the Address, the old Tory resolution that no peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain or Europe if Spain or the West Indies were allotted to any branch of the Bourbons, and after a hot discussion succeeded in beating the Government by a majority of eight. In the House of Commons, on the other hand, the Government cominanded a large majority. Harley and St. John had now to consider what steps to take against this hostile coalition in the Lords. They determined, in the first place, to strike a heavy blow at Marlborough, and the report of a Commission which had been issued to examine into the public accounts afforded them an opportunity of doing so. Basing its assertion on the deposition of Sir Solomon Medina, who had contracted to supply the army in Flanders with bread, the Commission reported that the Duke had received on those contracts large sums of money, amounting on the whole to £63,000, while his secretary, Cardonnel, had also received large douceurs. It also declared that Marlborough had received 2 per cent. on all subsidies to foreign troops, amounting on the whole to £177,000. Acting on this report, the ministry stripped Marlborough of all his offices. Marlborough was so notoriously avaricious, and his character was so mean, that these charges seemed to the public probable; but, in fact, his reply was tolerably complete. The bread money had habitually been received by every commander-in-chief in Flanders, and had been expended chiefly in obtaining information as to the enemies' plans. The percentage on the subsidies was a free gift from the princes to whom they were paid, and Marlborough had not accepted them without the royal warrant. In the state of feeling at the time these excuses were not much regarded. Having got rid of their most powerful enemy, the ministry made use of the royal prerogative to neutralize the influence of the Lords. Twelve new Peers were created, which gave them a permanent majority. Command of the Having by these strong measures secured their position in Parliament, Harley and St. John proceeded with their negotiations. There was some difficulty with regard to the prosecution of the war while the Congress was sitting. The command had been given to the Duke of Ormond, a man of strong Jacobite principles; he was privately instructed not to undertake any offensive operations against the French, and he consequently informed Villars that he need not be afraid of attacks from the English, although the pressure which Eugene put upon him was so strong that he could not refuse to join in the siege of Quesnoy. His strange 1712] PEACE OF UTRECHT 921 lukewarm prosecution of the war, which seemed rather like friendship than hostility, did not pass unnoticed in England. But all complaints were answered by the assertion that the Queen would shortly lay before Parliament the conditions of a peace. In fact, she was only waiting till Philip of Spain should have made up his mind whether to accept an equivalent for the Spanish crown, and retain his rights on France, or remain where he was and renounce those The Queen claims. When the answer arrived, preferring the latter announces the alternative, the Queen went down to the House and June 6. explained the proposed treaty. Though violently opposed, addresses of confidence were carried. treaty. Peace of 1713. An armistice was at once declared, and the English troops ordered to separate from Eugene. It was not without a considerable feeling of disgrace that 12,000 English troops withdrew from their old comrades in arms; the English stipendiaries refused to obey the command, and remained with the Prince. A visit of St. John, now Lord Bolingbroke, to Paris, put the finishing stroke to the negotiation, and peace was virtually declared. The campaign, completed by Eugene alone, was unsuccessful. His defeat at Denain, and further successes won over the allies by Villars, inclined the new Emperor to look more favourably upon the peace. The treaties were ultimately signed at Utrecht on the 31st of March 1713. The Utrecht. Emperor's peace, by which the Electors of Cologne and Bavaria were reinstated, was postponed for a year, and was finally completed at Rastadt in the following March. It is certain that the terms gained were infinitely less advantageous than the lengthened and victorious war might have justified, or than those which could have been obtained at the negotiations of Gertruydenberg. The desertion of the Catalans, who had risen in insurrection chiefly at the instigation of the English, was undoubtedly an act of selfishness; and Government would even have sacrificed the advantages of the Methuen Treaty, and granted commercial terms far more in favour of France, had not the moneyed interest proved too strong for it. At the same time, though the Peace of Utrecht was not a glorious one, there is much to be said in its favour; the changed position of Europe, by the accession of Charles to the Imperial crown, had in truth put the questions at issue upon a totally new footing; it would have been quite as disadvantageous to the general European balance that Spain and Austria should have been joined in the hands of the Imperial house as that Spain and France should have been in the hands of the Bourbon Princes. After the close of the great war, the question of succession, rendered more pressing by the failing health of the The succession. Queen, came prominently forward. In the midst of the negotiations the Pretender had written a letter to Queen Anne, and Bolingbroke had been throughout in correspondence with him. It is difficult to determine how far Harley was really Harley's conduct. views. mixed up in the plot of changing the succession. That he had frequently expressed himself as friendly to the Pretender is certain; but his indolence in business, his constant difficulty in making up his mind, and his love of intrigue, prevented him from taking any strong or definite line in the scheme for the Stuart restoraBolingbroke's tion. With Bolingbroke the case was different. He was unaffected by any Church views, for he did not believe in Christianity; he knew that the part he had already played had rendered him obnoxious to the Elector of Hanover, he had therefore little hope of office after the Queen's death. On the other hand, he was certain of being a trusted minister of the new Stuart king. To help him in the Cabinet he had Brumley, Ormond, and probably Harcourt. But for the success of his plan extreme care was necessary; for the general feeling of the country, though Tory and High Church, was nevertheless Protestant and Hanoverian. An over-hasty declaration of Jacobitism would probably destroy his ministry. New Tory 1714. A new Parliament assembled in February. It was again Tory in its views; and it shows the real object of Bolingbroke's tactics, that the Pretender during the elections wrote to his friends to use their best efforts in favour of the Government. The new appointments also, which were made on the occurrence of vacancies by deaths, show the same Jacobite tendencies. Wyndam became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Athol and Mar two of the chief officials in Scotland. Nor was the Jacobite scheme confined to the appointment of ministers, more immediate practical measures for securing the change of Government were taken. The Ormond reorganizes the army. Cinque Ports were placed in the hands of Ormond, anů the entrance of a foreign force into England thus rendered easy; the army was remodelled, and the greater part of those troops which William had organized disbanded; while a plan was set on foot for obliging officers in the army known to be friendly to Marlborough to sell their commissions, which only failed because Harley, either through indolence, or because he really shrunk from supporting the Jacobites, neglected to have the funds 1714] JACOBITE INTRIGUES 923 ready for the purchase. The Whigs, on their side, also organized themselves for the coming crisis. General Stanhope was regarded as their leader. They seem to have been ready for all emergencies, intending even to employ force, if necessary, to secure the throne for the Hanoverian Elector. In spite of the caution of Bolingbroke, the scope of his plans began to be discovered, and it became necessary still further to blind the nation. Pretending to treat as libels all suggestions that he was aiming at the restoration of the Stuarts, he introduced a resolution that the Protestant succession was in no danger, but his credit was too far shaken to allow of a complete victory. The motion was indeed passed, but the small majority proved how large a section of the Tories were attached to the Hanoverian house, and were willing on that point to make common cause with the Whigs. That party were encouraged to take a further step. Thinking it of the last importance that the Electoral Prince should be in England to take possession of the inheritance of his house on Anne's death, they induced the Hanoverian minister to demand his writ of summons to the House of Lords as an English Peer in virtue of his title of Duke of Cambridge. The Government was thrown into great perplexity; to refuse it seemed to confess their Jacobite tendencies, to grant it was certain to enrage the Queen, who, like other childless sovereigns, was morbidly touchy about the succession, and it would moreover deal a heavy blow at their own plans. The writ was given, but accompanied by a letter from the Queen to the Electress Sophia, couched in such angry language that it is said to have caused the death of that princess, now far advanced in years. But a schism within its own body was gradually undermining the ministry. Harley, undecided upon all points, and strongly bound by old ties to the Low Church and dissenting interest, could not throw himself heartily into the vigorous policy of Bolingbroke; he was, moreover, jealous of the ever-increasing importance of his energetic colleague. The Schism Act, a measure conceived in the most exclusive High Church spirit, brought their rivalry to a crisis. It enacted that no person should keep a public or private school, or act as tutor, unless a member of the Church of England, and licensed by his Bishop, thus in fact throwing the whole education of the country into the hands of the Church. Harley, bred a dissenter, and always relying much on the support of the Nonconformist bodies, could not give it his hearty support. With his usual indecision, he played fast and loose with the Bill. But he had lost the ear of the Queen, Bolingbroke and Mrs. Masham had supplanted him, and the favourite so played upon the Queen's High Church propensities, that, after a hot altercation in the Council before the eyes of the Queen, she was induced to dismiss the Lord Treasurer. In the dismissal of his dilatory rival Bolingbroke saw the removal of the last obstacle to the completion of his schemes, and he was preparing to form a ministry wholly in the Jacobite interest, when the Queen's sudden illness upset all his plans. Had the matter come to the decision of arms, Marlborough, who had just returned from abroad, might, after the treatment he had received at the hand of the Tories, have been trusted to do his best for the Whigs. But, fortunately, the question was destined to meet with a peaceful solution. The Duke of Shrewsbury, in his time the leader of the Whigs of the Revolution, and subsequently guilty of treacherous correspondence with the Stuarts, continued his vacillating policy. The part he had taken in 1708, in persuading the Queen to rid herself of the Whigs, had given him the confidence of the Tory party. But he had never ceased to regret the one false step of his life, and was firmly attached to the Hanoverian succession. His position in the ministry enabled him for the time to become really master of the situation, and to thwart all the schemes of Bolingbroke. With this end in view he arranged a plan with the Dukes of Argyle and Somerset. As the Council was sitting to consider what steps to take in consequence of the Queen's illness, the two Dukes suddenly made their appearance, claimed their right as Privy Councillors, were by Shrewsbury's advice admitted, and at once proposed that the Queen, who had for the moment recovered consciousness, should be requested, in view of the coming crisis, to make the Duke of Shrewsbury Lord Treasurer. A deputation, of which the Duke was himself a member, went to her bedside, and persuaded her to give him the White Staff. Vigorous measures were at once taken. Troops were collected, the Elector summoned over, and everything was ready to withstand armed invasion, and to hasten the peaceful acceptance of the legal heir, when the Queen died on the 1st of August. The Queen's death. The Union. For several sessions the Parliament had been acting under the new title of the Parliament of Great Britain, the Union with Scotland having been completed in 1707. Quite at the beginning of the reign, in 1702, leave having been given both by the Scotch and English Parliaments, Commissioners had met to make arrangements for the Union, which had always been a favourite |