can be easy while their enemies are endeavouring to take off their heads ? ' I nunc et versus tecum meditare canoros.' 520 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Do you imagine I can be easy when I think of the probable consequences of these proceedings, perhaps upon the very peace of the nation, but certainly of the minds of so many hundred thousand good subjects ? " ^ " In the King's first speech from the throne," observes Bolingbroke,^ "all the inflaming hints were given, and all the methods of violence were chalked out to the two Houses. The first steps in both were perfectly answerable ; and, to the shame of the peerage be it spoken, I saw at that time several Lords concur to condemn in one general vote all that they had approved of in a former Parliament by many particular resolutions. Among several bloody resolutions proposed and agitated at this time, the resolution of impeaching me of high treason was taken ; and I took that of leaving England, not in a panic-terror improved by the artifices of the Duke of Marlborough, whom I knew even at that time too well to act by his advice or information in any case, but on such grounds as the proceedings which soon followed sufficiently justified, and as I have never repented building upon. Those who blamed it in the first heat were soon after obliged to change their language ; for what other resolution could I take ? The method of prosecution designed against me would have put me immediately out of condition to act for myself or to serve those who were less exposed' than me, but who were, however, in danger. On the other hand, how few were there on whose assistance I could depend, or to whom I would, even in those circumstances, be obliged ? . . . Could I then resolve to be obliged to them, or to suffer with Oxford ? As much as I still was heated by the dis- putes in which I had all my life been engaged, I would sooner have chose to owe my security to their indul- gence than to the assistance of the Whimsicals ; but I thought banishment, with all her train of evils, prefer- ' Swift's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 256, 257. ^ Letter to Sir W. Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 90. ' Harcourt, Prior, and Strafford. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 521 able to either. I abhorred Oxford to that degree that I could not bear to be joined with him in any case. Nothing contributed so much to determine me as this sentiment. A sense of honour would not have per- mitted me to distinguish between his case and mine own ; and it was worse than death to lie under the necessity of making them the same, and of taking measures in concert with him. ... I committed with- out dispute many faults ; and a greater man than I can pretend to be, constituted in the same circumstances, would not have kept clear of all ; but with respect to the Tories I committed none. I carried the point of honour to the height, and sacrificed everything to my attachment to them during that period of time." Let us pause a moment to weigh these apologies for his flight. It was not an abandonment of his party — that is clear. They left him, not he them, in the lurch. He only acceded to the Pretender's eventual solicitations because he regarded his meditated expedition as that party's " last struggle for power." ^ The final struggle having failed, he had meant to leave a service which " only success could render tolerable," ^ before he received, through Ormonde, his notice to quit. Had his intention happened, he would have been at the future beck both of the Pretender and of the Tories ; and his "resolution" was taken to refuse them both.^ In the long run, as we shall discover, he became the scapegoat of all parties ; and England is relentless to scapegoats. It is clear also that Townshend designed to aggravate his impeachment by joining him with Oxford and twisting the joint evidence against each. How that evidence would have been wrested is obvious from Prior's trial before the Secret Committee ; after Lord Stair had impounded his papers in Paris, and he had been recalled, trembling, to England, where the Whigs at first feted, in order to caress 1 Letter to Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. 244. Cf. ibid., p. 106, where he says he refused to act till he knew that the Tories were acting in concert with Ormonde. » Ibid., p. 176. ' Hid., p. 245. 522 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES him into turning King's evidence. That Committee failed to elicit one compromising fact. Yet its proceedings re- mind us rather of the worst court-martial than of an English tribunal. Prior — in his " History of his Times " — called it " a wild inquiry." ^ He was not even allowed to view the heads of the indictment. The Committee itself was hopelessly ignorant of the points required. Coningsby raved, stormed, and swore. Walpole and Stanhope sulked. Nothing incriminatory could be extracted ; and after some two years of detention — during which he composed his "Alma" — he was liberated, although he was excepted out of the Act of Grace in 1717. Was Prior's conduct equivocal ? Was he" seeking to save Oxford at the expense of BoHngbroke ? He never broke silence. Bolingbroke himself only broke it after Prior's death. On January i, 1722, he thus unburdens his heart to Swift : "... It is therefore much better to hold one's tongue. I am soiTy that . . . our old acquaintance Matt lived so poor as you represent him. I thought that a certain Lord, whose marriage to a certain heiress was the ultimate end of a certain Administration, had put him above want." ^ It is further clear that the impeachments were inspired — and particularly through Bothmar — far more by fear of the most formidable political rivals than by dread of dis- loyal personal action, which they in fact provoked. Oxford had always managed to wriggle himself into office. He was impeached. Bolingbroke was the ablest man of his time. He was impeached. Ormonde was the darling of the people. He was impeached. Strafford had at last conciliated the Dutch, whose co-operation was the Whigs' vade mecum. He was impeached too. Windham was arrested, but he was young and too highly connected for safe resentment. Youth and Somerset saved him. But if they, or any of ' Lady Dupplin too writes, " Never was such wild doings.'' Portland Papers, vol. V. p. 512. ^ Swift's Works, vol. xvi. p. 414. Prior, be it noted, had recently addressed all despatches direct to the King. Portland MS., vol. v, p. 493. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 523 them, were at fault, why was Anglesea not impeached ? He was insignificant. Why was Harcourt not impeached ? He was insignificant. Why were not Bromley, Bingley, Lansdowne ? Insignificant also. Atterbury was not im- peached for the same motive that the others were. To have impeached Atterbury now would have been to have alienated the Church interest, which Walpole was so anxious to conciliate that he afterwards voted against every prin- ciple that he had ever professed for the retention of the Anti-Occasional Conformity Acts. The policy of the Government was to clear the course. Nor is it likely that Bolingbroke, as Bothmar's most for- midable antagonist, would have escaped the block. He had actually, as we have only quite recently learned, surren- dered his private letter-book to the Committee in the con- fidence of justice.^ It was insinuated that his motive was to incriminate Oxford. But the insinuation refutes itself. His innocence could be concluded by no method so sure. If Oxford feared Bolingbroke's innocence, his own must be com- promised. That innocence, moreover, Bolingbroke had in the preceding month privately protested to his father, and in a letter containing business items as well as self-vindica- tion.^ It is notorious that the son's attainder prejudiced and nearly precluded the father's peerage. But a sudden change of plan occurred. As he wrote in his parting letter to Lansdowne — and Marlborough^ and Nottingham were doubtless his authorities * — " ... I had certain and repeated information from some who are in the secret of affairs, that a resolution was taken by those who have power to execute it to pursue me to the scaffold. My ' Portland Papers, vol. v. p. 663. The source is Edward Harley in his Memoirs of the family. 2 Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 1 78. 3 " History of the Last Administration," Introduction, p. xliv. ^ Marlborough seems to have advised his escape, though Bolingbroke denies that he dictated it. "By whom this was managed," writes Edward Harley to his brother on March 31, "is not difficult to guess. It was kept a secret from Lord Trevor and other his friends till he was gone" (Portland Papers, vol. v. p. 509). 524 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES blood was to have been the cement of a new aUiance ; nor could my innocence be any security, after it had once been demanded from abroad and resolved on at home that it was necessary to cut me off." This may have been, as he sus- pected, a ruse ; but Walpole's and Townshend's vindictive- ness against him was a reality.^ The fatal error that he made — and one regretted by none more terribly than by himself — was not his flight, but his recourse to the Pretender in response to the invitation of his agents : that step was not determined until " the smart of a bill of attainder tingled in every vein," and he " looked on his party to be under oppression and to call for his assistance." ^ It was prompted not by reason but by revenge ; not by feeling, which was with his fatherland, but by pique, which urged him to still arm his party alike against Townshend and Oxford, and by that restless ambition which could not brook the loss of power. That his cause and country must suffer never crossed his mind in this mad mood, and it was just this red-hot madness that consistently foiled the coolness of his head and the candour of his heart. Shortly before, he and Ormonde, who had by this time with fixed purpose returned from France, alone acted in the light of day. The popular hero openly and, as Boling- broke asseverates, without his knowledge,' entertained Jacobites at Richmond. Oxford, "after having lived some weeks incognito, and skulking in London . . . went down to his country-seat in Wales, on the plausible pretence of making interest for his son and relations against the ensu- ing elections." Various reports gained credence. He had been seen, it was affirmed, travelling northwards ; he had embarked, rumoured others, at Milford for Genoa. He was yet at Radnor ; he was en route for London. Certain it was ' In January 1719 Walpole hinted to the House that there were men of ability enough at home without sending abroad for a successor, "though he might be never so true a penitent." Portland MS., vol. v. p. 576. ^ Letter to Windham. Works, vol. ix. p. no. The attainder itself happened six weeks after Bolingbroke acceded to the invitation ; but it had been a certainty for months before. ^ Works, vol. ix. p. 8. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 525 that at the end of March he had transferred his South Sea Stock. But " the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke," admits even Boyer,! " acted for some time a more open and generous part; for he not only appeared publicly both in the country and in town, but took his seat in the House of Peers ; and, in the debate before mentioned, spoke with all the resolution and unconcernment, if not of an innocent person, at least of a guilty man of spirit." We find him appealing both to Drummond and Lord Harley about alleged letters from Oxford to the late Queen incriminating him and Harcourt.^ The contrast remained good to the end between the politician of subterfuge and the "neck-or- nothing " statesman ; and yet the fact remains that the former stayed and heroically suffered, while the latter fled and incurred a worse ignominy than the Tower. On Friday, March 26, Prior arrived and waited on his old patron, the Earl of Dorset. Next morning — a morning when Tory addresses very different in their note from those of Whig fabrication were being laid before the King — he was introduced by Dorset and Townshend into the royal presence and graciously greeted. The same evening he, Dorset, Stanhope, Roxburgh, and Lumley dined with Townshend. His possible revelations were a valuable asset for the Whigs. While Prior was probably toasting the King in that select company, Bolingbroke, disguised in a plain surtout and black bob-wig, with a laced hat, as valet to M. La Vigne, one of the French king's messengers, was posting to Dover. The night before, with characteristic nonchalance, he had occupied a box at Drury Lane, and had " bespoke " the same box for next evening's entertainment ; he even subscribed for a new opera that was about to be produced. On the Sunday morning he and La Vigne, looking like two French couriers, entered the coffee-room of the Dolphin 1 " History of the Last Administration," Introduction, p. xliv. ^ Portland MS., vol. v. pp. 508, 509. These letters were supposed to accuse them both of peculation and Jacobitism. If Bolingbroke's information was cor- rect, he was to be condemned on the evidence of copies of complaints addressed to his sovereign by a disgraced rival. 526 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES Inn at Dover. There (doubtless by appointment) they met one Morgan, Kite captain in Major-General Hole's regi- ment of marines, whom Bolingbroke had employed before. l\torgan was bound for Calais in a vessel he had provided for some private business of his own. Bolingbroke in- stantly discovered himself, and proposed crossing in the boat already chartered by Morgan. They all tiiree em- barked together, Bolingbroke " aflecting a clownish air," and buttoning his riding-coat over his face ; i they landed at Calais by six o'clock on Sunday evening. There the governor of the town received him and lodged him in his house, where Morgan, probably with gratitude, saw him on the Monday morning. On Tuesday Morgan quitted France and arrived in London on Tuesday night,' with a rapidity, we may notice, hardly compatible with any mere " errand of his own." On Monday morning Bolingbroke was missed ; and Morgan, directly he returned, was hurriedly taken into custody by one of the King's messengers and examined. On August 6, after Windham's reprimand and Oxford's impeachment, but before Ormonde's, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was impeached for " high treason and other crimes and misdemeanours."" A fortnight after- wards both he and Ormonde were duly and solemnly attainted. In the previous motion for Bolingbroke's im- peachment in the House of Commons, Hungerford and Ross alone had dared to raise their voices in his praise. "... Tliose you make friends And give your hearts to, when they once perceive The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye, never found again But when they mean to sink ye." The letter to Lord Lansdowne, which Bolingbroke wrote at the Dolphin, and which was published in London on April 2, contains these i-emarkable expressions : " . . . Had there been the least reason to hope for a fair and open Cf. the interesting additional details embodying Slater's account and quoted in Cooke's Life, vol. i. p. 311. " Captain Morgan's Relation, " History of the Last Ministry," p. 45, //'»■(/., p. 233. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI" 527 trial, after having been already prejudged unheard by two Houses of Parliament, I should not have declined the strictest examination. I challenge the most inveterate of my enemies to produce any instance of criminal corre- spondence, or the least corruption in any part of the Administration in which I was concerned. ... I have always been too much an Englishman to sacrifice the interest of my country to any foreign ally whatsoever ; and 'tis for this crime only that I am now driven from thence." The adventure created an immense sensation. In a dog- gerel pamphlet of the day,i Bolingbroke is thus made to open himself to the Due d'Aumont in Paris : — " Being free with his Grace, I opened my case, How fearing disaster For serving his master, I was forced to retreat By precipitate flight ; Which if I'd not took For escaping the block, That had been my doom And the time was nigh come. I prayed him to exert His interest at Court To save me from ruffians With talons like griffins ; Which he very readily Answered and steadily." For the present we bid him farewell. To this crisis he constantly afterwards attributes the conversion of his life. "... I believe the world," he assures Swift ten years after- wards, " has used me as scurvily as most people, and yet I could never find in my heart to be thoroughly angry with the simple, false, capricious thing." ^ In a subsequent volume it will be our task to follow his fortunes for the next thirty-six years. We shall find him plotting in Paris, ^ " A Merry Letter from the L — d Bol ke to a certain favourite mistress near Bloomsbury Square." "Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipsa veni." London, 1715. The letter is not " merry " at all, but very poor stuff. 2 Swift's Works (Letters), vol. xvii. p. 58. 528 BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES directing and organising at Bar. We shall watch him staking his all once more on the life of an expiring monarch. We shall see him finally shake the dust off his shoes for ever on the impossible cause of the changing, unchange- able Chevalier de St. Georges. We shall witness his fresh marriage with a rich and charming widow ; his reconcilia- tion with Lord Stair ; his counteraction of Carteret's in- trigues with Schaub, and his eventual recall to his country, which restored him his property but not his seat in the House of Lords, "lest," as he ironically wrote, his "sour leaven should contaminate that sweet, untainted mass." In the midst of bribers he had never been nor ever remained rich. When he went to France he had some ^13,000,^ part of which he lost, and part of which, through Law of Mississippi notoriety, he recouped. We shall see him en- sconced at Dawley — whose ruined walls now encircle a rose-garden. We shall see him stemming the tide of venality under Walpole. We shall see him just not Prime Minister under George L We shall hear him eloquent in the Craftsman, though banned from the Painted Chamber. We shall contemplate his unofficial organisation of an Oppo- sition so powerful that it may be said to have wrecked his rival. And when that rival fell, we shall mark this prince of disappointments destroyed, like Frankenstein, by the very creature he had inspired. We shall track him once more to France, where La Source no longer, but Chanteloup, the Orsini's Armida-palace, will screen his contemplation of mind and man ; as later, Argeville, his political exit. His "philosophy" we shall explore. It breathes in the greatest poem of Pope. It pervades, though in pettier guise, much that has enriched Voltaire. And at length, " to end this sad eventful history," we shall accompany him home once more, and find him ever active and aspiring till, ' Marchmont Papers, vol. iii. p. 298. Horace Walpole had the effrontery — alluding to Charles the Second's sale "of Great Britain and Ireland for ;^ 300,000 a year " — to assert, in 1743, that Bolingbroke " took a single ;^too,ooo for them, when they were in much better repair." Cf. Letters, vol. i. p. 249. This may- serve as a sample of the adhesive lies of the Walpole combination. "LA REINE EST MORTE, VIVE LE ROI " 529 broken in heart by his beloved companion's death in health by a fatal malady, in enthusiasm by Pope's grand betrayal, he expires under the ancestral roof-tree of Battersea. Most of the light and leading of those times will pass before us. Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Walpole, Carteret, Pulte- ney, Chesterfield, Bathurst, Cobham, Chetwynd,^ Cornbury, with all their briUiant galaxy. Above all, the great Pitt, rehearsing as a youth the greater part which was to rouse England hereafter to some of Bolingbroke's ideals. We shall find how largely Burke, who repudiated the fountain- head, has drawn from Bolingbroke, especially in his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs ; " how much Gibbon borrows in his History. For the nonce we leave him on his road to Paris — and to ruin ; coaxing chagrin with stoic sentiment ; musing, regretting, perhaps repenting ; devising, daring, accomplish- ing much. At least in these pages, and for the first time, he has been suffered to speak for, and sometimes against himself. At least the language of his foes, so frequently sub- stantiating his own statements, shall vindicate their truth. At least the familiar voices of his friends may plead with posterity, that knows him not. ' " Black V^^ill" played no inconsiderable part among the " Patriots." His individuality is little known. He was an early friend of Bolingbroke, and had been consul at Genoa. 2 L INDEX Abercromby, 384 Abjuration Act, 158, 168, 177 >M)te2 Addison, Joseph (early prot^g^ of Whar- ton, y.i/.), on Bolingbroke, 3; reviled byBolingbroke, 134,298 ; onpartycries, 54, 79 ; on female follies, 85, 134 ; on tutors, 88 ; his business inferiority, 91 ; of ordinary origin, 89, 92, 94; his sister, MadaraedeSarte, 100, HI ; his"Coni6- dieLarmoyante,"ii4;"Cato,"iis,4S8; has usurped Steele's originality, 115, 117; his higher tone, 118 ; dines with Boling- broke (1713), 134 ; as collector, 129 note ^ ; promotes his brother by East India Company influence, ib. note^; and the Schism Act, 168 ; on Somers, 174; on Blenheim, i8i note^\ on com- merce, 261 ; Whig Examiner, 280 ; Medley, ib. note^, zSgnofe'^, 290 note^; invited by Bolingbroke, 298 ; (1714), 4S7. SOI Aim6 (surgeon), 16 Albemarle impeached, 154 Alberoni and Bolingbroke, 291 note 1, 396 Aldrich, Dean (Jacobite), his "hierogly- phical figures," 238 Anderson (trader), 130 Anglesea, Lord, with Haversham and Buckingham (1705), 178 ; " New Tory," 229 ; obstructs with Hanmer, 301, 351 ; (1714). 459. 478 ; his defec- tion, 466-467, 481 ; (1715). 518 Anglesea, Lady, 27 Anne, Queen [and see " Harley, R.," " Bolingbroke," " Somerset " (and Duchess of), "Buckingham," "Shrews- bury," "Somers," "Masham" (Lord and Lady), "Marlborough" (Duke and Duchess),] her peculiarities, 11, 19, 61, 81 ; "good old gentlewoman," 109 ; illnesses, 15 note *, 17 ; sym- pathy, ib. note 1 ; slovraess, Boling- broke on, 345 note * ; consideration for others, 12 note ', 313 ; decency. 112, 165; " Protose," 31; Bucking- ham, 26 ; Duke of Shrewsbury, 31 ; insulted by the Whigs (1708-9), 63, 207 ; Sunderland's appointment, 74 ; her frugality, 82, and generosity, 243 ; political influence, 82; love of music, 84; her " Ruelle," 113; her drawing- rooms, 165 ; her provincial tour, 166 ; "in danger" (1703), 13 note 2, 178; displeased with the Electress, ib., and with all who invited her over (170s). S3. 183, 184; (1707), 59; (1709), 59, 63 ; Anti-Occasional Con- formity Acts, 57 ; and Sacheverell, 71, 210 ; bullied by Somerset (1710), 40, 72, 74, 196, 212 ; prerogative, 237, 242 ; changes in England between 1689 and 1715, 271 ; Guiscard, 309 and sq. ; tentatives of peace (1711), 320; assur- ance as to Utrecht compact, 332 ; mediation of Allies, 324, and Charles, 325 ; first called her half-brother " Pre- tender," 333 ; not in his favour, 337 note 1, 340 7iote 2, 43 ; as Hallam admits, 343; "New Whig" policy to- wards, 352 ; originates suspension of hostilities (1712), 380 note 1 ; thaws to Bolingbroke (1712), 401, 407 ; comes to lean on Bolingbroke (1713), 412 ; rati- fies peace, 420 ; D'Aumont, 427 ; on Pretender's motion (1713), 432, 433 ; effect of illness, 344 ; invests peers with Garter (August), 438, 440, 441, 451 ; (1714), " Succession" Parliament, 457, and South Sea Company (1714), 454; Catalans, 463, 464 et sq, ; her aversion to Harley, 345 ; overrules wish to resign, 469 ; Whig plot against, 348 ; (May) ; Chesterfield on (1714), 349; pelted with remonstrances, 468, 4S1 ; Bolingbroke now her champion, 475 ; Whigs dis- tinguish from "Administration," 466; Assiento, 482 ; last speech to Pariia- ment, 483, 485 ; detained in town (July 511 532 INDEX 1714), 485 ; events preceding her death, 491-494 ; death-scene, 496-497 ; Shrews- bury, 355 ; papers seized, 347, 517; funeral, 504 ; memory insulted (debate, March 1715), 518 Arbuthnot, Dr., character and career, 17- 24 ; his works, 18 ; Craftsman ; and works quoted, 5, 6, 75, 106, 123, 133, 206, 228, 236 ; Brothers' Club, 281 ; deprived of his post by George, 344 ; "Art of Lying," 387, 404, 482; on situation (July 1714), 488, 492, 493 (September), 509, 510, 511, 512 and note 1 Arbuthnot, Anne, 20 Arbuthnot, George, 20 Arbuthnot, Robin, 19 and note *, 444 Argyle, Duke of, duel, in tiote*; (1709), 186 note 2 ; Sacheverell (1710), 209 ; solicits promotions, 210, 256, 403 ; (1713). 427, 445 ; (1714). 427. 4SI, 457. 459. 46°. 461. 492. 501 : Marlborough, 216; opposes his vote, ib, ; defection, Tory obstacle, 229 Argyle, Duchess of, 127 Arnall, political hack for Walpole, 352 Arran (Earl of). Brothers' Club, 281 Articles for Umitation of the Crown (1701), provisions discarded by Whigs, 156 Asgill (freethinker), 169 Assiento, the, 200, 259, 320, 323, 372, 384, 396, 417, 454, 455, 456, 482-483 Assurini, the (spies for Austria and Hol- land), 376 Astell, Mrs. ("Molly"), 85 Atterbury (Dean and Bishop), friend of Buckingham and satirised by Prior, 27 ; Harley, 74, 90; Tatkr, 118; "tutor to a Prime Minister " (Defoe), 187 ; early associate of Bolingbroke, 146, 208 ; composes Sacheverell's speech, 211, 213; inveterate Jacobite, 229; Bathurst, 297; (1713). 438; (1714). 49°; (1715). 515 Attilio (opera-singer), 114 Balls, 112 note ; Marlborough's, 83 ; Vryberg's, 112 Banks, Sir Jacob (City magnate), 76, 129, 437 Barber, John ("Johannes Tonsor"), publisher and Lord Mayor, i note 2, loi, 121; his career, 121, 162 Barnard, Sir John (originally a Quaker), "non-deserting old Whig," 228 Barrier towns, "fortresses for Dutch monopolies," 205, 215, 259, 322, 326, 362 note 1, 365 ; "a barrier against Eng- land" (Bolingbroke), 368, 373, 374 and note 2, 393, 418, 423 ; Toiirnay, case of, considered, 409-410, 411 Barrier Treaty (1709), 60 ; considered, 204-206, 322 (debate, 17x2), 368, 372 ; (1713), 393 Barton (Queen's messenger), 354 Bath, 126, note ■* Bathurst, Allan, Lord, 5, 97, 109 ; char- acter and career, 297-298 ; (1705) 198 ; longevity, 100; October Club, 231, 281; a " laughing philosopher," 282 note 6 ; Swift, 298 Battersea Manor House, 142, 145 note ■■=; devolution of, 146, 147 Baynard, Mrs. (the learned), 85 note 3 Beauchamp, Margaret (mother of Henry Vn.), ancestress of Bolingbroke, 143 Beaufort (Duke of), staunch Tory, 61; Defoe, 121 ; indifferent intriguer, 229, 231 note'^; Brothers' Club, 281,348; Peterborough, 303 ; Guiscard, 312 (1713), 420, 437 Bedford (nonjuror), 438 Beefsteak Club, 282 Bellamont, Lord, 309 Bennet, Miss, 23 Benson. See Bingley, Lord Bentley (scholar), 90 Bergheyk, 416 Berkeley, Bishop, quoted, 132 Berkeley, Earl of, 501 Berkeley of Stratton, Lord, quoted, 385 ?iote^ Bernstorff (diplomatist), 32, 328; (1714), 500 Berwick (Duke of Marlborough's nephew, and Pretender's half-brother), 23, 192, 303. 317; his " M^moires " examined, 335. 338, 339 Betterton (actor), 113 Beveridge, Bishop, 90 ; philanthropy of, 131 Bingley, Lord (Benson), 62; of "no extraction," 89 ; house of, loi ; on commission (1710), 212 ; (1713), 444 Birch (schoolmaster), 89 Blackball, Bishop, 68 note^ Blackmore, Dr. , 492 note 3 Blackwell, Dean, go Blandford, Marquis of (Marlborough's only son), 74 Blathwayt, 75 ; Secretary of War (1701), INDEX 533 140 ; replaced by St. John, 179 ; popu- larity of new appointment, 180 Bolingbroke, first Lady (Frances Win- chescombe), her letters, 86, 161, 162, 165; Hungerford's niece {(J-v.), 141; marriage and property, 145 ; character and relations to husband, 159, 160 et sq. ; Swift, 161, 313 ; Harley, 161 Bolingbroke, second Lady (Clara Des- champs de Marcilly, widow of IVIar- quis de Villette), 3, 162, 165 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, first Vis- count (and see "Patriot King"), verdicts of " Prince Posterity " on, 3- 6 ; eloquence, and missed Premier- ships, ib., 4, 502; Swift's admiration of, 4 ; constant friendships, 5 ; contempt of lucre, 247, 283, 451, 528 ; frankness, 6, 138 ; industry, 291 and notes, 292 ; impatience and isolation, 4 note ^, 6 ; predisposition to extremes, 145; habits. 28S1 394 ; faults, 162, 257, 262, 271 ; private and public generosity, 92, 102, 139, 282-283, 371; solicitude for half- brothers, 44 note'', 162, 388, 425; consistency, 150 ; libertinism, 100, 167, 197, 291 and note, 292 ; Arbuth- not's view of (1727), 3 and Marlborough. — Marlborough's prot^g^, 45 ; Bolingbroke' s panegyric on, ib. , Blenheim column, ib. note ; Woodstock grant, 44; election, ib. ; affection for, ib. , 56, 184, 194 ; last Administration, 162 ; desii'es to retain him (1711) by sacrifice of Duchess, 31, 43 ; Marlborough's Tory beginnings, 35 ; Eugene's plot and Marlborough's dismissal, 47; Drummond (q.v.) re- specting (1711), 42, 518 ; attachment to Marlborough, beginning of split with Harley (q.v.), 72; comments on Marl- borough (1713), 51 ; after 1706 Marl- borough's campaigns profitless, 197 note''-; estimate of Harley and Marl- borough (1708), 199, 200 and Harley [q.v.) contrasted, 212; ridicule of Harley's pretensions, 67 ; views on his policy and character, 65, 66, 72, 502 ; early attachment to, 184 note''; 199; (1711), thinks Harley's life indispensable, 314; Guiscard, 308-310 ; already (1711) begins to enlist own party, 306, 315 ; date of breach be- tween them, 314, 315 note 1, 412, 436, 471 ; (1713), still addresses him friend- lily, but lurges him to make a push for time leadership, 430 ; violence against him after commercial clauses thrown out (June), 433 ; on him and Pretender, 339 note''' Bolingbroke, continued : Pedigree and significance, 142-145 ; family pro- perty, 142, 14s ; education, 145 ; quoted on, 87; mission of genius, 14s ; classical studies, 185 ; quoted on education, 87 ; lack of, at the period, 93 ; patronises Dryden ; early verses and contributions, 147 ; travels abroad, 147 ; Mercurialis, 146 ; takes seat for Wootton Basset (1701), 138 ; first public appearance and cliarac- teristics, 138, 139 and notes; earliest associates, 141 ; Battersea Manor, 97 ; views of political career, 113 ; marriage (1701), relations to wife, 145, 159, 160^^ sq. ; early political foresight and insight, 148-150 ; Savoy's and Italy's import- ance, and Gibraltar's, 179, i86, 323 note^, cited, 400 ; introduces bill for securing Protestant succession (1701), 156; Com- missioner of Accounts ; part in Kentish Petition ; co-operation with Harleyites, 157 note 2; grief at sister-in-law's (Betty) death, 163 ; letters to intimate Coke [q.'v.]; grows "less and less a man of pleasure," 163 ; Harleyites and "Gentlemen of England," 164; Stratford {q.v.), 164; doctor's degree, 166 ; elections (1705), 166 ; intro- duces Anti-Occasional Conformity Act (q.v.), 166; Teller, ib. ; statements as to these Acts, 169 ; cited on High Church clergy, 172 ; repudiates esprit fort, 173 note ^ ; views on national religion, 176 (and see under "His Pohtical Opinions"); Somers (q.v.), I74i 17s I votes against the "tack" (1704), 177: squib in State poems about, ib. ; moves extension of time for Abjuration Act (q.v.), 177 ; " Ashby v. White," 179 Secretary of War (1705), 179 ; real meaning of 1705 removes, 180 et sq. ; elections (1705) ; letters to Harley(i705), 184, 185; France should have been hampered at sea by interception of bullion, 192 ; abortive Toulon expedi- tion would have shattered French navy, 204 note " ; attitude to Scotch Union (1707), 57, 193 ; Godolphin's finance, 57 ; national expenditure, 136 note*; Harley's watch-dog (1707), 57, 534 INDEX 194 • eagerness for the ' ' Queen's in- terest," 164, 194; foresight (1707-8) of necessity for peace ; recoraraendations of soldiers' widows and orphans, 194 ; resigns with Harley and Harcourt {f.v.), (1708), 197; generous efforts for Harcourt, 198, 518 ; devotes two years to country retirement ; Bucklebury de- cides choice of seat (1708), 159 ; Marl- borough and Godolphin [j.v. ) ; position and prospects {1708-10), 197, 199, 200 ; until 171 1 out of Mrs. Masham's favour, 200 ; Moerdyke Conferences (1709), 204 and note ^ ; writes to Harley on Sacheverell, 209. Bolingbroke, continued : Secretary of State for Northern Department (Sept. 1710), 212 ; hesitates, ib, ; returned both for Wootton Basset and Berk- shire (October 1710) ; decides to sit for wife's county, 214; Robethon's (j.'-j.) tribute to, 215; speech on "Commit- ment of Place Bill," 216 ; early con- trast between and Walpole (?.J'.), 217; political following, 229 ; money losses, 103 note 3; diflBculty in "educating" party, 233, 261, 262, 263, 264 ; desires " National Church" as well as " Na- tional Party," 224, 236, 353, and to make "Queen a party," 351 [and see under " Political Opinions"]; Hallam on "Whig opinions," 254 [and see "Whigs" (New)]; plan for parly while in power, 255-257 ; remounts to bed-rock of "first principles," 265; foreign and commercial policy, 258, 260, 264, 428 ; summary of creative political ideas, 263, 264; "Fair- trader," 260; "Free-trade" from Dutch, 362 KO&i; anticipates remark- ably modern political thought, 265 ; contrast with Peterborough {q.v.), 273- 277; friendship for, 5, 99 Directs main movements of 1711- 12, 278; Examiner [q.v.), 279; first effusion in; aids Harrison [q.v.) in continuation oiTatler, 281 ; Brothers' Club (y. w. ), 28 1-284, 298 ;" conviviality, " 281 ; letter to Orrery on club, ib. ; slan- dered by Lady Mary Montagu, 285- 290 ; on combination of pleasure and business, 292; his " True Use of Re- tirement and Study," 297; anxiety for Harcourt, 296 «o/e', 518; "March Club," 300 ; " played with fire," 301 ; West Indian and Quebec expeditions, 302, 318; Galway's case (1711), 304; growing breach with Harley, ib., 314, 317 note 1 ; speech on thirty- five millions, 305, 306; Jacobite medal, 307 ; menaced by Guiscard, 308-310 ; Queen's dispatch favour- ing election of Charles as Emperor (r7ii), 316 ; preliminaries of peace, 316 et sg. [and see ' ' Utrecht Treaty "] ; singles out Prior, 286 ; chooses him to transmit the counter -propositions to Louis, 320 ; separate articles for Eng- land, ib. (May 1711) ; astute provisions in Utrecht Treaty; creating "interest in the blood ; " misunderstood by sciolists, 321 ; Eugene and Austria, 326-327 ; Eugene's cicerone (1712), 46; treat- ment of Savoy, 327-328, 406 ; Por- tugal and Prussia, 328 ; resolute front towards Dutch chicane, 330; diplomatic maxims, 332; justified in "no separate peace," 382; Hallara's charges against, refuted, 334 et sq. ; his own account of Jacobites (1715), 340, 353i 470-471 ; Jacobite letters alleged to incriminate, 342 ; real attitude towards Jacobites {q.v.), ib. ei sq. , and 470-471 ; 351 ; new peers (1711), 368 ; not Jaco- bite before 1715, 338-343, 471, 479 ; loyalty to party, 344 ; about to corre- spond with Hanover at Queen's death, 335 note,^ 347, 349,399; m 1716-17 tries to purge party of Jacobitism, ib.; tries to render "Court" and "Country" synonymous, 351 ; plots against him ; reasons why historians discredit, ib. ; probabilities, 352 ; conduct of crowd to (August 1714), 352 note ^ ; accord with Shrewsbury(i7i4), 355 ; himself recom- mends (1714), 355, 494 note''-; review of Utrecht Treaty to Parliament, 358- 362 ; Whig attack on the peace (De- cember 1711), 364; on Queen's resolu- tion, 324, 365 ; on situation (1711), 366; on tactics towards Dutch, 367 ; policy one of "levers," 373 ; situation (Febru- ary 1712), 169, 358-362 ; answers Both- mar's letter, 371 ; instructs Harley, 372 et sq. , 403 ; wants to visit France (1712), 374 ; determination (spring 1712) to urge renunciations, 376-379; suspension of hostilities (1712) not his advice, 380 and note 1 ; view of right course, 382; de- fended, 383 ; ' ' We have passed the Rubicon," ib. ; speech on negotiations (May 1712), 384; adroit use of Rech- teren's quarrel, 393 ; Princesse Ursins, 395 ; receives French answer to Colonial INDEX 535 stipulations (June 1712), 396; their pur- port ; alters them, 397-398 ; session opens, 398 ; on Wharton, 399 ; effects of truce, ib. ; situation, 399 ; orders mercenaries' pay to be stopped, 400 ; now indispensable, 400 and note 1 ; dis- appointed in title (June 1712), 401-403 ; visits France (August), 404-408 ; Dart- mouth (October), 409 ; settles ' ' Tour- nay," 410; asserts Queen and Allies, 412 ; negotiates commercial and colo- nial clauses (1713), 402, 414 et sq. ; tariff, 415, 430 ; Spain, 417 ; ultimatum to France (February 1713), 418 ; peace? secured (April 1713), 420 ; medal, 421 ;( on peace, 422-425 ; on debates, com- mercial clauses (spring and summer, I7i3)i 428-431; Hanmer (y.f.) ruins tariff reform, 351 ; appeals to Oxford, 430 ; remonstrating, 433 ; complaints, 435 ; expected Garter, 438 ; Dunkirk, 440-441, 448; Secretary of Southern Department, 443, 445, 447; pro- pitiates "Whimsicals" (1713), 451; patriotism, ib., 452; South Sea Company, 4S4-4S5 I inaugurates "Thorough" policy, 460, 470, 474-476, 478; party situation (spring, 1714), 461 ; Catalans, 462, 465, 476 ; Preten- der debate, 466, 468 ; at the head of Church party and Queen's cause, 474- 476 ; Hanover troops, 476 ; Schism Act, 477 ; proposes Pretender Enlistment Bill, 480-481 ; Assiento debate, 482, 483 ; on close of session (July) and Ox- ford, 484 ; rumoured foreign project of, 485 ; crisis, 486 et sq. ; vindicated from Oxford's charges, 487; devotion to Queen, 488, 501 ; unrelaxed efforts, 489- 491 ; in Kensington Palace, 490-496 ; George's proclamation, and situation (August 1714), 498-503; false accom- modation rumours with Whigs, 486 ; with Oxford, 501 ; and George, 500, 502, 518 ; made scapegoat, 505, 553 ; deprived, 504, 508 ; his group doomed ; retires to Bucklebury, 506 ; at coronation, 512 (January- March 17^5)1 515 ' apprehensions for friends, 518 ; his speech (January 1715), 518 ; his comments, 520-521 ; probabilities of reasons for flight, 521, 524 ; Prior, 522 and note ^ ; flight, 525 et sq. ; letter to father, 523; to Lansdowne, 526 ; impeachment, 524 tiate 2, 526 ; summary of future, 527-529. Bolingbroke, coiitiatied : Story of Swift 99, lOQ ; opera, 114 ; Barber bequeaths legacy, 121 ; maids of honour, iii ; diatribe on Steele, iig ; billiards, 113 ; Arbuthnot, 23 ; late in life turns to rising generation, 277 ; Dawley, 97 ; toast, 387 7tote^; Prior, 391; politi- cians, 474 note^; motto, 212 note- Political Opinions [and see ' ' Patriot King "] quoted pass-im, cb. vi. ; Eliza- beth and James I., 253, and note ; Cromwell's policy, 150 ; war (1688) and policy of, 1698, 260 note; JamesII. , 219 ; Clarendon and Southampton, 220; William III., 55, 253 note'^; old Whig tenets, 224 ; education of party to be "National," 225; citations to prove, 226, 227, 25s, 263, 269 ; place-hunters, 229 ; comparison of two parties, 232 ; passive obedience, 233 ; appreciation of the Church, 234; " Divine Right, ' 235i 251, 155; view of "National Party," 247, 248, and notes ; definition of faction, 247 note ^ ; ideal of mon- archy, 251-253 ; Ministerial responsi- bility and legislature, 255 ; prerogative, 156 note 2 ; early discernment of aver- sion of Spanish to French, 149; and that William's true policy lay in defen- sive support of Charles, 148 ; England's Mediterranean power, 150, 152 [and see "Gibraltar" and "Sicily"]; Examiner quoted, 257 ; importance of navy and colonies, 250 and notes, 263 ; insular foreign policy, 260, 262, 263, 264, 273 ; differs from contemporary Tories, 261 ; Spanish succession, 262 ; historical pre- judice, 271, 272; "New" Whigs con- trasted with old, 242 note 2 ; merchants with jobbers, 272 ; Utrecht Treaty, ch. ix. passim ; objects of renunciations, 321 ; Barrier Treaty's (q. v. ) fatality, 323 ; necessity of excluding Papists from throne, 346 ; no plan by last Ministry for Pretender, ib. ; Dutch profit by Whig rejection of Commerce Bill, 350 ; Pretender's cause against ' ' Sense of the Nation," 355; vindications of Utrecht Treaty cited at length, 358, 362, and ch. ix. passim ; Allies' remissness, 368 [and see Charles VI. , Emperor] ; whole Spanish question, 377-379 ; suspen- sion of hostilities (1712), 381 ; Austrian policy, 420, 429, 430; Portugal (1714), 449 ; Catalans (1713), 465 ; necessity for union, 475 ; Schism Act, 479 ; Pretender sz^ INDEX Enlistment Bill, 481 ; French trade, 485 ; on situation (January 1715), 517- Bolton, Duke of, adherent of Junto, 16 note ^, 228, 348 Bolton, Duchess of, 16 Bonet (Hanoverian agent in Berlin), 375 ; (1714), 501 Booth, actor, 113 Borgo, Del (Savoyard envoy), 362 Borsch, Van, 411 Bothmar, Baron, 32, 41, 48, 130, 140, 494 note"^ ; George I. owed throne to, 215; Prussia, 494 note-; avarice, ib,, f/ote^\ importance, 50, 231; London Papists, 239 note 2 ; 224, 316, 317, 322, 345. 347. 364. 36s. 371. 372. 393. 394 (1714). 451 (1715). 523 Boufflers, Marshal, 1266 jiote'^ Boyer (Whig historian, dismissed spy of Harley), 345, 362 ; on Swift, 283 ; in- accurate, 385 note 1, 441, 449 ; on Anglesea's defection (1714), 472 Boyle (" Hal "), Mr. Secretary, "Garden Plot," 26 : house Junto's rendezvous, 62; succeeds to St. John's post (1708), 195, 202 note ^ Bradley (merchant), 129 note" Brawls and duels, in Breton, Brigadier -General, friend of Bolingbroke, afterwards ambassador at Berlin, 160; (1714), 508. Breton, Mrs. , scandal concerning, 160 Brett (" highflying" divine), 235, 238 Briancon, Count, 307 Bristol, Earl of, Swift considered him Bolingbroke's prototype, 4 note 2 Bromley (Speaker and politician), 41 ; Bolingbroke's set (1701), 141 ; Boling- broke's colleague (1702), 157, and in .\nti-Conformity Act, 168 ; pressed by Bolingbroke into Queen's interest (1707-8), 194 ; Marlborough (1709), 207; (1710), 202, 209; (1711), 299; (1713), 442, 445. 451 : (1714). 499. 503. S". 512 Brothers' Club, 17 Note^, 109, 281 et sj. ; members, 284 ; rules and objects, 281- 282; "Friendship," 282; meeting- places, 298 ; Guiscard, 308, 404 Bruges, Bolingbroke's colleague (1702), IS7 Brydges, James (afterwards Duke of Chandos), Bolingbroke's cousin and early associate, 141 and note^; peti- tioned against (1708), 197, 508 Buckingham (John Sheffield, Duke of), character and career, 25-27 ; weak poet, z*. , "Vivant"(i70s), 183; Jacobite, 31, 324 ; Walpole and, 26, 27 ; Harley (i7io),29,i78; buttressof High Church, 26 ; friend of Bolingbroke, 25 ; duel, III; Lord Steward (1710), 212; pre- vious opposition to Harley, 213 ; one of a Tory junto, 222, 314 note 2, 334 ; (1713), 432; (1714), 486; (171s), 518. Buckingham, third Duchess of (daughter of Lady Dorchester), her pride, 27 Bucklebury, Bolingbroke's seat through wife, his occupations at, 159, 509 Bull, Bishop, 90 Burgess, Rev. Daniel, 68 note ^, 124 note^ 125 note 1 ; son, spy at Hanover, ib. ; Presbyterianism, 146 Burke, Edmund, borrowed from Boling- broke's Works, 6; cited. Parliament, 2SS Burnet, Bishop, national debt, 11; Roches- ter, 25 ; squibs on, 13, 90 ; preceptor to Dean of Gloucester, 95 ; to Lady M. W. Montagu, 84 ; Arbuthnot's Jo/in Bull, 125 ; Irish Papists, 167 note s ; against Tory clergy, 171 ; Junto, 228 ; relied on by Hallam, 345 ; quoted, 349. 448 note 3, 472 Bussiere (surgeon), 308 note^, 312, 313 Button's coffee-house, 18 Buys (Pensionary of Amsterdam), Moer- dyke Conferences (1709), 203; Ger- truydenberg (1710), 206 ; " Memorial " quoted, 323, 329, 331, 362, 366, 367; Whigs term him Tory, ib. 366 ; their management of, 481 noie^\ quits Eng- land, 368 ; 369, 375, 393 ; Paris (1714). 451 Byng, 401 Byron resembles Bolingbroke, 139, 283, 394 ; borrows simile from, 263 Cadogan (afterwards Lord) (1710), 216 ; engaged in Whig plot (1714), 347 ; 368, 461, 486 Calli^res (diplomatist), 266 «ofci, 330 Carey, Henry (author of "Sally in our Alley," and probably of National Anthem), 91 note^; his "Wish" quoted, 245 note * Carlowitz, Treaty of, 154 Carlyle on Bolingbroke, 7 ; inaccuracies as to Utrecht Treaty, 51 note^, 315 Carmarthen, Lord, 412 Carnaby, 514 INDEX 537 Caroline, Queen, 83, 237, 474 Carteret, 2, 149, 350 " Carwell," Madam, 443 Caryll, Lord, Jacobite, 35 Catalans, 152 ; " to be caredfor," 373, 378, 411, 44S. 455, 459. 461, 463eisg., 476 Catherine of Braganza, 442 Chamillard, 192 Chanteloup, 395, 526 Charles VI. , Emperor of Germany, and for a time III. of Spain ("Laborious Futility"), Bolingbroke on true policy towards, 148 noie * ; family alliances clue to policy, 152 note^, 188; aban- dons Madrid, 215 ; elected Emperor (1711), 278, 317 ; character and " Aus- triacity" — "the Turveydrop of diplo- macy," 324-326, 378 ; in relation to the peace, 382, and Netherlands, 419, 447, 448 ; Catalans, 463 ; commerce, 483 Charles II. of Spain, 28 Chatham, Earl of, studied and admired Bolingbroke's oratory, 2 ; acquainted with him and infused with his ideas, 250 note 1 Chesterfield, Lord ("Deportment"), opinion of Bolingbroke, 5 ; society, 84Ko/«i; education, 91 ; "Academy," 94 ; opera, 115 ; Hammond, 141, 339 ; Whig plot (1714), 347 note*; Jaco- bitism, 349 ; Dutch policy, 363 Chetwynd (" Black Will "), 529 Child, Sir Francis, 169, 202 Child, Sir Josiah ( ' ' Charity Organisa- tion "), 132 Child, Sir Richard (afterwards Lord Castlemaine), loi Children's formality, 87 and note Chirack (Queen's jeweller), 102 wofei Cholmondeley, Lord, 420 Chuck, Bell (courtesan), 291 note^ Chudleigh, Lady (the learned), 85 Church, party within a party (1710), 208, 221, 225 ; factiousness of Convocation, 134 ; political relations of, ch. vi. , 230 ; "in danger," 13, 171 and note^\ and Dissenters, 172 ; passive obedience, 233-235 ; detested by Whigs, 30, 236 ; secular and spiritual protests of, 237 ; Convocation, 338, 239 ; ' ' Divine Right," 208, 238, 349 ; High Church, ib. and 385 ; (1712), unprovided for in London, 239 note*; succession debates (Boling- broke cited), 349, 448; religious feeling, 175 ; (1714). 475. 479. 499 i "'" danger" revived, 513 Churchill (bookseller), 129 note" Clarendon, Earl of, Bolingbroke's view of, 220; "Rutilius" in Bolingbroke's " Retirement and Study," i6. note^; (1714). 472. 500. 504 Clarke, Dr. (Latitudinarian divine), 217 Clayton, Mr. (musical composer), 81 Clergy (and see "Church") in provin- cial politics acted like modern press, 12, 23 ; ill-paid, 123 note ^ ; super- stition, 125 ; restricted by Whigs, 36 ; gleaning, 90, 93 ; and Cowper, 169 ; discontent (1705), 187; Sacheverell, 208, 209 ; few real Jacobites among, 238; "widow-parson," 93 Clermont, Lord, 348 Cobb, S. (Jacobite Dissenter), 77 Coffee-houses, 99, 103, 317; parents of journalism, 134, 489 Coke, Thomas (afterwards Lord Lovel), Bolingbroke's early intimate, " Rake," and Vice -Chamberlain, 141; letters between him and Bolingbroke, 163, 194 ; dissuades Bolingbroke from re- signing (1708), 19s, 309 Collectors, mania of, 129 7iote* Collins (Freethinker), 169 Colson, T., 118 Commitment of Place Bill (1710), 217 Compounders, 51, 221, 224 Compton, Bishop, 14, 35; death (1713), 438 Congreve, 23, 113, 115, 281 note"^, 275 Coningsby, Lord ("that Hangman" — Portland MS., vol. v. p. 512), (1715), 72 Copley, Sir Godfrey, colleague of Boling- broke (1702), 157 Corporations, 129, 135, 172, 173 ; poli- tical dictatorship of, 246 Costume, 105, 107 Cotton, Hinde (Jacobite), 129 note", and Windham, 293 Courcillon, Madame de, 408 Cowper, Lord [Lord Chancellor], 25, 29 note 6 ; not at University, 89 ; house, 104; incorruptibility, 135 and note ^, as to career ; Lady H. Vere, 128 ; clergy, 169 ; acceptability to Queen, ib. note'^\ scarcely religious, 174; Lord Chancellor (1705), 183; Sacheverell, 209 ; Walpole, 254 ; Duchess of Marlborough, on (1705-6), 183; "Impartial History of Parties" criticised, 265-270; Schism Act, 269; "Cabinet" (1711), 303, 306; (1714), 451, 459, 461, 472, 484, 486, 503, 507 538 INDEX Covvper, Lady, 96 [and quoted through- out /aw;»«], (1714), 512 Cox (Tory) unseated (1708), 198 Craggs, 89, 109, 378, 486, 494 ; (1714), 504 Crawley, Sir W. , 56 Crespy, Treaty of, 330 Croissy, Madame de, 390, 406, 408 Croly (or Crawley?), Sir Ambrose, 129 Cromarty, Lord, story of, 81 Cromwell, Richard, mention of, 82 Crowe, Mitford, 463 Curl, R. (publisher), 19, 121 D'Altri, Duke, 413 Danvers, Mrs. (Queen's dresser), 49 note, 69 Darien Corporation, 129 Dartmouth, Lord (Secretary of State), 12, 49 ; Harcourt, 295 ; and Anne's English, 94 ; succeeds Sunderland (q.v.), (1710), 212 ; "New" Tory, 229 ; Harcourt (q.v.), 357 Bofei, 387; Earl, 401 ; enraged with Bolingbroke (Oct. 1712), 409 nffte'i, 441, 444; (1713), 230; (1714), 503 Dartquenave (epicure), 108 D'Aumont, Due (Ambassador to Eng- land, 1712), 394, 413, 415, 426, 427, 433; (171S). 434, 539 Davenant, Dr. CTory member and pam- phleteer), 133 ; and Swift, 79 ; and Mordaunt, 275 Dawes, Bishop, 68 note 2 Defoe, Daniel, 59 ; " Father of Journal- ism," and appreciation of, 120-121 ; (1703), 294; Harley, 65; Lady Mash- am, 70: spy for Harley,75; Godolphin, 121 ; London, 96 ; his potteries, 100 ; " Legion" pamphlet against Socinians, 167, 193 ; Sacheverell, 208 ; Harley (1710), 218 ; October Club, 300 ; Jacobites, 337; (1711), 483; (1713). 441 ; (1714), S" Delany, Mrs. {nie Granville, and after- wards Mrs. Pendai'ves), recollection of Bolingbroke, 3, 86, 87 note''-, 95 note'', 161 note 1 ; Bolingbroke's habits of work, 296 Delorme (spy), 371 De Port of Basing, ancestor of Boling- broke, 142 Derby, Earl of (1714), 501 Desaguliers, 92 Devonshire, Duke of (1707-8), 194; (1714). 507. S19 Diaper (poet and placeman), 91 D'lberville (French envoy, 1713), 449 Disney, Colonel ("Duke"), "Brothers' Club" (q.v,), and epicure, 108, 281; character, 287 ; legacy to Bolingbroke, ib., and 253, 291, 430 note^, 434 Disraeli, admiration for and debt to Bol- ingbroke, 7, 141 note; "Venetian oligarchy" derived from Queen Anne literature, 222 note'' ; assertions on Par- liamentary reform justified, 244 ; rating principle of Reform Bill, ib. note 2 ; " Young England" based on "Patriot King," 253 Dissenters' education, 94 ; Defoe on, r2o, 167, 169, 170, 208; party within a party, 225 ; occasional Nonconformists, 175 ; vote for Harley (1710), 213, 240 ; Whigs temp. James 11., 219; out- number Papists, 239 m>te*; Socinian latitude, 239, "bubbled" by Whigs, 240; smarted more under social than political disabilities, 240 ; BoUngbroke on, 237; not downtrodden, 168 Divine Right, doctrine considered, 235- 237 ; Church view influenced by Epis- copacy, 238 ; BoUngbroke on, 251 Dodwell (High Church divine), 169, 235, 238 Dolben, impeacber of Sacheverell, 210 Dorchester, Countess of (Catherine Sedley, afterwards Lady Portmore), 308 ; alluded to, 271 Dorset, Earl of (1714), 501 ; (1715). S^S Drift, Adrian (Prior's secretary and exe- cutor), 49 Drinking, excessive, 109 and note, no Drummond, John (bapker and paymaster of forces at the Hague), 42 and note'' ; assertion to Harley about Bolingbroke's quarrel, 334 nofes, 302; (1713), 518, 52s Dudley, Lord, story of, 133 Duncombe, Sir Charles, 127, 303 Dunkirk, Bolingbroke discerns import- ance of, 187, 202, 255, 259, 287, 374, 384, 438 ; occupied, 385 ; debated, 432, 439. 441. 448, 457 Dupphn, Lord, 64; "Brothers' Club," 281 Durham, Mrs. Anne, and Prior, 284, 390 note'' Dutch matrimonial alliances, 125 ; na- tional debt and excise schemes, 10 vote ' ; land-tax, 132 ; fondness for secret understandings, 205 ; greatest INDEX 539 consumers of French wines, ib. ; pro- test V. Ministerial changes (1710), 211 ; obstinacy, 215 ; tactics, 203, 204, 364. 365. 367, 381, 415 ; secret arrange- ments with France, 266, 319, 331, 338 ; ' ' requirements' ' ( 171 2) , 374 ; manoeuvres before 1710, 319 ; aims purely commer- cial, 321, 322, 323; proposal for Elector of Bavaria, Netherlands, and governor- ship, 331 ; Harley's petty management helps commercial gain of, v. England, 350; constitution, 363; "memorial," 369. 373. 375. 382; obstruct {1713), 415, 418, 430; disregard of Spain, 371, 444; remonstrate (1712), 384; (June, 1712), 399 D'tlxelles (one of the French represen- sentatives, Utrecht), character, 389 ; (1710), 206 Dyot (forger of stamps), 135 East India Company, ss, 128 Eating, 109 Education, 85-95 Elections, Malmesbury (1702), 136 ; Bewdley (1702), 136; Woodstock (1705)7 44 "Ote^; Lewes (1705), 28 ; of 1705, 184 ; of 1708, 197 ei sq. ; power of corporations over, 173; (1710), 213; (1713). 438 ; (1715). 516 Election, purity of, 136 ; Tories protect, 173, 188 ; their Acts to preserve, 245-246 Electress. See Sophia. Elstob, Mrs. ("the learned"), 85 Essayists, 115 Essex, Lord (Marlboroughite), 211 Estcourt (actor and founder of ' ' Beef- steak"), 282 note'^ Eugene, Prince, Blenheim, 180; (1706), 189, 191; (1709). 203; (1711-12), 47, 48-50, 15s, 323, 365, 369, 371, 382, 386, 448 ; on Bolingbroke, 200 ; on Shrews- bury, 30 ; on Peterborough, 275 Examiner, the, 81, 278 Excise scheme and Act, 10, 135, 173, 2ii«(?fe2; undue influence of officers, 24s Eyles, 129 False Musters Act, 126 Farnese, Elizabeth (second wife of Philip v.), 396 Ferguson (spy for Harley), 193 F^riole, Madame de, 390, 408, 429 Ferrers, Lord, 216 Fielding, "Beau," 128 Fielding, George, 508 Fielding, Henry, refutes Bolingbroke's " Philosophy," 6 Finch, Lord, 166 note 2, 458 Findlater (Earl of), Scotch Chancellor (1703) and Jacobite, 340 ; referred to in Oxford's " Brief Account," 487 Fingal, Lord (Jacobite), 481 Firmin (Socinian philanthropist), 131 Fleming (Presbyterian minister), 171 Foley (auditor), 457 Ford, Charles (Swift's correspondent), 21, 352, 481, 488 cited 499 et sq. Ford, James (quack doctor), 97 note " Forstner, Baron, 466 Foubert (Harley's schoolmaster), 67 "Four Species," The, 373 Fownes, Sir William (philanthropist), 117 Fox, Sir Stephen (City magnate), 76, 98 note 1 Eraser, his abonive treason (1703), 177 Frechville, Lady, 497 Frederick William of Prussia, 494 Freind, Dr., "Westminster Set," 280; " Brothers' Club," 281 Gallas, Count, 329, 372 Galway, Lord (Rouvigny), i6i ; Peter- borough, 190, 191, 302, 303 Gambling, 126 Games, 113 Garth, Dr., 46, 133, 376 Gaultier, Abb^, 31, 329; "M^moire," 330. 335> 337. 353 ; story of, and Bol- ingbroke, 339, 374 ; his answer ; ne- gotiating (April 1712), 384, 392 ; quits England (1714), 504 Gay (poet and secretary to Embassy at Hanover), 20 note ^, 21 ; Arbuthnot, ib. note 1, 22 ; business incapacity, 92 ; "Beggar's Opera," 114; writes love- letters for Mrs. Howard, 275 ; Har- court, 292 note -, 295 ; Disney (1714), 287, 504 George of Denmark (Prince Consort), (1702), 73, note 3, 167 ; allowance (1703), 176, 177 ; impugned by Marlborough, 195 ; persuades Anne to part with Har- ley, ib. ; Prior celebrates, 197 ; Break- water V. ' ' New " Whigs, 227 ; Charles, 325; " garden-house," 412 George the First (Elector), suitor for Queen Anne, 26, 82 ; contempt for Marlborough after accession, sr; re- fuses to touch for king's evil, 125 ; early indifference to succession, T40; 54° INDEX Garter, 177 ; Rhine army (1707), 195 ; asked to subsidise Whig peers, 231, 395 ; latitudinarian education, 231, 257, 271, 29s, 473; unpopular, 353; head of a party (1712), 375 ; Bremen (1713), 419; (1714), 461, 504 ; proclaimed, 497 ; cedes, 494: alters intentions, 498 ; at Hague, 505 ; and Townshend, 507 ; lands, 511 ; coronation and behaviour 512, S14. S18 Germaine, Lady Betty, 21, 86 Gertruydenberg, conferences of (1710), 206, 319, 365, 424 Gibbon indebted in History to Boling- broke's Works, 2 Gibraltar, Bolingbroke emphasises im- portance of, 186 and note 2, 259, 287, 320, 323 and 7iote ^, 372, 442, 455 Gideon, Sir S. , 129 Gilligan, 482 Giraldi, 519 Gloucester, Duke of, 36 ; education and death of, 95, 96, 140, 385, 492 note^ Godolphin, character and career, 53, 64; for a regency (William), 220 ; ' ' New " Whigs, 228 ; Presbyterianism, 73 ; Pre- tender, 39 note ", 196, 206, 207 ; bad finance, 79; (1701), 158; (1707), 39; (1708), 278; (1709), 193; (1710), 62, 208, 209, 211, 213; (1711), 303; (1712), 305, 306, 334, 348 ; death, 63 Goerz, 500 Golden Square, Bolingbroke's house in, and Benson's, loi ; and Lansdowne's, 309 Gordon, Duchess of, 317 note ^ Gould (Whig), 129, 428 Gower, Lord, 166 Grabe (Lutheran scholar), 78 Grand Alliance, 155, 157, 158,203,206,325 Grandison, Viscount {see St. John, Oliver), William Villiers, son of Bolingbroke's great-grand-aunt Barbara, 142 Granville, G. (Lord Lansdowne, poet and statesman, Mrs. Delany's uncle, and Bolingbroke's friend), story of, 109, 133, 141 ; Secretary of War (1711), ib. ; Controller, and resigns War Office (1712), 400; peerage (1705), 166 note^, 187, 281; Mrs. Delany's "Alcander," 282 ; and Disney, 289 note 2, 309 ; on Shrevifsbury's appointment, 355 Gregg (the traitor clerk), 66, 135, 194, 196 Guildford, Lord, 443 Guiscard, Marquis de, 161 ; attempt on Harley, 307-313 Gumley, Miss (courtesan), 147 Guy, Henry (1701), advice to BoUng- broke, 139 Gwynne, Sir Roland (rabid Hanoverian Whig), 188 ; Church, 236, 237 Halifax, Lord (C. Montagu, Prior's early friend and patron) ; Dryden, 147, 148; "Bufo," 79,89; (1701), SS; im- peached, 150; Somers {q.v.), 40, 154 ; " Church-in-danger " (1705), 183'; con- fabulations with Harley (1709), 2or, 210; (1711), 42; (1713), 427, 430; and Prior, 287; for peace, 251 note^; "Brothers' Club," 29S; Galway's case, 303, 314 ; Guiscard, 311 ; good-natured, 175; (1714). 427, 4SI. 459. 461, 466* 468, 480, 481 ; wishes to be Premier, 483. 500. S08 Hallam, on Tory Jacobitism discussed, 334 et sq. Hamilton, Duke of, 202, 348, 355, 374, 395, 412 Hamilton, Duchess of, iii Hammond, Anthony ("Silver-tongued"), 141. 177 Hampden (Independent Whig), 28, 428 Handel, 114 Hanmer, Sir Thomas (a "Whimsical" — Duchess of Grafton's husband), de- scription of, 229, 106 note 6, 300 ; rela- tion of Ormonde, 350 ; pressed by St. John into "Queen's cause" {1707-8), 194 ; presides over commission for ad- dress (November 1710), 216, 217 ; Jacobitism, 229 ; October Club, 231, 299 ; edits Shakespeare, ib. ; conduct in trying to fix Jacobitism on Tories, 350. 357; (1712). 369. 391; (1713)1 429, 431, 451 ; (1714), 473 ; causes of dismissal, 489 ; retires from town, 489, 512 Hanover Club, The, 450 Harcourt, Sir Simon (afterwards Lord), BoUngbroke's "dear Sim," his cha- racter and career, 294-297 ; Scotch Union, 57 ; Harley and Trevor, 66, 89 ; Bolingbroke's associate (1701), 141 ; a Teller, 167, 177 ; dissuades Boling- broke from resignation, 195 ; petitioned against (1708), 197; Bolingbroke's generous support of (1708), 198; and afterwards,296 note^, 518 ; loses seat,ig9 and note 1 ; urges promotion on Harley, 209 ; Sacheverell, 72, 211 ; Lord Chan- cellor, 212 ; follows Bolingbroke, 229 ; INDEX 541 "Brothers' Club," 281 ; "Atticus" in Bolingbroke's "Retirement and Study," 295 ; mot on Tory party, 296 and notes: (1713 in Paris), 429; (1714), 462, 486 ; coquettes again with Whigs, 488, 499, sii; (1715), 515, 518 Hardy (Whig admiral), 133 Hare, Dr. (Marlborough's chaplain), 43 Harley, Robert (Earl of Oxford and Mortimer) [and see " Bolingbroke "], character and career, 64-81, 88 ; poli- tical attitude to 1710, 68 note''-, 117; nickname, 106 note 1 ; City cabals, 40 note*; Dissenters, 77; literature, 78; illnesses, in ; Steele, 118 ; early career, 67 note^; verses, 22 note^ ; " Vanderberg," 31 ; Speaker, 1701, 56, 139 ; partition impeachments, 155 ; in 170S only head of group, 187 ; want of discernment as to Louis XIV. (1700), 192; as to Philip (1712), 377, 379 ; Scotch Union (1707), 57, 62, 64, 193 ; policy in forming party, 194 ; Gregg, a.; resigns (1708), 195; secret cause of withdrawal, 196 ; " divid- ing" policy (1709), 201, 202, 209; Sacheverell, 209 ; his Whig scheme (1710), 25, 336 ; elections (1710), 213 ; and Bolingbroke, 209 ; Lady Bolingbroke, 162, 167; Socinians, 168; "New Atalantis," in flattery of, 175 ; persuades Queen the country is with her and dissembles dissolution, 210 ; commissioner (1710) and Chan- cellor of Exchequer, 212 ; Toryism, 222 ; scheme of fifty churches, 239 ; Bolingbroke cited on his premiership, 243 Kofei ; author of " Faults on Both Sides," 246 note^\ sounds Louis for peace (1710), 316; "Brothers' Club," 281, 298; Prior, 286; October Club, 298; "thirty -five millions," 306; Guiscard, 307-315 ; Earl, 314 ; Quebec expedition causes rupture with Mrs. Masham, 318, 322; answering im- peachment, omits Gibraltar, 333, 335 ; his use of Jacobites for the peace, 336; not seriously in their interest, 337 et sq. ; Bolingbroke's charges against, 339 ; Jacobite letters, 352 ; duplicity of, fatal, 347, 349, 350; hissed by crowd (August 1714), 352 note'^; peace attacked (December 1711), 364-365; (May 1712), 383; bungles concessions, 416 ; (1713), 429, 437; (Dunkirk), 441, 442, 444, 445; "iHighland clans," 458!; (1714), 429, 459,- 461, 471, 474; Ijoins [opposition on [Spanish; commerciaKclauses 481 situation, July, 483; meanness, 484 485 ; rumours as to, and causes of, downfall (July 27, 1714), 485-486 story of, 486; his "Brief Account,' 315 note 1, 487 ; George's proclama- tion, 498, 499, 511 ; (171S), 521 ; retreats, 524; impeachment, 80; peer- age bill, 81 Harley, Lady (first Countess of Oxford), homeliness, 74 Harley, Lord (eldest son of Robert Har- ley), Brothers, 281, 444, 450, 486, (1715), 518, 525 Harley, Thomas (brother of Robert Har- ley, auditor), 286, 305, 369, 372, 384, 394 note: Bolingbroke to (June 1712), 398 ; (1713), 45°. 452 Harrison (Swift's prot^g^. Secretary at Utrecht), poet and editor of Tatler after Steele's discontinuation, 97 note'^ ; early death, 92, 97, 420, 432 note Haversham, Lord (1700), 155; (1704-5), 178; 57. 58, 62, 97; Sacheverell, 207; old Tory type, one of a Tory Junto, 222 ; Tutchin's [q.v.) patron, 185 Hazlitt quoted to show Bolingbroke's grasp of principles, 265 Heathcote, Sir Gilbert (leader of Junto- City interest), 40, 62, 129 ; commerce, 260; (1715)1 519 'Hedges, Sir Charles (Tory politician), 97 ; Secretary (1701), 140 ; forced to retire (1707), 193 Heinsius (Grand Pensionary), his charac- ter, 393 ; (1714), 505 Heiresses, 128 " Heptarchy," The, 213 note'^ Hertford, Earl of (1707), 61 Hervey, Lady, cited, 276 Hervey, Lord, 18 note'^, 166 note'^ Hescourt, Dr. (High Church divine), 62 Hicks (" Highflyer"), 235, 238 Higgon (Sacheverell of Ireland), 208 Hill, Abigail. See Masham, Lady Hill, " Jack" (her brother), 60, 69, 211 ; " Brothers," 289 ; Disney's legacy to, 384 Hill, Sir Scipio, 35, 118 Hoadley, Bishop, 13 ; (1710), 211 Holcroft, Sir W. (original owner of Battersea Manor), 142 Holt, Sir J. (and R. Cromwell), 82 Hone (writer for Medley), 280 note^ 542 INDEX Honeywood, 60, 116 Horneck (philanthropist), 131 Hough, Bishop, 171 Howard, Henrietta (Countess of Suffolk), 23, 86, 275, 276, 295, 297 Howe, Jack (Macaulay's "old repro- bate"), with Bolingbroke (1701), 141, 153. 177. 187 ; (1708), 198, 229 ; and Mrs. Durham, 390 note * Huguetan (eccentric), 390 Hungerford (Lady Bolingbroke's uncle), 141 ; (1714). 457 Indemnity Act (1709) saves Godolphin, 58, 160, 193, 207 Innes (miracle-monger), 126 Islay, Earl of, 302, 445 Jacobites and Jacobitism, 72 note^, 77, 317 ; and Nonjurors, 223, 229, 234 ; Whigs who "resemble," 178 ; rarity of, among clergy, 238 ; and in Parliament and generally (Bolingbroke), 356 ; (Boyer), 348 ; (Burnet), 349 ; Christ Church, Oxford, hotbed of, 238 ; "cla- mouring," 256 ; Scotch, 302, 317; part in politics, 336 £^5^.(1703), 57 ; promised everything by Harley after the peace, 336, 337 ; Harley's affected Jacobitism, 72 note^; (1711), 300; gullibility and credulity, 336, 337 et sq. , meddle- someness of, 341 ; a French party for, ib. ; causes of adhering to Tory name, 347, 433; (1713). 438; {1714). 459. 460 ; Bolingbroke and, 471 ; and Or- monde, 472, 475, 488, 490 ; Whig, 35 note'^, 75 BOfeS, 353, 506, 513, Si4, 5i6, 524 Jekyl (" Old Whig"), 228 ; (1712), 368 Jersey, Lord, the elder (Villiers), Boling- broke'smother's kinsman, 147; ambassa- dor to Paris (1698), ih. ; (1700), 266 note; (1701), IS4, 155; (1705), 180; Sache- verell, 209 ; inveterate Jacobite, 229 ; " Brothers' Club," 281, 330 ; Jacobitism prevents promotion, 354 ; in relation to Bolingbroke, ib. Jersey, Lord, the younger, Bolingbroke's letter to, 113, 150 (cited) ; story of, 364, 450, 4S3 Jersey, Lady, Jacobite intriguer, 112, 132 note ^, 238 ; romance of son's removal to France, 364 note *, 445 Jews, financiers for Marlborough and Walpole, 129; buy horses for Louis XIV., 179 Johnson, Dr., recommended for small headmastership, 88 ; quoted 6, 84, 417 Kelly (Jacobite), (1714), 480 Kent, Duke of. Chamberlain (1708), 180 ; (1710), 61, 218; ("Old Whig"), 228, 439 Kentish petition, 157 Kidd, Captain (pirate), 55, 155 King, Sir Peter, ballot (1711), 246; (1713), 428 Kingdom, Jenny (maid of honour), 287 Kit-Cat Club, political share in riots (November 1711), 46, 280, 281 note ' Kreyenberg (diplomatist), 228, 476 Lake, Bishop (" Highflyer"), 235, 475 Lambert, Sir J. , 130 Lamberti (1714), 514 Lansdowne, Lord. See Granville La Vigne, 525 Lawless, Sir Patrick (Don Patricio), 395, 447. 458, 465. 468, 484 Leake, 196 Lechmere, SirE. (rabid Whig), and Wal- pole (1710), 216; a "New" Whig of Marlborough section, 228 ; (1712), 369 ; (1713), 433; (1714). Si8M0fei Legion pamphlet, Defoe's and "T.G.'s," 167, note^ Leibnitz, 72, 96, 231 note 1, 474, 351, 394 Lesack (dancing-master), 88 Leslie (high-flying parson, and Jacobite editor), 70, 121, 169, 172, 235; "Case Stated," 238, 317 note^; "Letter," 473 " Letters on Study of History," Boling- broke's ch£f d^ceuvre, 148, 150 note'^ Lewis, Erasmus (secretary in Lord Dart- mouth's office and Harley's adherent), character, 21, 50, 489 ; Harley, 73 note >, 78 note ', 80 note ', 250 ; Utrecht Treaty, 821, 448 ; on Oxford's dismissal, 489 ; cited, 499 etsq. Lexington, Lord (Ambassador to Spain), 144, 396, 464 Lilly, W. S., cited, 265 Lindsay (1703), 177 Lintot (publisher), 121 Lloyd, Bishop (" Mysterio"), 90 Locke, 92 London, 97-104 Longevity, no Lonsdale, Lord, 154 Lorraine, 152 note"^, 347, 413, 466, 480, 514 INDEX 543 Lotteries, 130 Louis XI V. , his policy towards England, 39> 49. 54. 140. ISS \ would have sacri- ficed Spain and Indies (1707), 192 ; still more (1706), 192 ; straits of (1709), 202, 2o5; Junto's requisitions on, 203; secret understanding with Austria be- fore 1709, 202, 205; (1710), 206, 316 ; by autumn rejoices at its rejection, 205 ; Bolingbroke's forecast as to (1710), 258; deaths in family {T711), 318 ; de- serted Pretender when he conceded peace, 338 ; French Jacobite party, 341 ; Louis's part in negotiations, jpi,et sq. ; concentrates (spring 1712) on renuncia- tions, 375, 410 ; tries to evade New- foundland and tariff questions, 415,416; compounds 352 note^; proclamation, 498, Sii ; (1715), 518, 521, 524 note^, 526 Ormonde, Duchess of, 86, 161, 460, 492 Orrery, Lord, on Bolingbroke, 129 note'^; Patrick, 124; (1710), 210; on "New" Whigs, 223; Kitcat, 281 note^; "Brothers'," 281; on Peter- borough, 276 note*, 356; (1713), 415, 419 Ostend Company, 129 Oxford, Earl of. See Harley, R. Ozinda's Coffee-House, 99, 298 Paget (Old Tory ; Mansel's brother-in- law), 62, 188 ; (1710), 212, 229, 469 Palmer, 486 Papists, number, 239 note ^ ; 418, 514 Parabfeze, Madame de, 408 Parker, Judge, 72, 133, 494 Parnell(Poet), 91, 163; quoted, 65 note^, 421 Partition impeachments, 36, 55, 140, 150, 154 Partition treaties, 55, 140, 151, ig^mite'^ ; Whigs violate second (1706), 190; first, secret, 266, 323, 330, 367 Passive obedience, 233-235 " Patriot King," 251-255, 253, 262 note% 273 note 1 ; and Burnet, 349 Pelham, Mr., 6, 287, 297 Pelham, Lord, 486 Pembroke, Lord (1701), 154, 231 ; (1708), 196 Penkethman (actor), 113 Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of ("Dorimant-Quixote-Julian"), 98, 99, 133, 135, 136, 221 ; summary of qualities, 273-277, 278; (1703), 176; elections, 28, 136, 173, 174 ; (1706), 189, 195 ; (1711), " Brothers," 281, 298 ; 303, INDEX 545 304, 305, 316 ; on non-Jacobitism of I Harley and Bolingbroke, 340 note 2, j 384, 400 ; (1712), 401, 432 ; (1713), 438, I 443. 444. 4S3; (1714). 460, 463, 483 note 1, 498 and note ^, 512 Pettecum (Holstein Min ster at Hague), 35, 60 note*, 170; (1709), 203, 330; {1711), 331, 336 note * ; (1713), 44S Philanthropy, 131 Philip of Anjou (Philip V. of Spain), 152, 327, 367, 373, 378, 447, 466, 483 Philips, Ambrose ("Namby"), 91, 92, 508 ; quoted, 13S note ^ Philips, John ("Poet"), i6o, 297 Phipps, Sir Constantine, 229 ; (1713), 439 Physicians, fees of, 16 note 2 Pillesary, Angelica (Bolingbroke's step- mother), 143 note 1 Pinnel (Bolingbroke's early colleague), 141 Pitt, "Diamond," 438 Polignac (French emissary, (1710), 206; (1712), and character, 389 " Political Club" (temp. Geo. II.), 294 Pope, Alexander, largely influenced by Bolingbroke, 115 note, 147 note '^, 23s, 265 ; on Bolingbroke, 147 note 2 ; and Peterborough, 274 ; no punster, 289 note 1 ; and Harcourt, 295, 297 ; Withers, 287 ; Bolingbroke one of his first supporters, 263 ; quoted, 3, 6, 18, 52, 54, 63, 65, 67, 79 note \ 114, "5 note *, 129, 147 note 2, 259, 265, 275 note, 292, 334, 421 Popham (Bolingbroke's early colleague), 141 Popoli, Marchesa di, 189, 464 Portland, 150 (1697), 266 note^; Junto, 228 Portman, Lord, 173, 186 note 2 Portmore, Lord (Lady Dorchester's hus- band), " New Tory," 229 Porto Carrero, 154 Portugal, 152, 189 note 2, 190, 196, 32S, 443. 449. 455 Potter, Bishop, 68 note 2 Poulet, Lord, 72, 74 ; (i7r°)i 209, 211, 212 ; (1711), 310, 312 ; (1712). 383 ; (1713). 437 " Premier," 168 note 2, 187, 253 Pretender (James, the Old), his char- acter, 340 ; repudiated by nation, 356, 369. 373; 31. 36. 140; (1703). 193; (1707), 196 ; (1708), 197, 206 ; Walpole, 213, 217, 269, 327 ; Hanover, 332 ; Austria, 327 ; and Utrecht Treaty, 335 ; (1710), 337-343 ; (i7"). 3i7 ; (1712), 385 ; (1713), 416, 427. 432. 438. 443, 448 ; (1714), 257, 350 note \ 459, 466, 468, 473 ; Reward and Enlistment Bill, 480; 483, 513, 521, 524, 528 Prior, Matthew, character and career, 283-287, 389-391 ; Education, 96, loi, 117 ; and Swift, 284, 329 ; and Harley, 285 ; and Addison, 280 ; and Steele, 117 ; (1701), 21, 55, 133, 139, 155 ; (1705), 184; (1707), 92, 140; (1710), 281 note^; (1711), 280, 281, 313, 319 and note », 320, 352; (1712), 341, 354 note *, 370, 402, 404 ; (1713), 413, 422; (Peace), 444, 450, 484 ; (1714), and Bolingbroke, (1715), 521, 522, 525 ; quoted, 17, 27, 112, 151, 197, 313 note^, 319 note 3, 320, 341, 429 ; head of Westminster writing set, 280 ; Kitcat, 281 note^; "Brothers' Club," 281; " Pierrot of literature," 287 ; his "His- tory," genuine, 154, 319 note ', 331 Psalmanazar, G. (retailer of prodigies), 126 Publishers, 121 Pulteney, J., 213 Pulteney, W., 2, 18 note'-, 23, in, 184; (1712), 384; (1715), 519 Putney, the home of Deists, 98 note 2 Quakers, 77, 240 Qualifying Bill (1710), 244, 246 Queensberry (1707), 58; (1711), 311 Queensberry, Duchess of. Whitehead's compliment to, 86 ; quoted, 87 Raby, Lord. See Stafford, Earl of Races, 126 Radnor, Lord, 157 Ranelagh, Lord, 157 Ratcliffe, Dr., 16, 17, 108, 493 Raymond, Sir R., 281 Rechteren, Count, 392 Regency Bill (1705), 178 Rents, 108 Resignation, device of, 37 note ^, 61, 195, 202 Richardson, S. , 98 Richmond, Duke of, "Old Whig," 228 Richmond, Duchess of (Madame " Car- well"), 444 Ridpath (editor), 121 Rivers, Lord (" New Tory"), 60, 62, 229; (1710), 214; (1711), 308; (1712), 405 Rivers, Lady, 69 Roads, 97, 113 2 M 546 INDEX Robethon (Hanoverian secretary), char- acter and career, 41, 140, 231, 394 ; (1712), 215, 375 ; Bolingbroke on, 399 Robinson, Bishop (Privy Seal and Pleni- potentiary), character and career, 90, 237. 368, 385, 438 Robinson, Mrs. (his wife), iii, 112, 388 Robinson, Miss (opera-singer), 98 note 2, 276 note 5 Rochester (Earl of), character and career, 24-25. 35. 222; (1701), 141; (1702), 158; (1704), 178; (1710), 56, 209, 212, 213 I (1712), 299 ; (1713), 300 ; pacifi- cator, 25 note 3, 315 note 1 Rooke, 37, 133, 179, 183 Roper (editor), 121 Ross [Bolingbroke's staunch friend ; in- tended to succeed Prior in Paris (1714)], 526 Rothes, Lady, 497 Rouill^, President, 60, 202-203 Rowe (poet), 115, 213 note 3 Roxburgh, 525 Roydon, Joan (see Holcroft), 142 " Ruelle," the, 113 Rutland, Duke of (Junto adherent), 228 Rysv^ick, Treaty of, 140, 155, 374 note 2 Sacheverell, Dr., 31, 60, 61, 123, 124 ; (1710), 208 et s,;., 234; (1711), 316; (1713), 256 St. John, Catherine (Bolingbroke's great- aunt), 144 St. John, George (Bolingbroke's half- brother), 44, 162, 388, 420, 453 St. John, Henry. See Bolingbroke. St. John, Henry (Bolingbroke's great- uncle), 144 St. John, Sir Henry (Bolingbroke's father), no, 142, 143, 388 note"^, 523 St. John, John (Sir Henry's cousin), 142, 14s St.John, John (Bolingbroke's great-grand- father), 142, 144 St. John, John (Bolingbroke's half-bro- ther; afterwards second Viscount St. John (d. 1749), 44 note^, 142, 162, 388 St. John, Lord, of Bletshoe (Bolingbroke's cousin), 125 nbte'^ St. John, Oliver (" Ship-money"), 9, 143 and note 2, 144 St. John, Oliver (Lord Grandison), 142, 143 St. John, Poulet (Hampshire branch), 143 St. John, Poulet (court chaplain), 143 St. John, Sir Walter (Bolingbroke's grand- father), 142, 145 St. John, Lady (his wife, and daughter of Cromwell's Oliver, d. 1705), 93, 143, i44K0/e5_ 145^ 146^ 177 St. John ? (in service abroad), 144 St. John ? (resided in France), 144 Sancroft, Archbishop, 170 Sanderson, Bishop, 233 Sandes (A. Moore's father-in-law), 300 Sandys, 293 Saturday Club, 281 Savoy, importance of, 58, 147, 151, 152 nofei, 189, 326, 327, 328. See Victor Amadeus Scarborough , Earl of ( " Old Whig " ) , 228 Scarborough, Miss (Queen's dresser), 69 Scawen, Sir W. , 129 Schism Act, 72, 77, 152, 1^2 note'-, 269, 467, note^; (1714), 476-480 Schulenburg, 72 note''; 231 note''-, 351, 394 Schiitz, character, 228, 230, 347, 394 ; denied court (1714), 469 Scobell (Bolingbroke's early colleague), IS7 Scotland, union of, 158 ; William, 57 ; generally, 57-59, 193, 201 ; debate on repeal of (1713), 230, 429; Swift and Steele, 456 Scriblerus Club, 18, 22, 473, 509 Security Act (Scotland), 57 Self-denial Acts, 188, 230 Seymour, Sir E. (High Tory), (1701), 140, 166, 173 ; removed, 180, 229 ; his retort, 28 S'gravesande, 92 Shadwell, Dr. , 492 note ^ Shaftesbury, Earl of, 102 note'' Sharp, Archbishop, 14, 233, 235, 240 Sherlock, 90 Shippen (" Honest"), 231, 244, 293, 519 Shops, 102-103, 134 Shrewsbury, Duke of, character and career, 30-32, 220; (1710), 31 note^, 44, 61, 76, III, 209, 211, 212, 221; (1711), 281, 310, 314 note^, 338 note^; (1713), 224, 243, 275, 341. 344. 412. 429. 435. 436. 444. 447. 449 «<«'«''; (i7i4)> 481, 485,490, 508; premier, 31, 352, 355. 493-494 ; ambition, ib. 488 ; (1715), 518 Shrewsbury, Duchess of, 32, 33, 78 Sicily, importance of, to England, 153, 259, 328, 338 noie^, 400, 401, 443, 455 INDEX 547 Singer, Mrs. , 390 note ^ Skelton (" Dick"), 21, 280 Smalridge, Bishop, 68 note'^, 239, 438 Smith (Speaker, 1705), 179 Smith, Professor Goldwin, refuted, 156 note'^, 244-246 Somers, Lord ( ' ' Cicero "), character, 175, 55. 57. 89, 232 note'i; house. loi ; (1700), 153; (1706-7), 57, 95; (1708), 19s; (1709), 202 note'^; (1710), 209; (1711), 281 fwte^, 314 W(?/f2^ 244; (i7i3),298; (1714), 451 ; (1715), 50s. 508 Somerset, Duke of, character and career, ic^note*, 27-30, 60; (1706-8), tznote^, 82, 194, 195, 196; (1709), 202; (1710), 29, 214; (1712), 300; his gala-night, 114; (1714). 492. 508; (1715) 508 Somerset, Duchess of, 15 note''', i6, 61, 345, 490-492, 495, 504 Sophia, Princess and Electress, 53, 96, 140, 152 KoCe 2,156; (1705), 178; {1710), 215 ; (1712). 372 ; (1713). 394, 403. 418, 452 ; her character, 474 ; a political counter, 230; (1714), 473; contrasted with family indifference, 468 note''-; of Jacobite leanings, 354 Southampton, Lord, Bolingbroke cited on, 220 South Sea Company, 19, 129 ; andHarley, 308 ; and Bolingbroke, 412, 454, 482 "Squadrone," The, 57 note^, 302 Stair, Earl of (Old Whig), 228, 460, 521 Stamford, Earl of (1702), 178 ; (1705), 228 Stanhope, General (1710), 29, 184, 209 ; (1713). 331. 337. 378. 433. 436; (1714). 427, 461, 486, 507 ; (1715). 508, 519. 525 ; death of, from drink, 109 note^ Stanley, Sir John (Mrs. Delany's uncle), 308 Stanley, Lady, 161 Staremberg, 369 Steele, Richard, 41, 91, 92 note''^, 99, 105, 108, 114; character, 116-120, 438 ei sq., 133, 136, 137, 280 ib. note^, 289 note''-; (1714), 45^ "Stella," 85, 95, loi, 161, 284 Stepney, G. (poet and diplomatist), 92 Sterne, and Bathurst, 297 Stewart, Sir J. (1714). 458 Strafford, Earl of (Lord Raby), character and career, 386-388 ; (17"). 278, 320; (1712), 278, 3%onote^, 384, 385 ; (1713). 415. 436. 438, 449; (1714). 484. 495; (1715), 514, 518 ; Bolingbroke's kms- man, 215 note 2 ; Shrewsbury, 30 ; Harley, 75 ; Bolingbroke, 44 ; Buys, 393 ; Robethon and Bolingbroke, 215; marriage, note'^; house, 197; advice to Electress, 110, 252, 352 Strafford, Lady, 33 iiote", 34, 45, 84, 103-112, 386 note 1, 387, 413 Strangeways, Colonel, 173 Stratford, "The Revd." ("The fat Levite"), 164, 165 Stratford (banker), 103, 112 Streets, 104, 105 Sunderland, Earl of, 55 ; [Harley], 77, 193 ; (1707), 39, 67 note 2, 68, 74 note'' ; (1709). 39. 55. 207, 211; (1713), 432; (1714), 451, 459, 461, 466 ; (1714), 500; 508, 512 ; violent Republican, 39 note*, 228, 331 ; Peerage Bill, 248 Swift, Jonathan, and Bolingbroke, 4 note'', 156 note^, 256, 449 note^, 285 and note*; 5, 99, 100, 159, 160- 162 ; [Lady Bolingbroke], 212, 256, 291. 345. 402. 404. 405; (Harley), 75, 76, 79; and Prior contrasted, 284, 329 ; habits, 285 ; superstition, 125 ; truthfulness, 97, 98, 236, 346 note; pioneer of philanthropy, 133 ; Queen Anne, 12 note ^ ; Somers, 174, 195 ; Duchess of Marlborough, 15 note''; Somerset, ib, , note * ; Sacheverell, 208 ; (1710), 195 ; New Whigs, Whigs and Tories, 222, 224 ; Nottingham, 228 note * ; Arbuthnot, 24 ; Peterborough, 273, 304; Harcourt, 295: passive obe- dience, 234 ; Dissenters, 77, 169, 239 ; London, 239 ; Prerogative, 241 ; sug- gests Tatler to Steele, 116 and note 1, •>, and'; refugees, 257; "Parson" and "Great Britain," 93, 255 note''; poet- asters, 181 note''; "Fable of Fame," 277 ; Bathurst, 297 ; October Club, 299 ; March Club, 301 ; Guiscard, 307 note '-, 313, 3x4, 321 ; Gaultier, 329 ; Duchess of Somerset, 345 ; Strafford, 387; "Bandbox Plot," 413; Educa- tion, 87 ; new men, 89 ; season, 113 ; "Cato,"ii5; badpuns, 24, 108; political allusions in "Advice to Servants," 76 note''; passive obedience, 234; "Fag- got," 232, 460; (1714), and Boling- broke, 449; union, 456-457, 483; to Bolingbroke after deprival, 508-509 ; (1715), impending impeachments, 519, 520 ; poetry quoted, 17, 30, 52, 63, 68, 74, 78, 85, 86, 91 note'', 99, loi, 104 note'', 105, 108, 109, 112 note*, 116, 123, 182, 441, 473 548 INDEX Tallard, 329 Temple, Sir R., 426 Tesieu, Abb^ (Regent's secretary), 342 Test Act (Scotch), 58 Teviot, Lord, 216 Thackeray, accuracy of, criticised, 7, 231 ; Steele, 117 Thatched House Tavern, 298 Theatre, 114, 115 Tickell (poet), 92, 385 Tillotson, Archbishop, 170 Tindal (Freethinker), 169 Tofts, Mrs. (opera singer), 114, 228 note^, 336 Toland (deist, spy, and go-between), 98 ; vanity of, 194 ; abroad, 76, 169 ; (1710), 280 Tonson (publisher), 121 Torcy, De, character, 389 ; on ShrevifS- bury, 30, 31, 203 ; Prior, 284 ; Rech- teren, 392 ; Memoirs, 357 ; peace pre- liminaries, 319, 320, 336, 337, 384; (1712 and 1713), 396, 403, 410, 41S, 491 Tories [and see " Harley, R."— " Boling- broke" — "Election, purity of"], (1701), 141, 153 ; past principles, 219 et sq. ; old Tory views, 220; revolution, 221, 222, 223 ; prerogative, 156 ; purity of election, 173 and note ' ; Duchess of Marlborough, 36 ; elections, 178 ; (1705-8), 187 et sq.; (1710), 213; Harley, 222; Tory Junto, ib., 225, 229 ; cause of failure, 230, 232, 233 ; principles, 241 ; parliamentary reform, 244-247, 460 ; Bolingbroke on, 234 ; Harcourt on, 296 ; (1711), 302; (1713), 432 ; (1714), Reform Acts, 459 ; Boling- broke's aim for, 475, 479 ; condition of (July), 483, 491 ; situation (August and afterwards), 499, 504; (1715), 516, 517 ; ' ' New," created by Bolingbroke, 222, 229 ; not Jacobite till 1716, 338 ; how far a faction, 343 ; Renaissance, George II., 23 Townshend (afterwards Lord ; R. Wal- pole's brother-in-law), character and career, 507; "New Whig," 46, 161, 203, 228; (1710), 214; (1713). 427; (1714). 427. 486, 500. 505. S14 ; (1715). 515, S2I. 525- Toyshops, 103, 46, 48, 60, 161, 203 Trant, OUve (Jacobite), 341 Trap (Bolingbroke's chaplain), 124 note Trelawney, Bishop, 68 note^ Trevor (one of Bolingbroke's group), 67, 133. 134 ; {1714), S" ; (171S). S18, 523 note^ Triennial Act, 56, 158, 220, 245 ; (1707), 194 Trimnell, Bishop, 68 note'^ Tugghe, M., 438, 439 Turkey traders, the, 129 Tutchin (editor), 121, 185 Tyrawley, Lord (Sir C. O'Hara), 303 Ursins, Princesse de, character and career, 395-396, 443 Utrecht, Treaty of, Carlyle on, corrected, 51 note 2 ; effected policy of William III., 149 note, 154, and Moerdyke Con- ferences, 203 ; as to Sicily, 152 ; sum- mary of its effects, 259, 260 ; Emperor's death justifies, 264 note ^ ; Windham on, 293 ; preliminaries to (1710-11), 316; unilateral, 333 et sq., and chap, viii. ; an Anglo - French v. Anglo- Dutch agreement, 319 ; practicability and surviving force, 321 ; treats Allies psychologically, 322 ; Dutch, 322-324 ; Austria, 324-327 ; Savoy, 328 ; Bavaria and Prussia, ib. ; permanence based on Bolingbroke's discernment of French family feuds, 322, 328 ; answer to charge, of "clandestine," 329, 333; American clauses wholly Bolingbroke's, 338 note 5; suspension of hostilities and renuncia- tions secured (June 1712), 383 ; Cowper on (1714), 472; commercial clauses, 373, 414-417, 423, 444, 483; unre- stricted trade with Spain, 417 ; consuls, ib. ; signature (April 16, 1713), 419 ; an- noimcement and ratification, 420 ; peace secured and criticised, 421-425, 430 ; debates on (1713), 428, 431 ; thanks- giving for, 433 ; Portugal (1713), peace signed, 447 ; (1714) Anglo - Spanish treaty ratified, 455 ; Spanish clauses debated, 481 ; explanatory articles de- bated, 482 and note 1 ; Assiento, 482- 483 ; commercial clauses defended by Windham (1715), 519 Vanbrugh, 100, 281 note'^; Jacobite— (Portland MS. , vol. v. p. 299) Vanderdussen (Dutch envoy), (1709), 203 ; (1710), 206 " Vanessa," 2, i85, 101, 284, 301 INDEX 549 Vere, Lady Harriet. See Cowper and Onslow Victor Amadeus (Savoy) and Bolingbroke, 147 ; relationships, 152 note s ; eager- ness for Milanese, ib. note'^; 189, 191, 192, 371. 373. 376, 393, 406, 412, 416, 419. 443 Villars, 50, 448 Voltaire, 2, 86, 128 Vryberg (Dutch agent in London), 112 Wagkr, 197 Wake, Bishop, go Waldegrave, Lord, 426 Walpole, R. , 26, 89; "Leviathan,'' 105 note 4, 134, 161 ; (1705), 193, 228 ; (1708), 19s; (1710), 161, 209, 213; (1711), 217, 307; Schism Act, 168, 176; elements of success, 250 ; criticism on Bolingbroke's action (1702), 177; (1715), argument v. Triennial Act, 247 ; (1727), 513: guarantee of pragmatic sanction, (1730), secret, 331; assisted by Moore (1725), 392; with Stanhope and Pul- leney continues Utrecht policy, 186 note^ \ Windham, 293; Bolingbroke's aid to, in combating Austria, 327 ; Tory- Jacobitism, 44, 350, 368 ; (1714), 455, 458, 472, 483 ; 499, 508 ; dines' with Bolingbroke, 486, (1715), 519; vindic- tiveness towards Bolingbroke, 524 note"^ Walpole, Horatio, Lord, 60 ; Gibraltar, 186 ; (1714). 458. 499 Walpole, Horace (the younger), 27 note''-, IIS, 276 ; quoted, 513, 528 note''- Warren (Dissenting schoolmaster), 94 Watkins (diplomat and Bolingbroke's friend), 571 Webb, General (1708), 196, 202, 214 ; (1714), 512 Wentworth, Dowager Lady, 385 ; caco- graphy, 95, 105, 129 ; superstition, 125 ; a fortune-hunter, 127-128, 130 Wentworth, Peter (Strafford's brother), character, 386, 12 note''; education, 89, mourning, 107 ; cited passim, through- out Wentworth, Betty, 107, 130, 386 Wharton, Lord(" Lillibullero," Addison's first patron), adherent of Junto, 228, 240; (1705), 171 note'^; (1706), 82; (1708), 198 ; (1709), 202 ; {1710), 212 ; (1711), 303; (1712), 399; (1713). 432. 451, 456, 459; (1714). 459. 461. 466. 480; (171s), 50°. 508. S19; on Dis- senters (g.v.), 171 note ", 240, and Dis- ney (g.v.), 288 Wharton, Lady, 43 ■Whigs, ' ' Old " Dutch party, SS, 91 ; their plan, 131 ; revenue-control, 131 ; in pre- ceding reigns (1699), 223, 219 et sq. ; their Jacobites, 55, 221 note *\ (1711), 348 ; (1714), 19 ; became in all but foreign policy the Tories of Anne, 222 ; causes of success, 230-232; crude com- mercial theories, anti-Papist perse- cutors, 167 ; bogus rents, 135 ; press, 165 note 2, 513 ; their toast, 387 ; party of, v. " New Whigs," 228 Whigs, "New" (distinct party), first led by Tories, 223; (1705), 36, 182, 187, 188, 236; (1706), 189, 190 1 (1707), 193; (1710), 211, 216, 224, 225, 228 : election maxim, 256 ; a faction, 343 ; Bohng- broke contrasts with " Old," 214 note^, 376; (1711), 217, 303-307; (1712), 385 and note ^ (Buys), 481, note 2, 387, 403 ; (1713). 348. 362, 420, 427, 429, 430, 433. 434. 437. 441, 442; (1714). 448, 45°, 4SS. 468, 471. 476, 480, 502, Sio; (1715), 517; disbelieve in Boling- broke's rupture with Oxfoi'd, 412, 413; "Peace," 25, 29, 59, 62 note ^ ; (1713), 413 " Whimsicals" (Hanoverian Tories). See Hanmer), 229, 301, 350, 451, 491, 466, 517 Whitworth, 316, 475 Wilcox (messenger), 312 WiUis (philanthropist), 132 Willis, Bishop, 516 Winchescombe (Frances). See First Lady Bolingbroke Winchescombe, Betty, 163 ■Windham, Sir William (Bolingbroke's great friend), character and career, 5, 30, loi. III, 128, 141 note 8, 229, 260, 287,292-294; (i7i2),368; War Secre- tary (June), 400 ; (1713). P^'^y Coun- cillor, 442 note^; Chancellor of Ex- chequer, 412, 444; (1714). 486, 493. 499 ; (1714). 519 Windsor, Lord, 216 Winnington, 225, 227 Wishart, Sir J., 465 Witches, 126 Withers, General, 217 note*, 287 note * 2 N 55° INDEX Wogan, Chevalier (typical old Irish (1713)1 Harley on, 339 ; Bolingbroke loyalist), 220 note WoUaslon (Freethinker), 169 Wotton Bassett, 44 '•' World" Club, 281 note '' Wren, Sir Christopher (1710), 211 Wright, Sir Nathan (1701), Lord Chan- cellor, 141 ; (1705), removed, 180, 183 Writ, demand of, for Duke of Cambridge on, 469 and note, 485 YALDEN (Tatler), 286 Young (Poet), 92, 407 ZinzeNdorf, Count (Austrian envoy), character of, 48, 392 ; (1710), 206 (1712), 384, 38s THE END Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson <5^ Co. Edinburgh &* London