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HISTORY OF CABINETS.
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
FROM THE UNION WITH SCOTLAND
TO THE
ACQUISITION OF CANADA AND
BENGAL.
W. M. TORRENS.
illiam
Torrens
McCullagh
VOLUME 1.
LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & CO., LIMITED
13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.,
Publishers to the India Office.
1894.
WYMAN AND SONS, LIMITED),
PRINTERS,
LONDON AND REDHILL.
ๆ
be
0300
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIR ARTHUR JOHN OTWAY, BART.
,
THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED
BY
Reclear 7-21-26 NAP
HIS OLD AND FAITHFUL FRIEND,
+51
INTRODUCTION.
GOVERNMENT WITHOUT A CABINET.
1688-1714.
William of Orange-Parliament confers the Crown but retains the Sceptre--.
Division of Offices-Ministers but no Ministry--King attempts Legis-
lation-Queen Mary and her Advisers-Irish Forfeitures— Marl-
borough in the Tower-Triennial Act-Legislative Veto— Treaty of
Ryswick-Parliament Annuls Royal Grants-Accession of Anne-Gov-
ernment by Junto- Marlborough's Supremacy-Further Limitations of
the Prerogative—Union with Scotland-Rival Junto-Death of Right
Divine.
If the story of Administrative rule as it has come to be recog-
nised amongst us is to be faithfully told, it must be written from
the inside. The purpose and spirit of those who have from
time to time combined to bear the burthen of empire can only
be learned from what they have said or written one to another,
or to the few partakers of their confidence whose counsel and
aid they have severally found indispensable. The range of
original material, under all circumstances limited, dwindles
provokingly as we look back, and the historic nuggets worth
recovering from the obliterating sands of forgetfulness become
scarcer, though not less intrinsically valuable, as we ascend the
stream. But, happily, all the descendants of those who have
borne an eminent part in affairs have not scattered the relics
and records of their dead, and from private collections and
VOL. I.
B
2
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
public archives we may gradually find our way to a just esti-
mate of Ministries gone by.
From the dark winter's night when James II. fled by the
water-gate from his Palace of Whitehall, to the summer morning
when the last of his House that wore a crown sank peacefully
to rest at Kensington, the chroniclers count near five-and-twenty
years, and impatient questioners of the past are given to ante-
date the form of Government under which our country has
since then grown from a secondary island realm to be the
greatest Empire in the world, as if the administrative power
had come into being with the advent of the Stadtholder-King,
and had arrived at maturity under Godolphin and Harley. But,
like most other things that have won and kept a lasting hold of
national confidence and respect, government by Cabinet was
not a cunning device aforethought, or announced as a discovery
on or about a particular day in the almanac. No group or body
of advisers deserving that distinctive appellation is recognisable
in the reign of William or of Anne. Neither during the interreg-
num, when the transfer of the Crown was pending, nor after its
legislative disposal, was there any effective combination of in-
fluential men in office capable of exercising the duties and
responsibilities of executive rule.
After long and anxious deliberation, the Prince of Orange
undertook to lead the nobility and gentry in resisting grievous
and glaring abuses of prerogative by their hereditary Sovereign.
But it soon became plain that he did not mean what they
meant, and that they meant what he did not mean. The grand-
son of Charles I. and the son-in-law of James II., he had for
years looked forward to his wife's accession to her father's
throne, and, careful to guard her title as heiress presumptive, he
had strained to the utmost his influence in 1680 with his
personal friends in England to oppose the Exclusion Bill.
Mary had, moreover, voluntarily engaged never to accept any
position or exercise any authority that might come to her by
inheritance incompatible with the obedience she owed him as
KING OR REGENT?
3
his wife, and when, by circumstances none could have foreseen,
he found himself at Windsor at the head of an unopposed army,
and was hailed as the deliverer of the nation, he felt, no doubt,
that the great opportunity of his life was come, and that not
merely a second Stadtholderate was within his reach, but an
ancient Crown. Discussion for a time prevailed as to whether he
should be king or regent, to which he put an end by saying he
was ready to return to his own land, but that he would stay in
England only if recognised as Sovereign. Sooner than palter
with their fugitive lord, or begin a second time a Commonwealth,
the majority of the Convention agreed to offer him the Throne,
with the granddaughter of Charles I. for Queen Consort; and
the oath of allegiance to King James by right Divine was trans-
formed by Statute into one of fealty to William and Mary.
Parliament thus conferred the Crown, but William soon found
that they meant to retain the sceptre.
In the memorable decision neither Peers nor Representatives
of Ireland or Scotland had any voice, and their appendant
Parliaments could only reiterate the resolution passed at West-
minster. There existed at the time but one hundred and
seventy-six English Peers, of whom one hundred and ten only 1
were present in the Convention; and, making allowance for
minors, invalids, and those who were abroad, it may be taken
that one third of the Lords spiritual and temporal were absent.?
Instead of definite stipulations by Parliament and guarantees
for the observance of explicit laws on the part of the Prince,
Somers, in the Declaration of Rights, put together an exhaus-
tive enumeration of the misdemeanours and misuses of preroga-
tive that had compelled the deposing of James, and there, with
certain compliments to the Prince, he left it. It was, in fact, a
declaration of wrongs, not of rights. Its greatest eulogist says
that it made nothing law which was not law before.3
1
MSS. of House of Lords in 12th Rept. Hist. MSS. Com.
2 See Lords' Journals, January and February, 1689.
3 Macaulay's “ Hist.," Chap. X.
B?
4
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
After twelve years of troubled dreaming of kingship, it would
have been strange if, on waking at Windsor, William had
doubted his being at last a monarch, even as his predecessors
had been. Was not the audible expression of his will to be
indispensable in the making of any new law,-a warrant in his
name indispensable in the enforcing of any old one? Was he
not henceforth to be the fountain of honour, the giver of office,
the paymaster of service—ecclesiastical, civil, and military? In
the first days of power, was it not natural that he should think
of those whom he knew best? Natural enough ; but the prefer-
ence cost him dear. On the foreign members of his staff he con-
ferred high rank and lucrative office. Count Bentinck was made
Groom of the Stole and Earl of Portland, Marshal Schomberg
was made Master-General of the Ordnance and created a duke,
and Henry de Nassau Auverquerque, his uncle's natural son,
Master of the Horse, and subsequently Earl of Grantham;
while Generals Rouvigny and Ginckel had military commands
and Irish peerages, and Count Zuylestein had honours culmi-
nating in the Earldom of Rochford.
The conduct of Foreign Affairs had always been regarded as
the peculiar function of the Sovereign. Charles I. had been as
absolute as Elizabeth in diplomacy, and no branch of the prero-
gative was clutched more exclusively by Cromwell. Even
indolent and idle Charles II. took the trouble of choosing for
himself his representatives abroad, read their despatches, and
snubbed Ambassadors who presumed to deviate from instruc-
tions. For expostulating against too easy compliance with
French intrigues, Sir G. Downing was sharply reproved,—“I
have seen all your letters to my Lord Arlington, and have
thought fit to send you my last mind upon the hinge of your
whole negotiations, and in my own hand, that you may know it
is your part to obey punctually my orders, instead of putting
yourself to the trouble of finding reasons why you do not do
so."1 William believed himself more fit than any of thosc about
From Whitehall, 16th January, 1672.–Stowe MSS.
DISTRIBUTION OF OFFICES.
5
him to have charge of the heirlooms of Foreign policy and war,
and he resolved to retain them in his own hands. For the rest,
he was willing to let the triumphant nobles who had invited
him over, and who possessed controlling influence in Parlia-
ment, to divide amongst them the other trusts and dignities of
State. Halifax, pre-eminent in attainments and abilities, ex-
pected to be President of the Council, and he was but half
satisfied with the Privy Seal. But Danby's claims were para-
mount, for without his decisive support William probably would
not have come, or, if he had, Nottingham and Godolphin would
hardly have given him theirs. He had been Lord Treasurer
under Charles II., and longed to resume irresponsible control
over the finances. But for that very reason, as well as from a
sense of his incurable unpopularity, neither King nor future
colleagues would agree. He was fain to acquiesce in the Lord
Presidency, with a marquisate and a dukedom in perspective.
Herbert, who had convoyed William to Torbay, was inortified at
being refused the Admiralty on account of his depraved habits,
and he was only appeased by a grant of 3,000 acres in Cam-
bridgeshire and the title of viscount. Pembroke, an upright
and fearless man, whose shortcoming in Royal eyes was his
lack of ambition, became First Lord, and Admiral Russell
Treasurer of the Navy. Churchill, whose change of sides at a
critical moment had been of signal importance, was made
Lieutenant-General and Earl of Marlborough. On wavering
Shrewsbury and unyielding Nottingham devolved the duties
of Secretaries of State, and, without actual quarrel, they con-
trived to perform their respective functions independently.
To three eminent Judges of the Common Law was confided
the custody of the Great Seal, that James fancied he had
drowned in the Thames; and the Treasury being put in
commission, Mordaunt and Delamere insisted on having the
first and second places at the Board, for which they were
strangely unfitted, Godolphin, as Junior Lord, doing the
business of the department. Devonshire became Lord Steward,
6
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and Dorset Lord Chamberlain, with Sir J. Lowther for his
Deputy.
Parliament, which had thrown away the opportunity at the
Restoration of asserting a paramount control in taxation and
finance, resolved not to do so again. To the surprise and
chagrin of William, the Civil List and the Estimates of the
various departments of State were voted for twelve months
only. The Commons had the power of the purse, and they
proved inexorable in their determination to keep it. His
income as Prince of Orange and Stadtholder was £63,000 a-
year, and the Commons thought they were behaving hand-
somely in multiplying that sum by ten. But were the new
officials a Cabinet ? When summoned to the Royal Closet, it
was to afford information and receive instructions. No record
was made of their assembling, and in Westminster Hall nobody
knew for certain who came thither.1 In the administration of
the three not yet united Kingdoms, as in the Seven United
Provinces, William was resolved there should be no Prime
Minister. Every other dignity and title is spoken of freely in
the confidential letters of the time, but this is never mentioned,
nor does the institution of a Cabinet seem to have been
thought of. William would ask no man to form a Government
for him, for he wanted Ministers, not a Ministry.
A Cabinet would have been invaluable to a Prince in his
position, not only to guard him from sanctioning impulsively
advice which the majority of his Ministers in Parliament did
not scruple to overbear, but because, when protest or upbraiding
came from either House in the gilt-edged paraphrase of an
Address, it would have been certain to take the shape of com-
plaint against his Cabinet Councillors, instead of by direct impli-
cation against him. The evasion resorted to of laying the blame
on
“whoever might have given wrong advice” without fixing
the burthen of responsibility anywhere, was too thin to deceive
the most careless observer. Equally futile and foolish has been
1 Luttrell's Diary.
MINISTERS BUT NO MINISTRY.
7
1
the pretence set up later of saying that the undisguised dissen-
sions in the Royal Closet were only like what our own day has
excused under the title of open questions. In our sense of the
term, open questions did not exist, for the best of all reasons-
that Closet differences under the seal of confidence, and the
obligation to act together on the decision taken, were practically
unknown. With the exception of the Toleration Act, which
was, after all, rather the waving of an oriflamme than the initia-
tion of a policy, few important acts of legislation were unani-
mously approved by holders of high office.
Though mainly occupied with military and foreign affairs,
William's superior energy of character led him to meddle per-
sonally in the administration of various departments. When
complaints reached him of delays in paying the troops, he would
ride down to the Treasury and inquire into the cause, and wait
until he saw the order issued which the public service required.
It is easy to imagine how attempts to assert his right to a per-
sonal share in departmental business must have been resented.
Had noblemen and gentlemen risked their heads and imperilled
their estates to be called to book in this fashion by a reticent
and overbearing Dutchman?
Kingcraft, by Divine Right, implied that the Sovereign was
the thinking head of the State. Parliaments were told by
Elizabeth that their function lay in developing measures she
laid before them, and the initiative in legislation was claimed by
the Stuarts to the last. Dreaming at first that the Royal garb
turned inside out invested him with undiminished powers,
William hastily undertook to reorganise the Church by enabling
its preferments to be shared by Nonconformists. Nottingham
in his name introduced a Bill for that purpose, without the
approval of other Ministers. Shrewsbury and Carmarthen dis-
dained compliance; walked out of the House of Lords on the
first critical division, and sanctioned the subsequent resistance
that caused the Measure to be laid aside.
1 Luttrell's Diary, II., 30.
8
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
William chafed and fumed a while, and then submitted, for he
had no choice. The fine gold of his popularity grew dim, and
as yet he had achieved nothing to regild the prestige of his
name. He summoned the officials to Kensington, and told them
he meant to retire into Holland, leaving the Queen to try what
she could do where he had failed. All concurred in deprecating
such a design, and held out hopes of accommodation. He gave
way, but when he announced his intention of putting himself
at the head of the army in Ireland, objections to his quitting the
capital arose. Some were even for moving Addresses in both
Houses, upon the ground that he ought not to risk his life in the
field, or his health in a damp climate.
“They are afraid," he wrote to Bentinck, “to lose their tool
before they have done their work; as to their friendship, you
know what it is worth." His unaccustomed bondage grew so
irksome that he bethought him of more than one device for
loosening if not breaking it. If his wishes were neglected, or
baffled, when expressed at Kensington, how would they be treated
when received from a distant camp? The Queen, whom he had
jealously excluded from all share in the Executive, must be in-
vested with plenary powers of rule in his absence, not that
she was likely to be able to assert such authority, but that its
failure would be less mortifying in her hands than in his own.
A Special Act was passed accordingly. He asked his Consort
to choose whether, in his absence, all should be left to the Privy
Council, or they should have directions to refer everything to
her. She said the two things were the same, for being wholly a
stranger to business they must do all. On the eve of his de-
parture? the nine Officers of State were summoned to Whitehall,
and the Queen and Government committed to their care. To
her it was an exigency for which she felt herself unequal; for
those in whom she must confide were known to differ widely
among themselves, as did the more numerous members of the
1 To Portland, 20th January, 1690.
2 2nd June, 1690.
COUNCIL OF NINE.
9
Privy Council, of which it has sometimes been imagined that
they were a Committee; though nothing is more certain than
that they were neither nominated by, nor held responsible to,
them.
With all her sense of inexperience in affairs, Mary was not
blinded by the airs of departmental wisdom likely to be assumed
by more than one of her several advisers. “ Carmarthen was the
person the King had particularly recommended to me, and he
was one to whom I must ever own great obligations ; yet of a
temper I can never like. Devonshire the King had likewise
recommended as one who might be trusted and must be com-
plimented; Dorset, too lazy to give himself the trouble of
business, so of little use; Pembroke as mad as most of his
family, though very good-natured and a man of honour, but not
very steady. Nottingham was suspected by some as not true
to the Government, though, in the post he has, he must do
all. The King believed him an honest man, though he was
thought too violent for his party. Mordaunt is mad, and his
wife, who is madder, governs him. I know him deeply engaged
in Scotland, and not much to be trusted ; yet he must know all.
I will say nothing of Marlborough, because 'tis he I could say
the most of. Sir John Lowther, a very honest but weak man;
Admiral Russell was most recommended to me for sincerity, yet
he has his faults.” 2
Of this Council of Public Safety, in the most critical hours of
the new reign, but three had signed the Invitation from which it
sprang, while as many were half suspected of looking back unto
Egypt. Even the perplexed Queen confessed the want of unity
of purpose and tendency that prevailed among her severally
independent Councillors. How the distraction was held within
control and by whose firmness the Government was preserved
from wreck, we may conjecture, but we shall probably never
know. William's advice was that in the hour of need his trem-
1 Afterwards Peterborough.
2 Diary of Queen Mary.
IO
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
bling consort should be guided rather by Carmarthen than any
of the rest. More perhaps than any other man, he had con-
tributed to make her Queen of England ; and as little certainly
as any man he could afford that she should be discrowned.
With great knowledge and courage he combined great insight
into the motives of others, and a habitual reticence that accounted
in no small degree for their distrust and aversion. Saturnine,
money-making, and cynical, he took little heed of Mary's filial
or conjugal unhappiness.
The anxieties of Mary during the panic caused by the defeat
of Beachy Head, and her impatience for her husband's return
from Ireland after the victory of the Boyne, cqually arose from
the distracted counsels given her. For an hour they seemed
to agree with spirit, but she soon saw them relapse into their
normal condition of difference and disagreement. She had
thought at first the characteristics given of them by William
rather morbid, but she admitted her error. “I thought you had
given me wrong characters of men, but I now see they answer
your expectation of being as little of a mind as of a body.” 1
Before leaving Dublin, William appointed Sidney and Con-
ingsby Lords Justices, and to them confided the civil administra-
tion of the Kingdom, with Ginckel for General and Sir C. Porter,
an eminent practitioner from Lincoln's Inn, for Chancellor.
Whispers early prevailed at Court that the personal favourites
of the King would make their fortunes by grants out of the
Irish forfeitures. The struggle was not over ; but already Min-
isters heard rumours of ill augury; and, half incredulous, learned
that without their privity vast appropriations were being made
of estates in Ireland. Anxious for his return, they were in no
mood to raise in correspondence a controversy with William on
the subject; and they were willing probably to treat the sinister
reports as exaggerated. But Mary had reasons of her own for
fearing their truth. She was diffident in offering advice, timid
and self-effacing to a fault. But ten years' experience of her
1 To the King, July, 1690.
MARLBOROUGH IN THE TOWER.
II
husband's ways and weaknesses prompted her to depart from her
usual reserve ; and inspired a warning to which it had been well
for his reputation if he had given heed, “ I have been desired
to beg you not to be too quick in parting with confiscated estates,
but consider whether you will not keep some for public schools
to instruct the poor Irish. For my part, I must needs say that
I think you would do very well if you would consider what care
can be taken of the poor souls there, if you will give me leave
to say so, after the great deliverance you have had.”i William
gave no explanation of his purpose ; and on his return the in-
vidious topic was allowed to sleep.
Next year the Queen was again left alone to preside in the
meetings of ministers at Kensington, and to seek advice day
by day from each of them on affairs of his special department.
She bore herself worthily amid a sea of troubles. Perplexity
and anxiety breathe in every page of her journals and letters.
She saw all those she was to trust, together by the ears ; and a
general peevishness in them all except Sidney.” ?
In a moment of panic at rumours of a plot, Marlborough was
dismissed from his employments and committed to the Tower.
To justify the proceeding, an obscure informer named Young
was released from Newgate, where he lay on charges of perjury
and forgery, to make the required affidavit. Devonshire, Brad-
ford, and Montagu refused in Council to sign the warrant for
the General's committal; and Bradford (Treasurer of the House-
hold), to mark his sense of the transaction, visited Marlborough
in captivity. At first there was difficulty in finding eligible
bail, but at length Shrewsbury, Burlington, Carbery, and Halifax,
shocked at the humiliation of such a man, offered, and could not
be refused. An intercepted letter, in which the Earl had reflected
on the King's partiality to the Dutch, is said by Burnet to have
been the immediate cause of Marlborough's arrest, but no distinct
charge was ever publicly stated. Such an exercise of the pre-
1
To the King, 25th July, 1690.
? Diary of the Queen.
I2
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
rogative touched too nearly the self-interest of all who were
engaged in public employment. To what end had they risked
lives and fortunes to bring about a Revolution if without reason
assignable, or at least without reason assigned, the foremost of
them might be thus cashiered and incarcerated ? Russell, though
differing in party from Marlborough, lived with him on terms of
intimacy and confidence. He regarded his dismissal as little
short of an affront put upon himself, and in no measured terms
he rated his Majesty for thus treating one of those who had
"put the Crown upon his head.” He said he would go no
more to sea or take any responsibility under a Government
in which he could not confide. Burnet tried to soften his ill-
humour, but, as he owned, did not succeed. After some
weeks in the Tower, the truth was made plain, and Marl-
borough was set free, with due expressions of regret. But
Joseph's official coat of many colours had meantime been
parted among less notable comrades. A Bill met with much
favour providing new securities against malicious or arbitrary
charges of treason, the most valuable of which were that in future
the accused should be entitled to a copy of the indictment, that
witnesses should be heard in his defence upon oath, and that no
overt act should be provable upon the trial which had not been
set forth in the indictment. The old principle of common law
was confirmed specifically, that no man should be adjudged
guilty of treason as a principal or accomplice, save on the con-
current oaths of two witnesses. The King urged the adoption
of a new oath of abjuration, but the majority of the Commons
were not in the mood for further ineasures of sectarian exclusion,
and the project was abandoned. One by one the powers of the
prerogative, capable of being used oppressively, were shorn
away ; and the Stadtholder more than ever felt that if the chiefs
of Parliament had given him a crown they meant to retain the
sceptre. •
The phrase " Cabinet Council” was sometimes applied to
those who were summoned to confer together on affairs of
A LEGISLATIVE UNION.
13
moment at the instance of the King, and generally in his pre-
sence. But in its nature it was essentially a consultative, not an
administrative body. It had no separate or permanent head,
and homogeneity of opinions upon the great questions of the
day does not appear to have been required; while the conven-
tional liability to be summoned was confessedly dependent upon
the pleasure of the Crown, varying and shifting as it did from
time to time. To be named a Privy Councillor by announce-
ment in the Gazette was the conferring of high political rank for
life, and, though like the Lieutenancies of Counties or Commis-
sions of the Peace, it might be put an end to by the summary
and irresponsible act of the Sovereign, no man was, in point of
fact, divested of it save for some offence given to the Court, or
for public misconduct so called. William is believed to have
cherished from the first the idea of a legislative union of the
three Kingdoms. Whatever were his faults or prejudices, sec-
tarian bigotry was not amongst them; and he was too sagacious
not to covet the allegiance of the Catholic community by amnesty
to their territorial chiefs and freedom of intercourse to the traders
in their towns. If the forfeited estates were not to be restored
they might be redistributed, as had been done in Ulster a
century before, among gentry, mesne tenants and yeomanry,
and thus the graduated elements of middle-class life, sorely
needed, would have been engrafted in social organisation. But
his courtiers had other views. They had no tu-morrow. They
cared nothing for what might happen in time to come, or of the
disastrous effect of a system of absenteeism, disfranchisement,
and official monopoly. The Stadtholder King was forced, how-
ever, to abandon his dream of legislative tri-union; and was
beguiled into giving over the fruits of victory in civil war to the
flatterers and intriguers about him.
Sidney, when proceeding to Ireland as Viceroy, was attended
by a brilliant retinue, and took Althorpe on his way. The rumour
thence arose that Sunderland would succeed his nephew in con-
fidential office at Whitehall, and the Queen was persuaded to
14
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
acquiesce in an order releasing the Earl from his liability to re-
place eight thousand ounces of silver taken by him from the
Jewel Office in 1688, and carried beyond sea. The instrument
passed the Treasury, but was probably never submitted to the
majority of those in high office who disliked and feared him.
In the Session of 1692-3 both wings of Opposition flapped
the infirm Executive in the face for its obvious indecision in
the orders to the Fleet regarding a descent on the French coast
which had failed. Foley and Musgrave were cheered by the
country gentlemen when they scoffed at the impotence of what
they termed a "cabal” that usurped the authority of the Privy
Council which in old times used, they said, to be consulted on
all great affairs. Foley urged that the great affairs of Govern-
ment for some time past had been unsuccessfully managed,
and that the King should be moved for the future to employ
men of known integrity and fidelity. He would have every
Minister put his signature for or against the advice to be acted
upon. Strickland said he could not tell where it was we were
wounded, but he would not have the management in such hands
for the future. This could not be if we had a Cabinet Council.
Waller said Cabinet Council” was not to be found in our law
books. We knew it not before, we took it for a nick-name.
Temple said all Governments reduced their Executive to a few.
The Dutch did so, and the French King's Councillors were but
three. The question proposed was: that the King be advised
that all matters of State should be considered in the Privy
Council, and that the management of them by a "cabal” was
dangerous. Lowther asked what would foreigners think of such
a debate ? It was a familiar pleasantry among envoys resident
here that England was the safest place for diplomatists, for
once a year Parliament sat, when everything of moment was dis-
closed. For his own part, he would often rather be at home, but
the resolution for referring everything to the entire Privy Council
he thought wholly impracticable in the way of business. The
resolution was not put to a division, and it does not appear in
TRIENNIAL ACT.
15
the journals. The ill-humour of the hour evaporated in the
cloud of censure on administrative mismanagement. Nobody
as yet clearly saw his way to commute an ever-varying crowd of
Privy Councillors in the tapestried closet at Kensington for a
co-optative board sitting at the Cockpit without the presence of
the King
A plausible resource of opposition lay in attack on the noto-
riety of corruption and in demands for the shortening of Parlia-
ments. Never were ingredients better compounded for a stimu-
lating popular draught. The cry went well, and its influence did
not cease till it had carried the Triennial Act. If William could
not initiate legislative measures to his mind, he hoped to be able
to modify or baffle those he disliked by securing a sufficient
number of adherents in each House who would ratify and pro-
mote his ever-widening plans of Continental alliance and inter-
vention. From of old the duration of Parliaments was for the
life of the King, save when he chose to resort to a Dissolution ;
but a monarch like William was less likely every year to indulge
in a prerogative whereby his investments in senatorial opinion
must be often thrown away. A second Triennial Bill was de-
bated in the Commons with no little heat, but 210 to 132 were
for reading it a second time, and it passed through Committee
without alteration. But the King's antipathy was inappeasable,
and the question arose how its further progress could be ar-
rested and the difficulty eluded of his being obliged to give it
his veto or assent.
Many Tories favoured a Triennial Bill, and wealthy Whigs a
Place Bill, which was passed almost unanimously in the Lower
House, and only rejected in the Upper by three. Marlborough
and Prince George of Denmark were in the minority, and neither
Shrewsbury nor Carmarthen voted. The King, mortified at
the proposal of changes so vital, came down to the House, and
from his gilded and curtained box listened to the debates. But
16 Parl. Hist.," 21st Nov., 1692.
? Lords' Journals, 3rd Jan., 1693.
16
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the Peers were equally balanced, and, in spite of William's known
aversion, Pembroke, Carmarthen, and even Burnet, personally
registered their approval. "You will live to repent the part
you are taking in this matter,"1 said his Majesty. For the time
the Bill was lost, but the question would not die.
The second Place Bill differed materially from the first in not
being retrospective. It disabled all who should take office after
1694 from sitting or voting. The Lords added "unless again
chosen”; and the Commons agreed to an amendment which
changed obviously the scope of the measure. William still
refused to yield, and formally laid aside the Bill.2 The Lower
House broke forth in loud murmurings, and resolved that “who-
cver advised the King not to give the Royal assent was an
enemy to their Majesties and the Kingdom.” Had there
been a recognised Cabinet, the Commons could not have helped
denouncing them; and had such a Council possessed an ac-
knowledged head, they could not have avoided impugning him.
In truth, there was neither Cabinet nor Prime Minister to stand
between Sovereign and Parliament; but such a protest against
the exercise of the Veto was too serious to be forgotten.
The answer of William to an angry address was conciliatory
but evasive. Foley, as Leader of the Opposition, declared that
though his Majesty professed to have a great regard for the
Constitution, he appeared not to understand its nature, which
he might take to be to reject Bills of ever so just grievances.
He therefore moved an Address for a further answer, which a
majority shrank from adopting, as tending to an open collision
between Crown and Commons, an extremity for which few were
prepared. Nobody spoke or thought of what we should call a
change of Ministry in consequence of this refusal to agree with
Parliament, for the best of all reasons, that no such authority,
responsible for the conduct of the Sovereign, then existed.
Parliament had clearly thc power to pass undiscriminating
1 Danby's “ Letters," Introduction, 1710.
25th Jan., 1694.
2
DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS.
1.7
Place Bills, and the Monarch had as clearly the legal powers
to reject them. The device for bringing the three branches of
the Legislature into accord had not yet been discovered ; and if
we would read history aright, we must not interpolate political
facts or anticipate Constitutional progress.
A third Place Bill was rejected in the Commons by 142 to 75,
and there ended the futile controversy.
Before again quitting England for the camp, William felt it
indispensable to reinforce the Civil Government, which from its
total want of unity had proved signally incapable of guiding or
controlling either House of Parliament. He once more resorted
to Shrewsbury for help, but found him alike inaccessible to
flattery and expostulation. His health, he averred, and perhaps
believed, would not permit him to resume the labours of Sec-
retary of State, and his disenchantment with public ambition
was such, that if he had a son, he would sooner bring him up to
the business of a hangman than to that of a politician. But
female influences prevailed after all ; and, with a dukedom, he
once more accepted the Seals ;' his first act being to lay upon the
table a Bill, concerted with his friend Lord Keeper Somers,
limiting the duration of the existing and every future English
Parliament to three years. The King gave way, and the mea-
sure became law at the end of the Session. The conferences in
presence of the Queen at Kensington during the King's absence
abroad were as much as ever proofs of the want of Ministerial
unity. There was no doubt a fluctuating agreement as to who
should be summoned, or who should not. But, as the distinction
was neither definitely nor inflexibly marked, and the practice in
point of fact suffered to grow up gradually, it bore upon it the
irregularities of feature incident to things that owe their ultimate
form to circumstance and usage, and that are fashioned by
shifting needs rather than in conformity with any theory or plan
In the letters from the new Secretary of State to the King at
Loo, the expression Cabinet Council sometimes occurs, but with-
1 March, 1694.
VOL. I.
С
18
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
out any indication of who took part. Great doubts existed in
Shrewsbury's mind as to the subjects on which they were to be
allowed to confer, and how far it was desirable during the sum-
mer to call them together at all.
The Session of 1696 witnessed the exercise once more of the
enfeebled but not yet extinguished Prerogative of Veto. A Bill
prescribing a property qualification for Members of Parliament
of £500 a year and other tests of eligibility being passed by
both Houses, was laid aside by the King when giving his assent
to various projects of law. A resolution of censure on those
who had advised him was therefore proposed in the Commons;
but, lest it should lead to a quarrel with the King, a plot against
whose life had recently been discovered, it was rejected by a
large majority,' and Parliament was prorogued. Misconstruing,
however, their forbearance, William wrote from Breda urging
the re-assembling of Parliament to authorise the Treasury to
accept payment of taxes in guineas at twenty-four or twenty-
five shillings. “Things had come to such a pass that Govern-
ment must not be too scrupulous; if money were not soon found
to pay and feed the troops abroad, all would be lost.” But no
casual triumphs in the field numbed the painful sense of dis-
content at the prolongation of the war. Neither Godolphin's
skill in finance nor Montagu's dexterity in debate could persuade
the Commons to sanction an expenditure daily shown to be
profitless and endless ; and every day Royal demands for further
supplies grew more importunate and more impossible. After
seven years spent in costly and sanguinary war, France as well
as England sighed for peace. William was the last convert to
its necessity; but finding the difficulties daily increasing of
supplies to maintain his often vanquished troops in Flanders,
and weary of humiliating appeals to his English Ministers to
combine for the maintenance of a crusade that seemed intermin-
able, he opened negotiations early in 1697, which resulted in the
? 24th April, 1696,
2 To Shrewsbury, 4th June, 1696
SUNDERLAND RESIGNS.
19
Treaty of Ryswick. His title to the throne of the three King-
doms was formally acknowledged by Louis XIV.; and after a
vain protest on their behalf, the French and German Protestants
were left to their fate. The exiled Stuarts were still to be
treated with the honours of Royalty, but France would no longer
furnish them with the means of conspiracy, or the weapons of
invasion ; while Mary of Modena was guaranteed the payment
of £50,000 a year from the English Treasury, not only as her
jointure, but during the lifetime of James, on the fantastic plea
that he was henceforth to be reckoned as dead to the nation.
Territorially, England acquired nothing, and, in the main, things
were restored to the footing on which they stood at the Peace of
Nimeguen. The people generally were glad to see an end put
to the struggle, and on his return from Holland in November,
the King was received by the populace with more good humour
than ordinarily. But no pretence of unity in Council was made
respecting the Treaty, and no abstinence of reproach was affected
by those who were not consulted towards those who were privy
to it. Sunderland, in a fit of terror at being called to account in
Parliament, where his enemies were legion, resigned the Gold
Key of Chamberlain ; while Shrewsbury, disdainful of opinion,
from his retreat at Eyforth, whence he directed the business of
his office through his deputy Vernon, vainly advised that, to
please the King, Sunderland should be brought back.
Portland, with a splendid retinue, the cost of which he bore
at his own expense, was sent to Versailles to realise befittingly
the recognition of his master as one of the crowned kings of
Christendom. While there he was sounded on a secret com-
pact regarding the Spanish succession in the probable event of
the death of the King of Spain. Some months later the project
was circumstantially laid before William, during his residence
at Loo, by Count Tallard; and the outlines were agreed on of
what eventually became known as the Partition Treaty, which
materially modified the map of Europe recently settled at
i Burnet.
C 2
20
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Ryswick. The design was communicated, under the seal of
the strictest confidence, by William to Chancellor Somers, with
permission to confer only with such few as he might deem
indispensable.
"If it be fit this negociation should be carried on, there is no
time to be lost, and you will send me the full powers under
the Great Seal, with the names in blank, to treat with Count
Tallard. I believe that this may be done secretly, and that
none but Vernon and those to whom you may communicate it,
may have knowledge of it; so that the clerks who are to write
the warrant and the full powers may not know what it is.
According to all intelligence, the King of Spain cannot outlive
the month of October, and the least accident may carry him
off any day. Be always assured of my friendship.-WILLIAM
REX.” 1
There cannot be a more signal proof of the non-existence of
the political mechanism which popularly has come to be called
the Government-or Cabinet--than the fact that William nego-
tiated and concluded the Partition Treaty without the know-
ledge of the majority of his Ministers. Daring as he was in the
pursuit of his life-long schemes of foreign policy, he would
never have committed himself to an act so important and so
incapable of ultimate concealment, had he supposed that it
would be looked upon as a breach of constitutional faith.
Somers was, moreover, the last man who, to gratify regal whim,
would have become a party to an act that against envious
and able rivals in the Lords he could not defend. The sudden
and clandestine conclusion of the Treaty was indeed impugned
as impolitic, and Somers provoked the jealousy of more than
one member of his own party by his reticence during the
affair. But it was
never seriously contended that he had
broken any actual or implied confidence with the other holders
of high office. He consulted Orford, Montagu, and Shrews-
bury before formally acquiescing in what he was asked to do.
i From Lop, August, 1698.
TREATY OF RYSWICK.
21
They concurred in warning the King that “there was a great
deadness and want of spirit in the nation, who were not dis-
posed to enter into a new war, and that the people seemed to
be tired of taxes, as was seen in the late elections.” They
presumed his Majesty would not think of naming Commis-
sioners in the matter who were not English born or naturalised
subjects; but before their response was received, the Treaty
had been signed by Portland and Sir J. Williamson, Pensionary
Heinsius and Count Tallard; the utmost secrecy being ob-
served with the view of keeping the Courts of Vienna and
Madrid in the dark, The Confederate Powers mutually en-
gaged that on the death of Charles II., Naples, Sicily, and
Guipuscoa, without any reference to the will of their inhabi-
tants, were to be severed from the Spanish Monarchy and
added to that of France, as the price of the Dauphin's renun-
ciation of heirship to a second Bourbon Crown.
The distrust, if not disdain, manifested by William for the
other chiefs of departments, who were kept in ignorance of a
negotiation that when complete might commit the country to
another European war, hardly admits of explanation, save upon
the ground that collectively they were recognised as possessing
no Executive voice or responsibility ; and that the conduct of
affairs, diplomatic and military, was still left in the Sovereign's
hands. Had there been a Cabinet, it would have been the mani-
fest duty of the Chancellor and Secretary of State to call its
inembers together and consult them before complying with
the singular requisition thus made; and if they had not been
consulted on a matter of such moment, it would have been the
duty of the contemned majority to resign. It does not appear
that any of them thought of doing so. A sense of their
growing weakness and unpopularity contributed probably to
their acquiescence in William's foreign policy and their sub-
mission to the querulous parsimony that showed itself in the
acts of the new Parliament. Godolphin had retired from the
1
4th September, 1698, at Loo.
22
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Treasury in despair of being able to baffle the devices for
jobbing whereby he was daily beset, and had made way for
Montagu, whose head was turned by his elevation and whose
vanity provoked incessant ridicule and censure by his osten-
tatious mode of living. His inexhaustible fluency of speech
failed to convince or control the Tories led by Harley, who
were now preponderant, and in a sudden misgiving of displace-
ment he conferred the Tellership of the Exchequer, worth
£5,000 a year for life, on his brother, reserving privately the
bulk of the sinecure income to himself. Opposition took
William at his word, that the Treaty of Loo had secured the
peace of Europe ; and insisted, therefore, that two-thirds of
the army should be disbanded, and that the Blue Dutch
Guards should be sent home. William expostulated eagerly
and angrily, but in vain; and at length prepared a farewell
Speech from the Throne, full of bitter reproaches, which Somers,
with difficulty, dissuaded him from delivering. But Vernon
was unable to induce the Commons to vote more than seven
thousand infantry in the Mutiny Bill; and the only legislative
sop to commercial discontent out of doors was the embodiment
in statutable form of a promise by William that he would
do all in his power to put down the woollen manufacture in
Ireland.
New difficulties arose at the industrial monopoly thus de-
creed. The inefficiency of Lord Winchester as one of the
Lords Justices left the conduct of provincial affairs entirely
in the hands of Galway, who favoured the placing of the
Huguenot regiments on the Irish Establishment against the
advice of Shrewsbury and Somers. William unbosomed him-
self to his favourite Lord Justice, and confided to him his real
intentions. “I have not writ to you all this winter, by reason
of my vexation at what passed in Parliament, and because of
the uncertainty I was under to know what to send you. It is
not possible to be more sensibly touched than I am, at my not
being able to do more for the poor Refugee officers, who have
BENTINCK'S GRANT.
23
served me with so much zeal and fidelity. I am afraid the
good God will punish the ingratitude of this nation. I could
hardly get the Establishment of Ireland passed, as it will be
sent you. I am perfectly satisfied with your conduct, and hope
now you will be left undisturbed. I fear the Commission given
here by the Commons for the inspection of Forfeitures will
give you a great deal of trouble. Assuredly, on all sides, my
patience is put to the trial ; and I am going to breathe a little
beyond sea.'
Versed in all the maxims and expedients of the old Court,
Sunderland encouraged his Royal pupil in the exercise of what
remained of the prerogative, especially in the granting, without
asking Ministerial leave, estates in England as well as Ireland.
Bentinck thus obtained a concession of two-thirds of the county
of Denbigh, which had formerly been a portion of the appanage
of the Prince of Wales. As that dignity was no longer recog-
nised in point of law, why should not the rents and profits be
given to the trusted though taciturn friend who had shared all
the Prince's toils and dangers, but for whom, as a foreigner, it
was difficult otherwise to provide ? And this was at a time when
the deepening deficiency occasioned by the war rendered indis-
pensable the imposition of a new and unpopular burthen in the
form of a Window Tax. The Commons voted the impost on
light and air, but they broke out in upbraiding the ill-advisers of
Bentinck's grant. A great stir was made in Wales, where local
factions joined in Celtic unison to protest against their fields and
mines being, for the first time in the annals of the Principality,
alienated to a foreigner. A deputation of the principal gentry
of the county represented that the Lordships of Denbigh, Brom-
field, and Yale had ever been set apart as a demesne of the
Prince of Wales, and, when there was no heir to the Crown, had
been vested in the King as usufructure, not as property, till there
should be a male heir to the throne : being too great to be given
Of twelve thousand men.
2 William III. to Galway, January ist, 1699.
:24
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
over to any stranger, for Welshmen were never subject to any
but to God and the King. Godolphin asked if there was not a
precedent in the reign of Elizabeth, who had granted one of
these manors to the Earl of Leicester ; which Sir R. Cotton
owned was true ; but he added that the sedition thereby bred
was so inappeasable that the Earl was fain to give back his
grant; since when there was loyal peace in the land. Godolphin
owned that there was much force in their remonstrance ; and
promised that it should be carefully considered. They naturally
invoked likewise the interposition of Pembroke, who, like other
Ministers, had not been consulted in the matter ; but, lest his and
Godolphin's aid should fail, their chief spokesınan, Mr. Price,
appealed to the House of Commons, and with such effect that
an Address was unanimously voted that the grant might be
recalled. William replied, “I have a kindness for my Lord
Portland, which he hath deserved of me, by long and faithful
services; but I should not have given him these lands if I had
imagined the House of Commons could have been concerned.
I will therefore recall the grant, and find some other way of
showing my favour to him.”
The pressure of taxation still continued.
While the country
gentleman was forced to curtail the comforts of his unostentatious
home, and the farmer and the trader were often pinched for the
necessaries of life, more money than ever was spent at elections,
for placemen every day lived more showily than they used to do.
It would never have done to allow discontent to roam at large
for objects whereon to batten ; so the Court favourites, English
as well as Dutch, were pointed out as the especial burthen of the
nation. If it were not for exorbitant and wasteful grants,
another shilling might be taken off the land tax ; and many a
long night was spent in angry debate on the subject. William's
partiality for his favourites was undeniable, and the suspected
abuse of his discretionary power over Crown lands gradually
became known. But did all his Ministers really regret the
diminution of his influence by these alienations and escheats ?
FORFEITED ESTATES.
25
5
Throughout the protracted struggle of the Barons to prevent
the Plantagenet Kings alienating the patrimony of the Crown,
and to compel them to resume improvident leases and feoffs,
efforts were repeatedly made by Statute to throw on the neck of
Prerogative a bridle which might curb its wayward ways. Acts
of Resumption were frequently accompanied by declarations, and
more than once by resolutions, that in future no grant should be
made without the advice and assent of such of the Privy Council
as enjoyed general confidence. On the accession of Henry IV.
a joint Address from the three estates of the realm complained of
outrageous gifts of land and of great sums of money in fines
and dues released to undeserving persons by his predecessor,
which they desired him to realise. In order to avoid any errors
through haste or misrepresentation in the time to come, they
laid it. down that, without the sanction of the wise men of his
Council, he ought to promise nothing, and unless conveyed
formally by letters patent, Royal gifts should be held void and of
no effect. Henry engaged to act accordingly. His ill-fated
grandson fell by departing from the rule and squandering
resources upon courtiers and sycophants. The learned Fortescue
deplored the evils which he saw impending. Parliament must
take some security that thenceforth the like dilapidations of
the Crown estate should not occur through any weakness of
prodigality, because “all such giving away of the Kynge's lyveli-
hoode is harmful to all his liege men which shall therebye be
artyd to a new charge for the sustentation of his estate.
A good
and notable council should be established, by the advyse of
which all new gifts and rewards might be moderated," and the
old grants should be resumed. When such a council should
have been fully created and established, all supplications for gifts
or rewards should be sent to the same, and there debated and
deliberated. “Thus would the King be relieved from importunity
and the land saved from harm." 3 This early vision of a Cabinet,
i Henry IV., Rot. Parl. No. 98.
2 De Dominio Regali et Politico, &c., MS. by Sir J. Fortescue, Chief Justice.
1
3 Ibid.
26
HIISTORY OF CABINETS.
originating in Parliament and responsible thereto, the patriotic
Judge saw afar off and was glad. “O! what myghty quiet,” he
exclaims, "shall grow to the Kynge by this order, and in what rest
shall all his people lyve, havyng no colour of grievance with such
as shall be about hys person for the giving away of his lands, nor
of murmurings against him for the misgoverning of his realm.”
But for this he lived two centuries too soon.
There were fresh Acts of resumption under Edward IV. and
Henry VII., with promises against Royal waste, which the latter
faithfully kept, and thereby piled up the vast heap of riches
which he left to his son to squander at his capricious will. By
this time the mutinous strength of the aristocracy was spent,
and their day of Parliamentary power had not come.
Lavish
concessions of land in Ireland by Elizabeth and Cromwell were
deemed illegitimate penalties of discomfiture in civil war;
and to clear up the confusion of forfeitures Parliament at the
Restoration set up the Court of Claims, who sat at Dublin to
adjudicate between man and man according to such methods of
procedure as might be ordered for the purpose. Clarendon
warned the Viceroy of the danger and discredit that would
ensue from partial or factious decisions. If only native testi-
mony were listened to, no doubt few of the victors would be
enriched, and on the other hand, “if every English evidence
should carry it, all the Irish would be extirpated. It must rest
upon the wisdom and integrity of the Judge, to weigh and
distinguish between the evidence; and if he should reject all
Irish evidence because it was Irish, when no other could naturally
be expected, it were as good as declared that all the Irish should
be destroyed. The Commissioners must judge by the rules
prescribed to them, and more unequal rules he never heard of
than those that the House of Commons would have prescribed.
Was it not true that treason had been the general sin of the
three nations, though the dismal effects and judgment of it fell
only upon poor Ireland? Yet since they were to be preserved
a nation, such a temper should be exercised towards them in
COMMISSION OF INQUIRY.
27
0
the administration of justice that they should undergo no dis-
advantage or reproach, only for being Irish."i There was no
Cabinet to enforce these equitable views.
When the House of Commons in 1698 found themselves
beset by the disbanded troops clamorous for arrears of pay, they
proceeded to appoint seven Commissioners with suitable salaries
to inquire into more recent confiscations and re-grants which
had followed the flight of James and the Treaty of Limerick.
A Cabinet worthy of the name would have resisted such en-
croachment on regal authority as unconstitutional; but the few
heads of departments present thought it expedient to acquiesce,
and only insisted that the inquisition should extend to the two
previous reigns.
When Vernon told the King what had been done he did not
like it at all. He had his own reasons for being uneasy ; for
few save Bentinck and Sidney knew how many estates of the
vanquished he had actually given away. But he tried to
persuade the Minister that, after all, the inquiry might be of no
effect.? Acts of Resumption at the bidding of Parliament were
grown obsolete ; and not even the grants to Lady Castlemaine
and the Duchess of Portsmouth had been annulled. But Par-
liament had long expected that the forfeited lands in Ireland
should be sold to defray the charges of the Civil War. Ambiguous
assurances had been given that their wishes should be attended
to. What if it should appear that they had been wholly
neglected ? Here, then, was a clear and definite issue to be
tried between the taxing authority of the State and the personal
will of the Sovereign, and the legislative jury of seven, with
Lord Drogheda for their foreman, proceeded to Dublin to try
the question.
The Local Legislature being in recess, they were assigned the
Chamber usually occupied by the Irish Peers for their hall of
audience, and thither evicted owners who had but passively
| The Chancellor to Anglesea, 18 April, 1663. State Papers, Sup. III., 36.
2 Vernon to Shrewsbury.
28
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
abetted the cause of James, and immigrant grantees who had
risked little, if anything, for the cause of William, mortgagees
who trembled for their money long since lent, and holders of
valuable leases sadly at fault as to whose tenants they should
be, with a crowd of schemers of all dimensions, came to tell
their incompatible tales of suffering and wrong. A minority
of the inquisitors gradually showed a disposition to let wounds
heal and encourage antagonistic creeds and races to compromise
and forget, but the majority of four were all for probing to the
quick and laying bare every suspected sin and back-sliding,
equally of poor and great. Every forfeit acre, it was said, that
had been sold below the market price should be brought to the
hammer again, and restitution should be made to an injured
Treasury of those that had been left in the old hands by the clan-
destine use of favour. Coningsby, Sidney, and Rouvigny began
to repent having used their opportunities as Lords Justices to en-
feoff themselves under the Great Seal of Ireland by. leave of
his Majesty; and still greater beneficiaries of his Grace
listened from afar to the threatening of wholesale reversal, which
the Commissioners were supposed to meditate. At length
their memorable Report appeared, bearing the signatures of
but four of their number. They found that, while in England
since the Revolution but 57 persons had been outlawed, in
Ireland there had been 3,921, and that the confiscated property,
as accruing to the Crown, exceeded in value two millions sterling.
This comprehended one million and sixty thousand Irish, or one
million seven hundred thousand English acres, yielding a rental
of upwards of two hundred thousand a year. About a fourth
had been restored by the judgment of Chancery in conformity
with the Articles of Limerick; and a seventh was given back
by the favour of the Crown to the original possessors. The
remaining two-thirds formed the subject of varied and curious
exposure. In the course of seven years, concessions small
and great, the most conspicuous in the realm and the most
obscure, had been made without the knowledge of the chief
RESUMPTION ACT.
29
Ministers of State, which would have sufficed to liquidate the
debt due to the Army and Navy; while the hereditary
estates of the Crown in Ireland had been likewise alienated
to a great extent. The struggle in Ireland, from Derry
to Kinsale, was computed to have cost £4,515,693, of which
two-thirds had been borne by Irish taxation : why should not
the residue be defrayed by the sale of the confiscated lands ?
The Commissioners recommended especially the resumption of
seventy-six grants: To Sidney, Lord Romney, 49,517 acres ;
to Keppel, Lord Albemarle, 108,633 acres ; to Woodstock, heir
of Portland, 135,820 acres; to Ginckel, Lord Athlone, 26,480
acres; to Rouvigny, Lord Galway, 36,148 acres ; to Thomas,
Lord Coningsby, 5,966 acres, with valuable chief rents in and
near Dublin ; to Auverquerque, Lord Rochford, 39,871 acres;
to Elizabeth Villiers, Lady Orkney, 95,619 acres, said to be
worth £25,000 a year; and to her sister, Marquise de Puyzart,
30,512 acres. 1
No Minister chose to draw down upon himself individually the
clamour which these disclosures provoked, but a Bill, summarily
cancelling these and other grants, and applying the proceeds of
sales to be publicly made, with a view to the discharge of the Army
and Navy arrears, in the liquidation of the Floating Debt, was
called for on all sides. Colonel Granville, as Chairman of Ways
and Means, reported a serious deficit in the Excise, to meet
which new supplies from taxes and other sources would be
indispensable. An Address to the Throne was presented on the
15th February, desiring the revocation of the condemned grants,
to which William replied that he was not led by mere inclination,
but" thought himself obliged in justice to reward those who had
served him well in Ireland out of the estates forfeited to him.
The long war in which they had been engaged had left the
nation much in debt, and the taking just and effectual ways of
1 The original of this, as of so many other legislative records, was probably de-
stroyed in the fire of the 16th of October, 1834, but from one of the copies circulatect
by order of the House and preserved unimpaired the whole of the facts above stated
have been taken.
30
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
» 1
supporting the public credit was what, in his opinion, would best
contribute to the honour, interest, and safety of the Kingdom."
Would any Cabinet have advised such an answer? Neither
Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Somers or Orford, Vernon or Montagu,
Pembroke or Marlborough, or any other man of weight in either
House had been consulted, and the Speaker, foreseeing the re-
ception it was certain to meet with, took upon himself to hold it
back for several days. When at last, in despair of any modifi-
cation, it became his duty to recite its futile and provoking terms
from the Chair, the unanimity of indignation knew no bounds,
and without division or debate it was resolved that whoever had
suggested it used their utmost endeavours to create a misunder-
standing between the King and his people. Their names were
too palpable between the lines. Spendthrift Romney was dis-
tinctly charged in the Report for sanctioning, as Lord Justice
and Viceroy, the extortion of blackmail by the officers of the
Army and the Castle, for respite and despoliation ; and was
charged with having netted as his own share many thousand
pounds. While Queen Mary lived, her hated rival had to wait
for her dower in marriage with Lord Orkney ; but her continued
influence was confessed in the independent portion in broad
acres bestowed on her nephew Woodstock, and the salaries
and perquisites conferred on her brother Jersey. These, like
Auverquerque and Albemarle, had everything to gain by
prompting their benefactor to defy the Commons, and his loss
of reputation as a ruler was above their ken.
The necessity for passing the Land Tax to square the Budget
for the year was urgent, and by the advice of Harley, clauses
imposing the tax were tacked to a Bill resuming the mis-
appropriated estates. On the old question of privilege, the
Peers objected to deal with the subject in this way. But the
case was exceptional, and the logic of observing ordinary rules
of procedure was disregarded. The Upper House by two to
one submitted, and the King did not venture to veto the Act for
21st Feb., 1700.
WILLIAM DESPONDENT.
31
his humiliation. Its depth was sounded in a private letter to
Galway intimating his supersession with that of Bolton and
Jersey, as Lords Justices, for it was felt that a change of Executive
hands was indispensable at the Castle, whatever the practical
effect might be.
William confessed without reserve the anxiety he had under-
gone, and his vexation at Rouvigny being deprived of what he
had given him ; but he should earnestly seek occasions to
acknowledge his services in some other way. “There had been
so many intrigues in the last session that without having been
on the spot and well informed of everything, it could not be
conceived. The Commission of Lords Justices could not well
be continued as it stood, and he had resolved to send the Duke
of Shrewsbury as Viceroy. But he wished that Galway should
command the Army under him, and hoped that he would not
take this as a degradation or quit his service; for he had never
had more occasion for persons of his capacity and fidelity.”
Shrewsbury, in one of his hypochondriacal moods, said he
was too ill to go, and after some delay Rochester, to please the
multiplying friends of Princess Anne, was named instead. Lord
Drogheda vouched the truth in all essentials of the facts recorded
in the Report of the Commissioners. Hillside and valley had
been stripped of their sheltering woods, and wide tracts of fertile
lands laid bare ; farmers and cottiers were compelled to sacrifice
at nominal prices whatever they possessed of horses, sheep, or
cattle; while old timber trees, indiscriminately felled in the
blind greed of absentee gain, lay in reproachful piles, unsaleable
at sixpence a-piece, for house or shop building; for industry and
enterprise were paralysed by misrule 1—foreign trade was
forbidden by law, and prædial industry by the prevailing sense
of legal insecurity. Jacobite attainders, impeaching the titles of
1
The wounds thus sordidly inflicted on the face of the country were long in dis-
appearing. In our own day, M. de Tocqueville, when travelling through some of the
richest counties, asked why no forests or plantations were to be seen, and being told
how much was the effect of civil war, he said : “ Ireland is like a beautiful woman
bereſt of her hair."
32.
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Williamite nobles and gentry., were revenged by the forfeiture of
Jacobite estates, and the banishment of their former owners :
and these, when not clandestinely bought back, were given over
to be rackrented by foreign favourites from whom they had now
been recaptured, to be put up for sale to the highest bidder. It
was Rochester's duty to see that this was done, and when after
a brief sojourn he resumed the more genial occupation of lead-
ing the High Church Party in the House of Peers, he nominated
Drogheda one of the Lords Justices to complete the work of
repartition. But Chancery and Exchequer were deafened with
conflicting plaints and demurring pleas on bonds and mortgages
given by transitory owners; and pleas in debt and contract,
which in ten years had ceased to have enforcible obligation, till
all financial credit and thought of improving investment was
stricken unto death.
Many old proprietors who had hitherto escaped ruin, in the
vague fear that their turn might come, secretly assigned over
their properties to powerful neighbours, and took leases at low
rents from them, trusting to their renouncing and restoring
what was given them in trust if better times should come; and
to their honour and that of their descendants, numerous in-
stances might be named where goodly heritages at last reverted
to the sons of their ancient owners. But Rochester, whatever
his disposition may have been, was utterly powerless to help or
heal the misery and confusion of the time, and there was no
Cabinet to whose collective judgment he could appeal.
The fear of a disputed succession drove men of opposing
parties at Westminster, on the death of the Duke of Gloucester,
to agree that the reversion of the Crown should be settled by
statute on the Electress of Hanover and her descendants, should
Anne die childless. The opportunity was too tempting to be
neglected for determining conditions on which legal power
should be exercised. William's repeated attempts to confer
great demesnes upon his personal favourites had convinced
1
;
1
zoth July, 1700.
ACT OF SETTLEMENT.
33:
thoughtful statesmen that limits should be finally set to the
exercise of personal power without the knowledge and sanction
of responsible Ministers, and that these conditions should be
embodied, as theretofore they had never been, in a fundamental
statute of the realm. If a prince of the prudence and sagacity
of the Stadtholder could not resist the impulse, that seemed
ineradicable in his branch of the House of Stuart, to resuscitate
bygone prerogatives, why should any other be trusted to rise
superior to the temptation ? Better once for all to declare that
the Executive Authority should only be exercised with the
advice, consent, and participation of public men whom the
nation from time to time thought fit to honour, and whom
Parliament could always call to strict account without stirring
up fears of revolution. The holiday maxim that the King could
do no wrong had proved worth little on working days, unless
somebody else could practically be made answerable.
The Long Parliament, with all its fervour against despotism, and
pitiless zeal for its suppression, had slipped its foot in the blood
of Charles I.; and found too late that it had only slain one who
wanted to be master, for one who was able and determined to be
With the Restoration, the returning flood of loyalty had be-
guiled the Sovereign into relying on the older precedents of ab-
solutism in Church and State ; Cabinet responsibility being still
unknown. As far as the imposition of taxes and the exercise of
the Legislative Veto were concerned, the quarrel between Crown
and Parliament had since been closed, and the bitter lessons
taught by the enforced dismissal of the Dutch Guards, and the re-
vocation of furtive grants, might have seemed sufficiently severe.
But so long as each Minister could be individually appointed and
removed without the knowledge or assent of other Heads of
Departments, and it might be against their will, the King held in
his hands the reins of personal rule; and accountability in
matters of the highest importance or any guarantee for a fixed
line of policy was unattainable,
The Electress of Hanover was the English-born daughter of
VOL. I.
So,
D
34
TUISTORY OF CABINETS.
Charles I.; but her son and grandson, to whom in succession the
Throne was to be given, were alien by birth and education. It
was, therefore, provided that no foreigner, though naturalised,
should take grants of land from the Crown, or hold any office of
trust, or seat in Parliament; that the nation should not be obliged
to engage in any war for the defence of territories abroad without
the consent of the Legislature; that the wearer of the Crown
should belong to the Established Church, and that the Judges,
theretofore holding office at the will of the Sovereign, should in
future hold dum bene gesserint, removable only on Address of either
House. Above all, a clause was adopted in Committee, which for
the first time dealt directly with Ministerial responsibility. Harley
said that the haste with which the Government was settled at the
Revolution had prevented the nation requiring such securities
from the future Sovereign as would have prevented much mischief.
He hoped they would not again fall into that error. It was con-
sequently enacted that “all things relating to the well governing
of this Kingdom properly cognizable in the Privy Council, by
the laws and customs of this realm, should be transacted there;
and all resolutions taken therefrom shall be signed by such of
the Privy Council as shall advise and consent to the same." This
was indispensable to prevent future attempts to elude Ministerial
participation in administrative or diplomatic acts of State, and
Ministerial responsibility for them; like those which had led to
the controversy between King and Parliament concerning the
Treaty of Ryswick. The Bill became law in June, 1701, and
thence may be traced the uprise of the power to direct and con-
trol the policy of the State ; but it must be observed how
cautiously and tentatively the great change here foreshadowed
was outlined on the disc of the future. No number of Privy
Councillors was named as requisite to give validity to adminis-
trative measures; no heads of Departments were designated as
indispensable signatories; not a word was said touching the
power of appointment and dismissal ; and for the interval
1 12th and 13th Wm. III., chap. 2.
DEATH OF JAMES II.
35
during which it seemed probable that Anne might wear the
diadem, it was not made too clear that the provisions of the Act
should apply.
On the death of James II. in September, 1701, growing con-
fidence in peace founded on recent treaties of alliance was
suddenly dashed by Louis XIV., who, against the advice of his
Ministers, publicly acknowledged James III. as rightful King of
England, Scotland, and Ireland. William was at Loo when the
tidings reached him, and Lord Manchester was at once desired
to quit Paris without taking leave. On all hands it was regarded
in England not merely as a wanton breach of faith, but as an
insulting attempt by France to nominate the Sovereign of a
neighbouring people in defiance of their deliberate will declared
in Parliament. Hastening from abroad, William summoned to
Kensington those whom he trusted most, and individually asked
their counsel. Sunderland advised his making amends to
Somers for his recent deprival of the Great Seal, at the envious
bidding of his foes, by placing him at the head of affairs, and
allowing him to name his principal colleagues. Obviously, it
meant the restoration to office of such leading Whigs as would
disarm opposition to a war budget, without displacing Rochester
or Godolphin, or discarding the support of Nottingham and
Harley. The combination of abilities in the public service
without identity of aim, unison of expression, or the pretence of
mutual trust and regard was the Stadtholder's dream at the
beginning; and often as he had been rudely wakened from it by
the uproar of contending parties, it was his dream to the end.
Somers came, and had the offer, but declined to entertain it
because made without the privity or approval of the Ministers
actually in office ; for if these were thus treated, how could their
supplanters tell how soon they might in turn be thrown over ?
In the excitement of the exigency William exclaimed with
vehemence, “Never! never!" But it was too late. Somers was
a poor man for the great space he had occupied in the public
eye; but after ten years' unwearied devotion in which he had
D 2
36
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
served, if not always wisely, only too well, he felt that he had
been abandoned from mere supposed expediency, and he finally
refused. Some changes were made, the precise value or motive
of which history has no lens that will enable us to scan. Parlia-
ment was dissolved, and in the popular resentment at the conduct
of the French King, a House of Commons was returned which
courtiers said was more placable than the last. But Cabinet
there was none, or Executive Government, save that of the
Monarch, out of health, out of spirits, and out of reliance on the
resolves of the nation to do what he might urge betimes in the
hour of need. An unlooked-for accident which laid hiin on the
bed of death put an end to the perilous suspense ; but it is
eminently characteristic of the forethoughtful purpose and
policy of the man, that his last act, as he felt his end draw
near, was a message to both Houses of Parliament recom-
mending without delay a complete union of the three Kingdoms.
The peaceful accession of Anne opened a new scene. Her
father's death had relieved the consciences of many bred in
allegiance to him; and they would have kept their early vow
had they not been driven, for sake of creed and country, to
accept the Resolution, and who now gladly proffered her their
fealty without misgiving or reservation. In the Privy Council
who proclaimed her Queen, and in the throng which came to
do her homage, the Whigs may have been a minority; but
without the leading part played by them, Government by pre-
rogative would not have been deposed, and Government by
“Ministers who were not a Ministry” could not have been main-
tained. They had held great offices in the late reign, and not a
few of them had proved faithful friends to Anne in the day of
adversity. Who now should guide her hand and govern in her
name? Was the uncle of the Queen to be allowed, as he ex-
pected, to fabricate a new Executive wholly or chiefly of
materials of his choice ; breaking with the recent" past, and
launching the country again upon a course devious and doubtful
as that in which he would have counselled James ; or should the
ACCESSION OF ANNE.
37
new reign open with a general amnesty, and an attempt to com-
bine the best men of all Parties in resistance to reaction, with
the practical acknowledgment that Parliament should not only
inake the laws, but decide who should adıninister them?
Godolphin and Marlborough, whose intimacy had recently been
cemented by the intermarriage of their children, were eminently
fitted to measure the wants and perils of the hour; and, through
the undoubting confidence of the Queen in the wife of the latter,
certain of her acquiescence in what they might recommend. In
the main, by their advice, the existing officers of State were un-
changed. Sarah became Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the
Robes, and Keeper of the Privy Purse, while her husband was
named Captain-General of the Forces and Knight of the Garter.
The pride of a woman of less self-reliance and ambition would
have been appeased with these rewards, but Sarah had long
looked forward to the day when she should sway the councils of
the realm, and, in concert with the great financier and the great
soldier, she became for the next seven years the animating and
ascendant spirit of administration. The ebb and flow of power
between St. Stephen's and St. James's had not left the official
shore of Whitehall always above high-water mark, but Minis-
terial footing there had become firmer than before.
Godolphin would have declined the envied title of Lord
Treasurer, but Marlborough vowed that unless the one man
whom he implicitly trusted was director of the national re-
sources, he would positively refuse the command in the coming
Whereupon Godolphin yielded, and undertook, with
plenary powers, the task of providing for domestic credit and
military expenditure on a scale which he foresaw would be vast.
He stipulated, however, as a condition, that Henry Boyle should be
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pembroke President of the Council,
and Devonshire Lord Steward-pledges to the Whigs that, who-
ever else might dream of party exclusion, he was not of that
mind. In like manner, the Command-in-Chief of the troops
within the realm was left in the hands of Schomberg, created
war.
38
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Duke of Leinster on the death of his father at the Boyne.
Nottingham was desired to resume the Seals of Secretary of
State.
A few days after the Queen's accession, Southwell wrote from
London: “We are now in a new world, and after so great a
thunderclap surely never was there so quick a calm, for within
eight hours of the King's death Queen Anne was fixed on the
Throne. Lord Marlborough is gone this morning for Holland to
confirm our steadiness to the alliance, and to establish theirs that
so the enemy may not sow tares. I have great wishes that good
may come by attempting an union with Scotland, and the more
in hopes it will necessarily draw in a consideration of Ireland.” 1
Rochester retained his Lieutenancy of Ireland, without think-
ing it necessary to return thither, and no one audibly questioned
the nomination of Prince George of Denmark as Lord High
Admiral; but a ministerial Committee of Inquiry into Offices
lost no time in making known their views to the department as
to the manner in which its business should be conducted. « I
send your Lordships," wrote the Secretary of State, “the
enclosed, which came from Colonel Selwyn, by order of the
Committee, that you may consider and report to them your
opinion.” In the confidential copies of the Earl's correspond-
ence a note was added in the same handwriting,—“the enclosed
was entitled the state of the Admiral's new powers and the in-
convenience." 2
Instructions were addressed thenceforth from the Home Office
to the Prince's council at the Admiralty regarding ships, officers,
stores, arms, and implements while His Royal Highness was
absent; and the practice being thus established of treating the
Board as the responsible Executive of the department, it was
continued in point of form after her Majesty's Consort had
returned to Windsor.3 Rochester, chagrined at the preference
| From the Irish Office, Spring Gardens, 14th March, 1702, to Archbp. King.-MS.
Nottingham Papers, MS., 5th May, 1702.
3 Idem., 31st October, 1702.-MIS.
ROCHESTER RESIGNS.
39
shown for Nottingham's advice, and fearing the loss of his posi-
tion as head of the party of the Church in Parliament, gravely
remonstrated with his Royal niece on her neglect of him, and
asked to be allowed to exchange the Viceroyalty for a Secretary-
ship of State or the Presidency of the Council. No disposition
was, however, shown to gratify his wishes, or to strengthen the
influence of the section of politicians to which he belonged. He
was told that a due administration of affairs in Ireland might
best engage his attention; and on his refusal to betake himself
thither he encountered a rebuke which left him no choice but to
resign. Ormond's share in the victory of Vigo was rewarded by
the Lord Lieutenancy; and as a great Irish noble his appoint-
ment was undoubtedly popular.
Lady Marlborough owned that from this time she "began to
be looked upon” as a person of consequence, without whose
approbation at least neither places, pensions, nor honours were
bestowed ; at first, indeed, not seeming to assume the air of dis-
tinction and dictation for which she was subsequently known.
Even in the first days of the new reign she hesitated not to com-
bat the prejudices of her Royal mistress. Her husband's com-
mand of the army abroad, and Godolphin's continuance as head
of the Treasury, her own supremacy at Court, and the great
places retained by Nottingham, Ormond, Normanby, Jersey, and
Chancellor Wright, more than balanced the influence of Somerset,
Devonshire, Pembroke, and Boyle, who held important posts and
who were regarded as representing, though inadequately, the
Whig interest. In outward semblance all went on as before.
Every Minister knelt to Anne as his predecessor had done to
her grandfather, and to her would-be despotic sire ; and if all had
not the careful and scrupulous wisdom of the Lord Treasurer, or
the grace of sympathy and devotion of the Captain-General,
there was not one of them who would not have repudiated the
idea that he held office by any other tenure than that of her
Majesty's pleasure. Nevertheless, there came about by degrees
a transmutation of things in the working of the Executive, which,
40
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
had it been anticipated in the days of Pym and Strafford,
would have averted civil war and much that followed in its train.
It is curious to observe with what good temper and good nature,
with what dignity and prudence, Anne allowed herself to be led
during the greater portion of her reign, and that, so long as the
delicacy of deference and duty was shown her, she hardly seems
to have thought of asking the dangerous question, which shall
govern England—the Crown that cannot be called to account
save by revolution, or individual Ministers that Parliament may
depose by a majority of one? A letter to Godolphin, from
Windsor, during the negotiations for the Scottish Union, reveals,
on the other hand, how reduced had become the weight of the
hereditary sceptre.
“Though you tell me you intend to be here either to-morrow
night or Saturday morning, I cannot help venting my thoughts
upon the Scotch affairs. I think these people use me very
hardly, and I should be very glad to know your opinion, whether
upon this refusal I might not write to the Commissioner to let
him know, if he does not think it for the service that Lord For-
far should have the post I recommended him to, I would let him
have some other that might be equivalent to it; and that I do
expect he should comply with this one desire of mine, in return
for all the compliances I have made to him. This may displease
his grace's touchy temper, but I can't see it can do any prejudice
to my service; and in my poor opinion such usage should be
resented. As to the Duke of Queensberry, though he is none of
my choice, I own it goes mightily against me—it grates my soul
to take a man into my service that has not only betrayed me,
but tricked me several times--one that has been obnoxious to
his own countrymen these many years, and one that I can never
be convinced can be of any use. But after all, since my friends
may be censured, and it may be said if I had not been obstinate
everything would have gone well, I will do myself the violence
these unreasonable Scotsmen desire ; and indeed it is an
inexpressible one. My heart was so full that it was impossible
PRINCE EUGENE.
41
“ Had
for me to forbear easing it a little, and therefore I hope you will
excuse this trouble.”
When the Queen visited Bath the Treasurer and other Minis-
ters accompanied the Court, and when letters from Edinburgh
or Dublin required authoritative replies the officials in attend-
ance assembled in her presence and transmitted their decisions
to the capital.
Had the choice of Ministers on Anne's accession been really
made by her it is scarcely credible that Jersey would have been
retained. But he seems to have contrived to gain the confidence
of Nottingham; and their private correspondence shows the
footing on which they stood.
For reasons of policy which the Lord Chamberlain probably
did not understand, Marlborough had suggested a visit to
England by Prince Eugene. Both the Treasurer and the Secre-
tary acquiesced. Jersey wrote regretting their decision.
I been in a place where I might have used such freedom of
speech, I should certainly have opposed it, for I cannot look
upon the Prince's journey hither otherwise than as a contrivance
of Count Wratislaw with his friends the Whigs to extort sub-
sidies which I fear this nation cannot bear; and to brand those
honest gentlemen that do not come freely into them with the
usual reproach of their being disaffected to their country; for I
take it for granted that in case this Prince is here his opinion
will be too popular to be withstood, though the demands he
makes be never so extravagant. Would it not be better that he
should see my Lord Marlborough in Holland, since they can
there more properly concert the disposition of the next campaign,
rather than he should come hither to foment our divisions ? If
these sentiments are not right you know I am always willing to
submit them to your better judgment. Meantime I have men-
tioned them to nobody here, and desire you will burn this letter.” 1
Thus, confessedly the Chamberlain, though present, was not
invariably deemed, and did not deem himself, one of those who
| Lord Chamberlain to Secretary of State.—MS.
42
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
was officially expected to advise ; although his predecessor, Sun-
derland, undoubtedly was so. Nottingham was pledged to sup-
port the wishes of Marlborough, and he easily dissuaded Jersey
from pressing his objections. When Nottingham resigned soon
afterwards, Jersey was glad to retire on a pension, and the Gold
Key was given to the Earl of Kent, who, with equal docility in
speech and vote, had the superior merit of having great posses-
sions.
Anticipating the triumphs of her husband, and reckoning on
the practical expansion of her own power, Sarah revolved within
herself how various departments might be reinforced with ability,
and the existing ascendancy of the Junto thereby rendered more
impregnable. Round her tea-table she talked freely with men
like Harley and Cowper, and later on with St. John and Walpole,
disdaining to disguise predilections as one of a feebler nature
might instinctively have done. Nottingham would not bend to
her caprice, and did not share her party agnosticism, and she
was determined to replace him with whoever would bring most
strength to Government on whom she could personally rely.
No Whig seemed so eligible as Harley ; and she was, perhaps,
not yet prepared to try the temper of the Queen by asking that
too many of that party should be preferred to their traditional
rivals. When first in Parliament Harley had but a moderate
income, which he spent without ostentation, chiefly on emissaries
to gain him early and exclusive information, and upon clerks to
furnish him with unpublished documents useful for reference in
debate. During William's reign he was usually in Opposition,
but the character he acquired for knowledge and aptitude in busi-
ness led to his being chosen Speaker by consent of both sides,
and he was now offered ministerial office by Godolphin, and
on Nottingham's resignation became Secretary of State. When
the Privy Seal was taken from Normanby, recently made Duke
of Buckingham, in consequence of his ultra-leanings to the more
vehement party in the Church, Sarah advised its being conferred
on the Whig Duke, Holles Newcastle. The greatest and most
HARLEY SECRETARY OF STATE.
43
difficult step remained. Wright, though a competent lawyer, was
deficient as a courtier and wholly wanting as a politician. While
the majority of his old friends remained in office his assent and
support in the House of Lords might be implicitly relied on: in
council it was hardly deemed worth asking. But if critical times
should come and the predominance of power should tremble in
the balance of Party, the Keeper of the Great Seal ought to
be not only reliable but worthy in talents and attainments to
fill his high position. Such a man in every respect was Henry
Cowper, who had ingratiated himself with the fastidious and
fearless Duchess. Halifax commended Cowper as successor to
Wright, and when no one else would undertake the task Sarah
continually laboured with the Queen to make him Keeper, to
save the Duke and the Treasurer from an application so disagree-
able to her. Godolphin saw the policy of attaching such a man
to the Government.
The sense of administrative power felt by Marlborough and
Godolphin chafed at the restrictions imposed by the Act of
Succession requiring every Executive measure of consequence to
be adopted only in a meeting of the Privy Council, and to be
endorsed by five at least of its members. Their author, Harley,
now in office, no longer contended for their retention on the
Statute-book. As Secretary of State, he had cognizance of
everything of importance that was designed or done, and he
easily persuaded himself that checks upon the will of Royalty,
needful with a King like William, might be discarded as obsolete
with a Queen like Anne. As Leader of the Commons, he brought
in and carried the repeal of so much of them as related to
Ministerial counsel and countersign, and thereby contributed,
it was said, to a rehabilitation of the Executive system which
William was blamed for having pursued according to precedent, in
this affair of the Partition Treaty. Neither he nor his successor
had any responsible Cabinet to consult; and this perfunctory en-
1 4th and 5th of Anne, chap. viii., sec. 24 (numbered chap. xx. in the “Ed. of
Statutes of the Realm” published 1821).
44
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
dorsement by five Privy Councillors, named for the occasion out
of five times that number, could add no constitutional validity
to an otherwise unpatriotic act of the Crown. But Marlborough
was fast becoming, if he had not already become, as his only
military rival afterwards called him, "himself the Govern-
ment”:1 and if he shared his transcendent sway with any it was
with his wife, and with Godolphin. The great notables, Heads
of Departments, Lords of the Household, and Law Officers, being
graciously summoned to Kensington, were told what was about
to be done ; and any suggestions they had to offer were duly
noted, sometimes perhaps considered. Hallam, indeed, admits
his inability to trace clearly the changes in procedure which
tended to increase the discretion and authority of the Secretary
of State.
The general plans of Government he thinks were discussed
and determined in confidential meetings, undefined in nuinber
and undesignated by law, but consisting of members of the
Privy Council; on which, gratuitously, he bestows the unearned
epithet of Cabinet. But the negative evidence is conclusive that
the institution was unknown of a distinct and combined adminis-
trative body consulting in confidence apart, and advising as one;
and whose responsibility for the acts of Government was to be
mutually deemed and publicly recognised as collective and not
merely individual.
Ormond had opened the Session of 1703 at Dublin with the
usual assurances of Royal goodwill, but dropped not a word lead-
ing men to hope that the enactments of the previous reign, which
were fast reducing the woollen trade to extinction, were to be
relaxed. Like the Scotch, the representatives of Ireland would
willingly have come into the notion of an incorporate union on
condition of free trade with all parts of the realm and the
Colonies. They occupied themselves in discussing this proposal ;
and by the Chancellor, Sir Richard Cox, it was earnestly pressed
on Nottingham. It was laid before the Queen in Council, and
i Duke of Wellington to Lord Mahon. - Corresp.
GREAT BRITAIN,
45
the Secretary was told to write that the wishes of Ireland for
fusion would be taken into consideration. But the day never
came. The danger of leaving Scotland liable to legislative and
dynastic alienation seemed more pressing; and the best wits in
the two kingdoms were exercised in compassing a permanent
accommodation. The larger realm was left to fret, and chafe,
and pine. Its gentry, made to feel themselves of no account at
Court, betook themselves to prodigality and pleasure; the
Church, as a mere pension list for needy or damaged adherents
of great families in England, sunk into sinecurism, worldliness,
and demoralisation; and the cultivators of the soil, hopeless of
regaining what they had lost, betook themselves to humbler
modes of industry, and by the winter hearth transmitted to their
children the fading memories of other times. The project of a
Scottish Union had indeed been broached in William's time; and
Nottingham had given notice in the Lords of an address praying
for a dissolution of the Edinburgh Parliament to prepare the
way for discussion of the requisite details at Holyrood. But the
agitation caused by the first rumours of the change forbade a
premature appeal to national feeling at elections. Many of the
great chieftains were pledged to resist the diminution of their
provincial importance; and Fletcher of Saltoun devoted his fear-
less and eloquent pen to denunciations of the measure.
The Parliament at Edinburgh was a continual scene of personal
and family feuds, in which religious and dynastic controversies
largely mingled ; and Queensberry, with his thorough knowledge
of the jealousies and enmities that mainly moved the idle and
passionate leaders of local faction, was an instrument rarely fitted
to deal with them. A few patriotic men in the undisciplined
assembly, who feared that some day James III. would land with
a French force and rally to his standard the heads of the Clans,
shrunk from the prospect of a vain attempt to separate two king-
doms, or the vainer scheme of imposing on England the Stuart
dynasty. They believed that the poverty, stagnation, and dis-
content of the Lowlands arose from the exclusion of their trade
46
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
from the growing dependencies of England, and they despaired
of constitutional or stable government so long as the industry of
the towns bore an inappreciable proportion to semi-barbarous
and profitless occupation of the soil. With them the sole
practical question worth debating seriously was, whether Scotland
could obtain thorough participation in all branches of commerce
and trade as the price of legislative independence. Godolphin
was fortunately well-disposed to concede a condition so reason-
able; and, though angry protests were made by not a few English
towns against the rumoured admission of rivals to a share in
their gains from colonial and foreign trade, he had firmness and
wisdom enough to insist on the stipulation being embodied in
the final treaty.
When the design came to be publicly discussed "some wished an
entire union, some a federal one, and these latter seemed to make
the greater party"; 1 but the veteran official preferred the scheme
of incorporation, as likely to bring about what he termed the
“mainest and greatest benefits." Had William lived a little
longer his experience of the working of Federalism in Holland
might have modified certain centripetal tendencies in those about
him ; but day-after-to-morrow policy was beyond the compre-
hension of Anne, and the adaptation of local liberty to imperial
safety had to find its way.
To the lasting credit of the statesmen who led the counsels of
the time, no thought of overbearing or outwitting the Scottish
Parliament seems to have been harboured by them; and their
patience with petulent obstruction and exacting delay is worthy
of being kept in mind by all who have to deal with international
affairs. The idea of a legislative union had occupied the at-
tention of many reflecting and far-seeing men of both nations,
even before the blundering attempt of Cromwell which came to
nothing. In the corrupt and intolerant days of the Restoration
no hearing was to be had for enlightened plans of progress, or
for the remodelling of existing institutions. But after the ex-
1 Marchmont to the Queen, 291h Dec., 1705.
THE PRICE OF UNION.
47
citement of the Revolution subsided, and the perils of a disputed
succession began to reappear, lovers of peace and order, north
and south of the Tweed, reverted to the hope of means being
found for securing the future identity of the Crowns, whoever
might wear them; and the fusion of Legislatures, by whatever
suffrages they were chosen. Until the former was accomplished
it would obviously have been waste of time to discuss the
feasibility of the latter. But when, in 1705, identic statutes
were passed ratifying the succession as settled in the House of
Brunswick and excluding the heirs by hereditary claim of the
House of Stuart, the occasion looked as if it had come for
bringing about an incorporate union of the unequal realms.
Naturally the weaker misgave the proposal of the stronger that
it should give up its individuality; and justly it pondered long
and carefully the possible as well as the apparent results of a
partnership which practically would be indissoluble. The Scot-
tish nobles sat in the same House with the Commons. A few
great families had more or less intimate relations with the Court,
and hardly feared a diminution of their importance from being
admitted to the English House of Peers; while the better
educated members of the gentry, weary of the excesses of pro-
vincial authority and the anomalies of hereditary tribunals,
envied the control exercised in freedom of speech at West-
minster over the conduct of the Executive and the Judiciary.
From the fewness and smallness of the Scotch towns com-
mercial or middle-class opinion was too fceble to modify materi-
ally the passionate impulses of the rest of the community. Manu-
facture and enterprise were crippled, as in Ireland, by the jealous
spirit of English enactments. Godolphin and Harley risked no
little popularity by offering Scotland free trade; but they knew
that without it their project of union would never be accepted.
Neither was over scrupulous in dealing with noisy opponents
who had private aims and purposes to satisfy. But neither they
nor their colleagues attempted to carry the measure by mercly
winning over the majority of insincere patriots by promises of
48
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
place or title. An equal number of Commissioners were ap-
pointed for the two kingdoms, who should elaborate the details
of union so as to make it acceptable to the two nations; and
the Queen's Ministers in Scotland were instructed to nominate
for that country most of the leading men in Parliament who had
theretofore taken exception to the proposal. If they could not
be won over in the course of negotiation it would be hazardous
to attempt its enforcement. The pact must be made by treaty,
not imposed by overbearing force, if it was to strike root or be
permanently fruitful : for a nation may easier be brought to for-
get the wounds of conquest than to forgive the humiliation of
being cheated of its freedom. After prolonged and excited dis-
cussion, the Act was carried in the Assembly at Holyrood by
I10 to 691 votes, and after brief debates at Westminster the
treaty in due form of statute was ratified by Royalty. Dis-
affection to the person of the Sovereign lingered in the High-
lands for more than a generation, and desperate efforts were
twice made to reverse by force of arms the order of succession ;
but no serious effort has for nearly two centuries been made to
annul the marriage of the two nations; and most prolific has it
been in mutual benefits. But if popular content has been
general and lasting, let it not be forgotten that neither by cun-
ning aforethought nor through the lust of domination after the
fact were Scotchmen disturbed in the faith and practice of their
religion; and that neither for its sake nor the yet meaner and
more miserable motive of administrative jobbing, were the
appointments to their national offices filched from them by the
central Government in London. Administrative expropriation
and sectarian intolerance have been things unknown beyond the
Tweed, and the sense of the wrongs these things have generated
elsewhere from sire to son can hardly be over-estimated.
The inclusion of Cowper and Sunderland in the Junto, and
the unparalleled triumphs of Marlborough in the field, seemed
to vindicate, beyond the reach of enmity or cavil, its governing
16th Dec., 1706.
FALL OF THE JUNTO.
49
authority, and the Queen, whose womanly ambition was buried
in the tomb of her last surviving son, acquiesced more passively
than ever in the rule of the Groom of the Stole. But, strong
and shrewd as was the mind of Sarah, it was not proof against
the temptations and bewilderments of power—the subtlest and
most irresistible of intoxicants—to which greatness of fortune is
a prey. She had climbed out of reach of nearly all sympathy;
and though never failing in her friendship for Godolphin or
wavering in her love for her husband, she ceased to be guided by
either, and forgot the consideration and respect she owed to the
Queen. Personal attendance and the semblance of appreciation
for Royal whims grew irksome ; and the absence of any show of
feeling on the death of the Duke of Gloucester was believed to
have broken the warm tie that so long held her Royal mistress
captive to her will. The story of their gradual alienation, and
the misgivings it caused in those who were near enough to
perceive it, need not be recounted here.
A rival Junto, not exclusively Tory as sometimes has been
supposed, but powerful in the discontented talents of both
Parties, worked insidiously on the disenchanted Sovereign, and
flattered her infirm memory of prerogative that had really passed
away, till, in the midst of a religious panic, one after another the
leading members of the first Junto were dismissed ; and, in spite
of another splendid victory of the Captain-General, he, too, was
ignominiously cashiered. The memorable Treaty of Utrecht
followed, which made peace in Europe, and sought to establish
reciprocity of trade with France; but the old enmities of sect
rather than those of class or party, as Swift and Steele tried to
paint them, became concentrated in the question of succession
to the Throne. As Anne's bodily and mental health declined,
the absorbing thought of all political gamblers became, who
should inherit the Crown? Had Harley, St. John, and Harcourt,
Shrewsbury and Somerset, been thoroughly at one between
themselves, and been content to be co-equals in a Cabinet com-
prising other ambitious men who sighed for office, they might
VOL. I.
E
50
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
have chosen whichever kingly figure-head they wished ; but their
personal jealousies, though veiled from the public, superseded
all other animating motives, and the world has long since been
made to understand why, in the spring of 1714, the paralysis
of mutual distrust disabled the second Junto, and practically
brought a Government to an end, even before the death of the
Queen.
On the 17th of July the Chancellor took leave of her Majesty,
and sought in the country a brief respite from business ; but
he was soon peremptorily recalled to confer on the increasing
urgency of affairs.
To reconcile Oxford to removal he was
offered the Dukedom of Newcastle, to which, in a suit with Lord
Pelham, Cowper had thought him entitled; while his opponent
should have the Earldom of Clare. But this, with a pension of
£5,000 a year, the Treasurer declined, and on the 27th met his
colleagues at Kensington, in presence of the Queen.
The Venerable Archbishop in his robes; Harcourt as the
Oracle of Law; the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland still wearing his
Gold Key of Chamberlain, and Ormond playing showily the part
of Commander-in-Chief; Normanby, Lord President, and Dart-
mouth, Privy Seal ; Oxford, Lord Treasurer, and Wyndham to
answer for the Commons; Somerset, Master of the Horse, and
Paulet, Steward of the Household ; Bolingbroke and Bromley,
Secretaries of State, had all been duly summoned, and who
beside we may surmise but cannot tell ; but one may be
sure that none appeared unasked, and that the dramatic tale
of startling intrusion rests on mere misconception or on
imagination.
Oxford was interrogated anxiously by more than one of his
colleagues for allowing things to drift without an effort to the
brink of civil war. He defended himself with his usual versatility
of detail and prolixity of argument, but refused to take any
definite or decisive course. Shrewsbury, Ormond, and Harcourt
were ready to support Bolingbroke, who was felt to be the only
man amongst them combining the courage, energy, and know-
COUNCIL AT KENSINGTON.
51
1
ledge requisite for the direction of affairs, in which, without any
change of office, he had obviously gained a practical ascend-
ancy.
In the altercation that ensued, Oxford, among other re-
proaches, exclaimed that he would leave some people as low as
he had found them, and, losing his habitual self-command, he
laid his Treasurer's Staff at the feet of the Queen. The scene
did not end till after midnight, when Anne, worn with perplexity
and pain, left the Council Chamber, having formally intimated
no decision, but taking with her the coveted symbol of official
primacy, to which no one in succession was named. Bolingbroke
suggested that the Treasury should be placed in commission, his
brother-in-law, Wyndham, being Chancellor of the Exchequer
and Leader of the House of Commons; but nothing was resolved
on, and the Council was adjourned till further summoned.
To meet the Chancellor, the Viceroy, Wyndham, and Ormond,
Bolingbroke entertained at Golden Square Stanhope, Pulteney,
Walpole, Craggs, and Cadogan, to all of whom he offered a
fair share in a new coalition. They insisted as a preliminary
that the King of France should be called upon to expel the
Pretender from Lorraine, but this he knew the Queen would
not consent to.
Next day, he summoned his old colleagues to a “Chamber
Consultation” at the Cockpit, to consider who should be named
in Oxford's place. The conference sat long without coming to
a decision. Meanwhile the Queen grew worse, and an urgent
message came from the Duchess of Ormond, who was in waiting
desiring their immediate presence at Kensington. The Bishop
of London, Lord Mar, and several other members of the Privy
Council, who had become aware of her critical condition, attended
likewise, including the Dukes of Somerset and Argyll, whose
appearance has by some been said to have contributed materially
to decide the fate of Parties. But Shrewsbury declared the duty
that lay upon them all as Privy Councillors was to hold themselves
in readiness for any exigency that might arise ; and acceded to
the suggestion of Argyll that the physicians should be called in
E 2
52
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and examined. Their report was not reassuring, whereupon
Bolingbroke proposed that, as it was necessary to fill the
Treasurership without delay, three of their number should be
permitted to wait upon her Majesty and tender the advice that
the Whig Lord Lieutenant of Ireland be named. Anne received
them without emotion, said a better choice could not be made,
and, suffering the Chancellor to guide her hand, gave the Trea-
surer's Staff to Shrewsbury and bade him use it for the good of
her people. This done, she relapsed into unconsciousness, from
which she woke no more. Somerset's appearance at Kensington,
absurdly supposed to have been decisive in defeating Jacobite
designs, was, in fact, attributable simply to a message from his
wife, the Mistress of the Robes, acquainting him with the dan-
gerous illness of the Queen. He was still Master of the Horse,
but had not for some time attended the Council. Peevish under
fancied slights, and egregiously vain of his position as second
Peer of the Realm, he chose now and then to sulk at Petworth,
allowing his wrath to be assuaged by the great position his
Duchess continued to hold. Argyll's attendance was as easily
accounted for in such an emergency, though the chroniclers of
vermiculate details have not preserved a copy of the message
that brought him. In an exigency of State like that with which
it was necessary to deal, few would have thought of questioning
his sense of public duty in offering advice and aid. Strafford
was at the Hague, and it is not certain how many other officials
happened to be out of town. But the melodramatic tale of sur-
prise and disappointment at the alleged inbreak without notice
of the two Whig Dukes, as if the meeting of the 29th July at
Kensington was in the nature of a Cabinet whereof they were
not members, is an error that ought by this time to have been
allowed to drop from histories intended for the use of schools.
The Secretary of State came and went as he used to do unchal-
lenged and unremoved, pleased with himself at the tact displayed
(when there was hardly anything else to be done) in having at
the critical moment named the future Lord High Treasurer -a
DEATH OF RIGHT DIVINE.
53
Whig in the estimation of violent Tories, and a Tory so-called
by unreasoning Whigs.
Peter Wentworth, who was on the spot, says without emphasis,
when writing to his brother : "The Dukes of Somerset and
Argyll are in Council, which they say they may be though not
summoned, for they were never formally struck out”;t and there
is not in the correspondence a hint of any objection having been
raised to their presence. Wentworth gave a dismal account of
the state of suspense at Kensington. Towards evening Dr.
Arbuthnot came out of the sick-room and said that there was
some change for the better, and that the Queen was then asleep.
A great company, consisting of persons of all parties, lingered to
hear from hour to hour the state of the invalid. In a whisper,
the physician was overheard to say it was a thousand to one if
she recovered. No one ventured above his breath to conjecture
what might happen.
Many influential friends of the Elector assembled at Baron
Bothmar's, anxious to be assured that he was in possession of
the names prescribed by the Act of Regency of 1705, should the
impending event require their production.
The feeling in London is described as that of mingled hope
and fear at the Queen's illness, and anxiety was not allayed by
Ormond directing the guards at Kensington and St. James's to
be doubled.
It was not generally known during Saturday that the physi-
cians had given up all hope of the Queen's recovery. Conflicting
expectations and desires preoccupied the minds of men, but
there was no ebullition of either fear or exultation observable in
any part of the town. No audible expression of hostility to the
rumoured changes escaped the lips of the Hanoverians who
knew what was going on, and the Jacobites in the secrets of the
Palace were too conscious of the frailty of their tenure of power
to talk openly or confidently.
| Friday, 30th July, 1714. To Lord Strafford,
J.J. Cartwright.
“ Wentworth Papers ” : Edited by
54
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
One memorable fact stands out alone above the murmuring
ebb and flow of passing hopes and fears—that the pretension of
Executive Rule by Right Divine had ceased to be. Scarcely
four years had passed since Harley had been named Chief
Minister by the sole command of the Crown ; while all his col-
leagues took their offices by similar title, and the majority in
more than one Parliament tacitly acquiesced therein. Yet
already the notable experiment had failed. The too confident
steersman had let go his hold of the helm, and no one dared to
take his place until nominated by the concurrent suffrages of
fellow-statesmen assembled in Privy Council : the scarce audible
ratification of the expiring Sovereign being palpably a cere-
monial act of form. The Queen's state being pronounced hope-
less, Shrewsbury, with the assent of Bolingbroke, prepared a letter,
adopted by the other members of the Council present, apprising
the Elector of her extreme danger, and advising him to repair,
with all convenient speed, to Holland, where a squadron would
be in waiting to receive him.
55
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST CABINET.
A
1714.
O
Accession of George 1.—Council of Regency-What would Marlborough
do?~Removal of Bolingbroke-Civil List of George 1.—Putting
together the Cabinet-Marlborough Captain-General-Wharton and
Halifax-Sunderland and Stanhope-Cowper and Townshend—Walpole
and Addison-King's German Suite.
F the many eventful changes which history recalls in the
public life of England, none can be said to have taken
place so noiselessly, and with so little outward jar of
feelings and opinions, as that whereby the reins of Government
dropped from the unconscious hand of the last of the Stuarts
into those of the Provisional Council named by the Elector of
Hanover to keep the realm in safety till he came. The Act of
Succession invested the Heir to the Crown with the right of ap-
pointing beforehand the seven great officers of State for the time
being, and such other natural-born subjects of the realm as he
should deem fit to exercise the powers of Government on the
demise of the Crown. George I. had furnished three persons in
England with copies of the instrument duly executed by him,
on the production of any one of which the Privy Council were
bound to act.1
Harcourt, suspected by many to be ready to play whichever
dynastic game could be played most safely, produced the copy
confided to him as Chancellor. He broke the seal, and, being
himself the first named in the list, he proceeded without hesita-
tion to take the oath of allegiance to George I. Shrewsbury,
now Lord Chancellor, did likewise, and the other great function-
i 6th of Anne, chap. vii.
1
56
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
aries in turn ; and the rest of those named who were present
in Kensington did the same. There was no room for question
on whom the Executive Government devolved. A few hours
before, Harley might have been the first officially called on to
respond, but his office was now filled by another, and as a peer
he was not separately mentioned. A more signal omission was
that of Marlborough, who was still abroad when the list was
framed, and that of his ambitious son-in-law, Lord Sunderland,
for reasons never thoroughly explained. It included both Arch-
bishops, the Dukes of Somerset, Bolton, Devonshire, Kent,
Montrose, Roxburgh, and Argyll, the Earls of Pembroke,
Anglesey, Carlisle, Nottingham, Abingdon, Scarborough, and
Orford, Lords Townshend, Halifax, and Cowper. The new
Sovereign was forthwith proclaimed. The two Houses were
called together, and the members were occupied for many hours
in taking the oaths of allegiance and abjuration prescribed by
the last Act of Anne, and orders were issued for substituting in
the Liturgy the name of the new King for that of the deceased
Sovereign.
Shrewsbury sat by a two-fold title, while Oxford, who had
contributed more than the rest to rebuild this bridge over the
chasm, being no longer in office, and not having been other-
wise nominated at Hanover, was left out altogether. Boling-
broke, still dreaming of Ministerial Coalition, and unprepared
for the exigency at hand, had recommended him for Lord
Treasurer. He cherished probably the hope that his languid but
influential Grace would be brought into acquiescence, if not
active concert, with colleagues like Ormond and Strafford in the
future, as he had been in the past. He had held the Lieutenancy
of Ireland after the imprisonment of Walpole and Steele, and
after Marlborough had been driven into exile. Not even Somers
could explain his un-partisan course to the satisfaction of the
Whigs, and if he still was capable of being taunted or worried
by a virago wife into retaining political office, where could he find
support unless in a fusion of Parties? With the management of
Foreign Affairs left in his hands, Bolingbroke would have been
content to let him hold the Treasurer's Staff until it tired him, as
everything else did and was likely to do. The zest of power
and the nerve of ambition had not yet wholly died out in him,
and an opportunity had arisen almost without example of direct-
BOLINGBROKE IRRESOLUTE.
57
ing the course of events. We look in vain for any political
explanation of his abstinence from making the attempt. Filling
three great offices at once, without a murmur of cavil or jealousy
from either Party, with a record of stainless and distinguished
services to the State, and endued with every grace of mien,
talent, and expression, he not only took no determining part in
the memorable crisis, but he seems almost to disappear in the
contentions and intrigues of the time. The same abnormal want
of decision that throughout life had numbed or marred all his
worthiest efforts to accomplish what was great or good, paralysed
him once more and rendered him in the world's account little
better than a splendid cypher. He did not neglect the duties of
his great position, or flinch from the liabilities and dangers that
encompassed it. But, self-tormented by inappeasable doubt re-
garding right and wrong on every important question, the future
was for him a land of dreams, not of designs—of insoluble diffi-
culty, not of action. Somerset, on the other hand, was not likely
to give up by anticipation the Mastership of the Horse on account
of any passing question that might arise. Proud, rich, irritable,
and blunt-spoken, he was destitute of the discernment of ten-
dencies and motives that made fellowship in Council trouble-
Ormond commanded the Ordnance and Harcourt was
head of the Law, and both were friends as intimate and depend-
able as Bromley and Wyndham. So far, the lines seemed to
have fallen to Bolingbroke in pleasant places, and, reckoning
upon Anne's continuance in life, he could afford, he fancied, to
laugh at Swift's gloomy warnings of danger at hand ; but the
messenger that wakened him on the Sunday morning with the
tidings that the Queen had ceased to be broke the thread of his
sanguine anticipations.
It was not in him rapidly to organise or daringly to execute
revolutionary counter-schemes. He was a superb actor : not a
desperado; still less a hero. His part, when he had duly got it
up beforehand, he could play to perfection, whatever that part
might be. But belief had sunk so low in the socket that it shed
not a gleam of light even on his own path. The romance of a
perilous and clandestine design dazzled him. But in the midst
of unlooked for vicissitudes as they prosaically happened he
never clearly saw his way, and shrunk from going on blindfold :
for there was no unselfish earnestness in him. He had wavered
some.
58
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
come.
cause
and hesitated about Oxford's overthrow too long. The catas-
trophe came at last sooner than he expected; he was unpre-
pared, and not merely afraid, but unable to act without pre-
paration. And thus it happened that the blunt common-sense
of men, who on other occasions he despised, baffled all his fond
imaginings, elaborate plottings, and golden visions of power to
Had he and Harcourt refused to take the oaths at that
Sunday morning's Council upon any plea, however illusory or
illegal, others, neither few nor obscure, would have followed their
example ; and an interregnum might have ensued in which, the
actual powers of Administration being in their hands and those
of their friends, they would for the time have been able to
accomplish much. But, as Atterbury complained, the Stuart
was lost for want of spirit.” The oaths they had taken
to maintain the statutable succession might not have bound
them if it began to look unmaintainable. But they had looked on
and listened to each other performing the grave act of adhesion,
and the mutual confidence without which conspiracy never gets
beyond dangerous mutterings withered within them. Harcourt
went on acting as Chancellor and Bolingbroke as Secretary of
State, and they began to think that they might for a time hold
on under the new rigime. George I. was everywhere peaceably
proclaimed, and Bolingbroke, to please the mob, had the largest
bonfire and the finest illumination in town at his house in
Golden Square.
The Council of Regency was little else than a new Privy
Council, remodelled as was customary at the beginning of a
new reign.
so reconstituted by Charles II. at the
Restoration ; by James II. at his accession; by William and
Mary on their joint election; and, finally, by Anne on her
coming to the Throne. Its members were empowered to act
in the name of the Elector King, and in his absence to provide
in all things for what concerned the peace and safety of the
realm. But, unless upon definite and authentic direction by
him, they could not, and did not, exercise any function of
removal or appointment. An interval of several weeks con-
sequently occurred, during which the civil and military holders
of office at the death of Anne retained their positions.
.
1
It was
1 Peter Wentworth to his brother, 3rd August, 1714.
MARLBOROUGH INEVITABLE.
59
Every day men asked, curiously and anxiously, which way
was Marlborough? The versatility of his early career and his
known contempt for Party ties, might well render men doubtful
as to what remained of his future. Practically, he had lived
and thriven, risen to greatness and fallen from power, with
the fixed belief, if he believed anything, that his countrymen
in general cared not a rush for what politicians called con-
sistency. His personal attachments were firmer than those of
most men; but abstract principles or convictions he did not
profess to be bound by. Nothing, probably, would have in-
duced him to entertain projects or purposes inimical to the
Queen, to whom his sense of obligation was ineffable, and
whose hard treatment of him, though he could not but think
it unjust, was provoked, as he bitterly felt, by the intemperate
passion and folly of his wife. But, if Anne did not live to two-
score and ten, who could tell him what was to come after? He
had been a party to the Act of Settlement, and to its con-
firmation in the various statutes passed for securing the Hano-
verian succession, but he could not be unconscious that a
majority of the clergy, country gentlemen, and the Bar were
Jacobite to the core, and he knew better than anyone then
living how small a place the Elector occupied, or was personally
capable of filling, in the imagination of his partisans, and how
bitter were the feuds that divided them amongst themselves.
Were they able to guarantee the statutable reversion of the
Crown without Marlborough's assistance ? And, whatever
Sunderland and Cadogan inight think or say, it was not clear
to his pondering mind that he was not more sincerely coveted
at St. Germains than at Herrenhausen.
His sagacity had led him to live abroad during the two
preceding years rather than gratify his enemies by the spectacle
of his humiliation at home; and no doubt with the silent belief
that sooner or later a revulsion in the public mood would come.
His devoted wife sympathised in everything but his oppor-
tunism. That was not in the nature of the woman. She would
have stood her ground and fought it out with her foes day
by day; but, seeing he was resolved, she went with him to
Aix-la-Chapelle, Frankfort, and Antwerp: not pretending that
she was reconciled to banishment, or that she did not long to
have her children and her old friends round her at St. Albans,
60
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
or that she was insensible to the glorification of her husband
by princes, magistrates, and notabilities of all sorts wherever
he went in Germany and the Low Countries.
She kept up
an incessant correspondence with relations and confidants in
England, chiefly to record the honours paid to him "by people
who were not ungrateful,” but partly also to explain how
miserable she was at not being able to converse in any foreign
language, and partly to keep up her accounts of investments
in the Stocks, the payments for rent at Woodstock, and the
artists who were finishing the decorations of the house in Pall
Mall, for the Duke was so intolerably lazy that he would not
even write a letter to his children. She continued to denounce
the “Sorcerer" and his colleagues with unmitigated vehemence,
and to foretell the reversion of the Crown to the Prince of
Wales, whom she ceased to call the Pretender. But Sarah
was full of misgivings as to what might become of her great
possessions should Oxford succeed in bringing about “another
revolution ; after which he might pretend to be sole Minister of
State to the Devil.” She thought so badly of the times, that
if she knew where to place her money abroad “she would draw
every shilling out of England. Money in Holland was about
three per cent., and that country could not long subsist after
a villainous Ministry had given England up to France." If
anything is to be drawn from her letters at that period, it is that
she hardly knew her own mind while at a distance from home.
But from the time of her return, the decision with which she
formed her plans for recovering power, and the success with
which she pursued them, cannot be forgotten.
Though piqued at not having been invited to Hanover, Marl-
borough made up his mind to return to England as soon as
Parliament was up, and wrote to Bernsdorff desiring to know
how he could be of most use on his arrival there.
He landed at Dover on the ist of August, amid salutes from
the forts and acclamations by the people. On his approach
to the Capital he was welcomed by a long cavalcade of citizens
and nobles, with the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, who attended him
to his residence in Pall Mall, where he received the congratula-
tions of all the Ministers of Foreign Powers then in town. But,
having taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy in the
Lords, he withdrew to Holywell, and subsequently to Bath.
ADDISON AT COUNCIL.
61
Bothmar in vain protested, in the name of his now Royal
master, that the omission at Hanover which Marlborough took for
distrust, was only inadvertence, which, to the haughty spirit of
Sarah, seemed only to make bad worse. “Upon my knees I
begged that he would never accept of any employment. I said
everybody that liked the Revolution and the security of the law
had a great esteem for him ; that he had a greater fortune than he
wanted ; and that a man who had had such success, with such
an estate, would be of more use to any Court than they could
be of to him.”
What, in fact, she deprecated, her passionate words do not
clearly express, but what she meant is not doubtful or far to
seek. Marlborough, with her counsel and aid, at the commence-
ment of the last reign, had put together, and held together, a
Government of greater power and claim to be remembered than
any that had gone before or was likely to follow. Was it in the
nature of the woman that she should not desire that he should do
so again? Without a rival in diplomacy or arms, the testimonies
to his skill in negotiation, and genius in command, had been set
thick without example, and had struck ever-widening roots in
the public mind. No one, probably, understood better than
Sarah the poet's warning against the delusion of escaping envy ;
but she chose rather to commute the penalty into a regular
charge, which was to be borne unshrinkingly, and even proudly,
as token of pre-eminent distinction. What she haughtily re-
pudiated, and was anxious above all things Marlborough should
spurn, was the notion of his being made an instrument in the
new mechanism instead of having the control and guidance he
had had before. If Oxford or Townshend had led Robethon
and Bernsdorff into the belief that their unaccustomed master
might choose for himself the men to govern England, he must
be undeceived. The mansion in Pall Mall had more secure
whispering galleries with St. Stephen's than the old Palace of
St. James's. The impending choice of Ministers would bring a
blight or blessing on the realm. Informally, but emphatically,
it was resolved, by those who were taken into confidence at
Marlborough House, that if the drama of a Constitutional
Executive was to be successful, the cast of parts must be made
with intimate knowledge of the capabilities of each performer,
and with general agreement that the company would act
62
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
together. If the new Monarch had neither English ideas in
his head nor English language on his lips, it was all the more
essential that those who were to act and speak in his name
should win and hold their places by showing unison of purpose
and harmony of utterance.
The pen of Addison as Secretary was enlisted by the Council
as the ablest to countervail any that might be dipped in discon-
tent. With Swift he had had more than one round in journalism,
with results so doubtful that the friends of both thought each
might be well satisfied that the contention was not prolonged.
But in the art and mystery of State-paper writing the essayist
was not at his best. At the Council table he was as unsuggestive
as the gilt inkstand ; and when it came to the critical duty of
framing an Act of State, his knack of phrase was paralysed by
the greatness of the occasion. Halifax snatched the pen from
his hand and did the duty of scribe in his readier way. Addison
wished it to be understood among his friends that there was
some notion of naming him one of the Principal Secretaries of
State, but that he had the modesty to decline. It is hardly
credible, however, that in the scramble for power in the first
days of the new dynasty he should have been seriously thought
of in that critical capacity. · The fascination of his style and
his personal amenability were his chief merits in the politi-
cian's eye ; but with rumours of counter-revolution on all sides,
such qualities were of little worth. For a Chief Secretary
in Ireland, where a Viceroy chose to be absolute, he was just
the man, and Sunderland made up his mind that he would send
him thither.
Bolingbroke, meanwhile, was suffered to discharge his former
duties, and he took care to observe a scrupulous neutrality in all
respects. But things could not long continue as they were, and
through the Hanoverian Ministers of George I. the incompati-
bility was daily more decidedly expressed of his continuance in
Executive office. In reply to these representations, the Elector
sent a letter to the Lords Justices, which gave great satisfaction,
and Halifax, who ascribed it to the advice of Bernsdorff, bade
Robethon say how glad they all were that the Baron was to
accompany his master to England.
If the new reign could be inaugurated by measures to revive
BOLINGBROKE REMOVED.
63
the drooping spirit of commerce, it would be a great glory and
happiness to his Majesty.1
At the end of August authority came for the Secretary's re-
inoval. Shrewsbury, Cowper, and Somerset were directed to ask
him for the Seals, and take possession of official papers, which
were placed under lock and key. The blow could hardly have
been unanticipated, and yet, with all his mastery of look and
gesture, he owned that “the manner of his removal shocked him
for at least two minutes." He was not thereby intimidated, he
said, from any consideration of Whig malice and power; but the
grief of his soul was that he saw plainly the Tory Party was
gone ;? and he used the same language to Swift and Harcourt.
Addison thought Bolingbroke's removal had put "a season-
able check to an interest that was making in many places for
members in the next Parliament, and was very much relished
by the people, who ascribed to him in a great measure the decay
of trade and public credit.” He begged of Robethon to find
terins submissive enough to make the humble offers of his duty
acceptable to his Majesty.3
On the morrow of the Queen's death the price of public
Securities wavered inconsiderably ; but, as compared with the
period preceding her illness, they did not fall. At Midsummer,
Bank Stock was 123, South Sea Shares 87, and India 123. By
the end of August, Bank of England Shares were believed to
be worth ten pounds more, and speculation had so far revived
that South Sea Debentures stood at 96 and East India Com-
pany's at 134.4 It was not easy to make away with these
suffrages of confidence in the new order of things.
Atterbury might repine at Bolingbroke's untimely resolution,
as he deemed it, and he, in his turn, might deplore the apathy
which he had striven against in vain, but Oxford read more
clearly the realisations of his prognostics, and when not in wine
thanked God that Presbyterianism was, after all, not likely to be
in danger.
To carry on the business of the Executive it was necessary to
1 Halifax to Robethon, 24th August, 1717.-MS.
2 To Atterbury.
3 4th Sept. 1714.-MS.
* Flying Post, June to Sept. 1774.
64
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
renew the Civil List, out of which most of the salaries of public
servants were paid. The Lords Justices resolved to ask for the
new Sovereign the same amount that had been hitherto voted,
and £700,000 was, therefore, proposed. The Tories, to outbid
their rivals, suggested, instead, that the sum should be £1,000,000
a year, but the amendment was not pressed. Mr. Conyers was
proposed by Walpole as Chairman of Committee of Supply,
and carried against Sir W. Wyndham, whom the majority would
have preferred. There was evidently no disposition to array the
strength of opposing Parties in conflict prematurely, and on the
25th August Parliament was prorogued. For the ensuing
months the Council of Regency governed. The French Ambas-
șador, apprehending personal insult from the populace, asked for
military protection, and a detachment of the Train-bands was
ordered to guard the Legation. A day or two afterwards he
acquainted the Council with the resolution of his master to
maintain unbroken the friendly relations hitherto subsisting be-
tween the two kingdoms, and Lord Peterborough arrived from
Paris reporting the unqualified assurances given him in audience
by Louis XIV., of his determination to recognise faithfully the
Elector's accession to the Crown.
Marlborough was again encircled by those whose undisputed
chief he had so long been. For them the paramount question:
was, what would he do? Less anxious for office than he had
once been, he was as eager as his indomitable wife for restitution
of the dignities and emoluments of which he had been deprived ;
and for this an Administration able to guide Parliament, to con-
trol the Court, and reliable to conserve his interests was neces-
sary.
Halifax had hoped through Bernsdorff to prove himself best
entitled to be the head of the Ministry, while George I. carefully
avoided the open avowal of any especial preference. Sunderland
expected to be Secretary of State, but he was outrun in the
race for precedency by a competitor who had been the school-
fellow of Walpole in the days of the Revolution. Charles,
second Viscount Townshend, had early entered public life, and
in employments at home and abroad had made a considerable
figure and name. He was no orator, and his impatient temper
often rendered his utterance confused and his diction inaccurate.
But he was full of energy and ambition, was imbued with strong
TOWNSHEND SECRETARY OF STATE.
65
attachment to the new form of Government, and was fond of the
bustle of business and the show of power. He had made him-
self several influential friends among the Dutch, who commended
his useful qualities to the Elector; but he did not rely on their
good offices alone. He had contrived to win the confidence of
Bothmar, the Hanoverian envoy in London; but so carefully did
he avoid all appearance of preference, that when upon the
accession he was nominated Secretary of State many of the
great Whigs were surprised and something more. It was no
time, however, for dissension or even debate. Their political
adversaries still lingered on the steps of power.
To Townshend was ascribed the initial error into which the
expectant Sovereign had fallen, of omitting Marlborough and
his immediate connections from the ad interim Council of Re-
gency. Some time before the illness of the Queen, he had
formed the design of gaining the ear of the narrow conclave at
Herrenhausen, and he contrived to make much way with Both-
inar and Bernsdorff when few of his own countrymen were
doing little more than hedging against possible contingencies in
letters of florid but empty compliment. Nobody, in the Spring
of 1714, practically reckoned on an immediate demise of the
Crown; and Townshend, like other men once entangled in
intrigue, forgot the prudence which, after all, is best observed
by politicians from a sense of impending responsibility. The
Hanoverian Ministers and their agents in England were filled
with suspicions of the Marlborough party, for such, though not
in name, it had been, and was likely to become again ; and to
humour their distrust, without which he could not easily hope to
secure their confidence, Townshend unwisely filled up the list of
Lords Justices without naining the great soldier or his aspiring
son-in-law. His own antecedents were not inconsiderable. His
family had been staunch Loyalists in the days when the grand-
father of the Elector was. King, and they had adhered to the
side of Prerogative during the Restoration. Taking his seat as
a young man in the Upper House as one of the Opposition, he
had been easily engaged by Godolphin to support a coalition
Government, and, once freed from the ties of party, he had
drifted into the opposite ranks. Marlborough was his leader
and colleague at Gertruydenberg; Walpole his neighbour and
1 April, 1714. Hanover Papers.-- /S.
VOL. I.
F
66
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
friend in Norfolk. It is possible that the idea had not oc-
curred to either that Townshend was making a game for him-
self; but so it came to pass that, ere the eventful accident of the
Queen's illness suddenly compelled every man to show his hand;
the ambitious Viscount found himself singularly favoured by the:
Hanoverian Court, and made himself responsible for slighting a
political connection without which its accession and security
would be seriously imperilled. The good sense subsequently
shown by Townshend on many occasions of difficulty might
alone have spared historians the necessity of distinguishing
between his nomination as the first of the Ministers who were:
appointed in the new reign, and his imaginary appointment as.
First Minister. His position as Secretary of State and his
connection by marriage with the influential family of Pelham.
have misled writers on the subject; but the confidential detail of
how the first Cabinet was made dispels the error.
Marlborough's pre-eminence was so incontestable that, had.
there been any idea of Premiership, his claim could not have
been disputed ; and had his self-love slumbered, it would have:
been peremptorily awakened by her whose jealousy regarding
all that concerned his greatness and glory never slept. But
there could be no competition for a dignity theretofore un-
known; and in a Government formed mainly of his friends, he
was content with the old authority, patronage, and influence of
Captain-General.
The Duke of Montagu was named High Constable of Eng-
land; his Duchess, Marlborough's eldest daughter, First Lady -
in-waiting to the Princess of Wales ; Lord Bridgwater, husband
of a younger daughter, Chamberlain to the Prince ; and Lord
Godolphin, another son-in-law, Cofferer of the Household.
Charles, second Earl of Sunderland, had entered public life in:
1695 as Member for the close borough of Tiverton; and though
the remembrance of his father's perfidy and apostasy still threira
an ominous shadow on his path, the precocity of his talents and
attainments, the rare decorum of his life, and his alliance with
the House of Cavendish rendered him an object of especial pride
and hope to the party whose principles he espoused. In the late
reign his fortune and ability would hardly have singled him out
as a hostage for the concession of administrative power the great
Whig families required; and till his second marriage with t!
MARLBOROUGH CAPTAIN-GENERAL.
67
daughter of the Captain-General, his prospect of admission to
high office was remote. He had made himself an object of dis-
trust and dislike by the public avowal of extreme opinions, and
the assumption of pitiless loyalty in the case of his sister, Lady
Clancarty. He was, in short, unpopular, not with the crowd
who knew little about him, but in the Palace and in Society;
and though confessedly "not the properest man for the post, yet
being my Lord Marlborough's son-in-law, the Whigs chose to
recommend him to be one of the Secretaries of State in 1706,
because, as they expressed themselves, it was driving the nail
that would go." 1
But not even the concession of the Seals could appease his
thirst for predominant party power. Again and again he tried
to organise resistance in Parliament to the retention of Prince
George of Denmark as Lord High Admiral, whom he persisted
in describing as capable of being used to bring about a second
Restoration, and he laid before Godolphin a plan for constitut-
ing a Board of Admiralty, with Pembroke as its First Lord,
whose collective decisions and orders should in future be indis-
pensable for the Government of the Navy. Godolphin, who
thought of nothing new or strange that would displease the
Queen, and undertook nothing of importance without previous
agreement with Marlborough, put aside the suggestion sinc die,
while telling its author that he did not disapprove of it.
fidential letters to Holles Newcastle, Wharton, Somers, Orford,
Halifax, and Devonshire, he urged them to use their influence to
defeat the Court candidate for the Speakership, and to take
other means of convincing the Lord Treasurer and the Captain-
General that the country was lost if all the Tories were not
driven out of office. His unyielding and imperious temper
made him, ere long, so distasteful to the Queen, that before her
final quarrel with the Marlboroughs she insisted on his removal.
He laboured arduously to keep his political friends together, and
by degrees contrived to make himself regarded as the chief
defender of the interests of the Dissenters in the Upper House,
and as likely to be their champion in a future reign. And now,
if not Secretary of State, might he not have some equally im-
portant place? As the presumptive successor to Marlborough,
hc had lcarned to temporise on many critical subjects, and to
1 - Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough,” 160.
In con-
li 2
68
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
adopt not a few of the maxims of coalition that he had formerly
treated as rank blasphemy. Sarah's influence prevailed with
him to accept for the time being the Irish Viceroyalty, though it
offered no immediate scope for the exercise of his love of power,
and though to the world without it seemed a post of secondary
importance. It had indeed been held by men of the highest
rank and pretension; but since Strafford's timc, no Lord Lieu-
tenant had been able to exert a power really equal to that of
Secretary of State, and from the day Sunderland had been
divested of the Seals by the late Queen, for his unbending
assumption of executive authority, his craving had been for
their repossession. Sarah, who understood the boundless am-
bition of the inan, and who already had begun to realise in his
children the broken dream of family greatness, was alone
capable of understanding his morbid irritability at what was
now proposed. Did she whisper in his ear what his amiable and
loving but prosaic wife was incapable of imagining-Thou shalt
be chief hereafter ?—or would his egotism without such incense
have allowed him to adjourn silently the fixed purpose of his
life for a time, and feign complacence, though he had it not?
But there were precedents enough for a Governor-General of
Ireland governing from Westminster; and, with the understand-
ing that he was not to quit his home in Piccadilly, he deigned at
last to accept the indignity, as he considered it, of being called
Vice-King.
As he was not expected to throw away his time beyond sea,
but, like Montrose, to be responsible in Council for the conduct
of affairs in an appendant realm, for which, with the rank and
pay of Viceroy, he was to be Minister, it was essential that he
should have for his legate a latere a man of ability and pliancy,
on whom he could depend, and from Shrewsbury, lately returned
from Ireland, he gathered readily who was most worthy of his
choice.
Sir A. Brodrick, M.P. for Orford in the Parliament of the
Restoration, was one of the Commissioners appointed to settle
conflicting claims in Ireland after the Civil War. Both he and
his brother became possessed of extensive estates in West Cork ;
and while the elder branch of the family continued to reside in
Middlesex and to hold an influential position in English public
life, the transplanted branch struck early root in Irish soil and
BRODRICK.
69
by adoption came to be regarded, not without reason, as more
Irish than the Celts themselves. Alan Brodrick, being a second
son, was bred to the Law, and so early gained distinction that in
1695 he was made Solicitor-General, and in 1707, Attorney-
General. By the Whigs he was named Chief Justice in 1710,
but was superseded the following year by their successors. In
recognition of the independence he had always shown in advo-
cating the abatement of the Test Act, even when in office, under
an intolerant Administration, and as a tribute to his eminent
ability and learning, the Irish Commons chose him unanimously
their Speaker in 1713. Shrewsbury, who at heart was with him,
approved their choice.
their choice. Sunderland was too glad to have such a
man for Chancellor and Chairman of the House of Lords.
He resolved to have Addison for Chief Secretary. Well aware
of the scramble for patronage likely to ensue on the arrival of
the new King; and feeling that mere literary merit would too
certainly be jostled aside by sturdier pretensions, Addison had
taken care to ply Robethon with eager iteration of his claims
founded on the services he had rendered. He forwarded a con-
.
gratulatory poem by Tickle, and a copy of a preamble composed
by himself to the patent of the Prince of Wales, with the draft
proclamation issued by the Lords Justices, offering a hundred
thousand pounds for the apprehension of the Pretender. A
fortnight later he addressed a business-like document to the
new Sovereign, setting forth how much he was out of pocket by
his Secretaryship to the Regents in the past six weeks, and
hoping confidently his indefatigable services to the Hanoverian
succession might not be forgotten. Nor eventually were they :
Sunderland having made it a point that he should be Chief
Secretary for Ireland. Addison did not conceal his dis-
appointment, but thought it would be imprudent to refuse,
When, however, his abitrary patron sought to exact from him
the pledge that he would not see his old friend, the Dean of St.
Patrick's, the better nature of the man broke from the bondage
of time-serving and party, and he declined to give any promise
of the kind.
Wharton's party zeal and energy in self-assertion rendered it
impossible that he should be overlooked in the re-distribution of
administrative parts. His stay in Ireland as Chief Governor was
brief and unhonoured; but he gave little heed to the upbraiding
70
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
t
of his critics in the Press, who compared him to Verres, the
misruler of Sicily; and there was no one in the Peers with the
courage of Cicero to call him to account. Exposure seemed to
do him no harm ; expostulation did him no good, and he rioted
on while his party was in opposition. Now their turn was come
again, his tarnished aid in elections and in many other ways,
was not to be despised, and it was secured by the Privy Seal
and a marquisate.
There were other members of the all-powerful family con-
nection to be thought of, for whom a position must be found.
Young Lord Pelham had just come into his great inheritance,
and by all-aspiring mothers was courted as the best match in
the world of fashion. Townshend had married his sister, and
naturally sought to promote his expanding views of dignity
and importance. An earldom was the least that might be
conferred on the successor to the fortune of Holles Newcastle,
and though there were disputes about the revival of the old
Barony of Clare, who should forbid the King making him an
earl by that coveted name? In the sultry days of deliberation
at Pall Mall, when the whole scheme of future Government was
putting together, Townshend fell back into the secondary rank
to which he naturally belonged ; and, content with the prospect
of being Secretary of State, he found ready acquiescence in the
stipulation that his young relative, Lord Pelham, then at Cam-
bridge, should be thus advanced in the Peerage. The Northern
Department, which included, with some exceptions, the adminis-
tration of domestic affairs and the Appellate control of matters
of primary moment in Scotland and Ireland, was to be his por-
tion. His assiduity in business, acquaintance with county politics
and Quarter Session ways of looking at public life, rendered him
a safe and unforgetful referee on a thousand commonplace
matters of dispute which a foreign King, with a foreign house-
hold, would have been hopelessly perplexed if called upon con-
tinually to deal with. But his temper, which even his admirers
owned was arrogant, lent a colour to the conduct of ordinary
business that was destined to contribute no little to the unpopu-
larity of the new reign. Kind to his children and considerate to
his servants, he was usually spoken of as good-natured and
humane. But a curious and instructive side light on his
character as a Home Minister is intermittently struck, as from
IIALIFAX.
71
the old flint and steel, by the guarded expostulation of Defoe,
who knew too well what was going on, and whose nobler nature
shrank, often to shuddering, from the ruthless exercise of power,
in whose pay his impecuniosity tempted him to live, but to whose
faults he could not shut his eyes. When Townshend came to
represent the varied and complicated action of Government in
the House of Lords, he was often deficient in ready reply and
impromptu defence ; not from want of knowledge or decision in
judgment, but because he was provokingly ungracious and wan-
tonly aggressive, where others would have shown more discretion
by escaping from a difficulty in a cloud of brilliant words, or a
timely appeal to the patriotism of forbearance.
Bothmar and Robethon were soon convinced that Townshend
had led their master into an error too dangerous to be acknow-
ledged or adhered to, in supposing that an Administration that
-could see him safe or hold the reins of rule could be formed
without Marlborough and his personal friends. After a visit to
Bath and a short stay at Holywell, where he said he was happier
than anywhere else, the Duke returned to Marlborough House,
and there the consultations, in which Sunderland, as formerly,
was the most unyielding, and Walpole the most knowing and
suggestive, were resumed. What was to be done with the
Treasury? Godolphin was dead, and no Whig had succeeded
in building up such a financial reputation as his pupil the
“ Country Mouse." But years had passed, and it was necessary
to have somebody who knew without prompting all the fiscal
wisdom of the Egyptians, and how they could make money
appear by their enchantments whenever it was wanted. Nobody
had had such experience of the need, or, to say the truth, the in-
dispensability, of such magic as Marlborough. Ten years before
he had refused to mount the war-horse at his door unless Godol-
phin would undertake for its keep and stabling: and when his
friend was displaced he could hardly be restrained from dis-
mounting ere his work was done. They had now times of peace,
and he had probably made up his mind never to cross the sea
again on foreign service. But without a master hand at the
Treasury in whom he could implicitly confide, or, at a pinch,
imperatively bend to his will, the worn and world-sick General
would not be involved again in the toilsome and thankless task
of Government. There is no evidence that he cared personally
72
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
.
for Halifax ; but there was, in fact, litle choice, and, after all, the
families of Churchill and Montagu had come to be akin. In a
Court where there was to be no Queen, she who had been politi-
cally greater than the Queen could not resume her old pre-
eminence; and Sarah was content that her daughters should.
have between them all the distinctions she had once enjoyed..
Cadogan was likewise to be recognised and rewarded. He had
followed Marlborough's fortunes throughout his great campaigns,
and sat beside him without shrinking in the cold shade of Oppo-
sition. No personal defect or fault had been laid to his charge,
and he had shown in diplomacy the same aptitude and resource
that he had been credited with in war. It was, therefore, decreed
by the dispensers of all that was worth having that he should be
sent as envoy to the States General.
Halifax had persuaded himself that by his debating talents he
was entitled to lead his party in the Peers, and that by his past
experience no one had such claims to paramount rule as a.
financier. But his dream of pre-eminence was not realised, and
he was fain to be content with the first seat at the Board of
Treasury, and an earldom, his nephew being allowed to retain
the Auditorship of the Exchequer, a place designed to be a
check upon every branch of the departinent. According to
Sarah's unsparing pen, there never was a falser man : and such
his thrift that “when he dined alone he ate upon pewter to savc-
his plate.”
Halifax had used his leisure and sinecure income in cultivating
what no one in his time but Orford had systematically striven
to do—the personal goodwill and (if they believed him) personal
sympathy of men of letters, dramatists, and artists, without re-
gard to nice distinctions of creed or party. Addison and Con-
greve were almost made to believe that they were equals as well
as intimates. Was it in human nature that they should not
speak and write of him as the one man in all England they
wished to see in office again ? Swift was less easily cajoled..
Before he changed sides, he liked greatly dining at the great
little man's table; but even while only fasting vicar of Laracor
he did not like being bidden to be brought in with the highways
and ledges of literature. Few of his craft were, perhaps, as.
squeamish; and chairs were seldom vacant at Mæcenas' table.
When gathered round, his learning, tact, eloquence, anecdote,
LITERARY ADULATION.
73
humour, wit-like the charm of an unseen solvent-melted for
the hour all the jarring prejudices of the men who never else
blended in unison, and whatever recollection dwelt upon each
memory on the morrow, and however waywardly or peevishly
chequered by envy or disappointment, it was sure to add some-
thing of its hue to the concurrence of what men call opinion,
that is the breath of a statesman's popularity. Others have
since then tried the like arts of conjuration ; but few, like Charles.
Montagu, brought it to perfection. Cold-hearted critics in our
times rub their eyes and wonder if there is any misprint in the
bursts of adulation and paroxysms of praise that were addressed.
to this Master of Literary Revels. Congreve had the face to
inscribe his collected works to the Statesman who, if he had
followed the bent of his genius in poetry instead of politics,
would have eclipsed the aggregate fame of Hellenic song.
If Halifax in his earlier official days could find no worthier
mode of expressing sympathy for a brother wit than making
Congreve a Commissioner for Hackney Coaches, and subse-
quently, of Wine Licences, he hoped now to have the power of
doing something better for his friend, and he did not fail to use
it. The dramatist had ceased to write, and preferred being
known as a man of fashion and indispensable friend of the
Duchess of Montagu ; but the man to whom Steele vied with
Pope in doing honour, and for whose company politicians and
players contended, was worth identifying (if it could be done
economically) with the new Administration. A Clerkship of the
Pipe, £ 500 a year, and the stay-at-home Secretaryship of Jamaica,
£700 a year, might be judiciously conferred on the classic whose
help in his best efforts Dryden did not disdain, and whom Swift
only blamed for not writing inore. Congreve thriftily enjoyed
his sinecures for several years, and left her Grace in his will
sufficient to buy a diamond necklace and erect a monument to
his memory in Westminster Abbey.
The declining health of Somers unfitted him for any active
employment, but as an adviser he was thought indispensable,
and with a seat in the Cabinet he was allotted an additional
pension, which he did not live long to enjoy.
The Presidency of the Council was assigned to Nottingham,
who had been one of the coalition at the beginning of the late
reign, and who had only left them when bishoprics and deaneries
74
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
were given, he thought, too exclusively to low Churchmen. But
he had little sympathy with non-jurors, and none with Jacobites;
and by degrees he came to act on many important questions
with the Whig majority in the House of Lords. His reunion
with them in office would serve more than argument to show
that the new Sovereign would be advised to reign as head of
the nation, not as the chief of a party. Marlborough, Shrews-
bury, and Halifax, who had never undervalued his worth, were
glad to have him for a colleague, and even Wharton did not
object.
Devonshire, it was agreed, should be once more invited to be-
come Lord Steward. He was the one man of his party who
had troops of friends and no enemies, and the rebuilding of
his house in Piccadilly being completed, its gates were opened to
that un-partizan hospitality on which they never have been
closed. Shrewsbury, from the first, declared his intention of
relinquishing the Treasurer's staff and the Lieutenancy of Ire-
land, preferring only to retain the post of Chamberlain. But as
his income was much less than his boastful wife would have the
world believe, he was gratified at her being named Lady-in-
Waiting to the Princess of Wales, and that his past services in
office should be acknowledged by a pension of £2,000 a year.
Everyone desired that Cowper should again be Chancellor, and
the victor of La Hogue, though personally unpopular, was, for
the sake of his connections, named First Lord of the Ad-
miralty.
Argyll would fain have had his brother Islay made Secretary
of State for Scotland, but Marlborough's veto quenched the
claim. He was recommended for the office of Clerk Register,
but the Portfolio was allotted to Montrose, who had rendered
essential service at the Union. He was one of the sixteen
representative Peers, and in the late reign had been Lord
President and Privy Scal in Scotland, but had lately been re-
moved for his intractability to the policy of Orford.
named by the Elector one of the Lords of Regency. What
place should be found for Argyll? None, if the absolute
will of the Captain-General were to be obeyed, for he had never
.concealed his distrust and dislike of his most distinguished
Lieutenant. MacCullamore had shown his resentment on the
critical occasion when Marlborough's conduct was impugned in
He was
GENERAL STANHOPE.
75
the House of Lords; and nothing had subsequently occurred
calculated to bring about a reconciliation. It was not a time,
however, to be nice. Argyll was still the hero of the popular
imagination north of the Tweed ; and it was decided that he
should be Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, and Groom of the
Stole to the Prince of Wales. Thus, without being a Minister,
he was placed in a position of conspicuous rank and influence,
whence ere long fresh jealousies and distrust arose.
Henry Boyle was thought of for the Exchequer, not for any
special knowledge of finance, but because in the late reign he
had been Secretary of State without blame, and was still personâ.
gratâ at Marlborough House. He preferred, however, a peerage
with leisure and independence; and the Speaker, Sir Richard
Onslow, consented to occupy the second seat at the Treasury
while waiting for his summons to the Upper House, and Henry
Boyle became Lord Carlton.
Who, then, was to be Joint Secretary of State ? Horace
Walpole by his own account suggested the victor of Almenara,
and persuaded Townshend that Stanhope "had a fruitful and
luxuriant genius in foreign affairs, which he hoped might be
checked or pruned by him as his colleague, and which he never
imagined would prove wild, mad, and ungrateful.”? At a moment
so critical, vigour and unity were indispensable in the joint
holders of thic Seals. What the elder might be thought by some
to lack in versatility and popularity, the younger ought to supply.
By foreign diplomatists the Viscount was not unappreciated or
under-valued ; but in the Commons Townshend had never sat;
in Court circles his worth was discounted as wanting hereditary
quickness and grace, and in the City he was unknown. On the
other hand, the General was a hero who, in the Homeric manner,
had challenged and slain in single coinbat Amezaga, the Captain
of the enemy's host, in set array. He had subsequently gone
through the romantic vicissitudes of captivity in foreign parts,
only to be ransomed and to return to talk as well in Parliament.
as if he had been bred to that function. With Pulteney or
with Steele, in point of rhetoric, he could not compare : but
who were they in parliamentary connection to be considered ?
He had married Lucy, daughter of Governor Pitt, lately re-
? 11. Walpole the elder to Etough (for many years Chaplain to Sir Robert Walpole),
21st Septi, 1752. --MS.
76
HIISTORY OF CABINETS.
turned with fabulous wealth from India, and who was forming a
not inconsiderable family party in the House of Commons. One
of her brothers had wedded the daughter of Lord Grandison,
another the heiress of Lord Londonderry, whose title was sub-
sequently transferred to him, and a third the daughter of Lord
Falkland. These were considerations not to be overlooked in the
choice of Ministers in the Lower House. Many of Stanhope's.
earlier years were passed at Madrid, where his father was resident
Minister. While still a youth he served with distinction under
Lord Peterborough at the siege of Barcelona, and anxious to
acquire a knowledge of other Continental States and their
languages, he was allowed to make a prolonged tour in Italy and
Germany.
At Namur he served as a volunteer, and William III. gave
him a colonelcy of Foot. He was elected for Newport, and
afterwards for Cockermouth. In the War of the Succession he:
was entrusted with diplomatic as well as military functions.
With the rank of General and the character of Envoy to the
Court of Charles II., he assumed the conduct of affairs in 1708
on behalf of Great Britain in the Peninsula ; planned, and led in
person, the attack on Port Mahon, and secured the conquest of
Minorca.
He and Walpole became political friends. Between the
capacity of the two men there was indeed no comparison, but
by lineage and connection the General took precedence, and
each possessed knowledge the other felt to bc imperatively
required for the successful working of constitutional rule. Bred.
in diplomacy, Stanhope was well worth trying in the manage-
ment, if not the direction, of foreign affairs. It was something,
too, that Townshend and he were personal friends; and their cor-
respondence during the period they were colleagues shows how
entire was the confidence the former reposed in him. Yet it has.
been said that when Walpole and others suggested his appoint-
ment as Secretary of State, he was piqued at being, as he thought,
misplaced, and not without difficulty was convinced that the:
offer was made sincerely, without any idea of anticipated failure.
Throughout life, his best qualities were frequently obscured by
uncontrolled bursts of temper, but, in the main, he was amiable,
generous, and upright, untinged by the avarice or invetcracy
that marred the reputation of so many of his contemporaries.
WALIOLE.
77
Looking back through the historic mist that shrouds the acts
and motives of a distant time, it is not casy to discern precisely
how the son of a Norfolk squire, who married for a fortune the
daughter of the Lord Mayor, pushed his way not merely to the
front of Parliamentary battle, but to a leading part in the con-
fidential councils of Marlborough House.
He had entered Parliament at six-and-twenty as M.P. for
King's Lynn, and in 1705 was thought worth making a Lord of
the Admiralty. Who knows exactly why? There was little
room for the most active-minded and glib-tongued partisan at
St. Stephen's beyond the traditional one of keeping a House and
voting with Ministers; but one who, impatient at being nothing,
had made up his mind to be something, found a way that nobody
else would take the trouble to show him. Two years later Sarah
obtained for him the Treasurership of the Navy, which he
acknowledged by letter as a great obligation. He was glad to
act as Vice-Secretary at War for Cardonnel whom the Duke
had taken with him to Flanders. But when the Harley and
Masham cabal began the Duchess thought he played a double
part to keep well with both sides. She says he treated her
afterwards with all the folly and insolence imaginable, when he
had come into great power, and acted as if he were King. But
in September, 1714, he was still deferential, and still, in a certain
.. sense, a favourite.
He was said to have overspent himself in hospitalities in the
latter days of Queen Anne. The heads of the Party were now
willing to make it up to him and give him the Pay Office and
the Governor's quarters at Chelsea Hospital, if he would under-
take the essential work of what was called doing the King's
business in the House of Commons.
Consulted throughout the pending deliberations, he consented,
if he did not ask, to be Paymnaster-General. Seldom filled but
by a Commoner, the office afforded, to one who understood so
well how to use them, especial compensations. If peace lasted,
these would probably be no more than the War Office had
previously yielded; but, in case of war, the dues and perquisites
would, as he well knew, be unlimited, save by his own discretion.
Sir Stephen Fox had made his fortune after the Restoration by
his careful husbandry of so rich a farm, and after him his son
I Memoirs of Duchess of M.
78
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
held it till the Revolution, when the notorious Lord Ranelagh
made his own of it. In 1703 the office was divided, Charles
Fox being reappointed to that relating to Foreign Service,
while John Howe had the control of the military estab-
lishments at home. After them, Brydges, created Duke of
Chandos, condescended to accept the post in consideration of the
profits that appertained to it, and held it till it was again divided
between Thomas Moore and Edward Nicholas.
Walpole's still undeveloped powers in debate did not entitle
him to dispute with Halifax the first place at the Treasury, and he:
wisely resolved to wait for the reversion, which fell sooner than
he could have counted on; but his courage, energy, and versatile
skill, rendered him from the first an essential element in the new
scheme of rule. Personally he had about him little that com-
mended him at Marlborough House : he was blunt, coarse, and.
saucy-qualities which the presiding spirit there could overlook
when convenient, but which not the less offended her sense of
dignity and her inappeasable craving for deference to her
opinions, presumable or expressed, which she retained long after
she had ceased to be La Première. Walpole could tell her, from
day to day, as no one else could, how the weather set in specu--
lation and finance. Others were ready to inquire, if she wished,
what was said in the City and at Amsterdam. Arbuthnot had
many loyal and accomplished rivals ready to fetch and carry,
but that all implied, in more or less degree, revealing her far-
sighted wishes and aims, and at best she knew that none of them
really knew what, for certain, she wanted to know. Walpole
asked no questions, and wanted no time to consider. Like Sarah,.
he believed in gold if in nothing else, and when there was news
of importance, or rumours perplexing, or tidings propitious, they
talked shorthand to each other, and more than even the opinion
of Sunderland or Cowper on political subjects the great Duchess.
valued that of Walpole. That they should have quarrelled
eventually, when times changed, was, perhaps, inevitable; but in
the days of the Regency, when the great families were conferring
together how they might build up such a stronghold of oligarchic
power as could not be shaken, a self-contained man like Walpole.
exercised in secret council regard and consideration which few,
if any, except Marlborough himself, could command. The only
services thought of, or deemed worth thinking of, by men forming:
THE WAR OFFICE.
79
an Administration were services to come; and these were what
everybody credited Walpole with without his naming them.
His early prudence and tact in the management of men, and
the confidence early reposed in him by those in high office with
whom he had to deal, made him the trusty instrument of the
head of the great coalition in his dealings with the Whig party.
The office of Secretary at War, created under Charles II., was
of comparatively small account, and had cognizance rather of
civil wants and necessities than of military duties. So little
political consequence attached to it, that it was at first bestowed
on Sir W. Clarke, who had acted in a similar capacity under
Cromwell, with the title of Secretary to the Council of
War, and subsequently on Mr. Locke, promoted thereto
from a clerkship in the Treasury. By the time, however, the
hereditary Monarchy had been overthrown, and government by
Act of the Three Estates of the Realm had come into fashion,
the Secretary at War, like all other heads of departments and.
sub-departments, became a political functionary, had a seat in the
House of Commons, and took part, when bidden, in debate.
Walpole was chosen, when Godolphin required all the help he
could muster round him, to keep the tallies of the huge outlay in
the Low Countries. It was a time of universal laxity, and of
jobbing on a scale that through the best historic telescopes can
hardly be made out clearly. The member for Lynn was not a
man to neglect his official opportunities, and he grew rich apace.
Presents—what would now be called discounts-were the dis-
order of the day, and when Walpole was not engrossed by
speculation in the City, he indulged in amenities at Whitehall
that sometimes were worth several hundred pounds. Opposi-
tion had its eye upon him, and in resentment for never-failing
votes against them, and broad jokes at their expense, harder to
bear, they resolved to call him to account for bribery and cor-
ruption. All was, of course, denied, then explained, partially
extenuated, and at length confessed. The House of Commons .
voted him.guilty, and he was sent to the Tower, where he was
allowed to live a lazy and luxurious life till, with the Parliament,
his imprisonment expired, none of his contemporaries, either
friends or foes, appearing to think the worse of Robin for having
been caught feeding too fat at the public expense. · Such was.
the beginning of a great career. It is important to observe that,
80
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
from its first creation, the Secretaryship at War was strictly re-
garded as civil and not military; and Lord Palmerston, who
himself filled it so honourably in later times, and who took no
ordinary pains to make himself inaster of its history, declared
that he could find no instance of the appointment having been
conferred on an officer of the army. The Secretary at War
was at all times bound to take his orders from the Treasury, the
Secretary of State, or, up to a certain period, from the Sovereign
himself. But the pay of the troops, their pensions and allowances,
and all that appertained to the finance of the Army, was con-
fided to a new functionary, with a separate establishment of clerks
and assistants, called the Paymaster of the Forces. Neither were
at first Ministers of State, but both had seats in Parliament. The
Paymaster was bound to account for the disbursements, where-
with he was held personally chargeable, until formally acquitted
by an auditor of the Exchequer. Henry St. John, successfully
paying court to the Marlboroughs, was made Secretary at War
when Harley first obtained the Seals, and went out of office with
him in 1708, to be succeeded by Robert Walpole
It would not have done to make Walpole again Secretary at
War, for Parliament, though ready to forget his faults, was not
.always safe to be trified with on points of form ; and there a
vote of expulsion stood on the minutes unrescinded, and but
four years old. He himself thought he could do better by
taking the Pay Office and leaving his former post in the
interval occupied by Lansdowne, Wyndham and Gwyn) to the
friend who had steadily adhered to him in his time of trouble,
and whose repute as a debater was already deemed superior to
his own.
So Pulteney became Secretary at War Craggs
offered himself in preference for the post, but was told by the
Duke (as probably the easiest way of getting rid of importunity)
that if he could persuade his new Majesty to appoint him no one
would be inore welcome to him. The sanguine aspirant could
not see that his Grace was civilly fooling him, and when George
I. arrived Craggs actually asked an audience to present his claims
and credentials as a practised official store-keeper ; but he could
only extract at intervals an unexplanatory “non,” and he was
glad eventually to put up with the consolation of half the Post-
master-Generalship.
| Palmerston's Memoirs.
TENISON.
81
1
In previous Parliaments Pulteney had won great distinction, if
not influence, by his versatility and eloquence, equal to that of
Wyndham and Cowper; while in debating power, strictly so-
called, after St. John left the Commons, he was unequalled. In
the scramble for office the ties of personal or political friendship
were too frequently forgotten. “Not any three held together;
and, as needs must, old friends often stood in one another's way.
Pulteney told the tale himself, which some affected to doubt,
that on coming to the War Office he found the salary had
always been but £1,400, until it was raised by Godolphin
for St. John a thousand more. For his part he would be
satisfied with the old recompense in order to leave the King
the difference wherewith to gratify whom he would. His
Majesty said he had found few like him, and would let it be
as he proposed.
Beset by the importunities of the crowd who jostlcd one
another for promotion, the new Sovereign enjoyed one hour of
respite in the audience given to the Primate. He said “he
liked him better than all the rest who came to tender homage,
for he was the only one who asked for nothing." Returning to
Lambeth, Tenison believed that his long day of public life was
passed, and that he might fairly hope to be suffered to wait
his end in peace. But the influence and respect he universally
enjoyed were of too much value to be left out of political cal-
culation ; and with the King's approval a place was offered him
in the Council of Ministers. Nottingham and Cowper cordially
advocated the proposal, as likely to form the best guarantee that
no designs were harboured inimical to the Church, and that no
fresh attempts would be made to abridge the liberties of Non-
conformists. Tenison, far from desiring such an additional
distinction, could not easily be persuaded to incur the new re-
sponsibility it involved. He alleged, with truth, his increasing
infirmities of body and anxieties of mind as pleas in bar against
the dignity proposed; and he could only be induced to yield to
the argument sincerely used by the Lord President and the
Chancellor, that the support of the Church was an element sine
quâ non in the peaceful establishment of Constitutional rule.
From private memoranda of Townshend we learn that the
noble-hearted old man did not elude the duty thus laid upon
G. Wentworth, ist Oct., 1714.
VOL. I.
a
82
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
him; and that during the subsequent twelve months he attended
constantly the confidential meetings at Whitehall.
Before the King's arrival in England, the ground-plan of
future Government in his name was complete, and Townshend
was authorised to submit on bended knee the terms of capitu-
lation, whereby he was to wear the Crown, and his self-appointed
Ministers were to keep the Sceptre. The first Cabinet consisted
of:
TENISON
Archbishop of Canterbury
MARLBOROUGH
Captain-General
CowPER
Lord Chancellor
NOTTINGHAM ..
Lord President
WHARTON
Privy Seal
SUNDERLAND.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
TOWNSHEND 2
Secretaries of State
STANHOPE :)
MONTROSE
Secretary for Scotland
HALIFAX
First Lord of the Treasury
ORFORD
First Lord of the Admiralty
ONSLOW
Chancellor of the Exchequer
SHREWSBURY
Chamberlain
DEVONSHIRE
Lord Steward
SOMERSET
Master of the Horse
SOMERS
(Without office)
...
...
...
...
...
:
...
...
...
...
And when it was agreed as to the places to be taken respectively
by the future rulers of England, George I. was made to under-
stand their decision. All the reasons, or the half of them, would
have been, by letter or in broken English, beyond his compre-
hension, and the effort would, doubtless, have ineffably bored
him. But he had shrewdness enough to see that his acquiescence
was all that was necessary, not his pretended or imaginary ap-
proval. On any other terms than the combined will of those
who wanted him for King, he knew that he had better not quit
the Hunting Lodge where he had passed the noon of life.
But the offices of Government being settled as an indispensable
preliminary, he understood that in all the forms and ceremonies
of Royalty he was to be treated as King. The Court pageantry
and Executive forms of Monarchy were indispensable to the new
system of rule. The dread of another Commonwealth, by cour-
tiers scornfully disclaimed, and by statesmen seldom actually
MARLBOROUGH AT LEVÉE.
83
owned, was to be lulled to rest by the show and state of Royalty;
and for the sake of it the haughtiest and wealthiest, the dullest
and the wisest aspirant to Cabinet rank were content to keep up
scrupulously the litany of Right Divine. Government by way
of Kingcraft was over, but the part of Kingship could no more
be left out than that of Hamlet's father in the play. Majesty
should have honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, Parks,
Palaces, Guards, the right to give and withhold titles, and a
Civil List of £700,000 a year. How much all this practically
amounted to, as consideration for coming into exile, he did not
exactly know, and his Ministers did not care too precisely to
explain. But on one point they were resolved, namely, that
they would meet and deliberate with closed doors, and under
the mutual pledge of secrecy, hitherto imperfectly kept as Privy
Councillors, but henceforth a bond indispensable to the pre-
servation of the new system. Where was this covenant recorded
or written ? Where is it recorded or written now? Like other
momentous and memorable things, it can only be read between
the lines, or not believed at all.
On the King's landing at Greenwich, he was received by
the Lords Justices and a crowd of notabilities of either
party, and afterwards gave audience to those who had been
most zealous in his interest. Ormond, Harcourt, and Bo-
lingbroke were not of the number, and Orford, who arrived
early the next morning, had to be content with kissing his
Majesty's hand.
At the first levée Marlborough was received with especial
attention, the Prince of Wales reminding him of his having
served under him at Oudenard. The veteran courtier, after two
years' exile, could not be insensible to the fragrance of such
flattery. Both the King and his son were said to have made
themselves very obliging to those about them; paying visits to
several of the older nobility, and going to sup and play cards
with others. The Duke was said to have made an offer to the
Prince of Marlborough House as a suitable residence, which
might easily be connected by a gallery with St. James's; but, if
ever made, its acceptance was certain to have been objected to
by colleagues.in whom the fear probably still lingered of the old
ascendency
At the first meeting of the new Privy Council, George I.
G 2
84
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
allowed a declaration to be made in his name promising to
support the Established Church "without impairing the tolera-
tion allowed by law to Protestant Dissenters, so agreeable to
Christian charity.” Though no one could tell precisely how
inuch or how little the words thus ascribed to Royalty might
mean in the shape of legislative change, they were taken as an
augury of more tolerant times to come; and addresses of con-
gratulation and gratitude were presented by a hundred ministers,
introduced by the Duke of Devonshire to the King, and by the
Duke of Argyll to the Prince of Wales. All of them wearing
the Genevan gown, a waggish courtier was heard to ask if the
ceremony was a funeral. “No, my lord,” said Bradbury, “a
resurrection."
The Duke of Buckingham, in a protracted audience, strove
to convince George I. that he had been greatly misinformed
regarding the relative strength of parties, and undertook to
show that the Whigs were but a handful compared with the
friends of the Church. His Majesty listened, and his Grace
came out highly pleased with himself. An hour or two later
he was informed that his services were no longer required.
One of the Chancellor's first duties was to frame what he
called an Impartial History of Parties for the new Sovereign,
with the view of convincing him that his safety lay in the
ascendency of the Whigs. In numbers, wealth, and social
influence, Cowper admitted them to be so equal that it was.
necessary a decided preference should be marked by patronage
under Court favour before the next elections, in order to secure
the Government a working majority. Lady Cowper translated
the paper into French, and it was given to Bernsdorff for the
edification of his master. The programme thus framed was
generally followed ; waverers trimmed their sails to catch the:
changing wind; and the new Parliament was thought safe to
contain a decided preponderance of Ministerialists. Among
other acts of Executive power resorted to in the first days of
the new reign was the removal of certain of the Judges, whose
private feelings inclined, it was said, to Jacobitism, though no
impeachment of partiality in the discharge of their office lay
against them. The same had been done on the accession of
William. In the Act of Settlement the Judges were treated
as holding their seats during the life of the Monarch in whose:
name their commissions ran.
FOREIGN POLICY.
85
The first meeting of the Cabinet was at the Cockpit, part of
the old Palace at Whitehall, from a window in which Pembroke
saw Charles I. walk from St. James's to the scaffold. Originally
designed for the enjoyment by the Court of the amusement
which the name denotes, the building occupied the space on
which the Privy Council Office stands, and was connected by a
gallery with the Palace, on the west bank of the Thames. In
the time of Queen Anne, it ceased to be used for the cruel sport
which continued to be practised elsewhere ; and the arena was
converted into a Court for the hearing of Appeals. One of the
larger rooms had from the time of the Revolution been used for
conferences by the Ministerial heads of departments, and when
they associated themselves together as a Cabinet, it continued to
be their ordinary place of meeting.
The new Government was resolved on a policy of peace, but
Stanhope, whose ear was rather too sensitive to foreign fears
and whose voice was too sympathetically tuned to military airs,
suggested when on his way to Vienna, that a combined Dutch
and English fleet should be kept in the Mediterranean, to
guarantee the Emperor's dominions in Italy, and thereby liberate
his undivided force for the defence of the Low Countries.2 But
the Cabinet forbade his holding out any hope of the kind. Such
an engagement could not be entered into without the consent of
the States, where there were no secrets in foreign policy, and, as
soon as it was known, it would be looked upon here as a direct
step towards embroiling the country afresh in a European war,
Thus controlled, the elastic and inventive Foreign Secretary
turned to a closer alliance with France, which he contributed
greatly to bring to completion.
Bolingbroke, though mortified at the manner of his dismissal,
attended the Coronation with most of the Tory Peers, and
public acquiescence in the new order of things may be said to
have been complete. The Pretender, hastening to Versailles to
ask aid for the recovery of the Crown, was told in firm though
friendly terms that France could not move ; and that he must
not remain within her confines. His Manifesto from Plombières
asserting his hereditary right to the Throne excused his absten-
tion while his sister lived, by the assurances he had had in her
latter days of her goodwill towards him.
1 Chief Justice Tindal to his niece, Mrs. West.
2 Townshend to Stanhope, 26 Oct., 1714.-31S.
86
CHAPTER II.
HIGHLAND INSURRECTION. .
1715.
Differences in Cabinet-Judges Irremovable--General Election-No King's.
English–Court Jobbing --Deaths of Wharton and Halifax--Com-
mittee of Impeachments - Flight of Bolingbroke and Ormond-
Retirement of Shrewsbury-Sunderland Privy Seal—. Mar at Levée-
Pulteney and Walpole--Pretender at Edinburgh-Argyll's Humanity
Censured-Trial and Execution of Rebel Lords—Penal Laws-Sep-
tennial Act.
THE
HE Cabinet had not been three months in existence before
symptoms of disunion began to appear. Marlborough
on his return in triumph had harboured no doubt that,
l'hoinine inevitable, he would again be Administrative King.
Stanhope and Townshend might make excellent Secretaries ;
Halifax an unexceptionable financier; and Cowper once more
the best occupant of the Woolsack. Indecorous Wharton
might have the Privy Seal, and Shrewsbury the Chamberlain's
Staff, while he, as of yore, would be supreme, Master of the
Ordnance and Captain-General of all the land forces of the
realm, with Sunderland for Lieutenant of Ireland, and his other
sons-in-law well placed at the Court. This would have been
enough for any other man garnished with the respect and con-
fidence of those around him. But for Marlborough it was,
without that garnish, enough only to keep alive the fever of
tantalisation if the sense of power and the gain of patronage
were wanting. His quick sensibility was not long in perceiving
that Royalty had no confidence in him; that his colleagues
while acrimoniously observant of the respect due to his pre-
eminence, experience, influence, and fame, were reticent and
measured in their intercourse with him ; that his wife was
INDEPENDENCE OF JUDGES.
87
regarded as one whom it was difficult to please, impossible to
trust, and perilous to offend; and that, with daily recurring
rumours of a disputed succession, he was not to be allowed
to have at his disposal commissions in the Army. The most
accomplished dissembler of his time was not likely to indulge
in the luxury of resentful words that would betray to outsiders
the unreality of his position ; but now and then he gave way
to his vexation, bidding the applicants for his favour to try
Pulteney or some other quarter where they might gain their
ends, as he had not the giving of a Lieutenancy or a Cornetcy
of Horse. It had been well for his reputation had Sarah
suffered his discontent to ripple away in murmurs of this kind.
A letter of Bolingbroke asserts that during the summer of 1715
the Duke reopened communications secretly with the Pre-
tender, sending the exiled Court £20,000.1 Was this a pre-
monitory symptom of the want of self-control that not long
after showed itself in so many unexpected ways? Or was it an
impulse of compunction or compassion yielded to without the
advice or cognisance of any whom he was used to trust ?
There is no evidence that, however meant, it was followed
up by any act of falsity to the newly-established order of
things; and those who are not ashamed to own unwillingness
to believe in the double dealing of illustrious men find it easier
to question than explain the allegation.
One of the best practical reforms made by the new Govern-
ment was that for increasing the salaries of the Judges and
recognising their claim to continuance on the Bench during
good behaviour. During the régime of Prerogative they were
made frequently without pretence of merit, and unmade when
unmindful of the whim or interest of the Court, without scruple
or. shame. William and Anne had justly earned popularity by
waiving in most cases the right, never questioned in their pre-
decessors, of treating the commissions of the Common Law
Judges, as that of the Lord Keeper, as cancelled by the de-
mise of the Crown. A few new appointments made by them
were precedents that would have justified similar changes by
George I.
Elizabeth, despotic as she was in many other ways of rule,
had let her prerogative sleep in this respect; and how often and
| Bolingbroke to James III., 25 September, 1715.-Stuart Papers.
88
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
how grievously it had been exercised by her successors was
painfully held in remembrance. The power of deprival had
been foregone by Cromwell and, for a time, by Charles II., until
Chief Justice Raymond refused to overrule by authority of the
King's Bench the right of the House of Lords to commit one of
its Members for contempt.1 This was an offence not to be
endured, and he was thrust aside to make room for the in-
famous Scroggs. He in his turn was deposed for Pemberton,
who was driven back to the Bar in time to defend the seven
Bishops. The precedents thus set anew of deprival without
public cause were too convenient to be readily laid aside, and
one of the culminating misdeeds of James was the supersession
of the Judges who declined to endorse his suspension of Statute
law.
It was plain enough that if the head and front of the delin-
quent King's offending was to be put an end to, the inde-
pendence of the Judges must be secured. New patents might
be requisite at the commencement of each reign to confer
authority on those who were to administer the law in the
Sovereign's name, and a reasonable discretion in pensioning off
aged or feeble public servants, and putting more efficient men
in their stead, was not questioned. Some changes were made
without petulant cavil, but it was confidently expected that
the principle of irremovability, save for grave and grievous
cause, would be not merely observed, but treated as beyond
contention.
The Judges then held by no other tenure than that of quam
diu se bene gesserint, and Ministers did not think of abridging
the prerogative of removal and fresh appointment at the be-
ginning of each reign. No complaint of judicial partiality or
error prevailed that would have justified a sweeping change on
the accession of Anne; but to re-assert and maintain the
power it was resolved to depose two of the Common Law
Judges and the Chief Justice of Chester. Nottingham, then
Secretary of State, apprised the Lord Keeper "that though the
Queen had not resolved upon the persons to succeed Mr.
Justice Turton and Baron Hatsell, yet she was determined
that their patents should not be renewed ; and that it would,
perhaps, even in their own opinion, be more decent that they
Lord Campbell's " Lives of the Chief Justices,” II.,
1
8.
JUDICIAL PAY.
89
should not again appear on any Bench.” 1 Both were learned,
upright, and assiduous men, against whom no other imputation
lay but that of being Whigs appointed by the late King.
Hatsell's name was remembered as having been the Judge of
Assize who tried at Hertford the remarkable accusation brought
against Spencer Cowper of having caused the death of the
beautiful Quakeress with whom he was in love; and having,
by his judicial discrimination of the evidence, led to a just but
hardly expected acquittal. On the summons of Lord Keeper
Wright, both silently withdrew, and no attempt was subse-
quently made to reinstate or compensate them.? To the
Attorney-General the Secretary wrote: “The Queen would have
you inform yourself of the nature of Sir Joseph Jekyll's patent
for the Chief Justiceship of Chester, whether it be for life or
quam diu, and determinable as those of the Judges at West-
minster. This might be done without sending for his patent
or making it public.”3 Jekyll was not, however, to be drawn
into admitting any lapse of title or wheedled into making
profert of his patent, and sooner than provoke an invidious
discussion in the House of Commons, where Jekyll's wit,
eloquence, and candour made him a favourite, Northey advised
that it would be better to let the Member for Eye alone.
The Cabinet, led by Cowper, wisely counselled great forbear-
ance; and a Bill introduced by him, with the consent of George
I., altered in a sense the most beneficial; the tenure of Judicial
office. Something more, however, was wanting to establish
their independence in the estimation of the people. Under the
old system, nominal salaries were small and the fees exacted
from suitors varied capriciously and were oftentimes oppressive
to the humbler sort, while the suspicion was kept alive (not
without cause) that presents often furtively offered had their
weight in the doubtful scale. As the first step towards raising
the reputation of civil and criminal justice, it was proposed that
the annual pay of the Judges from the Civil List should be
substantially increased, that of the Chief Justices being raised to
two thousand a year.
The absorbing thought which necessarily filled each mind was,
· Nottingham Correspondence, 3 June, 1702. --il/S.S.
2 fosse, “ Judges of England."
33 Nottingham MSS., 18 May, 1702.
90
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
what was to be done with Parliament. By Statutel a dissolution
was imperative within six months of the commencement of the
reign. In the absence of Stanhope, his colleagues deferred as
long as possible complying with the obligation. They had dis-
tributed amongst them the keys of Executive rule, but who could
tell how they would fit the curiously varied wards of National
opinion ? A Cabinet was a new contrivance, of whose working
no one could feel sure.
. If the experiment proved successful,
it might, and it was hoped it would, combine and control all
.
other influences in the State ; but the motive power of the politi-
cal machine still lay in the action of the constituency. Of a
majority in the Upper House the Ministry felt secure ; but it
took all their individual and collective skill to provide not
merely the official seats they wanted at Westminster, but to
secure the return of a sufficient number of grateful or expectant
friends on whom they could rely.
Out of 513 English seats 371 were nominated by noble and
wealthy proprietors, speculative purchasers, or by the Treasury
for the time being. In Scotland nearly the whole of the forty-
five seats were filled in this way. In Ireland the sixty-four
County Members and the representatives of half-a-dozen cities
and towns, might be called elective; but two-thirds of the Irish
Parliament were nominees of landed proprietors and their assigns
for valuable consideration. Great families in England were:
accustomed to dictate in their respective counties whether the
old knights of the shire should be sent again to St. Stephen's,
or whether promising substitutes for those who had proved in-
dolent or inefficient should be taken from the rising generation.
A few territorial magnates had learned of late to boast that they
had what was called the representation of certain small towns or
decayed hamlets in their pockets. The accuracy of such vaun-
tings signified comparatively little theretofore; but it now
became a matter of collective anxiety. For the first time the
business of Government had been undertaken by the promoters
of a syndicate, who named themselves directors, with the power
of filling vacancies by co-optation, and the contributive share of
Parliamentary support which each could bring or guarantee
became a matter of paramount importance to all the other mem-
bers of the company. It does not appear that they always
7th and 8th William, ch. 15, and 6th Anne, ch. 7.
1.
GENERAL ELECTION.
91
possessed the seats they required in the Lower House; and
Marlborough, Halifax, and Sunderland had to rely on deft elec-
tioneering hands like Wharton and Walpole to make provision
for several of their followers who had rendered the party service
by tongue or pen, but who had no chance by themselves to break
into St. Stephen's merely by force of talents or merit. Christmas
had come and gone, and the time appointed by the Statute had
almost run out before the Cabinet could bring themselves to
plunge into the electoral deep ; nor was it until Stanhope re-
appeared amongst them that the actual decision was taken,
on the result of which it was plain that their continuance in
office must depend. The country was full of Jacobite doubts
and dissenting fears. The old loyalty had perished, and there
was no immediate prospect that praise of the new loyalty
would go for much at the polls; and if not what would
determine the issue? But the Statute was inexorable, and
accordingly a new Parliament was summoned for the 17th of
March.
Party heats prevailed in the chief towns and several of the
counties, but on the whole the supporters of Government had a
considerable majority. The electors of the City published a
mandate to their members directing them to inquire rigorously
into the conduct of the late Ministry, who had advised the peace
of Utrecht, throwing away, they said, the fruits so dearly bought
of a long and exhausting war.
Horace Walpole, who for a time acted as private secretary to
Townshend, and was sent as envoy to the Hague, where his
shrewdness in the discrimination of character and devotion to
business rendered him of especial use as a correspondent, con-
gratulated Government on their success in the elections.
Old Craggs stood for Newport and was defeated by Mr.
Stephens, a gentleman of local influence ; Marlborough promised
to ask for him a seat from his young relative, the head of the
Pelhams, and Craggs himself besought Townshend to back his
suit. “If his Lordship would not have compassion on him he
must give up all hopes of serving his King and country. If
Stanhope succeeded at Cockermouth, there would be a vacancy
at Aldborough, and Craggs gave his poor soul to the devil if he
would not rather owe his seat in Parliament to the Earl than
? To Townshend, 15 March, 1715.-D1S.
92
LIISTORY OF CABINETS.
to any man in England." 1 Outsiders inconsiderately asked
what would the new Parliament do? As well might they ask
the instruments of the Guards band what tune they meant to
play. To keep order and spirit on the march, their music no
doubt was essential ; but what music? That must be settled
overnight by those who did not take an ostensible part in deter-
inining the tune. Whatever might have been the case in past
times, the Cabinet would thenceforth select the airs from day to
day, without punctilious care of what had gone before, the
memory whereof in the national ear was likely to be soon for-
gotten. Spontaneous movements, sometimes full of passion, and
occasionally the efforts of erratic genius, occur in Parlia-
mentary history; but in the main the narration is tolerably
consecutive, and is called in contemporary Memoirs, “doing the
King's business," which really meant doing the business of his
Ministers, sometimes to his satisfaction, very often to his dis-
content, but hardly ever at his suggestion.
The managers
within the closed doors of the Cockpit decided what should be
performed during the season, and Parliament had few other
functions than to play and be paid for the playing. Before they
met there were signs that some of the late Government, and not
a few of their supporters were not irreconcilable. Bolingbroke,
though disappointed and slighted, had not quite made up his
mind what course to take. He had lived on friendly terms with
Cadogan and Stanhope ; and he believed that a peerage con-
ſerred on his father, who was not a party man, and was qualified
by the old estate of Battersea, would pass with the world as the
easiest form of amnesty to himself. He wrote to his successor
in office, begging an interview: “That I may do joy better at this
time, it will be of use that I have the opportunity of speaking
to you. I am now ready and will wait upon you wherever you
command ; and I shall not take two minutes of your time." 2
The General was advised to refuse ; and Bothmar's intervention
was enlisted to obtain an audience of the King. Cowper, having
a good many other things to object to, is said to have urged
Bernsdorff to prevent the issue of the patent; but a promise had
already been obtained by the most corrupt of the Court brokers,
of whom Townshend said that he had every day some project or
1 Townshend to Lord Clare (created Duke of Newcastle), 1 Fels., 1715.—MS.
? To Secretary Stanhope, 10 March, 1715.-- /S.
COURT JOBBING.
93
other on foot to get money. The Chancellor was more success-
ful in preventing Colonel Burgess, a companion of Stanhope, a
man of depraved manners and morals, being sent as Governor to
Massachusetts, whose Puritan folk “would look at it as being a
judgment upon them." His patron in office would not give
way; and he was bought off for £1,000 in ready money through
a colonial agent then in London ; Samuel Shute being named in
his stead.
Chancellor Bernsdorff and Count Bothmar had cherished hopes
of profit and dignity in England, such as Bentinck and Keppel
had enjoyed under William ; and they were disappointed and
disgusted when it was proved to them that the Act of Succession
had interposed impassable barriers in the way of their ambition.
There was nothing for it but to try how far they could dispose
of their influence to others; and this they appear to have done,
without respect of persons, to the highest bidder. The Baroness
Kilmanseck and the Countess of Platen, who formed prominent
parts of the Honoverian household, vied with each other in the
exercise of clandestine aids to patronage, and drove in that way
a subordinate but substantial trade. The statutable limitations,
moreover, were hardly thought to apply to them; and in due
time they were ennobled. Mr. Chetwynd was said to have
obtained the lucrative post at the Board of Trade which he kept
for many years through Madame Kilmanseck, to whom he gave
£500 and a pair of diamond earrings. Robethon obtained a
grant in reversion of the Clerkship of the Parliament for
whomsoever he might chose to name, and for £1,800 he assigned
it to Spencer Cowper, M.P. for Truro, for whose sons in succes-
sion the patent made the claim to the office inure.
Meanwhile the giver of titles began to chafe in his gilded
cage. How much he was to gain in money by his elevation was
not quite clear, and how much he had lost in personal freedom
became daily clearer. It took little sagacity to foresee that as
his position grew firmer, and he could afford more safely to
express his discontent, he would be likely to question the in-
fallibility of Ministerial dictation; and who could tell what
difficulties and dangers might thence ensue? The Chancellor
undertook to bring George I. into a different frame of mind
by specious pretences of popular reverence for king-craft and
Lady Cowper's Diary.
1
94
IIISTORY OF CABINETS.
respect for Kings, provided only they would exercise their sway
with a counter signature of responsible Ministers, and take the
trouble to buy votes as they wanted them. “The generality
of the world here,” said Cowper, "is so much in love with
the advantages a King of Great Britain has to bestow without
exceeding the bounds of law, that 'tis in your Majesty's power,
by showing your favour in good time to one or other of them, to
give which party you please a clear majority in all succeeding
Parliaments." We may doubt if the transplanted Elector half
understood the Chancellor's theory of limited Monarchy; or if
he believed that the keeper of his conscience himself believed in
it; and he soon waxed weary of the innumerable restraints and
reservations he was told he must observe, and longed for his old
freedom at Herrenhausen.
George I. had brought with him from Germany few political
ideas. Of tradition and prejudices he had the usual stock that
came as heirlooms to the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire ;
but there was no one to instruct him in the principles of consti-
tutional rule ; and he had much to learn on assuming the Chief
Magistracy of a free people. The teachers into whose hands he
fell were competent enough; and in a theoretic way sufficiently
in earnest about acquainting him with what he ought not to do.
On one important point he found, however, that most of them
were dumb, and the rest inexplicit; for, in truth, they were not
among themselves agreed. In the undeft but straightforward
sense of his duty, he was bound to requite the call of thrce
nations to be their King by proving in all legimate ways that he
meant to be their common Sovereign, and not a grateful depen-
dant merely on an active and thorough-going party. Was not
this, however, what the most thoughtfully ambitious of that
party sought, and had made up their minds that he ought to be?
They were a majority in the Government. The Primate was too
old and infirm to take part with either side; Marlborough
began to show less interest in political designs; and Cowper,
though at heart more National than sectional, sincerely believed
that what he had told the King soon after his arrival was true,
that the Whig Aristocracy, allied as they were with the Chief
men of the City, and the Three Denominations of Dissenters,
formed together the indispensable guarantors of his Throne;
and that under existing circumstances, at all events, he must
SHREWSBURY.
95
keep them in good humour. Still, at heart he hated the
exclusive self-seeking and violence which was never tired of
exultation over displaced rivals,
Nottingham, who had consented, not without misgiving, to
preside in Council with able men from whom he differed widely
on many vital questions, sympathised. probably more than they
with their illogical Sovereign in his desire to be recognised as
head of the whole community. But against the trenchant
ribaldry of Wharton, the dogged narrowness of Townshend, and
the restless irritability of Sunderland, it was difficult to contend.
There still lingered in the fleeting shadows of coalition one of
finer perceptions, and truer National feelings, who only lacked
the early faith in himself and in the future which had enabled
him to play a generous part; but who, having outlived that
invaluable quality of a statesman, was now longing only for a
peaceful evening after a fitful and troubled day. Shrewsbury
might have retained any of the great offices he was allowed
simultaneously to hold without the chance of a competitor, but
he preferred the Gold Key of Chamberlain as implying the least
amount of direct responsibility. He had not sat many weeks in
Cabinet without being convinced that, whoever else was in his
proper place, he had little business there. His eccentric pride
had for five-and-twenty years kept him from being identified
with either sect or faction. He disapproved, and in private
deprecated, as unwise and unpatriotic, the longings of his col-
leagues for vengeance, and their growing resolve to use the
authority of the Crown to wreak their purpose. He would have
.no hand in such a work; and an opportunity soon arose which
brought matters to a test. There could be no doubt that the
recent elections had given a decisive majority to Government in
the Commons; and their predominance in the Lords was beyond
question. A speech from the Throne was to be put together
that would serve at once as a pledge of constitutional rule, a
programme of legislative policy, and a rallying cry to the foreign
powers that had theretofore stood against the domination of
France; for though Louis XIV. still kept up the ceremonials of
amity, his refusal to compel the Pretender to quit Lorraine was
taken as proof that his neutrality could not long be relied on.
Wanting a record of the deliberations in Cabinet when the
important document came to be framed, we can only conjecture
1
96
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the diversities of opinion and phrase that marked the con-
ferences. Like most of the Royal discourses that have since
been addressed to both Houses at the beginning of a new
Parliament, it bore upon its face palpable traces of contention,
and as ultimately read by the Chancellor on the 17th of March-
his Majesty being unable to attempt its delivery in the Parlia-
mentary tongue--it said, and unsaid by inference, if not actually
in words, a good many things that the audience delighted to hear.
When the Keeper of the Great Seal told his brother Peers and
the Gentlemen of the Commons standing at the Bar that "it
were to be wished that the unparalleled successes of a war which
was so wisely and cheerfully supported by the nation had been
attended by a suitable conclusion,” adding in his Majesty's.
name a mild expression of regret that "some conditions .
essential to the security and trade of Great Britain were not yet
duly executed, and that the performance of the whole might be
looked upon as precarious until they should have formed de-
fensive alliances”; and complaining that the Pretender's con-
tinuance in Lorraine, and the assistance he boasted of expecting
to repair his former disappointments, rendered impracticable
our trade and commerce, which, if not retrieved, must be
destroyed, few of his audience out of the Cabinet could have
expected to hear him conclude with an announcement that for
the liquidation of the war debt and lightening of taxation "a
great number of ships had been paid off which had been kept
in commission when there was no occasion for continuing
such an expense.” What would not one give to know in whose
handwriting this compensating paragraph originally stood,
or how the promoters in the Cabinet of panic kept at a low
boil reconciled themselves to taking off the lid of their concoc-
tion? The inconsistency was too flagrant to escape notice, and
Bolingbroke made his own use of it.
The Duke of Bolton having moved the Address, which
pledged the House to restore the National commerce and “re-
cover the reputation of the Kingdom in foreign parts,” Boling-
broke objected to the censure thus implied of the conduct of
affairs in the late reign, and of all that had been accomplished
by The Peace. In a speech of unusual length, he reviewed the
foreign policy in which he had borne so great a part, and vindi-
cated, with cloquence surpassing all his former cfforts, the
DEATH OF WHARTON.
97
measures and the motives repeatedly applauded by Parliament,
but now sought to be condemned. He probably felt that it
might be his last opportunity, and he relied, doubtless, on the
support of those whom he had so often led. But the Thanes
fled from him ; and, as he afterwards said, “he saw, to the
shame of the Peerage, several concur to condemn, in one general
vote, all that they had approved of in a former Parliament." He
was supported by Trevor, Buckingham, Anglesey, the Arch-
bishop of York, and the Bishop of Bristol. Shrewsbury, re-
calling the opposition he had given on the accession of Anne
to similar expressions reflecting on the foreign policy of William
III., refused to acquiesce in the condemnation of a Government
in which he had formed a part. As Ambassador to Paris, he
had conveyed the thanks of England to her old enemy for
coming to terms at Utrecht, which both declared were con-
cessions to humanity, and which both were prepared to defend
as politic and just. How could the Chancellor look him in the
face without repudiating the charge that the Speech he had read
from the Throne meant to disparage the memory of the late
Queen, and to revile her Ministry, or how could he plead the
necessity of satisfying the National expectation that a more
vigorous foreign policy should characterise the new reign ?
Wharton, who had been created a Marquis, died suddenly in
April, leaving the Privy Seal an unexpected prize to be contended
for. It was not easy to decide who should have it ; and, to
avoid grudge and grumble, it was resolved to place it in Com-
mission, Under Secretary Southwell, Sir C. Musgrave, and A.
Charlton being named as its temporary trustees. Second in
political rank to the President of the Council, the Keeper of
the Privy Seal must be a man of lineage and wealth, for he had
daily show to make beyond the mere parade of the six prancing
steeds and coach with emblazoned panels, on days of cavalcade,
and the keeping a luxurious table hospitably full. Stanhope
and Townshend would, perhaps, have filled up the post at once,
but the muttered veto of the Captain-General would not have it
so; the reason in due time appeared. Sunderland was growing
tired of reading despatches from the Lords Justices in Dublin
on subjects he knew little and cared less about, and was discon-
tent at not being as prominent in great affairs as he had been
when Secretary of State. But the Marlborough section had
VOL. I.
H
98
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
already appropriated so many good and glittering things that
wise Sarah recommended him to wait a little longer ; and her
counsel still prevailed, for Lady Anne still lived and loved him,
moody and absorbed as he was, and every ambitious thought of
the Duchess was centred in their children. The tribute paid
after his death to Wharton's partisan worth was without prece-
dent, and has been without parallel. His only son was still but
a youth of eighteen, of whose early promise he had been boast-
ful, and in whose education he had found in later years his chief
delight. The Cabinet, in a fit of folly ineffable, desired that the
King should make the boy a Duke. Not for his merits, for, as
yet, he had none; nor for his fortune, for it was mortgaged to
the hilt; but, as they vainly imagined, to pledge, by the pre-gift
of the highest honour the Crown had to bestow, his support as a
partisan. How they were rewarded by his graceless Grace was
seen ere long.
Though the first place at the Treasury had been conceded to
Halifax at the outset, Walpole began to covet it for himself.
Knowing the nature of the man, Townshend thought he might
be piqued into resigning, which would be better, on the whole,
than turning him out, and, as Secretary of State, he sent him,
accordingly, an order from the King to appoint one of his
friends Commissioner of Customs, which was meant for an
affront that no First Lord could be expected to endure. Halifax
did not immediately resign, and his death soon afterwards caused
another and more important vacancy in the Cabinet. The First
Lord of the Treasury had contrived to clutch more honours and
rewards than fell to the share of most of his contemporaries,
yet the close of his career was darkened by disappointment and
dimmed by a sense of distrust. Unsatisfied with the Garter, an
earldom, and the great patronage of the Treasury, Montagu
repined because his jealous colleagues would not agree to his
having the post of Lord Treasurer, which they not unreasonably
thought more than his deserts, and higher than was compatible
with the principles of oligarchic equality they were bent on es-
tablishing among themselves. He could not brook the mortifi-
cation of remembering that Harley and Shrewsbury, with whom
he had run the race of glory, should in turn have won the
historic staff that had been held by Norfolk and Burleigh, Danby
? Newcastle to Devonshire, 12th June, 1741.-MS.
AND OF HALIFAX.
99
and Godolphin. "He had," says one who knew him well, and
whose discrimination was almost unerring, "no other principle
but his ambition, so that he would put all in distraction rather
than not gain his point."1 His conduct too closely verified this
severe judgment. Alone, perhaps, of his party, he had expected
the world should be told that he was the head of the new
Government, and he could not stifle his chagrin at its being
denied. Finding it impossible to shake the resolution of the
Cabinet regarding the Lord Treasurership, he was suspected of
scheming with the Opposition for their overthrow-and while
thus engaged he was himself overthrown by the enemy that
walketh in darkness.
Long afterwards, when, in the cool of life, forms and facts of
the time gone by were estimated more clearly, old Horace
weighed in his grudging balance the character of Halifax as it
looked to him. “He was an able speaker and aspiring Minister,
insolent in power, and miserable and dejected to the last degree
when out of it. It was said that before Queen Anne's death he
had condescended to make his court to Lord Orford, and was
upon tolerable terins with him, weaning himself from his former
intimacy and cordiality with the steady Whigs.” 2 What was to
be done with the vacant office? The Treasurer's Staff, though
broken into five, was not to be allowed to drift out of reach.
Lord Carlisle, a Howard, and owner of many green acres in
Yorkshire, was, politically speaking, a friendly nonentity ; but
his son had married Lady Frances Spencer, daughter of Sunder-
land by his first wife, the heiress of Holles Newcastle. Here
was a concatenation of reasons and motives for making Lord
Carlisle First Lord of the Treasury. Burnham may not have
come to Dunsinane, but Castle Howard, we know from the
Gasette, was included for a time within the curtilage of the Cock-
pit, and, to the surprise of its owner, who had done nothing, said
nothing, and imagined nothing in his whole life to merit such
distinction, he found the doors of the Cabinet flung open to him
as Chief Minister of Finance, Harm in that capacity he did
none, and, as a locum tenens for a brief space, he probably did
as well as any other—for no ill is recorded of him.
1 Private letter of Marlborough to the Duchess, 7th February, 1709.
2 II. Walpole to Rev. J. Etough, his brother's chaplain, 21st Sept., 1752.-NIS.
3 London Gazette, 23rd May, 1715.
H 2
IOO
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Parental jealousy would not suffer the Prince of Wales to take
any active share in Government. He was said to have been
willing, like more than one of those who were destined to succeed
him in title and pre-eminence, to go to Ireland as Viceroy, and
his enterprising helpmate would doubtless have found ample and
useful scope for her varied and noble qualities, had he been per-
mitted to do so. Sunderland did not stand in the way, and, if
he thought about the matter at all, he and his statesmanlike
mother-in-law must have discerned, without prompting, that the
heir to the Throne, fond of hospitality and amusement, with a
wife possessing the good sense and good taste fitting her for
social rule, might attract the aristocracy and attach the people
as no one else could do. Of the Princess we hear comparatively
little for some time. She was doubtless making herself acquainted
in her own way with the country of her adoption ; and learning
to appraise at their actual value those with whom she might one
day be called upon to deal. Now and then she was, perhaps,
prematurely tempted to talk to her father-in-law about grave
matters, or matters that to her looked grave. Leibnitz had
taught her to be candid and true in the avowal of opinions until
she was convinced they were unsound. George I., who found it
hard enough to endure the dogmatic resolutions of the Cabinet
he did not always understand, was provoked at her presumption
in seeking to meddle in affairs that were none of hers. Quel
diable cette Princesse la,” he exclaimed as he came out of the
curtained pew in the Chapel Royal, where she had tried to
whisper in his ear some unwelcome advice.
The Secret Committee appointed to inquire into the means
whereby the Treaty of Utrecht had been brought about, and
how far the designs of its authors were faithless to the Hanoverian
succession, consisted chiefly of Government partisans, who it was
presumed might be trusted to give full weight to the fruits of
disloyalty about to be laid before them. From week to week
they were occupied in sifting cinder-heaps of official correspon-
dence whereout no sparks of guilt could be elicited ; and they
then betook themselves to interrogating subordinates as to what
their official superiors might have meant, but story, for the most
part, they had none to tell. When time went on and no definite
hints were dropped of actual discoveries made, the friends of
the accused grew sanguine, sarcastic, and at length saucy, till
FLIGHT OF ST. JOHN.
IOI
Shippen laughed openly at the whole proceeding, and said that
it would end in smoke. Walpole, on the other hand, persisted
in declaring himself unable to find words to describe “the villainy
of the late Frenchified Ministry.” Oxford remained imperturb-
able : confident that when all was told nothing worse could be
shown to his detriment than agreement in the stipulations of the
treaty which the two last Parliaments had declared to be wise
and beneficial. He could not be frightened into absconding.
Strafford does not seem to have been alarmed ; and in a few
weeks his share of the business was almost forgotten, and his co-
signatory, Bishop Robinson, was not even accused. Bolingbroke,
who could not tell how far his secret closetings with the agents
of the Stuarts were known, or how many of his plausible and
equivocal letters had got into the hands of his enemies, affected
to brave the storm, but fled to France the night before he was to
have been arrested. Ormond, who loved magnificence, kept
open house at Richmond, where the members of the party paid
him court as their future leader.
The inveteracy of political persecution pants in the private cor-
respondence of the time. While the preliminary steps were
taking in Parliament towards the impeachments, Addison, in a
long confidential note, relates with undisguised satisfaction that
Ormond was to be impeached on the morrow, and that Boling-
broke was to be indicted for high crimes and misdemeanours,
that Prior had been five hours together under seven select
members, and being reported very dry in his testimony, a special
resolution was made by the Middlesex Magistrates in the hopes
to fetch the truth out of him.1
In a letter to Townshend, Addison says that he "had great
difficulties with himself about Ormond. When he was a member
of the University of which his Grace was Chancellor, he was
favoured with his countenance and encouragement; and when
the Duke succeeded Wharton in Ireland, he resisted many
solicitațions which were made for the place which Addison had
ever since enjoyed in that Kingdom. He would never pardon
himself if he gave a vote that might have a tendency to taking
his head off, and he had reason to believe Lord Sunderland
would condemn him for such a piece of ingratitude. Since he
had been in the House he had not once separated from his
1 To Delafaye. State Papers. 16th June, 1715.-NIS.
102
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
friends; and all he proposed to do in this case was to be absent.
He desired his Excellency to be acquainted, that it might not
make an impression to his disadvantage.” Articles of impeach-
ment were brought in against Oxford and Strafford, who were
committed to the Tower. The superseded Commander-in-Chief
visited his old colleagues in captivity and counselled them to fly
while the gates were still ajar. Oxford refused, and defied his
accusers to bring him any proofs of treason; while he warned
his impulsive visitor not to risk by any precipitate act the
forfeiture of his wide domains. Each, however, held to his
opinion, and on parting, Oxford exclaimed, “Farewell, Duke
without a dukedom,” to which his friend replied, “Farewell, Earl
· without a head.” Both prophecies proved untrue. Neither
Ormond nor Bolingbroke waited for the impending blow; but,
hastening to Paris, offered their services to the Pretender.
Impoverished emigrants, with dreams of restoration, and un-
calculating squires at home, who said something decisive should
be done, they knew not by whom or how, blamed James III., as
they loved to call him under their breath, for indefinitely de-
ferring an invasion. Bolingbroke, as his Secretary of State, and
Berwick as his Minister of War, had difficulty in deterring him
from hearkening to such instigations. But, as was truly said by
the latter, he had neither friend nor ally from whom he could
expect effectual help, for Princes seldom trouble themselves.
about an unfortunate brother unless their particular interests ·
impel them to do so. For twenty years Europe had felt the
strain of war, emptying pockets, beggaring husbandry, ruining
commerce, and diminishing population. Everybody, therefore,
longed to live in peace, and, short of absolute necessity, nothing
would tempt any potentate to draw the sword.1
Shrewsbury, who sympathised as little with the personal aims
as with the personal resentments of his colleagues, felt himself
every day more and more in a wrong position. He had no
longer any object to gratify by being of the Cabinet, and he
despaired of being able to curb the rancour and resentinent be-
trayed by Walpole and Townshend in dealing with their humbled
adversaries. From the first he had been one of the minority
who would have gladly sanctioned an act of political oblivion.
He had not hesitated to take the Seals from Bolingbroke, when
1 Memoir sent by Bolingbroke to Bar-le-Duc.
SIIREWSBURY RESIGNS.
103
it seemed doubtful whether he might not have misused them;
but he would have suffered him to remain in England. He now
demurred to the measures his colleagues were bent on taking to
fortify themselves in exclusive power, and breaking the heart of
competition in their discomfited opponents. The temptations of
public life for him were over. His scrupulous epicureanism
shrank from the coarse, and, as it soon appeared, covetous, ways
of the new Court. A King without dignity, and favourites with-
out attractions of form or feature; wearisome iterations of zeal
for Protestantism, by men incapable of Christian magnanimity
to defeated rivals, might be inevitable, and, upon the whole,
preferable to any other régime; but that seemed to him no
reason why he should actively, or even tacitly, be identified
with it. His presence in Cabinet became not less irksome to his
colleagues than to himself. Nottingham and Cowper naturally
wished him to remain as one to whose sense of right and justice
they could always confidently appeal, although there had never
been any unreserved intimacy between them; but Sunderland
on the one hand and Walpole on the other, would fain have him
betake himself to Heythorpe, for he stood equally in the way of
their personal ambition. He had never approved of their in-
discriminate removal of subordinate officials, against whom no
definite charge of unfaithfulness could be brought. He had
taken Prior with him to Paris, in 1713, to negotiate the com-
mercial details, for which he was considered peculiarly apt from
previous official experience. In 1711 Prior had been appointed
by Orford a Commissioner of Customs; he was now deprived,
with four other members of the Board, to make room for an
equal number of Ministerialists. On the roth of June Walpole,
without Shrewsbury's consent, and without previous notice, moved,
as chairman of the Secret Committee, that Prior and Thomas
Harley should be taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms. To
justify such vindictive rigour, it was thought necessary to keep up
apprehensions of conspiracy and invasion, and Townshend recom-
mended Proclamations for the disarming and banishment of all
who were of the same faith as the Pretender. Shrewsbury was, in
sentiment and judgment, averse throughout life from every form
of persecution. He had reluctantly acquiesced in the breach of
| Abstract copy by R. Pringle of the Duke of Shrewsbury's letters in State
Papers, 20th April, 1715.-MS.
104
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the conditions of Limerick and the enactment of the first penal
laws under William. With those passed in the time of Anne he
had nothing to do, and when in 1712 he consented to become
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he consistently repressed every
manifestation of party or sectarian bigotry, and made it clearly
understood that he was only there as the representative of the
Crown and the guardian of all classes and creeds of the com-
munity. It was intimated to him that he had better withdraw
from Court, and make way for the Duke of Bolton in his stead.
George I. could not be made to understand the reason for a
change he viewed with great reluctance. He believed that he
owed more to Shrewsbury than to most other men in the King-
dom, and in spite of his strange career in party oscillation his
intensely feudal prejudices led him to prefer the head of the
house of Talbot as the Marshal of his Court to any of the other
nobles that coveted the position. For several days there was a
struggle, ending on the 7th of July in the Duke's giving up and
retiring into the country. Bolton was named his successor, but
not being able to endure the undisguised repugnance of the
King, in a few weeks he asked permission to resign. The
Cabinet resented silently the treatment of their nominee, de-
clined to name anyone in his place, and the office remained
vacant for nearly two years.
Oxford University believed in the legitimacy of the Pretender,
and replaced Ormond as Chancellor by his own brother Lord
Arran. The wrongs done to Magdalen College were not for-
gotten; but the health of the exiled Prince was drunk in
Chambers every day. Nor can it be doubted that at this time
and long after, a great number of the clergy had scruples about
the Hanoverian Settlement; and at heart would have preferred
the restoration of the hereditary line. They sincerely discredited
the fears professed by Government for the stability of the Church.
They knew that James the Second's son was a Catholic; but
they also knew that the bulk of the English people adhered to
the reformed creed, and that were he on the Throne, he would
possess still less power than his father had shown, to bend the
nation to his will. On the other hand they could not look with-
out misgivings on the manner in which ecclesiastical patronage
was likely to be used under the new order of things; and their
i Duchess of Marlborough to Mr. Jennings, 8th July, 1715.
1
SUNDERLAND PRIVY SEAL.
105
apprehensions were not without cause. Amid loud talk about
Constitutional right and care for the Protestant religion, scoffers
and jobbers in power were bent on strengthening their own
ascendancy, and upon making merchandise of Church prefer-
ment, to enrich their own kindred and following. Rumours
multiplied of plots to overturn the Government by confederate
non-jurors and Jacobites in town and country. There had been
for some weeks disturbances at Manchester, incited by cries for
James III., and splutterings of disaffection at Warrington and
other places in Lancashire said by the Government organs to
"swarm with Jesuits and Priests.” On the 29th July three Pro-
clamations were issued for suppressing seditious tumults, for
putting the laws 1 in execution against Papists and non-jurors,
and commanding all reputed Catholics to depart from London
and Westminster and from within ten miles of the same, and to
confine themselves to their habitations. Disturbances, however,
subsequently spread throughout Warwickshire and Staffordshire,
where Dissenting chapels were pulled down, and other violences
with difficulty restrained. Several lives were lost in an attack
on a meeting-house at Bromwich. Townshend wrote to Slings-
land that they were more and more confirmed in opinion of
the Pretender's design to invade the Kingdom ; and Parliament
was entirely taken up in making preparations for the security
and defence of the realm. Several arrests on suspicion were
made ; but in the Capital no proofs were found of organised
disaffection.
Townshend had doubtless made the most of his connection
with the family of Pelham, and he now used his position to
requite the benefit conferred. Lord Clare was hardly of age, and
held out no false lights of intellect or capacity to come; but he
was a young man having great possessions, whereunto many
seats at St. Stephen's appertained ; and it took few visits to the
fountain of honour to convert the Earldom of Clare into a
revived Dukedom of Newcastle. Out of health or out of humour,
Sunderland lingered throughout the summer at Althorpe, and
leaving the routine of Irish affairs to Addison, occupied himself
with objections to the measures of his colleagues, whose policy
he did not profess to understand. Townshend and Walpole did
1 3rd of James I. against Popish recusants, and ist of William and Mary ſor dis-
covering and removing Papists from London and Westminster.
106
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
« Her
not hide their vexation at his behaviour, which they attributed
to incitement from Marlborough House, where the Duchess,
piqued at the want of what she deemed due attention by newly-
made Royalty, indulged at the expense of its surroundings in
every caprice of sarcasm. She had been an essential part of the
greatest Adininistration England had ever known, and she did not
see why she might not be so again. She had made Sunderland
Secretary of State nine years before, and she would listen to no
vague or evasive excuses for his not being so once more.
neighbour George " did not like her; and by what contrivance
and concatenation of influences she ultimately achieved her pur-
pose her voluminous memoirs do not explain ; but the cuckoo
clock of official history in the dead silence of September chimed
Sunderland's appointment as Lord Privy Seal, and he continued
to hold the viceregal office for some time longer. The young
Duke of Grafton was sent to Ireland to act with Lord Galway,
and as one of the Lords Justices there he exercised the viceregal
functions for the residue of his Excellency's term of office.
What fitness he possessed in local knowledge, official experience,
or the gift of genius to revive the spirit of industry that in the
two last reigns had well nigh been extinguished, nobody could
tell. Archbishop King, one of the ablest and most earnest
friends the Whigs had in Ireland, expressed strongly his feel-
ing that “They were very unfortunate in their frequent change
of Governors, for before they were well acquainted with one
he was removed and everybody obliged to begin his business
anew."
A fresh piece of service was demanded from Addison. Re-
actionary murmurings tended to dispel the illusion in the mind
of the new Sovereign of his universal acceptability to the nation.
Few had been less scrupulous in this respect than Addison, and
when he had leisure it was thought that his pen might well be
applied to an endeavour to win back the popular esteem which
it was said the Jacobite press was gradually weaning away. He
undertook accordingly the issue twice a week of the Freeholder,
to which for several months he was the chief contributor. It
was, in fact, a series of essays rather than articles on political
topics of moment, or personal sketches of prominent personages,
generally in a flattering vein. George I. and the Princess of
Wales were made the objects of special encomium.
MAR AT LEVÉE.
107
The summer was spent by the Jacobites abroad in futile
efforts to persuade the French Government to send an invading
army into Scotland, where they promised that more than half
the population would rise in arms to sustain them. Marshal
Berwick, whose account is by far the most truthful and intelli-
gible of the time, never believed in these sanguine representations,
and steadfastly refused to deceive Louis XIV., who admitted him
constantly to audience. Bolingbroke's sagacity prompted him
to take a similar part, for which he was denounced by fanatics as
a recreant and double-dealer. On the first of September the
Grand Monarque passed away, and the direction of affairs
devolved on the Duke of Orleans, who, "with one virtue and a
thousand crimes,” steadily refused to commit his exhausted
country to the perils and privations of a dynastic war.
A year had passed and an expectant crowd came to felicitate
King George on his undisturbed possession of the Throne, Mar,
among the rest, placid and plausible, ready to depart on the
morrow for the Highlands as if intent on enjoying the autumn
in unpolitical pursuits. Scotland was spoken of as sound to the
core; though north of the Tay many of the old families remained
unreconciled to the system of rule founded in England at the
Revolution, and confirmed by the legislative Union. The wild
clans of the North had not forsaken the faith of Rome or the
traditions of the old dynasty. Bred to endure the rigour of
climate, scantiness of fare, want of money, or the means of mak-
ing it, and all the pains of incessant conflict among themselves,
they were too easily liable to be moved by any daring chieftain
who might speculate on the advantages of making himself
troublesome. Argyll, Montrose, Seaforth, and a good many
more rose above such temptations, and undertook, from time to
time, to keep their people still ; and south of the Clyde there was
a growing disposition grumblingly to accept the inevitable, and
make the best of incorporation with the richer realm. But so
little had been done by Government in the first seven years of
Union to realise a parity of conditions ; so few Scotchmen of
auld bluid had been admitted even as junior partners in the
joint concern of British rule, that several who submitted to Anne
as the lineal descendant of Kings all crowned at Scone, began
to talk of the bad bargain and to laugh at the wee German
Lairdie from over the water who was now called King. Polic
108
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
ticians who had helped to make the compact openly talked of
its repeal.
The malt tax levied in England during the war was exacted
in Scotland likewise since the peace : ominous presage, it was
said, of heavier burthens still. Seafield summed up the National
grievances in a disruptive speech, and advised a combination of
parties for the recovery of legislative independence.
He was
seconded by Mar, who had been commissioner for the making of
the Union, and on its completion had exchanged the office of
Chief Secretary for the Keepership of the Signet of Scotland.
Hc supported Oxford till he fell, and then was ready, with
compliment and complaisance, to enter into the views of his
successor. He signed the Proclamation of George I., and wrote
a letter before his coming over, prognosticating perfect peace.1
He was superseded in office, but he was not a man to be silently
suppressed.
As opportunity served, he communicated in cypher with Bar-
le-Duc, whence, late in July, he had peremptory orders to hie
without loss of time to Braemar, summon his own and the neigh-
bouring clans, and raise the flag of revolt. The rash missive
was sent without the knowledge of Berwick or Bolingbroke, and
without the cognisance of the Regent, all of whom disapproved
and would fain have had it recalled ; but it was too late : and
Mar obeyed.
A man may possess much intelligence, plenty of personal
courage, be a capable Minister, and yet lack the faculties be-
fitting a venture of this nature. In Mar these faculties were
wanting. After drawing the sword, he knew not how to use
it; and thus," in the words of Berwick, "was frittered away the
most favourable opportunity (for the Stuart cause) that had
occurred since the Revolution of 1688."
On the morning of the prorogation, Stanhope brought down
a message demanding the committal of six Members of the
House suspected of connivance at the rising in Scotland, and
the motion was agreed to without discussion. Wyndham was
absent in Somersetshire and eluded his captors for some days;
but surrendered at the house of a relative in town. Cowper
objected in Cabinet to the proceedings against him ; his father-
30th August, 1714. Steele republished the letter in 1715, with amusing reflections
on the vanity of political pledges and the demoralising effects of civil war.
1
RISING IN SCOTLAND.
109
in-law, at a meeting of the Privy Council, where the King was
present, offered himself as bail for his loyal demeanour. Towns-
hend peremptorily objected, and Wyndham was committed to
the Tower. Somerset, incensed at his security being declined,
broke out in violent terms of denunciation. George I. warmly
thanked Townshend for the service he had done him, and dis-
missed the Duke from the Mastership of the Horse.
The great war over, the first peace-offering of Ministers to the
natural desire for economy was the estimate for the year 1713
of eight thousand men as sufficient" for guards and garrisons in
Great Britain.”1 Had peace continued there would have been no
excuse for abandoning this normal figure. But the total number
of men under arms was not defined ; and by the time Halifax
took charge of the finances of the new Government they had
reached fourteen thousand for home service. In the new reign
the Cabinet resolved to ask Parliament for an additional four
thousand in Great Britain ; the immediate reason assigned being
the need of extra guards for the protection of the King's person.2
The system of taking foreign soldiery into pay to serve only
abroad was adopted to evade the dislike, amounting often to
hostility, to enlistment which was shown by various classes of
the community, and the prevalence of which alone was held to
justify habitual recourse to impressment for the Navy. Attempts
to reduce this supplemental addition to the Army were repeated
in the House of Lords, but without success.3
Government had in Great Britain but a few thousand dis-
ciplined men to repress disorder. Every manifestation of dis-
content was interpreted as expressive of sympathy in the
Northern outbreak and treated as additional proof of spreading
plots. But nowhere did the great body of the people evince any
disposition to rally to the Pretender, and even in Scotland, after
Mar's adherents had been many weeks in possession of Perth
and Aberdeen, few recruits joined them from the Lowlands, and
their difficulties for want of money and ammunition were at all
times very great. On the other hand, comparatively few persons
of wealth or influence answered to the call of the Government to
arm in its defence. Parliament adopted loyal addresses, granted
1 Mutiny Act of 1713.
2 Com. Journ.
See Clode's “History of the Forces of the Crown.”
I IO
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
a vote on account to meet any exigency, and suspended the writ
of Habeas Corpus. Ormond reluctantly consented to under-
take a landing in Devonshire, where his sanguine correspondents
promised enthusiastic support. But when, after various delays
and mischances, he made his appearance in the West, he found
neither preparations nor partisans, and he re-embarked without
effecting anything. The arrest of a few distinguished persons
effectually discouraged the malcontent gentry, and the people
would not stir. In Lancashire and Northumberland, Lords
Derwentwater, Widrington, and Nithsdale attempted to raise
insurrectionary levies, but with little success. Though Catholics,
they yielded precedency to a gentleman named Forster, a staunch
Protestant, who was High Sheriff of his county. South of Trent
the newspapers had nothing graver to record than the execution
at Tyburn of three unhappy wretches convicted of having en-
listed in the rebel cause.
Cowper went out of town and his colleagues held on their
way. Stanhope and Townshend could not help being affected
by the equanimity of Marlborough House amid rumours of
spreading disaffection in Lancashire and Northumberland, and
tidings of a doubtful fight between the Scottish friends and
foes of the Pretender. On the 1st of October, the Duchess
wrote: “ I don't find that the news from Scotland is so bad as
some reported, and I am apt to believe the Duke of Argyll
exaggerated the matter a good deal, for at the same time that a
very terrible tale came from his Grace, I saw a letter from the
Postmaster of Scotland, which said our enemies there were not
about two thousand six hundred." I
The bland and patient bearing of Lord Carlisle, and his un-
questionable reputation for integrity, rendered him acceptable in
tranquil times. But when the sky grew overcast and the days
began to shorten, his placid features and mild voice were ne-
glected, and men's eyes turned anxiously to a stouter, if not a
rougher hand. Ten of the Cabinet were Peers, and it was felt
to be desirable that the Government should be represented by
more than one of the great officers of State in the Lower House.
Pulteney and Walpole had pre-eirinent claims to Cabinet rank
and legislative dignity. Up to this time the former had been, or
1 To Lady Cowper.
PULTENEY.
III
seemed to be, contented with the Secretaryship of War; but
who shall say what airs without words he hummed as he passed
the Cabinet door ajar? That it was intended, or, indeed, that it
was possible, he should long be left out had probably never
crossed his mind, and if malignity sometimes whispered in his
ear, it would hardly have suggested a wrong so incredible ; for
in point of brilliant ability, scholarly attainments, and proven
pluck when tested in party conflict, Pulteney stood as well as
any man without great family connections or great landed for-
tune could stand. The Member for King's Lynn was obviously
his only competitor; but hitherto he and Pulteney were friends,
if friendship be indeed a reality capable of bearing the strain of
rival ambitions. When Walpole was impeached in the former
reign, Pulteney stood gallantly by him ; and his sanguine tem-
perament did not suffer him to doubt that though they had both
been allotted secondary posts at the incoming of the King, they
both were destined ere long to be included in the inner circle of
power. Did it never occur to him that acknowledged parity of
pretensions might be after all the insuperable obstacle to their
realisation? But if not, why should not both the first and
second seats at the Treasury be vacated, and the Secretary
at War as well as the Paymaster-General be summoned to
fill them? This, however, was precisely what Walpole was
determined should not be done. He knew his power in finance
better probably than it was understood by anyone else, and he
was resolved to have the credit and influence of it unshared.
The public resources from taxation were barely sufficient in
times of peace, but if they should be engaged in war abroad, or
sedition at home, money on demand would be wanted, and a
Finance Minister ought to be sure whence it would be forth-
coming. Pulteney's aid would, doubtless, be valuable, but it
was not by rhetoric or wit that votes of credit on emergency
could be obtained or means found for keeping up the price of
stock in spite of bad news. Above all, there was nothing so
hazardous or hateful in the mind of Walpole as joint leadership,
and the recognising of an equal's right daily to question and to
differ. Walpole would be everything at the Treasury or nothing;
and Pulteney learned only after it was decided, that he was to
be left half way upstairs, while his yoke-fellow in party and in
office was called to come up higher in the feast of rule. Still he
II2
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
did not break with his old friends. Flattering expectations
were held out to him, and for another year he continued to dis-
charge the duties of the War Office and to believe that his inclu-
sion in the Cabinet would undoubtedly come. Walpole was
certainly not a favourite either of colleagues or the King, but he
was the best financier among them; and when George I. was
reminded of his rugged bearing and unyielding temper, he
replied : “But he is the only one who can make money out of
nothing." It was obviously requisite that the department should
be represented in the Commons by one who was thoroughly
master of details and never puzzled by novel arguments or
insinuations in debate. Carlisle was translated from the Trea-
sury to the Tower, of which he was made Constable ; and a
new Board of Treasury was constituted, consisting of Robert
Walpole, Sir W. St. Quintin, Paul Methuen, Lord Finch, and
Thomas Newport : Walpole being Chancellor of the Exchequer
as well as First Lord.
While autumn sunlight shortened apace, Mar lingered in the
Highlands, vainly attempting to bring into something like disci-
pline his irregular bands, but giving time for rally and reinforce-
ment to their outnumbering adversaries; and Argyll was able
to keep the insurgent movement in check till winter had fairly
set in.
Everywhere in England the Nonconformists rallied to the
support of the Government. One of their ministers, named
Wood, raised and led a Volunteer corps of four hundred men,
well armed, in aid of General Willis, when moving on Preston.
Many of them were persons of independent means, and those
who were not were maintained by their pastor, while from home,
at his own cost-earning the warm thanks of the authorities, and
the title from his congregation of General, which, on week-days,
he bore until his death.
Subsequent risings in Northumberland and Lancashire, under
Sheriff Forster and Lord Derwentwater, did not realise the
promises made in their name. The kilted invaders were hos-
pitably welcomed at Penrith and Preston ; and if Liverpool was
called Hanoverian, Manchester was Jacobite. But the many
thousand recruits, squires, and yeomen the leaders were led to
expect, failed to come in; and when Generals Willis and Car-
penter united their veteran forces, they proved too strong for the
CHEVALIER IN SCOTLAND.
113
boastful but semi-barbarous crowd, jovially resting in an unwalled
town. After a brave resistance, Preston surrendered, and 1,489
men laid down their arms. Some of the captives were executed,
great numbers were sent as slaves to the plantations, and the
few noblemen and gentlemen of fortune were pinioned together
and sent to London to abide their impending fate. The Cabinet
breathed freely again-all anxiety was practically at an end;
but they waited, curiously, from day to day for tidings from
Argyll, as to what had become of Mar. The drawn battle of
Sheriffmuir on the same day as the fall of Preston was the last
flash of Celtic defiance. Without money or commissariat, a
better general might have found it impossible to keep the wild
clans together in winter quarters. Sutherland and Lovat went
over to the side of the Government ; Huntley accepted pardon ;
and the ruin of the rebel movement, by the end of the year, was
complete. The Chevalier, in November, appeared among his
disheartened adherents, whose numbers daily dwindled to little
more than four thousand, not half of whom were effective ; while
Argyll, reinforced by the Dutch battalions, held Stirling with
more than double that number, well armed and supplied with all
the necessaries of a winter campaign.
On the 29th of January, retreat was resolved on, and the
weary and desponding Highlanders silently obeyed. There
were those who urged Argyll to pursue them through the snow
and complete their destruction, but the veteran chief deferred
moving from day to day, not venturing to tell the hot-heads of
his staff how easily consoled he would be if half the dupes, who
were no longer capable of resistance, escaped to their humble
homes. When it was necessary to come to a decision, to be
reported to Government, he had more than one strategic reason
to assign for not risking the lives and limbs of his troops in
pursuit through the glens beyond the Tay. He had neither
stores of food nor tents, or means of transport for ammunition ;
and as the bulk of his forces was composed of strangers to the
wild country through which they must pass, and unaccustomed
to the exposure of an unusually hard winter, they were certain
to suffer severely. The fight was over, all doubt was done ;
why should he repay the fidelity and fortitude of the garrison of
Perth by hounding them on to decimate his fugitive countrymen ?
1 13th Nov., 1715.
VOL. I.
I
114
LIISTORY OF CABINETS.
In the Cabinet such considerations were regarded as mere trifling
if not something worse. His duty was to make such an example
as would maim every muscle and fibre of disaffection for at least
a generation. If he had instinctive feelings of pity as a Scotch-
man, that was his affair; but the Commander-in-chief in North
Britain must be above all provincial considerations. The pre-
servation of the Union and of the dynasty required a man of
greater political firmness and executive nerve. MacCullum
More saw no assertion of his own honour and no additional
security of the Crown in carnage of undrilled peasants on the
mountain side, or the burning of their huts in remote valleys. He
willingly gave time for repentance, and advised Whitehall to
authorise him to make terms with the chiefs who had led the
ignorant crofters into revolt. But a majority of Ministers did
not want it said that a languid and desultory sedition had been
suppressed, and that the mad-cap enterprise of the Pretender
had come to naught; but that a formidable rebellion had been
put down, and such retribution inflicted on the partisans of the
exiled dynasty as would deter them from like attempts, and
the French Court from inciting them in future. They wanted a
butcher's bill, and because Argyll would not engage to furnish
it, he was dismissed from his command and Cadogan was sent
to supersede him. They called on the Prince of Wales to remove
the Duke from his post as chief of his household. The Prince took
his part in the controversy. His refusal formed an additional
subject of irritation with his father, and their differences became
widely known. The credulous Celts were left to their fate; and
Mar was fain to seek refuge beyond sea. Retributive justice
remained to be dealt out to everyone of note who had shown
any sympathy with insurrection, though things would be easier
in all respects with the Government than they had theretofore
been. There was still a minority who disapproved of the undis-
criminating policy of retribution, and neither Sunderland, Devon-
shire, Nottingham, nor the Primate took part in stimulating
measures of vengeance.
The Chancellor differed from the majority of his colleagues
regarding Scotch affairs. From the first outbreak he had urged
strongly the sending of reinforcements to Argyll sufficient to
enable him to stamp out disorder, that could only end, as he
foresaw, in unavailing misery and loss of life. He was over-
TRIAL FOR HIGH TREASON.
115
ruled by Marlborough, who personally distrusted Argyll. When
the crazy venture of Mar had evidently failed, Cowper's
remonstrances were directed against what Townshend and
Walpole insisted on as an exemplary policy of vengeance; but
the fact that Lady Cowper was a near relative of Sheriff
Forster, and known to be the private friend of his misguided
comrades of rank, weakened inevitably his pleading for lenity.
For a time he took little part and gave out, perhaps persuaded
himself, that he was ill. Bernsdorff, who was the mouthpiece of
his Majesty's humour, sharply took him and his wife to task
for leaning too much towards the Prince, of whom increasing
jealousy was manifested in the Royal mind. The Chancellor was
with difficulty dissuaded from giving up. The Heir Apparent
took occasion on his birthday to send him assurances of his
friendship and of his resolve to back him to the utmost of his
power if he would retain office, adding that when he came to be
King "all things should go to his mind."i When Parliament
met in January the King was advised to express regret that
" the first years of his reign, the whole course of which he
wished to have transmitted to posterity distinguished by endear-
ing marks of peace and clemency, should be clouded by a
rebellion which, however impotent, must sensibly afflict him by
the calamities it brought on many of his faithful subjects, and
by those indispensable returns of severity which their sufferings
and the public safety most justly called for."
Lords and Commons were equally zealous in their addresses
of thanks for the speech, and declared in favour of prosecuting
at once the authors of the measures which had brought the
horrors of internecine strife upon the country. Their first act
was to expel Forster, and their next to impeach seven of the
Jacobite Peers taken at Preston, this being immediately followed
by a Bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, which Shippen
characterised as "encouraging malicious informations, and giving
a handle to those in power to oppress innocent people.” The
rebel lords appeared at the bar of the Court, erected in West-
ininster Hall, on the gth of February, Cowper, against his will,
being required to act as Lord High Steward on the occasion.
Derwentwater, Carnwath, Widdrington, Nithsdale, Nairn, and
Kenmure pleaded guilty and asked for mercy, but there was not
1
Lady Cowper's Diary, 30th Oct., 1715.
I 2
116
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
much of that quality just then to spare, and sentence of death
was forthwith pronounced upon them, Ministers advising the
King not to exercise the prerogative of clemency, but to allow
all to be brought to the block. Many Members of both Houses
shuddered at the impending sacrifice. Steele and others con-
curred in expressing their repugnance to any expiatory sheddings
of blood, especially after it had become manifest to all that
revolt had burned itself out. But Walpole rebuked such dis-
positions towards lenity. He was throughout the most urgent for
severity, and the most inexorable. "He was," he said, “moved
with indignation to see that there should be such unworthy
members of that great body who could, without blushing, open
their mouths in favour of rebels and parricides," and, fearing a
reaction towards pity might set in, he moved and carried-
though by a majority of seven only—that the House should
adjourn until after the day fixed for the executions. The Lords
were less easily reconciled to letting the advocates of vengeance
have their way. Upon the petition of the unfortunate Peers,
Nottingham, who was personally a friend of more than one of
them, supported its prayer, and, in spite of the resistance of his
surprised colleagues, an Address for a reprieve was carried, after
a long debate, by a majority of five. The Cabinet met that
night. Divergence of sentiment, hitherto but imperfectly felt,
became articulate in open difference of opinion. Marlborough
was probably not there ; but the majority who still regarded
him as
their chief recoiled from vindictive measures. The
Primate pleaded for mercy ; Stanhope drew nearer to Sunder-
land. In other days when the fate of the fallen trembled
between mercy and rigour Royalty had held the scales. Half-
a-dozen principal officers of State, and of the Household, were
summoned to the Palace to give individual advice or suggestion :
but when the die was cast by Elizabeth, Charles, or James, each
Privy Councillor went his way, and was reckoned on the morrow
in nowise accountable for the decision come to with or without
his approval. The act was a judgment of the Crown, as such
promulgated and enforced, and to have swathed it in wrappings
of Ministerial responsibility would have been to incur the scandal
of doubting Right Divine. But when Right Divine had fled
Majesty did not sit in consultative council. The seizure by
night and immolation of the Clan of Glencoe upon a pretext of
RESCUE OF NITHSDALE.
117
informality in their submission was perpetrated by Royal
authority, whether on the suggestion of Dalrymple or Breadal-
bane, his other Ministers did not know, and the public did not
inquire. Once, and once only, during her reign Anne had
ventured on an important act of State, in the sudden dismissal
of Godolphin without Ministerial countersign. But an essen-
tially different system of rule had now arisen. A mutually
chosen number of nobles and functionaries, bound together by
no other tie than that of concert for the time being, had under-
taken to guide and govern. They did not deceive themselves
into identity of feeling at the outset, nor were they unconscious of
latent tendencies to divergence in the first twelvemonth of their
experiment; but pressure from without, though unacknowledged
and undefinable, like the magic of the sustaining force that keeps
every limb and organ of the bodily frame in its due appointed
position, had hitherto held them together. So long as the recent
sense, real or exaggerated, of domestic danger lasted no one
asked how or why; but as the compressive bond of unity lost its
hold the staves, hitherto convergent and compact, began to yawn.
Stanhope interceded for Nairn, who had been his schoolfellow
at Eton, and when the Cabinet refused to concur in recom-
mnending a respite he threatened to resign, and thus saved his
early friend. Many entreaties were used by persons of influence
of either sex to move the pity of the Crown ; and when these
proved unavailing, large suins were said to have been tendered
secretly to individual Ministers. Walpole afterwards stated in
the House of Commons that £60,000 had been offered him to
save Lord Derwentwater. After prolonged and anxious dis-
cussion a compromise was at length agreed to, Widdrington,
Carnwath, and Nairn being respited, while orders were sent to
the Tower for the execution of the three remaining prisoners
the following day. When all hope of clemency was gone, and
there was but a few hours between her husband and death,
Lady Nithsdale resolved on a desperate scheme for his rescue.
She visited him in the Tower with several friends, a sufficiency
of female clothing being brought with them in which to dress
the Earl ; and, having succeeded in lulling the suspicions of the
guards, they walked out with him unarrested. It is a sad
dissolvent of the charm of chivalry and martyrdom that hung
i Letter of King William.
118
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
so long around the cause of Jacobitism to read the details of
the gross and shabby selfishness with which the daring and
devoted Winifred was requited throughout years of exile by
her ignoble Lord.1 Derwentwater and Kenmure paid the forfeit
on the scaffold ? of their blind devotion to the Stuarts; Lord
Wintour, though subsequently tried and sentenced, making
good his escape from the Tower. Twenty-two persons were
hanged in Lancashire, and four in London. But these bore a
small proportion to the number of capital prosecutions. Chief
Baron Montagu scolded the jurors who were guilty of acquittal ;
and Townshend's secretary, in a letter to Stanhope, lamented
the apathy which prevailed in cases of treason, "except in two
or three of the courts where men of spirit presided.”
Lately-acquired power, when plucked by the beard, is too
often cruel. It does not feel strong enough to be magnanimous
or pitiful, and stops its ears to prayers for mercy in the selfish-
ness of unforgotten fears.
Although rebellion had been effectually quelled, Government
thought it well to keep alive the terror of invasion, and to fan
the flame of sectarian animosity. Lechmere was supported in his
motion calling for the enforcement of the existing penal laws,
which no man ventured to incur the obloquy of opposing, and
a Bill giving effect to the resolution was accordingly passed, one
of the clauses providing for the exemplary punishment of such
Papists as should enlist in the Army or Navy.
The wearing of oak-leaves to commemorate the Restoration
was taken as a demonstration of hostile feeling; and summary
expedients were resorted to for putting it down. Two unhappy
soldiers were flogged almost to death in Hyde Park for having
committed the enormity; and throughout the country local
Justices exercised what they called their discretion by. inflicting
rigorous pains and penalties for an offence unknown to the law.3
Nottingham's expression in the debate that he hoped the
rebel Lords would be reprieved if they confessed, and even if
they did not confess, surprised and vexed the King, who was
told that with such language held in the Peers by the Lord
President, he could not, if he suffered the law to take its course
1
“ Caldwell Papers and Book of Caerlaverock.”
24th February, 1716.
Calamy's “Life," Vol. II.
CHIEF JUSTICE PARKER,
119
» 1
in any case, appear in public with confidence of being treated
with respect. Nottingham, Aylesford, and their friends held
at his Majesty's pleasure at this time offices worth £15,000 a
year, of which they were summarily deprived. The Chancellor
was against their removal, and would have let them remain
until at least some more insuperable cause for parting should
arise; but his deprecation was over-ruled. He himself became
the object of distrust and ill-will at Court, and felt that certain
“Lords of the Cabinet were resolved to weary him out of it ;
for they had decided among themselves to put Lord Chief
Justice Parker into his place.
Parker was one of the seven Lords of Regency appointed by
Statute, who awaited on the shore at Greenwich the arrival of
the new King, who had already been taught to regard him as a
safe and able man. Facile and suggestive, he quickly became
trusty and familiar with the Hanoverian members of the Court ;
and, being more accommodating than the responsible Ministers,
they would have had him take the place of Cowper on the
Woolsack. George I. felt, however, that he was in no condition
to encourage schism among his makers; the Chief Justice was
content for the time with a peerage and a pension of £1,200 a
year. While perfecting himself by practice in the arts of Courtier,
he made free to differ in debate occasionally with the Chancellor
in the House of Lords. There were, indeed, essential points of
difference between them. The Chancellor was at last becoming
convinced of the unwisdom of allowing the Executive to be
identified with the shortsighted interests of Party, and he re-
coiled from the maxims and ineasures of those who were capable
of sacrificing the great and lasting interests of unrepresented
millions to the so-called policy of stamping out epidemic dis-
affection, or stilling the regrets and repinings of multitudes with
whose distinctive notions and beliefs he had, in truth, as little in
common as they. The Chief Justice, on the other hand, was
not troubled by scruples. Supple and useful, he had risen, was
still rising, and meant to rise higher yet. For some weeks
Cowper was ill, and meditated retiring. Robethon was in-
structed to sound him as to whether he would accept the
Presidency of the Council, and let Parker be Chancellor. He
refused, saying if they would have him quit he would do it; but
Lady Cowper's Diary.
1
I 20
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
he would not change places. Robethon tried to induce his
wife to persuade him, and Bernsdorff endeavoured to bring
about the same object by moving the Prince of Wales, whose
influence with the Chancellor was known. But the Princess
.
bade Mrs. Clayton tell Lady Cowper that his Royal Highness
absolutely declined going into it, unless her lord desired it; and
that the Ministry should never draw or force them into anything
contrary to the Chancellor's inclination.
Cowper's private letters show that while he disclaimed direct-
ing the counsels of Leicester House, where in fact he seldom
appeared, he appreciated highly the tact and talent shown by
Princess Caroline, and prognosticated good from her influence
over her husband. Townshend and he never seemed to have
been thoroughly in accord; and various promotions at the bar
soon betrayed the existence of other ways to favour. Cowper
resented this encroachment on his department, and complained
that Townshend permitted his patronage to be taken from him,
contrary to usage and, as he argued, to the interest of the
public. His remonstrances, however, were deemed little worthy
of attention.
A Bill had been prepared at the Treasury giving an additional
£100,000 a year to his Majesty, professedly to enable him to
inake due provision for the Prince of Wales's children, but leaving
the amount he was to give for their education wholly to his
discretion. It was shown late at night to the Chancellor, and
next morning he wrote a letter in somewhat indifferent Latin to
the King, stating objections, the most important of which was
that it invited unlimited discussion in both Houses on the
differences existing in the Royal Family ; and that, as parties
were certain to be much divided, his influence abroad and his
authority at home would be brought into question. Whatever
the reply of his Majesty may have been, the differences in the
Cabinet were thenceforth widened, the Chancellor was found to
be unpersuadable, and the measure was withdrawn.
The death of Marlborough's youngest child, Lady Bridgwater,
in March, was followed a few weeks later by that of his favourite
daughter, Lady Sunderland, who had exercised a softening
influence over the difficult temper of her mother, and the no less
intractable disposition of her husband. Marlborough deeply
felt her loss; and though he continued to discharge with habitual
DECLINE OF MARLBOROUGH.
I21
care the duties of his office, he hardly ever seemed himself again.
Her death affected him more deeply than the less tender nature of
the parent whoin she was known to regard with more of deference
than of love. After the return of Cadogan from the suppression
of the Scotch revolt, Marlborough's strength visibly gave way.
On the 28th of May, while residing in seclusion at Holywell, he
was struck with paralysis, from which he partially recovered; and
in October he visited Blenheim, then advancing to completion.
With the surrounding estate it had cost the Treasury £240,000,
and required £60,000 more, which he was left to provide.
Gradually he took less and less interest in political affairs, but he
was persuaded by Sunderland to retain his office, and occasionally
to attend the House of Lords, where his name is traceable in
Committees for some time after.
The grief and anxiety supposed to be the cause of his illness
were frequently said to have been aggravated by a message from
Oxford, still in the Tower, threatening to expose his correspon-
dence with St. Germains; but no proof has ever been adduced
of the fact of the menace or its cogency.1
The mob had revelled in triumph over the prisoners as they
were led into London from the North, after the suppression of
the insurrection; made holiday during their trial, and shouted
themselves hoarse at their execution. Yet, so little did the
Government rely on these manifestations as tests of public
opinion, that within three months they resolved upon a legisla-
tive coup d'état second only to that of 1689, and justifiable only
on grounds of necessity. When the order of things established
by the Revolution was still new, popular feeling had been pro-
pitiated by the passing of the Triennial Act, whereby in all
places where the inhabitants still retained more than a nominal
right of election, the conduct of Parliament was every three
years submitted to the electoral judgment, thus offering a serious
obstacle to perinanent retention of Ministerial power. Yet, in
1716, Jacobitism was alleged to be rife in several parts of the
country, and many arguments were adduced in support of
organic change. Lord Arran had been chosen Chancellor of
Oxford on the outlawry of his brother Ormond ; and he was
now elected High Steward of Westminster, six of the Chapter
1
Etough's curious Memorials, I., 62, NIS. Written in 1753, no doubt from im-
pressions confidentially derived from Walpole.
I22
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
voting for Newcastle, and six for him, while Atterbury gave his
casting voice. This was said by Government to be a serious
indication of the strength and obduracy of disaffection, which
they were called on to countervail by all means in their power,
and the incident was used in argument to reconcile Whigs to a
Septennial Bill, on the ground that in the divided state of the
nation it would be hazardous to dissolve Parliament.
The calculations of party had been falsified in the days of
William and of Anne at the triennial poll; and the men who had
now obtained power required no argument to convince them that it
would be pleasanter and more profitable, and why not say more
patriotic, to delay giving an account of their stewardship for
three or four years beyond the time prescribed by law. But
for this it was indispensable to abrogate the law, and by Statute
to extend the term for which Parliament was authorised to sit.
Scrupulous friends, frightened at the risk, plaintively said to be
possible, of a Jacobite majority being returned in 1717, muttered
something about the constitutional incompetency of men re-
turned for three years only to vote themselves in possession for
seven ; but Ministers laughed in their faces, or rated them
soundly as pedants, and Addison did not disdain the part of
pamphleteer apologist for what he would till lately have
eloquently spurned as a factious imputation. Those who were
disposed to invest largely in the purchase of seats, complained that
frequent elections added needlessly to trouble and expense. These
reasons could not with decency be stated, and therefore it was
set forth, by the same men who had contributed to carry the
Triennial Act, that frequent dissolutions were found to be con-
trary to the public weal, and dangerous to the peace of the
realm.
In the Upper House Argyll, Dorset, and Townshend supported
the measure, which was hotly debated, the Opposition being led
by Buckingham, Aylesford, Trevor, and Nottingham. Poulett
contended that they should ascertain the sentiments of the
nation before passing the measure. But after a brilliant speech
of young Carteret, the Bill was committed by a majority of
thirty-five, and was read a third time on the 18th April. Somners
was too ill to attend, but he was known to have signified his
acquiescence.
A minority of 121 in the Commons inveighed against what
SEPTENNIAL ACT.
123
they termed a usurpation like that of the Long Parliament who
voted themselves permanent. But Walpole, in his sick chamber
at Chelsea, scornfully smiled at the appeal to precedent, and
Stanhope persuaded 264, of whom two-thirds were said to hold
places or pensions, to pass the Bill, by the assurance that it
would be repealed when the evil spirit was cast out, and the
nation found itself tranquil and in its right mind. Seven years
came to be regarded as the rightful term in the legislative lease;
and no subsequent administration has attempted to shorten it.
: Of the thirty-eight Parliaments that have since sat, only four
lived to the ripe age of seven years; nine survived for six; ten
for five; while the rest all died in infancy. Nor has the law of
enatorial mortality become less elastic with the advance of time.
1 entham used to say that we moderns ought to be wiser than
our ancestors, because in addition to all their knowledge, we have
our own of subsequent experience. Be this as it may, we know
that in the last three reigns the average longevity of Parliament
has not exceeded four years.
I 24
CHAPTER III.
ROYAL ABSENTEEISM.
1716.
Influence of Cowper-Old age of Marlborough-Succeeded in Party lead by
Sunderland-Under Secretaries Delafaye and Tilson-Addison Chief
Secretary-Cabal against Townshend-Jealousy of Prince of Wales
-Limitations of Regency-Bremen and Verden annexed-Cabinet
Reverts to the Commercial policy of Utrecht—Threatened Invasion by
Charles XII.-Admiral Norris can only take orders from the Board of
Admiralty-Sunderland and Stanhope at Hanover-Difference with
Colleagues at Home Prince of Wales to open Parliament–Townshend
Viceroy-Consultations at Devonshire House.
T
HE King chafed at being told that he must not go abroad
without the permission of Parliament; for so the Act of Suc-
cession ran.
But as there were other wishes impatiently
expressed by his Majesty with which his Ministers did not think
it either for his interest or their own to comply, it became matter
for consideration what they should resist, and when they should
give way. Madame Schuylenberg had been successively created
Baroness of Dundalk, Marchioness of Dungannon, and Duchess
of Munster in the Irish Peerage, too often treated as a sort of out-
house of honour, where the waifs and strays of fortune were glad
to stable their horses until called within the circle of privileged
nobility. By descent she claimed the rank of princess ; her
daughter by the King was about to be presented, and with the
influence she was known to possess, and the deference paid her
in society, she deemed the measure of her greatness incomplete
without the dignity of an English Duchess. The King had no
objection, but many of the Cabinet had, and by way of compro-
mise it was suggested that Parliament should be asked to let
him spend his autumn in Germany, provided the lady was not
REGENCY.
125
suffered to have her way. Townshend, who rather relished the ex-
ercise of Ministerial control over Court and Commons, persuaded
his Majesty to defer his journey until they could get the clause in
the Act of Arne repealed, and to defer the gift of the coveted
Strawberry Leaves until milder political weather. Sir John
Cope was directed to propose the legislative change desired ; and
on the advice of Shippen, his friends forbore opposing what they
imagined would furnish a new cause of discontent. But in the
Palace, female resentment, hitherto chiefly directed against
Walpole, turned still more openly against Townshend, and
was not long in finding political sympathy and aid against
both. Bernsdorff exulted in Whig misgivings, and flattered his
master on his superior appreciation of public feeling. Paternal
jealousy insisted that if the Prince of Wales were to be Regent
during his father's absence abroad, more than one great officer
of State should be associated with him in the duties and re-
sponsibilities of Government. Marlborough, Devonshire, Cowper,
Sunderland, Townshend, Stanhope, and Walpole met to consider
how the Council of Regency should be constituted. Being
unanimous in fearing that his Majesty's absence from the King-
dom might prove of serious prejudice to his interests, they felt it
their duty to lay before him the reasons which obliged them
to be of an opinion that could not but be ungrateful to him.
Though Parliament had in two Sessions done all that was sug-
gested, and even more than might have been expected, towards
repressing Jacobitism, the rage and spirit of that party were still
very far from being extinguished. They had made such acces-
sions of strength during the last four years of the Queen's reign,
as appeared by the behaviour of both Universities and even of
London itself, that confidence in their numbers, rank, and pro-
perty encouraged them to enter into sedition upon their own
bottom, without any foreign support. They found no precedent
in former reigns for vesting the powers of Regency otherwise
than in the Heir Apparent to the Throne, and any departure in
this respect from ancient practice would furnish additional cause
of misgiving, it was to be feared, and supply the malicious with
fresh subjects of misrepresentation.? George I. waxed exceeding
wroth at what he deemed an attempt by the Cabinet to overrule
his legitimate discretion in the management of his family.
1 Townshend to Bernsdorff, 19th March, 1716.-MS.
126
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Townshend, often brusque in argument with the German favour-
ites, fell into disgrace, and Walpole fared no better because he
refused to reimburse certain expenses which the King had in-
curred in bringing over a body of troops from Hanover during
the rebellion, which on its suppression were found to be unneces-
sary. By way of compromise, the title of Guardian and Lieu-
tenant of the Realm, instead of Regent, was conferred on the
Prince, and he submitted to certain limitations being imposed on
his authority.
Precise instructions from his father prescribed rigidly what he
might and what he might not do. The conduct of all foreign
affairs was to remain as before. No Archbishop or Peer was to
be made, and no person was to be admitted to the Cabinet or the
Privy Council, and no one was to be displaced from either, with-
out his Majesty's express direction. Titles of honour, commis-
sions in the Army, Navy, Ordnance, Governorships of Forts or
Plantations, Orders of the Garter or St. Andrew, and all grants.
of pensions or Crown lands were specifically reserved. If Parlia-
ment should pass any Bill of emergency it must abide the Royal
assent from abroad. Ordinary felons might be reprieved on due
cause shown, but pardon for high treason belonged to the Crown
alone. The functionaries of various ranks and degrees appointed
by Royal warrant to meet at St. James's from time to time, under
the presidency of the Prince Guardian, though including most of
the great officers of State, had no collective identity with either
the conferences in closet of past reigns or those held by mutual
agreement at the Cockpit, without the presence or interposition
of Majesty. If a traditional likeness were to be traced, it must
be sought rather in the Sanhedrim devised by Temple, and re-
membered only for its fruitless failure, but from which, save in
its misnomer, it was essentially distinguishable. Several of the
Judges and certain military officers were included; the Clerks of
the Council were present; the resolutions come to were meant
for publication, and they appeared in the Gasette accordingly.
The German Ministers wished to signalise their triumph in
obtaining the repeal of the Permissory Clause regarding the
Sovereign leaving the Kingdom by obtaining English titles.
Bernsdorff wanted to be an earl, Bothmar and Robethon baro-
nets. With great difficulty George I. was brought to understand
the imprudence of granting these demands, and when they were
PRINCESS CAROLINE.
127
refused it was not surprising that inuttered vows of resentment
should have been overheard. Lady Townshend could not en-
dure the idea of her husband's absence for a considerable time,
and it was agreed that he should remain at home, and that Stan-
hope should accompany the King. No jealousy or mistrust dis-
turbed the mind of either, and the public in general betrayed no
uneasiness at the Sovereign's preferring Gohrdt for his summer
residence, or disquietude at the Heir Apparent's occupying
Hampton Court as his Viceroy. The Dissenters clung to the
hopes on which they had been fed, that they should be rein-
stated ere long in all the privileges of citizenship; and that who-
ever might be Ministers George I. would prove himself grateful
for their fidelity. Dr. Chandler, an eminent divine, wrote to a
friend: “This morning dear King George came publicly through
the city, for the Tower, in order to go to Holland. I saw with the
usual satisfaction that good and great man.
He looked up and
smiled upon his people.” 1
It was proposed that Devonshire should succeed Nottingham
as President of the Council, Sunderland to be Privy Seal with-
out salary and sole Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, Kent to be Lord
Steward, Kingston Master of the Horse, Conyers D'Arcy to have
the Buckhounds, Montrose to be Clerk Register of Scotland, and
Roxburgh to take his place as Secretary, Tankerville and Lei-
cester to be Lords in Waiting, and Cobham to be Constable of
Windsor Castle. But this programme was not finally adhered
to. In the political map the affairs of the world were divided
into North and South ; the great Powers of the Continent, Spain,
France, Bavaria, Savoy, the Austrian Empire, and that of the
Ottoman Porte, engaging the attention of one Secretary of
State ; while those of Great Britain, the United Provinces, Han-
over, Saxony, and Brandenburg, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and
Muscovy occupied that of the other.
The King, ere he went abroad, advised his daughter-in-law to
confide in Cowper as the most disinterested politician in England.
The Princess disliked Townshend, whom in private she called
the "sneeringest, fawningest knave that ever was.” Hervey and
Chesterfield, though estimating his domestic qualities differently,
concur in describing his manners as coarse and ill-bred. Sunder-
Monthly Repository,” XVI., 197, 1821.
2 Townshend MS., July, 1716.
1
128
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
land avowed that he was for restrictions on the Regent, but Caro-
line thought better of him than Townshend. How soon the old
practices of corruption struck root anew under the altered sys-
tem of Government needs no accumulation of proof. Formerly
every new place or pension was directly accepted as the
gift of the Crown, and reversions were only considered worth
paying for in ready money when the Royal assent had been
made safe. Sunderland's father paid Sir Joseph Williamson
£6,500 for the Secretaryship of State, which his mother
thought it would be very hard that they should lose when he
was removed ; in other words, that Charles II., having been cog-
nisant of the transaction, was equitably bound to make good the
loss. Throughout the preceding reigns official bribery, in num-
berless forms, betrayed itself, and was sometimes reprimanded
for the indecency of exposure; but nobody affected to exonerate
the head of the State from winking hard; and now that patron-
age had been put in commission, to be exercised by the prin-.
cipal Ministers, the King's acquiescence was generally taken for
granted in matters the merits of which he could not be supposed
to understand, and with the details of which he was irritable at
being bored. When, as often happened, a competitor for favour
tried to reach by a clandestine way the Royal ear, while the word
of a Minister had been pledged to another, a convenient mode of
solving the difficulty lay in the intervention of one or other of
those female friends whom his Majesty delighted to honour,
but who could not be expected to be troubled with business for
nothing
Stanhope, less tarnished than others with complicity in such
intrigues, was engrossed with affairs of his own department.
D'Huxelles and most of the French Ministers were known to be
averse from contracting intimate relations with England, but the
Regent, bent on pursuing that policy as best suited to secure his
own position, and struck by the tone of confidence and fami-
liarity in Stanhope's letters to Dubois, secretly despatched the
Abbé to the Hague, there to await the arrival of his friend.
Ostensibly his purpose was to buy pictures, books, and horses
for his master. His instructions were to satisfy the General that
France was as anxious, and as ready, to enter into binding en-
? Echard, quoted by Glencowe, II., 51.
Lady Sunderland to H. Sidney, 25th Jan., 1681.
2
DELAFAYE.
129
gagements of amity and reciprocal benefit as Austria or the
States General.
Symptoms of schism amongst the Whigs began to appear, and
Sunderland, before leaving for Hanover, visited the Duchess to
learn her views, for she still loved power more and money less
than her husband had ever done. The recent death of Lady
Anne, far from weakening the Earl's favour in her mother's eyes,
drew her more than ever towards him; and she induced Marl-
borough to alter his will, and, instead of leaving the chief part of
his fortune to Lady Godolphin, to bequeath it to the Spencers.
Thenceforth Sunderland felt himself, and was looked upon by
others, as the head of the Marlborough party.
The Prince Guardian resided at Hampton Court with his
household and certain officers of State. Townshend and Wal-
pole had their respective apartments, where they felt bound to
show liberal hospitality, while their Under Secretaries, with their
staffs from Whitehall, kept the mechanism of the Executive in
regular motion.
Charles Delafaye, son of a Court physician, began his
official life as Secretary to the Lords Justices in Ireland.
Soon after, through his father's influence with some of his
noble patients, he succeeded in exchanging that office for aii
Under-Secretaryship at Whitehall. There we find him cor-
responding daily with Tilson, who held a similar post in another
department; and between them not a few gleams of light are
shed on otherwise dark places. Tilson advised his chief, Stan-
hope, then in Hanover, that both the King's friends and enemies
in Scotland agreed in opposing the trials for treason at Carlisle,
and it was doubtful whether the list of cases could be got
through at the Assize from the listlessness that prevailed. There
appeared, moreover, to be a widening schism among the clergy,
owing to a revival of the non-juring spirit, which might need
resort to more stringent measures, certain to prove obnoxious to
the Universities. The Prince of Wales dwelt at Hampton Court,
and the attendance of the Secretary of State and of the head of
the Treasury seemed indispensable to keep up the dignity and
punctuality of regal clock-work; and had their daily presence
afforded opportunities of personal conciliation, either or both
? Sth Sept., 1716--MIS.
VOL. 1.
K
130
HISTOKY OF CABINETS.
would, no doubt, have been glad of it. His Royal Highness was
uniformly "civil, but that was all, for they were convinced that
he hated them." His unofficial courtesies were, in fact, bestowed
on visitors, the chief of whom were objects of distrust to his
responsible advisers. Argyll was still received on the old footing
of intimacy as when he was Groom of the Stole, and his brother
Islay constantly came from his seat at Isleworth to pay his court
with Shrewsbury, Uxbridge, Ossory, Carlton, and Windsor, all of
whom resided in Middlesex or Surrey. The time had not come
for confidence in one so little likely to be recommended to the
Princess as Walpole, and both he and his brother-in-law appear,
by their own account, to have been more afraid of being thought
by the King to stand too well in her husband's favour. They
were, in fact, beset with alternate suspicion of seeking to pro-
inote the aims of the Prince at the expense of the King's prero-
gative, and of allowing him, through their want of nerve or tact,
to fall into the hands of a Junto, who had all country houses at a
few miles distance that might facilitate caballing. Conformably
to orders, Walpole presented a patent revoking Argyll's pension
of £2,000 a year, which the Prince refused to sign. In law it
remained good, but no money would be paid upon it without
direction, which Stanhope might be sure would not be had. If
his Majesty were acquainted with this, they were of opinion it
would be advisable not to send any orders about it for fear of
disturbing the Prince, who seemed disposed to be easy just
then.
Townshend meanwhile tried to make way with the Prince of
Wales through the influence of Mrs. Howard. The Chancellor
did not hesitate to counsel his ill-mannered colleague on the
imprudence and ill-breeding of his conduct, which gradually
changed towards her Royal Highness, and in the eyes of the
Court matters were set right. But Townshend persistently
strove as best he might to extol the merits of Parker, whom
Cowper had helped to make Chief Justice, and who the Secre-
tary would fain have succeed him on the Woolsack. Sunderland,
at his visit to take leave, could not contain his irritability and
impatience regarding the Secretary for the Northern Department,
and in a conversation with the Princess, whose paramount desire
1
Walpole to Stanhope, 30th August, 1716.
CABINET DISSENSIONS.
131
was to keep all smooth among Ministers, broke out in tones so
passionate that she bade him beware lest through the open
windows persons in the garden should overhear them. “ Then
let them hear," was his reply. Her Royal Highness quietly
observed, "You had better walk next the window, for in the
humour we both are in, one of us must jump out, and I am
resolved it shan't be me." His Lordship protested to Towns-
hend that he meant him no ill-will, and that his going abroad
was only to hasten, if possible, his Majesty's return.
Ministers felt themselves treated with great coldness and
reserve. This state of things could only be ended by the King's
shortening his sojourn abroad. Any suggestion of the kind
would no doubt be ascribed to personal aims and interests; but
things were come to such a pass that they felt themselves
obliged to overlook the censure their fidelity might incur.1
The Princess valued highly Cowper's advice, and intimated
through his wife that she wished to see him oftener under
existing circumstances. Impaired health and difficulty of agree-
ment with Townshend would, he hoped, plead his excuse for not
meddling in affairs not especially within his department, the prob-
able result of which would be the questioning of his interference,
and consequent diminution of his power to be of real use.
Should H.R.H. ever come to the Crown, while he had health
and any degree of understanding left, he would dedicate them
and all his time towards making him great. But in the present
situation he thought he must seem not only not elated with, but
scarcely sensible of, his goodness to him.”? In spite, however, of
his prudent reticence and abstension, his infrequent visits were
enough to feed the worm of jealousy that dieth not, and the
Chancellor was regarded by Townshend as one of his Cabinet
enemies. Cowper “defied anyone to produce a single instance
of his having made an ill use of the confidence with which his
Royal Highness was pleased to honour him, or of the Prince's
having invaded the Royal prerogative in the minutest branch, or
having in any particular deviated from that entire submission
which he ought to show his father."
In the growing heats and divisions in Court and Cabinet,
i Tilson to Stanhope, 19th Aug., 1716.-NIS.
? To Lacy Cowper, ist Sept., 1716.
: Townshend to Slingsland, ist Jan., 1717.-M/S.
16
K2
132
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Townshend and Walpole held fast by Stanhope, to whose choice
as Leader in the Commons they took pride in having con-
tributed, and with whom they kept up relations of fraternal
confidence. But at the end of July they became uneasy at
reports which had reached them regarding Sunderland and
Cadogan, who were, they believed, privy to schemes for their
displacement, and the transfer of the General to some high
military command. They consequently let him know that these
designs were carried further, and better supported, than they
imagined while he was at home, and that "all the foreigners
were engaged on that side. The Duchess of Munster entered
into the dispute with more than ordinary zeal and resentment;
insomuch that by an account they had of a conversation with
the King at her apartments, nothing but the want of time and
the hurry he was in upon his going away, prevented a change of
Ministry, to be carried upon the Whig foot, exclusive of them,
there being no difficulty at all in removing Walpole. Stanhope,
it was thought, might be taken care of in the Army, but they
were at a loss regarding Townshend.” How far the King gave
in to it was not sufficiently explained, or whether he was more
than passive during the conversation. It seemed so contradictory
to the accounts he always had of the King's behaviour to Lords
Townshend and Stanhope, that the writer was at a loss how to
question what was positively affirmed, or to believe what was so
extraordinary and irreconcilable.1
Walpole had not yet quite recovered from his recent illness,
and feeling himself still ailing, he resolved to take a month's
rest in Norfolk to enable him to lay in a stock of health for the
winter. He certainly did not try to excuse his proposed absence
from Hampton Court by any attenuation of the difficulties there.
If possible, the King should be induced to return for the meeting
of Parliament, but if not, it had better be postponed till after
Christmas. If the Prince Guardian were allowed to open the
Session, the ceremony ought not to be delayed beyond Novem-
ber, for financial reasons, and because, if his Royal Highness
were led to imagine a further postponement was only meant to
defeat an object he had much at heart, he would probably
ascribe it to Ministers, and let his resentment afford encourage-
ment to Opposition in the spring. If by suffering the Prince to
1 R. Walpole to Stanhope, 30th July, 1716.
GEORGE I. IN GERMANY.
133
hold the Parliament the King agreed to put the whole affairs of
the winter into his hands, it should be done in such a manner as
would not engage his Highness in measures opposite to the
interest of his Majesty. The state of the revenue was such,
and the condition of the Civil List so easy, that no fresh supply
would be actually wanted till the new year; for though there
would be a deficit in the Exchequer of more than half a million,
it might be provided for by postponing the clearings on allow-
ances, and the payment of off reckonings to the Navy. In every
aspect the financial condition of the country was prosperous :
money was cheap, stocks were high, the Treasury was able to
get whatever money it wanted on its Tallies at four instead of
six per cent.; finally, the First Lord announced that he was busy
in forming a scheme for paying the debts of the nation, and did
not despair of being able to propose what should be effectual
for the purpose in case all things remained quiet, and they had
no disturbance nor alarms from abroad. In ordinary circum-
stances this clever balancing of prejudices and predilections
between Hampton Court and Göhrdt might have prolonged the
suspense midway between the Sovereign and his son. Without
any indication or tendency to cringe towards either, those who
felt within themselves the real ability to govern were ready to
look either way and to move compliantly in matters of cere-
monial, provided they were undisturbed. The alleged avowal
of the Prince's readiness to act the part of King at Westminster
before his time, may not have struck the mind of Stanhope
with the misgiving or concern wherewith it filled the Electoral
Ministers and favourites, but it tended to pave the way for
proposals from the Cabinet at home which, had Walpole fore-
seen their effect, he would hardly have suggested in terms so
plain.
George I., relieved from the trammels of kingship in a land
where he still felt strange, resumed with enhanced zest his old
ways of life in Hanover. He was not less of an irresponsible
Prince for having for nearly two years worn a crown, and his
courtiers told him he was a good deal more.
His German
Chancellor, tired of being over-ruled by English Ministers,
thought the opportunity good for making the importance of the
Electorate felt, and he lost no occasion of reminding his master
that the least compensation he might have for sojourning so
I 34
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
long beyond sea and submitting to a Cabinet of insular nobles,
would be the practical acknowledgment of his hereditary right
to act on his own judgment in German affairs. Bernsdorff had
reasons of his own for stimulating George I. to assert himself
more than he had recently done among neighbours and allies;
and though he was too wary to mutter this audibly within
English ear-shot, it seems clear that, through Madame de Platen
or otherwise, Stanhope gradually came to understand the mixed
motives that animated him. The foreign policy of the Govern-
ment was early directed to the acquisition for Hanover of
Bremen and Verden, which by the treaty of Westphalia had
been ceded, with other conquests, to Sweden, and subsequently:
occupied by Denmark. The Dukes of Brunswick and Zell
despaired of being able to bring back either within the circle of
the Empire; and until his accession to the Throne of England,
George I. had not ventured to provoke the resentment of
Charles XII. by questioning any of his German conquests.
His Hanoverian Ministers fondly hoped that the forcible pur-
chase of Bremen and Verden, advised by Stanhope and Towns-
hend, with English money, if ratified by the Emperor and the
States-General, might enable them to escape the penalty of war
with their still formidable neighbour. In the Cabinet there was
little or no difference of opinion on the question. Securities for
the freedom of trade with Hamburg and the interior of Ger-
many from capricious molestation or impediment by any foreign
power was held to be worth the price and the contingent risk of
quarrel. The Dutch Ministers, who were always against further
entanglements by Treaty between warlike rivals, would have had
them let it alone; but the English Envoy at the Hague was set
to compose a commercial argument to bring them round, and to
persuade the doubtful at home of the excellence of the bargain,
and Walpole undertook to furnish the money. Abbé Dubois
obtained the removal of all difficulties of recognition by the
Government of France, and the Swedish Envoy in London was
requested to inforın his master that the British Treasury was
ready to pay him the full value of the Prince Bishoprics that
would henceforth form part of the Electorate of Hanover.
The rage of the Swedish King was unspeakable ; but, in the
desperate condition of his affairs, he did not suddenly throw off
the mask of peace. His Prime Minister, Gortz, was instructed
BREMEN AND VERDEN.
135
to offer the Dutch any terms for their aid, or even for their
armed neutrality. M. Gyllenbourg was authorised to stick at
nothing that might stir the embers of disaffection in England,
and to promise a powerful expedition in the spring on behalf of
the Pretender.
It appeared by a despatch of Townshend's that Charles XII.
had concluded a Treaty with the Jacobite rebels in France, by
which they were to be taken into his service, and to enjoy the
same rank and pay they had been told to expect under
James III. Admiral Norris was consequently ordered to join
his fleet with that of Denmark, with which Sweden was then at
war. Unlimited offers were made at Versailles in the hope of
averting the apprehended alliance with England, and couriers
sped from Madrid to Stockholm to bring about the startling
combination advised by Alberoni for a total reconstruction of
the balance of Western Christendoin. But the interests of
Orleans daily detached him more than ever from the hazardous
schemes of Spain. Should Louis XV. not live to manhood,
Philip V. would infallibly claim the Throne of France, and
meanwhile he would probably seek to undermine the Regent's
Government. A leading aim of English policy under every
Administration had long been to defeat the Union of the
Bourbon crowns, and no mutual guarantee could be, therefore,
so obvious or binding as onc between the House of Orleans and
the House of Hanover. Dubois made way with his skilful
suggestions of reciprocal advantages, and offered such confiden-
tial proofs of sincerity that he was invited to visit Göhrdt.
Notwithstanding all they had said when it suited their purpose
against the Treaty of Utrecht, Townshend and Stanhope readily
entered into the offers held out by France for a renewal of
commercial relations, and not only was the condemned Treaty
made the basis of the new pact, but most of its reciprocal pro-
visions were re-enacted. One of these related to Dunkirk, the
works of which had been dismantled, and the harbour made
useless by the French, as had been required. But close by, a
new haven called Mardyke was much improved, in evasion, as it
was said, of the agreement at Utrecht. Ministers feared to avow
the contemplated alliance without being able to show that they
had made good this stipulation; and Townshend insisted upon
* To the Admiral, 3rd July, 1716.--MIS.
136
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
it so vehemently in discussion with M. d'Ibberville that at length
the French Envoy yielded. It was agreed to ruin the fascinages,
and to reduce the sluice to the breadth of sixteen feet, which, in
the opinion of the most skilful engineers, would more effectually
exclude ships of war and privateers than what was at first pro-
posed.” 1
The hostility of Charles XII. waxed keener every day, and
the consequent suspicion with which his representative in London
was regarded. Help from Sweden appeared to the Jacobites to
be more hopeful than from France. Her impulsive Sovereign
was full of resentment, and his Minister in London was more
than suspected of distributing, if not inspiring, inflammatory
pamphlets, as appeared from his intercepted letters. Townshend
thought that when amity with France was a little more assured,
M. Gyllenbourg ought to be ordered to quit the Kingdom.? His:
colleague concurred in the suggestion, and, at the instance of the
King, left it to the Government at home to put in execution the
measure as soon as they had intelligence of the ratification of
the French Treaty.
George I. probably believed, and his German Ministers cer-
tainly strove to make him believe, that if he were only firm in
asserting his Sovereign rights, he might emancipate himself from
the shackles of Constitutional control. Apparently, without
apprehending the difficulty and danger of his position, they
drew him on to make proposals which Stanhope and Sunder-
land had not the resolution peremptorily to reject, but preferred
to hold in abeyance till the judgment of the Cabinet could be
known.
Peter the Great, then at his zenith, was the meteor that kept
all Europe at gaze. For years a desolating strife had been on
foot between the northern Powers, which English good offices
vainly strove to appease. Muscovite aggression was not con-
fined to Sweden ; it sought to make prey of Denmark also,
whose Sovereign implored counsel from the Elector-King, and
the protecting presence of the British Fleet. Bernsdorff urged
the necessity of seizing the Russian squadron, and detaining the
Czar as a hostage for the evacuation of Denmark and Mecklen-
burg. Stanhope recalled the policy of Cromwell, who had sent
1 Under Sec. Poyntz to Stanhope, at Hanover, IIth Sept., 1716.
2 Townshend to Stanhope, 151h Sept., 1716.—MS.
ORDERS TO ADMIRAL NORRIS.
137
more than one fleet to the Baltic to secure freedom of trade
with each of the States contending for supremacy there ; and
the recorded fact that he offered to purchase Bremen from
Sweden with that view. If it were now given up, and Denmark
humbled, he feared that within three years the Czar would be
absolute master in the Northern Seas—so completely was he ·
carried away by the panic, real or feigned, of those around him.
Bernsdorff vehemently urged a coup de main. The chief part
of his inheritance lay in Mecklenburg, where the presence of the
autocrat no longer seemed to be resisted, and George I., hearken-
ing to his veteran advisers, pressed Stanhope to countersign an
Order to Admiral Norris for its immediate execution. The
General hesitated, not from any scruple of policy, but on the
ground that such an Order could only be given through the
Board of Admiralty on a resolution of the Cabinet.
In no little perplexity, he wrote home: “The King asked
how far I could venture to give orders to the Admiral. I said
that as far as joining his good offices with those of the King of
Denmark, I would make no difficulty; and I would accordingly
write to Sir John Norris by express. But the King desires you
will seriously consider of the matter, and of the instructions for
the Fleet. I do verily believe things will come to an eclat, per-
haps before I can have an answer from you.
I shall check my
own nature, which was ever inclined to bold strokes, till I hear
from
you.
You may easily imagine how I shall be daily pressed
to send orders to Norris. The truth is, I see no daylight through
these affairs. We may easily master the Czar if we go briskly
to work. If he be let alone he will not only be master of Den-
mark, but, with the body of troops he has still behind on the
borders of Poland, he may take quarters where he pleases in
Germany. How far the King of Prussia is concerned with him
we do not know, nor will that Prince explain himself. The
King wishes, and so do I, heartily, that we had secured France.
The Abbé showed me a part of a despatch from Marshal
D’Huxelles, whereby they promise that the moment our Treaty
is signed they will frankly tell us everything they know touching
the Jacobite plots from the beginning.”1 Stanhope took Dubois
for the first time to see his Majesty, and at the end of the inter-
view they parted well satisfied with each other.
1 To Townshend, 25th Sept., 1716.-N1S.
ܠܐ ܙܙ
138
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Townshend's reply deprecated strongly a rupture with the
Czar as certain to involve dangerous consequences; and in a
secret despatch he warned his colleague that war in the North
would be the ruin of the Ministry, and that sooner than ex-
asperate Sweden further, they ought to take the first opportunity
of making peace, even at a considerable sacrifice. The con-
tinuance of the fleet in the Baltic after winter set in would leave
the coast of England defenceless from Swedish attack, and
could not, therefore, be advised; but if the King of Denmark
seriously feared treachery on the part of his Muscovite visitor,
and thought himself strong enough to anticipate the blow, the
English Government would not object to assurances being
secretly given him of eventual support in case of open war.
This counter project did not satisfy the German Councillor,
and Sunderland and Stanhope could not be unconscious of the
widening divergency between them and their brother Ministers
at home. In answer to assurances from Robethon that the
King was likely to insist on the squadron being left to winter in
the Baltic, Under-Secretary Poyntz was commanded to say that
Lord Townshend “ was out of all temper to see what ridiculous
expedients they proposed for extricating themselves out of their
difficulties, as if the leaving eight men of war to be frozen up for
six months would signify five grains towards giving a new turn
to the affairs of the North.” 1
In the course of the summer Peter had agreed to act in
concert with the King of Denmark, and was still an invited
though distrusted guest at Copenhagen ; but his promised con-
tingent did not arrive till the middle of September, when a
Council of War declared it was too late to make a descent on
the opposite coast. His real design was suspected to be that of
treacherous surprise ; and if he dreamt of making the Baltic a
Russian lake, what security would there be for the independence
of Hanover ? England had still the power to curb his ambition
and preserve the balance of the Scandinavian States; but if,
irresolute, she waited until Charles XII. and Peter had come to
a compromise, the opportunity would be lost, and the Tartar
would have made his way to the ocean. Stanhope probably
discounted these alarms at their actual value, but knew that the
proposal of Bernsdorff would never have been made without the
25th September, 1716.
1
THE CABINET OVERRULES THE KING.
139
cognisance and approval of his master; and he suspended any
decisive answer until he had time to learn the sentiments of his
colleagues in the Cabinet. He did not conceal, however, his
misgivings. Bernsdorff sent orders to Norris to act with vigour,
but the Admiral refused, on the specific ground that it came from
the Government of Hanover, and not from the Government of
England.
In spite of all that Robethon and Bothmar could urge, the
Council at home remained unmoved. They were not insensible
to Peter's liability to fits of earth-hunger, but they felt them-
selves in no way called on to undertake the discipline of his
passion or the impeachment of his future designs against his
neighbours, and they shrank from an abrupt breach of the
peace with him which would probably entail all the evils of open
war. They were ready to confirm the Triple Alliance with
Holland and France, because, among other advantages, it might
enable them to bring the belligerents of the North to compose
their differences, and to suffer peace to prevail in the Baltic.
No proof eventually transpired that Peter was meditating the
treachery to Denmark imputed to him, and Norris returned
with his ships to the Downs, with the unpublished merit in the
eyes of his employers of having made the descendant of Charles
I. understand that a British fleet could only act upon orders
from a British Ministry.
The King was much surprised at being thus told that Parlia-
ment would not concern itself with what took place in Germany,
which he looked upon as not only exposing him to all kinds of
affront, but even to ruin. He agreed with Sunderland and
Stanhope and disagreed with what he called the old Tory notion
that England could subsist by itself, whatever became of the
rest of Europe.1
His Majesty was mortified at finding himself compelled
to own how little power he exercised over the armaments
of the realın whereof he was called King. Bred in a petty
school of absolutism, and incapable of comprehending the still
novel system of government at the gilded apex of which he had
been placed, it was not strange that he learned with bitterness
his first humiliating lesson in constitutionalism, and took es-
pecially ill the bluntness of tone in which it had been laid down
i Sunderland to Townshend from Göhrdt, rith November, 1716.—MIS.
140
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
by the Secretary for the Northern Department. Influences not
hitherto convergent thenceforth combined to fan his resentment
into flame. Townshend had hoped to appease the enmity of
the Great Lady by allowing her to obtain (for several thousand
considerations best known to herself) the Barony of Battersea i
for the father of Bolingbroke, which the Viscount had asked for
him in vain. But the newly-made Duchess was not narrow-
minded in her willingness to promote claims to the Peerage ;
and she was surprised and angry at impediments being thrown in
the way of Sir Richard Child's ambition. Townshend objected
that the worthy banker was an active member of Opposition
whom the Cabinet could not afford to have put over the heads
of several of their aspiring supporters. He had, moreover, ex-
asperated Bothmar, the King's confidential correspondent in
London, by backing the refusal of Walpole to promote his
scheme for the sale of French lands in St. Christopher's, which
were held to be escheats of the Crown under the treaty of
Utrecht, and for a large portion of which the Baron had ob-
tained a promise for himself. Both disappointed traffickers in
Royal weakness spared no pains to misrepresent the Minister's
unyielding disposition as insolence and faction; and when
delays and difficulties arose in the Treaty with the French and
Dutch, George I, betrayed a feeling of irritation and resentment
not to be mistaken. Sunderland, though reticent, rejoiced at
these additional provocations and pretexts for the changes in
office on which he had set his heart. He had never forgiven
Townshend's attempt to take a seat above him at the Cabinet
table ; and though possessed himself of three offices instead of
his rival's one, as these did not give him a lead in great affairs,
he continued to resent his arrogant and dictatorial tone ; and
sooner or later he was determined to regain the position he had
once occupied of Secretary of State. Townshend was an upright,
fearless, and, in his way, patriotic Minister, but fortune had
helped to spoil him.
He had outrun not a few of his superiors for the prize of
power, and, heated in the race, he had never thoroughly cooled.
He understood well what was expected of him by his colleagues.
He had all the courage and constancy requisite to fulfil the
implied condition that they should feel and be felt to be collec-
1 2nd July, 1716.
SCHEMES AGAINST TOWNSHEND.
141
tively supreme. Sunderland, who in fortune and family looked
on him as his inferior, waited impatiently for the time when he
might edge him from his path. Marlborough's declining
strength and influence, and his own embarrassments, the result
of play, compelled his pride to take counsel of prudence to dis-
semble his spleen, and to affect deference to the will of his
colleagues, that he might eventually rise above them. Before
going abroad, he asked Townshend and Walpole to tell him
what line they wished him to take during his sojourn should he
visit Hanover, as he desired nothing so much as to show that all
past feuds had been reconciled, and that there was perfect union
between them. But his craving for power was inappeasable,
and to Hanover he bent his way. There he began to spread
his nets for all that might contribute to his future ends. Official
ambition was the vital pulse of his being. On his travels he
inaintained without question the repute of fidelity to party. At
Göhrdt he found more than one subject apt for his interposition.
The German Chancellor and his colleagues were won by
courteous attention, wherewith they had been scantily favoured
in England; and Countess de Platen, more envious than ever
of her Duchess rival, caught at every hint from within the
Cabinet of how her family wishes might be realised if the
proposed negotiation with France were brought to success.
In the daily interchange of confidential counsels, Stanhope
and Sunderland soon came to murmur in concert against their
overruling colleague at home, who, seeing no probability of the
King's return before winter to England, naturally paid more
attention to the young Prince of Wales, and his Highness daily
saw more of Argyll and his brother Islay than the jealousy of
the absent monarch could be made to understand.
Bolingbroke about this time confided to the charge of James
Craggs the younger, who happened to be in Paris, a careful
letter to Sir W. Wyndham, telling him to hand it to his father
to read or send on as he thought fit. The Postmaster-
General brought it to Townshend, and asked what he was to do,
and was desired to make a copy and forward it forthwith. Its
obvious drift was to dissuade his friend from touching the futilo
schemes of the Jacobites, which he knew were again afloat in
England, and to make evidence uncalled-for of his returning
readiness to be loyal. He spoke of the Pretender's projects as
142
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
far advanced, and of the fresh combinations throughout the
Kingdom being inflated with hopes which he deemed illusory,
the Regent of France being thoroughly resolved to throw him-
self into the cause of Hanover. Bolingbroke's information of
the real intentions of the French Government was no doubt
better than that of his old associates. “Depend upon what I
say to you, my dearest friend, nothing can be so desperate as
the circumstances of affairs, nothing so miserable as the charac-
ters, nothing so weak as their measures, and whoever represents
things in another light is guilty either of gross ignorance or
scandalous artifice. The ardent and sincere affection which I
bear you, and which I shall carry to the grave with me, exacts
this admonition from me, and the rather because the knowledge
I have of some part of what is doing, and the guess I make at
the particulars which I do not certainly know, incline me to
think that I should not neglect a moment in so material an
affair. If other persons speak another language, they have one
of these two motives : either the heat of their temper or their
ignorance of facts makes them deceive themselves first and their
friends afterwards ; or else, having nothing left to lose, and, by
consequence, nothing to hazard, they imagine it very lawful and
very politic to expose as many as they can to the same situation
they are already in. Let me, therefore, conjure you, on no
account whatever, to enter into any measure till, by some means
or other, we have contrived to meet, which I hope will not
prove impracticable. Keep yourself till then absolutely free
from all engagements, and remember that the time will come
when you will own this advice to be the truest instance of
friendship which I can give. The people of St. Germains and
Avignon were never more sanguine in appearance, and yet the
Regent will undoubtedly throw himself à corps perdu into the
King of England's interest. Adieu, my dear Willy, ever much
more yours than my own. What I write is only for you and
one or two of our bosom friends. The inference to be drawn
from it, and the use to be made of it, ought to be as general as
your concerns for persons reaches. I give you this caution the
rather because some things which I writ over, and which were
by no means proper to rebound back hither, did, however, do so.
You will easily guess this not to be very proper; perhaps not
1 Townshend to Stanhope, 15th Sept., 1716.-MS.
TOWNSHENI) DISPLACED.
143
very safe for me. This letter comes to you sealed with a head,
and will go under our friend Jemmy's cover.” 1
Several of the Ministers being out of town, the Chancellor,
Lord President, the Duke of Bolton, the First Lord of the
Admiralty, Secretary Townshend, Chief Justice Parker, met at
Devonshire House to consider what heads of business should be
laid before Parliament. The intercepted letters of Count
Gyllenbourg seemed to require prompt measures of vigilance and
activity to thwart the designs of Sweden, for which purpose a
squadron asked for by the Czar should be sent to the Baltic as
soon as the season opened to support his descent on Finland..
It was further resolved that for policy's sake concessions there-
tofore withheld should be made to Russia, the only power in the
actual condition of affairs in the North worth securing as an ally.”
But when the Secretary unwarily wrote proposing that the
Prince Guardian should, in his father's absence, open Parliament,
the rage of the King blazed so high that Sunderland and Stan-
hope thought the inoment come for effecting a change of hands
and re-distribution of parts. Stanhope accordingly wrote by
desire of his Majesty naming Townshend, without his leave,
Viceroy of Ireland, and Methuen Secretary of State in his room.
On the same day he wrote to Walpole—“I do in my conscience
believe this was the only measure which could secure the con-
tinuance of a Whig Administration with any ease to the King,.
who has been more uneasy of late than I care to say, and I must
own I think he has reason, even though I don't pretend to know
so much of the matter as he does. He is jealous of certain
intimacies with the brothers Argyll and Islay ; I hope his pre-
sence in England and the behaviour of our friends in the Cabinet
will remove these jealousies. None can contribute more to this
than yourself and Lord Townshend; and I have assured the
King that you will do so. You know that ill offices have been
done you here, which might have made some impression if my
Lord Sunderland and I had not in good earnest endeavoured to
prevent it. You will believe that our endeavours were sincere
when I shall have told you with frankness our scheme for the
Ministry. In case my Lord Townshend accepts of Ireland,
which for a thousand reasons he ought to do, the Cabinet will
1 Bolingbroke to Wyndham, 13th Sept., 1716.—MS.
2 Townshend to Stanhope, 2nd Nov., 1716.-MS.
144
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
remain just as it was with the addition of the Duke of Kingston
as Privy Seal. Mr. Methuen and I shall continue Secretaries.
If he should decline Ireland and prevail upon you, which I can-
not think possible, to offer to quit your employments, the King
has engaged Lord Sunderland to be Secretary; and that I (un-
equal as I am) should be Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It
highly concerns me that you should stay where you are. I am
very sorry that my Lord Townshend's temper has made it im-
practicable for him to continue Secretary. The King will not
bear him in that office, be the consequence what it will. He
cannot refuse Ireland without declaring to the world that he will
serve upon no other terms than being Viceroy over father, son,
and the three Kingdoms. Is the Whig interest to be staked in
defence of such a pretension ?" Can it be believed that, how-
ever implacable may have been the aversion of the Duchess of
Munster, Chancellor Bernsdorff, and Lord Sunderland, George I.
would have been able to remove Townshend had Stanhope
resisted the change; or that he would have become the in-
strument for its accomplishment, if he had not felt sure of the
approval of the rest of the Cabinet ? It is worthy of note, that
to compass the displacement of Townshend, his rival had not
hesitated to resign two of the three offices he had held, and to sit
in the Cabinet with no higher official rank than that of Vice-
Treasurer of Ireland. How soon the curb of such unwonted
self-denial snapped, we have seen.
It had been from the outset agreed that every official act
should be done in the name of the King as of yore ; that at
every audience each Minister should go on bended knee, and
that all should be styled his Majesty's servants. For that
matter, so were the players; but who believed that they "spoke
the speech he prayed them as he pronounced it to them”; or
that the cast of parts was left to the Chamberlain's discretion ?
Had the two absentee Ministers harboured the least doubt that
the majority of the Cabinet were with them, they would never
have dreamt of taking the Seals of the Northern Department
thus abruptly from their colleague. They felt it inight involve
a still greater loss, by the resentful withdrawal of Walpole from
the Treasury, but, even thus, they knew themselves to be on the
stronger side, and they only used perfunctorily the name of the
King
EXCHANGE OF OFFICES.
145
2
Enclosing his letter of submission to the King, Townshend
reproached Stanhope in brief but bitter terms. “My heart is so
full with the thoughts of having received this usage from you, to
whom I have always been so faithful a friend, that you will
excuse my not saying any more at this time.
I pray God to
forgive you; I do. Lord Sunderland will, I am persuaded, ex-
cuse my not answering his letter.” 1
To the King he gave in minute detail the steps he had taken
to forward the conclusion of the Treaty with France, which M.
Dubois had complained of being needlessly delayed, but which
he protested that both he and Methuen desired sincerely to
complete.
But such expostulation came too late; for sake of appearance
the French Minister still persisted, though in moderated tones,
in insinuating that the Council in England had been tardy in
forwarding the plenary powers deemed necessary for the ratifica-
tion of the Treaty.
Sunderland advised the Cabinet that the King contemplated
spending the winter abroad, but if it was necessary that Parlia-
ment should meet before Christmas, a scheme of business for the
Session might be transmitted forthwith, with details of a plan for
carrying it on. Walpole was despatched in all speed with the
answer, and on his arrival at Göhrdt 3 sought to clear his relatives
from unnecessary delay in concluding the French Treaty, taking
on himself the blame of having hesitated to sign after the as-
surances he had been instructed to give the Ministers of the
States General up to a recent date, that Great Britain would not
enter into a separate alliance. He found it more difficult to
mollify the wrath of his Majesty, the resentment of Stanhope,
and the aversion of Sunderland, who avowed their chagrin at the
refusal of the Treasury to furnish supplies requisite for the Hesse
and Coburg troops in the Elector's pay, at the frustration of an
active policy in the Baltic, and above all, at the suggestion with-
out previous consultation with them that the Prince of Wales
should open Parliament in person by a speech from the Throne.
The contrast which would thereby have been inevitably afforded
between his Royal Highness, who was now beginning to speak
1 11th Nov., 1716.--MIS.
? 111h Nov.--MS.
23rd Nov.
3
VOL. I.
L
146
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
English with tolerable fluency, and the dumb show made by his
father in the House of Lords, where he was obliged to confide to
the Chancellor the utterance of his suppositions and thoughts on
domestic and foreign affairs, was too palpable for argument.
Stanhope showed signs of relenting ; protested anxiety that
early friendships should not be broken ; and undertook to make
his personal influence conducive to the building up anew of the
conjoint power in which they had hitherto borne so prominent a
part. Horace Walpole seems to have misconstrued these con-
ciliatory promises into the rescinding of what had been done, and
he returned to England filled with that impression. A few days
later the formal despatch arrived constituting Townshend Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland, and promoting Methuen, who had been
acting as Stanhope's deputy, to be with him joint Secretary of
State.1
The offer of an exchange of offices with his rival was spurned
indignantly by Townshend, who in a fit of scornful rage wrote
that his private affairs would not permit him to remove to
Ireland, and that "common honesty would not allow him to put
the profits of that employment in his pocket without going over
to do the duties of it,” 2 as Sunderland for the two preceding
years had done. This patriotic view was probably not shared by
the person most certain to be consulted on the occasion. Lady
Townshend's influence with her husband was unbounded, and
was hardly less than that which she exercised over her brother.
She had laughed too often with Wharton at the pageantries and
orgies of Dublin Castle to wish to preside in the capacity of
Vice-Queen, but she was a woman of business, loved money like
all her family, and ridiculed the notion of anyone whose opinion
she thought worth having appreciating the refusing of so many
thousands a year on a point of mere propriety. For had not
everybody in times past made a job of what was often called
the first post in the kingdom, only differing in the degree of
latitude which each had taken? If he persisted in sulking at
Rainham, and shutting the door of the Cabinet after him, Robin
would be left there alone, which in the actual state of his finan-
cial plans already above ground was what he did not choose.
The effervescence of Townshend's wrath subsided when he was
1 24th Dec., 1716.
2 Townshend to Slingsland, ist Jan., 1717.
TOWNSHEND VICEROY.
147
told that pertinacity in refusal would be taken to imply renun-
ciation of Whig fealty, and of faith in Hanover. He remained,
therefore, in the Cabinet as Viceroy, reserving to himself the
right to stay in Norfolk as long as he thought fit, or not to go to
Ireland at all. The First Lord of the Treasury bore a very
characteristic part in the controversy. He was deeply mortified
by the supersession of his brother-in-law, and did not shrink from
upbraiding Stanhope with failure in friendship, with acting from
passion, not reason, and with imputing to Cowper, Argyll, Towns-
hend, Devonshire, and himself subversive schemes to set the
Prince in the eyes of Parliament and the nation above his absent
father ; which Stanhope protested were groundless imaginings.
He did not say what he meant himself to do, but renewed his
promise to act in concert with the Cabinet as heretofore. The
hardihood of the man is read in his attempt to turn the tables by
suggesting that in the real secret of this strange business it was
probable that Chancellor Bernsdorff and the Duchess of Munster
were better informed than he could pretend to be. The Dutch
Ministers were afraid that Walpole and others might resign, and
that the close alliance between the two countries would be
endangered ; and uneasiness prevailed amongst city men
acquainted with the projects of the Treasury for lessening
the burthen of the Debt, lest their favourite financier might
give place to someone less capable. But his brother Horace, on
relinquishing his Under-Secretaryship, was made auditor of
American revenues, a sinecure for life worth £800 a year; and
with Townshend still beside him in the Cabinet, Walpole con-
sented to remain,
L 2
148
CHAPTER IV.
STANHOPE'S FOREIGN POLICY.
1717.
Primate Wake in the Cabinet-Liberation of Jacobites—Abbé Dubois in
England-Arrest of Swedish Ambassador-Minutes of Cabinet-Dis-
missal of Townshend-Walpole resigns-Addison Secretary of State-
Newcastle in the Cabinet-Stanhope First Lord of the Treasury—Wal-
pole's Conversion Scheme-Acquittal of Oxford-Quarrel between the
Prince of Wales and Newcastle.
O
N the death of Archbishop Tenison, Wake was translated
from Lincoln to Canterbury, while Gibson was ap-
pointed his successor, and Hoadly was made a King's
Chaplain. The new Primate came of old feudal stock, some of
whom had followed the Norman Princes to the field, and others
in the earlier days of the Stuarts enjoyed the distinction of
baronetage and shrievalty. He was one of those who had been
recommended by Burnet for a mitre for his sermons at the Rolls,
and on his promotion to Lambeth he was invited to take the
place of his predecessor in the Cabinet. Nor was this regarded
by himself or others as merely an honorary distinction. His
correspondence with Archbishop King, Bishop Nicholson and
others of the Episcopate in Ireland shows how active and
thoughtful was the interest he took in the politics of the Church
as he understood them in both Kingdoms.
His voice in the Council and the Senate was often, if not con-
sistently, raised against attempts to narrow the sphere of sec-
tarian privilege. He was tardily drawn into differing with his
colleagues on the repeal of the Schism Act; and he is said to
have been persuaded by Nottingham to sanction the proposal of
PRIMATE WAKE.
149
a more rigid test of clerical subscription. But he sympathised
with Synge and Berkeley in deprecating the rigour of the Penal
Laws in Ireland, and in his later years he carried on an active
correspondence with the Abbé Curayer at Paris with the ideas
of bringing about inter-communion between the Gallican and
Anglican churches. When his friend visited England he was a.
guest at Lambeth, was presented at Court by his host, and
treated with marked attention by the Princess of Wales, who,
leaning avowedly to the views of Hoadly and Samuel Clarke,
encouraged in every direction the tendency to what she deemed
Christian fraternisation.
To propitiate Leicester House while humouring the desire of
St. James's to have the disposal of more money to meet inces-
sant and increasing demands, the clumsy device was again
resorted to of asking Parliament to vote £100,000 in addition
to the Civil List, out of which his Majesty might grant from
time to time whatever portion he thought fit for the main-
tenance and education of his grandchildren. The scheme was.
actually prepared without the knowledge of the Chancellor in
order that he might frame a message to Parliament on the
subject. The Keeper of the Great Seal set down his objections
in Latin. It would certainly give rise to unseemly discussion
of the needs and wishes of the Royal Family, alienate many
votes from Ministers, revive contentions that were going to
sleep, and practically bring about nothing but mischief at a
time when the foundations of the Throne were already shaken.
On this unexpected demurrer the scheme was laid aside ; but
the resolution to be rid of so intractable a colleague became
more settled than before, and for its execution opportunity
alone was awaited.
The Princess, who had few other opportunities of speaking
her mind to her father-in-law on public affairs, took occasion
sometimes during a dull discourse when seated beside him in
the curtained pew of the Chapel Royal, to say what she thought
might be worthily done for a neglected friend, or in a forgotten
But her irreverent suggestions were unacceptable to
his worried Majesty when he quitted the precincts of prayer.
In the minutes of Cabinet, on the 3rd of February, 1717, we find
the name of Lord Parker, which is seldom omitted in subsequent
1 Mem. endorsed in Lord Cowper's handwriting, ist January, 1717.
cause.
150
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
notes of their proceedings." In this way the Chief Justice, without
displacing anyone, became acquainted with the confidential busi-
ness of Administration, and prepared ere long for the higher
position designed for him. The Duke of Kingston was given the
Privy Seal; Townshend, after much hesitation, consented to kiss
hands as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; Stanhope took charge of
the Northern, while Methuen was appointed to the Southern
Department. With these were assembled at the Cockpit the
Chancellor, the Dukes of Bolton, Kent, and Roxburgh, the First
Lord of the Admiralty and First Commissioner of the Treasury,
while Sunderland for a time held no higher office than that of
Vice-Treasurer of Ireland; the Primate, the Lord President, and
the Captain-General were occasionally absent. The Secretaries
of State were directed promptly to interrogate for the information
of the Council, M. Maudels, the Secretary of the Swedish
Minister, and to require him to remain within the surveillance
of a messenger. A few days later another Cabinet directed
the equipment of a Squadron without delay for the Baltic ;
and an embargo was laid on the export of corn. Ministers
· abroad were directed to send with their despatches transla-
tions in French, "to be laid before the King, who did not per-
fectly understand the English tongue.'
It was the policy of the reconstituted Administration to show,
as far as prudently might be, a distinctive tone of leniency
towards the Jacobites. Lord Lansdowne was liberated from the
Tower, and Sir W. Wyndham, summoned to appear in the
King's Bench, with his bail, was discharged. Wyndham, how-
ever, lost no time in moving a resolution that Hoadly's an-
tagonist, Dr. Snape, master of Eton, should be desired to
preach before the House on the anniversary of the Restoration
Government resisted the motion, and were beaten by ten.
Dubois and Stanhope were equally impatient to have the Con-
vention between France and England completed, and Cadogan
was authorised to sign it with the Abbé at the Hague without
waiting for the formalities which the constitution of the United
Provinces made requisite to enable the Pensionary and the
Greffier to do so. Dubois was sent to England to negotiate the
» 3
1 Record Office MS.
2 Minutes of Cabinet 30th January and 3rd February, 1717.—MSS.
3 Methuen to Worsley, Envoy to Portugal, 22nd January, 1717.—MSS.
DUBOIS.
151
final terms; one of the vexed questions being in what language
the Treaty should be ratified. George I., as well as Louis XV.,
being formally designated King of France, the point was
eventually waived, the competing claimants of Sovereignty
agreeing to use the common diplomatic tongue; and the Treaty
was finally executed on the 4th of January, 1717, the provisional
Convention being then by consent destroyed to obliterate all
memories of hesitation. The Regent, on learning the extensive
preparations making by Alberoni for the invasion of England,
sent Dubois back as Envoy Extraordinary to concert measures
for its defeat. The versatile Abbé seemed fittest for the special
mission, for, as he said, he knew England already, and avowedly
corresponded with members of the Cabinet. His candour did
not betray him into adding that he was in receipt of a pension
from them ; but when undertaking the task he told his High-
ness that he hoped the Abbé would come back a recognised
Minister of France, and that he would prove able to expand
the Triple Alliance so as to embrace other States of Europe.
Nor was this an idle boast. During his three months' stay in
London Stanhope contrived to obtain the adhesion of the Courts
of Vienna and Turin, in spite of all the influence used to detach
them by Russia, Sweden, and Spain.? Stair was a favourite
guest at the Regent's revels, where Dubois was never absent, and
their intimacy became closer than before. Stair's official talk
bespoke the character of the man. The Abbé took him for an
exemplary Scotchman who could never be entrapped into saying
what he did not choose to say and never dissimulating mal à
propos; and to his tact and temper was due his facility in extri-
cating himself from embarrassments not of his weaving.
Dubois visited Stanhope in London and characteristically
recorded his residence there.
My sojourn in England was short and mysterious. I suc-
ceeded in serving my master better than I could have hoped.
King George received me favourably, and, as a plenipotentiary,
I will not put down in my journal what was said in audience
in addition to documents and letters. During this visit I
touched for the last time the pension I owed to English munifi-
I have since ceased to have any private relations with
that Government; but I own that while Louis XIV. reigned, or
cence.
Memoirs of Dubois, III.
152
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
}
.
rather Mdme. de Maintenon, I regarded this money as lawful
prize. The deuce take scruples.”
Ministers had since October been in possession of correspond-
ence between Baron Gortz and Count Gyllenbourg, and Baron
Spaar, the Swedish Ambassador at Paris, whom Alberoni had
furnished with a million livres to pay and equip the Swedish
invasion of Scotland ; but until the alliance with France was
actually signed and sealed they hesitated to provoke an open
quarrel with Charles XII.; and on his part he was equally willing
to delay throwing off the mask. While exceptional measures
therefore were prepared by the Secretary of State to be put in
peremptory execution if necessary against the perfidious Envoy
in London, nothing was actually done save by espionage until
after the new Triple Alliance had been concluded. Before the
meeting of Parliament, however, it was thought advisable by the
Cabinet to strike a blow which, though it did not prevent the
shipment of men and guns from Göttingen, might paralyse
Jacobite plottings at Westminster. On the 29th of January
Stanhope laid before the King in Council at St. James's proofs.
of Count Gyllenbourg's active complicity in treasonable designs
forming in the Highlands and elsewhere, and it was ordered that
measures should be forthwith taken to secure the person and
papers of the Ambassador; of Sir Jacob Banks, recently M.P. for
Minehead; and of Charles Cæsar, lately unseated for Hertford,
believed to be engaged in treasonable proceedings with the
Government of Sweden. Stanhope instructed General Wade to
execute the warrant for their apprehension without delay. The
same night the Embassy was surrounded by a file of Grenadiers
under Colonel Blakeney, who placed M. Gyllenbourg under arrest
and removed the whole of his papers to Whitehall.
On the event being known the Foreign Ministers then in
London demanded an audience to inquire the cause of an
infraction of diplomatic inviolability so startling; and they
were assured that nothing but clear evidence of direct breach of
international faith would have led to such a deviation from estab-
lished usage. Warrants meantime were issued for the appre-
hension of several other persons suspected of complicity in the
design; but upon examination before the Council they were
discharged, and Banks and Cæsar were admitted to bail.
1 Secretary Methuen to Dayrolle 31st January, 1717.-MS.
ARREST OF GYLLENBOURG.
153
Replies expected to Gyllenbourg's last dispatches, copies of
which were found, were deemed of such importance that
several ships of war were employed to intercept and search
any Swedish vessels that might convey them. M. Gortz, the
Swedish Premier, was on his way to England, when he learned
at Calais what had been done, and returning to Holland he
was arrested at Arnheim by the Dutch authorities, on a re-
quisition from the British Government. This was a further
stretch of the recognised comity of nations, which Charles XII.
resented by placing Mr. Jackson, the British Minister at Stock-
holm, under arrest, without assigning publicly any reason in
justification or protesting against the capture and detention of
Gyllenbourg ; but the clandestine correspondence with M. Gortz
clearly disclosed the project of invasion.1 This was printed
and circulated by Government among the diplomatic repre-
sentatives of all the States resident in England in justification
of the proceedings, which were approved by votes of both
Houses of Parliament.
The Czar contrived so to ingratiate himself with the Regent
d'Orleans during a visit to Paris that a Treaty of Alliance,
offensive and defensive, between France, Russia, and Prussia
was secretly concluded, which, though not at variance in terms
with improved relations with England, was to be kept strictly
from the knowledge of her Ministers. All its provisions were,
notwithstanding, communicated by Dubois, though the fact
was not known in St. Petersburg till 1721, whereupon the Czar
was so angry that he exclaimed that had he found any of his
Ministers were privy to the disclosure he would have brought
them to justice for the crime. George I., learning his vexation,
wrote on the margin of the dispatch conveying the infor-
mation : "he wants to impale one of his officers and seeks a
pretext."
Freed from departmental reserve, Townshend spoke plainly
of the King of Sweden : "His violent and intractable temper
had for some years obliged the British Government to deviate
from their true interest by conniving at and even contributing
to the aggrandisement of the Czar and the King of Prussia, a
remedy little better than the disease, and growing more dan-
1 Secretary Methuen to Dayrolle, then Envoy to the Swiss Republic, subsequently
transferred to the Hague. 21st February, 1717.-MS.
154
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
gerous daily in proportion as Sweden grew less so; for, not-
withstanding his losses, Charles XII. was not yet reduced to
such extremities as to give up all his Provinces in Germany.
Whatever should be undertaken against him on the side of
Finland would, by turning to the advantage of the Czar, more
effectually subvert the balance of the North and render the
navigation of the Baltic still more precarious, upon which
account every endeavour should be used to bring the King of
Sweden to reason without dispossessing him of any part of his
dominions outside the Empire." If forced to renounce his
claims in Germany, the Protestant Princes of the Empire need
not regret it or look to other Sovereigns for support. Notwith-
standing the haughty spirit of the King, Townshend thought
Sweden was brought so low by loss of trade and want of
provisions, that if proper means were taken to blockade her
ports, Charles could not hold out against the cries of his
subjects or the necessities of his army; and if he could be
persuaded that England and Holland would employ their
whole credit and power towards getting Finland, Ingria, and
Livonia restored to him, without hopes of their ever joining
with him hereafter, to preserve the balance of the North he
might begin to think with patience of parting with his German
Provinces, in order to secure those which were the immediate
magazine and granary of Sweden. If France were suspected of
feeding the ambitious dreams of Charles XII. to ensure the
Maritime Alliance with Sweden against Great Britain and the
States, all the more it behoved us to seek opportunities for
convincing her wayward ruler that his best interests lay in our
support. These were wise and practical counsels, but coming
from an alienated friend they were treated with mistrust and
ascribed, perhaps, to a desire indirectly to guide the foreign
policy he had ceased to dictate.
At a meeting of the Cabinet on the roth March, present: the
Archbishop, Chancellor, Kent, Kingston, Roxburgh, Bolton,
Sunderland, Townshend, Orford, Parker, Secretaries Methuen
and Stanhope, a resolution was passed "to burn, sink, or destroy
all ships belonging to Sweden as might come in the way.”2 In
the Privy Council on the 16th March, there being beside
1 Townshend to Slingsland, 17th March, 1717.
- Minute of Cabinet, Cockpit, roth March, 1717.-MS. Record Office.
SHIPPEN.
155
members of the Cabinet, present the Duke of Montrose, the
Earls of Derby, Westmoreland, Radnor, Berkeley, Torrington,
and the Bishop of London, Sunderland was declared Lord
President. At the next meeting of the Cabinet a respite of
six months was granted to the rebel Lords in custody.
The ferment created by the arrest of Gyllenbourg fully
answered Ministerial expectations, but internal peace in the
Cabinet did not long remain unbroken. Stanhope and Sunder-
land would seem to have too easily lent their sanction to jobs
and exactions by the German favourites that in one form or
other necessarily came before the Treasury. Walpole was not
troubled with scruples about comparatively small amounts for
comparatively small services; and, engrossed with important
fiscal schemes as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he doubtless
suffered a good many things to pass without much inquiry, and
others into which he saw at a glance that inquiry had better not
be made; but a limit was at length reached when he felt bound
to say of my Lady Duchess or Robethon that for his own
credit's sake he could no further yield to importunity. Devon-
shire and Townshend shared his disposition to resist, and the
contagion of discontent spread through their immediate friends.
Stanhope's conduct of foreign affairs had proved signally suc-
cessful, and Walpole was preparing with undoubting confidence
the Budget on which his fame in after tiines was destined con-
spicuously to rest. Not the less ungraciously he continued,
however, to resist the incessant demands of all sorts from those
who looked to Stanhope and Sunderland as the chiefs of the
party in power. Sunderland's egregious self-sacrifices were still
without compensation. He had deprived his hated rival of the
Seals by surrendering the Viceroyalty, and he had added to the
dignity and territorial influence of the Cabinet by surrendering
to the Duke of Kingston the Privy Seal. The subordinate,
though not unprofitable, office of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland
remained, but it was not to be expected that he would long
consent to occupy such a position. Meanwhile the connections
and partisans of the two Ministerial factions gradually organised
themselves in separate Parliamentary camps, and every vote in
Supply was watched narrowly, and sometimes with misgiving,
by the Treasury Bench. The First Lord spoke freely in private
1 Minute of Privy Council, St. James's, 16th March, 1717.
156
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
against the Hanoverian policy of maintaining an increased
standing army, for which there was no longer necessity or
excuse; while the Secretary of State, exultant in the triumphs
which the command of such a force could alone have enabled
him to win, listened with impatience to suggestions of economy
as unworthy and unsafe. Slumbering jealousies were unexpec-
tedly blown into flame by an injudicious message which the
King was advised to send by Stanhope on the 3rd of April to
the Lower House, asking for a Vote of Credit to equip further
armaments against Sweden, for the necessity of which no
definite grounds were assigned, and to the scope of which no
limits were annexed. Ministers, it was known, were not agreed
upon the subject, and discord among their supporters raised the
hopes of Opposition high. Shippen led the attack with the
memorable expression that it was to be regretted their new
Sovereign “was as little acquainted with the forms and usages
of Parliament as with the language of the country.” Had it not
been so, he would never have authorised such a message—so
unparliamentary, and without precedent. But perhaps it had
been conceived by some foreign Minister, and ill-translated into
English. If recent successes in diplomacy were owing to the
liberal use of English money, they might reasonably fear its
repetition; for foreigners once tasting the advantages of our
friendship would certainly not fail to come again, and their
adhesion to our interest would last only as long as we continued
to supply their needs. Both he and Hungerford dwelt on the
irregularity of asking the House for a pledge in Supply without
a previous estimate or demonstration in detail of its necessity.
Stanhope could only say that the King was too upright and
patriotic to misuse what might be granted him for the external
safety of the realm, and that none could refuse what he asked
but those who distrusted the integrity of his responsible advisers.
Lawson replied that were such notions to prevail they had better
retire to their country seats, and leave the Court and Cabinet to
take what they chose of the people's substance, and spend it as
they pleased. The debate grew warm, Grimston and other
Whigs openly dissenting from the Motion, while Walpole
observed an ominous silence. Papers were demanded which
could not well be refused, and the discussion stood over for a
week. Meanwhile it became known that many would not vote
WALPOLE RESIGNS.
157
at all, while others were undecided. The First Lord of the
Treasury supported the Vote on the second debate, but more
circumspectly and guardedly than his colleagues, Aislabie and
Craggs; while the Speaker, being out of the Chair, strongly
deprecated the departure from established usage and principle
which had been proposed. In a House of 313, the Vote was
carried by fifteen only, while on the Report the majority
dwindled to four. In the minority well-known adherents of
Townshend were found, and several others were absent. This
was taken as indicating an open breach, and Stanhope, a few
hours later, wrote to acquaint the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
that the Crown had no longer occasion for his services. Next
morning Walpole asked an audience, and delivered up the
Seals. The King handed them back to him, saying he could not
accept his resignation. A long conversation ensued, the loss of
such a Finance Minister being fervently deprecated by his
Majesty, while Walpole declared the impossibility of his con-
tinuing to endorse the demands forced upon him by the
unworthy recommendation of official rivals. Repeatedly the
King gave back the Seals, but at length Walpole laid them on
the table and withdrew, betraying by his manner as he left the
Palace his agitation during the scene. Devonshire, Orford,
Methuen, and Pulteney thereupon also resigned, and but four of
the original Cabinet of October, 1714, remained.
Stanhope was niade First Lord and Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, Sunderland and Addison Secretaries of State, and
Berkeley First Lord of the Admiralty. No exception could be
taken to these appointments as not sufficiently Whig, but not
even party prejudice could affect to treat them as equal in
weight or influence. Stanhope's integrity was not questioned,
but his discernment and discretion in financial affairs few were
hardy enough to avouch. Sunderland, after ten years, regained
the direction of Foreign Affairs, and for a time no substantial
change was observable in the policy recently pursued. The
disposal of other high offices stood clear of any suspicion of
mere desert or merit.
The young Duke of Newcastle had lately married Lady
Henrietta Godolphin, grand-daughter of Marlborough and of
the not yet forgotten friend and comrade who with him had
"sounded all the depths and shoals of honour" in the reigns of
158
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
William and Anne. A few days after room was found in the
Cabinet for his inexperienced but opulent Grace, the gold key of
Chamberlain being given him, while the Duke of Bolton became
Viceroy of Ireland. How little qualified either proved for the
duties he was set to discharge it took but brief space to disclose;
but both were owners in fee of many boroughs whose legislative
tenants-at-will it was desirable to secure. Bolton had had the
means of acquiring experience in Irish affairs, having been for a
time one of the Lords Justices, and this was probably thought
a sufficient excuse for committing the fate of that troubled land
to the head of the House of Poulett.
Various motives conduced in the mind of Sunderland to the
nomination of Addison as Secretary of State. His love of
letters and genuine enjoyment of sympathetic talk with him
about books was perhaps the least influential, and in the critical
circumstances of the hour, others were inevitably uppermost in
such a nature. He coveted the control without the possession of
the second Seal of State, and he knew only too well the inexhaus-
tible amenability of his friend; nor can it be doubted that in his
insatiable love of domination he wished to show the haughtiest
of his own order that when he chose he could do without them.
Halifax had recommended Godolphin to retain the political
services of Addison when still a very young man for the due
celebration of the victory of Blenheim, and the Treasurer was so
much pleased that he named him successor to Locke, as Com-
missioner of Appeals. From this petty place he was advanced
to that of Under Secretary of State in 1706, under Sir Charles
Hedges, and subsequently under Lord Sunderland. He went
as Chief Secretary to Ireland with Wharton. The real business
of the department was performed by Southwell, who had suc-
ceeded his father in the permanent office of Irish Secretary,
designated when first conferred by William III. as Irish Sec-
retary of State, but which gradually shed its inappropriate
plumage as it came to maturity and usefulness. Edward South-
well had recently been one of the three Commissioners to whom
the charge of the Privy Seal was left by Sunderland when he
went abroad, and from the manner in which he is named, it is
obvious that the apocryphal title of Secretary of State had
become obsolete. For a long series of years the correspondence
between Whitehall and the Castle was conducted by members
ADDISON SECRETARY OF STATE.
159
of the family, who, having landed property in Cork and Limerick,
gladly spent a portion of each year in Ireland, and during the
residue dated their letters from St. James's Street or Spring
Gardens. The emoluments of the Chief Secretaryship in
Addison's time and for some years after were not £1,000 a year,
and the office seems to have ranked among the third or fourth
classes of political appointments given to men whom it was
thought desirable to initiate into public business, and whose
'prentice blunders could not much signify. The other profits of
the office arose chiefly from fees, so small that Addison did not
think it worth while exempting personal friends from their pay-
ment; and he was glad to accept the supplementary place of
Keeper of the Records in Birmingham Tower, Dublin Castle, at
a salary of £300 a year. On the change of Administration in
1710, he resumed his pen, and besides his matchless essays, pro-
duced his well-known tragedy of Cato. He was nominated
Secretary to the Regency on the death of Queen Anne, and
Chief Secretary for Ireland a second time. Too much given at
all times to walk in the shadow of rank and state, he at length
persuaded himself that were his home for life a great historic
mansion, and were he the husband of a countess-dowager, he
might come to be reckoned at last as one of the Sanhedrim who
were henceforth to rule in Israel. That the mastership of
Holland House tended to his political advancement his literary
rivals did not doubt, but that his nuptials with the old Lady
Warwick contributed to his happiness, Lady Mary Wortley
Montague may be excused for disbelieving
For some years he had been a favoured guest at Holland
House, where he became tutor to the youthful Earl. As he ad-
vanced in political or literary fame, the lady's consciousness of
her power to fascinate or lead the fashion was thought to have
declined, but when opposing partisans vied with one another in
praise of Cato, and the anonymous Spectator was likely to
become a Right Honourable gentleman, incompatibility hitherto
insuperable seemed to fade away, and Addison's ambition be-
guiled him into imagining it would be said, perhaps even
thought, that he as well as the lady was marrying for love.
Sunderland wanted two votes in the Cabinet, and knowing the
fitness of the man for Ministerial cypherhood, he insisted on
his being Secretary of State. The Northern Department was
160
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
was
SO
assigned to him, and he took the oath of an English Privy
Councillor on the 15th of April.1
The office was ill suited to a man of his temperament in such
times-perhaps in any times. He had no argumentative readi-
ness in debate, and had so much inauvaise honte as often to
show a certain embarrassment in conversation with strangers.
Had there been any real appreciation of his specific ability and
worth he would not have been thrust into a situation so ill-
suited to him, and in which his want of success
easily turned to account as a pretended proof of deficiency in men
of his class. They might as well have offered him a cavalry com-
mand, or a Regius Professorship of Divinity, a position he was
banteringly said to have sometimes coveted. Morally and in-
tellectually, he was singularly ill-qualified for the rough work
of political warfare at a period when party spirit ran so high.
His mind was essentially judicial in its graver and playful in
its lighter moods. Even in his satire, glittering though it was
with point, the aim hardly ever seems to be directed by passion
or the wish to wound. His judgments are in general impartially
just even upon opponents, his jests at their expense seldom or
never damaging or humiliating. To take such a man for a par-
tisan chief when neither side gave quarter, and the overthrow of
a Ministry frequently implied their impeachment was only another
proof of the utter disregard of practical fitness for office that was
habitual with those in power. But Sunderland's forbearance, as
he deemed it, was spent; and he resolved to enjoy to the full the
power so long deferred. He was First Minister, and he would be
sole Secretary of State. But this was only possible by his nomi-
nating as his colleague one who would always reflect his opinions,
and do as he would have done. Among his Peers it might not
have been easy to find one equally pliant. He looked out of the
window of privilege, and his eye fell upon Addison. He had
known him before in subordinate place, and felt that his flexi-
bility in opinions and plausibility of speech fitted him above
stronger men for the post. Had he possessed the political quali-
ties without which no man ought to be made a Secretary
of State, Sunderland would never have thought of him. So
thoroughly was this understood by those who were near
enough to appreciate correctly acts and motives, that it be-
1 Minute of Council, 16th April, 1717./S.
SUNDERLAND'S MAN.
161
came usual among politicians to speak of Addison as Sunder-
land's man.
There were many public trusts of consequence which Addison
would have exemplarily filled, not a few offices that would
have been dignified by his name. But in a long life of literary
distinction none such was ever offered him. Why should it have
been? That would have been an act of mere justice, the acquit-
tance of an equitable debt from the public to one who had served it
well, the recognition in an honourable form of a national obligation.
These considerations, however, never occurred probably to the
Government of the day, or if they did they were disregarded as
fantastic and sentimental. The question was not how Addison
should be rewarded, but how he should be used. He was, there-
fore, beguiled into taking the part of domino in the State Mask,
and left to the bitterness of disappointment when the require-
ments of the scene changed.
Stanhope, unhappily for his fame and self-content, took Wal-
pole's place at the Treasury, with whose infinite details of busi-
ness he was wholly unacquainted, restoring at last to Sunderland
the portfolio he had been deprived of ten years before. On Ais-
labie, Addison and Craggs, with the aid of the Attorney-General,
Northey, devolved the business in Supply; while the new First
Lord was compelled to rely on the popularity he had already
earned as a truthful and courageous lcader of the House. Though
often swayed by impulse to outrun his deliberate meaning, and
forced by the candour and justice of his nature to retrieve an
error, he preferred to do so in phraseology rather than in senti-
ment. On taking office he was nettled by a retiring sarcasm of
his predecessor into a too effusive protestation that he meant to
make up a want of experience and versatility in business by de-
voting to the work of his department energies undivided by any
thought of serving private interests at its expense, or burthening
the already heavy-weighted resources of the country with pen-
sions or reversions. Walpole, stung by the cheer that fitted the
taunt to his notorious facility in permitting such practices, coolly
undertook to explain literally what the allusion meant.
true, he said, that he had often been asked to sanction the
transfer of valuable claims, it might be for valuable considera-
tion. Sometimes he judged the terms of transfer reasonable, and
gave them his assent, sometimes he thought them the contrary and
It was
VOL. I.
M
162
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
refused. An impertinent fellow named Robethon, who, it was well
known, hung about the Court, had lately asked his permission to
assign a pension to his son, who was still a very young man, and
without any pretensions of his own; and upon his being refused,
had the insolence to demand from the Treasury the sum of £2,500
as compensation for the loss of its sale in the market. This, said
Walpole, I thought it my duty to decline, and that I should do
better by assigning the reversion to my own son. Stanhope's
only rejoinder was characteristically weak--that he was in no
danger of being led astray, as he had neither son nor brother to
provide for.
Walpole took no common pains to show, without a faltering
or resentful word, how much the State had lost by his withdrawal.
Before quitting office he had matured measures of fiscal and finan-
cial reform not wholly without precedents, but greatly enlarged
from what had been done by Godolphin and Harley. On the
day that he resigned he took his seat as usual with other Privy
Councillors on the right hand of the Chair, and conformably with
the notice which stood in his name, he rose to expound the schemes
for the reduction of interest and the liberation of commerce from
vexatious impediments, which, in his capacity as an independent
Member of the House, he now presented to his successor, with
the hope that he might carry them to perfection.
He proposed to pawn the House Tax with the Bank of Eng-
land for the purpose of liquidating four millions and a half of
National Debt by converting the securities on which it was held
at six and seven per cent. into a charge on the Exchequer
bearing five per cent. only until it should be paid off. This
charge was given in varied forms of securities which no future
Board of Treasury might repudiate or alter without consent of
Parliament. Some of these were annuities negotiable by bearer;
and the inducement to the Bank seems to have been in some
degree the complimentary terms in which the title of the Bill and
its preamble proclaimed the measure to be one for enlarging the
capital of that great and growing establishment
Walpole, who knew its joint-stock feelings intus et in cute,
understood exactly what would stimulate its ambition, and how
far it was safe to play with it a new game of finance. To say
that it was an improvident experiment, without knowing ex-
i Chandler's Debates.
WALPOLE'S FINANCE.
163
actly the pulse of the money market at the time, would be idle ;
and to take for gospel the credulous applause with which the
project was received would be little better. The worst of it was
that it drew his unwary successors in office to imitate and
expand
the example he had set, and led them by degrees whither they
knew not. By another Act a similar transaction was authorised
with the South Sea Company, to whom as security the specific
revenues under the oth of Anne were pledged until the advance
should be redeemed. These enactments essentially differed from
that of Harley in 1711, and had vaster operations not been
undertaken by Aislabie on the pretence of adhering to that
model, the fatal consequences to all concerned might have been
for a longer space averted.
The relief offered to trade by Walpole in the remission of
duties on raw materials imported, and various vexatious imposts
in the form of customs, attracted less notice at such a time in an
assembly of lawyers, soldiers, and younger sons; but the out-
going Minister's public spirit was extolled as equalled only by his
rare perspicacity in dealing with practical affairs; and having, as
he felt, built for himself a legislative monumentare perennius, he
soon began to think that he might amuse if not avenge himself
on the colleagues he had left behind. Personally he had no
quarrel with any of them; and politically all of them were
sincerely anxious not further to estrange him. But the position
was not easy to be either maintained or explained ; and being
ambiguous, the old friends gradually widened from one another,
till they became open adversaries. Walpole was overmatched in
all that related to war and finance, not merely in accurate know-
ledge, but in readiness and vigour in debate. The bulk of the
country gentlemen, whatever their party leanings, were of opinion
no plausibilities could move, that he understood better than all of
them put together what was best to be done with the public
resources, and how to do it. On one occasion when Government
asked for a vote of £130,000 for "exceedings on the Army
Estimate" and the Jacobite Opposition proposed to cut it down
to £80,000, the strong man, with recollections of the past and
anticipations of the future, dictated a compromise at £ 99,000,
which the House meekly ratified. On another occasion, when
an Address to the Crown offered thanks for the completion of
3rd George I., chap. 9.
1
M 2
164
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the Quadruple Treaty, and other Conventions appendent there-
to, Walpole declared that having been a party to their elaboration
he had no doubt they were all for the welfare of the country;
but he could not, therefore, agree that the House, for the first
time in its history, should approve what it had not read; and he
made it, consequently, defer its thanks until it had opportunity
to judge by copies laid upon the table. He likewise challenged
brusquely the necessity of keeping up the regular forces on land
to the strength he had hitherto stoutly vindicated ; but he was
entitled to plead in justification for this change of front that the
confirmation of peace with France made all the difference in the
number of rank and file requisite for the defence of the realm,
and that the discomfiture of Gyllenbourg's intrigues rendered
apprehensions for the stability of domestic peace less believable
than when he professed officially to share them.
Stanhope became irritable, perplexed, and at last miserable,
in his false position, used as he had been to the never-failing
sympathy and support of his old friend, who now, with sardonic
look and tone, made it a point of seizing every opportunity for
teaching him how little he knew of his unaccustomed business;
and how much quicker and better it could be done another
way. In the course of July he told Sunderland he could stand
it no longer, and he was accordingly suffered to make his
escape to the Upper House, where his excellent qualities were
fully appreciated, and where, even in answering questions re-
garding foreign affairs, he was readier and infinitely more
agreeable than Sunderland. The Earl wanted to be head of
Administration and would be content with nothing less. Prime
Minister was a phrase of compliment occasionally bestowed in
conversation or private correspondence, but for which there was
no official warrant or continuing usage. There can be no doubt
that Marlborough was primus inter pares from the accession of
Queen Anne until the dismissal of Godolphin ; but the fame,
power, and fortune of his Captain-Generalship caused every
civil epithet to pale in its exceeding light; while the Gazette
and Almanack seemed rather to believe in the Lord-Treasurer's
þeing First Minister of the day. When a century had passed
and prejudices had withered away, the man who alone history
thinks worthy of compare with Marlborough pronounced, in
1 Chandler's Debates.
NO PRIME MINISTER.
165
terms that ought not to be forgotten, the difference between
the position of a British General serving abroad under the
control of Ministers at home and dependent from day to day
on their discretion, and that of one who was practically his
own master, whose decisions were never questioned, and whose
requisitions were never withheld.
Asked in confidence to compare candidly Churchill's military
career with his own, Wellington paid a noble tribute to the
genius, patience, and generalship of his illustrious prototype;
and uttered not a hint of preference for him who had fought
his way from Torres Vedras to Waterloo. He was justified
in adding, on his own behalf, that the difficulties he had to
contend with throughout, from frequent lack of prompt and
adequate support from home, were practically unknown to
Marlborough—"for he was himself the Government.” 1
The Commission of Treasury consisted of Stanhope, created
a Viscount, Aislabie Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Tor-
rington, John Wallop, George Baillie, and Thomas Mickle-
thwayte, Junior Lords; but there was not among them a hand
firm enough to defeat the jobs of friends, or the importunities
of speculators.
To the surprise and chagrin of many who were called his
betters, the younger Craggs was made Secretary-at-War. The
older Craggs remained Postmaster-General, and thus it was
plain that Sunderland, in the pride of exaltation, did not deign
to disguise his resolution to grasp predominant power. With
Marlborough's growing infirmity of memory and decision, it
was of no little consequence to have in the War Department
one who was equally trusted by him, and by his ambitious
son-in-law. The archives are full of proofs how punctually and
perfunctorily Craggs filled his office; and how dutifully he
acquainted the future master of his fortunes with what was
doing. Steele and Tickle looked to their old friend in advance-
ment, and the former was jealous of the latter being given an
Under-Secretaryship, for which, indeed, he was the better quali-
fied of the two. He was subsequently made Secretary to the
Lords Justices in Ireland, a place which he retained till his
death.
! Conversations with the Duke of Wellington and Lord Mahon.
2 State Papers, 1718.--MS. Record Office.
166
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Aislabie, left too much to himself at the Exchequer, proposed
an improvident bargain with the South Sea Company, having
about it the look of a copy from the precedent left behind by
Walpole. But the consummate artist is never taken in by a
showy imitation of his work. The ex-First Lord pounced upon
the unhappy imposture. High words ensued ; hands were laid
on scabbards, and the Speaker bound the belligerents over to
keep the peace.
The victor of Blenheim had gradually ceased to be an object
of personal jealousy or of party.suspicion. The chill of old
age crept over him. In all duties of his office still unremitting,
he showed in private life symptoms of decay, even in the equa-
nimity that had been one of his most marked characteristics.
Phlegm, like frost, gives soonest in the genial air; and the
great soldier, whose countenance and temper were unruffled in
the shock of battle and amid the gusts of popular ingratitude,
betrayed now and then signs of disobedience to the mastery
of will that so long had made men marvel. To strangers he
was still urbanity and courtesy personified ; to the woman he
worshipped he was still yielding and tender ; but, like the strong
man of old-
“He found his general spirits droop,
His hopes all fiat,
Nature within him weary of herself :
His race of glory run.”
He seemed unable to contain a fretfulness in trifles and capri-
cious prejudice with respect to his surroundings. "He was tired
of St. Albans in one day, and fancied he would be better at
Windsor Lodge, but found it impossible to get out, the weather
was so bad," and Sarah adds in writing to a friend she
wished to visit them, “he would be much the better for company
sometimes.” 1 As yet no indication of official incapacity was
noticeable. He was methodical and punctual in discharge of all his
regular duties, and he attended the Court, the Cabinet, and the
House of Lords. But in the changes and cabals of the new reign his
name occurs less and less frequently, and by degrees at length it
drops out altogether. Both his sons-in-law, both his grandsons
by marriage, and his favourite chief of the staff were in promi-
nent places; the house in Pall Mall was worthier the name of
1 To Mr. Jennings, 17th May, 1717.
OXFORD RELEASED.
167
palace than the old brick hospital of St. Jacques next door. In
fact, he had offered the King the use of it till St. James's
could be made fitter for a Royal habitation. Blenheim with its
galleries and gardens, unequalled in their time, approached com-
pletion. But the light of triumph in the veteran's eye grew
dim. There was no more to feign or fight for. He loved his
daughters more than their mother loved them. He knew that
his honours and possessions would pass in reversion to their
children, but the hope of his noon-tide had perished in the grave
of his only son. Still, he clung to life till life at last began to
fail in him. There was no sign of faintness in the partner of his
signal fortune. Sarah treated his recognition as indispensable
on the death of Anne, as mere retribution inade by national jus-
tice which implied no special obligation of gratitude or good
humour. George I. tried to be gracious to the Duke, but for his
imperious and cynical wife he could not conceal his dislike, and
she was not one to hide her spite under a bushel. Keeping up
to the world a fair show of decorum, she made no secret with her
intimates of what she thought of Mesdames Schuylenberg and
de Platen. Addison notes in his minute of the Cabinet on the
31st May the presence of the Archbishop, the Dukes of Kent,
Roxburgh, Newcastle, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Lord Sunderland, and himself. Marlborough,
Parker, Devonshire, Bolton, Stanhope, and Berkeley seem to have
been absent. A few days after Sunderland called another meet-
ing at the Cockpit, when Marlborough and Bolton were present.
A grave question, held unrighteously in suspense too long,
pressed for decision.
Oxford lingered in the Tower, but the Attorney-General had
failed to discover any proof against him of high treason, and the
Cabinet tardily came to the conclusion that "the charge should
be dropped, there was not sufficient evidence to convict him of
that crime, but that he should be pushed with all possible vigour
on the point of misdemeanour."2 On this confession of expedi-
ency rather than of lenity, attempts have been made to exon-
erate Walpole from the authorship of the capital charge as origi-
nally framed. But the violence of his language in the Report
1 MS. Record Office.
2 Townshend to Stanhope, at Göhrdt, 2nd Nov., 1716.
3 Coxe and Stanhope.
168
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
of the Secret Committee, his reckless use of uncorroborated
assertions, and his advice that general presumption should be
substituted for specific proof, confute the notion of his having
yielded to the impulses of magnanimity or mercy. The Earl
was at length brought to trial by his peers. After two years of
plots discovered, revolts suppressed, correspondence ransacked,
and confessions made to escape the gallows, Ministers had ob-
tained no evidence to convict their fallen rival. All they could
hope for was to obtain judgment against him on the minor
articles of misdemeanour, and with these they proposed to pro-
ceed. Coningsby was eager and unabashed, as when in the
Commons he sought to avenge his losses under the Resumption
Act carried by Harley. Room was seldom found for men of his
sort in the Cabinet, and his reward was a coronet with the un-
usual remainder to a favourite daughter by a second wife,
though sons by a former marriage, and grandsons were living.
Ex-Chancellor Harcourt interposed on behalf of his former col-
league with the objection that it was unfair to the accused to hold a
capital accusation over his head if it were not meant to press it,
and that in that case he had a right to claim readmission within
the bar as a peer, instead of being arraigned as a felon. On the
other hand, if a capital charge should be made good, it would
involve the loss of estate and life, and, therefore, to proceed for
the penalties of misdemeanour would be a cruel mockery
and waste of time. The Peers withdrew to deliberate, and
there arose in chamber a long and warm debate, ending in
the admission of the accused. Oxford defended himself with
dignity and courage; there were many differences irrespective
of party among his judges, and the whole proceeding eventually
broke down on certain points of privilege between the two
Houses,
Ministers wished to bring to an end the criminal proceedings
which continued to overcrowd many of the gaols with obscure
participators in impulsive or implied sedition. Sunderland, once
so inexorable in political severity, had learned the prudence,
if not the humanity, of milder means of rule. The public tem-
per had relented with the assurance of peace, and, except in
cases of theological acrimony, juries were found less willing than
formerly to find verdicts that might entail crushing penalties.
Lords' Journals, June, 1717.
1
MINUTES OF CABINET.
169
Even writers on the side of the Government instinctively pleaded
in favour of leniency, and journals formerly blamed as wanting
in loyalty did not scruple to remonstrate against aimless rigour.
Nevertheless, at a meeting of Council, the Primate, Lord Chan-
cellor, Roxburgh, Kent, Newcastle, Kingston, Berkeley, Sun-
derland, Stanhope, and Parker being present, seven persons
capitally condemned prayed for reprieve, of whom one was
transported for life and the others left for execution. There
remained in the Fleet above sixty prisoners for treason awaiting
trial, who, having been arrested under warrant of the Secretary
of State, might now be discharged. In Chester Castle there
lingered 194 sufferers for the late rebellion, who it was thought
might safely be set free.2 Matthew Prior was detained long in
custody without being brought to trial, and he was at length
liberated without being subjected to any definite charge. Oxford
gave him Down Hall, a pleasant residence in Essex, where he
spent the rest of his days.
The last act of the Session of 1717 was that of free pardon to
the partisans of the Pretender, in the grace of which the Earl of
Carnwarth, the Lords Widdrington, Nairn, and seventeen other
gentlemen shared. In the list were found the names of Oxford,
Harcourt, Prior, and Thomas Harley, besides every person of
the name and clan of Macgregor. Yet no past attainder was
reversed, nor any forfeited estate restored. These produced a
yearly income in Scotland of about £30,000 and in England of
£48,000.
The temper of the new system of rule is indicated by the fre-
quent exercise of criminal appeal to the Cabinet superseding the
old practice of the Crown being advised by a single Minister.
Sunderland, not choosing to affront the self-importance of his
colleagues, possibly not caring to load his name with the reproach
of rigour, summoned the heads of department within reach,
to consider what should be done with the prisoners awaiting
their fate for ordinary crimes. Of fifteen, six were ordered to be
transported, a respite was granted to one, and eight were left for
execution. The Lord President was Minister in attendance on
his Majesty to Cambridge and Newmarket, whence orders were
2
? Minute of Council, 19th June, 1717.-AIS. Record Office.
July, 1717.-MS. Record Office.
3 Minute of Cabinet at lIampton Court, 26th September, 1717.-MS.
170
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
When you
» 2
ject."
sent for an important meeting of the Privy Council at Hampton
Court, to which care should be taken that the Primate, Chan-
cellor, and other Members should be summoned, and the Law
Officers directed to attend.
Sunderland, writing to the Duke of Grafton, informed him
that, the King having reason to dispose of his employment as
Gentleman of the Bedchamber, his Majesty had no longer any
occasion for his services. "I am exceedingly concerned to be
obliged to write to you upon such an occasion, having always
been very much your servant, and having had opportunities of
showing it which were not in any other body's way.
return to town I shall wait upon you to talk more upon this sub-
Nor were these empty professions, as events in due time
proved.
Much of the correspondence of the department continued to
devolve on Under-Secretary Tilson, by whose intelligence and
assiduity it was well served. He had been trained to adminis-
trative work in William's reign and to official adaptability in that
of the Queen. He had learned how to live easily, and to serve effi-
ciently with whatever party chief happened to occupy the principal
arm-chair, and how to keep well personally with the knowing
and reliable men in other departments who exercised functions
like his own, one of the most valuable of which consisted in not
letting a careless or idle chief omit to answer prudently dis-
agreeable letters. The Executive knack of judiciously saying
nothing at considerable length, with a certain air of good-nature
and sympathy, was then, as now, regarded as a gift of governing
genius whereby men of his kind were born to make their way.
By degrees there arose under the system of government by
Cabinet the practice of circulating confidential papers; the shap-
ing of which as Returns, Instructions, or Correspondence, was
the business of Under-Secretaries. Tilson writes from Hampton
Court, sending back the last papers and documents Delafaye
had sent him, and the letters and instructions that had been
signed. A letter to the High Sheriff of Essex was sent by a man
on horse-back, booted and spurred, to save a man's life, who
would otherwise have been hanged next day. “ This was an act
| Tilson to Delafaye, 5th October, 1717.—MTS.
2 18th July, 1717.—MS. Record Office.
DELAFAYE AND TILSON.
171
of mercy, but if the pardon came in time the man promised the
fees should be paid." 1
Delafaye suggested what papers might be sent, directed gener-
ally to the clerks of the office, and others to him personally, to
be opened by his deputy, Mr. Wace, "for he did not think it
decent that any clerk but he should open letters" relating to the
Archbishop or the King of Poland.2
Sometimes when Sunderland wanted to have a Cabinet at
Hampton Court the only Members in town were Cowper, Kent,
Stanhope, and Newcastle. The younger Craggs, who affected
airs of familiarity with his high-born acquaintances, told his
brand-new Grace that he was sadly wanted in town, but that he
believed “the only way to bring him there was to let him remain
ignorant of all occurrences. Therefore he would not tell him
some very curious ones, but, being good-natured, he could not
help sending him an account of some he did not deserve.”3 Sun-
derland, however, would have his own way, and his colleagues
did not choose to thwart him. Delafaye thought the Chancellor
“ did not like these evening Cabinets because he had no place to
lie at, his lodgings at the Palace not yet being fitted up, but he
would not omit to attend.” 4
The members of the Cabinet in or near town met occasionally.
On the 4th September there were present : Archbishop Wake,
the Lord President, the Chancellor, Kent, Roxburgh, Berkeley,
Stanhope, and Addison. It would appear from the correspon-
dence that Sunderland lived much at Hampton Court, where
he probably preferred the duty of attendance on his Majesty to
suffering any of his colleagues to monopolise that means of in-
fluence. Was th
Was the aid of Carteret made available by him in
gaining and keeping, from day to day, the Royal attention? It
is only certain that the youthful politician rapidly became a
favourite, not only by his colloquial facility in his Majesty's
native tongue, but by the diligence with which he secured the
sort of information regarding foreign Courts which, except Stan-
hope and Cadogan, there was nobody just then able to supply.
George I. loved chaff, broad jest, ludicrous recitals, and scandal.
1 To Delafaye, Sth August, 1717.—MS.
? To Tilson, Sth August, 1717.—MS.
Ist September, 1717.--MIS.
To Tilson, 9th August, 1717.-- /S.
3
.
172
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Statesmanship, clothed with a little brief authority (or with a
little too much, as his Majesty sometimes thought), could not
unbend to these longings, and if it would, did not know how. It
was delightful, therefore, to have a Lord-in-Waiting who, with-
out preface or pretension, apology or blush, could, for the mo-
ment, make the expatriated Elector forget that he was not at
home. This, in German, came easy to Carteret; and so long as
he was content, under his sagacious mother's advice, to be useful
and available officieusement his jealous chief observed with satis-
faction the play of his versatile faculties thus subordinately
exercised.
Stanhope was for some time too unwell to attend to business,
and his official correspondence devolved upon his colleague for
the Northern Department. Important instructions (not, we may
be sure, without full consultation with Sunderland) were for-
warded by Craggs to Cadogan when acting as plenipotentiary at
Vienna, where he appears to have effectively presented the views
of his Government.1
The sadness of the Duchess at the visibly declining health of
Marlborough was in no small degree assuaged by the triumph of
her ambitious son-in-law. Though more than ever difficult to con-
sult with confidentially on questions involving personal prejudice
or predilection, Sarah was too thoroughly imbued with the policy
and expediency of statesmanship to insist on non-essential dif-
ferences of opinion. But as time went on and the inebriation
of success became complete it was not perhaps in human nature
that Sunderland should not betray a sense of independence of
advice. Even in his frequent visits to Holywell he carefully
forgot to speak of subjects that he instinctively feared might
lead to disagreement; but at.last he was forced to make a com-
munication which he foresaw was not likely to be welcome, and
from which the first beginning of alienation arose.
For some-
time a widower, he had offered his hand to the young and
beautiful Judith Tichborne, a niece of Lord Ferrard, and
daughter of a Wiltshire squire of old family, but moderate
estate, and they were married before the close of the year. His
ancestral property being settled on his children by Lady Anne
Churchill, he was left without means of providing for any future
issue. His house in Piccadilly, opposite St. James's Church, not
1 Craggs to Delafaye, 24th Oct., 1717.-NIS.
SUNDERLAND'S LIBRARY,
173
being large enough for his increasing collection of rare books, he
bought the adjoining mansions of Sir John Clarges and Lady
Denbigh, which overlooked Burlington Gardens, and of the three
formed the stately residence of which the glory was the library,
said to have been, Harley's excepted, the noblest in the capital.
Who shall tell how many tranquil and happy hours were spent
with Addison there? For years he had been engaged in the
multiplication of classical and mediæval treasures. Harley and
he had been throughout rival bidders for their possession, and
more than once his balance at his banker's had been low in
consequence.
On one occasion, when purchases by his agents
abroad, and losses at deep play at White's, had made him feel
the pinch of actual necessity, he is said to have offered as security
for ten thousand pounds to his business-like mother-in-law, a
certain portion of his literary possessions, and the transaction has
been mistaken for the sale and transfer of his vast collection to
the Lady of Blenheim. It is clear from Strype's 1 edition of
Stow's "Survey of London," that the undepleted jewel-house of
antique MSS., illustrated chronicles, and primitive printing was
still in his day almost unique for spaciousness and diversity of
contents, valued as he said at thirty thousand pounds. When in
the fulness of time his descendants inherited Marlborough House,
and no longer needed the grey and stately mansion within high
gates in Piccadilly, it was sold to Henry Fox, and re-built for
him by Sir W. Chambers, while its most valuable contents were
transferred to Blenheim.
Chief Justice King did not cease to be in private a party man
when he put on the ermine. Beeralston, with permission of the
Drakes, was given to old Horace Walpole ; and when in 1717 an
office of which he had the reversion fell in, vacating thereby his
seat, Sir Robert wrote to Sir Peter pressing urgently for his
brother's re-nomination. It was in the midst of the struggle for
ascendancy for power between him and Sunderland ; votes in the
Lower House were of consequence, and some delay in answering
his letter caused him to fear that the Chief Justice was ready to
play into the hands of his competitor. What made the matter
more serious was, that several other western boroughs were be-
lieved to be at Sir Peter's disposal ; and though he did not hold
any of them as his property, he was allowed to dispose of them
1 Published 1734.
174
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
pretty much as he listed. Walpole grew anxious, and indited
another epistle admitting the critical position of Ministerial
affairs, and the chagrin his brother's exclusion would cause
him. “ After I have expressed myself thus plainly and ear-
nestly to you, I can add nothing but to tell you that as I am
sure this depends upon you alone, to you alone I will ever own
the obligation, which you may plainly see I do really think as
great as you can possibly confer upon me; and if, after this, I
should ever be wanting to show you a just sense of it, I should
be worthy of the last reproach."1 But King decided to return
Edward Carteret, the friend of Sunderland. Horace Walpole was
obliged to wait for a seat until twelve months later, when the
death of Sir James Bateman caused a vacancy at East Looe.
When Parliament reassembled, Opposition commented harshly
on the terms of the Speech from the Throne regarding German
affairs; and no formal notice having been taken of Shippen's
language in a previous debate reflecting on the unacquaintance
of the King with Parliamentary usage and language, he in-
dulged in renewed sarcasm, denoting that the Speech framed
for him by his Ministers was more suitable for the meridian
of Germany than for that of England, and that its tenour was
highly unconstitutional. For these and similar expressions he
was sent to the Tower, where he remained without being
brought to trial or asking to be heard at the Bar, until the close
of the Session. Walpole would have given him an opportunity
of qualifying or retracting what he said, but the unbending
Jacobite disdained to make any amends, and preferred being
known in the character of a martyr.
If his Majesty wanted pecuniary favours for his German
adherents, why should not his Majesty's masters provide for
theirs at the public expense as well—or ill? His signature to
the patent in each case could not well be refused when their
support was as necessary in turn. Chief Justice Parker had a
paternal wish to provide for his son in a substantial and per-
manent way, and he saw nothing better than a reversion of the
Clerkship of the Pells, lately conferred on the Duke of New-
castle's brother, a young officer on half-pay. Lord Parker
wrote, asking Mr. Pelham (whom he doubtless foresaw was
meant for greater things) “If he would be pleased to let Mr.
1 Lord Campbell's “Life of King."
PRINCE AND CHAMBERLAIN.
175
Parker be joined with him in the office now, but so as he should
have all the profits during his life. He believed both these
points would be secured, so that he would receive no loss, and
that his son would have an advantage greater indeed, if he
lived long enough to survive Captain Pelham; but though he
should not (and, indeed, he was not of a strong constitution),
yet still there would be some benefit even from the bare ex-
pectation of survivorship. He was the more persuaded that
he should prevail in this request when he reflected that his
Grace the Lord Chamberlain had done him the honour to join
it in favour of one who had zealously, and not altogether
unsuccessfully, served his Majesty's Protestant succession.” 1
The burthen of Issachar was light compared to that which
Protestantism had to bear in these days from its hard
drivers.
The King's distrust of his eldest son had not abated with
the termination of the Regency; and there were not a few on
either side who lent their aid to fan the family feud. No
rupture took place, indeed, until on the request of his Royal
Highness that his uncle, the Duke of York, should be named
as godfather to his youngest son, the King, in a fit of unac-
countable caprice, declared that the Lord Chamberlain should
stand sponsor.
When the ceremony was over, the Prince,
addressing Newcastle, exclaimed: "You rascal, I'll fight you,"
of which his Grace complained to the King: 2 Sunderland
refused to take passively the affront put upon his pretentious
relative, who, left to himself, would probably not have had the
spirit to resign the White Staff; but, although no meeting of
the Cabinet was called on the occasion, the Dukes of Rox-
burgh, Kingston, and Kent were sent for an explanation of
the Prince's language, and to obtain something in the shape
of an apology. His Royal Highness peremptorily refused, and
rather exacerbated the injury by declaring that he had not
threatened to fight his Grace, but that he had told him he
would “find him in time, for having had the presumption to
stand godfather to his son against his inclination." Roxburgh
1 Chief Justice Parker to Mr. Pelham, 22nd October, 1717.-Macclesfield Papers,
MS. in British Museum.
2 Memorandum in Dela'aye's handwriting, 29th November, 1717.-NIS. Record
Office.
176
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
assured him that the Lord Chamberlain had asked to be ex-
cused from standing sponsor, but had been commanded by
the King. The Prince rejoined that he would not take his
word for it, whereupon the Secretary for Scotland asked to
be relieved from being the bearer of any further communi-
cations, and the Chancellor was sent in his stead with their
Graces of Kent and Kingston as bearers of the Royal mandate
confining his Royal Highness to his apartments, 1 George I.
being determined, he said, to show that he was master in his
own family. His Majesty was thus in the singular position
of having both his wife and his eldest son in his custody. In
the course of the following week the Prince and his family were
directed to quit St. James's, and the wrath of the King over-
flowed on all members of the young Court, none of whom
could be suffered to remain in the Royal household. Sunder-
land was directed to acquaint the Dukes of St. Albans, Mon-
tagu, and Bolton, the Chancellor, and others that their ladies
were expected to resign incompatible positions ; and the
Captain-General was requested to withhold any guard of
honour from the Prince or Princess of Wales. The quarrel
ran so high that the Lord-in-Waiting was desired not to ask
Townshend or Walpole to dinner at Newmarket; and a formal
notice in the Gazette forbade the Court to all who visited the
contumacious heir to the Crown. Even the Archbishop was
refused exemption from the interdict against any person being
admitted to the Royal presence who should visit the Princess
of Wales.5
3
| Memorandum of Delafaye's, 29th November, 1717.-NIS.
2 Tilson to Whitworth at the Hague, 29th November, 1717.—MS.
3 To each of the above, 2nd December, 1717.---NIS.
Sunderland to Marlborough, 2nd December, 1717.-MS.
5 H. Pelham to G. Berkeley, 29th December, 1717.--MIS.
177
CHAPTER V.
ASCENDANCY OF SUNDERLAND.
1718.
Necessity of a Plot"--Scheme to Disinherit the Prince-Cowper's Inde-
pendence-Retirement of Cowper-Craggs to succeed Addison-
Defoe in Government Pay – Foreign Policy--Offer to give up Gib-
raltar-War with Spain-Mutiny Act-Walpole's Change of Front-
Affirmation Bill-Repeal of the Schism Act.
THE
HE alarm caused by the arrest of Gyllenbourg served a certain
purpose, but as no proofs of his treachery were ever pub-
lished the recollection gradually passed away. To justify
the measures contemplated by Ministers for augmenting the stand-
ing force in and around the Capital there was need of fresh rea-
sons, not always casy to find. A clever pamphlet, in grave irony,
appeared without publisher's or printer's name, entitled “The Ne-
cessity of a Plot, or Reasons for a Standing Army," by a Friend
to K. G., which tried the temper of the Secretary of State, and
moved the Attorney-General to wrath. Could the wicked author
only be discovered! The passages he marked for special indict-
ment are not bad specimens of the style of party polemic created
by Swift's inimitable power of audacious banter. “In a pro-
found tranquillity, while a great and wise Prince adorns the
Throne, it may seem an error in politics for the Government to
alarm the minds of men with the apprehension of a plot or the
necessity of a standing army. But in all ages plots have been in
repute with wise men; and as to the effect, it is of no sort of con-
sequence whether they be well or ill-grounded; for the pretended
plot will always serve the present turn, as well as the real one.
Did not the Swedish plot last spring conduct the designs of
the Court smoothly through both Houses, and may not some-
thing of the same nature have the same effect this year? I hope
VOL. I.
N
178
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
it cannot be imagined that I would hereby insinuate that the
Ministry have the least design of pushing any plot upon the
world. Although, if I were to speak my mind, I wish we were
to have a plot of some kind or other; and if reasons of State did
so require it I cannot see why the Ministry should hesitate
upon it through tenderness of conscience or passion for truth.
If the exigencies of the Government did need a plot, it is just in
itself and laudable in the eye of the world to find one out one
way or other, although, perhaps, proofs there might be none; and
I should look upon it as a general calamity if any person con-
cerned should defeat the good ends proposed hereby out of
scruples of conscience."] Atterbury was suspected of being the
author, but no attempt was made to make him responsible.
Sunderland allowed the King to hug his paternal grudge, and
to listen to the mischievous whisperings of those about him in
daily depreciation of him whom he had never forgiven for his
mother's sin and for his youthful entreaty to visit her in cap-
tivity. Enraged at finding no symptoms of submission to his
despotic will, he actually ruminated a plan for the partial disin-
heritance of the Prince. If he must be King, he need not be
suffered to be Elector. Cowper lent no encouragement to such
a scheme, and it would seem to have lain over while he retained
the Great Seal. With a new Chancellor there might be better
hopes of success, and we know that his Majesty actually sounded
Parker somewhat later as to the feasibility of the project. The
Cabinet, if not formally consulted, affected to deliberate, but
eventually authorised Parker to inform their wrong-headed
Sovereign that the design was impracticable. His Lordship held
that, as a matter of dynastic law, a renunciation of the rights
of the Princess Sophia might afford room for serious ques-
tions touching the succession to the Crown, for it was only
on the Elector of Hanover and his heirs that the Crown of
Great Britain and Ireland had been settled by Act of Parliament
If he or they were to renounce that title the Throne might be held
to have become once more vacant; and meanwhile it was not
clear by what feudal or other privilege such a renunciation
could be rendered valid without a decree of the Empire. A
Jacobite Parliament might, of course, alter this condition of
the Act of Succession, as a Whig Parliament had recently
1 Enclosed in opinion of Sir E. Northey, M.P., to the Chancellor, 1717.-N7S.
PARKER CHANCELLOR.
179
repealed the section requiring his Majesty to ask permission to
go abroad. But the existing Parliament would certainly refuse,
and the request would be hailed by half the nation as equivalent
to lifting anchors and putting to sea again.
The last of the Stuarts was still living openly at Rome under
the style and title of James III., and it would, therefore, be an act
of unfathomable folly to do aught that would unsettle men's
minds again on the vexed question of his legitimacy. George I.
moodily submitted, as he had done so often before, and was to do
again ; but is it certain that another proposal for getting rid of
the Royal difficulty, of which nothing was known till some years
later, had not its origin in the abortive consultations that took
place at this time?
A recast of administrative parts followed the close of the Ses-
sion. Of the first Cabinet of the reign few remained. None but
Cowper had strength enough to dispute the ascendancy which
Sunderland and Stanhope had completely gained, and his posi-
tion had become so uneasy that, with declining health, he was more
than willing to retire. Hints had been dropped of further con-
stitutional changes repugnant to his settled notions of policy and
of right; but until they were actually brought before the Cabinet
in definite form he hesitated to press his resignation, already often
deprecated. It seems to have been understood, however, that it
was only deferred, and time was thereby given for the comple-
tion of other arrangements with which it would fitly comport.
Cowper was blamed for one great fault, that he kept a separate
conscience. In spite of expostulation and reproach, he protested
against certain proceedings of the Cabinet, and with still more
provoking contumacy he spoke and voted against Walpole's
scheme for imposing a tax on Roman Catholics. These were
acts of infidelity to party not to be forgiven, and they never
were.
Before his accession to the Throne the Elector had quarrelled
with his son, whom he compelled to accompany him to England,
while his grandchildren were to remain in Hanover and abide
his orders absolutely. The Chancellor was consulted as to
whether by the laws of England his Majesty was not their solo
guardian, and had not, without their consent or that of their
father, the disposal of each of them in marriage. Cowper
truly replied that statute law recognising such a power there was
N 2
i so
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
none, and that its exercise under the common law had been so
long in abeyance, he must respectfully decline to pronounce an
opinion. He proposed instead to call on the Chief Justice to
summon the Judges, and advised his Majesty to follow their
opinion. Parker clutched at the unlooked-for opportunity for
ingratiating himself, called his eleven colleagues together at his
chambers in Serjeants' Inn, declared his own judgment to be in
favour of the claims of the Crown, and desired their opinions
seriatim. Baron Eyre, who was Chancellor to the Prince,
pleaded that he had done nothing to forfeit the custody and
direction of his children possessed by every father in England
time out of mind, and Baron Price concurred. The other nine
succumbed at the bidding of Lord Parker to the demand of the
Court. The judicial majority of ten to two in his favour was
naturally ascribed by the Monarch to the influence of his devoted
Chief Justice, whom he wished to see promoted to the Woolsack.
The Master of the Rolls was universally regarded as pre-emi-
nently entitled. Jekyll had acquired a high reputation as an
cquity judge, and though advanced in years his faculties were
unimpaired, and his politics were those of the Administration.
But he was not a courtier or a peer. The Chief Justice was
both, and on the 12th of May he received the Great Seal at
Kensington. Beside the customary allowances and perquisites
he had a gratuity of £12,000, and a tellership of the Exchequer
in reversion for his son.
On the day of his retirement Cowper wrote: "I have just put
in execution, by surrendering the Great Seal into his Majesty's
hand, a resolution I had taken a good while since, not to enter
on the service of the next term, principally in regard to iny:
health. There could be no occasion so fit as that I have chosen,
neither session of Parliament or judicial business now depending.
The Ministry were never in a more prosperous position, so that
I cannot be said to withdraw either from danger or difficulty.
The changes in this great office have always been made, as much
as possible, on a sudden, the foresight of them being liable to
many inconveniences, which, together with my thinking
it my duty not to mention it to any before I did it to
his Majesty, I hope you'll allow as a good apology for my not
giving your lordship and the rest of the Ministry any notice of
it. The party appointed by your lordship for to-morrow being
SUNDERLAND FIRST LORD.
181
» 1
of the Ministry, 'twould be presumptuous in me not to think it
determined as to my being of it, now I am no more of that
number; and, indeed, it will be necessary for me to avoid, by
being out of town, the uneasy questions and complaints of the
many who will be losers by what I have done. But I wish
we may continue to act together with zeal and fidelity for his
Majesty and the common good.
Stanhope acknowledged the letter in a tone of affected sur-
prise and high-flown compliment. Had he dreamed that the
weight of the Great Seal was become too much for Cowper to
bear, he would easily have managed to exchange it for some
lighter load, so that Government should not lose the inesti-
mable benefit of his lordship's services. But he carefully omitted
to make any suggestion that might have had the effect of detain-
ing the ex-Chancellor on his way down stairs. The patriotism of
the First Lord must, however, forbid him "to despair of seeing
Lord Cowper again in the King's service."? Cowper could not
misread the hollowness of such expressions. He retired to Cole-
green, where he set about trying to cheat himself into believing
that he enjoyed the planting of young trees and the pruning of
old ones more than the weighing of political interests, and the
worry and fuss of high office. The illusion speedily passed
away. Used to the exquisite tantalisation of hourly toying with
power and the occasional dream that he really possessed it, be-
cause he was constantly a witness of its exercise, and suffered to
overhear and even to interjaculate his own earnest thoughts amid
Cabinet consultations, he could not easily reconcile himself to a
solitary stroll on his own gravel walks, or be contented with the
mute reverence with which his Hertfordshire labourers received
his judgment on the fate of a mulberry tree. The philosophy
of retiring was a fine thing to read about, and to write about ;
and, when his enemies were by, to talk of with measured voice
and placid brow. But it could not fill the void within one who
had spent his life in climbing, and who, when that was done, had
nothing else to do. Who cared ? His wife and Princess Caro-
line; the one because her pride and love were bound up in the
man, and the other because she knew the value of him in guid-
ing her wilful and unwise husband, and because she knew not
1 To Stanhope, April, 1718.—MS.
2 To Cowper, 15th April, 1718.
182
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
where to find as untiring and sagacious a political engineer to
direct the defences of Leicester House against its real or sup-
posed enemies. Stanhope was not happy in his position as First
Lord of the Treasury. His acquaintance with foreign affairs
fitted him better for his old department, and an exchange was
effected with Lord Sunderland, Stanhope receiving at the same
time an earldom. The purport of the changes was not clear
to the naked eye at a distance. Speaker Conolly owned
it was past his understanding why Lord Sunderland had
changed to be First Lord of the Treasury, unless it followed, as
he hoped it would, that he would be soon Lord Treasurer.1
That was not, however, his ambition. He told George I. that
to give strength to administration it was essential that someone
should occupy the pre-eminent position, equal at least, if not
superior, to that which he himself had held when Viceroy and
Privy Seal.
He could not undertake the, to him, novel and
onerous responsibility of First Commissioner of the Treasury
without being President of the Council. The Earl of Dorset,
whom everybody loved and no one would offend, had filled that
station since the retirement of Devonshire in April, 1917; but
there was reason to believe that, from public considerations, he
would not hesitate to give way, and Sunderland was accordingly
gazetted Lord President of the Council on the 16th, and First
Lord of the Treasury on the 20th of March,
While Stanhope presided at the Board of Treasury not a few
foreign Princes and Ministers continued to correspond with
him, as they had been used to do, confidentially; and the
King's habit of consulting him more than any other of his
English subjects on continental affairs was not easily altered.
It could not be that this mode of transacting business of
importance should prove altogether satisfactory. Sunderland's
self-love was elastic enough to save him from any sense of
mortification in having to assent to decisions of Cabinet on
Foreign affairs of which he was felt not to be the author. But
jealousy is an orchid that will grow on air and gain even size
and strength without means of subsistence palpable to the
common eye; and if the Lord of Althorpe was too proud to
admit the possibility of slight being meant towards him, his
colleague was too shrewd and genial not to fear that the
25th March, 1718.-Ir. St. Papers. —MTS. Record Office.
1
AISLABIE.
183
working of the system might lead to mischief. Obvious reasons
of policy and convenience suggested the resumption of the
Foreign Secretary's Portfolio by one whom so many influential
personages abroad concurred in treating with unequalled con-
fidence. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer, which Stan-
hope had held with the First Lordship of the Treasury, was
conferred on John Aislabie, a wealthy and pushing Yorkshire
squire, who had contrived to ingratiate himself with the Marl-
boroughs.
His father, George Aislabie, had for some years held the
Office of Chief Registrar to the Ecclesiastical Court at York,
when he succeeded in winning the hand of the only child of
Sir William Mallorie, from whom he inherited the broad lands
of Studley and the burgage tenures, some seven score all told,
of the quiet little borough of Ripon. Not to be outdone in
climbing, his son had himself returned, with his brother for
colleague, to the first Parliament of King George ; and, not
to lose time on the way to notoriety, he had offered, in the
course of his first Session, to impeach the newly-made Earl of
Strafford for high crimes and misdemeanours in his conduct as
plenipotentiary at Utrecht. He had made his inark and became
a handy and hardy tool of party purpose whenever he was
wanted. He had sat in several Parliaments, and till 1714 had
filled no office of higher importance than that of Mayor of
Ripon, whose handful of burgage-holders were required to
return him and a friend of his to Westminster. He was then,
from his knowledge of Parliamentary practice, made Treasurer
of the Navy, a position which then and long afterwards was
next in importance to that of the Exchequer in Committee of
Supply. Richard Hampden now took his place, while he was
promoted, unhappily for himself, to the more critical and peril-
ous one of Second Commissioner to the Treasurer. Had Aislabie
been an upright or even a prudent man, his tenure of office
might have passed without discredit or calamity. For a time
the routine of the Department went on undisturbed. Its
spokesman in Committee of Ways and Means was hardly
thought worth worrying by Opposition, and when he re-
visited Studley Park in the recess his wondering neighbours
could only congratulate him on his rare good fortune, and
extol his gracious hospitality. Events and contingencies were
184
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the while at hand, a premonitory glimpse of which would
doubtless have made him pray to be delivered from the temp-
tation of things that were too high for him, or from occupying
himself in great matters.
Not a few proofs have escaped the tide of oblivion, in which
the best acts of public men are ordinarily doomed to perish,
that Addison was not forgotten after he left Ireland ; and that
on his part he was glad in his new position to promote any
good object his friends there had in view. It was probably
due to his intervention that Trinity College obtained from the
Treasury a grant to found the library, which has since become
one of the most valuable possessions of the University. Not
less gratifying to him must have been the duty of directing
Lord Stair at Paris to ask the Regent's protection of Boling-
broke from insult, now that he had renounced the service of
the Stuarts, and was seeking the benefit of amnesty and per-
mission to live once more in England. Deadly political strife
had not obliterated the memory of mutual enjoyment in each
other's company or betrayed into disparaging the splendid
evidences given by his competitor for fame. When Secretary
of State, Bolingbroke had led the applause at the first per-
formance of Cato, and complimented Booth with a purse of
fifty guineas for his admirable protest againt the danger of a
military dictator; and now it was Addison's privilege in the
same office to tell his fallen predecessor, without a sarcasm, that
no danger was apprehended from allowing him to return home.
While his duties lay in corresponding with Foreign Courts,
Lieutenants of Counties, Judges of Assize, or the Irish Privy
Council—even though, as Pope suggests, he sometimes wearied
himself in quest of the most fitting turn of phrase the pride of
the man was daily gratified by having attained the summit of
his ambition. But as the days shortened and the meeting of
Parliament drew on, he began to anticipate the questioning
of Bromley, Shippen, and Pulteney; and the necessity of
making half-a-dozen speeches in the week, every epithet and
adverb of which might be caught at by unscrupulous critics as
committing his colleagues in debate. How much happier would
be an evening at Button's amid his deferential senate of poets
and play-wrights, philosophers, and divines; and did not his
health, after years of hard work of so many kinds, crave repose ?
THE YOUNGER CRAGGS.
185
» 1
By Christmas he persuaded himself that he was not very well,
and he devolved the perfunctory duties of his place on Temple
Stanyan, who long had lent him confidential aid. In March he
resigned the Seals, which he had held less than a year, receiving
a retiring pension of £1,500. a year. The first use of his liberty
was a cordial letter to Swift, reverting to their old literary
sympathies and undertaking to help in advancing some sug-
gestions of the Dean's; having no longer any excuse for delay,
as, “God be thanked, he was entirely free both of his office
and his asthma."
Who was to succeed Addison ? Duchess Sarah, who, with all
her pride and love of magnificence, had in her a more genuine
and courageous sympathy with talent than all the dilettante
patrons of art and letters of her time, bade Sunderland take
young Craggs, who was among her favourites, and make him
Addison's successor. He was the son of a land steward, and
had had, as a boy, but an indifferent education. But he was
undoubtedly possessed of considerable abilities, and a rare
tact and suavity of manner, by which he rose rapidly in the
world.
He was one of the singular men of whom it inay be said their
deficiencies have floated them upwards. Sarah had sent him to
Oxford, but even she could not make him read. He brought
away with him a degree and a little scholarship, and even those
who wished to thrust him forward with a view to use him could
not pretend that he was well informed. But he had the gaiety
of temper that consoled him in all failures, the elasticity of spirits
whereof his betters were frequently in want. A keen critic long
afterwards described him as one who, by perseverance and exer-
cise, from a very bad became a very good speaker. He had no
foundation of literature, and yet he had a happy knack in turn-
ing phrases, which few of his superiors equalled; and being a man
of pleasure it was not to be supposed he could have had much
time for solid improvement. “No one ever exceeded him in the
management of many sour and perverse Members. He at-
tended their clubs, and by his songs and jollity put them into, and
kept them in, good humour. He was successful in making himself
agreeable, and in making himself esteemed and beloved beyond
any man in his disadvantageous circumstances. On the other
1 March 20th, 1718.
186
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
hand, he was said not to have been a good speaker, and re-
proached for speaking from the insolence of office, and that if
reduced to private life he would have made but a poor figure in
Parliament. To great vivacity, assurance, and good luck his sur-
prising exaltation was to be imputed."1 To which old Horace of
Woolterton, who knew him well, rejoined, “As a Minister he had
no scheme or principle calculated for the service of his country;
but, like a true disciple of Sunderland, his views and actions had
110 other tendency, right or wrong, but that of making himself ap-
pcar great and considerable.”
The elevation of Craggs subjected him to many taunts and
sneers, for was he not an intruder, an upstart, a nobody? When
the Duke of Buckingham, on one occasion, was railing fiercely
against the profusion of the Government, Craggs confessed that
inuch of what had been said was true; but there was an old
saying, "The pot must boil.” Yes," rejoined his Grace, “and
there is, as you know, Mr. Secretary, as old and as true a pro-
verb, that when the pot boils the scum floats uppermost."
In subordinate office, and later as Secretary-at-War, Sunder-
land had found him docile and dutiful. His vanity, which affected
an absurd degree of familiarity with those who were socially above
him, never tripped at the threshold of him whom he knew to be
worth all the rest of the world to him ; and the Earl, who now
began to enjoy the pride and pleasure of ascendancy, resolved to
bring no one within the magic circle of power likely to dispute
his will. Craggs the father was faultless in compliance, Craggs
the son would probably be so too. There was, of course, the
danger that too rapid elevation would turn his head; but dan-
gers must be run, and on the whole it seemed safer to have an
expert nobody for a colleague, who must be ready to do what
was wanted, than any man of the stamp of Nottingham or
Townshend, who had proved so constant a source of irritation and
conflict. So the younger Craggs became Secretary of State for
the Northern Department. Lord Castlecomer, brother-in-law of
Newcastle, was named in his stead, but in a few weeks he proved
so incompetent that Robert Pringle took his place; and, failing
to obain a seat, he in his turn gave way to G. Treby, while
Pringle was compensated by an appointment at the Board of
Customs.
Etough to Walpole, 26th July, 1751.-MS.
1
DEFOE.
187
The Cabinet was not unmindful of support in the Press, and
had Ministers lapsed into carelessness their permanent staff of
Under-Secretaries were too well versed in the mechanism of
official influence to permit its loss for lack of prompting or pay.
They had, indeed, the benefit, little understood at the time, of a
pen which has since become notable, irrespective of political or
sectarian controversies, wherever the English language prevails.
From the outset, Stanhope, and even Townshend, blunt, hard, and
business-like as he was, did not feel inclined to reject the sug-
gestion of Delafaye in 1714, that they might rescue from ruin
and make a friend of one whose help might be of inestimable
worth. Daniel Defoe, over zealous in the cause of the new
dynasty, had published a libel on one of the Council of Rcgency,
supposed to be in the interest of the Pretender. The imputation
of treason was too plain to be excused ; and, having no defence,
he was awaiting the judgment of the Court of King's Bench.
When the change of Government took place his versatility as a
periodical writer, and the variety of employers whom he had
served in the Press, made him, in the eyes of Under-Secretary
Delafaye, a clandestine ally to be courted, and to be secured, if
possible, on reasonable terms. Though not yet past his prime,
he was wayworn by disappointment, and sick at heart of penury
and privation.
Delafaye knew all his troubles, and watched for opportunity
to aid in bringing them to an end. Why should not his sen-
tence be shortened or respited now that times and hands were
changed? Chief Justice Parker was no punctilious, imprac-
ticable man.
On the contrary, a man fond of influence, staunch
to party, and eager to make himself of use. Might he not be
propitiated by a skilful appeal to magnanimity, mercy, justice in
the abstract, and other considerations which a great master of
idiom and ideality would well know how to compound? Delafaye
persuaded his friend to write a letter of expostulation and en-
treaty. The Lord Chief Justice decided to hear more on the sub-
ject, and to listen to such conditions and pledges for the future
as might possibly warrant a pardon. Delafaye next set himself
about engaging his facile pen in the service of Government; and
we have Defoe's account of the affair in a letter to his friend at
Whitehall. He was anxious that his relations to the Government
should be clearly understood by whoever might be Secretary of
188
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
State ; and though he doubted not that Delafaye would duly
acquaint whoever might be in power with what humble sense of
favours conferred he received the account the Under-Secretary
was pleased to give him, “that his little services were accepted,
and that he was to go on upon the foot of former capitulations,'
&c., he thought it best to give a short account, as clear as he could,
how far his original instructions empowered him to act, and, in a
word, what the little piece of secret service was, for which he was
so much a subject of favour and bounty. He proceeds to narrate
minutely how the transaction came about during the Ministry of
Townshend. 1
Parker recommended his colleagues to accept Defoe's pro-
fession of attachment to the interest of the Government. In con-
sidering which way he might be rendered most useful, it was
proposed by Townshend that he should still appear as if, as before,
he were under the displeasure of the Government and separated
from the Whigs; and that he might be more serviceable in a kind
of disguise than if he appeared openly. Upon this foot a weekly
paper, which he was at first directed to write in opposition to a
scandalous publication called the Shift Shifted, was laid aside,
and the first thing he engaged in was a monthly journal called
Mercurius Politicus. In the interval, Dyer of the News Letter
being dead, he had an offer of a share in it as well as the manage-
ment. Townshend let him know, through Mr. Buckley, that it
would be a very acceptable piece of service, for the News Letter
was very prejudicial to the public, and the most difficult to come
at in a judicial way. His lordship was pleased to add that he
would consider his service in that case, which he afterwards did.
Upon this he engaged, and though the property was not wholly
his own, yet “the conduct and government of the style and news
was so entirely in him that he ventured to assure the Minister that
the sting of that mischievous paper should be entirely taken out,
though the style should continue Tory as it was, that the party
might be amused, and not set up another, which would have de-
stroyed the design." This went on for a year before Townshend
went out of office, and in consideration of this service he made
an appointment, with promise of further allowance. Lord Sun-
1 To Under-Secretary Delafaye from Newington, 26th April, 1718. State
Papers, Record Office. Given in full by W. Lee in his “ Collection of Defoe's
Writings.”
LITERARY EVISCERATION.
189
derland, to whose goodness he had, many years before, been
obliged, when he was in a secret commission sent to Scotland,
was pleased to approve and continue this service and the ap-
pointment annexed, and, with his lordship's approbation, "he
introduced himself in the disguise of a translator of foreign news,
to be so far concerned in the weekly paper of Mist's as to be able
to keep it within the circle of a secret management, and also pre-
vent the mischievous part of it; and yet neither Mist nor any of
those concerned with him had the least guess or suspicion by
whose direction he did it. This paper, called the Journal, was
not in himself in property, as the other only in management, with
the express difference, that if anything happened to be put in with-
out his knowledge, which might give offence, his lordship would
be sure always to know whether he had a servant to reprove or a
stranger to correct. Upon the whole, however, this was the con-
sequence, that by this management the Weekly Journal and Dor-
mer's News Letter, as also the Mercurius Politicus, which was in
the same nature of management as the Journal, could be always
kept (mistakes excepted) to pass as Tory papers, and yet be dis-
abled and eviscerated, so as to do no mischief or give any offence to
the Government. He was, for this service, posted among Papists,
Jacobites, and enraged high Tories—a generation whom his very
soul abhorred. He was obliged to hear traitorous expressions
and outrageous words against his Majesty's person and Govern-
ment and his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if he ap-
proved it; and he often ventured to let things pass which were a
little shocking that he might not render himself suspected. Thus
he bowed in the House of Rimmon, and most humbly recom-
mended himself to his lordship's protection.'
His employers at Whitehall, however, did not always appreciate
the expediency of allowing these "shocking " paragraphs to slip
in as the disguised editor did; and Secretary Craggs viewed with
increasing wrath the virulence of disaffection which broke forth
in weekly type, notwithstanding all the furtive assurances given
by Defoe of the worth of his process of editorial vaccination.
Defoe was at this time a sincere partisan of Government, and
careful not to be discredited by sub-editorial errors on the part
of those who were known to write under his direction. There is
a curious disclaimer by him of “a paragraph in the Post Boy, of
1 To C. Delafaye, 26th April, 1718.
"1
190
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
the Pretender being in the list of the Queen Dowager's children,
which Mr. Mist inserted after Defoe had looked over what he
had gotten together.” It was not done from malice, he was sure,
and Mr. Mist had renewed his promise to be more wary in the
future.
Again he writes to the Under-Secretary : "I hope I have kept
the difficult people I have to do with within the bounds of duty,
and am in hopes to draw them gradually within yet narrower
liinits of respect. It is a hard matter to please the Tory Party,
as their present temper operates, without abusing, not only the
Government, but the persons of our Governor in everything we
write. But, to the best of my skill, I cause all letters and para-
graphs which look that way to be intercepted and stopped at
the Press."
He had an entire dependence on Sunderland's justice and
goodness that no unintentional offence should be remembered to
his prejudice.
After another conference with the Under-Secretary, he re-
ported that he had brought Mr. Mist to reason, and he had
promised not to offend again. "The liberčies that Buckley men-
tioned, viz., to seein on the same side, to rally the Flying Post,
the Whig writers, and even the word 'Whig,' &c., and to admit
foolish and trifling things in favour of the Tories, Defoe repre-
sented as liberty enough, and resolved his paper should for the
future amuse the Tories, but not affront the Government. He
had freely told him this was the only way to preserve his paper,
to keep himself from a jail, and to secure the advantages which
now arose to him from it.” Curll, the bookseller, had lately
tried to trepan Mist into the use of disloyal words with a view
to inform against him ; but Defoe hoped the Government were
above the use of such expedients, and should anything come of
it in this case, he undertook to lay bare the whole stratagem.
Meanwhile, a book, scandalously reflecting on Sunderland,
had been prepared for publication at Mist's office, the proofs of
which, with his consent, Defoe had possession of in order to
place them in the Earl's hands. “ He believed the time was
come when the journals, instead of affronting and offending the
Government, might in many ways be made serviceable to them,
1 Defoe to Delafaye, 10th May, 1718.
? Defoe to Delafaye, 23rd May, 1718.
THE DEVIL'S POOR.
191
and he had Mr. Mist so absolutely resigned to proper measures
for it, that he was persuaded he might answer for it." i
Yet, with all his craft and complaisance, Defoe could not
refrain from breaking out occasionally against the party and
sectarian bigotry he loathed. The semi-official harness he
secretly wore galled him, and he took advantage of his unde-
fined and undefinable function of double-faced monitor of rival
sects and factions, to say not a few provoking things that much
wanted saying; but which no one of political or literary mark
would venture to say above his name. He himself dared not
scold his employers at Whitehall for detaining in Newgate or
Carlisle prison, without trial for want of evidence, numbers of
unhappy Jacobites; he dared not personally plead for their
release, or even for mitigation of their treatment, without risking
the continuance of Ministerial confidence and pay. But he could
not look on and be altogether mute. As early as May, 1716
there appeared the inquiry, in the usual guise of a nameless out-
sider's question,“ whether justice, so-called as respects the public,
or revenge, so called as respects party, should be extended against
the rebels in general, or whether mercy should interpose to the
saving them from the hands of the executioner, should proof
tardily turn up; or saving their families from the misery of their
being kept to pine and famish in prolonged incarceration.” The
Sessions, nevertheless, at the Old Bailey ending soon after, nine
men and one woman were left for execution ; and month after
month severities continued to be dealt on the devoted dupes of
disaffection, on the official plea that counter revolution was a
contagious disease that must be pitilessly stamped out.
did not think Defoe ; and we find him appealing to the better
instincts of men in the form of a narrative, told with all his grace
and graphic point, of two Whig gentlemen who happened to pass
the Sicilian Embassy where a collection was making for the
prisoners in Lancaster Castle, whose condition was said to be
deplorable. One said to his friend, “I like this very well; I am
resolved I'll give them something." "Do you consider what you
are saying? It is for the rebels. "I know that very well," he
replied, “but they are not in rebellion now; and there is a great
deal of difference between an enemy in the field and a rebel in
jail ; to relieve the first would be a sin against the King, and
1 Defoe to Delafaye, 13th June, 1718.
But so
192
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
not to relieve the last would be a sin against God.” “Well, but,”
said the other," they are our enemies, and I am sure you abhor
them." "So I do; I abhor their crime, but I pity their persons;
and are we not commanded if our enemy hunger to feed him?"
Whereupon he went and put in a guinea, and coming away he
said, “There are two sorts of poor in the world ; there is God's
poor, and the Devil's poor ; the one we are bound to take care
of, but even the other should not starve.” | Ministers, however,
cared not for these things ; and the Under-Secretary's notes are
from time to time interspersed for many a month after with lists
of persons suspected of grave offence or undergoing imprison-
ment for lesser delinquencies.
In spite of Defoe's ingenious efforts to burlesque clerical
impieties and newspaper treasons, their reiteration stung the
political susceptibility of the Court; and the Lord President,
like a man kept from sleep by vermiculate tormentors, laid
about him indiscriminately. "He would have them lay hold of
friend and foe, and plague all alike who took the liberty of pub-
lishing false news; and he would be obliged to Delafaye and
Buckley if they would lay everyone by the heels as often as they
caught them tripping. He would give £200 a-year to some
wrangling, teasing attorney that knew how to tear and rend
these wretches."2 Secretary Craggs was only too ready to fall
in with this irritable humour. No time should be lost by Dela-
faye and Crackerode in using all the rigour imaginable in
punishing the authors and publishers of such scandals. It
appears that under Secretary's warrant many quires of Mist's
Journal were seized, and various private letters from con-
tributors. Defoe's name is not mentioned in the depositions.
It was decided that, beside punishing the authors, printers, and
publishers, the Justices of the Peace should have it given them
in charge by the Lord Chancellor to punish the keepers of the
coffee houses and public houses that took them in, that Mr.
Crackerode should read all the Journals as they came out, and
when he found anything in them punishable should attend Mr.
Attorney-General for his opinion.
Several of the non-juring clergy were prosecuted for reading
the Liturgy with the omission of the prayer for the King. The
1 Mist's Journal.
2 Mem. Sec. of State's Office, ist Nov., 1718.-MS.
NON-JURORS PROSECUTED.
193
Rev. Mr. Hawes, who performed the service in his own house
opposite St. James's, was fined £20 for every repetition of that
offence. Certain of the Scotch clergy, on being convicted a second
time, though not found guilty of praying for James III., were
silenced for three years. Nor were the Penal Laws maintained as
threats merely to overawe the Jacobites, or left to the caprice of
local bigotry to be put in execution. Informations were taken
by the Under-Secretary against one Grimes, for saying Mass at
Calais, and who was found subsequently dwelling in London
wearing the garb of a Capuchin, and going by the name of
Father Archangel; the Statute in that behalf to the contrary
notwithstanding. About the same time Orme, a non-juror,
was cast into prison for having attended Sheppard after his
trial; and failed to acknowledge what he had confessed to him
in his last hours. This was held to be identical with that of
Cook and others who absolved Charnock for the guilt of treason
in King William's time ; and was said, therefore, to be an ac-
cessory after the fact. The Solicitor of the Treasury reported
that the use of the non-juring Prayer-book was criminal, though
it might be difficult to frame an indictment against the author
or publisher of it.2 The Rev. Mr. Bisse was indicted for
preaching sermons full of seditious matter. He had narrowly es-
caped the penalties of præmunire, but was liable to indictment
under other Statutes. He was prosccuted accordingly, and was
sentenced to stand in the pillory in the City and at West-
minster; to pay a fine of £600; to be imprisoned for four
years; and to find two sureties in £500 each for his good
behaviour.4
Stanhope re-entered on the duties he had but half abandoned
for a time, with renewed vigour. A spirited foreign policy was
his sleeping and waking dream, and backed as he was by
Sunderland and the majority of the Cabinet, his success was
complete. No sooner had the Triple Alliance been ratified than
negotiations were begun to induce the Emperor and the Duke
of Savoy to join with a view to the reconstruction of the map of
Italy. Sicily had been annexed to Piedmont, and its towns were
1 13th Dec., 1718.-MS.
2 Mem. of Delafaye's, 1718.---MIS.
3 Mem. Delafaye's handwriting.--NIS.
Report of Solicitor to the Treasury, 27th November, 1718.
VOL. I.
4
o
194
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
occupied by her troops with the promise of Austrian support in case
of attack as, was feared, from Spain, whose resources by sea and land
had, as by miracle, been raised from the torpor of decrepitude by the
genius of Alberoni ; the fruits of his administrative skill, and the
recital of his gigantic clutchings at European ascendancy, belong
rather to historical romance than to the outlook of foreign re-
lations from Whitehall. Ministerial unanimity being established
by the recent changes of office, the Duum-viri practically deter-
mined the conduct of home and foreign policy. Stanhope set
all his varied wits at work to bring about that concert long deemed
impossible, between the Powers of Central and Western Christen-
dom. To this the great obstacle was the naval and military
ambition of Spain, or rather of her fanatical Queen and her ad-
venturous Premier; for Philip V., in whose absolute name every-
thing was done, and on whose personal claim to the Regency, if
not to the throne of France, all their projects turned, had no
other thought or word in Council but that he would sell his
shirt sooner than abandon his dynastic rights, or for the sake of
any temporal advantage relax in enmity to heretics at home, and
heterodox powers abroad. His Cardinal Minister was troubled
with no such scruples, and failing to obtain the confidence of the
Vatican, or to subvert the Guardianship of Orleans, he was ready
to negotiate with the Porte against Austria, with Charles XII.
against England, and with the Czar against Catholic Poland for
a confederacy that was to clear the seas of all but the new
Armada, and sweep Italy from Etna to the Alps. The steps of
the perilous ladder by which this marvellous man had risen to
administrative power almost unique, have often been described.
It happened that during Stanhope's military career in Spain
they had become acquainted in camp and subsequently in Coun-
cil, where the General was fascinated by his versatility and
vigour, and led to form an intimacy, kept up by constant corres-
pondence, hoping in time for a good understanding between their
Governments. By the Triple Alliance which the Spaniard had
pledged himself to baulk, their political friendship was rent in
twain, yet Stanhope did not forego the expectation of being
able to assuage his disappointment, if not to reconcile him to a
new order of things, and he obtained from the Cabinet and from
George I. powers of concession in the last resort, the record of
which in after times reads like fable. While Dubois still lingered
DUBOIS.
195
in London making himself more than others personâ gratå at
the Royal table, where his limitless experience in all the wit and
licence of the Palais Royal made him only too great a favourite
with the King, Stanhope and Dubois lived, as formerly, much to-
gether. Their politics, like their pleasures, ran in the same groove,
and when the assurance of M. Abbé had thoroughly satisfied
the English Court and Cabinet that his Government were infran-
gibly bound to resist the aggressive policy of Spain, Stanhope
accompanied Dubois to Paris, where it took all the Ambassador's
strength of character to baffle the intrigues of Alberoni. Redress
had been asked for the crimping of English sailorsin Spanish ports,
who were compelled to serve on ships of war, and for the seduc-
tion and detention of artificers in the naval arsenals and dock-
yards at Ferrol and Barcelona, while numerous acts of violence
by privateers had caused frequent expostulation to be made, but
hitherto in vain. Still more important was the grievance com-
plained of by the South Sea Company, of the manner in which
their rights had been infringed.
In May, 1717, Sunderland had obtained from the Spanish
Government an extension of the limits within which merchandise
inight be shipped by the holders of the Assiento contract, from
five hundred to six hundred and fifty tons, to be offered for sale
at colonial fairs. The South Sea Company represented that not-
withstanding this concession, they had had notice from the
Spanish Ambassador that their vessels lading with valuable
merchandise must not depart for Vera Cruz or Porto Bello,
where they would not be suffered to unload or expose their
goods for sale. They, therefore, called upon the Government to
interpose. The ground alleged for this suspension of export
from Europe seems to have been a glut in the trading towns of
South America, and an offer by way of compensation was made
by the Chevalier Eon that twice as many galleons from England
inight be despatched next year. While endeavouring in concert
with Stair and Dubois to induce the Regent to concur in such
terms as would win the alliance of the Emperor and the acqui-
escence of Madrid, Stanhope (no doubt with the approval of
Sunderland) promised confidentially to recommend his Govern-
? Extract of letter from Secretary Craggs, 17th June, 1718.-MS.
2 Directors of S. S. Company to Secretary of State, and letter of Spanish Minister
in London, 5th June, 1718-MIS.
O 2
196
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
ment to suggest the possible relinquishment of Gibraltar. The
proposal was embodied in a secret despatch received by his col-
league, and laid by the First Lord of the Treasury before the
King, who "authorised Secretary Craggs to let Stanhope know
that his Majesty approved of his proposition relating to Gibral-
tar, and in case his Excellency found it would conclude and
settle everything, he was thereby authorised to make that offer
when he should find it expedient."1 If Spain would withdraw
her troops from Sicily and leave the Italian peninsula in peace,
the coveted fortress should be given up. The maintenance of its
garrison had long proved a source of exorbitant cost, and the
pride of Spain, it was imagined, would eagerly grasp at the re-
covery of a possession whose retention by a foreign Power was
in the face of Europe a greater humiliation than substantial
injury. By way of compensation to England, the cession of
certain territories in America was to be required, but so secretly
was the whole negotiation conducted that no trace remains of
their extent or value.
Stanhope being satisfied that the Regent d'Orleans was firm,
and learning from Cadogan that the States General were pre-
pared to become parties with Austria in the new Alliance, took
the resolution of making a journey to Madrid in the hope of
being able, by personal communications with Alberoni, to avert
the rupture which he felt was imminent. The Cardinal did not
refuse him passports, but caused them to be delayed, in order to
give time for a Spanish fleet of thirty sail to reach the coast of
Sicily, the object being to reduce the Irnperialist garrison there
before succour could arrive. The English Government, apprised
by Colonel Stanhope, then Envoy at Madrid, of the unusual pre-
parations making at Cadiz and Barcelona, had ordered Berkeley
to equip and despatch a powerful squadron under Admiral Byng
to the Mediterranean. Though they were not prepared to precipi-
tate an actual breach of the peace, he had sealed orders to touch
at St. Vincent and acquaint the English Minister in the capital
that he had instructions, not to be opened till his arrival on the
Sicilian coast, where he would expect information from him.
Stanhope, on his arrival, found the Court at the Escurial, whither
he followed. Alberoni's temper had meantime become exaspc-
Secretary Craggs to Ambassador al Paris, 17th July. 1718.
2 Cadogan to Craggs, 28th June, 1718.--Slowe Papers NTS.
1
OFFER TO GIVE UP GIBRALTAR.
197
rated by the tidings that his negotiations with Austria had failed.
King Philip felt, or affected to feel, indifferent to the tempting
lure, and Stanhope began to fear that he must return by the way
that he came, when an express informed him of the sanguinary
conflict off Syracuse and the destruction of the Spanish fleet.
Alberoni vented his wrath in no measured terms, and when
shown the names of the ships under Byng, with details of their
equipment, he tore the list in atoms and trampled them under
his feet. Yielding, soon after, to a revulsion of feeling, perhaps
hoping hourly for news from the fleet under Castañeta, his
Eminence reverted to the
the better days they had spent
together, and promised to avert any breach of friendly relations.
Muffled in diplomatic reserve, which has never been thoroughly
penetrated, we learn that in an audience of the King, Stanhope
offered, as he had been authorised to do by George I., the restora-
tion of the great fortress. The effect of the victory of Syracuse
in Paris and the Hague was hardly less than that in London,
and Sunderland naturally exulted in a confirmation of his power.
He would have been unlike all his successors had he been able
to resist the influence of the subtlest and strongest of intoxicants.
Thenceforth we shall find him gradually yet continuously pre-
suming more and more, not only that to-morrow should be even
as yesterday, and yet more abundant, but his tenor of ascendancy
being unlimited, he might gratify the arrogant ambition of his
nature, and write his name large in changes more or less funda-
mental in the constitution.
When Parliament met in November, all shades of Opposition
attacked the foreign policy of Government. Stanhope in the
Upper House and Craggs in the Lower defended it with vigour
and success. The power of Spain at sea had grown too great,
and it was high time it should be reduced if English commerce
was to be pursued in safety. Walpole, still in Parliamentary
alliance with Wyndham and Shippen, denounced the Quadruple
Treaty, as contrary to sound policy and public faith. Ministers
having improvidently and unjustifiably begun a war with Spain,
sought to make it the Parliament's war, which he would fain
have had the Commons refuse to do. But the House had been
too well handled by Government to follow his advice, and a
majority voted an Address of confidence and approval, with
liberal supplies.
198
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
In the Upper House, Carteret was put forward to move an
Address of gratulation on the events at sea, and the accession of
Austria to the Alliance with France and the States General.
Nottingham, Cowper, Devonshire, and Argyll concurred with
Oxford, Harcourt, and North and Greyin objecting to the outbreak
of hostilities without a declaration of war, and the venturous
policy abroad to which the Cabinet was now committed ; but
Stanhope revelled in exultation, boasted of having given author-
ity to Byng to baffle any attempt to take possession by surprise,
which, having suspected, he had vainly called on the Spanish
Government to disclaim, and characteristically offered to answer
with his head for the issue, should war be forced upon them.
The Peers, by 83 to 50, ratified Carteret's resolution ; and he
gained such credit in debate that in reward for this and his
previous service to Government in the memorable contention
on the Mutiny Bill, he was sent soon after as Ambassador to
Stockholm—the first step in his long administrative career.
Undismayed by their loss at sea, the Spanish Government
doggedly refused to give any satisfaction for the injuries com-
plained of by the Dutch and English traders; and it was even
said, in concert with Sweden, held out fresh hopes to the Pre-
tender.
On the 3rd of December orders were issued by the Admiralty
to make reprisals on Spanish ships, and authorising letters of
marque; and on the 18th war was declared and the Warden of
the Cinque Ports, and other officers on the coast, were directed to
seize all vessels and goods belonging to the enemy, giving
a share of all prizes to the captors. Stanhope advised our
Ministers abroad, that a Great Council was held at St. James's
where his Majesty approved and signed a declaration of war,
and ordered that the same should be duly published, and the
French Government would do the same in a few days.2 The
Cabinet were in high spirits. Both Houses of Parliament ad-
dressed the King with a promptitude and vigour which would
encourage their friends, and would, they hoped, contribute much
to shortening the war. Aislabie fondly persuaded himself that as
the lot had fallen to him in pleasant places, he had only to carry out
? Mem. Dec., 1718.-MS.
Stanhope to Dayrolle, 16th Dec., 1718.—MIS.
3 19th Dec. 1718.—MS.
WAR WITH SPAIN.
199
fully the financial plans of his predecessor to keep the City in his
favour. It was not so easy, however, as sensible Addison and
flimsy Craggs discovered, to face the brunt of attack in debate on
subjects where Walpole was committed, and where his previous
administrative knowledge made him more than a match for all
the official staff. The severest tug was that on the Mutiny Bill,
whose novel rigour was said to have become necessary with a
permanent increase of foreign troops. Some verbal amendments
having been made in the Lords, the Bill was returned to the
Lower House, where, instead of giving the signal for a renewal
of the struggle, Walpole declared that he meant to acquiesce, and
hoped his friends would bow to the decision come to by both
Houses. For himself, he had riot changed his mind, but if they
were to have an augmented standing army, he had rather the
soldiery were liable to be tried by inferior courts-martial than
not be tried at all. This was decisive, and by a large majority
the measure became law. New articles of war were from time
to time ordered under the Sign Manual, expanding the sphere of
corporal punishment for implied disrespect or constructive dis-
obedience; and for one hundred years the Mutiny Act of 1718
was annually renewed without essential change.
In the inaugural speech to the Privy Council prepared for
George I., and read in his name by Cowper, a pledge of toleration
and protection was given to all who professed and called them-
selves Protestants; and as an earnest of its redemption a Bill
was brought in for rendering permanent the Act of William and
Mary, which allowed Quakers to give evidence in civil suits on
affirmation instead of oath. No opposition was offered in either
House ; and in the Upper a clause was introduced extending
the Bill to Scotland. With this concession the Cabinet, however,
paused ; the King was satisfied; and nothing further was done
for some time in fulfilment of the pledges to complete religious
liberty.
Three years had elapsed since the change of dynasty, and the
Dissenters complained that the promises then given of a Restora-
tion policy were over-due. In Parliament a movement was set
on foot to agitate the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and
Schism Acts, and while the Cabinet was in the throes of dis-
ruption and reorganisation, more than two hundred Members
of the House of Commons met to consider the propriety of
200
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
removing, without further delay, the civil disabilities of Dis-
senters. Lord Molesworth, Mr. Jessop, and Sir Richard Steele
advocated immediate action, while Mr. Tufnel was authorised
to express Government fears of defeat in the House of Lords ;
and the assembly adjourned to give time to consult and de-
liberate. Sunderland, who claimed to be the champion of
sectarian liberty, and who had hitherto held back, saw that
a favourable opportunity had arrived ; and he led the Cabinet
to undertake the measures thus pressed upon them. At the
adjourned meeting of Commoners, an intimation was given
that several of the obstacles hitherto in the way had been
removed. In other words, they were given to understand that
the Cabinet were prepared to take the initiative in the cause
their supporters had so much at heart. Some months must
still elapse before anything could legislatively be done; but
Molesworth, as chairman of the meeting, recommended patience
and confidence, and his opinion had great weight. Possessed of
considerable talent and energy, he had entered public life as
a diplomatist, and recently published a descriptive work on
Denmark, whose condition he had become thoroughly ac-
quainted with when resident there as Envoy. He now en-
joyed the privileges of irresponsibility as Member for the
obscure hamlet of Michell, in Cornwall. In the Speech from
the Throne, the policy of uniting all sects of Protestants by
a sense of equal rights and liberties was declared to be the
best for the Church as well as the State; and the expectations
thus excited rose so high that public meetings in many of the
great towns demanded the repeal of the Test and Corporation
Acts. Sunderland, however, deprecated provoking a spirit of
resistance not to be overcome. Walpole, already coalescing
with the Tories in Opposition, would resist the repeal of the
Test Act. His advice was taken, and it was agreed to let the
question of municipal disqualification lie over to a more con-
venient season. Stanhope asked leave to bring in a Bill to
strengthen the Protestant interest; which, beside repealing the
Acts of Anne, amended in certain particulars those passed at
the Restoration. He relied on the justice and policy of
restoring the Nonconformists to municipal rights, and of re-
lieving them from the stigma and burthen cast upon them
in troubled times and compassed by unwarrantable methods.
TOLERATION ACT.
201
The Church of England would more than ever be the head
of all the Protestant Churches, and the Archbishop of
Canterbury would become the Patriarch of all the clergy of
the reformed faith. The new Primate (Wake) did not accept
the prophetic dignity thus awarded him, and, with Lans-
downe and many temporal and spiritual Peers, made diffi-
culties on various grounds. Cowper retained his aversion to
the Acts of the late reign, but would not meddle with the
Test Act.
The second reading was carried by 86 to 68, but in Com-
mittee the clauses modifying the Test Act were withdrawn.
In the Commons, Walpole and his brother Horace, Shippen,
and Wyndham opposed; while Hampden, Secretary Craggs,
Jekyll, Lechmere, and Heathcote supported it. The debate
lasted many hours; and the Cabinet prevailed by a majority
of 41 in a House unusually full.1
Within the Cabinet Sunderland had attained the pre-eminence
he desired; yet he was not content. The outer world did not
question, and did not even care, why there had been a second
exchange of offices with Stanhope. People might still mistake
which of them was Chief Minister. Stanhope, indeed, never
disputed the matter. He liked the duties of the Foreign De-
partment better than those of the Treasury, and he was well satis-
fied to resume his correspondence with Vienna and the Hague;
leaving the whole business of budget-framing, tax-gathering,
and schemes for the better prevention of smuggling, to his
successor. Sunderland, however, could not be satisfied unless
common fools as well as fools of quality recognised him as
head of the Administration; and he could think of no better
way of showing himself to be primus inter pares than by
taking in addition a conspicuous office in the Household. To
head a Cabinet containing seven Dukes, he told the King that
he must have some distinctive mark of pre-eminence, and that
he therefore wished, along with his political functions, to dis-
charge those of Groom of the Stole. The head of the house
of Sackville had till then enjoyed that distinction. He had
taken part in the Revolution by arranging with Bishop Compton
the escape of Princess Anne, escorting her to Nottingham
Castle, where Devonshire, at the head of his regiment, awaited
17th January, 1719.
202
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
her coming, and entertained her with princely hospitality until
the crisis was overpast. For his reward, Dorset, in his
father's life-time, had obtained the Earldom of Middlesex ;
and, being of an unenvious temper, he seemed content with
the first place in the King's household, whence no one dreamt
of removing him. But, the place being wanted by the Chief
Minister, means were found to persuade him to give way; and
in due time he became Duke of Dorset. Not to provoke
jealousy, Lords Carnarvon, Chandos, and Manchester were
raised to the same dignity. In the Cabinet, Parker took no
prominent part. His opinion had weight in matters of adminis-
tration ; but hardly on critical legislative questions. It is even
said that of the Dissenters' Relief Bill he knew little, and not
much more of the memorable Peerage Bill, until they were
laid on the table. He had no lack of envious critics, whom
his rapid rise had made; and he saw nothing to be gained
by bringing to their notice the weakness of his position-
weakness he could not cure. He had offended the Prince on
points not easily forgiven; and if he was to long enjoy the
sunshine of Royalty he must keep clear of differences with
his colleagues, and tell the world that they were members of a
united Cabinet. .
He turned his thoughts from foreign to
domestic, and from legislative to judicial cares.
His social ambition satisfied, he devoted himself to the
mastering of equity practice, in which he was undeft, and to the
accumulation of wealth, for which the holder of his office had
exceptional opportunities. In the former he succeeded rapidly
by his assiduity in the acquisition of previous rulings, and a
power little short of genius in discriminating and marshalling
them. In seven years not a judgment of his was reversed ;
and, though he never overcame the jealousy of leading mem-
bers of the profession, he earned the repute that has never
been effaced, of being a great magistrate. His leanings were
towards Executive rigour; and in spite of the reassuring
reports of Churchill and Bulkley, who had been sent into
the Western counties to spy out tendencies to disaffection,
and who reported nothing but apathy and peace, the Cabinet
resolved upon renewed suspensions of Habeas Corpus, and in-
termittent measures of repression. While they wavered, warning
Reports to Secretary Stanhope, March, 1719. --MS., Record Office.
1
PROSECUTION OF MATTHEWS.
203
came from Dubois of a naval rendezvous at Cadiz for an in-
vading expedition under Ormond's command.i
Government did not feel itself secure; it lived in per-
petual alarm from imputed plots and treasons; and the
frightened are too apt to be cruel. Their pamphleteers and
journalists set up for ever that the bulk of an ignorant com-
munity hankered still after an English Sovereign; that Jacobit-
ism was the undoubted tradition of many of the nobles and
three-fourths of the squires ; and that the rural clergy believed
and taught, as far as they dared, the imprescriptible right of
the Pretender. But this, by inference, went far to make away
with the case for the Revolution, and it was thought indispens-
able to stamp out the dangerous doctrine when quoted or in-
sisted on by opponents.
The proceedings against a youth of nineteen, named Mat-
thews, for a seditious pamphlet he had the folly to have pri-
vately printed, but which he had neither sold nor distributed,
mark indelibly the temper of the Executive rule at the time.
His father was a printer in Aldersgate, after whose death he con-
tinued to serve his apprenticeship to his mother; and in his
leisure hours he composed a plea for Jacobitism, which he per-
suaded two of the workmen to set up in type, taking the copies
as they were struck off into his own keeping. One of the men,
named Vezey, gave information at Whitehall; and the Secretary
of State issued a general warrant to arrest the accused and seize
all papers found on the premises where he lived. Matthews was
arraigned at the Old Bailey before ten of the judges on an indict-
ment for high treason, and the fact of the printing and of copies
of the proofs being found on the prisoner's person were not dis-
puted. His younger brother was compelled to identify the hand-
writing of a letter to the Secretary of State, in which the prisoner
admitted having written the pamphlet, but protested his inno-
cence of having distributed it. The trial lasted till late at night,
when the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and sentence of death
was passed. Even in times so hard the public were incredulous that
the extreme penalty of the law would be passed. But after the
lapse of a fortnight, when every incident had been duly weighed,
this ineffectual offender was brought to Tyburn, and there offered
as a sacrifice to the wrath of affronted power.
? Despatch to Secretary Craggs.--MS.
204
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
ance." 2
Stanhope watched still wistfully the policy of Spain. Albe-
roni's project of alliance against France and England was vast
and splendid. He engaged Sweden, and sought to enlist Russia in
his designs, which would have compassed the reunion of Philip's
Italian and Spanish doininions. The Pretender was to be fur-
nished with a great armament for the recovery of the English
Throne, and the Regency of Orleans was to be overturned under
the pretence of delivering young Louis XV. from captivity. In-
telligence from Lisbon furnished details of the formidable arma-
ment concentrating in Cadiz Bay. Many Irish officers had left
Madrid, and, it was said, had gone on board; 1,000 infantry
and 1,000 horse, with field trains and stores for three months,
were minutely described, and said to be ready for sea." Stair
grew uneasy at the aspect of things, and wrote:"With regard
to the rumoured expedition, raise as many troops as you can,
and have them ready. I think the Duke of Orleans is thoroughly
in earnest to help us, but it is good not to want friends' assist-
A Cabinet was specially summoned to consider what
should be done. Marlborough was too ill to attend, but Grafton
Kingston, Roxburgh, Kent, and Newcastle, Sunderland, Stan-
hope, Berkeley, Parker, Aislabie, and Craggs assembled at the
Cockpit, and resolved on the issue of a proclamation offering
€5,000 reward for the apprehension of Ormond, £1,000 for every
nobleman attainted, and £500 for every M.P.
The intentions of Spain were still wrapped in doubt, and at the
close of the session, words were put into the lips of George I.,
denouncing "the desperate and extravagant projects of one ambi-
tious man that prevailed in the counsels of Madrid, which must
occasion some expense and trouble, though not capable of caus-
ing fears to their neighbours. The acknowledgment of James
III. would, no doubt, be received by every good Briton with in-
dignation and contempt." But whether to show how illusory
were Alberoni's threats, or how unessential the presence of his
Majesty was deemed for the defence of the Kingdom, he was
advised to remind Parliament that he meant to spend the recess
in Hanover, where he could be of as inuch use as in England.
Yet about the same time, to justify the cry for arming and
coercion in Ireland, the Lord-Lieutenant issued a Proclamation
1
Worsley to Craggs, 12th March, 1719.-MS.
2 To Craggs, from Paris, 15th April, 1719.—MS. in Stowe Collection.
PROCLAMATION OF JAMES III.
205
against the growth of Popery and the impending invasion by the
Pretender. The members of the Cabinet were included in
the Council of Regency, whịch asserted for the time the more
ostensible functions of the Executive. They met three times a
week, with Delafaye for their Secretary; and their proceedings,
although with closed doors, had a certain character of publicity.
Instructions were given to fit out twelve additional ships of
war. Meanwhile a Proclamation by James III. before setting out
from Rome, was widely dispersed throughout the kingdom. He
was coming, he said, to rescue the nation from the rule of a usurper,
and to restore the ancient order of things. In the Capital and
the chief towns journalists and booksellers were warned against
circulating incitements to sedition ; insurgent ballads were
especially prohibited, and the voice of rebellious music was not
suffered to be heard in the streets. All who offended were sent
at once to jail, and the suspected authors of mischief had notice
of prosecution.
Week after week, however, passed without tidings of the new
Armada. Sinister alarmists couid but surmise unlooked-for
causes of delay; and practical politicians turned their thoughts
to subjects of interest nearer home. In due time it became
known from Corunna, where Ormond was to have gone on
board, that he had written to Madrid announcing that half the
fleet had been wrecked by a storm off Cape Finisterre, and that
the troops placed at his disposal were too few and undisciplined
for the contemplated enterprise.
Far from advising the expedition, he had been reluctantly
drawn by Alberoni into accepting the command, which he re-
signed as that of a forlorn hope. Thenceforth no flatteries could
induce him to einbark again, in what Berwick and Bolingbroke
already told him was a lost cause; and he allowed his friends in
England to assure the Government of his intention to have done
with reactionary politics and to live peaceably abroad if his pri-
vate fortune were restored. His brother, Lord Arran, was even-
tually enabled by statute to repurchase his forfeited estates from
the Crown ; and he spent the long evening of his chequered life
at Avignon, dispensing impartial hospitality to all English tra-
vellers of distinction who came that way.
206
CHAPTER VI.
GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND.
1719-23.
Bolton Lord - Lieutenant-Previous Viceroys-Phantom of Invasion-
Chief Secretary Webster-Proclamation against Sarsfield-Nicholson
Bishop of Derry-Condition of the Peasantry and of the Established
Clergy-Position of the Presbyterians-Disabilities of Dissenters-
Webster on the Irish Parliament-Appellate Jurisdiction-Judges
Imprisoned-. Final Statute of Appeals—Penal Code--Bolton's Pro-
posals--Sunderland Groom of the Stole—Alberoni-Peerage Bill-
Argyll Duke of Greenwich-Chancellor Brodrick-Expedition against
Spain-Final Defeat of the Peerage Bill.
IN the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts administrative
functions in Ireland were exercised mainly by Lord Depu-
tics responsible directly to the Sovereign and removable
at his pleasure. The intercept of the Commonwealth presented
no exception to the rule. Elizabeth sent the most unstable,
rash, and incapable of her favourites to reduce and govern
Ireland ; and when he failed, stung him by pitiless reproach
into forfeiting his head upon the scaffold. Charles I. conferred
plenary powers on Strafford to over-reach the Dublin Parliament
in votes of Supply and unlawfully to enlist troops to be used
against that of Westminster, and then to save himself sacrificed
him to his foes. Cromwell named for his representative his
colourless and submissive son, and James II. delegated to his
brother-in-law for a time the vice-regal use of the prerogative.
William commissioned Sidney to carry into effect the grants to
himself and other favourites of great estates, kept dark from his
English Ministers; and Anne, to get rid of her uncle Rochester,
bade him go to Ireland and stay there as her Lieutenant.
Ormond was a worthier choice. The nomination of Arch-
IRISH TRADE.
207
no
bishops, Chief Justices, and Generals commanding-in-chief was
indeed reserved; but his patent empowered him to make Bishops,
Judges, and Commissioners of Revenue, by formal recommen-
dation to the Lord-Treasurer for the approval of the Queen, to
whom alone he felt himself responsible. He did what in him
lay to retrieve the errors and mitigate the evils of past misrule.
A chief among the nobles of the Pale, he would fain have ignored
Celtic and Saxon antipathies. He was not a philosopher or a
man of genius, but he believed in the maxim of Bacon, that they
who cherish resentments keep their own wounds green ; and as
for political or religious predilections, he would as soon have
thought in his executive capacity of frowning down a man on
account of his opinions, as for his backing a different suit at
cards. He had neither the ability to devise, nor the influence to
carry measures of industrial renovations, and there was
Cabinet to whose collective judgment he could appeal for legis-
lative aid. But he strove to bring about practical ameliorations.
Commercial credit was paralysed, capital hoarded in silent fear,
and investment in tillage, draining, or planting had come to be
thought of as infatuation. In his despatches Ormond pleaded
earnestly that Government should encourage the extending
culture of flax, and the weaving and bleaching of finer fabrics in
Leinster and Munster. Godolphin seems to have been convinced
of the wisdom and duty of applying the same principles of trade
to Ireland that were guaranteed to Scotland by the Union ; but
he found himself unable to withstand openly the fatuity of the
time. As some ainends, he bethought him of the expedient of
creating a local sub-department at Dublin with the title of the
Linen Board, which might be furnished with means by the local
Parliament, and should be accountable only to them. But the
export trade to Great Britain and the Colonies of all descriptions
of woven or printed goods was interdicted, and an Act was
passed by the paramount legislature prohibiting the use of
Irish sail-cloth in the Navy. For the purpose of obtaining
supplies and lending a colour of justice to laws of sectarian
jealousy and social rigour the provincial Parliament was now
and then called together ; but in both Houses the attendance
i Brodrick Correspondence, 1717.-MS.
Treasury Minute of 4th September, 1706: Calender of State Papers : Tbiit. 18th
January, 1707.
208
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
was scant, reports of its proceedings were not allowed, compliant
votes were not always obtainable, and the final acceptance of
Bills drawn in Ireland but transformed in England (by virtue of
Poyning's law) was not always certain.
The last of the Lieutenants whose authority was really due to
the exercise of prerogative was Shrewsbury. Weary of the
thraldom imposed by the Whig Junto, and still hesitating about
committing herself to that of the Tories, the Queen, without
asking leave, had conferred a Dukedom on Kent in lieu of the
Chamberlain's staff, which she took from him and gave to un-
partisan Shrewsbury, then for the first time acquainting
Godolphin with her decision, which he did not venture to dis-
approve. The lofty disdain her new favourite evinced for the
narrowness and rancour of contending factions, led her Majesty
three years later, when Ormond was sent to command the
Army in Flanders, to name the Duke his successor in Ireland.
Sectarian feuds were stifled, though not quenched, by his agnostic
disfavour, and he refused inflexibly to allow Government in-
fluence to be used in any sense or form at elections, reproving
sharply every attempt to compromise his absolute impartiality
as Viceroy. His patronage, according to law, was necessarily
confined to members of the Anglican Church, but the Catholic
nobles and gentry were gratified by receptions at the Castle
being held by his Italian wife ; and Presbyterian hopez revived
of a mitigation of their unjust exclusion from local privileges
and rights of citizenship under the rule of him who had headed
the invitation in 1688 to William of Orange. But appreciation
of negative merits like Shrewsbury's would even among the
better classes have taken long to grow, and personal popularity
was too troublesome to earn, if in truth he did not despise it.
The Dublin inob resented his indifference by caricaturing him
as Caliban, from his accidental loss of an eye. Like all who
preceded him, he spent more than half his time in England,
leaving explicit instructions that the Lords Justices should
neither in Parliament nor Council drop any hint of Government
intentions; but should inform him fully from time to time on all
matters, “ that they might receive again from him the significa-
tion of her Majesty's pleasure."2 The last articulate words of
1 Letter from the Queen to the Lord-Treasurer, 13th April, 1710.
? Broclrick's Correspondence, ist January, 1714.-MS.
VICEROY IN CABINET.
20G
Anne were to name Shrewsbury Treasurer, but after her death
he agreed to make one of the new co-optative council that
undertook for the future the thinking and directing duties of
Government. Retaining only the gold key of Chamberlain, he
resigned the uncoveted portfolio of Irish Minister, which
Sunderland made a inerit of putting up with, though he could
not be induced to go over even to be sworn in. He named Lord
Kildare, with Archbishops King and Vesey, Lords Justices, pro-
fessing a desire to recognise native claims to trust and distinction,
and Speaker Brodrick, in whose learning, good sense, and
experience his main reliance lay, became Chancellor. Personal
and party considerations soon outweighed pretences of regard
for local susceptibility ; Sunderland took to himself the lucrative
post of Vice-Treasurer, Addison resumed his office of Chief
Secretary, Gilbert, the family adviser in Lincoln's Inn, was made
Irish Chief Justice, and the young Duke of Grafton, and Lord
Galway were sent to supersede the head of the Geraldines, and
their Spiritual Lordships of Dublin and Tuam. To enable
the Chancellor, however, to take part in the deliberations of the
Upper House the dignity of an Irish baron? was conferred upon
him. Brodrick did not conceal his regret that the difficulties of
Executive rule were needlessly aggravated by the change of
hands, and Archbishop King “could not for the life of him see why
they who knew the interest and state of the Kingdom, and were
as heartily attached to his Majesty's service as any nobleman in
England, should not be trusted with the government.” In the
Cabinet quarrel of 1716 Sunderland gave up the Viceroyalty
that Townshend might be thus got rid of as Secretary of State,
and when he was at length persuaded to take the pay of
absentee pro-consul he began by nominating King, Brodrick,
and Speaker Conolly as his deputies in place of Grafton and
Galway. From the first it was an unwritten rule that the Vice-
roy of Ireland, like the Secretary for Scotland, should be a
member of the Cabinet. Townshend held the position but for
a few months, and Bolton was named his successor. No special
instructions were probably deemed necessary by the new Vice-
1
13th April, 1715.
? To Primate Wake, 4th January, 1717.-NIS.
14th April, 1717.
3
VOL. I.
P
210
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
roy, who did not "go over "1 until the beginning of autumn, till
when the Lords Justices were expected only to mark executive
time.
Although the Pretender had prudently declined risking his
person in another descent on the Scottish coast, while neither in
England nor Ireland any symptom of disturbance was seen, it
was deemed expedient to keep alive suspicions of Jacobite plots,
against which the Viceroy exhorted the Irish Parliament to con-
sider measures for enlisting the Presbyterians on the side of the
Church, and by fresh additions to the penal code to terrify the
Catholics into mute submission. The two Houses replied in
vague Addresses, promising to consider what was subinitted to
them. His previous experience had taught his Excellency little
that was likely to be useful in the administration of Irish affairs,
and instead of seeking confidential aid in someone qualified by
ability or training to advise him, he named as his chief secre-
tary a personal favourite who knew nothing of the country or
the people. Of Mr. Webster nothing derogatory is recorded ;
and he seems to have been diligent enough in meddling with
matters he did not understand. He was returned for the
obscure borough of Carysfort, in Wicklow, and was made a
Privy Councillor, but there is no trace of his having shown any
capacity for business in Parliament, or any ability to cope with
the difficulties, sectarian or judicial, that occupied both Lords
and Commons at the time; and after a brief stay at Dublin he
returned with his Excellency to England. It was thought a
clever stroke of policy to take advantage of a too confiding vote
of Supply for two years, instead of one, to defer the reassembling
of Parliament for nearly the same space of time.
Misled by false rumours, a proclamation was issued denounc-
ing Sarsfield (titular Lord Lucan) as head of a Spanish force,
recently said to have landed in Ireland-whereabouts, Govern-
ment was not sure—offering a thousand pounds reward for his
seizure and a hundred pounds for every officer serving under
him. All magistrates were charged to "search for and to seize
all Popish Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Friars, Jesuits, and all
others exercising any Ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and to commit
them to prison;" and to administer, rigorously, recent acts pro-
viding that none but Protestants should be petty constables or
1
15th August, 1717.
PROGRESS OF TOLERATION.
2II
watchmen, and for the calling out of the Militia. The Statute
for preventing the Further Growth of Popery was set out at
length. All strangers and travellers. unable to give a satisfac-
tory account of themselves were to be lodged in gaol, and
numerous arrests on suspicion were consequently made. Des-
patches setting forth the vigorous measures taken were for-
warded to Whitehall, and a garrison was held in readiness to
act on receipt of the earliest intelligence; but the apprehended
expedition, if ever contemplated, was nowhere seen in the offing,
and Sarsfield was heard of no more.
On the outbreak of Mar's rebellion in Scotland in 1715, the
Irish Presbyterians had, nevertheless, volunteered, regardless of
the statutable penalties, to take arms in defence of the new
dynasty; and they were publicly thanked for their zeal. The
danger over, they asked for an Act of Indemnity, the reason-
ableness of which was at once conceded, and the heads of a Bill
were brought in exempting Protestant Dissenters serving in the
Militia or the Army, from the operation of the penal clauses of
the Test Act. It passed easily through the Commons, but was
defeated in the Lords; whereupon the Ulster Members appealed
so effectively to the good sense and good feeling of their col-
leagues in the Lower House, that a protest and a warning in
the form of Resolutions were forthwith adopted, that "those who
had recently taken commissions in the Militia, or acted in the
commission of array, had thereby done a seasonable service to
Government; and that any person who should commence a
prosecution against any Dissenter who had accepted or should
accept of a commission in the Army or Militia, was an enemy
to King George and the Protestant interest, and a friend to the
Pretender."2 No one ventured to prosecute ; and the question
left thus open, continued to be bandied between parties. Sun-
derland gave place as Minister for Ireland to Townshend, and
Townshend to Bolton. Creeds were for politicians cards
wherewith to play the game of power; and each was backed in
turn as suited the holder. The Lord-Lieutenant, with the con-
sent of his colleagues in the Cabinet, authorised an addition of
£800 a year to be made to the Regium Donum. This could
only be done in Committee of Supply on the motion of some
| Dublin Gazette, 18th April, 1718.
2“ Irish Com. Journal," iv., 255.
1
P2
212
IIISTORY OF CABINETS.
member of the Government; but it was taken as an offering of
first fruits and a pledge of better things to come by the Presby-
terians, and assented to cheerfully by the Episcopal inajority of
the Commons.
In both branches of the local legislature there were able and
sensible men who did not allow their sectarian predilections to
blind them to the true policy of abrogating the Test and Cor-
poration Acts, whereby Dissenters rendered themselves liable to
severe penalties for bearing arms or appearing in military array
to maintain order, or to resist rumoured invasion. Bishop
Nicholson warned the English Primate of the folly of alienating
the industrious and loyal settlers in Ulster, who had come over
from Scotland, after the Revolution, to get bargains of land left
vacant, and when their leases for thirty-one years expired, com-
plained that their rents were raised, and sooner than submit
they were emigrating to America in great numbers. Bolton
was urged by his colleagues in the Cabinet to throw all the
weight of his influence into the scale of concession; and though
unable to see their way in the same direction in England, be-
yond the repeal of the Schism Act, and a remission of penal-
ties for disregarding municipal disability, they pressed him to
obtain, if possible, from the Parliament of Ireland, a statute
annulling altogether the system of Nonconformist exclusion
there.
There is a remarkable letter of Secretary Craggs dictated by
Sunderland when forwarding a Draft Bill to carry into effect his
policy. It proposed an entire repeal of that part of the Test
Act which required persons on taking any office or function,
civil or inilitary, to receive the Sacrament according to the rites
of the Established Church; and placed the Presbyterians on the
same footing as their brethren in Scotland. His Excellency
was not prepared, however, to attempt the legislative fulfilment
of his instructions. The Secretary might remember that, at
Lord Sunderland's house last year, he had told him and Lord
Stanhope that “if they proposed an entire repeal of the Sacra-
mental Test Act in an Irish Parliament it would be found a
matter of great difficulty, if not impossible to be obtained ; and
it would turn to the dishonour of the Government if anything of
this nature were attempted without success. The Dissenters
? To Wake, 2nd June, 1719.-A/S.
BLUNT EDGE OF THE WEDGE.
213
had been offered a legal toleration, but they seemed cool in the
matter, hoping for an entire repeal.” Some of the Privy Coun-
cil were of opinion that it would be practicable to carry the
desired repeal if Ministers in both Kingdoms heartily pressed it.
But the dislike to the change by the majority of the House of
Lords made the Chancellor doubtful of the issue. Sunderland
suggested that some of the adverse Bishops should be sent for
to know from them the sentiments of their brethren, as well as
their own; and if the Test Act were not entirely repealed,
whether the Dissenters might not be allowed to hold certain
civil and military offices, and to worship God in their own way
without being liable to persecution for doing so. The Lord-
Lieutenant thought that most men would concur in doing some-
thing in their favour, though not so much as would fully answer
their expectations. The Dissenters would be disappointed if
they should grasp at a total repeal, swayed no doubt by the
advice of the Chancellor. He thought it best that the Parlia-
ment should be allowed to frame the heads of a Bill," for it was
impossible to know how far gentlemen would go, rather than to
send over a Bill which might be entirely lost.” I The Commons
declared that because of their attachment to the Act of Settle-
ment and the Establishment, they would be glad if any means
could be found whereby partial indulgence could be given the
Dissenters, whom they regarded as supporters of the Constitu-
tion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-
General consequently brought in heads of a Bill for their relief;
but a counter project was forthwith proposed by the less tolerant
section, which the Presbyterians strongly objected to; and “it
was astonishing what heats people were in upon the subject.
The Viceroy could not but mark that people trying to carry
Whig principles farther than they would bear or the Constitu-
tion would allow, were doing them more harm than their
enemies. It made great caballing with people who were de-
termined to give no ease to the Dissenters but purely toleration;
so that there was no hope of carrying it so far as set down in
the form proposed by Ministers to him. Even as regarded
Militia and Justices of the Peace, he had grave doubts as to
whither that would go; for Opposition would do their best to
thwart it. By his letter to Sunderland Craggs would see that
? Bolton to Craggs, 27th June, 1719.-MS.
214
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
was
things were being driven to extremities. The Chancellor could
not influence even his own son. He wished all the more that
the heats in both Houses were over, as they greatly impeded
votes for the payment of the troops; and he was anxious to
pass the Money Bill.”1 Archbishop King offered the heads of
the Relief Bill abolishing various sectarian disabilities, which,
with the help of the Chancellor, he induced the Peers to accept;?
and which was duly transmitted by the Viceroy for approval to
England. When returned with the approval of the Cabinet,
the Government lawyers were summoned to the Castle to
rehearse their parts in order that there might be unison in
support of the Measure in the Commons.3 A warm debate
arose in the Lords, Primate Lindsay declaring that schism
a damnable sin. The objection most insisted on was
that the Dissenters were not to be obliged to subscribe any
of the thirty-nine articles; but the measure was carried by
36 to 25.4
The Provincial Parliament and Judicature, though eloquent,
and no doubt sincere, in their desire to emulate the paramount
authorities of St. Stephen's and Westminster Hall in observance
of constitutional forms, were not yet broken to go quietly in
harness; and recent controversies ineptly provoked by Chan-
cellor Parker did not tend to render them more docile. To the
surprise of Bolton and his advisers, the Irish Judicial Bench,
though comprising several English lawyers of eminence, asserted
their exemption from overruling decisions by the English
House of Lords; and laid down, as of undoubted authority, the
principle of law that civil suits in Ireland could not be finally
determined, save in the Court of Appeal in the appendant
realm.
In the reign of Henry VI. the Parliament of the Pale, in
assertion of its local autonomy, had statutably declared that
“ Ireland was, and always had been incorporated within itself by
antient laws and customs, and was only to be governed by such
laws as by the Lords and Commons of this land in Parliament
assembled were affirmed and proclaimed; that the realm had its
1 To Secretary, Craggs, 8th July, 1719.-NIS.
? Lords' Journals, 31st July, 1719.
3 Bolton to Craggs, 15th October, 1719.—MS.
1 Chief Secretary Webster to Delafaye, 22nd October, 1719.—MS.
RIGHT OF APPEAL.
215
Royal Seal, and its own Constable and Marshal, before whom
all appeals were finally determinable ; yet, as orders had of late
been issued under another Seal, and the subjects summoned into
England to prosecute their suits before a foreign jurisdiction to
the great grievance of the people, and in violation of the rights
and franchises of the land, it was enacted that no person should
be obliged by any commandment under any other Seal than
that of Ireland to answer any appeal out of the said land, and
that no officer to whom such commandment might come should
put the same into execution, under penalty of forfeiture of goods
and chattels, and payment of 1,000 marks, half to the King, and
half to the informer."
A century later Poyning's Law had, as a matter of procedure,
asserted a right in the Central Executive at Whitehall to exer-
cise a preliminary discretion regarding the provisions of any new
statute proposed in the Local Parliament, and the claim had
been conceded. But Poyning's Law was not retrospective, and
unless the Statute of Henry with reference to judicial im-
munities and obligations had been explicitly repealed, Chancellor
Brodrick did not feel justified in acquiescing in the surrender
of a jurisdiction whereof he was the specially appointed
guardian.
On the 23rd September, 1717, it was moved in the Irish
House of Lords that the question be put to the Judges whether
an appeal lay from a decree of the Court of Exchequer in Ire-
land to the King in Parliament in Great Britain; and being put
it was resolved in the negative. From this small "rift within
the lute" arose the discord, so long memorable, between the two
jurisdictions, each claiming to be exclusive and supreme.
The Irish Peers appointed a Committee to inquire what
relief should be given to the appellant Hester Sherlock, from a
judgment against her claim upon the property of Edward
Annesley under certain deeds and bequests. They reported,
after hearing Counsel and examining witnesses, that the defen-
dant was justly indebted to the plaintiff in the sum of £1,507,
that certain lands in Kildare were chargeable with the sum, that
the Sheriff of the County was the proper officer to levy the
same; and that he should put her in possession. The Chan-
1 Case of Sherlock, Lords' Journals, Vol. II., p. 559.
2 Lords' Journals, II., 569.
216
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
cellor concurred in the decision, which was warmly supported by
his friend Archbishop Synge on national grounds; but opposed
by a minority of the Peers.
The House of Lords at Westminster subsequently heard an
appeal brought by the defendant Annesley, and sent by their
own messenger their decree to the Barons of the Exchequer at
Dublin restoring him to the unincumbered possession of his
estate. The Court, not venturing to refuse, issued an injunction
to the Sheriff of Kildare for the reinstatement of the defendant;
whereupon the Irish House of Lords summoned the Barons of
the Exchequer before them to know by whose orders they
had acted ; and remitted the fines on the Sheriff for refusing to
execute the order of the Court. The Barons (Chief Baron
Gilbert and Barons Pocklington and St. Leger) declined to
answer questions tending to criminate themselves, and were
committed to custody of Black Rod by order of the House ;
Midleton and some other Lords dissenting from this extreme
exercise of Parliamentary privilege.
Chief Secretary Webster had no sinecure in his post. But he
thought the Session would be crowned with a happy conclusion,
notwithstanding the difficulties which at the beginning of it
seemed almost insurmountable. The contest in the House of
Lords concerning their jurisdiction; the different views of
gentlemen in the House of Commons with relation to the Dis-
senters' Bill; the additional weight of half-pay and pensions on
the Establishment since the last Session; and their being
obliged to make provision for seven regiments which were not
in the Kingdom, besides the withdrawing of four more for
the designed expedition against Spain, seemed to threaten great
disturbance and opposition, and “had indeed made a great deal
of pains and courtship necessary to keep some restless spirits in
temper. So many things concurring to keep up the ferment and
to create every day new jealousies, made him, upon reflection,
think it a very important piece of news that the Public Debt and
Establishment were provided for until Michaelmas, 1721, without
any animadversion upon the pensions or the Administration.
He could not but think that the Lords had pursued their resent-
ment against the Barons of the Exchequer in a manner
which would not be very serviceable to themselves; but as he
? Lords' Journals, Vol. II., 626.
CAPTIVE JUDGES.
217
a season.
was within their reach he would avoid saying more upon the
subject."1
With the close of the Session, the captive Judges were set free ;:
but Chief Baron Gilbert, who had creditably and popularly for
seven years filled the chief post amongst them, imparted to
Sunderland his desire to exchange it for a post of less titular
dignity at Westminster. The First Lord of the Treasury remon-
strated, but in vain, and could only persuade him to hold on for
In the Cabinet there was little if any difference of
opinion on the main points at issue; and Chancellor Parker, to
end the dispute, brought in a Bill declaring the supreme appellate
jurisdiction to be in the British House of Lords. This was re-
garded in Ireland as another step towards centralisation ; and
political discontent was for a time fed by an assertion of judicial
authority in which professional rather than national suscepti-
bilities were offended. Midleton, while attending as Member
for Midhurst the discussions in St. Stephen's Chapel on the
Peerage Bill, had frequent opportunities of personal remonstrance
with Ministers against the arbitrary tenour of Parker's measure.
There is no reason to suppose that he would have objected
to the constituting a Court of Appeal, such as happily exists
in our day, wherein eminent judges of the Court of Session at
Edinburgh and of the Four Courts at Dublin have seats; and
in whose consultations their special knowledge of differential
usages and specific enactments are always certain of a hearing
before final decree. Such a tribunal would have been, next to
the Triple Crown, the safest and most solid keystone of Im-
perial Union
When half a century later the discrepant States.
of America found it difficult to agree on other terms of confeder-
ation, no jealousy amongst them on this head threatened to mar
the prospect of combination all felt to be indispensable for internal
peace and external power. But neither equity nor policy shaped the
measure adopted instead, which simply stamped out in scorn the
judicial privilege of the Irish Peers who had presumed to assert
their inherent jurisdiction. The Bill was not finally passed until
the spring of the ensuing year ;2 but no attempt was made to
question its overruling authority in Ireland.
In the two preceding reigns it had become a sort of practice
1 Webster to Delafaye, 6th August, 1719.—M1S.
6 George I.
218
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
with Government to endeavour to divert Protestant discontent
by adding new provisions to the Penal Code. Every two or
three years a Bill was brought in either at Westminster or
Dublin to prevent, as was said, the further growth of Popery.
The good sense and good humour of those who were charged
with putting in force these various schemes of outlawry was con-
stantly reproved by the Executive as unpatriotic indifference to
the alleged peril of the State and the stability of the Established
Church ; and country gentlemen who winked at the neglect of
their duty as magistrates in this respect chose to incur the
reproach of covert leanings towards Jacobitism by standing up
in Parliament against the intolerance they despised.
To tranquillise, however, the misgivings of those in Court and
Cabinet who suspected the Irish Parliament of yearnings after
legislative independency incompatible with the existing order of
things, the Attorney and Solicitor-General were directed by the
Viceroy to prepare the heads of a Bill " for the better securing the
Protestant interest in Church and State," the adoption of which
would serve to refute groundless suspicions and attest the
accuracy of Bolton's assurances that no lurking tendency to either
reaction or republicanism was to be feared. The draft, when
revised by the Chancellor, consisted of no more than a recital of
the leading clauses of the existing statutes, which few just then
were prepared to impugn. It was laid upon the table of the
Commons on the 14th of July; and after some desultory discus-
sion was suffered to pass through all the necessary stages and
remitted to the Castle for transmission to Whitehall. Ere that
was done, however, Bolton insisted on two interpolations which
changed essentially the character of the measure, against which
his best advisers expostulated in vain, but regarding which their
lips as Privy Councillors were sealed. The one would have
seriously affected the legal relations between landlord and tenant,
the other by resort to the penalty of degrading mutilation
sought to deter the Catholic priesthood from the exercise of
their religious functions. Midleton's repugnance to this bar-
barous proposal was, after repeated consultations, finally con-
firmed by a majority of those who were consulted ; and but five
officials who held their places at the will of the Executive could
be induced to countersign the measure in its altered state. With
other heads of Bills it was forwarded at ļast to the Secretary of
INIQUITOUS PROPOSAL.
219
State, with a dispatch from Bolton--the most revolting record of
the worst period of international misrule—on the plea that
liability to the punishment of branding failed to deter Seculars
or Regulars from hearing confession, celebrating marriage, or
saying Mass, and Government were told that if they wished to
eradicate Popery and disaffection nothing else would do. Few
of the Cabinet were in town; and Secretary Craggs could only
refer the iniquitous suggestion to Sunderland and Stanhope, with
anxious inquiry as to what he was to say. Chief Secretary
Webster wrote more than once urging the expediency of a
speedy return of the project :vith approval, that it might be laid
before both Houses in the form of a Bill before the prorogation,
and deprecating the omission on the mere ground of humanity
of any portion that might seem too severe.3
Stanhope was with the King in Hanover, and the corres-
pondence shows that he spurned with contempt the addition
proposed by Bolton without the cognisance of either House of
Parliament. His opinion was expressed in such terms that the
remnant of the Cabinet that remained in town were doubtful
whether he contemplated the total rejection of the measure,
or only the omission of the odious clause. Craggs wrote
again
“We are all here pretty much of an opinion that in
the orders you sent not to pass the Bill come from Ire-
land against Roman Catholics, you only meant to reject the
ridiculous clause about the priests. I have some time since
written to Lord Sunderland something of this inatter, but if
that has not procured an explanation before this reaches you,
I am in hopes an answer to this may come time enough before
the recess of the Irish Parliament to set that matter right, un-
less it is his Majesty's pleasure absolutely to reject the Bill." !
Sunderland concurred with Stanhope, and the heads of the
Bill inodified at Whitehall in accordance with their advice were
at length returned, through the Irish Under-Secretary, to his
overruled Excellency at the Castle.
In the prescribed form they were brought in by Chief Secretary
25th August, 1719.
? See Appendix.
* To Under-Secretary Delafaye, 26th August, 1719.—Irish State Papers, MS.,
5th September, &c.
+ Craggs to Stanhope, Cockpit, 22nd Sept., 1719.—AIS.
1
220
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
mons.
Webster and passed rapidly in an almost deserted House of Com-
In the Upper House an unexpected combination of in-
fluences, territorial and episcopal, arose. A clause, which the heads
of the anti-Catholic Bill originally presented to Parliament did not
comprise, had been inserted by the Viceroy and his dependents,
while passing through their hands, and not having been struck out
in England was now read for the first time by the Irish Peers. It
sought to deprive Catholic leaseholders of the power to recover
rent from their sub-lessees; and, in case of death or forfeiture,
denied all legal or equitable claim of right on the part of occupier
to the benefits of covenants regarding tenure, rent, or possession.
It was, in fact, a ruthless blow aimed at random at what yet re-
mained of legal security to the peasantry and farmers of the
lands they leased or re-let; and being retrospective it amounted
to an edict of widespread confiscation. Several of the bishops
who were implicitly relied on for support, revolted against this
new enormity. Archbishop Synge, accounting for the part they
had taken, lamented, indeed, that there were some of his order
"who would rather keep the Papists as they were in an almost
slavish subjection, than have them made Protestants, and thereby
entitled to the same liberties and privileges as the rest of their
fellow subjects.”1 His way of winning adherents was by pro-
viding glebes for the Protestant clergy, and enforcing parochial
residence, but he found only a half-hearted support among his
mitred brethren, who, nevertheless, could not be induced to abet
projects of spoliation as a substitute for missionary zeal. The
temporal Peers were equally recalcitrant, in a matter savouring
of reality so much more than the other portions of the measure.
A majority hesitated to vote against the second reading ; but in
Committee it was moved that the leasehold clause should be
omitted. The Chancellor explained that if any amendment of
the kind were made after its transmission from England and
adoption by the House of Commons, the measure would fall to
the ground for the Session. A compact body of lay and spiritual
Peers disregarded the warning, and carried the omission of the
clause, whereupon the measure was declared to be lost, a few
days before the prorogation, which, it was announced, would be
for two years. The salary of the Lord-Lieutenant was specifi-
? To Prinate Wake, 191h November, 1719.- MS.
2 Irish Lords' Journals.
VICEROY'S SALARY.
221
cally charged on the wool licences, which were, in fact, all but
prohibitory taxes imposed upon the sale of Irish wool for
English manufacture ; and the impolicy of which in depression
of trade, is chronicled in the complaint of his Excellency that in
the year 1719 they did not yield enough for his pay. In the
preceding year the Vice-Treasurer had made up the £4,000 he
was entitled to out of the general revenue, and the Duke re-
quested "that a clause might be inserted empowering him,
whenever the wool licences fell short, to make it up out of
other funds." 1
Midleton and King had long deplored the absence of officials
in many of the local departments, causing the delay of necessary
business. Of seven Commissioners of Revenue, only two were
resident, not enough to constitute a quorum.
The practice of bestowing secular, as well as ecclesiastical,
appointments in Ireland on the relatives and dependents of men
in power, without any obligation to reside, naturally evoked,
from time to time, bitter murmurs, by way of appeasing which
Bolton had allowed his Chancellor of the Exchequer to propose
a tax on absentee officials. But the produce of this illusory
check amounted to no more than £4,624; and, before quitting
the Castle, his Grace closed the book of his mal-administration
by bestowing the lucrative post of Auditor-General on his
younger son, Lord Nassau Poulett, who, it is needless to say,
did not consider himself bound to live in political exile in
Dublin.
On returning to England, his Excellency appointed Midleton,
King, and Conolly his vice-Lieutenants for carrying on the
Government. His presence was more needed just then at
Westminster to aid his colleagues in their memorable struggle
to carry the Peerage Bill; for the Poulett interest was strong
in both Houses.
The insatiable longing for class domination was memorably
bewrayed in the strange project of the Peerage Bill. So long as
the lingering prestige of hereditary Royalty checked his pre-
sumption, Sunderland was what in later times would have been
called a Radical; ready to widen sectarian enfranchisement,
and to question or even snub the prejudices and preferences of
Monarchy. But the political power of prerogative being dead,
Treasury papers Calendar, 31st May, 1720.
222
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
so was his enmity, and the whims and foibles of the Court
might be fed to fatness without scruple. Rough talk about cor-
ruption and jobbing in the House of Commons gave him little
concern, the theories of equality among Dissenters troubled him
naught, and their leading preachers were welcome to his table.
Jacobite reaction must of course be threatened or trampled out,
but for English Catholic squires he had no grudge, and of Irish
Catholic peasants no fear. All his misgivings, suspicions, and
hatred were absorbed by the few score men of his own class who
were bold enough, or thought themselves clever enough, to
wrestle with him for the mastery, and who, if they once got the
Prince of Wales into their hands, might possibly prevail in the
event of his coming to the Throne. That was a contingency to
be provided against at any cost; and no device was deemed
more sure than that of curtailing beforehand the power of creat-
ing Peers. William III, had disgusted the old English families
by ennobling too many of his Dutch adherents; and Anne had
scandalised Dukes and Earls of Norman blood by creating
twelve coronets in a batch to prop a tottering Minister on a
division. Such things must be effectually prevented in the time
to come if the predominance of the Whigs was to be perma-
nently secured, and the supremacy of the Cabinet in which
Sunderland was over-lord was to be put beyond dispute. A Bill
was accordingly prepared limiting the House of Lords to six
beyond the then existing number. Twenty-six spiritual and
194 temporal Peers, with 16 Scotch representatives, were to form
the Senate. In the reign of James there were but 176; on the
accession of Anne, 192; and at the coming of George I., 209.
In the four years of his reign there had already been added,
beside numerous promotions, 21 members to the House of
Lords. No motive less powerful or more indefensible than that
of a desire to fetter the power of his successor would have over-
come in the Royal breast the instinctive reluctance to cut down
the chief remaining flower of the prerogative; but the tempta-
tion when insidiously presented proved irresistible. No little
pains were taken to secure Irish support in various quarters.
Bolton, over-confident in his personal influence, would seem to
have engaged that Midleton would give his support as M.P. for
Midhurst. When his Excellency first spoke of it, the Irish
Chancellor did not relish the scheme, but he “refrained from
PEERAGE BILL.
223
· expressing himself strongly against it, being told that the King
approved, and that the Ministry deemed it essential to the
stability of the existing order of things. The Lord-Lieutenant
did not show him the resolutions to be moved, so he was much
in the dark." At a subsequent interview in London he told the
Duke that he would not debate or vote at St. Stephen's, but
that he was unconvinced of the reasonableness of the proposal.1
Meeting him at St. James's, Sunderland said more than this
would be expected of him, and hinted that if those in employ-
ment would not support, there must be a change of hands.
What he meant he did not expressly say, but it seemed obvious.?
Incredulous that one whom he had so long regarded as a per-
sonal friend and official adherent could diverge openly from him
on a question of importance, Sunderland called on him at
Thomas Brodrick's house in Privy Gardens and tried his
utmost to gain him over, or at least to persuade him not to
oppose. “The Whig majority,” he said, “had preserved the con-
stitution in Queen Anne's time, and this was the way to settle
it. Ridiculous, not to say mad things would be done when a
certain event happened.”. He professed great regard for Midle-
ton, and would have him repeat what passed between them to
his brother. The Chancellor desired leave to go for Ireland, as
he did not wish to be present when the Bill came down to the
Commons, but if there he must act upon his judgment. Sunder-
land said “the King would tell him his own thoughts.
The Duke of Somerset was flattered by being asked to introduce
a measure which directly tended to minister to his known pride
in his order, wherein he acknowledged only his Grace of Norfolk
as his superior in ancestral dignity. He had shut the door of
office upon himself, in a fit of temper, on account of his son-in-
law, Wyndham, whose leanings and prejudices he was not sus-
pected of sharing ; but in a moody, irritable way he had still
continued to support the Whig interest in Sussex, and West-
moreland, where he had great possessions. His advocacy of a
measure so difficult and questionable could not weigh for much;
but his territorial wealth, historic rank, and numerous con-
nections, were a gauge of triumph. To draw the Scotch
» 3
.
+ Feb., 1719.-- Brodrick MSS.
2 Ibid.
3 Mem. in Midleton's handwriting ; Brodrick MSS.
:224
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
into compliance, Argyll was asked to second the introduction
of the Bill. For his aid in compassing the Union with Scotland
he had been granted an English earldom; and for this latter
service he was to be created an English Duke. His part ful-
filled, the promise was not broken ; and for the next five-and-
twenty years his votes were recorded as those of his Grace of
Greenwich. A message from the King informed the House of
Lords that "he had so much at heart the settling the Peerage
on such a foundation as might secure the freedom and constitu-
tion of Parliaments in all future ages, that he was willing his
prerogative should not stand in the way of so great and neces-
sary a work." The Episcopal Bench could hardly fail to perceive
that the legislative voice of the Church would gain rather than
lose in relative importance from a change equally desired by
Cabinet and Court. Oxford throughout opposed the Bill on
constitutional grounds. Townshend and Cowper, freed from
official obligation, took exception to the scheme as a violation of
the Act of Union ; Sunderland, Stanhope, Poulett, Buckingham,
and Islay, with more than one of the Bishops, defended the
measure; the Dukes of Montrose and Roxburgh contending that
the interests of Scotland would be served rather than prejudiced
by the addition of nine to her representatives in the Upper House,
and that their brethren had no right to complain. On a division
eleven resolutions forming the basis of the measure were carried
by 83 to 30 votes. Nevertheless, the Scotch Lords petitioned to
be heard at the Bar in defence of their rights; but their prayer
was refused.
Ere a week elapsed the various sections of Opposition had in-
terchanged danger-signals, promptly leading to confidential
agreement, Wyndham and Shippen answering for the Tories,
Walpole and Pulteney for the unofficial Whigs; but the soul of
the movement was Steele, who had launched a new journal-
The Plebeian--wherein, with his usual vigour, he denounced the
indiscriminate disqualification of the landed gentry and richer
middle class for ennoblement, whatever their individual merits
or services might be; and called upon men of all diversities of
opinion to combine against the threatened usurpation. A
stereotyped order of nobility meant nothing less than the estab-
lishment of the worst form of oligarchic rule, without the power
or the hope of mitigation by the natural way of fresh creations.
STEELE AND ADDISON.
225
The pretence that the Monarch might work a tyrannic will by
suddenly swamping the independent Peerage was a mere delusion.
Since the Revolution the prerogative had been, by successive
statutes, so shorn of its once dangerous powers as to be no
longer an object of reasonable fear, and country gentlemen in
the Commons who should desert the interest of their order were
denounced with having in their pockets promises of being included
in the compromising batch of coronets. Steele's analogies from
the history of other States were not much to the point; and his
jibes at the few county members who dreamt of being some day
made Peers in reward for their quitting the hounds to attend the
Ministers at St. Stephen's, made more people laugh than frown.
But his constitutional reasoning was irrefutable. Addison's
skill of literary fence was invoked on the other side. In default
of better arguments, the Old Whig conjured up the danger of a
capricious creation of Peers like that in the time of Anne; and
asked why, if the number of one branch of the Legislature was
fixed, that of the other ought not to be so too? The Commons
having the power of the purse need never apprehend being over-
borne by the Upper House, or the Crown, or by both combined ;
and, affecting airs of dignity unworthy of him, Lady Warwick's
husband scoffed at The Plebeian, the author of which, "to show
himself a perfect master in the vocation of pamphlet-writing,
talked like a son of Grub Street." Steele's rejoinder has been
overpraised and overblamed, but he was naturally stung out of
his self-control at the use of terms by a friend so old and
intimate, which he could not but resent as “insolent and mean."
The quarrel grew inappeasable, but the popular tribune won.
Steele, placable as passionate, took readily to more congenial
work. The invalid at Holland House turned aside from party con-
Alict, which at heart he hated, to plan a tragedy on the death of
Socrates and a work on Christian Evidences, neither of them
adding to his fame, and The Plebeian ceased from troubling ere
the Old Whig sank to rest.
To appease Opposition, Ministers offered that the Crown
should renounce the prerogative of pardon after conviction of
felony, and the Press their privilege of Scandulum Magnatum ;
while the Commons should be declared entitled to administer an
oath to a witness at their Bar. None of these changes, however,
were carried into effect, and witnesses before the Commons con-
Q
VOL. I.
226
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
tinued to be sent to the Upper House, or the Court of Chancery,
to be sworn until 1871, when the anomaly was redressed by
statute. Sunderland would have risked the unpopularity that
must have increased by pressing the Bill upon the Commons
during the Session ; but Stanhope, always more given to yield,
succeeded in dissuading him from making the attempt until the
fall of the year. The King was impatient to go abroad, and on
the 14th of April the Foreign Secretary made the announcement
that as the tendency and intent of the provisions they pro-
posed had been somewhat misunderstood, the Cabinet had re-
solved to let the question "lie still till another opportunity."
The relations of amity between France and England were
curiously illustrated by those of the intimacy between their rulers.
Dubois, whose collegiate brevet of Abbé implied no more than
Deacon's Orders, had often tried through the Ambassador at
Rome to obtain exalted station in the Church. Cardinal Trè-
mouille, Archbishop of Cambray, sent him only allocutions to
reform his private life, and Père Lafiteau, the soul of the French
Embassy, deprecated earnestly the impudent claim. Neverthe-
less, when the Regent was full of wine and lavish of promises
that the Minister should have whatsoever he would, Dubois
asked that he should be named for the next Cardinal's Hat.
Even Orleans started at such a demand: "The only Chapeau
Rouge that would suit you would be a Bonnet de Fou.” On New
Year's Day the undaunted applicant once more pressed his suit.
News had come that the Archbishop was dead, and he asked to
be named his successor. "But you never had even Priest's
Orders." Banter and serious objection on the part of his High-
ness were quenched in importunity, and it ended in a tipsy
promise on oath that the shameless Abbé should have the See.
In vain upon the morrow the Prince sought to be released from
an obligation which he feared would render him ridiculous. A
bright idea, Dubois said, came to his aid. “I will obtain from
the King of England a pressing letter by which you will be
solicited to grant me this Mitre as a recompense for the services
I have rendered in the Triple and Quadruple Alliances.”
Orleans exclaimed, "It would be ludicrous that a Protestant
King should ask for a Catholic Archbishopric for an Abbé of
The candidate, however, insisted that a letter
drafted by him and signed by George I., would have the desired
your sort !”
ORLEANS AND DUBOIS.
227
1
effect. The form was forthwith prepared and forwarded to
London, with letters from the writer to his friends Stanhope,
Stair, Destouches, and all who could make the wheel go round.
The Secretary was too anxious to secure the good offices of his
old confidant in preserving the alliance they had conjointly
brought about, to hesitate. With the help of Sunderland, he
obtained the assent of the King, and the expectant prelate re-
cords with satisfaction that in due time the Royal recommenda-
tion came back from England with no addition but the Sign
Manual. Thus equipped, he sought the Regent, who said, “I
consent because I must make you Archbishop; but who will
you get to make you a Priest, not having taken clerical vows ?”
He found little difficulty, however, in having himself formally
ordained and thereby made eligible to misappropriate the Crozier
of Cambray.
The Regent, to propitiate the Court of Madrid, and relying on
his influence in England, undertook that whatever George I. had
promised should be performed. The Queen of Spain took the
King's letter from her cabinet and showed it to the French
Ambassador, and a special Envoy was sent to London to ask
for the redemption of the Regent's pledge. The counter feeling
had by that time waxed so strong that the Cabinet dared not
recognise the unaccepted proffer as binding on the part of his
Majesty ; but Stanhope took occasion in the House of Lords to
hint at the possibility of a Bill to give the Crown a discretion to
yield what was asked on certain conditions. An outbreak of
angry feeling warned the Secretary not to proceed, and he
advised Sir Luke Schaub at Paris that just then the demand
would be futile, and would probably end only in an enactment
that would prevent Ministers ever inaking the attempt. Stan-
hope himself visited Paris, and presented a letter from the King
acknowledging his original suggestion, in order to avert a war,
but that the conditions not having then been fulfilled, he could
not renew it in the existing temper of the nation. Nevertheless,
Stanhope, in a despatch to Craggs from Hanover, recommended
the Lords Justices to consider whether Gibraltar might not be
exchanged for Florida or one half of St. Domingo if the com-
pensatory cession could be secured. Spain refused, and the
design fell to the ground.
? 28th March.-MS.
1 Dubois Mem.
Q 2
228
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
“ Dear
Vague rumours prevailed that M. de Torcy was scheming a
secret Treaty between France and Spain, and Newcastle, who
was covetous of being informed of all that was going on in other
departments, learning that Stanhope had left suddenly for Paris
without saying why, wrote a wheedling letter to his private
secretary to beg that he would tell him all about it.
Charles had been so exceedingly good to him that he could not
forbear troubling him on every occasion. He might be assured,
however secret the objects might be, he would not disclose them
to anyone living.” 1
The Dutch had made it a condition of their joining the Quad-
ruple Alliance that they should enjoy the same freedom of trade
with Sweden as ourselves; but, having delayed their accession
until after our Treaty with Sweden was signed, the Government
could only direct Carteret, at Stockholm, to use the utmost
efforts to bring about that object. The young diplomatist
speedily proved that he was well chosen for the embassage of
peace; and though at first he was unable to propitiate the way-
ward ruler of Muscovy, his address in conciliating the other
maritime Powers, and the care he took to let his hand be over-
seen, spread by degrees the general persuasion that the English
Cabinet sincerely meant what they said—the tranquillity of the
Baltic, and the mutual security and liberty of trade. It was a
merit which, like too many others, found little appreciation save
in the abstract, and so little was thought of a policy merely
useful, that it was deemed expedient to strengthen the squadron
under Norris, and carefully repel the imputation that Great
Britain could be wheedled into engagements of mere reciprocity.
Peace between Denmark and Sweden was subsequently brought
about by Carteret, acting on instructions from home, and Russia
found herself isolated among the Northern Powers. The Czar
refused any offer of mediation from Norris or Carteret, and
letters from the former to the commandant of Revel were, by
order from St. Petersburg, sent back unopened. At the same
time an invading force under Mengden landed on the Swedish
coast, burnt the town and forty adjacent villages, and, having
ravaged the country round, departed.
The summer and autumn of 1719 were devoted to fitting out
expeditions, in concert with that of France, against Spain. A
1 MS.
FALL OF ALBERONI.
229
fleet was despatched from Spithead with 4,000 men on board,
under Lord Cobham, to surprise Vigo, known to be without a
arrison, and to capture the remains of the arms and stores that
had escaped Ormond's expedition. In Sicily no better fortune
attended the forces of Spain, and the warlike Cardinal sent an
Embassy to Paris in quest of peace. Dubois persuaded the
Regent to refuse negotiations without previous sanction from
Vienna and London ; and the diplomatic venue, as lawyers
would say, being transitory, the proposal was remitted forthwith
to Hanover. Thence Stanhope replied that the preliminary
conditions of peace must be the dismissal of Alberoni, foras-
much as he had proved, regardless of treaties, fathomless in
dissimulation, pitiless to Princes with whom his master was not
at feud, and boundless in his ambition to reconstruct the map of
Christendom. Various influences were brought into concurrence
for the overthrow of the friendless Minister, and when all was
ready he received, without warning, a letter of dismissal from
Philip, who never saw him more, and who bade him quit the
Kingdom within twenty-one days. His small offences were
forgotten in the recollections of the great things he had done,
and his levée ere he left Madrid was more crowded than any in
the height of his power. But Alberoni was crushed and cast
away, for was he not a gardener's son? Stanhope was glad to
hear of his fall, as an essential step in the good work of peace.
M. Grimaldi, who succeeded Alberoni, sought the first oppor-
tunity of reconciliation. The Regent became the active mediator
between the Courts of London and Madrid, and once more
hinted the restoration of Gibraltar as best fitted to soothe the
wounded pride of a people but yesterday intoxicated with
dreams of recovering mediæval greatness. George I., who held
fast by the acquisition of Bremen, cared little about giving up
the great fortress; and his Foreign Minister having recently
assented to its restitution, could not abruptly affect to treat it as
impossible, provided Parliament could be convinced of the value
of some equivalent. Ministers instinctively shrank, however,
from broaching the question at Westminster, and the presence of
external danger having palpably ceased, Stanhope preferred to
adjourn from time to time any definite language, while using con-
ciliatory terms on every other point in dispute. His policy was so
i General Stanhope to Dayrolle, IIth Dec., 1719.--MS.
1
230
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
obviously aimed at securing the interests of the Kingdom that he
had seldom any difficulty in bringing either his Royal master or
his Cabinet colleagues to agree with him. In the unworthier duty
of submitting for Sign Manual the daily increasing number of
jobs and exactions his patience was sorely tried. The summer
visit of the Court to Göhrdt was the golden opportunity for
local extortion ; while the close of the Session and the desertion
of London by unprofessional politicians was equally propitious
for jobbing. The Secretaries of State condoled with each other
on their helplessness to check the evil of which they were
ashamed. In fits of vexation the General would sometimes
threaten to resign, and plausible Craggs would rejoin that he
was ready to stand out for the honour of the public whatever
happened. But all that is clear now is that in their time the
warp and woof of Government patronage were thickly embossed
with corruption whichever way the Executive shuttle flew, and
that Ministers bore the infliction with dutiful fortitude. Let the
younger Secretary of State tell the tale :
"You see that at the rate we are now going on, Lord Stan-
hope is on the point of resigning every day. It is possible that
his friends may continue in, out of pure respect to the King;
but without hoping to do the least good, and thus becoming
certain victims to a useless point of honour. Believe me, my
friend, consult with the Duchess and Lord Stanhope and exert
your utmost efforts; for nothing worse can happen than what I
foresee. My most humble and sincere compliment to the
Duchess. Show her this letter, which will save her the trouble of
one from me. It is incredible what prejudice all these sales of
Offices and other underhand dealings occasion; for, to complete
our misfortunes, I have remarked that there is no distinction of
persons or circumstances; Jacobites, Tories, Papists, on the
Exchange or in the Church, by land or by sea, during the
session or in the recess--nothing is objected to provided there
is money.
You see that I write pretty freely to you.
I
have burnt your letters. Should you show mine there is not a
thought of which I am ashamed, nor any consequences that I
dread. But as long as we are in the boat we inust pull with all
our might, and meet difficulties only to surmount them. I
desire you will continue your information with the same
punctuality. Among the very few reasons which induce me to
CRAGGS ON JOBBING.
231
· support the burthen of business as well as I am able, the hope
of being one day of some use to you is not the least.” 1
Would Craggs, with all his reliance on Marlborough House,
have seemed to trifle thus with official fortune had he not been
successfully redeeming the time by securing allotments in
South Sea Stock? The spirit of the inner Cabinet was vexed
at the prevalence of jobbing all round, that profited nothing to
Government in general or exalted persons in particular; and
they would fain have kept the German dependents of the Court
in more awe of the frown of the chief of the ladies there. Craggs
wrote implicitly what Sunderland bid him. Imperium in imperio
could only be kept up in vital force by the unfailing interchange
of candid thoughts between mutual confidants when near or
afar; and the recognition of like aims and misgivings by one
another.
Although no rupture had actually taken place with Russia,
the relations between the two Governments were often strained.
Bernsdorff and his colleagues lost no opportunity of keeping
alive distrust of the Czar, and urging upon the Elector the
policy of drawing closer to Sweden. Without openly adopting
their views, the Cabinet were understood to be passively favour-
able, and Lord Carteret's mission to Stockholm was confessedly
intended as one of sympathy, if not of support, to the new
Queen. M. Veselofsky told Stanhope that even a defensive
alliance with Sweden would be considered by Russia a declara-
tion of war. The Secretary of State complained, on the other
hand, of something more than hospitalities shown to the
partisans of the Pretender, some of whom had been given
commissions in the service of the Czar; and likewise of the
restrictions on trade recently imposed without necessity or ex-
planation, to the surprise and injury of British merchants. See-
ing the friendly aid we had rendered during the war in several
important respects, more consideration might have been shown ;
but if there was no wish to make a quarrel, he was ready to
negotiate fresh terms of a reciprocal treaty of commerce that
must be beneficial to both nations. The Tartar envoy asked
haughtily what services great Britain had rendered under the
flag of neutrality during recent hostilities. Stanhope replied
that without interposition or protest by us, Peter had been
To Under-Secretary Schaub, then at Hanover, 30th June, 1719.
232
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
allowed to make great conquests, and to establish his authority
on the shores of the Baltic. Veselofsky rejoined that Great
Britain had suffered only what she had no power to prevent,
and that her fleet had hitherto been employed to protect the
integrity of Denmark and her own trade in those waters, but in
no sense to further the interests of Muscovy. London mer-
chants engaged in the Baltic trade were worked upon by
agents of the Russian Embassy to deprecate war; and were
propitiated by promises that if it were averted, relaxations of
high duties would be made in favour of English, Dutch, and even
Swedish traders. A deputation to Whitehall inquired how
they ought to act, and were assured that they might safely
freight their vessels as before without apprehending hostilities;
but on their recurring to their clandestine adviser he gave them
plainly to understand that a rupture was imminent and, con-
sequently, their danger great. Meanwhile Carteret had been
instructed to offer mediation between his Czarish Majesty and
the Queen of Sweden; and to intimate that the Regent of
France was ready to become a party to a general pacification.
Lord Whitworth was sent to Berlin to bring about a better
understanding between Prussia and Hanover. But Bernsdorff
wished his family estates on the Elbe to be transferred to the
Electorate ; and for this he was ready to prolong negotia-
tions indefinitely. Stanhope assiduously strove to baffle his
design.
Count Tolstoi did his utmost to dissuade Frederick William I.
from adopting the treaty, and a curious minute is preserved in
the secret archives recording his Majesty's reluctance to seem
indifferent to the interest of his great neighbour, with whom he
desired to live in friendship. “Would to God that I had not
promised to conclude the treaty. It is an evil spirit which has
moved me. Now we shall be ruined, which is what my false
friends wish. May God take me from this evil world before I
sign it, for here on earth there is nothing but falsehood and
deceit! I will explain to Golofkin that I must wear the cloak on
both shoulders. To have the Czar at hand is my interest, and
if I give him money, I can have as many troops as I wish. I
pray God to stand by me if I must play an odd part. I sign the
treaty, but I shall not keep it ; and when I throw away the
mask shall tell the whole world how false friends have treated
BERNSDORFF.
233
me.” 1
The treaty with England was signed June, 1719, that
with Sweden soon afterwards. By a subsequent act, to which
Denmark also was a party, the successor of Charles XII. re-
nounced all conquests in Germany. Bremen and Verden were
annexed to Hanover; Livonia, Esthonia, and Finland were
restored to Sweden.
Bernsdorff
, resenting his exclusion from all share in the
direction of English politics, retained a certain ascendancy in
Hanoverian affairs, which greatly troubled the Ministry. While
they were strengthening the guarantees of peace, which the
Quadruple Alliance promised, by seeking to reconcile differences
between other Powers and Prussia, the aged Chancellor was
clandestinely negotiating, in the Elector's name, for certain
advantages desired by the Emperor at the expense of the
ambitious House of Brandenburg, regarding whom the Aulic
Council already cherished not unfounded fears. Bernsdorff
relied on his being able to secure his master's assent, when
ratified by Austria ; and, believing himself strong enough to
effect his purposes, he kept them dark from the Secretary of
State and the Duchess, whose information was derived from
means of espionage neither could avow. The Envoy of Eng-
land at Berlin, resisted all attempts to win him over to the
Hanoverian scheme; and at last things looked so critical that
Sunderland's presence at Göhrdt became earnestly desired by
both the Minister and the Mistress, who were entirely in
accord.
“No scheme was ever framed so impracticable, so dishonour-
able, nor so pernicious as what this old man has in his head.
He proposes, beside part of the spoils of Prussia for his Master,
to get for himself certain Baillages situated about Wismar.
continue to carry it fairly towards him, and to live just as we
used to do. One would have hoped that what had lately been
done for him would have satisfied him ; but you may depend
upon it, he will do us all the mischief he can. I think that we
shall weather this danger, and it may then deserve consideration
whether we should endeavour to get him left here when the
King returns. The Duchess is bitterly incensed against him,
and would go any length; but I advise her to do nothing
precipitately till we know the sense of our friends in England.
1 Life of Droyen, quoted by Schuyler.
234
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
"1
I have learned what I know of it in such a manner as I cannot
acquaint the King with ; but I have let her Grace into it, and
by her assistance I hope we shall baffle it. You will see by my
despatch to Craggs, the confused situation of our affairs. The
old man grows worse.
Sunderland congratulated his colleague on overcoming so
many difficulties, and announced to him the taking of St.
Sebastian by the French. Another man-of-war of 70 guns had
been sent to reinforce Norris and make him strong enough to
deal with the Muscovites, who “though more numerous were
but sad wretches at manœuvring a ship; and their case, if
there were an action, would be like that of the Spaniards” off
Syracuse. 2
He rejoiced at the Treaty with Sweden, which would enable
the allied fleets to join in crushing that of the Czar. He was
provoked at the difficulties made by Norris, but not surprised,
never expecting better from him, "for he was one of those
unreasonable, blustering men that made a great noise and were
capable of doing nothing. For God's sake let positive orders
go to him forthwith to join the Swedes, and not lose the oppor-
tunity now the Czar's fleet was in a pound in the river of
Stockholm. This was the opinion of the Lords Justices; and
if the Admiral should persist in making his difficulties, the
King should send express for Sir John Jennings to take the
command. Compliments to the good Duchess.” 3
Somewhat later Stanhope was felicitated on the signing of
the Prussian Treaty, which crowned his diplomatic successes
in the North as well as the South, and made Great Britain
Mistress of the affairs of the Baltic, for which he would get
great credit as being the projector and founder of the peace.
Throughout his career, Stanhope was the firm and faithful
friend of an anti-sectarian policy. He was ever watchful of
opportunity to do something that would mitigate the hardships
under which quiet and loyal Catholics laboured. The fears and
enmities of Party knew no discrimination ; every Catholic was
said to be a Jacobite, and every Jacobite a rebel. Foreign
emissaries drove a perilous but desultory trade in disaffection ;
1 To Sunderland, August, 1719.
2 Sunderland to Stanhope, 31st July, 1719.
3 Ibid., 4th August, 1719.
CATHOLIC ESTATES.
235
but without pecuniary supplies from France or Spain, their
machinations only resulted in bringing them into trouble. The
Secretary of State had such confidence in the fidelity of the
French Regent, and so little fear of Spain, that he resolved
to try whether the wealthier and better educated Catholics
might not be detached from the desperate cause of the
Stuarts.
A return of the estates of Roman Catholics in England
and Wales, stated the annual value (exclusive of demesne
lands) to be £382,775; and if they were compelled to pay on
two-thirds this would yield a considerable sum. There were
some four or five hundred persons who had not set forth the
rental of their properties, which a proposed law would oblige
them to sell lest they should bear local help in future dis-
affection. I Stanhope recoiled from the undiscriminating in-
justice and purblind oppression he was unable to avert, and
he strove in other ways to make some amends. He succeeded
in engaging the Emperor's interposition with the Pope to pub-
lish a Decree on behalf of British subjects, whereby they might
take the Oath of Allegiance in a form not impinging on Catholic
faith or morals. With this view, a confidential paper was pre-
pared for approval by leading Catholics in England setting
forth the conditions of submission and fealty, without whose
observance they could not hope for any relaxation of the Penal
Laws; and a copy of which was taken by Secretary Craggs to
a conference, where it was approved by the Duke of Norfolk,
Earl Waldegrave, Mr. Charles Howard, and other eminent
persons of their communion by the advice of the Rev. Dr.
Strickland. It was forwarded to Vienna and Rome; and orders
were sent to the Nuncio at Brussels for the publication of an
Oath disclaiming a belief in the power of the Church to depose
Princes. One of the stipulations was the removal of Cardinal
Gualtieré, a known Jacobite, who assumed the function of Pro-
tector of England ; and another was an engagement to suspend
any Bishop within the realm who should give just offence to
the Government. But the negotiation came to nought, and was
not renewed for half a century.
During the recess rumours prevailed that the Peerage Bill
would be revived in the following Session. Thomas Brodrick
The return is signed J. Cosins, 19th January, 1719.—MS., Record Office.
236
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
advised his brother that his presence at Westminster would be
both advisable and necessary, though he felt that it would not be
a matter of pleasure or satisfaction to some. He thought the
Peerage Bill would be resumed. The attempt had put the
people in every part of the Kingdom into such a ferment as
might (at least, in his opinion, should make the great men con-
sider well before they added fuel to a fire already kindled. But,
elated with Stanhope's diplomatic success, the Cabinet thought
they would be strong enough to carry their scheme for divesting
the Crown of its chief remaining prerogative. Newcastle was
glad to find that Sunderland and Stanhope were all for pushing
the Bill.
Everything ought to be prepared that would be an induce-
ment. Craggs would school them that this Bill was as good as
could be, a solid advantage to the party, and agreeable to the
public advantage. He was not of the same opinion respecting
the repeal of the Septennial Bill, for he thought they would
evidently lose much more than they would gain by it. He was
sure it would not make the Peerage Bill go down better. Some
who were very good friends to the latter would thoroughly oppose
the former, and though they had but small chance with some
lords, yet that undoubtedly would make them the more deter-
mined: He had taken the liberty to tell Lord Sunderland, when
he dropped something of that kind, that he found it had dis-
pleased some of their friends. The merit of having settled a
universal peace in Europe would make the King so popular that
he might have whatever he pleased, and his steady adherence to
the Whig interest must and would make that unanimous on
their side. He was of opinion that Government would not fail
of a better Parliament than the present, providing that they did
not disoblige the Party by parting with it sooner than its time.
He would undertake himself for the maintenance of sixteen votes ;
many others would do the same, and if on such an occasion the
Prince would think it worth while to use some proper method,
they could not fail. The great point he thought they ought to
aim at was that there should be but two parties, that for and
that against the Government; and by a new election Mr. Wal-
pole, his friends, and his party would be so incorporated with
the Jacobites that they would have but little difficulty in dealing
1 Rt. Hon. T. Brodrick, M.P., from Peper Harow, 30th Aug., 1719.-MS.
PEERAGE BILL AGAIN.
237
with them.1 Sunderland and Stanhope would probably have
been willing to purchase the Peerage Bill with the repeal of the
Septennial Act; while Newcastle and others of the party were
reluctant to incur once more the heavier tax of frequent elec-
tions. Government resorted to every method during the autumn
calculated to prevent independent Members losing their way.
Inducements, we are told, were freely lavished, promises and
threats were alternately employed.
They declared that the inevitable consequence of the rejection
of the Bill would be the ruin of the Administration.
few of their best supporters were incredulous; and even among
the holders of office some proved inexorable. Chancellor Midle-
ton had incurred the distrust and disfavour of the Lord-Lieu-
tenant by the countenance he had given in the Irish Parliament
to the rejection of his Excellency's Bill to prevent the further
growth of Popery; and he made no secret of his continued
aversion to the Peerage Bill. But, on questions so critical, the
most remarkable disclosure of the state of the Ministerial mind
is that contained in a letter of Stanhope's from Hanover on the
eve of the Session, owning, with candour almost feminine, his.
readiness for one to give up the Septennial Act (not yet three
years old), for sake of the Peerage Bill, and confessing his
private belief that, after all the fight they had made for it, that
memorable effort of legislation was not really worth keeping or
capable of being eventually kept. If their friends demurred to
surrendering the extension they had given themselves of their
legislative lease, he was ready to hold by it; but could they not
be converted back to the faith as it was in Triennialism? What-
ever their differences might be in Cabinet or party, let them
agree to be unanimous, for such a chance would never occur
again, and they all knew how much their good master had it at
heart, for reasons especially his own. On the plea of showing
how entirely George I. was in the hands of his Minister, Sunder-
land demanded the Garter and it was forthwith given him.
From Hanover Stanhope wrote that Lord Stair, contrary to his
custom, assured him confidently that Spain would speedily sub-
mit to terms. Even the Czar was said to put water in his
wine. “ Thus we have a reasonable prospect of peace both in the
? Newcastle to Stanhope, 14th October, 1719.--MS.
2 To his brother, 21st Nov., 1719.--MS.
238
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
South and in the North before next spring. This situation of
affairs will probably put our friends in good humour at the open-
ing of Parliament, and it seems to us here very advisable to
make the best use possible of this good turn by getting the
Peerage Bill passed, which, if dropped or delayed, must in my
poor opinion be looked upon as lost for ever. I beg of you to
think of what has been suggested from hence touching the Sep-
tennial Act. If you think we can carry the Peerage Bill without
the assistance of so strong an argument ad hominein as the con-
tinuing the present House will be to them, it will be pretty in-
different to me whether we meddle with the Septennial Act or
not, though I will confess to your Grace that I think it for the
interests of our country to repeal it if it stood singly upon its
own merits. But however that may be, I shall readily submit
my opinion touching it to our friends, because I think there is
no danger in delaying it. On the contrary, I am persuaded that
it will, at some time or other, force its way. But the Peerage
Bill is of a very different nature. I think we must carry it now
or never, since it will probably never happen again, that both a
King and a Ministry will be for it. Nobody can be so mad
as to think of proposing any fixed resolution upon matters of
that consequence without knowing accurately the sense of friends
in England. If what is designed as a service to this House of
Commons and the Whig Party be taken otherwise by them, it
must undoubtedly be dropped ; but if they are against repealing
the Septennial Act I shall have very little hope of succeeding in
the Peerage Bill. When you shall see our good master you will
learn from himself how much he has at heart not to be baffled a
second time in this matter. I am very glad to find your Grace
so sanguine upon the choice of a new Parliament; but it will
come too late if the Peerage Bill be not passed in this. If there
be any difference of opinion among us it seems to be which is
the best and most certain way to come at it; but all private
opinions must submit to what appears to be the sense of the
bulk of our friends in the House of Commons.” 1
Exulting in the triumph of their foreign policy, the Cabinet
indulged in accents of patriotic joy. From the Throne they
told Parliament that “It had pleased Almighty God so to
strengthen our arms that we might reasonably promise ourselves
Stanhope to Newcastle, 271h Oct., 1719.-MS. British Museum.
WALPOLE'S PAMPHLET.
239
to reap very soon the fruits of our successes.” On the 25th of
November the Duke of Buckingham reintroduced the Peerage
Bill, and a few days later it was read a third time without a
division and sent down to the Commons. Ministers, over-con-
fident in their strength, proceeded to debate their memorable
project without any usual mustering of supporters; while ener-
getic means were employed by Walpole and Pulteney-knit
firmly for once with their habitual opponents, Shippen, Wynd-
ham, and Bromley—to rally resistance to a charge which it was
only doubtful who amongst them hated it most. Jekyll and
West lent all the aid of their learning to the cause, and Steele
was versatile and vigorous as ever.
The measure, they said, had its origin in no temporary need of
Ministerial strength in the Upper House, as was plainly shown
by the unanimity of its reception, but in a design permanently
to alter the balance of the Legislature. The strongest argument
against it was that it would not only be a discouragement to
virtue and merit, but would subvert the constitution by causing
one of the three Powers, now depending on one another, to pre-
ponderate in the scale. The Crown was dependent upon the
Commons by the power of granting money; the Commons were
dependent on the Crown by the power of dissolution ; the Lords
would now be made independent of both. Was casual abuse of
prerogative a sufficient reason for annihilating it? Under that
consideration, the power of dissolving Parliaments ought to be
entirely taken away, because that power had been more abused
than any other. How could the Lords expect the Commons to
give their concurrence to a Bill by which they and their posterity
were to be for ever excluded from the Peerage? If the pretence
of this measure were that it would tend to secure the freedom of
Parliament, there were many steps more important and less
equivocal, such as the discontinuance of bribes and pensions.
That it would secure the independence of Parliament they totally
denied; it would secure a great preponderance to the Peers; it
would form them into a compact impenetrable phalanx by giving
them the power to exclude, in cases of extinction and creation,
all persons from their body who might be obnoxious to them. If
gentlemen would not be convinced by argument, at least let them
not shut their ears to the example of former times ; let them
recollect that the overweening disposition of the great Barons to
240
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
aggrandise their own dignity led them to exclude the lesser
Barons; and to that circumstance might be fairly attributed the
sanguinary wars which so long desolated the country.
Walpole, in a pamphlet entitled “Thoughts of a Member of
the Lower House," &c., in temperate but telling plainness of
language, argued effectively against the project. But reluctance
was shown by many to oppose the Government, as was said, in-
effectually, and strenuous efforts were made to bring about a
compromise, if not surrender. In a conference at Devonshire
House, Walpole found at first but little response to his energetic
appeals; and, as Speaker Onslow used to tell, sharp altercation
arose. Devonshire, Townshend, and Cowper were known to
take Walpole's view, and he declared that though he stood alone
he would continue to oppose at every stage. His trenchant per-
sistency prevailed, and before the second reading the aspect of
matters was visibly changed. He had no heartier support than
that of Duchess Sarah, with whom Sunderland had no longer
the influence of a son-in-law. But had it been otherwise, the
sagacity and the pride of the woman would assuredly have made
her take the wise and constitutional side in the controversy, and,
having taken it, to back it with all the influence at her command.
And if anyone ventured to remind her Grace that Royalty leant
the other way, nothing would have been more likely to put a fine
edge on her opposition than the hint of legislative dictation by
the ill-informed foreign gentleman at St. James's, whom she
used to call "her neighbour George."
Impatient at the prospect of resiliency where compliance had
been arrogantly counted on, the new Lord Keeper was said to
have given vent to his amazement in terms more savouring of
petulance than expostulation. But Midleton, after all the argu-
ments he had heard in public and private, thought Parliament
ought to forbear from such a fundamental change, and the
Member for Stockbridge, without whose sympathy he seldom
thought or acted, concurred in his decision.
Once more the head of the Treasury tried his power of per-
sonal suasion with the Irish Chancellor, but alternate blandish-
ments and reproaches failed to bring the Member for Midhurst
to, compliance ; and he calmly intimated that his sense of duty
1 Letter to Mr. Hare with reference to her subsequent quarrel with Walpole,
September, 1726.
CLASS STRONGER THAN PARTY.
241
1
being clear he must abide the consequence, whatever it might
The imperious Minister, unused to tolerate what he chose
to deem insubordination, forgot alike dignity and prudence.
“His captain's heart
Which, in the scuffles of great fights, had burst
The buckles on his breast, reneged all temper.”
In the vehemence of passion, a blood vessel in his head gave
way; he was with difficulty removed to his house, and futile
expostulation was not resumed.
Though Walpole did not, in so many words, accuse the
Cabinet of a design to divest the Prince of Wales of this branch
of his inheritance, it was universally believed that the King's
jealousy and aversion had been played upon in order to obtain
his consent, and every shaft feathered with this suspicion went
home.
Class feelings thus aroused proved stronger than the bribes
and bonds of party. Unplaced Whigs combined with displaced
Tories to resist an innovation that would have tended to bar the
way of individual ambition. The Outer Guild, though generally
docile enough under dictation, rallied to the flag of mutiny, and
the Inner Guild was discomfited and disowned.
Lechmere, Craggs, and Aislabie, not yet tottering to his fall,
did what in them lay to rally the supporters of Government, but
they numbered on a division no more than 177 in a crowd, rarely
known, of 450 Members. The blow was crushing, and the victory
complete. Walpole had saved his order, and from that day his
personal importance was ensured.
Brodrick Correspondence, IV.--/
MS.
VOL. I.
R
242
CHAPTER VII.
GRAFTON VICEROY.
1720-24.
THE
Grafton hesitates about going to Ireland - Official Absenteeism charac-
teristic of the Time-Judges and Bishops not to be made from “Natives"
—Prohibition of Irish Linens-Madam Kilmansegge to be made a
Denizen prior to Ennoblement-Wood's Half-pence-Precedents—The
Customs Board Petition against the new Medium-Boarding a Vessel
in Cork Harbour and seizing the “Mock Money"__The Irish Lords and
Commons address the King:- Treasury Commission to analyse the
Tokens-Division in the Cabinet—The Brodricks-Walpole and Grafton
-Exemplification of the Patent-Brodrick's son moves a Vote of Cen-
sure -No Popery Bill-Position of Midleton-- The Drapier's Letters.
HE choice of the young Duke of Grafton for Viceroy proved
unfortunate.
In a conversation with Thomas Brodrick, his Grace asked
when he must go over. Would not the people be as well satisfied
with Lords Justices, of whom his brother Midleton was one?
But "the bait did not cover the hook," and Brodrick replied
that “people were always best pleased when a Chief Governor
spent as much time among them as his Majesty's affairs would
admit of,” and everything would go easy if he did what was
right. His Grace rejoined by calling him a Whiteboy; 1 a term
which, however used in banter, shows what was thought at the
Cockpit of those who were not sufficiently tractable in their
Irish politics. The use of an epithet then comparatively un-
known in a quarter so remote from that of its origin can only
be accounted for by recollecting that Grafton had lived on terms
of intimacy with the Brodricks, not only in England, but in
Ireland, when serving as one of the Lords Justices there. It had
still but a local significance in the districts where the peasantry,
i Thomas Brodrick to the Irish Chancellor, 23rd June, 1720.—MS.
ABSENTEE VICEROY.
243
stung to frenzy by the arbitrary exaction of tolls or exorbitant
rents, or the infliction of penalties still harder to bear, combined
for lawless vengeance, and roved at midnight wearing white bands,
or their shirts over their frieze coats. The extensive property in
Cork from which the Chancellor took his title, and which was
managed by him for his elder brother, had never been disturbed
by these alarms; and the tillers of the soil dwelt thereon in peace
and safety. Like every wise and humane landlord, Midleton
deplored the violence and cruelty wrought in hours of darkness
elsewhere; but deprecated not the less firmly resort to indis-
criminate measures of prædial or sectarian repression unaccom-
panied by practical measures of social and industrial justice to
the appendant realm.
Grafton could not be mistaken in what was expected of him by
his colleagues while holding the Irish portfolio. How often he
should visit Ireland and how long he should tarry there was left
to his own discretion, and he exercised it by staying for the most
part at home, and attending the meetings at the Cockpit, where
decisions were always to be taken on Irish questions—not at the
Castle of Dublin. Poyning's Law made this imperative regarding
local legislation; and the Cabinet had come to the resolution
that in every important matter of patronage, taxation, or garrison,
their Lieutenant-General and nominal governor of Ireland should
make known to them unreservedly every circumstance of each
case, and should loyally carry into effect their instructions. His
inexperienced Grace probably believed that these functions might
be more agreeably performed in frequent visits to town from
Euston; and that his official labours would be lessened if he were
represented on the spot by three such deputies as Midleton, King,
and Conolly ; each of whom knew more about men and things
requiring to be dealt with than he could affect to possess, each
of whom had a way of his own of looking at affairs; but whose
unanimity when they agreed and said so in writing inight well
give weight to his report and suggestion in Council. Be this as
it may, we know that he did not cross the Channel till August,
1721, and after a sojourn of five months, that he resumed his
absentee Viceroyalty, going over for the second and last time in
four years on occasions of extreme urgency. But absenteeism
was a characteristic feature of provincial rule. Prelates, judges,
and commanding officers were only expected to dwell in the
R 2
244
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
tributary realm until they had made their fortunes; and many
of them returned to enjoy them in their native land. Most of
the pensions charged on the Irish Establishment were to persons
who had never set foot in the country; and a great many Mem-
bers of the Upper House never made their appearance there,
being only Irish Peers in the sense that they were not British
nobles. Wake grieved over the reports continually furnished him
by his Episcopal correspondents in Ireland. Canonical resi-
dence was comparatively rare. Thoughtful men among the laity
lamented, and thoughtless men among them laughed at the un-
reality of a system that was neither indigenous nor missionary;
but there was no one in the Cabinet acquainted with the actual
condition of things; and if clerical appointments were sinecures,
might they not as well be given to graduates of Oxford or Cam-
bridge as to graduates of Dublin University? But the system
was hardly reduced to one of smooth-working organisation until,
on the death of Primate Lindsay, Boulter was transferred from
Bristol to Armagh, and instructed to carry into effect the desires
and intentions of his patrons with reference to the disposal of
Church preferment. Sunderland had made some amends for his
own pro-consular neglect. But Grafton said that "he had carried
the practice too far by choosing out of the natives most of the
judges, and the bishops too, which had been attended with very
mischievous consequences to the English interest.”
His Excellency set himself accordingly to enforce the opposite
rule. The Deanery of Down, one of the richest in the Kingdom,
fell vacant, and the Princess of Wales asked and obtained it for
Berkeley, whose writings had been commended to her notice by
Hoadly and Clark, and with whose elevation of thought and
earnestness in pleading for the helpless, she had been greatly
impressed. But Grafton, asserting that the gift of all ecclesias-
tical dignities was in him, refused his assent, and appointed
instead one of his own chaplains; and the author of Alciphron
had to be content with the less valuable Deanery of Derry.
In compliance with the prayer of petitions from certain manu-
facturers of the finer descriptions of linen, in 1719, a committee
of the Commons at Westminster recommended that the wearing
of “stained or printed fabrics” brought from Ireland should be
prohibited. With a view to prevent this point being carried,
Midleton wrote to his brother confidentially by Mr. Ward, a
IRISH SAIL-CLOTH.
245
Member of the Irish Commons, remonstrating against the pre-
tence that a bargain had been made between the two Legis-
latures when the woollen trade was sacrificed, in order that
Ireland should betake herself exclusively to the making of
coarse or plain linen cloths. New branches of "the linen
manufactures had begun to spread southward, and turned to
good advantage to some parts of Munster, and would do
more so from time to time. He did hope and suppose they
had no view toward the taking away from that part of the King-
dom, which had suffered so much already in their woollen manu-
factures, the little remains of that trade which they still enjoyed,
and upon which great numbers maintained their families.” I
A remonstrance so reasonable was naturally brought to the
notice of the new Viceroy, who did not want to quarrel with
him or his relatives at Westminster, but, on the impulse of the
moment, he probably wished to give warning of his purpose not
to side in Council with the minority who adhered to notions of
legislative amelioration.
Another turn somewhat later was given to the screw of in-
dustrial exclusion. A Bill to encourage the making of sail-cloth
in England was in progress through Committee at Westminster.
Alarm was taken in Ireland lest its provisions should interfere
with that part of the only export manufacture then permitted
from Ireland, and the Linen Board desired Southwell, who was
a member of their body, to interpose, as best he could, at White-
hall for the prevention of that result. King wrote to the same
effect to the Primate, invoking his aid, and suggesting that it
would be well if all heads of Bills sent over from Ireland should
pass through the hands of the Irish Under-Secretary in London,
whose duty it would be thoroughly to acquaint the Secretary of
State with their purpose and probable effect, instead of their
being transmitted, like despatches from abroad, by the hands of
a member of the Viceregal Staff, who earned a handsome fee for
taking over a batch of such legislative projects, and who could
not be looked upon as competent to explain or define their
meaning: The Sail-cloth Bill was passed, nevertheless, and its
provisions further excluded Irish competition.
1 To his brother, 11th Dec.,
1719.-MS.
2 Coghill Correspondence, 22nd December, 1722.-MS.
January, 1723.—MS.
3
246
IIISTORY OF CABINETS.
Grafton was possibly not aware how readily his nomination as
Viceroy had been abetted by more than one of the King's
foreign favourites from their persuasion that he would prove a
reliable accessory in their schemes of personal ambition.
Irish Peerages had been conferred on both the King's princi-
pal Ladies-in-Waiting without either going through the pre-
liminary forms of naturalisation. There was no Irish Peer or
Commoner to enter a caveat in Cabinet to proceedings plainly
in breach of the Statute against ennobling aliens. But when in
paulo post future English Peerages were to be granted and
gazetted, it struck the constitutional mind of Chancellor Parker
that legal decencies had better be observed. Instructions were
therefore sent, by order of the Secretary of State, to the Irish
Government, that the proper steps should be taken without
delay for making Madame Kilmansegge a denizen of Ireland
preparatory to her being created Countess of Leinster, and,
in the fulness of time, Countess of Darlington. Corresponding
care was taken to qualify her Grace of Munster to be raised to
the English dignity of Duchess of Kendal, while her Royal
daughter Melosina Schuylenberg was created Countess of Wal-
singham. Orders were sent to the Exchequer to pay £648 fees
on her patent, and the like sum on the patent of Madame de
Platen. Had no gleam of suspicion crossed his Excellency's
mind of the uses to which he was meant to be put in ratifying
strange honours and bargains! Or was it only when com-
manded by the Treasury to recognise Birmingham tokens as
current coin and give them a forced circulation that he began, as
he said, to “feel thoroughly miserable”?
A wealthy speculator, named Wood, by the gift of £5,000 to
the King's mistress, had obtained permission to fabricate
£120,000 worth of half-pence and farthings, which the Executive
undertook should have circulation in Ireland as a legal tender,
by using it in payment of Government salaries and pensions.
The privilege granted was for fourteen years, a rent of £800 a
year being reserved to the Crown, and £200 a year for a Clerk-
Comptroller. Lbs. 100,000 was to be issued the first year, and
? P. Whichcote to Under-Secretaries Temple Stanyan and Thomas Tickel, ioth
October, 1721.–Irish State Papers—MS.
2 Under-Secretary Tilson to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 10th April, 1722. —
Calendar of Treasury Papers.
WOOD'S HALF-PENCE.
247
lbs. 20,000 in each year succeeding. Every pound weight of
copper was to be made into tokens representing half-a-crown in
silver ; but in the first instance it was said in the Government
prints to be intended only for those who chose to take it as
coin. Any attempt at counterfeit was to be made liable to the
penalties attaching to the forgery of base coin. These in Plan-
tagenet days had been especially barbarous; and even in later
times were such as to mark with merciless vengeance all who
were guilty of a crime still accounted treason.”
Not long
before several persons were capitally convicted at the Old
Bailey; and a female accomplice was first strangled and then
burned at Tyburn in presence of a vast multitude.
Chancellor Midleton when first made acquainted with the
scheme did not hesitate to deprecate on legal and political
grounds such an act on the part of the Crown without the
cognisance of the Irish Privy Council and Legislature.?
Precedents, it was averred, had been set in previous reigns for
devolving on unofficial persons the function of supplying the
want of copper coin. Letters patent under the great Seal of
Ireland had in 1680 been granted to Colonel Legge and Sir T.
Armstrong by the advice of Ormond as Chief Governor, to make
such quantity of half-pence of copper as might be issued during
one and twenty years ;
such half-pence to weigh one
hundred and ten grains troy weight
In any case should
persons happen to be surcharged in the course of their trades,
with more of the said half-pence than they could utter, the
patentees were required to deliver at any time the sum of
twenty shillings sterling in silver for every sum of twenty-one
shillings returned in the same so-called coin.3
To secure its currency, the Viceroy in Council issued a
proclamation forbidding any other persons to fabricate in
Ireland or to import from abroad copper tokens, and straightly
commanding and requiring that the aforesaid copper half-pence,
made by Royal Authority, and no other tokens, should be used,
and taken in all dealings whereby exchange of small money
was necessary between man and man as current monies, yet
1 Barrow's State Trials.
2 Brodrick Correspondence, 1721.
3 Witness our said Lt.-Gen. and Gen. -Governor of Ireland at Dublin, 18th May,
1680 : Domville, Auditor's Office, lib. xxvii., 154: cited by Simon on Irish coins.
248
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
none were compelled to receive of the said copper half-pence in
any payment above five shillings in one hundred pounds.
On the demise of the Crown the patent was renewed under
the same conditions as to legal tender and convertibility, and
the tokens being in quality and bulk equal to those current in
Great Britain, no popular misgiving arose as to their use, which
continued until they were called in, in 1689, to make room for
the avowedly debased coin issued by James II. in that year.
Reference to such precedents served only to condemn their
clumsy caricature.
Additions to the public currency could not be manufac-
tured by the graving of a national emblem on one side and
the Royal image on the other; still less by the assurances of
irresponsible officials that their metallic value and weight would
be adequate and uniform. The utility of a sound exchangeable
medium for the poor as well as for the rich no one questioned,
but it must be unquestionable. Coins, whether gold, silver, or
brass, were what Bacon said of enactments—“laws they were
not which public opinion had not made.” The only test of
validity or value was that of convertibility; and without this
primary condition no substitutes, even if accepted at first, would
long retain their nominal value. How futile and mischievous
then, would it be for Government to try and force them into.
circulation by their use in the payment of salaries, pensions, and
wages, or for goods supplied. The first issues might bear
specific analysis and stand the test of weight in the grocer's
scales, but who could tell how many subsequent cargoes of
jingling hardware would be equal in metal or money's worth ?
And who would undertake to quench the doubt once raised in
the popular mind? Objections like these look obvious enough
to the economist's eye ; but Grafton was no economist, and he
could only report them with or without slighting comment to
the Secretary of State, by whom they were probably thought
hardly deserving of serious reply.
It was not until a Privy Seal was gazetted in July, 1722, con-
firming the privilege to Wood of manufacturing tokens for use
in Ireland only, that the public became aware that in their daily
business transactions they were to be left to the discretion of an
unknown and unofficial stranger. To the surprise of the Execu-
1 MS. by Judge Caulfield, Irish State Papers.
SEIZURE OF THE "MOCK MONEY."
249
tive, subordinate officials and persons of consequence hitherto
regarded as fast friends were the first to express alarm. The
Commissioners of Customs, of whom Speaker Conolly was Chair-
man, signed and presented a memorial against the threatened
addition, so called, to the circulating medium, on fiscal
and commercial grounds, for they naturally feared that the
agitation it was likely to cause would disturb trade and diminish
the revenue. What they demurely uttered was soon repeated
with less caution, and reiterated in language more provoking.
The agitation in Dublin occasioned no little uneasiness.
Coghill, Judge of the Court of Probate, whose duties brought
him into frequent contact with officials at the Castle, feared that
the revenue would suffer, and thought it was hard upon the
poorer pensioners, who could not refuse the new tokens, but
would find it impossible to make use of them except at a heavy
discount.? A vessel arriving in Cork harbour with a mixed
freight was suspected of having on board half-a-dozen barrels of
what was called the mock money, and, the alarm being given,
boats speedily put off from shore with volunteer coastguards,
who took upon them to overhaul the cargo, and unloaded the
ship of her unpatriotic contents, which they bore off in triumph.
Class' after class caught the contagion of distrust, and by the
time Parliament met, an unaccustomed unison of discontent pre-
vailed.
The Lords spiritual and temporal, in an Address to the King,
gave utterance to the national sense of grievance in unaccus-
tomed tones: “We are under the utmost concern to find that
our duty indispensably calls upon us to acquaint your Majesty
with the ill consequences which will follow from a patent for
coining half-pence to be uttered in this Kingdom, obtained
under the Great Seal of Great Britain by one William Wood, in
a clandestine and unprecedented manner. We are most humbly
of opinion that the diminution of your Majesty's revenue, the
ruin of our trades, and the impoverishing of your people, must
unavoidably attend this undertaking, and from the most exact
inquiries and computations we have been able to make, it
appears to us that the gain to William Wood will be excessive,
and the loss to this Kingdom, by circulating this base coin,
7th August, 1722, Irish State Papers.-MS.
2 January, 1723.—MIS.
1
250
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
greater than this poor country is able to bear. With the
greatest submission and deference to your Majesty's wisdom, we
beg we may offer it as our humble opinion that the reserving
the coining of half-pence and farthings to the Crown, and the
not trusting it with any private person, body politic or corpo-
rate, will always be for your Majesty's service and the good of
your people in this Kingdom. We beseech your Majesty that
you will be pleased to extend that goodness and compassion to
us which has so eminently showed itself to all your other
subjects who have the happiness to live under your protection
and government, and that you will give such directions as may
effectually free us from the terrible apprehensions we labour
under from the patent granted to William Wood.” 1
The Commons adopted by a great majority an Address in
equally energetic terms. Both Addresses were presented to the
Lord-Lieutenant for transmission to the Sovereign, and Grafton
contented himself with a laconic assurance that he should not
fail to do so. A vote of thanks was thereupon passed for his
Excellency's prompt compliance with their request; and, not to
be outdone in courtesy, he directed Chief Secretary Hopkins to
assure Parliament that he would always feel the greatest satis-
faction in conveying their wishes to his Majesty. It was this
supererogatory avowal of his readiness to question the proceed-
ings at Whitehall that drew from the First Lord of the Treasury
an explosion of wrath exceeding all the ordinary bounds of
official or personal consideration.
Ministers, though impatient at the presumption of the local
Parliament and the Executive in questioning what they had
sanctioned, thought it better to walk softly. Sunderland,
Carteret, and Roxburgh had been fully imformed by Thomas
Brodrick of the nature of the grounds of objection to the pro-
posal, and the unanimity with which they were supported, and
Walpole and Townshend were not prepared to risk another
break up in the Administration to soothe the growing ill-temper
of the Palace. The Cabinet consequently agreed to frame an
answer to the Addresses of the Irish Parliament, in which
George I. owned “his concern that his granting a patent for
coining half-pence agreeably to the practice of his Royal prede-
| Irish Lords' Journals, 28th Dec., 1723.
% Commons' Journals, Sept., 1723.
COMMISSION OF INQUIRY.
251
r
cessors had given so much uneasiness, and declared if any
abuses had been committed by the patentee his Majesty would
give the necessary orders for the inquiring into and punishing
the same, and would do everything in his power for the satisfac-
tion of his people.” A Commission, consisting of Sir Isaac
Newton, Master of the Mint; the Right Hon. E. Southwell,
Under Secretary for Ireland in London ; and John Scrope,
M.P. for Ripon, Chief Clerk in the Treasury, were appointed to
inquire and report into all the circumstances of the case ; and
as their investigations or their findings need not be precipitated,
time would be gained for the tide of popular ill-humour to go
down. There was nothing, however, in the Royal assurances to
appease the general misgivings or to slacken the persistent
efforts that were making to force the circulation of the tokens.
After three weeks spent in anxious controversy with persons of
various degrees, Grafton was sorry to be compelled to own that he
could not find one who would engageto oppose absolutelya Parlia-
mentary consideration of the grant. They all agreed that it
would be detrimental both to the nation and the Revenue. It
appeared to him that it was not in his power to prevent the
Parliament from proceeding upon the affair. The Chancellor
was daily repeating his assurances of doing everything in the
best and smoothest way, while his son was at the same time
making the most inflammatory speeches in the House.
Ministers would see what an unhappy situation he was in. He
laboured from morning to night under the greatest difficulties
and uneasiness, and feared that at last the event would be very
far from being agreeable either to them or to himself.1
Wood undertook to satisfy the Commission that an urgent
want had prevailed in Ireland of copper currency; that employers
frequently paid wages in promissory penny notes in wood,
leather, or brass ; that the remnants of the base money issued by
King James were still a scandal and a hindrance to trade. To
remedy these evils he had engaged to furnish a better circulating
medium. The specimen offered for assay at the Mint had been
found up to standard weight and worth, and some of them even to
exceed it, and who could show that the whole of the 360 tons of
copper would not be molten into coins equal to sample? He
had given his word ; the King had taken it : what need was there
1 From Grafton to Walpole, 14th Sept., 1723. Irish State Papers.-MS.
252
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
of further witness? To silence cavil, nevertheless, the Commission
were prepared to hear what could be said in support of the com-
plaints of the Irish Executive and Legislature, and Secretary
Townshend directed the Lords Justices to submit for their in-
spection the documents and correspondence relating to the sub-
ject, and to send over such persons as might be able to explain
their views and apprehensions: On receipt of this communica-
tion it was laid before the Privy Council, who sustained the
Lords Justices in declining to submit to be interrogated by
deputy on a subject strictly within their administrative discretion,
or to render an account, oral or written, to a tribunal having no
jurisdiction or authority within the realm ; and the Chancellor
was requested to frame their reply. They further resolved that
if orders or directions with the effect of orders had been given
by any authority without their cognisance to force the circulation
in acceptance or payment by any persons employed by Govern-
ment, such a proceeding was unconstitutional and not to be
endured. The Lords Justices, transmitting these resolutions to
the Secretary of State and the Viceroy, expressed their con-
viction that nothing would restore tranquillity and content but
the withdrawal of the patent.
The indignation of the Cabinet was great, as a draft rejoinder
by Newcastle (acting in Townshend's absence as Assistant
Secretary of State), with many corrections and interpolations,
testifies. Grafton shrank from vindicating his deputies at the
Castle; and failed to convince the brother of Midleton that he
was in the wrong.
Wake was loth to believe his friend the
Archbishop of Dublin capable of implied sedition, which Parker
on the other hand did not scruple to impute; and the rest of
their colleagues, at fault between conflicting statements of facts
and usage, could only suppose that Walpole was in earnest when
he said "he would force the new coinage down the throat of the
ignorant people who did not know how good it was.” The
Report of the Commission, however, concluded by recommending
that the issue should be limited to £40,000, or one-third of the
sum authorised by the patent, and the King in Council made an
order to that effect. With this compromise it was hoped that
Carteret would be able to still the storm at the outset of his
Viceroyalty But this, like all concessions yielded to pro-
1 18th August, 1724.
PROBABLE LOSS ON THE PATENT.
253
longed agitation, was received without gratitude and hailed as a
certain prelude to complete success.
The name of Sir Isaac Newton was freely used in official
correspondence and journalism to support the mandate of the
Treasury; for by him the assay at the Mint, it was pretended,
had been made. It so happened in point of fact that, being at
the time unwell, he had nothing to do with the operation, which
was performed by one of his subordinates, faithfully no doubt,
but to little purpose, as was subsequently proved by the careful
scrutiny of one who had no motive to mislead, and whose means
of investigation were much more comprehensive. In 1746, from
the parcels sent over by Wood remaining in possession of the
Irish Government, an equal number of tokens were at random
taken for the purpose of analytical comparison, and their com-
ponent parts and actual weight were found to differ so widely
that an average of the whole measured thereby would have
threatened a loss of £69,064. "And even had Mr. Wood made
his half-pence of the weight limited by the patent, yet the loss to
Ireland would have amounted to £60,480; every halfpenny in
the pound weight exceeding the number directed by the patent
giving the patentee £1,680 profit.' The English half-pence being
but forty-four half pieces to the pound, three hundred and sixty
tons (of copper) would make seventy-four thousand seven hundred
and sixty pounds only, that is, twenty-seven thousand seven
hundred and twenty pounds less than by the patent for Ireland
were promised by its grantee.
The work containing this disclosure was inscribed to the
Lords Justices, Primate Stone, Lord Chancellor Newport, and
Speaker Boyle ; and did not see the light till Walpole, Towns-
hend, her Grace of Kendal, and the patentee himself, were beyond
the reach of its reproach. Half a century later Mr. Ruding, in
his comprehensive annals of the coinage, while giving the result
of this post-inortem examination of the almost successful cheat,
tried to minimise the possible loss to the community, and the
equivalent profit Wood hoped to gain. Blindfolded by official
evasions of facts, and disregard of the constitutional remonstrance
by which Ministers ought to have been swayed, their apologist
would have it believed that the national resistance was a bubble
inflated by the frenzied spite of Swift; and that if the Drapier's
1 Essay on Irish Coins by Simon–71.
254
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Letters never had appeared the crowd would never have found
out the difference, and the skilful brazier and his fitting
patroness might have enjoyed the fruits of his invention in
peace.
But the Venerable biographer of Walpole, more subtle and
more eloquent, would fain allow the hero of his Ministerialade
to escape the sharp edge of blame in a cloud of ridicule and
censure of Swift; and subsequent writers have too readily been
drawn into the snare of being told they must choose between
the cautious and sagacious statesman whose life was one long
success, and the wayward child of genius whom disappointment
embittered, and whom, despite great popularity, a matchless power
of invective betrayed continually into extravagance all but
insane. Carteret and the minority of the Cabinet were suspected
of countenancing Midleton in the course he had taken about
Wood, while Walpole and Townshend supported the Viceroy,
who had sanctioned the issue.
After an absence of eighteen months, on resuming office in
August, 1723, Grafton spoke in confidence to the principal
persons around him, urging them to lend their aid in settling the
question of the copper coinage, but he found that even those
most friendly to the Government dare not undertake the defence
of the patent. They allowed that some of the objections made
to it were frivolous, but there were some things in it so much
more prejudicial to the Kingdom than in any former grants
that if they should support it they would lose the credit that
enabled them to be of use.1
The Irish Chancellor and his relatives continued to exercise
considerable influence on both sides of the Channel. His elder
brother, Thomas Brodrick, who sat for Stockbridge, was chair-
man of the Committee of Inquiry into the South Sea scheme;
he himself was Member for Midhurst, and his eldest son, who
represented Cork and led the Opposition in the Irish Commons,
succeeded Edward Carteret in the English Parliament for
Berealston, Their connections were, besides, numerous and
influential ; and they had proved intractable so often that
Townshend, when at Hanover, prepared the King' for Lord
Midleton's removal when a fitting opportunity should arise.
Without tangible excuse, however, it was thought better to
1 Grafton to Delafaye. 22nd August, 1723. Irish State Papers. --MS.
WALPOLE SCOLDS GRAFTON.
255
defer a proceeding so plainly hostile to the section of the
Cabinet that reckoned the Brodricks amongst their friends,
and the Great Seal of Ireland was suffered to remain some time
longer in Lord Midleton's hands.
While Townshend was with the King at Hanover, Walpole
discharged the functions of his department in domestic affairs.
His regard for Grafton prompted him to express his dissent and
that of others with the recent conduct of the Irish Administra-
tion in not dealing with sufficient firmness, as he conceived, with
the seditious language out of doors, and the factions of Opposi-
tion in Parliament which the Chancellor was supposed to favour,
if not encourage. Walpole wrote: “I desire to be excused
from writing to you as Secretary of State on the subject-matter
of your public and private letters, but hope you will excuse me
if once more, as a private friend, I take the liberty of giving you
my thoughts on what you are doing in Ireland. I do not
wonder at all that nobody appears in the defence of the King's
patent when you think it advisable to write and express your-
self in the manner you do in your public letter. If you think it
proper to disclaim it, the principal of his Majesty's servants
cannot be diverted from taking notice of it in a Parliamentary
way. I shall wonder at nothing that shall happen on this
occasion. The printed paper you send me is the most arrant
Grub-street paper I ever read in my life, which, I think, is not
my business to answer." He then goes into strong argument
to prove that the analysis at the Mint must be taken as con-
clusive for the intrinsic value of all that might be issued. "The
Irish Parliament is attacking a patent already passed, for whom,
and in favour of whom alone, you know very well. Will it be
for the (public) service to suffer an indignity in that view ? The
patent was passed by those that you have been hitherto looked
upon as pretty nearly engaged with in the public capacity. Are
they no longer worth that care or trouble? It was passed under
the particular care and direction of one upon whom the first
reflection must fall, that never yet was indifferent when you
were concerned. That consideration, you will be told, is not
worth the hazarding the quiet of the Session for.”
There may have been no other method of dealing with the
fact thus boldly avowed than by thus taunting the weak Viceroy
either to assent or pretend not to know it; but it is plain, from
256
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the heat and recklessness of Walpole's language, that the
interests of their party and their ascendancy at Court were
thought to be in danger. If Grafton could not be wheedled
or stung into absolute compliance with the avarice of the
Duchess of Kendal, and the blindness at will of the First Lord
of the Treasury, someone more pliant must be found to rule at
the Castle than Midleton, whose connections in England were
only strong enough to damage them, but not to save him the
loss of the Irish Chancellorship. “And does your Grace think
you will be thought to make a glorious campaign if, by com-
pounding for this, you should be able to carry all your other
business through without much difficulty ? The objections that
have come over are too late to be of any use, arriving here but
the day the Irish Parliament was to take the matter into con-
sideration. I venture to pronounce them frivolous, and such as
a very common understanding with a willing mind may easily
refute. I have never known more care taken in passing a patent.
I am still satisfied it is very well to be supported. What remedy
the wisdom of Ireland will find out for this supposed grievance
I am at a loss to guess, and upon whom the consequence of this
Irish storm will fall most heavy I will not say. I shall have my
share ; but, if I am not mistaken, there are others that will not
escape. I hope your Grace is not mistaken when you are per-
suaded to be thus indifferent. There are some people that think
they are ever to fatten at the expense of other men's labours
and characters, and be themselves the most righteous fine gentle-
It is a species of mankind that I own I detest; but I'll
say no more, and if your Grace thinks I have said too much, I
am sorry for it, but mark the end.” ]
His Grace, thus browbeaten, succumbed, and was readmitted
to Cabinet favour. The King's answers to the Addresses of both
Houses, transmitted by Carteret, were couched in sufficiently
gracious terms, but not having reached Dublin till after the
adjournment, they were not published until after the recess.
The Irish Commons asked by Addresses for an exemplification
of Wood's patent, and the Viceroy answered that he had no
such document in his possession. The Chancellor wrote confi-
dentially to Walpole expressing his grave regret at such a reply,
and once more gave warning of the growing alienation the
1 Walpole to Grafton, 24th Sept., 1723. Ir. State Pap.—MS.
men.
WALPOLE INCENSED AT GRAFTON.
257
1 2
controversy had engendered. Subsequently a copy was laid
before the House. The Commons agreed to resolutions con-
demnatory of the power improvidently granted to Wood, as
injurious to the general interests of the Kingdom.
Mr. Brodrick moved a direct vote of censure on those in
England who had advised the obnoxious grant, but he was
overruled.) Walpole scornfully refused to give way.
" I have
weathered many storms,” he said ; "I hope I shall not be lost at
last in an Irish hurricane, and that when I am, those who are
insensible of such unjust scandal heard upon me will not know
the want of ine; and I give your Grace my word that when
this comes to be retorted upon you, as much as I am hurt, I will
not be indifferent. You seem to think we must give into it, too.
I desire to know what relief it is that you expect, and what is
possible to be done to the satisfaction of a Parliament that has
been suffered to give themselves such a loose rein I confess
myself unable to find out. I write to you in my private
capacity, for as Secretary of State I will not say one word
upon
it.”
Grafton felt that he was losing hold of the confidence of the
Cabinet ; he owned with bitterness his surprise that the impres-
sions made to his disadvantage had been so readily received.
"But it is my misfortune to be put on a justification of myself for
not having paid a due regard for your friendship, which in many
respects I have ever esteemed most valuable. I am sorry my
public letter should have been considered as a disdaining of the
King's patent. Could I be silent on a subject which every private
letter from hence must probably be full of? Or could I think it
either respectful or polite that the first knowledge of this dissatis-.
faction should reach a certain quarter in company with some
disagreeable votes, for such I apprehend would be the result
after having tried everything, at first to divert an inquiry and
afterwards to make it of no effect? The Resolutions as sent
over are, I assure you, no more pleasing to me than they are to
you. I appeal to every English gentleman in this Kingdom
whether it was practicable to stop this torrent even though my
credit and capacity had been much greater than they are, and
which are liable, I find, to be thought too inconsiderable for
? Midleton to Walpole, 15th Sept., 1723. Irish St. Pap.-M.S.
Walpole to Graſton, 3rd Oct., 1723. Irish St. Pap.—MIS.
2
VOL. I.
S
258
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
such a management. It is my great misfortune that I have not
a larger share of both, but I should reckon it a much greater if
you could entertain a supposition that I did not try the extent
of both on this important occasion. As for the printed paper
which I sent you, as you consider it as not your business to
answer it, so, I am sure, it is not mine to support it. The
Resolutions, which passed almost unanimously, seemed grounded
upon some of the same notions. I cannot be answerable for
Grub Street authors or Grub Street understandings; but it is
extremely mortifying to me that it should be thought I wanted
a willing mind to refute the objections which were made to the
grant after labouring day and night to remove unreasonable
prejudices, and prevent the consequences thereof. The objec-
tion is levelled, not at the patent, put at the patentee, charged
with fraud on the execution of the grant, that upon an assay
made, it appeared there were four sorts differing in weight.
Different persons who deal in these metals, deposed upon oath
that in this Kingdom copper of that fineness was worth at most
but twelve pence a pound, and, therefore, by this importation
there was a loss of three-fifths to the nation, but nobody argued
from this that the entire three-fifths went to the patentee. I
hope I shall not be understood to disclaim the King's patent
because I have touched upon the charges against the patentee.
I must be the weakest man alive could I persuade myself that
in this attack the arrows would fly over my head. Could I have
been so blind my eyes would have been opened on the first
motions in the affair. I am, perhaps, more convinced than you
are that this attempt had its spring on another side the water.
That part of your letter which wounds me sensibly is that in
which you charge me with indifference in what concerns your-
self, implying the greatest want of friendship and gratitude in
me. Am I already thought so abandoned as to have suffered
an indignity to be offered to the King's patent to make my
administration easy the rest of the Session ? Such a shameful
(imputation) I both abhor and disown. Far from thinking a
campaign glorious to me upon those terms, I should have con-
fessed it an ignominious one, as it proves an unfortunate one,
and such I foresaw it would be before I had been a week in the
Kingdom. Can anything more severely affect me than a belief
that, upon any consideration whatever, I would barter away my
PENSIONS IN IRELAND.
259
duty to the King, or betray my benefactors ? I must not con-
ceal from you that the article of pensions has a great share in
keeping afoot these murmurings. The clear increase upon this
head in the Civil List since the last report from the Committee
of Accounts, amounted to £13,199 per annum. The Address
to the King herewith enclosed arose from the additional charge
to the Establishment. The country party spoke out and warmly
upon this point; and, indeed, others of this country are so
uneasy at what they call a heavy burden, and at the long term
of years for which most of the late ones are granted, that they
made but a faint opposition to the Resolution. In the English
storms you have weathered I never endeavoured or desired to
get first to shore; nor could I imagine that in an Irish hurricane
I could have any view of safety where you are in danger.” 1
From Houghton, the First Lord wrote: "The personal regard
I have always and truly had for the Duke of Grafton makes his
manner of treating me very shocking and insupportable ; but I
am come to a resolution to say nothing at all, which, I am sure,
is as much as can be expected from me. But I am still more at
a loss to know how to reply to the Address (from the Irish
Parliament), which is no less than a civil remonstrance, if it
deserves that epithet, against the pensions that have been
granted, and desiring the King to grant no more.
The King
must not admit that what he has done is wrong, nor must he
engage not to grant any more, which makes it impossible to
give any more than a general answer, which I have with some
difficulty drawn." 2
This perfunctory acknowledgment served only to deepen the
Viceroy's perplexity and mortification. He had done his best,
he thought, and found it only treated as though it were the
worst; and he looked forward with despondency to fresh out-
breaks of dissatisfaction.
Grafton's despondency in his position, he himself declared,
arose from finding that not one man of credit in the whole of
Ireland was ready to defend Wood's patent, while the clamour
of their party opponents knew no bounds; and he was hurt by
certain expressions in the private letters of the First Minister
touching his position in the matter. Newcastle truly observes
1 Grafton to Walpole, 19th Oct., Recd. 27th, 1723. Irish St. Pap. - NIS.
Walpole to Townshend, 30th Oct., 1723.-MS,
S2
260
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
that the objections made by the Irish were but the natural
consequences of the dependency of that Kingdom, which he
feared too much both friends and foes in Ireland were for
shaking off, and something must be done; but God knew
when or where to prevent this growing evil. Townshend would
see to what a height the Irish Commons had come by their
last Address. It was plain what they aimed at. The Duke
of Grafton had told him confidentially that this Address was
the best that could be obtained from the Parliament, and
Lord Midleton intimated his hope that a favourable answer
might be given to it. By Carteret, from Hanover, this course
would seem to have been advised, and Newcastle hinted that
it might have been suggested or even "concerted with” them.
He owned that in some of the intercepted correspondence with
foreign Ministers "the advantage that a certain great lady was
supposed to have from the patent” was dwelt on. Neverthe-
less, Grafton made up thenceforth for lost time by giving his
colleagues in England samples of the discontent which, far
from declining, he thought was on the increase. County Mem-
bers, who did not usually give up hunting before Christmas,
had been brought to town to keep watch and ward in Parlia-
ment against further pensions and the influx of base coin, and
his Excellency was sorry to say that their minds were kept
so inflamed by the insidious arts of faction that too many of
them lent themselves to various irrelevant and provoking
debates to delay the Money Bill till Royal answers to the
Addresses should be received, which, when they did arrive,
would “appear cold and doubtful so as not to give satisfac-
tion, for they had maliciously put about reports as if their
treatment of the patents was severely answered at a meeting
of the Regency, and they were alarmed at a speech they
pretended was there made by the Lord Chancellor ; and Mr.
Brodrick, it was evident, had a mind to keep them in hot
water until the recess.' To keep the cause alive, Brodrick
had given a threatening notice for a call of the House on the
first day they should meet again.
Synge assured the friend in the Cabinet whom he trusted and
» 2
1 He took care to wind up his long epistle to the Secretary of State with his usual
amount of compliments to their “good Duchess.”
2 Grafton to Walpole, 2nd November, 1723. Ir. St. Pap.-N1S.
MORE PENAL LAWS.
261
valued most throughout life, that the imputations cast on the
political fidelity of those in Ireland who, like himself, resisted
the engrossing policy of judicial appeals to London, and the
filling Irish offices with English favourites, and the selling for
a scandalous bribe to a German courtesan of the right to issue
copper money, were wholly without foundation. They were
staunch as ever in loyalty to the Crown, the Constitution, and
connection with England. In truth, he had never heard any
thought of disaffection to these principles expressed either in
or out of Parliament, and he did not believe that any of them
were undermined or endangered; but "it was impossible for
them to alter their opinions where no reason appeared. Neither
regarding appeals nor any other thing did they ever receive
any other answer but a British Act of Parliament, which to
him seemed as the cutting of a knot which could not be
untied.” 1
Despairing of being able to break the force of concurrent
discontents on secular grounds, Grafton bethought him of the
old device for causing division by invoking sectarian suspicion
and animosity. After congratulations on the defeat of the late
Jacobite conspiracy in England, he dwelt on the necessity of
adding a new chapter to the Penal Code to prevent more
effectually the evasion of existing statutes by Catholic priests,
whose number was known to be on the increase. The passing
of such a measure would, he hoped, divert attention within
doors, and without tend to cool, if not estrange, popular support.
Heads of a Bill to Strengthen the Protestant Interest were
consequently prepared and brought in; and, provoking less
discussion than was anticipated, were expanded by the addition
at the Castle of clauses far more rigorous than any the Com-
mons had been asked to suggest.
Archbishop Synge disapproved greatly of the measure.
What was done in England in the days of Elizabeth, when
there were plots and conspiracies against the Queen's life,
could not be quoted as precedent for doing the like in other
days. If any priest would not renounce the Pretender and
disclaim the Pope's power of deposing Princes, let him leave
the Kingdom or be dealt with under the existing law; but if
1 To Wake, November 4th, 1723.- NIS.
2 To Townshend, November, 1723.—MS..
2
262
IIISTORY OF CABINETS.
" Some
he was ready to do all this, and to give bail for his loyal be-
haviour, the Archbishop must own that he could not come into
a law to put him to death, under the name of high treason,
but in reality only for adhering to an erroneous religion, and
worshipping God according to it. He heartily wished that
effectual laws might be made for the security of the Protestant
succession ; but if the civil state might be made safe without
persecuting any man for his religion (as he could not but
think it might), surely it was the way that was most agreeable
to the spirit of Christianity.
The Viceroy transmitted the draft measure, to which he
averred that general assent had been given, for further en-
forcing the laws against foreign ecclesiastics, who were charged
with clandestinely enlisting men for service abroad.
clauses, at first sight, might seem severe ; yet the vast swarms
of priests who infested the Kingdom, and who were continually
negotiating against the Government, had prevailed on many who
had the tenderest regard for liberty of conscience to think this
Bill a necessary support of the Protestant interest.” 2
Neither section of the Cabinet seemed to have been willing
further to inflame the sectarian feud in sanctioning these new pro-
posals. A small committee of the Cabinet, over which Newcastle
presided, was directed to consider and report whether the measure
could be amended, or passed in the form transmitted from
Dublin. They agreed on laying it aside altogether, and Towns-
hend informed Horace Walpole at Paris, with leave to apprise
M. Fleury of the fact, but he specially enjoined him to avoid
recognising in any way that any intervention had taken place
on his part. 3 The truth seems to be that, through Carteret,
the French Minister had remonstrated against the proceeding
as incompatible with the professions of international amity
and reciprocal forbearance for some time interchanged; but it
was felt to be dangerous that any English Minister should be
liable to a question in Parliament on the subject, and Towns-
hend did not choose to admit that Carteret was entitled to any
share of the credit in having brought about the rejection of the
sanguinary scheme.
1 Synge to Wake, 13th December, 1723. – MS.
2 To Carteret, 13th November, 1723. Ir. St. Pap.-MS.
3 6th January,,1724.—MS.
1
3
POST OFFICE ESPIONAGE.
263
» 2
In the rising controversy, Midleton abstained from the lan-
guage and demeanour which opponents of the ill-starred measure
who were free from official ties daily more openly indulged in.
But his opinion of its impolicy was not concealed. He felt keenly
the loss of confidence not obscurely shown by those in power,
and prepared himself once more to pay the penalty of deprivation
for the popularity he enjoyed. “Whatever the event may be, I
have the comfort to know I fall a sacrifice to the opposition
I gave to Wood's Half-pence, and I had rather fall for these with
my country.”] The system of Post Office espionage which was
exercised under the warrant of the Secretary of State is vividly
described in one of Thomas Brodrick's letters to the Irish Chan-
cellor. “Upon New Year's day (1724) came yours of 8th of last
month, postmarked on that day so that you may be very certain
'twas stopped on your side, and probably a copy sent over,
before it was let go forward, for of the many you say you wrote,
not one came to hand; the same, I perceive, has happened to
those from hence.' St. John Brodrick had frequent interviews
with Carteret, who sympathised with the Chancellor's vexation,
and made warm professions of friendship and support.
all their letters were opened, he advised his father, who never
signed his confidential letters, to write to friends in England
instead of to him. In an interview with Walpole the Minister
repeatedly disclaimed having had any hand in the patent except
that it came officially before him as First Lord of the Treasury.
He'owned that Sir I. Newton had been disabled by illness from
making the assay directed by Government, which had been done
by Mr. Barton, his nephew, who pronounced the specimens sub-
jected to the test of full value, while Mr. Wood gave his personal
assurance that he had made none of any inferior quality. Wal-
pole, therefore, found much fault with the resolution of the Irish
Parliament, denouncing the coinage as base money.
After all, it was thought more prudent to regain the support of
the Brodricks, and the Chancellor's name was included in the
proposal submitted to the Cabinet for appointing Lords Justices
when Grafton should finally quit Ireland. Soon afterwards it
was announced that Carteret would be Lord-Lieutenant, to the
But as
1 To T. Brodrick, M.P., 28th Dec., 1723.—MS.
? Brodrick's Correspondence, V.-MS.
3 St. John Brodrick to his father, Iith Jan., 1723.
264
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
.
infinite satisfaction of his friends in Ireland, though little to his
own.
He did not hide from himself or the friends he confided in
that his chief embarrassment would be in dealing with Wood's
patent. The Irish Revenue Board had issued an order to the
local paymasters not to force the hated tokens in payment of
small sums as they had been previously ordered to do. Must
they be compelled to rescind their order ?1 The Treasury held
it could not be endorsed, that the patent could not be set at
defiance by a subordinate and local body, while, on the other
hand, the Commissioners held themselves directly responsible to
the Irish Parliament, whose decision they feared to disregard.?
The Cabinet were told that a spirit of alienation was growing in
the Irish Parliament, and a presumptuous tendency to self-
assertion which it was necessary to put down. Townshend
thought “the spirit in Ireland which had been at the bottom of
all the noise for some time past was an earnest desire of in-
dependency and of setting up for the direction of matters in all
respects as a Parliament of England, and he was persuaded that
if the coinage of the copper money had been made in Ireland,
and the grant given there, the half-pence and farthings had been
good and right, and no clamour had been raised about them. It
might likewise be observed how the King was used in the manner
of their giving the supply; how his Majesty let them into the
examination and control of £300,000 a year of his own hereditary
revenue, for the sake of their adding about £60,000 or £70,000
towards the maintaining the troops, which were wholly for their
own preservation; upon account of their raising this addition they
assumed to themselves the finding fault with the King's disposing
of £8,000 or £ 10,000 a-year of his own money, and according to
his own will, and thought it not improper to address his Majesty
not to burthen their revenue with such gifts and bounties. Graf-
ton could not but think this to be hard usage, and that in the
instances he had named as well as in that of the judicature
claimed by the Irish House of Lords, and in many others, it was
not to be doubted but the meaning of the Irish Parliament was
to grasp at more authority and lessen their subjection to England.
It was, therefore, the duty not only of the King's Ministers, but
of every Englishman, to be circumspect in what hands the
1 St. John Brodrick to his father: From London, 14th April, 1724.—MS.
2 Ibid., 20th April, 1724.
ARCHBISHOP KING.
265
government of the country, was left. Such treatment as had
been given from Ireland must excite a spirit of taking early care
to prevent growing evils, and to weaken the hands that promoted
these dangerous attempts, which were destructive of the depen-
dency that Ireland ought to be under. He hoped this would not
seem hard doctrine to his Grace, and he questioned not but that
he would give in to any proposal that should be for his Majesty's
service, in the present situation of that Kingdom
Grafton, having occasion to transmit the letter in which these
expressions occurred, drew his pen across them that they should
be omitted by the copyist; but their significance is riveted rather
than shaken by his silent admission how much he felt them.
The Secretary reminded his Excellency that the Cabinet were
embarrassed by the recent conduct of Archbishop King and that
of the Chancellor in the choice of a colleague to act as Lord
Justice along with the Speaker. If Grafton would consent it
would greatly ease their deliberations as to the course to be
pursued in future.
Grafton's sense of failure and despair of anything better than
being able to get quietly rid of his responsibilty was not ma-
terially lightened by certain assurances of general approval
from Townshend at the close of the year. He noted with
satisfaction "the determination of the King to let the Lord
Chancellor Midleton feel marks of his Majesty's resentment
before long."
The silence of the Cabinet in reply to his interrogation as to
their reasons for not endorsing his policy must have been felt as
a severe reproof. He had, in fact, incurred distrust of his capacity
for the post he filled. They did not want to alienate him as a
rich and powerful member of their party, and they were ready to
transfer his Grace to any post of honour where administrative
judgment was not especially called for.
On the death of Primate Lindsaya general wish was conveyed
to Southwell on behalf of the best friends of Government in
Ireland that King should succeed him. No time, however, was
lost in disposing otherwise of the See of Armagh. More than
ever, it was thought expedient to repress and repel the disposition
which King had shown to vindicate Irish pretensions to local
1 Townshend to Graſton, 23rd Jan., 1724. Ir. St. Pap.--MIS.
2 July, 1724.
266
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
preferment, either lay or clerical. Even Wake does not appear
to have ventured to hint a preference for him; and Boulter,
Bishop of Bristol, was appointed, being a man who could be
thoroughly depended on to promote what was termed the Eng-
lish interest. The putting one who was wholly unknown among
the clergy and laity in Ireland over the head of the venerable
Prelate was greatly lamented, and looked upon with amazement
by the local subordinates of Government.1
On the eve of departure the unhappy Lord-Lieutenant was
obliged to inform the Secretary of State that the smouldering
discontent regarding Wood's half-pence, which his quieting
assurances were meant to calm, had suddenly burst forth afresh,
in consequence of “paragraphs in several London prints,
enforced by private letters, giving fresh alarm to the town, as if
the patent was likely to prevail after all, and they were confirmed
in that notion by his Excellency's offer to send over papers and
witnesses pursuant to the commands he had received. All
seemed united, however differing in other matters. Accounts
daily came from the country of designs to Address and to asso-
ciate on the subject.?
The question was taken up by the Privy Council, and the
feeling there was running quite as strong as elsewhere.
After ten years' comparative silence, Swift once more took
up the pen. In the series of invectives known as the Drapier's
Letters, he gave articulate voice to the confused discontent of
the coinmunity, and gradually enlarging the scope of the ques-
tion at issue, and indulging in unscrupulous exaggerations, he
quickened the ferment among all classes and creeds.3
The only reply from the Home Office to representations
from the Castle were directions to prefer bills of indictment for
seditious libel.
On receipt of the Report from the Treasury of the Committee
offering to restrict the circulation, Dean Jonathan, as his brethren
of London called him, issued another manifesto, calling on trades-
men, farmers, and all others concerned, to combine in refusing
to take them in payment. They responded with alacrity in the
1
Coghill Correspondence, July and August, 1724.-MS.
2 Grafton to Townshend, 29th April, 1724.—MS.
3 Primate Boulter to the D. of Newcastle, 3rd Dec., 1724.
RESTRICTION OF COPPER COINAGE.
267
1
Capital, and in a few weeks their example was followed in Derry
and other towns.
Steps were taken by the bankers, brewers, and Guilds of
the City of Dublin, supported by numbers of merchants and
traders, to refuse the obnoxious tokens, and Sir M. Coghill
warned Southwell that even the officers of Revenue and
the clerks in the Castle were known to sympathise with the
general feeling. The Lords Justices agreed to forward a strong
representation to the new Lord-Lieutenant of the reasons why
they declined to issue, as directed, the orders sent from the
Treasury to the Departments of Customs and Excise, and if
further required to carry the orders into effect, they would ask
to be relieved from their Executive responsibility.
Meanwhile, Wood had, by leave of the Treasury, set up a
Mint at Bristol, where he commenced coining the half-pence
and farthings he was entitled to do under his patent. But the
Government, notwithstanding their protestations of determina-
tion to stand by the Grant, took counsel of prudence so far that
an Order in Council was issued, bearing date the 6th of August,
1724, forbidding the importation into Ireland by Wood of more
than forty thousand pounds' worth of copper coins.3
To make the groove of resistance clear in which Carteret's
administration was to run, orders more peremptory than before
were sent by the Treasury to the Board of Customs and Excise
at Dublin to pay and receive in all transactions under their
control the detested tokens, and calling them to account for the
part they had taken during the controversy. They denied that
they had issued any general orders to prevent the circulation of
Wood's tokens, but represented that from the state of dis-
order the nation was in, and the declarations that had been
published by all sorts of people that they would not receive or
utter them, they were under the utmost difficulties how to
execute the directions of their Lordships. “If their collectors
were obliged to take these tokens, such orders would be thought
arbitrary, and would bring a difficulty on the Revenue, the whole
nation thinking they might safely refuse them, the King having
| Nicholson to Wake, 21st Aug., 1724.--MS.
2 To Under-Sec. Southwell, 18th Aug., 1724. – MS.
3 Cal. Treasury Papers, 6th August, 1724.
268
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
declared in his patent that none should receive them but such
as were willing. The uneasiness that people of all ranks were in
was greater than could be imagined by any that were not on the
spot.” 1
George Faulkner, the printer of the Drapier's Letters, asked
leave to inscribe a complete issue of them to the Charicellor,
and sent a copy of the dedication, in which he declared that the
author would have been silent had he not had so glorious an
example in his Lordship's vindication of the rights of the
country. Midleton was at dinner, and desired his servant to
tell the messenger that "he would not by any means consent to
the dedication, and, if done, he would complain of the printer."
The statesman was willing to risk his office rather than forego
the fulfilment of his constitutional duty, but not to hazard his
reputation for gravity and truth by seeming to adopt the exag-
gerations of the popular pamphleteer.
Customs House, Dublin, 24th Aug., 1724.—Cal. Treas. Papers.
2 Endorsement of the original paper, in the Chancellor's handwriting, Sept.,
1724.—MS.
12
1
269
CHAPTER VIII.
SOUTH SEA SCHEME.
1721.
ences
Tou
Walpole in Opposition-Adviser of the Princess—Smoothing Royal Differ-
-Walpole takes Office—Incorporation of the South Sea Com-
pany- The Customs Pledged to Pay the Debt-Halifax raises the
Capital to two Millions—Competition between the Bank and the South
Sea Directors for Liquidating the National Debt-South Sea Stock at
1,000 per cent.—Marlborough sells out in time—Market Falls—The
Bubble Burst-Committee of Inquiry-Death of Stanhope—Aislabie
expelled the House-Death of the Younger Craggs-Suicide of the
Elder-Sunderland gives up the Treasury.
OWNSHEND and Walpole had proved themselves as
capable of giving trouble in opposition as evicted Ministers
deem it their privilege to do. The Viscount was not yet
in a forgiving mood or disposed to make any advance towards
reconciliation, but the Member for Lynn grew tired of his
Jacobite allies, and daily cogitated with himself how he was to
get back to the first armchair at the Treasury Board. He had
severed from Stanhope on account of Townshend, but was ready
to act with him again, not only formally but thoroughly; for he
knew the value of the man, and did not see who else could fill
his place with equal efficiency. He had offended and thwarted
the King's mistress, incautiously, but on further reflection he
was willing to agree to terms of friendship and alliance with
her, whatever they might be; not because he could keep his
countenance better than he used to do when talking confidentially
of blackmail, but because he did not see how the machinery of
rule was to be kept going otherwise. Walpole believed what
Sarah had always told him, that there was no enmity there, and
that when Sunderland's greed of office was satisfied, and his
270
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
personal pre-eminence recognised, he had no grudge against
him, and that the Earl would be glad to have again for a
colleague one who would lighten the weight of his financial
responsibilities. Whether the author of the Peerage Bill was
willing to abide by the beating he had received at the hands of
Walpole, or meant to make an opportunity for risking it again,
no one probably could tell ; but the victor was not unwilling to
aver that he had come to attach less importance to the provisions
regarding Scotch Peers, and that if compromise were made on
that part of the scheme, he would not be impracticable. Beyond
this there seems to be no reason to suppose that he offered, as
in the case of the Mutiny Bill, to give up the main issues for
which he had contended.
But there was something in his plotting brain more difficult,
and better worth accomplishing, than all these. In the Princess
of Wales he had at last made a friend, by whom he calculated
upon one day gaining ascendancy at Court. Everybody else
among politicians either had, or was supposed to have had, a
share in embittering the feud between her husband and his
father. Caroline had the good sense to deplore it for the sake of
her family, and to listen with readiness to Walpole's suggestions
for putting an end to it. His position out of office left him free
to offer advice for which his recent proof of transcendant ability
in Parliament ensured respect; and possessing that rarest of
political qualities, moral courage, he won at length her High-
ness's permission to try and bring the Prince to see that it was
his interest as well as duty to make the first advances towards
reconciliation. Without her aid, rendered as she alone knew
how, he probably would not have risked the experiment, and
though at first discouraged, he contrived eventually to succeed.
Devonshire and Cowper quite as earnestly desired to see the
miserable quarrel brought to an end, and they daily invoked her
aid for its accomplishment. It was inevitable that any move-
ment of the kind, thus originating and supported, should, in the
view of many, seem to be but strategy to bring back the alienated
Whigs; and it is probable that pressure was brought to bear
upon members of the Cabinet to dissuade them from hearkening
to the readmission of those who had proved so unyielding yoke-
fellows. Sunderland was willing to resume Ministerial relations
with Townshend and Walpole, leaving Royal enmities unap-
ROYAL RECONCILIATION.
27 1
1
peased. But Walpole, who acted throughout in confidence with
Devonshire, steadily refused, and warned Sunderland that upon
no other basis than that which he had offered could Govern-
ment rely on the support they wanted in Parliament for the
clearing the arrears of Royal debts. It was this that brought
George I. to see the necessity of granting a full parental
amnesty.
Without the support of his son's friends in Parliament, Govern-
ment could not have Walpole; and he was after all the only
Minister who could always find money. Secretary Craggs was
authorised accordingly to express the willingness of the King
that there should be oblivion of family feuds, without any
formal terms of accommodation on either side, provided the
Prince would write a dutiful letter expressing his desire, and that
of the Princess, to come to Court as formerly, and to resume their
residence at St. James's. Cowper advised them to stipulate for
the care and control of their children. After prolonged negotia-
tion, the thread of which seemed repeatedly snapped by the
vehemence of half-stifled resentments, the Heir Apparent con-
ceded all that was required, and the question of the restoration
of the children was left in abeyance. Caroline at this time was
tempted to distrust Walpole, whom she did not scruple to
accuse of bribing her husband to submit to everything else by
obtaining leave to have a separate residence. It is a curious
proof of the subtlety and effrontery of the man that, despite
prejudices seemingly so insurmountable, he should deliberately
set about winning, not merely the toleration of the Princess, but
her confidence, at the risk of losing that of the King, and, as all
this could not be done in a day or in the dark, that he should
have succeeded in gaining his end without paying the forfeit.
By his own account he carried everything he wanted in the
Closet by the help of the Duchess of Kendal, “who was Queen
of England as much as ever woman was.” ?
He assured Cowper that he had shaken the influence of
Bernsdorff by convincing his master that he had bought up the
orders for the pay of the foreign troops at fifty per cent. But
to get the Royal debts paid without taking the opposite party
1 Walpole in conversation with Etough.--Mem. MS.
2 Walpole to Cowper.
3 Idem.
272
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
into coalition there was no way save that of winning back the
adherence of Leicester House; and Townshend and Walpole
had consequently carte blanche to promise anything and every-
thing that might be necessary for the purpose. So rapid was
the progress of Ministerial mesmerism that by the middle of
April complete reticence was observed with respect to Court
affairs by the Princess towards Archbishop Wake, till then unre-
servedly trusted ; and by her favourite, Lady Cowper, the magic
change was noted as amazing : "How has Walpole got so far
power over them that they don't see and know their best friends
but through the perspective he holds to their eyes?"1 The chil-
dren were sent back. The Prince was received in audience; the
Grenadiers mounted guard at Leicester Fields. The recon-
ciliation was complete before the German busy-bodies were let
into the secret, and when Stanhope superciliously explained to
Bothmar that it was deemed necessary to observe mystery to
the last, as so good a thing was to be accomplished, the mer-
cenary inarplot burst into tears.
Cowper and Walpole said they did not want offices, they were
content with the credit of having made peace in the Royal
Family. Cowper alone was probably sincere. He said he
would attend the Cabinet if they summoned him, but he would
take no place ; for infirmities and fifty-five winters made him
wish for nothing so much as repose and freedom. He had
fortune enough to live independently ; he was tired of Court life
and all the sacrifices it entailed. The Duke of Kingston he
thought had behaved shabbily towards him about the Privy
Seal ; and it would serve him right if he were forced to give it
up. Spiteful people would be ready to say that he was sullen
because the task of peace-maker had not been altogether left to
him. But what signified such considerations in comparison with
health and ease? He would accept office no more. He held
to his resolution, content with his wife's having the Gold Key
recently held by the Duchess of St. Albans. After some delay
he withdrew for good into the country. Before he left he com-
mended strongly for advancement one who in due time was
destined to become the most illustrious of his successors.
Philip Yorke was already rising in reputation at the Bar suffi-
ciently to make it worth the while of Government to enlist him
1 Diary, 15th April, 1720.
WALPOLE AGAIN IN CABINET.
273
on their side in the wordy war at Westminster. Henry Pelham
engaged on his behalf his brother's interest at Lewes, and
thither, consequently, he bent his steps in April, 1719, and the
following year he was made Solicitor-General.
Newcastle had brought his brother Henry Pelham into Parlia-
ment for Seaford, and in accordance with family traditions-
reward first, and service afterwards—he was made Treasurer of
the Chamber. In a maiden speech, he moved an Address of
thanks to the King for proposing the appropriation of insurance
on ships and merchandise in support of the Civil List. He was
seconded by Walpole, with whom from that day Pelham linked
his political fortunes, and under whom he served his financial
apprenticeship. Soon afterwards he became Member for Sussex,
and represented the county for the rest of his life.
After the first effusion of joy, murmurings multiplied on all
sides by reason of the many who, thinking they had shown
patriotic zeal if not appreciable power to help forward the Royal
making up, found to their chagrin that they had only made
away with their subordinate importance; and, on the plea of no
inore room, were to be quietly dropped. Walpole himself was
not contented-he might have had the Exchequer and welcome;
but he put aside the notion, swearing that he would not serve
under anybody. Thus Aislabie remained on to his ruin ; and
Walpole re-entered the Cabinet as Paymaster-General. His
influence with the Princess did not prevent her husband from
holding Stock in the latest "bubbles," as the further issues of
South Sea Bonds were familiarly called. The allotment list
being full, it was suggested that his Royal Highness should sub-
scribe twenty thousand at one hundred and fifty, and the Princess
ten, displacing a good many whose names had been entered
previously and whose dissatisfaction contributed to make it known
that Leicester House was concerned in new ventures. Then
came a message from the King suggesting that the debt on foot
of the Civil List should be paid by the Treasury with the Com-
pany's paper. Walpole and Craggs are said to have turned to
private account the rapid rise consequent thereupon. Other
offers were made, but rejected without scruple at the instance of
Walpole, who, in the hearing of not a few at Westminster,
silenced Pulteney with the summary logic: “I tell you, sir, we
will hear of no other proposals, for these will do.” The Prince
VOL. I.
T
274
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
having thus contributed to paying off his father's debts, told his
advisers that he expected as much to be done for him when he
was King Already, however, the zenith of national infatuation
had been passed and the "bubbles ” had begun to waver and to
droop. Shippen, in his downright way, more than once im-
pugned the conduct of Craggs and Walpole. But the majority
in Parliament were too deeply engaged in maintaining public
confidence in the pretended way of making haste to be rich to
care for prognostics of coming evil. Some day or other a reverse
might come, but long ere then each one flattered himself that he
would have had his turn and got clear of the risk. Though
baffled for a time in legislation, Sunderland was bent on being
supreme. How long he might have held by Stanhope in Execu-
tive partnership none can tell ; but that he would ever willingly
have been content to trust Townshend or Walpole on a footing
of equality in Cabinet can hardly be believed. Carteret at most
could only aspire to the position of Second Lieutenant, while
Stanhope held that of First. But the fatal consequences of
Government identification with the South Sea scheme was
destined to put an end ere long to an ascendancy that for a
time seemed to be infrangible.
Sunderland had lost little of his influence in Parliament or at
Court by his defeat on the Peerage Bill, and Stanhope's visit to
Paris having obtained a decree excluding the Pretender from
France sealed the triumph of their foreign policy. They could
afford, without incurring the suspicion of weakness, to invite
notable schismatics to join the Government once more. On the
other hand, the men who by their well-concerted revolt from
party allegiance had won a signal victory in Parliament could,
without loss of dignity, again take office. Bolton made way for
Grafton, as Viceroy of Ireland. Townshend became President of
the Council. Boscawen, having married Marlborough's niece,
was gratified with a Peerage. He had been found a serviceable
whip in former days, and had occasionally proved ready to say
a hard word when it was thought useful. A postponed com-
petitor for distinction embalmed his awkward affectation of
courtly airs in the well-known quotation :-
Optat eplipia bos,
which someone in mischief told Lord Falmouth was specially
BOSCAWEN.
275
pointed at him. On asking him who dared to call him bos, he
was informed it was only old Horace. Mistaking this for the
brother of the statesman, the master of piebald teams angrily
threatened that if the Postmaster-General did not make
Horace behave himself, he would make all his votes in hand run
against him.
With continuing peace, the profits and perquisites of pay-
master were not sufficient to satisfy Walpole ; and he retired
to Houghton after a friendly conference with Craggs, intimating
that he did not contemplate returning to town for the rest of
the year. To keen observers the reunion of Princes and States-
men seemed “far from sincere, though it might by degrees
become so, and the appearances and consequences of it might
become the same as if it were so : a melancholy truth," as Atter-
bury termed it, whereof he felt bound to give frank warning to
the exiled court lest they should cherish groundless hopes of
better days at hand.
Bernsdorff soon discerned his master's discontent with the too
candid tone of security which characterised the reconciled chiefs.
Sunderland's overweening sense of power was the theme of
comment ainong all who were brought into immediate contact
with him. Harley, it was said no doubt with a view to its
being repeated by the Baron in the Closet_"never had the
power or the insolence of Lord Sunderland.”
On Grafton's designation as Viceroy, Chancellor Midleton's
friends believed that he must give place to another. His
obduracy and that of his brother regarding the Peerage Bill
could not be forgiven. Resentment had not cooled : would the
opportunity be now taken of gratifying it? After many years of
varied and responsible duty "he had not learned to be subser-
vient enough, and though his fortune was not great, he would be
able to live independent and yet handsomely."2 There were
difficulties, however, in choosing a successor --some professional,
some political ; and the details, had they been preserved, would
probably not be worth recounting. Chief Baron Gilbert paid a
visit to London about this time, and it was rumoured that he
was to be promoted; but either he failed to satisfy his patron's
impatience to carry matters with a higher hand than hitherto in
1 Letter to James III., 6th May, 1720.
2 Midleton to his brother, 12th June, 1720.--MS.
T 2
276
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Ireland, or he thought himself more secure in the Court of Ex-
chequer; he came back as he went; and Midleton was suffered
to retain his judicial office for some years longer. But in the
next nomination of Lords Justices he was omitted.
When Harley, in 1710, became Lord Treasurer, he had a
floating debt to deal with of nearly ten millions. On his sugges-
tion a Joint Stock Company was formed with a nominal capital
of nine millions, the shareholders being the creditors of the
Treasury to whom that amount was due. Under the Act of
Incorporation they were to receive, until paid off, interest at six
per cent. on "Bonds" assignable by ordinary transfer. To render
these marketable, existing customs on wine, vinegar, tobacco,
East India goods, wrought silks, and whale-fins, were made
perpetual and appropriated to pay off the capital debt at twelve
months' notice after 1716; and splendid promises were further
held out to the Company of commercial privileges to trade to all
parts of the Southern Seas, save those which belonged to Portu-
gal. The idea was not altogether new, a like expedient, to a
much less amount, having been embodied in an Act of William
for increasing the capital of the Bank of England during the
Administration of Godolphin, the soundness and success of
which had not been questioned.
Under the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain gave up the exclusive
supply of negroes from Africa for the whole of her Colonies and
Plantations; and this, entitled the Assiento Contract, was vested
in Harley's new Company, called by his admirers his masterpiece.
Halifax, in 1715, obtained from the Directors considerable ad-
vances in cash, for which additional duties were mortgaged to
them, and they began to fit out ships freighted with merchandise
for the Southern Seas. The value of their stock steadily rose, ,
and in 1716, Walpole, then at the head of the Treasury, negotiated
certain abatements of interest as part of a plan for the reduction
of debt, and the establishment of a Sinking Fund. In 1718,
Aislabie transferred to the South Sea Company other sources of
revenue to form part of their capital to the extent of £1,746,000,
bearing interest at five per cent. On this ill-fated model was
subsequently framed the memorable project for subscribing
the whole residue of the public debt to form part of the capital
of either the Bank of England or the South Sea Company,
18th and 9th William, chap. xix.
THE BUBBLE RISING.
277
whichever should bid higher for the privilege. To float the
scheme various lotteries were announced, which tended still
further to excite speculative cupidity in an ever-widening circle,
and to confuse the public sense of the solid grounds, if any such
there were, of calculation on which the egregious design could
with safety rest.
On the 22nd of January, 1720, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
informed the House of Commons that the South Sea Company
offered to pay a sum of three millions and a half in cash, in four
instalments, for an assignment to them as Stock of a great portion
of the National Debt,+ with power to issue Stock to that amount
"at any time until Lady-day, 1721, whereupon the Directors of
the Bank offered instead to give five millions. Not to be outdone,
the South Sea Company bid seven and a half millions, which
Aislabie clutched at with well-feigned patriotic satisfaction.
Strange to say, the Bank sought to cap this bidding with a
further advance, in which they offered £1,700 of their Stock in
lieu of every £100 of long annuities. The very rumours of these
sanguine dealings with Government had raised the Company's
stock to one hundred and twenty-six at the close of 1719, and
Parliament assembled to discuss the enactments necessary in a
fever of speculation, ill suited for inquiry or reasoning. Ministers
were too deeply committed in private negotiation with the direc-
tors of the Company to desert them in the reckless competition,
while Walpole contended vehemently that a preference should
be shown to the Bank. He urged the greater security offered
by the latter, and did not shrink from deprecating the whole
scheme as one full of hazard, and unworthy of the dignity of
Government. It was a scheme tending to pervert the spirit of
the nation from trade and industry to the pernicious habit of
stock jobbing. It held out a dangerous lure for decoying the
unwary to their ruin by a false prospect of gain, and to part with
the gradual profits of their labour for imaginary wealth. He
insisted that if the Company's proposal were accepted the legal
price of their stock ought to be limited. In vain he dwelt on
' In Walpole’s handwriting was found a summary, viz. :-
£
Original capital of the Company
11,746,844 8 10
Purchase of the Redeemable Debts...
15,924,218 12 101
Irredeemables ...
15,057,493 13 8
Including the original capital, the whole stock is ... 42,728,556 15 41
S. d.
278
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the miseries and confusion which then prevailed in France from
the adoption of similar measures; in vain he urged that, as the
whole success of the scheme must depend on the rise of the
stock, the great principle of the project was an evil of the first
magnitude, raising artificially its value by exciting and keeping
up a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of
funds which could not be adequate for the purpose. He foretold
how illusory the scheme would prove, and that the public ere
long would find the whole but a dream. His warning availed
nothing, and the preference was given to the South Sea, the Bill
being subsequently carried by a majority of three to one, for
the influence of the Company at Westminster was strong, and
the influence of the Treasury at the South Sea House was para-
mount. Besides, Sir J. Bateman, M.P. for the City, Shepheard,
M.P. for Cambridge; George Pitt, for Wareham; Sir G. Casnall,
for Leominster ; H. Townshend, for Yarmouth ; Sir Theodore
Janssen, for the Isle of Wight; F. Tench, for Southwark; J.
Sawbridge, for Cricklade; and F. Eyles, for Devizes, performed
the twofold duty of legislators and directors. Bateman, the son
of a Dutch merchant, who had amassed a large fortune in Lon-
don, took a prominent part in the original plan of Harley for
the liquidation of the Army and Navy arrears; and he was
brought into Parliament for Ilchester, then a Government
borough ; and on the change of parties in 1714, he found it con-
venient to join with Mr. Smith, Teller of the Exchequer, in
support of the new Administration. Walpole found both ready
to his hand when devising his enlarged copy of Harley's South
Sea scheme; and Bateman was named Deputy Governor of the
Company. He was more than ever made much of in Minis-
terial circles; and to the surprise of many, perhaps his own, he
found himself the accepted suitor of Lady Anne Spencer, nor did
his friends in the City marvel less when the great Duke and the
loftier Duchess stood sponsors at the baptism of their first-born.
While the golden day of national speculation was still young,
the Prince of Wales was invited to become Governor of the
South Sea Company, with the propitiatory offering of several
thousands a year. But he had not enjoyed this all-envied dis-
tinction long, when it was suggested that the King himself
might occupy the position, and in order to enable him to do so,
1 23rd March, 1720.
GEORGE 1. GOVERNOR.
279
an Act was framed by direction of the Cabinet, and carried
through both Houses, the scope and language of which would
hardly be credited if they were not of statutable record. The
Act enabled his Majesty to hold shares and receive dividends
without being liable, in any event, to calls or losses.
Plausible as the expanded speculation had become under
Aislabie for granting exceptional privileges to the Company,
there was still a remnant found who were not deceived. Beside
Oxford and Cowper, Devonshire forewarned the Peers of the
dangers borne in its womb. It was a Trojan horse originating
in treachery, nurtured in deceit, introduced with pomp, but big
only with disappointment and ruin. Out of doors all were not
carried away by the prevalent infatuation. From Ireland,
Archbishop King expostulated with Primate Wake on what
seemed to him the peril of the course the Government were
pursuing
From the first he distrusted the South Sea scheme, and warned
his friends in private against being drawn into the net. His
anxiety rose with the price, and when it touched three hundred
per cent. he reduced to form his reasons for unabated misgiving,
but would not suffer them to be printed because he understood
that whoever said anything against the South Sea was looked
on as disaffected to the Government," I a suspicion that did not
beseem one who was required to act as one of the Lords Justices
of the Kingdom. Nor was he the only episcopal seer of the
time. When Pope was the guest of Atterbury early in the year,
one of the presages of evil that filled the Prelate's thoughts
was of the insecurity of those around them on every side, who
were yielding to the temptations of the hour, and when events
began to realise the foresight of his friend he wrote alluding to
their interchange of sad forebodings: “I have cause, since I
last waited on you at Bromley, to look upon you as a prophet,
from whom oracles may be had, were mankind wise enough to
go thither to consult you. The fate of the South Sea Company
has, much sooner than I expected, verified what you told me.
Most people thought the time would come, but no man prepared
for it. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain
with half of what they imagined they had (among which is your
humble servant), I would have them sensible of their felicity,
| To Archbishop Wake, February, 1720.
280
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after
half of his estate was swallowed by the directors of those days,
resolved that half to be more than the whole. Does not the
fate of the people put you in mind of two passages, one in Job,
the other from the Psalmist :
"Men shall groan them out of the City, and hiss them out of their place.'
'They have dreamed out their dream, and awaking have found nothing in their
hands.'» 1
Defoe availed himself of his incognito to utter what his pay-
masters in high places would not have thanked him for whisper-
ing; and from his hermitage at Stoke Newington sent forth a
piercing cry against the infatuation of the day. When grave
warning of the danger of gambling with the public debt proved
vain, the anonymous Tribune tried to rail and banter his country-
men out of their credulity. In mockery he announced a finer
scheme :
“The projector, by long study, has attained to a certain method
of melting down carpenters' chips and sawdust, &c., and running
them into planks and boards of all lengths and sizes. Hereby
all gentlemen, builders and others, may, upon ten days' notice,
be furnished with boards and planks adapted exactly to the
dimensions they want, at least twenty-five per cent. cheaper than
yet has been known. These boards will be free from sap and
knots, and delivered grained or not grained as desired. The
projector promises himself that he shall shortly be able to give
them a tincture of marble shade, or any other fine stone colour,
which shall exceed all painting. The composition in these
boards has a secret virtue which prevents their shrinking, and
destroys all vermin that come near them. Proposals for erecting
a company, and raising a joint-stock of one million five hundred
thousand pounds, on very advantageous terms to the subscribers,
will shortly be published, and the projector will be glad (in the
interim) of an opportunity to confer with any gentleman of in-
genuity upon so beneficial a scheme; and for that purpose will
give daily attendance at exchange time, at the Cock, in Birchin
Lane." On another instrument he played a yet more plaintive
note.
“South Sea Stock has made such a consumed noise of late that
1 Pope to Atterbury, 23rd September, 1720.
PLANKS FROM SAWDUST.
281
abundance of our country gentlemen and rich farmers are upon
the roads from several parts of the Kingdom, all expecting no
less than to ride down again, every man in his coach and six. If
a friend's advice is worth anything, let them take care, for though
there are some prizes, they may find many more blanks; and
they may happen to lose all in an hour in 'Change Alley that
the industry and care of their ancestors have been scraping
together for some ages.” 1
Describing the collapse of Law's Mississippi Scheme, which
foreshadowed the coming disaster in England, the desertion in
Paris of the lately crowded Quinquam poix was set forth in no
mincing terms. "People there were running as precipitately from
the scene of their delusion as ever they flocked to it. There
was little money stirring, provisions grew dear, and, as stock-
jobbing was over, multitudes who came thither with no less pros-
pect than getting estates, found it now difficult to get bread.”2
Whitehall frowned, with reasons of its own, at such distempered
admonitions. Aislabie put on airs of disdain at the futility of
such malice, and superciliously pointed to quotations of South
Sea Actions, as they were still called, at four hundred pre-
mium. Craggs, who was concerned on his own account and
that of his father, that the stock should not go down till they
and their friends had realised, and who could not make up their
minds to get out of the marvellous venture while there was any
hope of its going up further, was very austere in Council about
curbing the licentiousness of the Press. If he ascribed the drop-
ping fire that wounded him to a masked battery furtively fed with
Government powder and shol, he had not the courage to say so,
and the veiled prophet of Stoke Newington went his way.
But the heart of Defoe continued to be moved within him as
he saw the whole people more than ever given over to the
idolatry of Mammon. A letter to his friend Mist, enclosed in
confidence a new project, professedly from one whose life had
been spent in "planning and building castles in the air, yet
could never get a lodging in any one of them.”3 His happy
thought was to provide the inhabitants of the Metropolis, whose
habitual thirst was well known, with ale of superior quality,
2
Defoe, Mist's Journal, 29th March, 1720.
Daily Post, 4th April, 1720.
3 30th April, 1720.
282
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
brewed at a central establishment of unrivalled dimensions, and
capable of supplying subscribers of temperate reputation with
the liquor they loved, by means of subterranean pipes like water
by the New River Company : capital ten millions.
Defoe, under various pseudonyms, sought to warn the credu-
lous from touching the leprous hand of speculation; but his warn-
ings were in vain. In April South Sea Stock continued to be
530 per cent. At the beginning of June it was 890 per cent.,
and after Midsummer it reached a 1,000 premium. Mean-
while at Paris Mississippi bonds had gone up to sixty times
their original price, and nearly every bank and palace in
Christendom shared in their possession. The epidemic grew
more and more contagious in Paris and London. The family of
the Marquis of Powys were said to have won £80,000, the
newly-created Duke of Chandos half a million sterling, and
Thomas Pitt (afterwards Lord Londonderry) was conspicuous
for the sale of like investments in Paris at prodigious profit.
While the fever was at its height Marlborough was dissuaded by
his astute spouse from giving heed to Sunderland's further sug-
gestions of money to be easily made; and before the fall set in
she insisted on his selling out all he held, whereby he netted
£100,000.1
Of the fragmentary shreds of fact that remain of the fatuous
doings of the time, one or two others may serve in illustration.
A female relative of the young wife of Sunderland speaks of "her
goodness as being so mindful of her absent friends as to secure a
five hundred pounds subscription in the latest issue of South
Sea Stock) which money was now doubled."2 And far down in
the country fair Judith's cousin only lamented that nobody would
lend her another five hundred pounds whereby she might profit
by the friendship of the First Lord of the Treasury. Forbidden
fruits abounded of every size and flavour, and the austere capi-
talist had as little compunction in asking as the flighty dame of
fashion.
Unruffled, the current of jobbing flowed to the very brink of
the abyss. Onlookers held their breath in the sultry air, and
listened for the impending storm ; but gaily-rigged yachts con-
tinued to float down stream to the last, running foul of one
1 Letters to Mrs. Clayton.
2 Mrs. Molesworth, from Axminster, 25th June, 1720.
ON THE CREST OF THE WAVE.
283
another now and then without ostensible damage or danger,
some of them tacking just in time, and making for shore. There
was great competition among the bigger companies for preferen-
tial privileges, which the most solvent and respectable sought like
the rest. The Sun, Hand in Hand, and Union lodged caveats
with the Treasury against the Charter sought by the Royal Ex-
change Company, but without success. Side by side is a record
of the price of £300,000 the London Assurance agreed to pay
Government for incorporation, and having paid a third of the
sum, and of their asking further time to pay the remainder."
Sub-Governor Sir W. Chapman was called in to offer securities
for £39,000, and £11,000 in cash a month later on account, when
Mr. Aislabie "admonished him to redeem the tallies so deposited
by small payments, viz., £5,000 at a time, as the Company should
be able, till the whole were redeemed.”2 Secretary Craggs enter-
tained the Foreign Ambassadors on a scale of magnificence his
predecessors were unwilling to afford. The country was, pre-
sumably, growing rich at an unprecedented pace, and its execu-
tive rulers floated with the tide. The journal in whose columns
the Minister's magnificence found a record was under his daily
control.
A private letter from the Secretary, in a gossiping tone, kept
his colleagues at Herrenhausen advised how unbroken by political
cares were the pleasant slumbers of Government. A Company
had been formed for smelting copper, in which several needy
men about town were concerned, and of which the Prince of
Wales had been induced, by the offer of a large stipend, to
become governor.
The shares speedily went to a premium,
and the attention of the Treasury was called to the fact that
the hopes of profit were based upon certain restrictive statutes
being set aside which limited trade. It was impossible to
describe what a rage prevailed for South Sea subscription at any
price. The crowd of those who held redeemable annuities was
such that the Bank obliged to receive them had been forced to
set tables with clerks in the streets. No hint was dropped that
Craggs and other Ministers were, day by day, wading further and
further into the stream.
1
Treasury Papers Calendar, Sept., 1720.
2 Ibid., October, 1725.
3 Mist's Journal, 28th June, 1720.
284
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
There dined at Lord Sunderland's the day before, the Dukes
of Devonshire and Newcastle, Lords Carlisle, Townshend, and
Lumley, the Speaker, Walpole, and himself. They got, some
very drunk and others very merry.
Alluding, obviously to the prevalent rumours that the great
Captain was fast losing his memory and intelligence, Craggs,
whose family owed everything to the patronage of Blenheim,
adds in gossiping mood, “Would you believe it, the Duke of
Marlborough, at a visit he and his good Duchess made at Rich-
mond, told the Prince he was ashamed to see his Royal High-
ness in such a country house, like a private gentleman, while
such an insignificant creature as the Duke of Marlborough was
playing the King; that he had, out of decency, attended the
Lord Justices once, at the first summons, but that he would
return no more. The previous Saturday, at Court, Craggs
observed that the Prince talked of the perfect state of his
Grace's understanding."i A week later Craggs reported that
South Sea had gone to about £1,000, and that the price aug-
mented every day. One would have thought this enough to
awaken the guardsman of the public safety to a sense of danger.
The contagion of gambling proved as ubiquitous as the small-
pox. Henry Pelham, who, by inheritance having little else, had
a character for integrity to make, and his brother, whose vast
fortune and intense timidity might have been supposed to keep
him clear of temptation, had, among the rest, yielded to its
spell, without apparently the least consciousness of danger. At
the end of July, Charles Stanhope informed the Lord Chamber-
lain that Mr. Pelham had been with him to say that the Directors
of the South Sea had resolved that the new subscription then
going on should be "equally divided among the proprietors of
their Stock, allowing, as he had since been informed, twenty per
cent. for what they had in ; but if this should not prove so, and
there was any room left for his zeal to exert itself, his Grace
might be assured of his diligence."3 In the same letter, the
Secretary to the Treasury reported having forwarded the Lord
Chamberlain's application for two small places; and added, in a
friendly way, that" he always fancied his Grace's jobs went more
1 To Stanhope, from the Cockpit, 15th July, 1720.—MS.
2 22nd July, 1720.-MS.
3 From the Treasury, 28th July, 1720.—NIS.
PREMONITORY CHILL.
285
roundly when he was there, as he should be at the next meet-
ing." Craggs, however, wrote that the resolution of the Directors
meant to confine the distribution of the new Stock to existing
holders, and that, consequently, all their Court lists of sup-
porters and friends not theretofore subscribers,"were demolished;
and though it saved him a great deal of trouble, yet he was
sorry he could not do as his Grace desired for his friends, who
must be contented to fare like the rest of the world. There
was not a scrap of domestic news, except that Walpole had gone
out of town; that the Prince had taken the oath of Governor
of the Copper Smelting Company; and that the Duke of Rich-
mond patronised another of the same kind.” 1
Some weeks later, the unforeseen but inevitable chill in specu-
lation became for the first time perceptible, and Stanhope, writ-
ing from Gohrdt, could only hope that this unaccountable panic
would subside before the opening of the session in November,
when everything would be done to retrieve the legislative project
on which their thoughts were fixed. As Parliament had led the
way, nearly all England followed. The Bank and the East
India Company shared in the delusive enhancement of their
Stock, the former rising to 260, the latter to 445, occasioned
partly by the sellers out of the "bubbles," as they were called,
beginning to think their money safer elsewhere. At Midsummer
the aggregate value at the advanced prices of all the great
Stocks was estimated at five hundred millions, or about five
times the amount of the current cash of all Europe. If the
yearly rent of all the land and houses in Great Britain did not
exceed fourteen millions, and their value at sixteen years' pur-
chase, two hundred and twenty-four millions—here was above
double the value of the fee simple of all the real property of the
nation in this chimerical traffic ; while the substantial industry
of the realm was in a great degree neglected. As if this were
not enough, new devices were employed to draw fresh dupes
into the general snare. On the second issue of shares, in lieu of
irredeemable annuities, subscribers were to be allowed six
months for their instalments at four per cent. A swarm of
lesser projects, infinite in variety of fraud, drew their transient
1 To Newcastle, 2nd Aug., 1720. — MS.
2 To Newcastle, Sth Oct., 1720.-- MS.
3 Anderson's " History of Commerce.”
286
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
vitality from the unnatural heat generated by stock-jobbing in
which Government were parties, and before the final dissipation
of the popular dream legal measures were actually taken to put
down what were called the "bubbles," as calculated to distract
the public mind and spoil the market. It ought not, however,
to be forgotten that out of this excess of speculation many use-
ful and honourable undertakings took their rise, which, carefully
guided and matured, not only survived the incidents of the time,
but are with us even unto this day.
Not content with preferential profits, the South Sea Directors
induced Ministers to put in force statutes against their compara-
tively feeble competitors in delusive joint-stock companies, and a
shower of writs of scire facias suddenly fell, like hail in harvest, on
'Change Alley and the parts adjacent. “Bubbles” vanished by
the score ; those who had made by them were careful to retire
taciturnly for the enjoyment of their gains, while those who had
lost wreaked their disappointment on the treachery of those in
high places, who, they said, were meanly jealous of those who
had feebly imitated their example. There was an exceeding
bitter cry in the City, and the would-be monopolists of fictitious
wealth grew nervous lest despondency and distrust should grow
infectious. An offer was accordingly published of a further
subscription of a million and a-half on the 24th August for
taking over so much more of the Public Debt at a thousand per
cent., with two years in which to pay up the instalments. But,
though taken in the space of three hours, some atmospheric in-
fluence depressed the selling value, and to dispel the injurious
misgivings created by the improvident resort to scire facias,
notice was published that for the next twelve years the dividend
on their Stock would be fifty per cent. For forty-eight hours
this magnificent promise was believed, and the New Stock rose.
A highly-respectable and influential meeting of shareholders
voted their thanks for this crowning proof of the Directorial
foresight and generosity. The curtain fell amid applause, and
when it rose again three weeks later, South Sea Stock had
silently but sadly fallen to 400, half its recent price. To arrest
the thaw in public confidence, the Directors offered to reduce the
terms of their last scheme from a thousand pounds to four hun-
dred, but all in vain. By the beginning of October no more
than 175 could be obtained for the Stock, while the Company's
THE CRASH.
287
bonds were at 12 per cent. discount. Thenceforth the decline
became daily more rapid.
Disappointment and dismay at the failure of reiterated promises
that the market would recover drove men to seek consolation
and counsel in various quarters. A meeting of South Sea stock-
holders on the 17th October to consider expedients for retriev-
ing their affairs, came to no definite resolution, and was broken
up in such a storm of passionate reproach as compelled the
Chairman, who was one having authority, to threaten the reading
of the Riot Act.1 Rich and luxurious persons of all degrees
found it impossible to realise their imagined fortunes, and
hastened as fast to expedients of economy too late, as they had
previously hastened to be rich too soon. Coachmakers advertised
for sale, at unprecedentedly low prices, carriages of the best
description that had been hardly used ; and jewellers offered to
array parsimonious beauty in magnificence at a cost hitherto
unknown. Private bankers could no longer make advances as
they used to do; deadly suspicions, whispered at first, but by
degrees fretfully muttered, that they had gone too deep with
their deposits in South Sea shares, shook their stability; and
before Christmas several had stopped payment. Privation,
grief, and ruin spread all round. Stanhope, Townshend, Argyll, .
and Midleton had shunned the glittering lure ; but too many
of their colleagues had yielded to the spell. The rich and noble
were conspicuous in ruin. Lords Lonsdale and Irwin were so
crippled by their losses that they did not disdain to ask for
colonial appointments. The Prince of Wales, having made
£40,000 as Chairman of his Copper Company, narrowly escaped
the consequences of its failure by withdrawing in time. Walpole
had opposed the passing of the South Sea Act for the reduction
of the National Debt by the sale of the long annuities to Sir
John Blunt's Company ; but there is no proof that he foresaw
the danger to the national welfare and credit involved in the un-
limited issue of speculative securities : and he had no scruple
about taking a considerable amount of them when 'first issued,
and selling out when they had risen to ten times the price.
Sunderland dabbled largely like the rest in the treacherous
stream, and when it began to decline was afraid the First Lord
of the Treasury would be reproached with selling out, until his
· Mist's Journal, 22nd Oct., 1720.
288
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
losses were very great. In the general dilapidation the house of
Bentinck did not escape. Henry, second Earl of Portland, a
kind and hospitable man, made liberal use of the vast accumu-
lations left by his father, and of the fortune brought him by his
wife, a co-heiress of Lord Gainsborough. The evil spirit of
impatient acquisition seemed in his youth to have had no hold
over him, yet when the tempter came, in the guise of universal
gold finder, he yielded like all around him. In the memorable
crash, for the first time in his life he knew what it was to feel
pinched. Not long before he had been gratified with a Marquisate
and a Dukedom, and he had since then lived in a style of greater
luxury than ever. He had not the courage now to retrench,
and sooner than cut down his establishment, and own how far
he had been duped, asked for public employment abroad. The
first easy post that offered was that of Governor of Jamaica,
which he held during the remainder of his life.
When the storm burst, Walpole was in Norfolk fox-hunting,
or figuring to himself in day dreams or on paper how the old
family home might be extended or rebuilt in a fashion more
fitting the residence of one who should be King, perhaps, or, at
all events, over-king, hereafter. Sundry designs offered them-
selves, and were laid aside. He probably did not know exactly
what he wanted ; but something of a house he did want, bigger,
if not better, than Euston, or Rainham, or Holkham, and for
upholstery and pictures money would provide them. As yet,
he was not ready to begin; but, though he was no philosopher
in pen or speech, his mother wit told him that in this, as in all
other joys of life, anticipation was more enjoyable than fruition.
Ere the frost had made the ground too hard for sport, he was
called to town by colleagues and particular friends in the Bank
Direction, who, frightened at the aspect of things in the City
and all around, wanted somebody who would tell them what
was best to do. Yet he tarried long before ordering post horses
for coming to the rescue; and when at last he came, and lead-
ing Directors of the East India Company and South Sea met
their more cautious rivals of Threadneedle Street to hear what
the Paymaster-General would advise, they were little comforted
at finding how much he had to hear and how little he had to
say. Again and again they met, every day bringing new facts
and doubts, vain' regrets, and incredible rumours, all tending to
A WICKED BARGAIN.
289
the same dread issue-general stop-payment. We may take for
granted, that when his conferences at the Bank were over he
had others at the Cockpit, where his help was as anxiously
looked for by the First and the Second Lord of the Treasury. It
shows how short even his clear eye-sight fell in measuring the
actual danger, that he proposed, after time for reflection, a
discount of £3,000,000 of South Sea Bonds by the Bank, which
it was supposed would go to a premium, and thereby revive
the pulse of general confidence. The proposal was clutched at
eagerly, even made publicly known, and for a few hours talked
of as a timely stroke of finance; for did not the Stock go up
from 175 to 200 ? But there the mildew of misgiving crept
silently over them, and they withered down rapidly again, and
the Bank hesitated to renew the contract.
Walpole's suggested accommodation provoked severe com-
ment from those who held Bank Stock. The favourite lady-in-
waiting at Leicester House called it a very wicked bargain for
the Bank and for everybody else. The immediate effect was to
cause a rally in South Sea shares; but next day several private
banks stopped payment notwithstanding ; and in a few hours the
Directors felt obliged to announce that they had cancelled the
transaction.
Another sickening pause of perplexity ensued, and Walpole
at length saw that without some trenchant act of legislation
nothing would do. Ruin fell suddenly and widely upon high
and low. At Dublin Castle, on the 18th of October, Lord Fitz-
william showed a letter, just received from London, in which
were named Kingston, Wharton, all the Boltons, the Scar-
boroughs, Carlisle, Lonsdale, all the Princes' servants, Hills-
borough, the Cockburns, the Foresters, Ladies Gainsborough,
Burlington, Pembroke, Hervey, and Granville, as involved in
the disaster.
Express after express was sent to Hanover by order of the
Cabinet, describing the condition of affairs, and recommending
his Majesty's immediate return. By the advice of Stanhope,
George I. hastened his journey, in order that the Houses might
be summoned to re-assemble ; but nothing definite was ready
to be laid before them, and on a prorogation to the 8th of De-
cember, despondency again sent down the price of Securities; for
1 Memorandum Lady Swindon, I., 18.
VOL. I.
U
290
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
everyone wanted to sell and nobody wanted to buy, till dis-
appointment and rage reached a height that, apart from politics,
had never previously been known. Who was to blame, and
how should the truth be riddled out of the delinquent authors
and abettors of the general infatuation and misery?
In reply to the Speech from the Throne, which only recom-
mended men of all parties to club their wits for the restoration
of public credit, great diversity of opinion broke forth. Pul-
teney, though still condemned to wait for re-admission with
his friends to office, consented to move an Address in general
terms, full of the promise of good things to come, but couched
in phrases unexceptionally vague. Jekyll, for the more inde-
pendent Whigs; Shippen, for the extreme Tories ; and Moles-
worth, on behalf of the sufferers within and without doors,
found it difficult at first to insert a pledge of searching inquiry
into the causes of calamity, and of determination to inflict
exemplary punishment upon those chiefly compromised, who-
ever they might be. The existing Parliament had begun with
such vows of vengeance on their predecessors, and they could
not better close their septennial career than by like pro-
ceedings.
Craggs and Yorke were supported by Walpole in resisting
a course which they too well knew would lead them fast and
far. If the City were on fire, all good men should join to
put out the flames, and wait till the cinders cooled to prose-
cute the incendiaries, if such there were.
Good surgeons
staunched the wound which they found bleeding, before they
sought to find how it was inflicted ; and there would be time
enough to investigate the financial errors said to have been
committed, and discover who were accountable for them, when
the panic was arrested, and men could look dispassionately
on the causes of the evil. But it grew hourly more evident
that there was much undisclosed which Government would
endeavour to conceal. Had Aislabie had the courage of inno-
cency he would have led the fight for impunity instead of
leaving it as long as he could to the special pleading of col-
leagues more free to fence because individually they had less
to fear. Walpole stood on the vantage ground of being able
to recall his now half-forgotten opposition to the reckless
measures of Aislabie for throwing slice after slice of the
WALPOLE'S PLAN.
291
revenue into a hotch-pot of national gambling for the liqui-
dation of debt out of unrealised gains in distant climes. The
Paymaster-General, who would not be listened to when there
was time to beware, was now regarded with breathless hope
and expectation when he told the House that he had already
bestowed some thoughts on a plan to restore public credit,
which at a proper time he would submit to their wisdom.
The South Sea Company were ordered to lay their accounts
in full before a Select Committee. Two classes of sufferers
threw themselves at its feet for reparation—the proprietors of
Government Stock, who had consented to be made share-
holders instead in the South Sea Company, under Aislabie's
Conversion Acts, and the subscribers, at high prices, to the
new issues of Stock by the Company at extravagant premiums.
Would the Legislature interpose to redistribute gains and
losses? The total nominal assets and liabilities stood at nearly
£38,000,000 sterling, accumulated by a great variety of trans-
actions with the public and with the Treasury. Could the
Legislature retrospectively adjudicate upon this mass of claims,
and grapple with their infinite diversity by the invention of
any rule whether inflexible or elastic? It was comparatively
easy to track the footsteps of deception and fraud through the
labyrinth of negotiation between directors and officials; and
more than one report of committees, sitting with closed doors,
named the leading culprits and recommended the sequestration
of their estates. In the bitterness of disillusion, suspicions
rapidly grew of huge gains by the managers who, it was taken
for granted, must have personally benefited largely by the
losses of the public; and similar imputations were flung broad-
cast upon everyone in Government, directly or indirectly
cognisant of the favouritism and jobbing that notoriously
prevailed in the allotment of shares; and in preferential per-
mission to withdraw. Victims there must be ere the thirst
for vengeance could be stayed ; and in times of terror when
were appeals for justice ever fairly heard ? It turned out
finally that many of the worst suspicions reiterated at the
top of the popular voice were misplaced, and some of them
were groundless. The whole of the estates of the Directors
put together did not amount to a million sterling; and there
were some men in high places against whom no conscious sin
U 2
292
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
could be brought home, save that which in Constitutional
Government is the commonest and the most mischievous of
all that of having weakly and culpably gone with the stream.
But there were others who justly trembled at the remembrance
of deeper responsibility, and a great fear fell upon all who,
whether in the City or at Whitehall, had profited by the oppor-
tunity to run up fortunes without foundation.
Walpole has been praised for not availing himself of the finan-
cial crisis which he was not responsible for bringing about. But
he was too shrewd a discerner of spirits to make such a mistake.
He saw that the imperious head of the Treasury was certain to
be damaged in the crisis ; and that his best chance of the re-
version lay in his not seeming shabbily eager to anticipate the
event. He framed and brought in and carried an elaborate
measure for distributing the liabilities of the insolvent Associa-
tion between the East India Company and the Bank upon
certain conditions ; by which public confidence might be re-
stored. Though opposed vehemently as unjust to the great
financial institutions that were not to blame, and though little
understood by the bulk of the community at large, the proposal
had a certain effect in allaying the violence of the storm ; and
eventually it was never put into operation. Other measures
followed of a more equitable and less pretentious kind. Parlia-
ment recognising the indefeasibility of the debt due by the
nation to the creditors of Government, notwithstanding their credu-
lous acceptance of South Sea Stock in lieu of their original claims
on the Treasury, Walpole proposed to engraft, as he called it,
£9,000,000 of South Sea Stock on the capital of the Bank, and
a like sum on that of the East India Company. He professed to
found his calculations on the accuracy of the accounts and docu-
ments laid before the Committee of Inquiry ; for, though many
doubts probably suggested themselves, he saw that the hour of
national agony was no time to be nice. He had the rare courage
to shut his eyes and to refuse to open them, where ignorance was
safety though not bliss, and where it would have been folly to be
wise. What want of principle! exclaims the moralising metaphy-
sician; but metaphysicians do not govern the world, and Walpole,
who had made up his mind to govern his part of it, went his own
way and held to it. The great institutions thus called on to submit
to contribution of their credit to an extent that might endanger
DEATH OF STANHOPE.
293
)
them, protested and petitioned, but in vain. Some amendments
of detail were made in the measure, which occupied in Committee
several weeks, and many divisions were critically near. At length
the Bill was sent up to the Lords, agreed to, and finally became
law.
Shippen, Thomas Brodrick, and Molesworth led the
cry
for
exemplary punishment in the Commons. Four of the South
Sea directors were committed to prison, and sangiunary threats
abounded against all who had directly or indirectly contributed
to bring about so much distress and disaster. Not to be outdone
in zeal, the Lords proceeded to examine the officers of the Com-
pany, and to commit to custody five more directors. The young
Duke of Wharton, whose personal repute was as bad as his
father's, seized the opportunity to play the part of Cato, and
with many invocations of the spirit of Roman virtue, inveighed
against the Ministers indiscriminately under whose rule calamity
had befallen the nation. Stanhope, at whose door no portion of
the blame had hitherto been laid, and whose indifference to
money was generally known, formed the principal object of
attack by the President of the Hell-fire Club. He was said
to be the modern Sejanus who had sown dissensions in the
Royal Family, and countenanced corruption in every branch
of Government. It had been confessed by some of the wit-
nesses, who to save themselves were willing to turn approvers
that shares in the original South Sea Scheme had been given to
persons in office to secure the passing of the ill-fated Act en-
larging the capital and scope of the Company. Could the Sec-
retary of State pretend to be ignorant of the fact? Stung by the
injustice of the insinuation, Stanhope rose, and with ungovernable
passion denounced the malignity of his accuser, and moved a
resolution, which was seconded by Townshend, declaring any
clandestine gifts or promises of shares for the purpose alleged,
to be a scandalous act of corruption. But the warmth of his
vindication cost him dear. When the House rose, it was per-
ceived that he was ill, and on reaching home his medical at-
tendant advised cupping. After some hours' sleep, inquiring
friends were reassured regarding his condition, but symptoms of
apoplexy set in, and after a brief struggle he had ceased to be. I
When informed of the event George I. retired to his chamber
5th Feb., 1721.
1
294
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
for several hours; and when at last his attendants were admitted
they found him overwhelmed with grief. Few men of his time
had greater advantages at starting in ambition's career than
Stanhope; and few men turned advantages more quickly to
account. Active, clever, good-natured, and unpunctilious, he
rose rapidly, winning the support of many friends, and the re-
spect of those who liked him least. He never saw more than one
side of a question at a time, but he saw that side clearly ; and
he had the knack or the luck of fixing his eyes for the most part
on that which was about to triumph. When he began to take a
prominent part in Opposition, the Tory Cabinet was beginning
to be shaken by the schism between Harley and St. John, the folly
of the Whigs about Sacheverell was beginning to fade in public
recollection, and the fine gold of the peace so long and so
anxiously desired was beginning to grow dim. As Minister of
a new King surrounded by colleagues of whose confidence and
co-operation he was secure, the lines may be said to have fallen
to him in propitious if not pleasant places. With them he had
floated into power; the time was full of excitement, and the
public air was fresh and stimulating Foreign politics, and more
especially Spanish politics, engrossed attention. Had he been
content with the part originally assigned him, his memory would
have escaped the chief reproach it bears of having caballed with
Sunderland against a trusting colleague. Townshend was hot-
tempered, overbearing, and rude, but he was an unresentful man
who hated heartily for the time being and scolded roundly those
who thwarted him; but, the occasion passed, he kept no grudge
or enmity. Both were superior to most of their contemporaries
in their indifference to money. They promoted, without nice
reference to merit, their respective relatives and friends; but they
did not plunder the Exchequer for themselves; and of Stanhope
it ought not to be forgotten that in an age of hypocritical and
cruel intolerance, he was one of the few who courageously stood
forth for the rights of conscience; and that he was about the
only politician of the first rank who was ready to risk power in
asserting them.
The cry for retributive justice was not hushed to sleep by the
progress of Walpole's Bill, which confessedly was founded on
the desire if not the hope of an agreement to let byegones be
byegones. Aislabie, despairing of acquittal, sought escape in
AISLABIE EXCELLED.
295
the resignation of his office, but he was too irretrievably identified
with all that had been done amiss to be suffered to elude prose-
cution. To the Committee he was obliged to confess the truth of
the deplorable allegations against him of having by his agents
and relatives taken between seven and eight hundred thousand
pounds of South Sea Stock when at a premium, out of various
allotments, and that in one instance £20,000 had been paid to him
by Robert Knight, the Secretary of the Company, as a douceur,
and without the pretence of any consideration. Arraigned at
the bar, he was unable to make any defence worthy of the name,
and being committed to the Tower, a Bill was carried for the
forfeiture of his estate and effects, and preventing him from quit-
ting the Kingdom. Finally he was expelled the House. Other
official delinquents speedily met their fate. Secretary Craggs lay
ill of small-pox. His case was not pronounced desperate until
the substance of the Committee's report was communicated to
him. It left no doubt of his participation in the besetting sin of
the day. Fear of disgrace proved more formidable than bodily
disease, and in a few days he was numbered with the dead. His
father, the Postmaster-General, was branded with similar reproach,
and a few weeks later he put an end to his life by poison.
An Act was passed to confiscate his real and personal estate ;
but by resort to some means unexplained, his daughters were
allowed to retain. £240,000 between them. A large sum of the
once coveted stock was said to have been lodged at Caswall's
Bank to the credit of Charles Stanhope, Secretary to the Treas-
ury. On reference to his account, the name was found to have
been altered to Stangape ; and though it was impossible to pro-
duce any individual answering to that appellation he was suffered
to escape for the want of identifying proof by a party majority
of three. The Duchess of Kendal and Countess Platen were
reported to have each received £10,000 worth of Stock; but no
evidence being adduced that they exerted their influence
in favour of the Company, they were not called upon to refund.
Other German courtiers were very indignant at the clamour
raised against them, and where they could venture, spoke and
wrote resentfully at the ingratitude shown the King, and the in-
justice done to them. The result would be that his Majesty
would either have to abdicate in favour of the Prince of Wales,
1 Etough Corresp., II., 60.--MS.
296
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
or take the reins of Government into his own hands. He was
till then but half a King. If the ambition of some designing
men threw obstacles in his way he must have time to remove
them. In case there should be no possibility of suppressing the
factions and of reconciling the different parties by the steps that
were taking, there would be nothing left for the King but to
propose to resign in favour of the Prince of Wales, and to get
his friends abroad to give in to it. The loss of his best English
confidant obliged him to put himself entirely into the hands of
the present cabal. The Republican Party had of late been very
insolent, but when Parliament had gone through their report,
means might be taken for putting the King above their insults.
Upon the hearsay evidence of Blunt, whose veracity was not
above suspicion, Sunderland was accused of accepting £50,000
in stock, and though he averred that he had lost heavily on the
balance of actual purchases and sales, his complicity with Aisla-
bie was widely believed from their being joint Commissioners of
the Treasury. Taunts and threats were hurled against him in
debate, but specific proof being wanting, the charge of official
corruption was negatived on a division by a majority of sixty-
one. He was unable, however, to withstand the prevailing out-
cry, and on condition that Carteret should be made Secretary of
State in the room of Craggs, he consented to resign the office of
First Lord in favour of Walpole, retaining his place in the Cabi-
net as Groom of the Stole.
? Letter, evidently intercepted, from D.C., one of the Household, to the Marquis de
Prier, March, 1721, in the Townshend Papers. -MS.
297
CHAPTER IX.
WALPOLE AT THE TREASURY,
1722.
THE
Reconstruction of the Cabinet-Townshend Secretary of State-Walpole
First Lord-Pulteney left out--Carteret Secretary of State-Townshend's
Foreign Policy-Excessive rigour-State of the Revenue-Budget of
1721-1722—Tariff Policy of Utrecht Revived--Dissolution-Growth of
the Pelham Interest-Walpole's Son a Peer-Bolingbroke's Recall--
Jealousy of Carteret-Steele Restored-Death of Sunderland and Marl-
borough-Suspension of Habeas Corpus--Impeachment of Atterbury.
HE Cabinet had now to be reconstructed. Marlborough
still lived and breathed : stet magni nominis umbra. But
beyond it there was nothing of personal or political power.
Sunderland reigned in his stead, and with Stanhope's success
abroad and the break-up of the Opposition in Parliament by the
return of Townshend, Argyll, and Walpole to office, the durability
of the Cabinet seemed to be assured. But, like every succeeding
Government, it committed suicide. Sunderland had, indeed,
escaped judicial condemnation by his Peers, but neither his
pride nor his prudence suffered him to retain his position by the
poor majority of three. He had risked power clandestinely to
clutch at money—not for its own sake, but to endow the daughter
of his young wife with fortune which otherwise he had no chance
of compassing; and mortifying as was the notorious fact that he
had been pulled through the boiling surge of blame by the com-
bined efforts of colleagues and dependants, he probably never
admitted to himself or anyone else that he deserved his fate.
Who can measure the pain of such a fall who has not climbed as
high; or who can comprehend the confidence with which he
looked, not for the first time, to being able to retrieve all that he
had lost? Twelve years before he had been Aung down the
steps of power only to recommence cabals for reascending them;
298
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
seven years before he had, to his infinite surprise, been jostled
out of Cabinet ascendancy by Townshend, and in a short time
he had found means to oust him and take his place. Subse-
quently, he had the satisfaction of inviting him back to office,
moulding the reconstructed Administration pretty much as he
would. And now his buoyancy would not drown. He could
hold his breath for a time: he had done that before, and with
Newcastle, Roxburgh, Kingston, Carteret, and Berkeley, he
might still hope to retain, in Marlborough's name and in his own,
an influence that resentful rivals could not afford to despise.
Carteret's early accession to the Peerage, his early marriage and
studious tastes, filled his widowed mother with undoubting faith
in his destiny, to play a foremost part in public life. She had
herself become, in 1711, co-heiress of the great estates of the first
Lord Bath, and being endowed with excellent sense and tact, as
well as personal charms, she gradually acquired no little influence
in political society. Stanhope especially, and afterwards Sunder-
land, encouraged their youthful adherent's aspirations; his name
had been often mentioned at Hanover by Robethon; and he
was commended to the King for the special reason that he could
talk to his immigrant Majesty in his own tongue. Carteret had
employed his time after leaving Oxford in mastering German,
Spanish, and Italian, and perfecting himself in French, and
George I. was glad to find that there was one of his insular
subjects capable of enjoying and repaying his jokes in German.
In July, 1716, Carteret was made Lord-Lieutenant of Devonshire,
and in 1719 sent as Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Stock-
holm. Next
Next year he was named with Lord Polwarth to repre-
sent England at the Congress of Brunswick; and he discharged
his duties in these capacities so well that, early in 1721, he was
named Ambassador to Paris, whither he was preparing to set,
out when the death of the younger Craggs opened for him the
door of the Southern Department. The sudden death of Stan-
hope and the impending impeachment of Sunderland for com-
plicity in the financial sins of Aislabie, shook the Administration
in its pride of place, and prompted them to seek eagerly the
renewal of official strength. Walpole was made First Lord of
the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. His Junior
Lords were Baillie Edgcumbe, Turner (his colleague at Lynn),
and Pelham, brother of the young Duke of Newcastle. Sunder-
WALPOLE FIRST LORI).
299
land remained Groom of the Stole. Having redistributed his
other offices, he felt confident of retaining his primacy in Cabinet
and Court. · Townshend had filled the Presidency of the Council
for the previous twelve months ; he now resumed the Seals of
Secretary of State ; and Carleton was recalled to political life to
take his place. Why he had preferred to stand aside in 1714 is
not clear. Swift appended to a sketch of him in Burnet,—“Add
the quality of avarice and you have the man." But this reproach
hardly sticks to one who, having enjoyed Cabinet office, declined
to accept £4,000 as a colleague of his former friends. He had
obtained from Queen Anne a grant of the curtilage of St. James's
Park lying between the gardens of Warwick and Marlborough
House, whereon he had begun the spacious mansion which
long afterwards bore his name. Whether he found the pleasures
of building costlier than he expected, or, like so many others of
his quality, wasted part of his fortune in speculation, he yielded
now to Sunderland's instances and re-entered the Cabinet.1
Walpole is said to have objected, that for some years Carleton
had seldom voted with the Whigs; that Devonshire was in every
way more fitted to fill the position of President; and if he had
intimated any wish on the subject it would certainly not have
been neglected at a crisis when Government, socially and
politically, tottered to its base. Beside his great estates and
recognised influence at elections, his personal independence and
discretion had won the confidence of Leicester House without
alienating that of Kensington. He probably desired, if he did
not suggest, the nomination of Carleton, and was content to
support out of office any Government that could restore the
credit and preserve the integrity of the realm. On Carleton's
death, not long afterwards, he became President of the Council,
and the mansion and grounds adjoining those of Marlborough
House eventually became the residence of Royalty.
In April, Walpole resumed the First Lordship of the Treasury
and Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Parker retained the
Great Seal, Argyll remained. Lord Steward, and Roxburgh
Secretary for Scotland. Grafton, the ally of his neighbours in
Norfolk, was suffered when he chose to visit Dublin to trifle
away time, and temporise vaguely with the Irish Parliament;
but for the rest to spend his time at Euston. The Duke of
| 25th June, 1721.
300
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
more.
Kingston continued to hold the Privy Seal ; Lord Cornwallis
was made Paymaster-General, while George Treby continued to
be Secretary-at-War, and Edward Carteret and Galfridus
Walpole became Postmasters-General. Newcastle was Cham-
berlain, and Berkeley First Lord of the Admiralty, Brodrick
still retaining the Great Seal of Ireland.
Walpole welcomed his brother-in-law back to his old office,
and resolved to be content with nothing but their joint ascen-
dancy. He frankly said, however, that the Norfolk firm was no
longer Townshend and Walpole, but must be henceforth Walpole
and Townshend; but while Sunderland preserved his influence
at Court and his party in the Cabinet, it would be difficult to
resist his unconcealable ambition to rule at the Cockpit once
Many of those who had followed Walpole in the schism
of 1717 were left out. His brother Galfridus had, indeed, been
made joint Postmaster-General, and Horace was named Chief
Secretary to Grafton in Ireland, and soon afterwards Minister at
the Hague ; but Pulteney, who, above the rest, deserved and ex-
pected advancement, was omitted.
He was highly incensed at the reconstruction of the Govern-
ment without him. He had played so great a part for several
years in Parliament and had given such proofs of his courage as
a partisan, and his constancy as a friend, that he could not
stomach his being omitted from consultation in a matter of so
much interest. When Walpole was impeached in 1711, he had
defended him gallantly, and while he lay in the Tower he was
frequently his visitor. In the critical days of the Hanoverian
accession they two and Stanhope took the lead so prominently
as to earn the bantering title of the Grand Allies; and before
George I. set foot in England, Pulteney was named Secretary-at-
War. In the schism of 1717, he sided with Townshend and
resigned. It was natural, therefore, for him to expect that if not
consulted in the reconciliation his claims should be considered ;
and that as he had gone out with his friends he should come
back with them. But official politics are a selfish game, and the
brothers-in-law, having taken care of themselves, thought he and
Charles Stanhope and many more might wait. His own account
of it is highly characteristic. Walpole undertook to break the
intelligence to him that the quarrel had been patched up between
the King and the Prince, and between Sunderland and Towns-
PULTENEY LEFT OUT.
301
hend. “A bargain,” he said,“ had been made for those Whigs who
had resigned their employments to be put in again by degrees.”
Pulteney asked who it was that had had the authority to make
this bargain. Walpole replied, " I have done it with the Minis-
try; and it was insisted on that nobody but Lord Townshend
should know of the transaction. Neither Lord Cowper, the
Speaker, nor anyone else knew it: and therefore we hope that
you will not take it amiss that it was kept secret from you. We
have not had our own interests alone in view ; we have bargained
for all our friends; and in due time they will be provided for.
I am to be at the head of the Treasury : Lord Sunderland had
a great desire to retain the disposition of the Secret Service
money; but I would by no means consent to that, knowing the
chief power of a Minister (and I presume his profits also) depends
on the disposition of it. We know that you do not value any-
thing of that kind ; so we have obtained a Peerage for you."
Pulteney replied : “If ever I should be mean enough to submit
to being sold, I promise you, you shall never have the selling of
me. A Peerage is what some time or other I may be glad of
accepting for the sake of my family; but I never will obtain it
by any base method, or submit to have it got for me on such
terms."1 Townshend's first letter on his reappointment was to
M. Fleury, declaring his admiration and respect for one who had
been so influential in promoting peace and amity between the
two nations; the first foundation of which he deemed the chief
happiness of his life to have been instrumental in laying:2
Negotiations continued for accommodating differences with
Spain.:: Townshend.confirmed William Stanhope in the Em-
bassy at Madrid. He was instructed to temporise discreetly and
to say in the name of King George : "I do no longer balance
to assure your Majesty of my readiness to satisfy you with
regard to your demand touching the restitution of Gibraltar,
promising you to make use of the first favourable opportunity to
regulate this article with the assent of my Parliament.” But for
a time the original pledge was kept secret.
In the preceding year reports found their way into print of
strong language: having been used by the Spanish Ministry on
the subject. Stanhope deprecated the renewal of the controversy.
1 - Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication of his Two Honourable Patrons."
2 To the Archbishop of Cambray, 9th. February, 1721. —MS.
302
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Whatever misunderstandings had arisen from the ambiguous
terms of the Treaty of Utrecht regarding English Trade with
the Plantations, there could be no doubt of the sincere desire of
Spain that “all grievances complained of should be removed.” 1
But the consideration which preoccupied the Spanish Court
was the promised restoration of Gibraltar, which ought to be
settled, and with it all other differences, before the meeting of
the Congress of Cambray. No mention need be made of. Gib-
raltar in'any Treaty, "since his Catholic Majesty had himself
proposed and engaged for keeping the letter from George I.
secret.” Unqualified assurances were offered that no engage-
ment would be given to the partisans of the Pretender; and for
this M. Grimaldo “would not only pawn his life but his salva-
tion.” The Jacobites at Madrid were. elated on learning the
ruin caused by the failure of the South Sea Scheme, and reckoned
on the discontent it must occasion ; but Stanhope was convinced
that their hopes of Spanish assistance were groundless. Never-
theless, new and insurmountable difficulties were started. To
the wording of his Majesty's letter in relation to Gibraltar, a
copy of which the Ambassador presented to Ministers, they
made innumerable objections; that the act of restitution was
so darkly mentioned, and what was promised was so faintly ex-
pressed, that it really engaged for nothing. The main force
was levelled at the word "equivalent," which would put his
Catholic Majesty in a much worse condition than he would be
in without it ; for the acceptance of the letter would show such
an earnest desire on his part for the obtaining the fortress as
might so encourage the Parliament in extravagant demands,
that he should not be surprised if they asked for a province in
lieu of it. The Envoy replied that all this should have been
thought of before ; he was asked to write for such a letter. He
was sorely embarrassed by Philip V. declaring that he did not
remember to have spoken to him in the interview when the
letter was asked for, to the effect he stated; for, though he
always contemplated the assent of Parliament being necessary,
he never meant to bind himself in stipulations, to that effect.
Other difficulties arose, until he was told that the Queen believed
him to be an enemy to Peace; and, being a soldier himself, that
1 Wm. Stanhope to Townshend, 17th March, 1721.—MS.
2 To Sec. Carteret, 14th May, 1721.-MS.
DIFFICULTIES WITHI SPAIN.
303
he would prefer having war. As a last resource, to avoid a
rupture, he offered, that if the proposed Treaty for liquidation
of damages at sea were signed, he would ask to be furnished
with an amended letter from George I., in which the words sur
le pied d'un equivalent should be omitted ; and that the Spanish
men-of-war taken off Sicily should be restored. If his Govern-
ment refused to ratify these concessions, all the rest was to be
deemed null and void. The separate Treaty between England
and Spain, and the Triple Alliance, including France, were
signed early in June. The French Envoy found that he had
exceeded his instructions, and wished to retract. Stanhope
protested, and was treated with much civility at Court. The
amended letter of George I. was sent by Carteret, and duly
presented to the Spanish Monarch, who seemed quite satisfied.
Orders were sent to restore the Spanish ships of war, then lying
at Port Mahon. But nothing was done about Gibraltar,
Russia's encroaching policy gave serious concern to the
Cabinet, and one of Townshend's first acts on his return to
office was to send instructions to Dayrolle strongly to represent
to the Pensionary the consequences that might ensue if the
building and equipment of a Muscovite fleet were suffered to
proceed in the ports of Holland. “The Dutch had already
given way on their part to the entire loss of the balance in the
North by suffering the Czar to arrive at that pitch of force and
grandeur as to impose upon the poor kingdom of Sweden that
miserable fate they were now forced to submit to; and, by this
further connivance, they would go on to aggrandise him in those
seas where he had no port nor naval strength; not only by
opening their ports to him, but by. equipping, as it were, a whole
fleet for his service. He should sound the Pensionary as to what
his thoughts were, and how these practices might be restrained.
Dayrolle, however, must take care that whatever be said should
be as from himself only, and that he had no instructions from
home on this head.” 1
Townshend's views of foreign policy once more turned on the
anticipation of hostility from Spain and the development of sus-
pected designs in the Court of Vienna, whereby the Electoral
Princes were to be reduced to subordination to its imperious
will, and the balance of European power thereby undermined.
Sec. Townshend to Dayrolle, Ist Aug., 1721.—MS.
304
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
With the aid of France, Sweden, Denmark, and Sardinia, a way
might be found of curbing these schemes of ambition, one of the
first effects of which, there was reason to believe, would be the
repossession of Gibraltar by force of arms:
Sunderland's retention of the post of Groom of the Stole gave
him constant access to the King, and opportunity, without pro-
voking observation, of conference with her who in many respects
sought to be chief Minister. They had both forgiven Towns-
hend his past thwartings and offences, content with the penalty
they had made him suffer. But it was otherwise with Walpole.
More than all others, he had contributed to rescue Sunderland's
official reputation from the shoals of the South Sea, and what-
ever the actuating motives may have been, the fact in the eyes
of the world was plain and the obligation unendurable. For the
selfishness of egotism cannot reconcile itself to the sense of
eminent service done, and the haughty Earl tried hard to per-
suade himself that the sneers and revilings directed against him,
notwithstanding his formal acquittal by his Peers, came from the
adherents of his successor at the Treasury, if they were not
directly instigated by him. It was not long before the Marl-
borough section of the Cabinet showed that they had not for-
gotten their old leader, and on questions of minor importance
they did not scruple to out-vote their newly-promoted colleague.
They were taught to believe that George I. at heart hated Wal-
pole and Townshend, and would be glad to be rid of them once
Before three months, disunion and distrust had so in-
creased that the Chamberlain, always tiinid and given to look
at the dark side of the picture, wrote to a friend that things were at
the worst, without any “rift in the clouds of calamity. Ministers
were drove to doing the most cruel barbarities and greatest in-
justice in the world, or running the risk of bringing the greatest
inisfortunes on the public. It was a terrible situation for an
honest man ; but they must yield to the clamour of the times
and the necessities of the public. He should not easily forgive
those who had brought them into this situation. The only com-
fort was that there was no ground for the apprehension that the
Tories were coming in. The King had declared to him and
others the concern the report gave him, and assured them that he
was determined to stand by the Whigs and not take in any single
Tory. He was very sensible that the Whig Party was the only
more.
THE KING AND WALPOLE.
305
security he had to depend on, in which he was most certainly
right.”1
Carteret, who had the entire confidence of Sunderland, sought
to persuade Newcastle that there was no one to whom he talked
so freely as he did with him, a bold stretch of flattery which he
would not have ventured on with anyone who loved himself less
than his Grace. He even went the length of saying he was
'sometimes uneasy to have no one near to whom he could open
his thoughts, for writing did by no means supply this. Still he
would let no opportunity slip of acquainting him with what
was passing, who was so well acquainted with what Sunderland
and he (Carteret) proposed that he would understand hints
without much explanation."? A week after he wrote assuring
the credulous and intriguing Duke that Sunderland was as much
his as ever, and that neither of them had lost any ground with
the King. When he told his Majesty how matters were agreed,
he replied : "Je veux qu'ils sachent que j'aurai toujours une par-
ticuliere distinction pour Lord Sunderland et jous.” Not the
least particular of their whole scheme had ever come out.
Townshend was certainly sincere in reconciliation, and Walpole
inade all the appearances possible for a man to make. Charles
Stanhope's advancement was put off by Walpole assuring him
that it would revive matters in Parliament about the South Sea.
This mortified him and Sunderland, but when the First Lord of
the Treasury had taken upon him that all South Sea matters
should be kept out of the next Session, they could not insist on
the point. He wished Charles Stanhope took the matter more
patiently than he did, and then he would be less uneasy. It
was a blow to him, undoubtedly, but he should never be given
up. In politics there was no doing what one would, and at
worst, he might be sure of the place in March.3 Ten days later
he wrote that the reconciliation had proceeded from Townshend.
If he could govern Mr. Walpole, all would answer his engage-
inents. The King was resolved that the First Lord should not
govern, but it was hard to prevent it.” +
George I. could not forgive the recent defeat of his hopes of
Newcastle to Mr. Jordan, 18th July, 1721.--A/S.
? From the Cockpit, 17th Aug., 1721.--/S.
3 Carteret to Newcastle. From the Cockpit, 22nd August, 1721.- /S.
- lilcm., from Arlington St.
VOL. I.
X
306
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
crippling by statute his successor's prerogative, which he as-
cribed truly to the energy and determination of Walpole. But
neither could he do without money, and, as he often said, Wal-
pole was the only man who could produce a supply of it at will.
An extraordinary suggestion was made by the restless Grooin
of the Stole in order to drive him from the Treasury. It was
nothing less than that Walpole should be appointed Postmaster-
General for life, which would have disqualified him froin sitting
in the Lower House, and compelled him to go to the Upper.
George I., to the surprise of his prompter, shrewdly asked if he
had consented to accept the proposed office, and when answered
in the negative, rejoined: “Then I will never force him to take
it ;” whereupon the strange phantom of jealousy vanished and
was heard of no more. The Leader of the Commons was not,
in fact, to be lured out of the great position he had regained by
compliment or sinecure. He would not have been unwilling
that his son should be made a Peer, as he was, in point of fact,
somewhat later ; but to give up the control and direction of finan-
cial affairs for anything that Royalty had to give would have
seemed to him absurd.
Meanwhile Sir George Byng was rewarded with the revived title
of Torrington for his victory at Syracuse, and was replaced at the
Board of Admiralty by Daniel Pulteney; while Bishop Hoadly
was promoted from Bangor to Hereford in recognition of his
polemical services. “Madame Kilmansegge had worried all
mankind about her title, and obtained it all for the sake of
peace and quietness.” 1
Under the same date, Sunderland announced that the Bishop
of Salisbury had been translated to Durham, the Bishop of
Gloucester to that see, and his place filled by Dr. Wilcox;
“they had thus nineteen Whig Bishops out of twenty-six, which
he thought a pretty reasonable proportion.” 2 One of Carteret's .
first official instructions was to request the Viceroy of Ireland to
have sixteen able-bodied Grenadiers, of more than uncommon
height, recruited, wherewith George I. wished to make a grati-
fication to his brother-in-law of Prussia, who was known to have
an admiration for giants, and was not particular where they were
bred. Voltaire tells how he had them from various climes; and
1 Carteret to Newcastle, September, 1721.
? Sunderland to Newcastle.
EXPORTING IRISH GIANTS.
307
a specimen from the Isle of the West would be a valued variety
“ His Majesty would have conveyance for them by sea from
Dublin to Hamburg, where Prussian officers must be ready to
receive them.”1 On further deliberation, it was decided that the
Celtic Grenadiers should be sent specially to the Queen of
Prussia, that she might make a present of them to her husband.
Whatever ills befell other members of the Administration,
fortune never seemed to tire of favouring the Chancellor. His judi-
cial reputation gained in strength day by day; lavish hospitality
in town and at Sherborne drew around him troops of friends; the
metes and bounds of his estates in land were continually changed
by the addition of field to field. His rare versatility of speech
and tact, rather than grace of manner, made him welcome with
the idlers of fashion, women as well as men; and his subservient
sagacity in humouring the prejudices of the King made him, in
1721, Viscount Parker and Earl of Macclesfield, with remainder,
in default of male issue, in the female line.
The strange freak of paternal animosity which had moved
George I. to adopt a proposal that a Bill should be passed sever-
ing Hanover from the Crown of England, and declaring that the
Prince of Wales should renounce the Electorate before he became
King, had the support of some of the Cabinet, though the
majority doubted or demurred, but the Chancellor, to the surprise
probably of most of them, had strongly recommended that the
design should be laid aside as inexpedient. Yet he retained to the
last the confidence and regard of his Sovereign. Cowper's jealousy
frequently showed itself in the Lords, and led sometimes to alter-
cations with his successor, redounding little to the credit of either,
if the imperfect records that remain are to be relied on.
the whole, the Woolsack was filled with dignity, and, party spirit
for a season having lost somewhat of its bitterness, the task of
presiding in the Senate was less onerous than formerly.
Sunderland continued to exercise pre-eminent sway, retaining
no other office than that of Groom of the Stole. He had pru-
dently surrendered the department of finance to Walpole 2 in
consideration of his indispensable aid in stopping the inquiry
into his own equivocal conduct in the department; but he kept
undisputed control over all others until his death two years later.
But on
1 To the Lord-Lieutenant, 4th October, 1721.-MS.
3rd April, 1721.
X 2
308
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
In 1722 Government felt it important to reawaken hope in
the Dissenters of the complete removal of their disabilities; and
he entered into personal negotiations with Sir John Fryer and
other leading men amongst them in the City, with a view of stimu-
lating their more active support at municipal and other elections.
A confidential letter from one of their most popular and influential
ministers entered unreservedly into details, naming several of
the leading merchants and traders whom he wished his lordship
to meet. "The two great hindrances of getting so good a Com-
mon Council, as cannot but be much desired by the Government
in the present juncture, are the strange inactivity of the Whigs
in the City and the backwardness of the Dissenters to stand in
places where they might be able to carry it. As to the former,
I conceive the best way to renove or lessen it would be for your
lordship, some evening, to step into the City, and at a proper
place to meet some of the chief of those concerned. Twenty
good Common Councilmen might be secured that are likely to
be lost for want of their acting vigorously. And as to the latter
difficulty, I humbly propose that with all convenient speed your
lordship would send for Councillor West, K.C., and make use of
him, with his father, who is a Dissenter and leading man in the
Bridge Ward, but backward to stand himself till such time as the
Test is taken off by the Legislature. If your lordship will allow
me to wait upon you at the office on Friday evening about the
same time as last week I shall then be ready to give you a further
account, or if that be not convenient, at any other time or place
you may please to appoint."1 The Groom of the Stole preferred
asking Sir J. Fryer and Dr. Calainy to dinner; and he evinced in
various ways his readiness to enter into their views; but w
pole doubted the possibility of bringing Parliament to acquiesce
in them, and prevailed with the Cabinet to defer the proposal of
any further legislative change, while he undertook the impeach-
ment of the Bishop of Rochester for complicity in Jacobite
treason.
It is painful to recall the excessive rigour of the Executive,
which continued without diminution during this period. A
nature so susceptible as Carteret's, with an intellect so en-
lightened, could not, without compunction, have performed the
1 Rev. E. Calamy to the Earl of Sunderland, with December, 1722, in Wadding-
ton's “ Congregational History.”
DAWN OF FREE TRADE.
309
duty continually recurring of submitting to Royalty questions
of respite from death sentences for strangely divers crimes, and
having to set his signature, however perfunctorily, to the stereo-
typed form in a multitude of cases that the law must take its
course.
Many of the legal cruelties inflicted were for offences against
property in the agricultural districts, and in the towns of the
making or uttering of base coin; and the social superstition that
such severeties could not be relaxed with safety to the com-
inunity retained its hold over jurists and legislators until our
own day.
Notwithstanding the paralysis of trade, caused by credulous
and extravagant speculations, the National Budget indicated soon
a return to equilibrium and a growth of elasticity in the springs
of industry. The net income was £9,945,759, of which £5,954,163
was derived from taxation and £2,092,868 from loans and lot-
teries. The chief items of expenditure were : Army, Navy, and
Ordnance, £1,557,153 ; Civil Government, £ 1,002,087 ; interest
and cost of public debt, £3,313,986; reduction of debt, £ 1,627,661
The closing session of the first Septennial Parliament was
notable for the first attempt made to reform the tariff. Walpole
was not content with the success of his measures to retrieve public
credit, damaged by the failure of the South Sea Scheme, but
sought to make his mark as a financier by the introduction of a
fiscal policy, based on the system of freer if not free trade.
Carteret had the merit of carrying commercial treaties between
the Baltic States, Great Britain, and Holland in the year pre-
ceding, and the new First Lord of the Treasury took the lamp
of reform that had fallen from Stanhope's hand and carried it
further.
He turned to the best account his predecessor's success by
framing and carrying a comprehensive measure for the liberation
of commerce and the true encouragement of trade. The pre-
amble deserves to be kept in remembrance. “Whereas the
wealth and prosperity of this Kingdom doth very much depend
upon the improvement of its manufactures, and the profitable
trade carried on by the exportation of the same, and whereas the
manufacture of silk stuffs, and of stuffs mixed with silk, is one
of the most considerable manufactures of this Kingdom, and
their exportation into foreign parts would considerably increase
310
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
were it not obstructed and hindered by the high duties payable
upon the importation of raw and thrown silk, without allowance
being made for the same when wrought up and exported,” it
was provided that there should be a drawback of the import
duty on all such goods exported, and thenceforth all export
duty on any product or manufacture of Great Britain should
cease and determine, with a few exceptions, and all sorts of
drugs used in dyeing should be imported duty free ; duties upon
all manner of spice to be greatly reduced, with drawbacks on re-
exportation, and with greater effect as regarded home comforts
and foreign products. The Cabinet agreed, at his instance, to
inake the subject the principal topic of the Speech from the
Throne in October, and although the faithless record of Parlia-
mentary proceedings omits the specific mention of many of the
changes which were accomplished, we know that the import
duties on timber for ship and house building, and the products
of the whale fisheries were repealed or materially reduced, while
duties on the export of manufactured goods were abated in like
proportion. The price of timber had risen with the contraction
of its supply to an exorbitant figure, while the pine forests of
America, though rigorously proscribed by treaty, were rendered un-
available to supply what every year became more and more need-
ful to national prosperity. Bounties on exports had been resorted
to in vain. Walpole's remedy was to take off the duties on raw
materials brought from the colonics. To stimulate the manufac-
ture of paper, cordage, hats, and various other articles import
duties were retained. The whole system of smuggling, which
had grown apace under the enhancement of duties for revenue
in past years, was cut up in its clandestine profits, and in many
cases extinguished; and finding Parliament disposed to listen to
his counsel, he went a step, or rather many steps, further, and
rendered the export of numerous articles of British manufacture
duty free. But from this exemption tin, copper, and lead, and
above all, coal produced within the realm, were excepted.
The first Septennial lease of legislative power having come to
an end, the thoughts of Government were mainly devoted to
procuring a renewal. Few of the counties were contested on
what would now be called political grounds. The great families
maintained their ascendancy without serious effort, and of these
the majority were Whig. But in the main the combined influence
FIVE PELHAUS ELECTED.
311
of the clergy and squirearchy sufficed to secure a preponder-
ance to eldest sons or younger brothers of old name among the
Tory aristocracy. The close boroughs could only do as they
were bidden by their owners on either side, and returned who-
ever at the last moment they were ordered, without the pretence
of regret or satisfaction. But an increasing number of country
towns and groups of hamlets were become the skirmishing
grounds of ambition, where the fight was sometimes angry, and
generally tipsy--not between the comparative few on either side
who claimed a right to vote, but between the turbulent non-elec-
tors who had come to look upon a dissolution somewhat as
schoolboys regard the first chime of the joy-bells for a holiday.
Largesse and treating in every form were matters of course,
which nobody questioned, as the outward and visible sign of
public spirit and gentlemanly bearing; and when the contests
ran close (or were said by local agents to be likely to do so)
chaises and pairs were certain to enter the place after dark laden
with weighty reasons in trunk or valise from headquarters why
waverers should brace up their nerves and show independence
and love of country at the poll. His Grace of Newcastle's
landed property in several counties gave him the nomination of
more Members than any of his social equals, and from the
matter-of-fact turn of his mind he took to the extension of the
power it gave him as the surest means of securing a prominent
place at Court, and an influential one in Council. At the Gen-
eral Election of 1722 five Pelhams rejoiced his heart. Sir
Philip Yorke and Sir William Gage were returned to his great
satisfaction for Seaford. To his surprise Hastings was lost by
a single vote ; but on the whole Sussex acknowledged his sway,
and portions of Notts, Suffolk, and Yorkshire proved faithful.
Thus he congratulated himself in being successful in almost all
his elections.
The King would have Walpole become a Peer, as all his pre-
decessors at the head of the Treasury had been. But though he
loved rank and dignity he loved power more, and his sagacity
told him that if he could secure nobility for his children, he
could sway more effectually the counsels of his time, and ex-
ercise more control over the Upper House itself, by retaining the
lead of the Lower. His sister was already a Peeress, and he
1
1 To the Duchess, March, 1722.-MS.
312
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
now advised the King to make his son a Peer under the title of
Baron Walpole. In the patent of ennoblement it was set forth
that “the beloved and most faithful counsellor of his Majesty
chose rather to merit the highest titles than to wear them ; the
honour due to the father was bestowed upon the son.” While
thus identified with the nobility, and by his official emoluments
enabled to gratify his love of luxury and display, he affected to
retain his position as a country gentleman at the head of the
Commons. He and Townshend acted together in all things, and
step by step they contrived to assert a complete ascendancy in
Administration,
In the absence of Sunderland at Hanover, Carteret had become
the leader in reversion of the Marlborough section of the Gov-
ernment and the object of the concentrated jealousy and enmity
of Townshend and Walpole. Things were in too critical a state
to allow of open differences, but by degrees Townshend and
Walpole began to depreciate and undermine him. He felt
himself so beset with thwartings and intrigues, that, in spite of
his command of temper and his confidence in his own ability,
he was betrayed into the weakness of telling the Duchess of
Kendal that if not decisively supported by the King in foreign
affairs he could not endure the responsibility of conducting his
portion of them. Her reply may well have recalled him to him-
self, and reproved his indiscretion in thus owning his weakness
to one who he must have known was in confidence with his ad-
versary. She bade him "have patience and all would come
right, for his Majesty at heart distrusted his other Ministers.” 1
George I. had early trusted Townshend and had learned to
relish the coarse jests of Walpole when explained to him in his
own tongue, but he hated the didactic and frequently dictatorial
tone which he said they assumed on important affairs, and Car-
teret never put him out of temper.
What none of Steele's beguiling letters to other Ministers
would effect was done at Walpole's instance on his accession to
power, when the Governor of Drury Lane, after a long period
of unjust privation, was restored to the full enjoyment of his
patent office. For some years longer Steele's literary energies
did not flag, and his last comedy, The Conscious Lover, was
deemed his best. Walpole, though he cultivated his goodwill
1 Marchmont Papers, I., 3, on authority of Chesterfield, Aug., 1744-
1ܙܙ
DEATH OF SUNDERLAND.
313
by affability of talk and occasional acts of hospitality, could
never spare from party investment the means of ordinary com-
fort for Steele's declining days. He worked on to the last with his
pen, eschewing controversy in politics or polemics, alike liberal
and loyal in his views, chaste and refined in every stroke of
humour ; but he was not a sycophant or a Pharisee, and was
therefore left to die in something scarce removed from indigence,
at less than threescore years.
The rivalry between the First Lord of the Treasury and his un-
satisfied predecessor continued without abatement. The Earl
was said to have sought allies among the Tories, and Walpole
now and then viewed with misgiving the versatility of him who
had filled in succession a greater number of offices than any
man of his day. But fortune was waiting to be gracious, and
an event wholly unexpected was at hand which upset all antici-
pations of Majesty, Mistresses, and Ministers.
Sunderland expired on the 19th of April, 1722, and his papers
were forthwith sealed up by order of the King, containing, as
they were known to do, the most secret correspondence with
trusted agents of the Government at home and abroad. Marl-
borough, too feeble to decide for himself in critical circumstances,
was induced to demand their surrender on the ground of his near
relationship, and on being refused a suit was brought in his name
for their recovery, and a decision was pronounced by the Court
of Delegates sustaining the rights of Government to retain what
ever touched the safety of the State, and ordering that all beside
should be surrendered. For some time it became too obvious to
those around Marlborough that the rare intellect that had so
long outshone all others in administration flickered to its end.
For the last time, on the 27th of November, 1721, he attended
the House of Lords, and silently interchanged recognitions with
some of his old friends. But he took no part and showed no
interest in what was going on, and when induced to leave by
Cadogan, returned no more. During the spring he was seldom
seen in public, and before midsummer was come life had ebbed
away, almost without note or pain from him who was beyond
compare the most illustrious man of his day.
In Parliament he seldom spoke after the accession of George I.,
but in the Cabinet, until the schism of 1717, he frequently took
part, voting staunchly with his friends and adherents ; but, as
314
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
far as can be traced, provoking little, if any, personal enmity',
and continuing to perform perfunctorily the many official dutics
with which he had been charged. Thenceforth his interest in
affairs flagged apace, his memory lost perceptibly its hold, and
somewhat later his speech grew less clear and impressive.
Cadogan was naturally fixed on by Marlborough's friends to
succeed him in office. His lieutenant in the field, his confidant
in Council, and sharer in most of his designs, he had been
steadily advanced in employments and in honours. In 1716 he
was made a Peer, next year a Privy Councillor, and the year
following an Earl, in recognition of his services in war and
diplomacy, and now, being placed at the head of the Army at
home, he was appointed Master General of the Ordnance.
The Regent d'Orleans, in an extra fit of friendliness, forwarded
intelligence of a new Jacobite scheme of rising and invasion.
He assured the Government that it was undermined; that
Jesuits in disguise were numerous and busy, and he gave it to be
understood that he had been obliged to be peremptory in repel-
ling attempts at making his administration appear to be acces-
sory to their plots. If not really alarmed, the Cabinet resolved
to turn the warning to account. The troops in and around
London were ordered to remain under arms by night and day,
and a camp was formed in Hyde Park.
His grasp of power once firmly gained, Walpole set about
strengthening its hold, with cynical indifference to any qualms
or scruples supposed to haunt his place. One of his first visits,
alone and on foot, was to the Deanery where Atterbury dwelt.
From the death of Oxford he had come to be looked upon prac-
tically as leader of the Tories in the Lords; and a very astute,
ready, and effective leader he made, worth buying, Walpole
thought, with any crozier in reversion, and any amount of ready
money down that might be agreed upon. Winchester was said
to be the special object of the Bishop's desire, and Trelawney
was well stricken in years. Government, on the other hand, had
strong reasons for suspecting their right reverend critic in debate
to be deeply compromised by correspondence with the exiled
Family; yet might he not, on liberal terms, be withdrawn from
compromising engagements ? The Prelate was at home, and the
Minister, with bland and easy phrase, opened his proposals. The
country needed repose. Recent losses and bewildering specula-
ATTEMPT TO BUY ATTERBURY.
315
tion had left it heart-sore. After seven years of gloom and chaos,
the hopes of exiled Royalty were without form and void. It was
his wish to put the most gifted men in the best places of the
Church, and therefore, when his old friend Winton died, he
should like to set Atterbury in his room. Rochester, even with
the Deanery in commendam, was no adequate reward for talents
and services like his, and until the more fitting See should be
vacant, the First Lord would be glad to advise his Majesty to
set apart £5,000 a year to balance income and expenditure, if he
would only take more care of his health, devote less time to the
House of Lords, and let Government feel that they had in him a
friend they could depend upon. The Bishop said he needed no
excuse for abstention on the ground of health, being half his
time locked up at Bromley by the gout, but he would give no
promise, and the hard-faced Minister raised the bidding. A near
relation might, if he wished, have one of the sinecure Teller-
ships of the Exchequer usually conferred for Parliamentary ser-
vice. But all this wheedling was in vain. Upon the stairs he
met the relative whom he had designated for the lay preferment,
and who was told what luxury for life he had lost. Walpole
went his way resolving that if his enemy could not be corrupted
he must be crushed. That there were fanatics and featherheads
in Jacobite pay who fancied they could organise a plot, there can
be no doubt; but Atterbury, who had sagaciously avoided com-
mitting himself in personal interviews with those who sought to
flatter him into taking the lead, and whose discernment told him
that the time had not come for action, showed unqualified sur-
prise when arrested on a Secretary of State's warrant. With
intrepid coolness, he parried all interrogatories addressed to him,
and with scorn challenged a search for compromising documents
among his varied and voluminous papers. But Walpole was on
the track of other proof than that which he defied. The Bishop
was carried in his own coach to the Tower, where he lay for
many months, subjected, as he truly said, to indignity and hard-
ship which had seldom, if ever, been put upon anyone of his age,
function, and rank. The arrest of Atterbury was followed by
that of the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Orrery. Whatever
grounds existed for suspicion, persons of consequence would not
have been arrested without the prompting of a so-called. con-
Atterbury Papers in Williams's Memoirs, I., 377.
316
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
dential letter from Lord Mar, to whom, after his narrow escape
from Scotland in 1715, unwary survivors of a lost cause were
tempted to write from time to time. How many of these epistles
were furtively transmitted to Whitehall we can never know.
Stanhope, if he had them, never used them : Walpole regarded
them as the jewels in the snake's head, and used them daintily.
Of bloodshed on the scaffold there had been enough; at least, so
thought George I., and if a Government was to be stable without
expensive garrisons and armaments, the sentiment of pity and
disgust must not be revived even in the unprivileged multitude,
as in the days of Tudor and Stuart. A few months' confinement
in a grim old keep, encompassed with so many recollections,
might be trusted to cool the malcontent spirit of unadventurous
nobles, and ill-paid agents of James III., if only somebody of
distinction, compromised or believably compromised, were made
an example. Atterbury stood out pre-eminently fitted for the
purpose. The clergy throughout London put up prayers for
his deliverance, and from their pulpits exhorted their flocks to
protest against his captivity. Ministers were daily reminded of
the fate of their predecessors who had ventured to lay violent
hands on priests and prelates whom the people loved : the im-
prisonment of the seven Bishops had ruined Sunderland's father,
and the prosecution of Sacheverell had precipitated Godolphin's
fall. But times were changed ; and though portraits of Atterbury
looking through his barred window in the Tower were to be seen
in every shop, and no end of diatribes and pasquinades appeared
from week to week denouncing his detention without trial, the
Cabinet remained obdurate and silent. Lord Falkland warned
the Pretender from Paris that he was betrayed by Mar to
Walpole. On consulting Atterbury regarding his suspicion, he
would only say that a pension of £3,000 a-year was seldom
paid without some essential service being rendered for it. The
Ministry could not be so well informed as they were by any
but one who was let into the most secret councils of the exiled
Court.1
Both Houses of the Legislature voted Addresses on the wicked
designs said to be hatching against the Dynasty; and a Bill
suspending Habeas Corpus for a year was carried in the Lords
1
Letters from Viscount Falkland and Hon. James Murray to James III., prov-
ing in detail Mar's treachery.
1
BOLINGBROKE'S REPRIEVE.
317
through all its stages, by three to one, on the same day. It was
the first time that so long a suspension of the writ had been
voted since the Revolution. The House of Commons would, no
doubt, do the like, and “these proceedings would show the world
how little the disaffected had to depend upon.” 1 A fortnight
later a message from the King asked the assent of the Upper
House to the arrest of the Duke of Norfolk, as chief of the
Catholic nobility, for high treason, which, though resisted by
eight-and-twenty Peers as needless and of evil precedent in a
Constitutional sense, was carried by double that number.
Walpole began in 1722 to build himself a mansion fitted to his
possession of power. The old house at Houghton was pulled
down, and the foundations laid down of the imposing structure
where his latter days were passed. The building was not
finished till 1735, when it contained a collection of statuary and
painting seldom equalled at the time. When he laid the
foundation stone George I. was said to have given him, unasked,
£10,000.
By the death of Stanhope and the resignation of Sunderland,
the stability of the Anglo-French Alliance seemed to be en-
dangered. Du Bois had no intimacy with Townshend and
Walpole, and little confidence in their diplomatic delegate, Sir
R. Lutton. He knew that the English Cabinet was divided,
and understood that Carteret took the lead in the section unex-
pectedly deprived of its powerful head and efficient hand ; but,
until the arrival of M. Schaub, with confidential instructions, he
could not assure the Regent what course the British Government
would pursue, or which of the two Secretaries of Embassy would
prove the stronger. The Marquise de Villette, daughter of
Madame de Maintenon, whom Bolingbroke had married, was
sent to procure his pardon; and Harcourt agreed to advocate
his petition. Townshend and Walpole were for a time im-
portuned unavailingly. They knew too well the danger of
letting such a man again resume his place in the Lords, and
upon no condition would they incur the risk of being bearded
and ridiculed by him. Harcourt gradually discerned that the
Monarch was less apprehensive than his Ministers of the possible
consequences of Bolingbroke's restoration. In point of fact, the
danger was to the Cabinet, rather than to the Dynasty ; for
| Townshend to Dayrolle, 12th October, 1722.-A1S. in B. M.
318
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Bolingbroke had quarrelled beyond reconciliation with the Pre-
tender, and his ambition was now set upon becoming a Minister
of the House of Hanover. The ex-Chancellor, finding he could
make no way for his friend with the brothers-in-law, introduced
Madame de Villette to the Duchess of Kendal, who was not
equally indisposed to entertain the question of the eloquent
exile's recall ; and whose sympathy in his case was quickened
into activity by an anonymous present of several thousand
pounds. George I. intimated his readiness to grant the pardon.
Warm debate thereupon arose at the Cockpit, Walpole strenu-
ously resisting his readmission to the Senate, where he would,
cre long, infallibly become the head of an Opposition, menacing
the stability of a Whig Government: for he was one whom no
promises could bind, and no obligations keep from mischief.
Harcourt, seeing that he could not obtain all that he desired,
suggested, as a compromise, that Bolingbroke's attainder should
be reversed, and that he should be restored in blood, whereby
he would be enabled to enjoy the rights of citizenship, while his
legislative privileges as a Member of the Upper House were
excepted. The exile was willing to avail himself of the con-
cessions thus made ; confidently believing that, once in Eng-
land, he should, ere long, obtain the rest.
Both Houses were occupied during the spring of 1723 with
inquiries into the conspiracy of the previous year, in which a
Committee of the Commons reported that Lord Orrery and the
Bishop of Rochester were deeply implicated. Layer had, in
prison, confessed his share in the plot; and a subordinate agent
named Neynoe did likewise. The Committee, with Walpole for
Chairman and Poyntz for Secretary, visited the Tower day by
day to examine these and other witnesses ; six warders, armed
to the teeth, keeping guard at the door. They finally reported
that there was evidence of the Prelate's complicity. Yonge,
on behalf of the Government, inoved for leave to bring in a
Bill of Attainder, as the only means of reaching so great an
offender. His guilt was aggravated, he said, by the repeated
oaths of loyalty he had taken in his sacred office; whereby, as
he had rendered himself a disgrace to his order, Parliament was
justified in saying: “Let his habitation be desolate ; and his
Bishopric let another take." Wyndham, Bronnley, Shippen, and
| Mist's Journal, 26th Jan., 1723.
IMPEACHMENT OF ATTERBURY.
319
Hungerford objected to such a mode of proceeding on hearsay
evidence, but they did not venture to divide.
Proceeding by attainder instead of impeachment, which would
have necessarily involved a trial by his Pcers, and the proof of
guilt according to the rules of law, was strongly objected to in
the Upper House as a deviation from the established practice in
cases of treason, for which no better precedent could be cited
than that pursued in the case of Sir John Fenwick Walpole,
however, persuaded the Cabinet to disregard all considerations.
as resting on constitutional grounds by laying before them confi-
dentially letters which his agents at Rome had, by lavish bribery,
obtained leave to abstract froin the Cabinet of the Chevalier,
without which evidence legal convictio i could not be secured ;
proceeding by attainder was, therefore, substituted for impeach-
ment. · Reasons of State were hinted or whispered why Govern-
ment should not disclose all they knew; and Habeas Corpus
being suspended, the spiritual lord of Rochester lay in prison
during the winter and spring
An order was sent to Colonel Williamson, the Deputy-Lieu-
tenant in charge to seize their prisoner when alone and examine
his person, his bureau, and his wardrobe, of which he complained
to his Peers indignantly. Relying on a standing order of the
Lords which forbade any of their Members pleading against
them in the Commons, Atterbury wrote to the Speaker declining
to give him any trouble, as he must make his defence in the as-
sembly of which he had the honour to be a member. A majority
of the Upper House, moved by Ministers, offered to relieve his
scruples, but he was too sagacious to incur liability to a double
trial. Five days were spent in speeches for the Bill, the reading
of alleged copies of letters said to be written and received by
the accused, none of them authenticated save at second hand by
agents of Mar, who had been bought over by Walpole.
The chief witness relied on was Neynoe, a clerk in Holy Orders,
who, forsaking the ways of his youth, had given himself up to
the trade of a spy. On the eve of the trial he was found
drowned; but his depositions were used notwithstanding. Even
in the agony of his peril, Atterbury could not still the sense of
sardonic humour at the mockery of evidence.“ A Right Hon-
ourable person hears Neynoe say, that he heard Kelly say, what
he must have heard persons of greater figure say, what they had
320
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
heard the Pretender say concerning the Bishop of Rochester,
And by this chain of hearsays, thus deduced, I am proved to be
a sort of First Minister to the Pretender.” alpole, however,
would not let go the ghost of the spy, whom he had paid in
cash; and unconfronted and uncross-examined he was made to
tell his tale of treason. How Macclesfield could have retained
his seat on the Woolsack, in obedience to his official maker and
master, his biographer does not explain. The days of his own
trouble were not far off when he too should be put in jeopardy,
and when his cry for help to that pitiless master would be in vain.
Atterbury, who recognised in Walpole his greatest enemy,
exhausted every device of subtle logic and sarcasm to confuse
hiin in cross-examination. He had never before probably met
his match, and he is said to have been sanguine that he should
have damaged if not discomfited his accuser. But Walpole
was not to be disconcerted or driven to admit anything he did
not choose to own, and in the judgment of those who witnessed
the rare intellectual wrestle, the case at the end of it was left
'where it had been before.
Community of dislike to the Administration, though springing
from different causes, had frequently brought the Jacobite Bishop
and the Whig ex-Chancellor together, and a certain friend-
ship had grown up between them. When the Bill of Attainder
against Atterbury came before the Peers, Cowper made an intrepid
stand against it. The Prelate's disaffection was notorious, and to
take his part was a thankless and unpopular task. But in what-
-ever other qualities Cowper may have been deficient, he never
showed any lack of courage or fear of odds, and history has long
:since confirmed the truth and wisdom of the burning words
in which he denounced the substitution of a Bill framed by party
leaders and carried by party votes for judicial proceedings and
legal proofs. "I am, my Lords, against this Bill, not only
because I think nothing has been offered sufficient for the
.support of it, but because I think the honour and dignity of the
Crown, of this House, and of the House of Commons are con-
cerned. The other House began by voting the Bishop guilty
without hearing him, and then instead of impeaching him, or
leaving him to the ordinary course of law, they make them-
selves his judges as well as his accusers, and pass sentence of
.condemnation upon him. Your Lordships' privileges are in-
HIS EXILE.
321
vaded, for in you is vested the supreme judicial power. The
alleged culprit stands at your bar, and has never attempted to
fly. If there be legal evidence against him, let him be legally
convicted; without legal evidence he must be wrongfully con-
demned. If this Bill should pass, it would become a dangerous
precedent. My zeal for the good of my country obliges me to
set my face against oppression, whether by five hundred men or
by one ; for vain will be the boast of the excellency of our Con-
stitution, in vain shall we talk of our liberty and our property
secured to us by law, if, when it suits the purpose of a majority
in Parliament, without law or evidence, we may be deprived of
both.” Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, boldly argued that the case
against Atterbury was not proven, as did Gibson of Lincoln, but
the rest of his brethren condemned him. With marvellous
subtlety he weighed every shred and feather of the imputations
heaped up against him, until the world without began to murmur
shame, and pending votes to waver.
The Bill stood over for
deliberation, and on the 23rd May a meeting of the Cabinet took
place to consider what should be done. The attainder passed,
Atterbury was deprived of his see and exiled for life. At Calais
he met Bolingbroke on his way home, who could not forbear ex-
claiming, “We are exchanged." In despair he was induced to
take up the official garb in the Pretender's Court that Bolingbroke
had laid down, and for some years his singular versatility of
thought and style were devoted to the ill-requited toils of
diplomacy in a hopeless cause.
When the measure for taxing Catholics was embodied in a
Government Bill, its provisions were extended to all non-jurors.
The impossibility of defining who came under the description sug-
gested naturally manifold objections, and when they finally became
law widespread fears of penalty begat a disposition to preventive
swearing in classes high and low, that soon resulted in a practice
of pitiable perjury, or, to say the least of it, of scandalous
trifling with the obligation of an oath. In the Lords consider-
able resistance was offered, the Bill being committed by a major-
ity of fifteen only. On the third reading it was denounced as
persecution by Lords Strafford, 'Bathurst, Bingley, and Trevor,
and excused as mild in comparison with former penal laws by
Townshend, Carteret, Cadogan, Bishop Hoadly, Newcastle, and
Macclesfield. For the last time Cowper raised his voice in favour
VOL. I.
Y
322
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
of religious liberty. Whatever gloss might be put upon the
measure, it was and would be held to be persecution more
than usually ill-timed, when the Governments of France and
Spain, who had proved themselves loyal allies were said to be
interceding for their co-religionists in Great Britain. Experience
warned them of the fatuity and error of the policy towards
Protestants once pursued in those countries, and which had
resulted only in driving into exile many of the best and
most industrious of their people. Were they about to force
peaceable and useful citizens from amongst them by like ill-usage?
But he spoke in vain. The Cabinet was content to accomplish
its purpose by sixty-nine to fifty-five votes, proxies included.
There being nothing any longer to require the presence of the
Court in England, George I. once more visited his Electoral
dominions soon after midsummer, accompanied by the two
Secretaries of State, where for a time their thoughts were chiefly
given to concerting measures with the Government of the United
Provinces to frustrate the intentions of the Emperor regarding
the formation of the East India Company at Ostend in rivalry
to those existing at London and Amsterdam.
Neither of the jealous Secretaries of State would trust the
other alone in the dark. At Hanover Townshend had had
bitter experience of what a colleague might do for the advance-
ment of his interests under the name of friendship, and Carteret,
who was the legatee of all Sunderland's secrets, knew too well
what he might expect from one so thoroughly skilled in the art
of traversing a colleague's purpose in diplomacy. It was agreed
that during their absence from London Walpole should exercise
all the functions of Secretary of State, in addition to those
of First and Second Lord of the Treasury.3. Horace Walpole
was sent on a special mission to Paris, not to supersede Schaub
but, if possible, to become more important. And this was
against the wish of Carteret, who vainly strove to maintain
a counterbalance in the Cabinet for the residue of Sunderland's
friends. An attempt was made to remove Cadogan from the
command of the Guards with a view to promote Lord Cobham,
but when this failed Cadogan believed himself secure, and, with-
2
i
1 22nd May, 1722.
2 Townshend to Dayrolle, and July, 1723.-—MS.
3 Etough, II.,
7.5. - NIS.
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.
323
out permission of the King, issued general orders as Com-
mander-in-Chief, to which Walpole took exception, as implying
a degree of authority approaching that which Marlborough had
exercised ; and of which he was to the last peculiarly jealous.
The precise difference it practically involved was not very easy
to define, but in the rivalry of parties in the Cabinet it was
thought worth while alarming his Majesty's susceptibility and
thereby obtaining a palpable proof of diminished confidence and
favour. Carteret was obliged on the 18th of June to tell
Cadogan in an official dispatch that the King had taken great
exception to the style used in the order of the 30th of May, of
“Commander-in-Chief." His Majesty said he would have men-
tioned it to him if he had seen him the day before he left
England. He did not intend to diminish any trust, rank, or
authority which his Lordship had, that he should still have the
same inspection and direction of Troops of Horse and Grena-
diers as he had of the other regiments, and that he should act
under the Lords Justices, of whom he was one. But the order of
the 30th of May had a tendency towards appointing a Captain-
General, and therefore he had ordered Mr. Walpole to signify
his pleasure that it should be revoked. It did not suit the wary
purpose of the First Lord of the Treasury orally to snub his
brother Regent, or to have the indignity put upon him by
Townshend. It was therefore decided that it should come from
Cadogan's friend and ally by Royal command. Cadogan was
nettled at the revocation of the order he had received leaving
him only a discretionary control over the Foot and Horse Guards.
He tried to make it subsequently appear that he had still the
power which the Cabinet insisted upon limiting. The First
Lord thought it necessary to keep a firm hand over Cadogan,
for he tried by all possible ways to make the world imagine that
he had got the better of the affair.2
I Carteret to Cadogan, from Hanover, 18th June, 1723.--MS.
2 28th June and 18th July, 1723, to Townshend.-MS.
Y 2
324
CHAPTER X.
CARTERET DIPLOMATIST AND VICEROY.
1724–26.
Keeps friends with Midleton-Commandership of the Forces-Council of
Regency-Death of Cowper--Encroachments of Newcastle--Indict-
ment of the Drapier-Harcourt joins the Ministry—Resignation of
Midleton-Wood's Patent Cancelled-Carteret and Swift—The Dean
in England-Local Additions to Irish Privy Council-Malt Tax in
Scotland-Suppression of Secretaryship for Scotland-Charges against
Macclesfield—Sir Peter King Chancellor-Order of the Bath Revived
-Pardon of Bolingbroke-The Court at Hanover.
tative Executive instead of the Cabinet, avoiding ques-
tions of a party nature. They were not always fortunate
in unanimity. The temper of his Royal Highness was not very
good, and he talked more of Opposition than he used to do.
M. Schreyenberg, the private Secretary at Gohrdt, requested
Walpole to let him know from time to time, in confidence,
what went on : from which Newcastle thought they would not
get much comfort.
Carteret, being conscious that his colleague was acquiring an
ascendant influence over the mind of the King, through the
Duchess of Kendal, sought the aid of Madame de Platen, with a
view to countervail it, and instructed Sir L. Schaub at Paris
to promote the views of the Count de Florentine, on which
depended his marriage with her daughter. Townshend was
disposed to treat with indifference what probably seemed to
him so visionary a scheme; but Walpole, well informed by his
brother Horace, persuaded him of its reality; and the practical
result in his mind was to wean the Swiss over to their side
betimes, who seemed, in truth, quite open to conviction as to
where his personal interests lay.
COUNT ST, FLORENTIN E.
325
While at Hanover, Carteret was induced by Lady Darlington
to enter into a strange scheme of hers for marrying her daughter
by the King to Count St. Florentine, on whom it was suggested
by Bernsdorff that the Regent might be persuaded to confer
the dignity of a dukedom. Townshend wrote angrily to Wal-
pole on the want of candour towards himself and the want
of discretion towards the King in thus luring him into a demand
which the head of the French Government was likely to resent
or contemn. But Walpole, who was beginning to relish errors
of judgment on the part of a colleague which might form in
due time grounds for getting rid of him, was not so easily per-
suaded of the futility of Mde. de Platen's ambitious maneuvres,
and thus a foolish project which might, with candour on both
sides, have been harrnlessly laid to rest, was allowed to go on
until it had wrought distrust and enmity inappeasable. New-
castle easily fell in with Walpole's views. He only hoped that
Townshend took care to “do everything by the advice and with
the approbation of their great friend' (the Duchess), whose
credit, as well as good intentions, must be superior to every-
body's, male or female ; and he dreaded the tenderness some-
times shown for the Countess.'
Lady Darlington, on her part, was glad to make use of the
friendship of the Earl to promote her maternal views in Paris.
If she could not herself be a Duchess, she hoped to see
her daughter endued with that dignity in the French Court.
Amelia wanting an outfit and trousseau, how was it to be
provided? The jealousies that rankled in the hearts of the
rival mistresses do not seem to have poisoned the youthful
lives of their offspring; and it was suggested, no doubt by
Carteret, that Lady Walsingham might befriend her half-sister
by advancing the necessary sum, keeping for once her despotic
mother in the dark. The newly-made Peeress was easily en-
gaged in a little plot which had in it the combined attractions of
generosity and mystery, and the curious relations of George I.
to those who surrounded him are revealed in a confidential
despatch from the Secretary of State to the First Lord of the
Treasury :-
"I am writing to let you know that I have received his
Majesty's commands to draw a bill on the Treasury for £500,
To Walpole, 31st August, 1723.-A/S.
11
i
326
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
t
11
and another bill for the like sum a post or two hence, for a
service, which it is his Majesty's pleasure should remain an
entire secret, and which I may beg of you to keep as such, from
the Duchess of Kendal. I make no doubt but this reservedness
towards her Grace, to whom we have sworn an eternal and
inviolable attachment, will at first surprise you not a little ; but
your astonishment will cease when I acquaint you that the
share I have had in this affair has been in obedience to the
Countess of Walsingham, whose conduct toward us has been such
as gratitude eternally engages us to assist her, wheresoever she
is concerned, either personally or in favour of any of her friends.
The person to whom the King has given this bounty is her own
sister (Mde. de Platen), of whom I shall say no more than that,
had you the happiness of being known to her, you would wish
the King had given her ten times as much. This little infi-
delity I can, with great truth, assure you is the only one I have
been or shall be guilty of towards the Duchess during my stay
here. However, I must recommend to you in the strictest
manner the keeping this transaction perfectly secret, as I am
resolved to do on my part.
Carteret for a time held his ground, aided by Bernsdorff and
Bothmar; and the brothers-in-law deemed it necessary, we are
told, to meet intrigue by intrigue, and manæuvre by manoeuvre,
to secure the good offices of the Duchess. Townshend worked
upon her jealousy of Carteret's endeavour to gratify her rival.
In the end, he was out-maneuvred, and his plenipotentiary at
Paris, Sir Luke Schaub, was superseded to make room for
Horace Walpole. Lord Harcourt tried in vain to compass the
recall of Bolingbroke, until a sum of £11,000 had been paid by
the exiled statesman to the female Minister: then, and not
till then, Townshend agreed, and Walpole undertook to obtain
a reversal of the act of attainder. The Duchess of Kendal
enjoyed a pension of £7,500 a-year during the life-time of the
King, besides many perquisites and presents which those who
wished to rise at Court were fain to offer.
The Court wanting money during the autumn, the First
Lord of the Treasury undertook to find £150,000, as the utmost
he could do just then; but so arranged, as he acquainted
Townshend, that both his Majesty and Lord Carteret should
1 October 25th, 1723. —MS.
SIR LUKE SCHAUB.
327
see that he lacked nothing that could contribute to the comfort
and convenience of Royalty. Not the less varied and assiduous
were the arts whereby he endeavoured to keep other influences
on his side at Hanover. Neither he nor Townshend trusted to
mere flattery in their dealings with the ruling favourite. “Our
good Duchess, I believe," wrote the latter, “reposes a more
entire confidence in me than in any other person about the
King;” and the sagacious relatives needed not reminding
that such a woman valued more than aught else being treated
with what she believed to be unreserved and pre-eminent
confidence.1
Despite his jealousy of his colleagues, Townshend wished to
have the command of additional finances in order to support the
King's favourite candidate for the Crown of Sweden; and even
Newcastle, while full of fears that the extra charge on the esti-
mates would furnish a handle to Opposition, thought it was highly
politic, even by a sacrifice of financial ease, to engage, if possible,
the Courts of Berlin, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, in resistance
to the dangerous ambition of the Czar. Carteret's diplomatic suc-
cess in Sweden, and his rare knowledge of German interests and
ideas, justified his taking the lead in the affair; and while Dubois
lived he believed France would not be scared into hostility to the
Baltic League. In the Cabinet his supporters were Roxburgh,
Carleton, Cadogan, and occasionally the Chancellor. But the
sons of Zeriah were too strong for him; and as his temperament
would not own a superior, and Walpole would not endure a ques-
tioner of his ascendancy, it was inevitable that they should part.
There was at all times about Carteret a self-confident indifference
to danger which made him often seem to invite difficulty he might
have avoided. His persistent instigation of Sir Luke Schaub to
press for the elevation of St. Florentine against the repugnance
of the Regent, and the open protest of the old French nobles,
led Townshend at length to instruct Horace Walpole at Paris to
disown and discourage the unwise demand. Instead of taking
issue at once at such an encroachment on his privileges as
Southern Secretary of State, Carteret prompted Schaub to
finesse with his unwelcome coadjutor, and to urge the paternal
wishes of George I. more strongly than ever. Sir Luke's mala-
droit attempt to carry out his instructions drew an indignant re-
1 To Walpole, Hanover, October, 1723.—AIS,
328
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
buke from the Regent, and abruptly put an end to this project.
Schaub was discredited, and Townshend insisted on his recall;
Horace Walpole eventually being named in his room, the baffled
Minister saw that his influence with the King must yield to the
predominant sway of his rivals in Council, and he prepared him-
self for the change of offices that took place on their return to
England.
Amid all the competing schemes of the day and restless dis-
position of Continental Courts, Walpole kept his head clear in
favour of permanent peace with France and Russia, caring little
what became of the rest of the world. “His politics were in a
narrow compass : if he kept perfectly well with the Regent and
the Czar, he was under no apprehension of foreign disturbances.”1
He took care to keep Newcastle filled with his own notions, and
in doing so took infinite trouble to keep up the semblance of con-
sultation and conference with him on all points of importance,
pretending every now and then to agree with his Grace, not only
transmitting him despatches from abroad, from day to day, when
he was in the country, but, upon ordinary occasions, copies of his
own replies to Hanover, except when excessive pressure left him
no time, and that generally happened when he was determined to
take his own way. The Duke was delighted with the importance
thus given him, and doubtless believed that he was reciprocating
confidence of vital moment by expounding, in diluted logic, the
reason for a policy in which he probably believed that he had of
his own free judgment concurred. Walpole told him he grew
quite proud of his own way of reasoning when he found it was
so agreeable to his Grace's thoughts. Could Lord Townshend see
his last letter he would never believe that they did not compare
notes.
Newcastle was in raptures at the dexterity shown by Towns-
hend in the intrigue for the removal of Carteret, whose influence
at the French Court had been undermined by Horace Walpole.
Upon Townshend suggesting that it would facilitate H. Wal-
pole's mission if he had full credentials at Paris, and saying that
the admission of the King of Portugal into the Quadruple Alli-
ance furnished a reason, his Majesty immediately fell in with the
2
i To Newcastle, 31st August, 1723.-MS.
? To Newcastle, enclosing important despatches from Hanover, 6th September,
1723. -- il/S.
INTRIGUE AGAINST CARTERET.
329
proposal, and promised to state it next day to Carteret as his
own thought, which he did, and gave his Lordship positive
orders to send on to England at once for the proper instru-
ments for that purpose. “This indisputable mark of the King's
favour towards us and neglect of Carteret and Schaub must in-
duce the Duc d'Orleans and the French Ministers to open them-
selves towards one another and to court our friendship. Putting
so near a relation of ours over Schaub's head at a Court where
the whole scene of affairs centre in Carteret's province and in the
strength and heart of his interest, is a publication to the world
of the superiority of our credit. I make no doubt but that the
accounts the King has received of the boasts of our adversaries
have contributed to the drawing down of the mortifying stroke
on their heads, which I can assure you has so astonished Lord
Carteret that I have never observed in him on any occasion such
visible marks of despair."1
Lord Cowper died at his seat in Hertfordshire on the roth
of October, and thus relieved Ministers from the last of those
whose criticism they had cause to fear in the House of Lords.
Within a brief space Shrewsbury, Oxford, Sunderland, and
Atterbury had all been swept from their path. It only re-
remained to get rid of the presence of Carteret and Maccles-
field, who dared now and then in Cabinet to exercise the right
of private judgment.
Newcastle was at this period in training for the business of
his future life—that of monopolist of patronage. For this he
had begun to mend old Parliamentary nets and to make new
ones—expensive work, entailing endless labour and outlay.
The number of Pelhams in the Parliament of 1722 was not et
nomine greater than that of 1715; when he was no more than a
'prentice hand in corruption. But seven years of official know-
ledge had made him an accomplished artificer in the work of
sapping and mining the judgment of Parliament, and reducing
what was left of the free will of Monarchy to absolute sub-
mission to administrative captivity. He had now half a score of
seats at his disposal in the Commons, and he had set his heart
upon having as many on the Bench of Bishops.
The sudden death of the Regent of France was looked upon
by Walpole as the first serious turn of ill luck they had had.
1 Townshend to Walpole, 25th October, 1723.-11S.
330
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
The Duc de Bourbon became his successor; but the English
Embassy already knew the worth of M. Fleury, although as yet
he had attained no Ministerial place at the Court of the pre-
cocious King. George I. was too happy in his old home at
Herrenhausen to be easily coaxed back to Kensington, and
Ministers grew uneasy at the prospect of meeting Parliament
without him. Immigrant Monarchy had not yet struck root
deep enough to dispense with State ceremonies; and Townsend
tried what could be done in the way of influencing the Royal
mind by apt quotacions from the almanac as to the changes of
the moon up to Christmas, which might indicate a safe passage
across the troubled Channel that surged between his ancestral
and adopted dominions, with shrewd calculations as to unruly
blasts in mid-winter, which might make the transit difficult.
Still more to the purpose were financial considerations : “The
supplies (which were granted only from Christmas to Christmas)
being exhausted, every branch of the public Service must be at
a stand. Parliament would meet probably in ill temper, and the
Session must unavoidably be protracted into the summer months.”
But if they were sure that the King would return by the middle
of December the two Houses might be prorogued to the roth of
January 1
In France, in the early days of Louis XV., justice between man
and man revived the peaceful energies of trade, and gave fresh
life to credit and to commerce. Every thought of the wise Abbé
was imparted on these subjects to the English Resident at Paris
and by him reported, with appreciative comment, to his brother,
to whom such notions of government were more and more wel-
come. Both contemned religious persecution and detested foreign
war, and under their respective influence the two kingdoms during
the next decade recovered much of what they had lost by pré-
vious misrule. The influence exercised in French affairs by
Fleury excited the envy of the fanatical party so much that they
had contrived to have him honourably banished from Court by
getting him appointed, without his consent, to a distant diocese.
He is said to have subscribed himself the first time he was
canonically obliged to do so__"Claude, by Divine indignation,
Bishop of Frejus." But his enemies relaxed their watchfulness
at Rome; and pleading humbly that his previous training fitted
| Townshend to the King, 30th November, 1723.--MS.
CARTERET VICEROY.
331
him less for episcopal than other services to the Church, he
obtained leave to devolve the dignities and duties of the Crozier
on one more qualified to keep parish priests and country curates
in diocesan discipline, and he became instead capitular head of a
subordinate community at Tournay, which enabled him once
more to spend his time at Paris.
How much the Cabinet were at their ease after Cowper's
death and the decision to supersede Carteret as Secretary of
State had been come to, was significantly indicated by the
brevity and tameness of the Session. Unanimity was, in fact,
only broken by a sharp but abortive resistance in the Commons
to keeping up the land forces to 18,000 men in a year of antici-
pated peace.
Morpeth, Jekyll, and Verney combined with
Bromley, Shippen, and Hungerford to oppose the unnecessary
expense, while Henry Pelham, Pulteney, Treby, Dodington,
Yonge, and Brodrick sustained the vote, and were severally
rewarded according to their words. In the Lords the contention
was again raised on the Mutiny Bill, the recent rigour of which,
it was argued, would never have been sanctioned, save in a time
of impending war, and which ought not to be petrified into pre-
cedent. Trevor, Wharton, and Strafford reasoned with little
effect against the obvious tendency to render a large military
establishment an essential part of the Executive Government,
while Harcourt and Argyll, who had become identified with the
administration of Walpole, supported Townshend, rebuking such
misgivings.
The complete understanding on questions of Foreign policy
cemented by the tact and skill of Horace Walpole and Fleury
(daily becoming more influential in the Councils of France), left
Townshend little to trouble him; and encouraged George I. to
spend more than half the year in Hanover. Domestic adminis-
tration was confided to Newcastle, as Secretary for the Northern
Department, while his brother Henry Pelham ousted Treby
from the office of Secretary-at-War, and Cadogan was deprived
of the Command of the Army. Carteret was obliged to relin-
quish the post he was pre-eminently fitted to fill, and to put up
with banishmeut to Ireland, while Grafton, to console him for
his recall, was given the Gold Key theretofore held by Newcastle.
Treby was compensated with a Tellership of the Exchequer ;
Yorke was made Attorney-General ; George Townshend, Com-
332
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
missioner of Excise ; Yonge and Dodington, Lords of the
Treasury. In a letter to Grafton, marked private and secret,
Townshend apologised for his Grace's omission in the consulta-
tions that had led to the changes of office, and tried to persuade
him that his interests and feelings had duly been cared for as he
must recognise in the great dignity of Chamberlain being con-
ferred upon him, for his friends in the Cabinet had always con-
sidered his interests identical with their own.1 Newcastle exulted
in the reward of his nine years' diligent apprenticeship to official
routine, and entered on that memorable sojourn in the wilder-
ness of blunder which lasted nearly forty years. But his manner
of recalling the superseded Viceroy? was so needlessly abrupt as
to cause the latter no little pain, and he earnestly besought his
Grace that the public notification might be so framed as to deprive
his enemies of any temptation to triumph over him. The error
was at once set right, and an order was given that the patent
appointing Carteret Lord-Lieutentant should be stopped until
after his predecessor's return to England. A profusion of
apology accompanied the reparation of form.
For some months Carteret corresponded privately with both
parties in Ireland. With all the arts of which he was a master,
his aim was to conciliate their personal goodwill before under-
taking his difficult task. By help of the Post Office, or private
treachery, what bore the appearance of double dealing became
known to Walpole, and confirmed more than ever his suspicions
and dislike. At length he made up his mind very characteris-
tically to force the lingering Viceroy to declare himself on the
question that kept Ireland at fever heat. "The only thing that
could be done was the sending over Lord Carteret himself
immediately, and he should not be for sending him over now, if
he did not think it would end in speedily recalling him. They
would at least get rid of him in England, and when he was upon
the spot he would be forced to explain himself, and take his
party betwixt the two great men there, which he (Walpole) was
confident he managed now by lying to both. He would be
under a necessity of either helping them through in this affair
1
Ist April, 1724.—MS.
2 Newcastle to Grafton, 14th April, 1724. -MS. .
3 Grafton to Newcastle, 17th April, 1724. —MS.
+ Newcastle to Grafton, 20th April, 1724. – MS.
DRAPIER'S FOURTH LETTER.
333
(which would be impossible for him to think of after the part he
had already acted) or of losing himself with the King when he
should see that he fell entirely into the Irish politics and the
independency that was so much aimed at."1 Contrary to his
wishes, Carteret was sent to Ireland to quell the disturbance he
was said to have fomented, but which he really had no interest
whatever in fanning into flame. Newcastle thought he would
find pacification no easy task ; but if he must go into exile
during half the year he was resolved to show from the first in
whom he placed confidence. Ere his patent was signed, he
promised St. John Brodrick and Henry Boyle that they should
be members of the Irish Privy Council, and he sent assurances
to Midleton of the regard and friendship he entertained for
him. All the more he desired, however, to dispel the imputation
that he had been stimulating discontent with the existing order
of things, and encouraging extravagant fears respecting the
coinage. On the day of his arrival in Dublin the Fourth of the
Drapier's Letters was brought to his notice as dangerously
exceeding in violence of language all that had gone before, and
fomenting national jealousy on other important subjects. As
soon as he had been sworn in, he addressed the Council in the
usual terms of official compliment spiced with caustic references
to the pamphlet tending to excite sedition. The Chancellor con-
demned the doctrines promulgated. The King was spoken of in
an undutiful and unfitting manner. The writer asserted broadly
the past autonomy of Ireland, which he represented as in a state
of slavery, kept down merely by force : 2 and the Attorney-
General was directed to prosecute the publisher. Some of the
Council feared the proceeding might fail; but it was resolved
to offer a reward of £300 for the discovery of the author.
Archbishop King, Bishop Bolton, and Dr. Coghill declined to
sign the order. The two former were known to be intimate with
Swift, who by general consent was believed to be him who
troubled Israel. No indication was given by the Lord-Lieu-
tenant that his instructions would enable him to withdraw the
hated tokens, and Midleton, having supported him in vindica-
ting the offended dignity of Government, felt it to be a duty
from which he could not shrink to warn him confidentially that
| To Newcastle from Houghton, ist Sept., 1724.
2 Midleton to his brother, 31st October, 1724.-AIS.
334
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
nothing could reconcile the people to their substitution for the
lawful coin of the realm. The Grand Jury before whom the case
was laid proved obdurate, refusing every adjuration and entreaty
of the Chief Justice to find a true bill ; and Whitehead became
an object of such general hatred that he was glad to retire upon
the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas.
Reiteration in the Gazette of the Treasury order, that only a
third of the original sum authorised should be issued, had no
effect of appeasement, and Carteret was ere long obliged to
advise the Secretary of State that he saw no prospect of recon-
ciliating local opinion to the upholding of the patent. Casual
expressions of disappointment by his colleagues were interpreted
hastily by hangers-on at Whitehall as foreshadowing his early
recall, and these in their turn gave place to prognostics of Midle-
ton's removal, as he had been found inflexible on the subject.
His brother recommended him to put it plainly to the Viceroy
whether he did not deem it for the public service that the Great
Seal should be placed in other hands. “The honest part he had
acted in reference to the patent was, he might be assured, a
mortal sin, not to be forgiven.”
Confirmed by statute in the exclusive power of hearing and
determining appeals from all other tribunals, the British House
of Lords proceeded, as opportunities arose, to extinguish points
of substantial or technical difference between the courts of West-
minster and Dublin. Divergent equities growing out of local
legislation or custom were brushed aside by Chancellor Maccles-
field and his learned colleagues, of whom Harcourt was the most
eloquent and influential. While sitting alone in Chancery he
had acquired no little reputation for patience, research, and skill
in lucid exposition, and by his thoughtful care in concatenating
precedents, recent and remote, forming thus a supplementary
code of judge-made law for the maintenance and strengthening
of whatever still remained of feudalism in the system of landed
property. His character as a judge was irreproachable for fair-
ness between man and man, but no one infused into his decisions
more of the spirit of that traditional system of class on which
local rule rested so long. Before his time it was doubtful whether
the trustees of real estate rnight not dispose of it for valuable
consideration, preserving the uses substantially they were ap-
i Midleton to his brother, i8th March, 1725.—MS.
HARCOURT'S PRECEDENTS.
335
pointed to protect. Harcourt declared, in the temper of a man
proud of his ancestry, that if no precedent could be shown him
forbidding the commutation proposed, he would create one.
Thenceforth, to break an entail it became indispensable that the
son and heir should have reached the age of twenty-one and
should join in the act; whereby an additional twist was given to
the rope which fettered the free circulation of property in land.?
So likewise he established the doctrine that where money was
left by will to be laid out in land it should be held to be land
before it could be so laid out, and should go by the rule of
freehold inheritance to the heir in remainder, and not, according
to the law of chattel, to the next of kin. Another stride was thus
made in the velvet shoe of unpolitical-looking equity, towards
the completion of that curious and subtle system meant to favour
the concentration of realty in the smaller number of hands.
Harcourt ruled that where a settlement had been made on
younger children, and there was no son, the eldest daughter
should, like her sisters, be held entitled only to the benefit of
her portion as a younger child, that the estate might go un-
broken to the remainder-man, as it would have gone to a son.
In the patent conferring on him nobility in 1711, he carefully
recounted the knightly virtues of his progenitors, and boasted
that the place from which he took his title had been in his family
600 years. Walpole appreciated at their true significance the
drift and tendency of Harcourt's decisions, and being satisfied
that he had severed his political connection with his Jacobite
friends, he thought the ex-Keeper of the Royal conscience might
be made a useful adviser to the Hanoverian dynasty. It was
still, perhaps, too soon to give high office to the avowed confi-
dant of Oxford and Bolingbroke, but not too soon to lead him
to expect it by applauding the sagacity of his judgments in
appeal. The reversal of some of Midleton's decrees had been
in terms so supercilious as to kindle the suspicion in the watch-
ful mind of Thomas Brodrick that they indicated a desire, if
not intent, of driving his brother from the Irish Chancery.
The impression grew that the removal of Midleton was con-
templated. The Chancellor thereupon tendered his resignation,
and when asked the cause, placed his brother's letter in the hands
I Pye v. Gore : Williams's Reports, 128.
Lingen v. Sowray: Ibid., 172.
2
336
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
of his Excellency, who seemed much startled at its contents, and
sought to dissuade him from acting on the advice it contained. 1
He warmly remonstrated against what he designated an error of
judgment; for if the suspicion were groundless he would be
throwing away power for nought, and would only be playing into
the hands of his enemies. But Midleton had made
But Midleton had made up his mind
to quit, and only doubted how best to make the King aware of
his reasons. Carteret did not conceal his regret lest the con-
duct of business in the Upper House at Dublin should thence-
forth depend upon someone who would bring to the task neither
political, local, nor personal knowledge, for he knew that no
member of the Irish Bench or Bar was likely to be chosen.
His confidential advice was reluctantly taken by the Cabinet
that the provocative of so much unabated odium should, by some
means, be withdrawn. Negotiations were accordingly opened
with Wood, and for a valuable consideration the ambitious iron-
monger consented to release Walpole from his undertaking to
force the Kendal coinage into circulation. The Lord-Lieutenant
summoned the members of the Privy Council who were in or
near town to meet on"extraordinary business," and when he dis-
closed the long-hoped-for issue of the controversy--that the
patent had been withdrawn, everybody was delighted, and they
seemed to show most joy who had hitherto never given that
project any opposition. Speaker Conolly's zeal carried him
so far as to say that he believed God Almighty inspired the
Ministry who advised his Majesty to the measures he had now
taken, and he said he rose to give thanks in the name of all the
people. The Lord-Lieutenant described the act as one of great
condescension and special goodness on the part of his Majesty ;
but the Archbishop could not refrain from saying to those he
trusted “-if a man throws me into a millpond, and then pulls
me out of it all over wet : hath he not done me a favour, taking
the matter altogether ?"4 Finding it hopeless to force back the
popular current, Carteret sought to devise new channels wherein
it might peacefully flow. His organs and agents gave out that
he meant to search forthwith into the abuses long known to
exist in the Vice-Treasury and the Barrack Administration, and
1 Brodrick Corresp., 3rd April, 1725.—MS.
2 To his brother, ioth and 29th April, and 13th May, 1725.- MS.
3 20th August, 1725.
· Brodrick Corresp., 25th August, 1725.—MS.
AN INFORMER'S REWARD.
337
arrear
the freshness of the promises of relief from frequent billeting
caught the popular feeling, and helped to divert attention from
other causes of complaint. Nor did the viceregal promise prove
illusory. The joint Vice-Treasurership had long been held as
an absentee sinecure by Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe, the
whole conduct of the Department being left to Mr. Prat, a well-
bred impostor, who, when his accounts were sifted, proved to be
£75,000 in default. The Commissariat Department and Barrack
Master's Offices were riddled in like manner, and an
of £120,000 was found to be due to the soldiery on what were
called their “clearings." Carteret was regarded as another
“ Daniel come to judgment.” 1
Absenteeism infected all ranks and conditions, clerical and
lay, owners of estates and holders of office; and Townshend
had no scruple in telling Primate Boulter that he wished him to
ordain and endow a man named Power, in reward for having
turned informer against a troublesome gang of deer-stealers in
Hampshire known as the "Waltham Blacks." King remonstrated
in vain against the scandal and sin of such an abuse of patron-
age, but it was perpetrated notwithstanding, and Boulter con-
tinued to be a bow anchor of Cabinet influence in Ireland to the
end.? The aged Metropolitan of Dublin could not dissuade
Carteret from gratifying the greed of his Cabinet colleagues for
sinecure dignities and benefices in Ireland. Their dependants
were thus provided for to the extent of £20,000 a-year, while
not £500 a-year had been given to native clergymen. Carteret
promised the reversion of the Mastership of the Rolls to an
eminent member of the Irish Bar, a Mr. Carter, who sat for Mayo
in the House of Commons; but when he was absent in London
Boulter, acting as one of the Lords Justices, strongly deprecated
such an appointment as adverse to the English interest :
“When I left England I did not doubt but your Lordship was
sufficiently sensible how much the English interest had been
neglected for many years, and of the necessity there was of
taking other measures for the future. We should likewise be
very much alarmed if the Attorney-General were made Lord
Chancellor. Against him the English here have nothing to
object, but they think the only way to keep things quiet and
Nicholson to Wake, 131h Suly, 1725.--MS.
Coghill to Southwell, 28th Dec, 1725. --MS.
z
2
VOL. I.
338
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
make them easy to the Ministry is by filling the great places
with natives of England.” 1
This policy prevailed, and Dalton, an eminent pleader in the
Temple, was sent over as Chief Baron ; other judgeships, as
theretofore, being bestowed on practitioners, sometimes with
good and sometimes with indifferent repute at the English Bar.
The Rolls hardly then ranked as a judicial appointment; Carter
held the Viceroy to his word and eventually obtained it. But
for the rest the old system prevailed, and what the administration
of criminal justice was thereunder may be illustrated by a case
mentioned by Bishop Nicholson in a private letter to his corres-
pondent at Lambeth. A poor fanatic was tried at Derry before
Mr. Baron Pocklington for preaching in the open air. As a
Catholic pilgrim, who believed he had seen visions and imagined
he had wrought miraculous cures, he adjured the peasantry
wherever he came to repent their sins and make their peace with
Heaven ere the elements should melt with fervent heat. Far
from evading the charge, he asked only for opportunity to tell
the Court the reasons of his faith and why he had taken to his
self-denying way of life. The judge refused to hear his blas-
phemy, told the jury that his guilt was not denied, and he sen-
tenced him to stand in the pillory; to be twice publicly whipped
through the town, and to be branded with the letter P, all of
which was carried into execution.2
Carteret, who was freer from prejudice of race and party than
most of his colleagues, enjoyed as an elixir the talk of Swift, in
whose society he spent many a leisure hour. It was impossible
to resist, had he been even so inclined, thé fascination of that
marvellous tongue. If even now one cannot read unmoved his
talk with Pope on paper, how must it have told on the ear of
one of the few other men of his time whose learning and under-
standing enabled him to appreciate every allusion to books and
hint of fancy. Carteret was too glad of such a companion in
what he deemed exile ; and when asked on one occasion how he
got on in Ireland, he is said to have exclaimed, “I disarm when
I cannot always satisfy Dr. Swift.” One of his ways of pleasing
the Dean was to efface as far as he dare the feeling of national
exclusion caused by imported appointments. Absentee pensions
1 To Townshend, 29th April, 1725.
2 To Primate Wake, 30th July, 1725.--MS.
SWIFT PLEADS IN VAIN.
339
he could not prevent; and the stowing of Court Chaplains into
Irish sees he could not stay. But he did what he could in legal
and other offices, applying the just and natural rule in Ireland,
which in Scotland was never departed from He dared not
gratify The Drapier by appointing him to any public trust. At
one time he asked to be a county magistrate, at another to be
added to the Irish Board. “You would not care for such feathers
of recognition, I am sure," said the Viceroy. "No," replied Swift,
“I feel that I might be serviceable in both capacities, but as
I would not job at the Board, nor suffer abuses to pass at Quarter
Sessions, I suppose you will not indulge me for the good of this
unhappy nation. If I were a worthless Member of Parliament,
or a bishop, who would vote for the Court, my request might be
granted.” To have bestowed on the Dean any official com-
pliment, would have been to provoke recall ; but through Lady
Carteret, or her mother, Lady Worsley, with whom Swift was in-
timate, Carteret let him know the truth of his inability. Bolton,
Stopford, Delaney and others benefited no doubt by their friend's
exclusion ; but when he was in London the sting of the Examiner
having passed away, Walpole asked him to dinner. He sought
to plead in person for a change of administrative policy in Ire-
land, not by complaining of Carteret's acts, but as desiring to dis-
pense him from the obligation of reiterating them; and he was
pleased with an early occasion being named by the Minister for
hearing fully all he had to say in favour of a different system.
Walpole listened unmoved. · He had built up his power on a
system of exclusion, and he believed that its ascendancy could
best be maintained by adherence to that fundamental rule. A
better and purer Legislature in Ireland would be of no use to
him, or to the Court, for keeping in good humour and good con-
dition the majorities in Parliament on which they relied ; and to
throw away on men of mere native merit the various posts and
pensions on the Irish Establishment touched him no deeper than
the emotion that was suggested only by a passing smile. He took
no trouble to refute the arguments of the Dean ; and his visitor
came away from the interview painfully conscious that his ex-
postulations had been vain. In a letter to Peterboro' he gave
an account of the conversation with a view to its being submitted
to Walpole, who took no exception to its accuracy. Swift
tarried at Twickenham till the end of summer, preparing
z 2
340
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Gulliver's Travels for publication ; his frequent visits to Boling-
broke, at Chelsea, justifying Ministers, they thought, in consider-
ing him a subtle Jacobite in the thin disguise of a man of letters
and a wit. He was graciously received at Leicester House, and
once more dreamt perhaps of better days to come.
His new
book was published in October, 1726, anonymously, his friends
affecting not to know the author. A letter from Mrs. Howard,
in November, about a present of poplin he had sent her for the
Princess, says that the secret was not long kept, and in England
the fame of the author rose higher than ever.
Carteret advised a revision of the Irish Privy Council, to which,
were added several persons of local weight and influence. On
the promulgation of the new list the Primate and others of his
way of thinking felt aggrieved because they had not been con-
sulted, and besides, they thought it very much lessened that
authority they imagined it was designed they should have there.
Success in resistance in central authority was in Ireland too
signal to be unrealised elsewhere. Disaffection in Scotland had
been silenced by the suppression of Mar's Rebellion ten years
before; but it was not dead. The arms and symbols of Jacobit-
ism were hid away, but repinings and grudges here and there,
and changes brought about by the Union were ready to fan into
flickering flame matter-of-fact discontent at new fiscal exactions.
An arbitrary and unexplained attempt by the Treasury to im-.
pose a duty of sixpence a bushel on malt, which had never been pre-
viously paid in Scotland, was met by a dogged refusal in Glasgow,
Edinburgh, and other towns. Ill-provided efforts to enforce it
were put to rout by the angry brewers and their men, and when
the authorities essayed to exact their demands, serious tumults
arose ; and Government was called upon to interfere decisively.
The Scotch Secretary of State was beset with appeals for and
against the tax; and swayed, as was believed, by the advice of the
Lord Advocate, and the Lord Clerk Register, he forbore to take
any measures of a peremptory kind, which, it was feared, might
lead to destructive, if not sanguinary conflict. The Court of
Session ordered the traders to give security for the duty and
come prepared to pay ; but the order was disregarded, and
though Ministers would gladly have kept the affair out of Par-
liament, it was too tempting a subject to escape notice. Ever
1 To the Duke of Newcastle, May 19th, 1726.
MALT TAX.
341
since the end of the war the Scotch had been nominally charged
the same duty upon malt as their neighbours in England; but
nothing was actually paid, and the sum not being large, the Ex-
chequer winked at the evasion. The English Members, however,
complained at the exception thus shown, their constituents being
compelled to pay £750,000 a year. The financial wizard was
ready to humour the Committee of Ways and Means by pro-
mises to set matters right by unsparing exaction, or by explaining
the deficit away in mystified account. But he had another
purpose to serve, of which he thought more. Roxburgh was
one of the surviving Members of the minority in the Cabinet
who held with Carteret ; and the more aggravated the con-
tumacy of the Glasgow brewers was made to appear, the more
heinous seemed the impunity which they had been shown; and the
easier it would be to get rid of the Duke, whom he and Town-
shend chose to suspect of favouring Irish refusal to accept the
Birmingham tokens.
John, fifth Earl of Roxburgh, had been created a Duke for
the part he had taken in promoting the Scottish Union, and
having married a daughter of Nottingham, was identified with
the section to which in turn Shrewsbury, Sunderland, and Cowper
had belonged, and who now were identified more or less openly
with Carteret and Cadogan. In the first Cabinet of George I.
he had been made Secretary of State for Scotland, and though
not particularly credited with administrative aptitude or zeal in
repressing the rebellion, he had been supported by the Marl-
borough influence; and if not very popular north of the Tweed,
had few, if any, enemies on the banks of the Thames. But the
Treasury grasped at the pretext afforded by Roxburgh's neutral
attitude in the malt tax affair for taking another step in central-
isation, and Newcastle consulted Townshend by letter whether
it was not clear that so long as there was a Scotch Secretary of
State there would be no quiet in Scotland when parties rose to
any height. At the same time, he wrote privately urging the
removal of Roxburgh. How this end was to be compassed
was plain. Walpole being at Houghton, he wrote—"I doubt
not that you will consult with our friend, the Duchess of
Kendal, and I hope neither her Grace nor your lordship imagine
we propose to have anything done in this matter without
her entire approbation and concurrence.
If you agree with
342
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
us that this is now right to be done, you will show my letter
to the King." 1
Walpole recommended the suppression of the office as the only
way of damping the spirit of insubordination on the Clyde. He
had no doubt that Roxburgh and Dundas had encouraged it,
though he had no proof of it; and, as the Highlanders were
reported to be giving up their arms, there was no reason to fear
that the Jacobites were making political capital out of the affair.
But Roxburgh ought to be removed, and accordingly instructions
were sent by Townshend from Hanover, under which Newcastle,
in the King's name, required the Secretary for Scotland to give
up the Seals.? The Duke remained one of the Lords Justices,
but henceforth declined to attend.
The Council of Regency despatched Lord Islay, with plenary
powers, to deal with the prevailing troubles. With tact and
temper, he succeeded partly in repressing and partly in con-
ciliating those who had already begun to disagree among them-
selves, and on whom the dismissal of the Secretary fell as an
unexpected blow. Islay was content to exercise the authority
without the official style and dignity, and no one was appointed
to the office for several years.
In a calmer sea no ship of fortune floated more securely with
all sails set than did that of the Chancellor. Yet already his doom
Those colleagues whose rapid rise had beguiled him
into over-confidently trusting them were ready to look on pas-
sively while he was assailed and overpowered for complicity in
abuses, whose prescriptive title could not be denied, but whose
iniquity could not longer be endured. Lords Oxford and Mor-
peth petitioned the House of Commons as trustees for the Duchess
of Montagu, that inquiry should be made into the way in which
large sums of money had been dealt with by officers of the Court
of Chancery in misuse of their public functions, with the pre-
sumed cognisance or connivance of their judicial chief, to whom
they were alone responsible. Suspicion long smouldering in the
public mind suddenly burst into flame, that suitors in the Court
had grave reason to complain that the decision of causes was
habitually delayed to enable the Masters in Chancery to make use
of the large funds lodged in their hands. It was likewise loudly
was near.
? To Townshend, 6th August, 1725.—MS.
2 25th August, 1725.
IMPEACHMENT OF MACCLESFIELD.
343
asserted that accumulations under the name of presents or fees were
exacted in the progress of suits, of which no account could be ob-
tained. Stories were told of large sums paid for appointments
in Chancery, wholly or in part disbelieved, through lack of veri-
fication never likely to be forthcoming. In the heyday of
speculation strange things daily happened, or were said to
happen, outside Westminster. In November, 1724, no mis-
giving clouded the mind of the Chancellor as to the security
of his position ; yet even then ruin impended over him. Walpole,
to relieve the Government from any share of responsibility, had
a committee of the Privy Council named, who, with three of the
Judges and the law advisers of the Crown, were to inquire into
the alleged abuses and report thereon. They found that many
of the heaviest charges of malversation were true, and that it was
difficult to exonerate Macclesfield from acquiescence in much
that could not be defended. In the hope of setting himself right
with the public, he issued a stringent order that all moneys of
suitors should forthwith be paid from time to time by the Mas-
ters into the Bank of England, whence none could be drawn
without the joint cheque of the six clerks, the particular Masters,
and the Governor of the Bank. But this was held only to
amount to an admission of culpable laxity in times past. The
outcry waxed louder, and his colleagues intimated to the Chan-
cellor that he had better resign. The Great Seal was put in
Commission, and Sir Peter King was appointed Speaker of the
Upper House. Sir George Oxenden, seconded by Dodington,
moved that Thomas, Earl of Macclesfield, be impeached of high
crimes and misdemeanour. Pulteney and Wyndham objected, on
the constitutional ground that before an inquiry made by the
House itself into the facts of the case, and its full consideration
of them specifically, there was no precedent for its assuming the
character of public accuser; but their objections were overborne,
and by 273 to 164 the impeachment was voted. Upon the trial,
which lasted thirteen days, it was proved that four thousand
pounds and five thousand guineas were paid for appointments to
Masterships; and that balances belonging to suitors squandered
in gambling and in the Stock Exchange were greater than were
even suspected. For the defence it was contended that by the civil
law and at common law, the sale of offices had never been for-
bidden, and that the statute of Edward VI. which had interdicted
344
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
The prac-
such bargains, excepted appointments in the King's Bench and
Common Pleas, and left many others unnamed.
tices now impugned had always prevailed; and instances were
alleged of £800 having been paid as fees for Masterships to
former Keepers of the Great Seal. The House of Lords unani-
mously declared the ex-Chancellor guilty, and sentenced him to pay
a fine of £30,000, and to be confined in the Tower till it was paid.
One of the few who had had the courage to plead precedent and
usage in defence of the arraigned Chancellor was Sir Philip Yorke,
with whom the obligations of office did not outweigh those of
personal and professional friendship. To Macclesfield he owed
his introduction to Newcastle, who returned him to Parliament, and
whom he never forsook throughout the fluctuations of his fortune.
Chief Justice King, created Lord Ockham, entered the Cabinet
as Chancellor. He was the son of a tradesman at Exeter, who,
in the hours stolen from his father's business, taught himself
Latin, and showed such genuine love of learning that his uncle,
Mr. Locke, the metaphysician, obtained leave to send him to
Leyden, then highly in vogue with English Presbyterians, to
complete his education. He early made his mark as an advocate
on the Western Circuit, and through his relative's interest with the
owner of Berealston was returned for that infinitesimal borough.
He meddled little in party strife, but not unfrequently gave
up lucrative business to attend at St. Stephen's. He tenderly
cheered his best friend in his declining days, which were said
to have been lengthened by his devotion.
Pulteney refused to remain any longer in a secondary posi-
tion, and feeling himself unjustly excluded from the Cabinet,
ceased to be Cofferer of the Household, Newcastle's nephew,
Lord Lincoln, taking his place, to be in turn succeeded as Con-
stable of the Tower by the young Duke of Bolton. The Great
Seal of Ireland was conferred on Richard West, a practitioner of
eminencein Lincoln's Inn. Argyll, retaining his seatin the Cabinet,
was gazetted Master-General of the Ordnance instead of Cadogan,
and the new Duke of Dorset became Lord Steward of the
Household. The altered state of the Cabinet stood thus :
Primate Wake, Lord Chancellor King, Dukes of Devonshire,
Kingston, Argyll, Dorset and Newcastle, Lords Townshend,
Carteret and Berkeley, Sir R. Walpole and Mr. Pelham.
Walpole consulted the new Keeper of the King's conscience on
REVIVAL OF THE BATH.
345
the strange design of the Prince and Princess of Wales to have
the Electorate settled on their eldest son, and the Crown: of
Great Britain and Ireland on their second son. The King ob-
jected to disinheriting his lawful heir without his consent when
he should come of age, and the scheme was laid aside. Sir
Robert had thought it his duty, moreover, to tell George I. that
if the children were not soon brought over to England and edu-
cated there as befitted their condition, neither might ever enjoy the
Crown, so strong had the feeling become against the idea of the
country being ruled by a foreigner.
Large as were the resources at the command of the Minister,
and lavish as was his hand, the claims upon him were so nu-
merous, that he sometimes misgave his ability to maintain his
credit. Promises of place and pay to the undeserving, though
made at the longest date, would still come due, would remain
overdue, and at last would form a subject of protest. What was
the great financier to do? He bethought him of several schemes
to stave off Ministerial reproach. One is described by his sar-
castic son in language too pleasant to be spoiled by paraphrase.
“The revival of the Order of the Bath,” was an artful bank of
thirty-six ribands, to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places.
He meant, too, to stave off the demand for Garters, and intended
that the red should be a step to the blue, and accordingly he took
one of the former himself. He offered the new order to old
Sarah for her grandson, the young Duke of Marlborough, and
for the Duke of Bedford, who had married her grand-daughter.
She haughtily replied they should take nothing but the Garter.
‘Madam,' said Sir Robert, coolly, 'they who take the Bath will
the sooner have the Garter. The next year he took the latter
himself with the Duke of Richmond, both having been previously
installed Knights of the revived institution." This clutching at
decorations for himself when at the height of power, made him
the object of much spite and envy, and looks at first sight in-
explicable. But is it certain that this was but the ravening of
ambition, which, unsatisfied with the profits and dignities of
office, turned to snip the tender points of a riband when nothing
more substantial was to be had ? May not other motives have
been operative in that subtle and cynical mind ?
1 Lord King's Diary.
27th May, 1725.
2
346
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
George I. desired to escape from the routine of ceremonial
during his stay in his old home, and relied on his Ministers
keeping at a distance the numerous courtiers and officials who
sought to prove their devotion by asking leave to wait upon him
there. Even Admiral Norris, who so long had held command
afloat, was refused permission to present himself; but his
Majesty was much pleased with the visit of the King of Prussia,
whom he especially wished to conciliate.
Townshend seems to have entertained a strange notion that to
engage firmly the States General and France in offensive and de-
fensivc alliance it was necessary to hold out to them a prospect
of territorial acquisition, in which Great Britain might have a
share. His project was, in fact, neither more nor less than one
for the partition of the Austrian Netherlands between the allied
Powers, which he communicated confidentially to Horace Wal-
pole at Paris, and, no doubt, to his brother in England. The
shrewd Envoy objccted, without reserve, to a scheme so fraught
with mischief, and it received no encouragement from the First
Lord of the Treasury, whose fixed policy was to keep clear of
all Continental entanglements; and it probably was
seriously broached either at Versailles or at the Hague. The
Secretary was successful, however, without such perilous bidding
for aid, in bringing the French and Dutch into reciprocal terms,
whereby the three Powers bound themselves to furnish specific
contingents by sea and land within a given time, should they be
necessary.
By the Treaty of Hanover the league headed by France,
England, and Holland was confirmed against that of Austria
and Spain. All Europe armed as though war were imminent.
As Elector, George I. was gratified by seeing the number of his
troops raised from 16,000 to 22,000; and, as King of England,
from 18,000 to 26,000 men; besides which 12,000 Hessians were
taken into pay at an expense of £240,000 a-year; while 20,000
seamen were voted for the Navy. Great dissatisfaction was
naturally expressed at such an augmentation of warlike ex-
penditure for no definite purpose, and, as the event proved, with
no assignable result. The First Lord was too shrewd not to
never
Townshend to Norris, 30th July, 1725.—MIS.
2 Townshend to Walpole, 27th Aug., 1725.
33 3rd Sept., 1725.
HANOVER TREATY.
347
perceive that the maintenance of the Protestant succession at
home was as little likely to be served as that of the balance of
power abroad by such a course of policy. He knew that light
taxes, and a yearly expanding trade with all the world, were the
best securities for domestic tranquillity ; and that if ever we
should be called upon in a real case of need to make our sword
the casting-weight in the scales of European liberty, it would be
all the heavier if not too early drawn. The majority of the
Cabinet were incapable of such foresight or forbearance; the
classes in whose name they governed loved large establishments,
which held out the prospect of quick promotions, lavish allow-
ances, the chance of prize money, and the certainty of pay: and
as the Finance Minister could not retain office without providing
the means in question, he agreed to engage as many of the
Commons as were necessary to vote the requisite supplies.
The Bishop of Derry informed Primate Wake that a measure
would be sent over, some clauses whereof (particularly that which
rendered a recent convert from Rome incapable of a public trust
till he had passed a quarantine of seven years) were thought un-
necessary and unjust by many who were staunch to the Protestant
ascendancy. There was another clause which others thought
much more hard--that a Popish wife should prevent the prefer-
ment of the most unquestionably sincere Protestant husband;
and yet milder methods had so frequently been despised and
eluded that the local lawgivers deemed it indispensable. If the
magistrates were more vigilant in looking after unlicensed
priests all would be well ; and, without this, nothing would be
effectual.
He warned Townshend, however, that Opposition meditated
a great onslaught on Ministers for the Hanover Treaty. “He
had the curiosity to open some of their letters, and found them
full of this language. Count Staremberg gave William Pulteney
great expectations of the materials he could furnish him with
when it might be done with safety.” ?
In April a supplemental vote of £90,000 had been passed to
defray a debt incurred on the Civil List, chiefly, as was alleged,
in the outlay of secret service money abroad, where Russia
threatened a renewal of hostilities against Denmark; an ally
1 Coxe's “ Life of Walpole,” Chapter 28.
29th Nov., 1725.
2
348
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
whom England, at all costs, was bound to defend. Pulteney for
the first time led the Opposition to the Ministry by whose
broken promises he had been disappointed ; and thenceforward
the memorable contest began between him and Walpole which
terminated only after many years in the overthrow of the
Minister.
It is said by his biographer that Walpole never thoroughly
approved the Treaty of Hanover, which tended to sever the re-
lations theretofore subsisting with the Court of Vienna, and to
provoke the active enmity of Russia suspected by Townshend
of supplying arins and ammunition to the disaffected in Scotland
and Ireland, and deserving, therefore, to have an embargo laid
on her vessels in our ports. The First Lord was practically for
peace at almost any price, and for economy in almost any
foreign purpose. When Townshend, therefore, proposed that
Parliament should be asked for an additional hundred thousand
pounds to bring back Sweden from alliance with the Muscovite,
Sir Robert declared it to be impossible, and recommended, in-
stead, that £50,000, if required, should be made up out of the
Civil List. It has, moreover, been said that George I., who was
accused of stimulating Townshend to conclude the Treaty while
at Hanover, for the sake of his Electorate, was in reality opposed
to it, as committing him to antagonism with the Emperor. But
were it done he would not decline to uphold it as a means of
checking a combination which openly threatened, not only the
West India trade, but the safety and tranquillity of the Kingdom,
and the result appeared to justify Townshend's misgivings and
his prognostics.
Well-born Jacobitism withered in an atmosphere wherein
every other form of political romance had given place to the
unbelieving individualism of climb and clutch, eat, drink, and
die. Ormond and Berwick were virtually naturalised in France,
and Marechal Keith in Germany. Harcourt, Abingdon, and
Anglesea had made their peace, gone to Court, and wished to be
considered sensible men. The young Duke of Wharton informed
his friends at Vienna and Paris that Bathurst had quite renounced
the hopeless cause ; that Gower was like to follow, and that
Wyndham was the secret spring of the desertion. He and
Bolingbroke began to ruminate the possibility of founding a new
? To Atterbury, 8th August, 1725.
BOLINGBROKE AND THE KING.
349
party on a Democratic basis, looking for their promised land
through Parliament, rather than through Court; and to the
power of the Press rather than that of the plot. Bolingbroke
for a time shammed political death, then sleep, and then returned
to Whig principles. But Walpole was not to be deceived, · No
blandishments or arguments, promises or stipulations, could be-
guile him into allowing the gate of the Senate to be unbarred.
The outer world never thoroughly understood how he came to
resume title and fortune and airs of fashion just as of yore, yet
could not gain admittance to the Hereditary Chamber. But the
Peers had not for generations before, and have never since,
recognised any right but their own to share their legislative
privileges with any claimant, be he whom he may; and the fact
that a King's mistress had sold the respite of the King's writ to
Henry St. John was no reason why they should resolve that he,
as one of them, should make and unmake laws for England.
Whether they would have firmly and consistently held together
in refusal, had the insidious grasp of Walpole been withdrawn,
it is vain to speculate ; but, the grasp being inflexible, the ex-
cluded demagogue had nothing for it but to appeal to the crowd.
As time went on, and the Viscount was not readmitted to his
place in the Peers, he would have been the most ungrateful of
men if he did not repay partial pardon with demands growing
ever more earnest for complete restoration. But the Cabinet
were not to be coaxed or threatened into letting him reappear
in the Assembly where he had been once supreme, and might
possibly make himself supreme again. He appealed to the
powerful advocate that took credit for having opened for him
the ay of return; and, yielding to the weakness that seems to
beset every politician whose influence is built on the power of
rhetoric, he resorted to methods the most opposite to those he
had hitherto pursued.
In a violent letter to the King, he undertook to show that if
the Minister were not removed the country would be ruined.
The letter was conveyed through the Duchess, with whom Lady
Bolingbroke was found in conversation by Walpole. On his
entering the closet the King handed him the invective, which only
led him to advise earnestly that the request for an audience should
be granted. George I. repeatedly refused, but at length yielded,
1 Letters to Swift from his farm at Dawley.
.
350
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and appointed a time for receiving the angry importunate, and
allowed him ample opportunity to state his views. Ere he had
concluded, Lechmere, the Attorney-General, came with papers
requiring the Sign Manual immediately; and on learning the
impediment in his way, he pressed for audience in such a state
of excitement that he forgot what had brought him, and spent
all his vivacious energy in railing against St. John and against
Walpole for having allowed him to be admitted. When asked
by Walpole what was the point or purpose of the indictment
against him, his Majesty only laughed, exclaiming : “Bagatelles,
bagatelles !”] But the mistress's cognisance of the proceedings
could not be concealed, and the revival thenceforth of mutual
distrust and enmity became inappeasable.
The Duchess feared that her rival with the King would be
allowed to accompany him on his return, and she made Towns-
hend write to Walpole that Ministers might use influence to
prevent it. There was nothing, Newcastle said, that he would
not do to please “their good friend " ; but he shrank from med-
dling in domestic arrangements with which he thought they had
properly nothing to do, though he was evidently afraid of conse-
quences to the Ministry should the Countess Platen become
established at Hampton Court.?
The phantom of Jesuit plotting still haunted the dreams of
Ministers; and the unceremonious use made of the Post-Office
fed their fears and suspicions continually. It was debated in
the Cabinet whether Lords Kincardine, Wigton, Dundonald,
Balmerino, and Mr. Lockhart should not be prosecuted for high
treason. It is due to the memory of George I. to note that he
expressed the strongest repugnance to the proposal, declaring
that he wanted no more blood or forfeitures, and it was dropped
accordingly.3
Townshend was anxious to get back to England early in the
winter; and though he had persuaded his Majesty to set out in
the middle of November, the yacht being duly in readiness
under Norris's command, Christmas approached before a day
was fixed for departure.
1 H. Etough to H. Walpole, 7th August, 1751.--MS.
2 Newcastle to Townshend, 23rd Sept., 1725. --MS., “Very private.”
3 Lockhart ; “Memoirs,” II., 398.
351
CHAPTER XI.
THE CABINET OUTLIVES THE KING.
1727.
Claim for Restitution of Gibraltar-Secret Service-Pulteney and Boling-
broke publish the Craftsman-Political Perspective ..-Vision of Came-
lick-Prosecution of the Press-Death of George 1.-Letter of
Fleury--Spencer Compton fails to make a Ministry-Ministers Resume
-Berkeley Removed—Shippen's Speech on the Civil List-Church
Patronage-Absentee Tax-Increase of Irish Pensions Debt-Further
Penal Laws.
ON
N receipt of advices from Vienna that the Court of Spain
had once more resolved on peremptorily demanding the
restitution of the Rock, Townshend desired H. Walpole
to communicate them to the French Government; and to
inquire how far we could depend upon their friendship and
assistance in preserving rights essential to our trade. An
explicit declaration in the sense desired was there upon given, for
which the Envoy warmly thanked Fleury. He hoped Stanhope
would say plainly to their Catholic Majesties how unjust the
Government of England regarded the claim thus suddenly made.
If Gibraltar had been ceded to England for Philip's quiet and
enjoyment of the Crown of Spain, and the cession had been
confirmed by the Treaties of Utrecht, London, and Madrid, what
could be more unjust than to demand its surrender? It was a
step equally imprudent and ungrateful. “ The demand was
made as if England was at the mercy of Spain ; and the threat
was that unless the fortress was abandoned we should lose all
our trade to the West Indies.” If King Philip were master of
London he could not have made a more peremptory and haughty
demand. It was astonishing to think that his Catholic Majesty
should have so little knowledge of the English nation as to
August 4th, 1725.—MS.
2 H. Walpole to Townshend, 29th August, 1725.—MS.
1
352
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
believe they would patiently bear such language and suffer their
King to be treated in such an ignominious manner. Were the
demand then ever so reasonable, they would resent the manner
of it; but when they considered the just title his Majesty had,
and the advantage it was to their trade, it was inconceivable
what a spirit of resentment a demand made in such a manner
would excite in Parliament. The nature of our Government
was such that his Majesty could not by his own authority give
up Gibraltar . if he would, it being by the laws of the land as
much part of Great Britain as Portsmouth or any other town in
England. So far from being influenced by the King, or the
Cabinet, to consent, Parliament would be ready to impeach any
Minister that should advise it. Far from being kept in awe for
fear of the loss of our trade to Spain and the West Indies, a
great many thought that, considering the present situation of
our naval force, it might give an opportunity of obtaining better
settlements and advantages of trade than were now enjoyed.1
The Royal Speech on opening the Session contained the startling
announcement regarding Austria and Spain : “I have received
information on which I can entirely depend, that the placing the
Pretender upon the throne of this realın is one of the Articles of
the secret engagements ; the price being the giving up the trade
of this nation to one Power, and Gibraltar and Port Mahon to
another. What indignation this must raise in the breast of
every Protestant Briton." Great indignation was indeed ex-
pressed in Parliament. It was unanimously resolved to raise
the Army to 26,000 men, the Navy to 20,000, and the supplies
to little less than £3,000,000. The Imperial Ambassador, seeing
how things were in England, immediately wrote to the Emperor,
advising him to declare publicly that the allegations in the Royal
Speech were false; and Charles VI., unacquainted with the
working of the English Constitution, sent over an indiscreet
declaration, which, by his order, M. Palm presented to the King
and dispersed throughout the country. This insult could not be
brooked, and Walpole carried an Address, without dissent, “ to
express the highest resentinent at the affront and indignity
offered to his most sacred Majesty ;” and M. Palm was ordered
forthwith to quit the Kingdom.2
1 Walpole to Stanhope, 21st August, 1725.-NIS.
2 Townshend to Sir C. Cottrell. --MS.
LAND TAX.
353
George I. had for twelve years occupied the Throne, and still
enjoyed the unquestioning friendship of France and the States
General. The country, on the whole, was prosperous, and the
rumblings of political earthquake were but faintly and at far
intervals heard. Argyll assured his colleagues in Cabinet that
no apprehension need be felt of Jacobite movements in Scotland;
and Carteret told them that the ferment in Ireland had gone
down, and that he could undertake for unbroken quiet there.
Yet Henry Pelham, as Secretary-at-War, asked for eight
thousand additional troops for the service of the year ; which
brought up the total standing force to 26,383 men ; and for a vote
of £885,494 9s. 4d. for their pay. Disappointing as was this
result of reiterated promises of stability and peace, and keen as
were the taunts and reproaches evoked, Government had their
way. The hostility of Spain had not abated; Austria and
Russia were still to be regarded as foes in ambuscade; and the
prevalence of seditious writings, more virulent and violent in
their character than recently known, proved that the elements of
disaffection still existed, and that they were reckoned on by
those abroad, who incessantly plotted and prepared for invasion.
To provide for the increased expenditure, Walpole moved, in
committee of ways and means, that a land tax should be imposed
of fourpence in the pound. It was naturally opposed, but after
some debate was carried by a majority of two to one.l
In Opposition, Pulteney led for many years the dicontented
Whigs, and rendered himself so troublesome that Government
would fain have won him over upon any terms.
Princess
Caroline herself, on one occasion, undertook to bring about a
reconciliation ; offering him a peerage and Secretaryship of
State. But resentment for injury and insult had become with
him a stronger passion than ambition, and he declared that he
would never sit again in Council with the man who he felt had
betrayed him
Pulteney, it was said, had used his intimacy at Leicester
House to confirm old prejudices against his rival, and thereby
to smooth the way for superseding him in office. The wrongs
he resented were not likely to render him nice in criticism of
Ministerial acts or suggestions of Ministerial motives; but the
charge of slow poisoning the Heir Apparent's mind rests only
1
27th January, 1727.
VOL. I.
A A
354
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
on circumstantial evidence, and the vehement imputations of
those who did not pretend to be impartial, or affect to be fas-
tidious in the life-long controversy. Foolish vows that he never
would employ Sir Robert for his Minister when he became King
rest on no substantial foundation; and the conduct of George II.
during the whole of his reign towards Pulteney tends to rebut
the allegation. Perhaps the strongest thing that can be
adduced in its confirmation is in the anxiety Walpole did not
conceal at the time as to his position and his fear that a
Cabinet including Pulteney might be formed under the nominal
headship of Compton, and the direction in foreign affairs of
Carteret.
In concert with Bolingbroke, Pulteney undertook the publica-
tion of the Craftsman, which surpassed in vituperative eloquence
and vigour all that had gone before it, and which no doubt con-
tributed in no slight measure to disseminate the belief in
Walpole's pre-eminence in parliamentary corruption and adminis-
trative prodigality, that contributed to his eventual fall. Not
that any political truth or literary inerit could in itself have
appreciably shaken the power of the Minister, or that any
diffusion, however wide, of the railings of the Craftsman could
have changed the balance of parliamentary parties. But when
external difficulties arose, and personal disappointments alien-
ated adherents, popular odium furnished a decent and even
plausible pretence for individual desertion and hostility; and
in this way the ceaseless vilipending of the Craftsman practi-
cally told.
Bolingbroke, failing to persuade the Minister into allowing
him to preach to his peers, resolved to assert for himself the
right of talking in print to the people. But how?
But how? He was, of
all men, the last to cast the pearls of which he was so proud to
those he regarded as the swine, and for all the effect his fine
periods and delicate sarcasms could produce upon the minds of
the mass of the community, he might as well have gone back to
La Source or the neighbourhood of Paris, which Mde. la Mar-
quise would naturally have preferred. But he happened to send
a letter to the Country Gentleman, complaining of the insolence
of Robin the coachman to his friend, Caleb D'Anvers. The pith
was fresh and the point keen, and it attracted so much attention
among politicians that during the autumn he put off his dignity
POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE.
355
at times, and tried in various ways how he could speak for a
purpose in the diction of the multitude. Wyndham and Pope
encouraged the idea of literary Tribuneship, and by Christmas
a polished gridiron was made ready: and Caleb D’Anvers
undertook to roast within an inch of their lives the reputations
of all the Whigs in power.
There appeared an advertisement of an invention likely to be
of great use to Statesmen. “Invented and sold by Solomon
Porch, at the sign of the Great Chair, in Westminster, the true
political perspective, which increases or diminishes any object
at pleasure. This instrument, it was hoped, might be of great
use in all public affairs, it being made large enough for several
hundred persons to look through at once. By turning one end
of it, dangers would be magnified and seen imminent; by turn-
ing the other, debts would be lessened and removed to a greater
distance. Very useful at sea; by its multiplying quality it
could, if thought necessary, make two or three small ships
appear like a large fleet. Spectacles might also be had for
the true reading any Treaty, Memorial, Foreign or English
News, or any Public Paper whatsoever.” 1
In the sixteenth number appeared the vision of Camelick, in
which an Oriental Court is depicted as trodden down by a
usurping Minister, "dressed in a plain habit, with a purse of
gold in his hand. He threw himself forward into the room in
a bluff and ruffianly manner. A smile, or rather a sneer, sat on
his countenance. His face was bronzed over with a glare of
confidence. An arch malignity leered in his eye.
They no sooner saw him, but they turned from the canopy
and fell prostrate before him. He trod over their backs without
any ceremony, and marched directly up to the throne. He
took out his gold in handfuls and scattered it among the
assembly. While the greater part were scrambling for the
pieces he seized upon the sacred parchment itself and rumpled
it into his pocket. The people began to murmur. He threw
more gold, and they were pacified. When his purse became
empty he dropped it, and dropped with it to the ground. The
radiant volume again shone out and resumed its place above
the throne. The throne, which had been darkened all this time,
was now filled with the effulgence of the glory which darted
? 6th January, 1727.
Α Α 2
356
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
from it. Heaven and earth resounded with, liberty, liberty, and
the heart of the King was glad within him.” 1
The seventeenth number of the Craftsman spoke in still plainer
language. It compared the Christian with the Mahommedan
religion, to the disparagement of the former, inasmuch as the
Christian faith, which was founded in peace, now sought to
dominate the world by war, while the Mahommedan creed was
sustained in toleration, though first propagated in blood. It
likened the mutations of religion to those of party, whose
opinions were continually undergoing a fux, and never long
remained in the same condition ; and finally, it said that the
time had come to cast off the delusions of party, and to be no
longer satisfied with names instead of things. Let them remem-
ber that liberty was the same blessing, whether dispensed under
Whig or Tory Administration, and that arbitrary power was
equally pernicious by whatsoever hands it was imposed ; but
though the evil was equally mischievous by whomsoever ob-
truded on them, it received some aggravation when it was
introduced under the guise and by the pretended champions
of liberty, because their understandings were insulted and they
were treated at the same time like children and slaves.?
The forbearance of Government gave way, and Secretaries'
warrants were issued for the arrest of Mr. Amhurst, Mr.
Francklin, and other persons supposed to be concerned in
the production of the Journal.
A week later, the Craftsman appeared with the motto “Novo
splendore resurgit," and feigned to refute the charge that had
been made against it, of slandering the Government by irony
and innuendo. When a debauchee was said to be temperate
and a corrupt Minister extolled for his disinterested love of
country, the irony was apparent; but where would be the satire
in calling Lucretia chaste, Cæsar valiant, or Cato just ? The
world would laugh at such folly and impotence. Therefore, it
could not be the Craftsman's design in his preceding papers
to asperse the existing Administration in an ironical manner,
by comparing them with characters of which they were a
living and exemplary confutation. He admitted having, in
the bitterness of his heart, inveighed against ambitious corrupt
1 27th January, 1727.
30th January, 1727.
2
“ NOVO SPLENDORE RESURGIT."
357
1
Statesmen, tyrannical officers, and treacherous guardians of
public liberty; against 'stock-jobbers, plunderers, and en-
grossers; against men who had too much cunning in office,
and men who had too little; against State harpies and political
blunderers. But could anyone call this a libel against the
Ministry, who were all just stewards, gracious magistrates,
uncorrupt administrators of public money, endued with a
proper mixture of the serpent and the innocence of the dove,
and in every way the opposite of those he had endeavoured
to expose ? The Craftsman assured his readers that so long
as the liberty of the Press flourished, so long as a printer and
bookseller could be found who was not to be intimidated from
proceeding in the undertaking ; so long as the Habeas Corpus
Act remained unrepealed or suspended, he would persevere in
the task to its accomplishment; and if his subtleties of style
were misconstrued by State lawyers, and he was compelled to
suffer on account of their reading his words in another light
to that intended, he was prepared to close the long evening
of his dark and laborious life a sacrifice to the resentments of
power, pride, and ambition.
Provoked out of patience, the Cabinet resolved to stamp out
their assailant, and a prosecution was ordered at the suit of the
Crown, but for a season it was allowed to drop.
Not content with his contributions to Journalism, Boling-
broke amused the world with ironical papers, under the name
of Occasional Writer, in which he affected egregious concern
for the safety of Sir Robert; and, by way of the best service
he could render him, recounted all the most malignant and vile
insinuations which he said bad men were continually Ainging
up in the air against the great man. Of course, he did not
believe a word of them, and he saw that, in times so torpid, the
head of the Government thought himself safe in treating asper-
sions with contempt; but he ought to beware, for the present
tranquillity was the surest portent of a storm, and when it came,
his creatures and flatterers would be sure to vanish like spirits
at the dawn of day. This inveterate species of vilipending was
intended to provoke the holders of Executive power into reply,
if they were able; or to resistance in the forms of law.
It has been said that Bolingbroke sometimes imagined that,
1 Craftsman, 7th February, 1727.
358
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
like the second Lord Sunderland, he might one day find his
way back to Court in spite of the Chevaux de frise of antipathy
that surrounded it for his exclusion, and a story was told by
Lady Betty Murray that Bolingbroke reckoned on the Duchess
of Kendal being a second time his friend, and that he had
actually been privately received in the closet, and expected to
be one day Minister again. Colonel Churchill was employed
to make Walpole aware of the rumour. In reply," he bestowed
some fitting language on her Grace, and said she would at any
time have sold her influence with the King for a shilling
advance to the best bidder." On a subsequent occasion, his
trusted chaplain, Etough, excused himself for having ventured
to ask some questions, when Sir Robert entered fully into the
affair. St. John, he said, had such a propensity for lying that
he could not forbear when there was no occasion. “ He had
reason to boast of his prospects and hopes, as he had the entire
and absolute interest of the Duchess. He was explicit in
telling the part she had in his return to England, and said
that eleven thousand pounds had been handed by one of the
Chetwynds to her daughter, Lady Walsingham.”
Half-a-million spent on secret service abroad had furnished
elaborate details of all the plans on paper for the capture of
Gibraltar and the restoration of the Stuarts. Townshend was
doubtless in earnest, and Zingendorff confident of being able to
beguile the Czarina into joining the confederacy; while the
Pretender wasted at Rome what scant resources remained to
him in quarrels with his wife and confidence misplaced in his
advisers, Hay and Murray, who were more than suspected of
being in the pay of Whitehall. But having got all the extra
supplies requisite to repel projects of invasion, Parliament was
dissolved, and George I. was once more suffered to set out on
his usual visit to his Electoral dominions. Hardly had he
reached Osnaburg, when death suddenly terminated his un-
eventful reign. When the express from Townshend reached
London, Walpole was at dinner. He wrote on the instant,
summoning the Chancellor to meet him at the Lord President's
without delay; but before they met, he had himself set out
for Richmond to render homage to the new Sovereign, who,
indulging in his usual siesta, could hardly be at first made to
understand the cause of the intrusion. Walpole knelt to kiss
ACCESSION OF GEORGE II.
359
his hand, and asked whom his Majesty desired to draw the
announcement of his accession to be laid before the Privy
Council.
Compton,” was the sole reply; and the Minister departed
on his unanticipated mission. Sir Spencer Compton was a
younger son of Lord Northampton, and, though a man of
moderate parts, had been early brought into the conduct of
affairs. For a time he was Treasurer of the Prince's Household ;
and more recently Walpole, with an eye to possible contin-
gencies, nominated him Speaker of the House of Commons,
where his look of gravity and methodical ways of business
were deemed indications of presidential wisdom. In 1722, he
was likewise inade Paymaster-General and Treasurer of Chelsea
Hospital.
The salary of Speaker had not then been fixed upon a scale which
sufficed to support the dignity of the office, and it was customary
to add some other appointment whose duties were not deemed
incompatible with those of the Chair. Lenthall, Trevor, and
Onslow had in turn been at the same time Presidents of the
Commons and servants of the Crown, and in Ireland it was
customary for the Speaker of the House to be Chancellor of the
Exchequer. At fault how the task should be performed which
had thus been unexpectedly cast upon him, Compton readily
resigned it to the Minister whom his self-importance would
willingly have superseded without scruple. He was probably as
yet unaware that George II. contemplated naming him for his
chief adviser, for if the King agreed in nothing else, with his
father he shared his suppressed dislike of the statesmen with
whose domination he had been forced to comply. Sir Spencer
was described by one who knew him well as "a plodding, heavy
fellow, with great application, but no talents; more concerned
for the manner and form in which a thing was to be done than
about the propriety or expediency of the thing itself; and as
he was calculated for a subaltern rather than a commander, he
was much more fitted for a clerk to a Minister than for a
Minister to a King. His only pleasures were money and eating,
his only knowledge forms and precedents, and his only insinua-
tion bows and smiles."i He and Walpole went straight to
Devonshire House. The Duke, though an invalid, did not
? Hervey's “ Memoirs.
360
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
shrink from taking part in consultation, and upon the whole he
was, perhaps, the safest man to be consulted; for individually
he wanted nothing, had no enemies; and in the firm establish-
ment of the future Government had a greater stake than any of
those who sought to benefit by it. It was his duty, as President
of the Council, to make the necessary arrangements for the for-
malities of the occasion, and in the brief interval that must elapse
before the new Monarch took upon him ostensibly executive
functions, he might seem to have been without responsible
advisers. The morrow came, and with it the difficulties began
to break in upon the Sovereign of forming an Administration
strong enough to stand of any but the old materials. Frequent
conferences took place at Devonshire House to consider the
course to be adopted. At these gatherings Walpole seemed
more gloomy than the rest. He had built much on the friend-
ship of the Princess of Wales, for the sake of whose esteem he
had gone the length of slighting the reigning beauty of Leicester
House, Lady Suffolk; while Argyll, Carteret, and Compton took
just the opposite course, in making their suit to her.) As hours
rolled by without any decisive indication of what the new order
of things official was to be, Sir Robert seemed to think he had
committed a mistake, and that not even his offer to obtain from
Parliament £20,000 a-year more than Compton promised the
Queen as separate settlement would avail to avert his super-
session. But her Majesty, who had her own predilections to
gratify, had not deserted him. It was her way not to let her
husband know how much she ruled him, or to suffer him to
suspect how inveterately she hated those who drew him con-
stantly from her side. Power was a thing too precious in her
eyes to be exposed to common view, or to the danger of mutila-
tion by the envious or resentful. It is doubtful even how far
Walpole knew how she worked for his reappointment. But
though his spirit fluctuated, and he was, or seemed to be, at
times depressed, he rated justly the comparative strength of
parties, and in the main acted on the belief that the combination
of great families, of whom he was diligently making himself the
instrument and mouthpiece, would, if displaced, speedily re-
assert their predominance. He bade his friend Sir William
Yonge, whom the Prince had treated with undisguised aversion
1 Hervey's “Memoirs.”
COMPTON'S ATTEMPT.
361
and contempt, to beware what he said should they find them-
selves in Opposition, for he might depend on it they would be in
office soon again. As they drove by Compton's house, he told
his companion to mark the crowd who flocked to pay their com-
pliments, while his door was forsaken; but he added, signifi-
cantly, "To-morrow the scene will be changed: that house will
be deserted, and mine will be more frequented than ever."
Meanwhile Townshend had promptly followed his messenger
from Osnaburg to present his gratulations to Royalty in
person, and he awaited anxiously an express from Paris that
should tell how the news had been received.1 Was a new
Administration possible? For several days Compton's near-
sighted vanity fancied it was. In private Carteret did not dis-
guise weariness of vice-regal banishment. He would be only
too glad to get back to European politics and a Foreign Secre-
taryship of State. Pulteney was ready to join, for he longed for
a share in the lead of the Commons, and for equality at least
with the faithless friend by whom he had stood in time of need,
and who had cajoled him into humiliating forbearance, only that
he might more effectually cheat him of Cabinet rank. But would
Walpole's unmitigable selfishness conceal this from any fellow
commoner capable of being his substitute, in Council or in
debate ? Compton naturally looked to any and all who would
help to force the door they could not by knocking or serenading
open. Many efficient but undemonstrative holders of office
would be sure to attorn to whomsoever grasped the reins, and, as
was seen in 1717, would let old chiefs go without them. There
were beside not a few ambitious men of ability in Parliament,
despairing hitherto of advancement, who might be relied on to
support a change of hands, and who felt that without it all their
efforts to win distinction in literature or legislation would gain for
them only transient popularity and permanent neglect. Vernon,
Cadogan, and Molesworth were dead, but the son of the last,
though more of a soldier than a politician, had a record, an
estate, and a seat in the Irish House of Peers: He had been
aide-de-camp to Marlborough at Ramillies, where he saved the
life of his chief by risking his own, and by him had been raised
to the highest rank in his profession. Who could tell that he
might not, like his father, take a seat at Westminster for one of
| Townshend to H. Walpole, at Paris, 24th June, 1727.
362
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the boroughs to let, and make one of Carteret's garrison to
defend the old political flag of Blenheim ? Distinction out of
office was danger to those who were in. So it proved in his
case, for he became not long after Commander in Ireland.
When the tidings reached Paris of the King's unexpected
death, Horace Walpole hastened to communicate it to M. Fleury,
whom it concerned deeply as well as himself. In a long inter-
view the Cardinal satisfied him that there was no ground for
the rumour sure to be put about by the Jacobites that he would
support a change of Administration in England. The question
with both naturally was how was such a change to be averted
and their first consultation ended without either venturing to
suggest a practical solution. Returning from Versailles late at
night, Horace Walpole was overtaken by a letter from his
Eminence urging him to go forthwith to London, assure his
friends and the new King of what they might rely upon in
France, and dispel any misapprehension of apparent acquies-
cence on his part in some things that had recently filled him
with doubt. Under ordinary circumstances, the Envoy would
not have presumed to quit his post without previous leave. But
the occasion was critical and time pressed. Acting on Fleury's
advice, Horace set out forthwith for England, and, hiring a fishing
boat to take him across the Channel, reached London while the
Ministerial crisis still continued. An audience was at first
refused him, and when subsequently granted to present his
important communication from Versailles, he felt it indis-
pensable to ask pardon for his breach of established usage, and
to implore his Majesty to weigh, without prejudice for any fault
he might have committed, the contents of the Cardinal's letter.
The King did not conceal his surprise and disapproval, but
something in Fleury's letter took the fancy of the new
Sovereign. He entered into many inquiries as to the state of
the French Court, and gradually settled into an evident feeling of
satisfaction. The Queen, apprised of what had transpired, had
the tact to suggest a letter to Fleury in his Majesty's own hand,
as a master stroke of spontaneous wisdom, while as yet he was
without a Minister, and the incident was made instrumental in
turning the wavering scale.
George II. wrote :—“MY COUSIN,—The obliging manner in
which you expressed your wish that my Ambassador Walpole
GEORGE II. AND FLEURI.
363
should instantly depart to give the most positive assurances of
the intention of my good brother, the most Christian King, to
cultivate that union which is so happily established between the
two crowns, as well as his desire to perfect the great work of a
general pacification, and the strong expression you have used in
your letter to the said Ambassador to testify your zeal for the
public good, and the particular interest you take in every thing
which regards my government, have so moved me that I would
not defer showing how much I am sensible of it and of acquainting
you of my decided resolution to pursue the same wise and fair
measures which have placed affairs in their present happy
situation, and to draw closer the bonds of friendship which unite
me to his Most Christian Majesty.
"I with pleasure embrace this opportunity to testify my high
sense of your merit, my reliance in your sincerity, and the good
will with which I am,
"My cousin,
“ Your affectionate cousin,
“GEORGE REX."
Had a Ministry been in existence with the authority and
responsibility of a Cabinet, the letter would not have been
written, or if written would not have been forwarded by the
Secretary of State. But Townshend held office at the time only
till the new Administration might be formed ; who should be
its members nobody could tell. Perfunctorily he transmitted
the Royal autograph to Robinson, acting as Chargé d'Affaires at
Paris, for presentation to the Cardinal, with what degree of
acquiescence on the part of Sir R. Walpole does not appear.
The countenance of Fleury as he read the unlooked-for letter
bespoke his surprise and gratification, but he uttered not a word,
though effusive in written acknowledgments. For several
mornings Compton was obliged to take the Chair at West-
minster, while Walpole was in early attendance at St. James's to
answer questions, explain difficulties, and make himself generally
useful. In the afternoon the Speaker arrived and had his
audience. After an interval, Sir Robert screwed up his courage
to the daring point of gently hinting that he might now be per-
mitted to retire. This, as no doubt he expected, fluttered the
irresolute confidants of Royalty. The Civil List had stijl to be
settled, and to risk its proposal with the great financier out of
364
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
employment would hardly be safe. He must stay on at all
events till that matter was concluded, and if he were to bring it
forward he must be consulted on each item. It would have
been strange if he had thrown away his opportunity. In the
scheme suggested by Compton the Queen was to have £60,000
a-year. Walpole insisted that less than £100,000 would not
suffice. Her Majesty was not likely to forget this delicate
attention, and opportunities daily occurred for improving the
favourable impression made by her munificent admirer.
Meantime Caroline was warily drawing the mind of George II.
to the conviction that the late Treasurer of his household was
not strong enough to be the future Treasurer of the Kingdom.
She had long inculcated the doctrine that resentment was a
pleasure which Royalty was bound to deny itself whenever its
interests were likely to be jeopardised by its gratification. The
King could afford to bide his time, and he was bound to put a
bridle on his enmities and aversions for the sake of strengthening
his power. Her superior understanding enabled her to compré-
hend more clearly than his how infirm was still the hold which
the new dynasty had upon the feelings of the nation, and how
dangerous would be the experiment of a total change of hands,
Lord Berkeley was indeed too odious to be retained at the Ad-
iniralty; and the Chetwynds, who had among them several snug
posts, might be removed without anybody caring but themselves.
In the first exuberance of monarchic joy, Lord Malpas, the son-
in-law of Walpole, was dismissed, and his favourite subordinate
at the Treasury, Sir William Yonge, had early notice of dis-
missal. But when it came to the point whether the great Whig
financier himself should be displaced, the Queen did not fail to
urge that his great experience and approved abilities would cer-
tainly enable him to serve the King better than any other person;
and that his having made a fortune already would make him
less solicitous about his own interest, and more at liberty to
mind the King's than any that could succeed him. Prudence,
rather than personal liking, seems to have actuated the Queen.
Originally she had no partiality for Walpole, and he was well
aware that the coarse epithets which he had permitted himself
to apply to her as Princess had been duly retailed at Leicester
House and were not forgotten there. But when the opportunity
came for making reparation Sir Robert was not the man to
MINISTERS RESUME.
365
neglect it; and her Vice-Chamberlain believed that past errors
were effaced by his timely offer to make her jointure double
what had ever been given to a Queen of England, and to make
her establishment £20,000 more than Compton proposed, who
thought she might be content with the sumn which Catherine of
Portugal had as the. Consort of Charles II. The propitiated
Princess sent him word that "the fat --- had forgiven him." '
When at Leicester House, Lady Walpole was unable to make
her way towards her Majesty by reason of the press. She was
addressed by Queen Caroline as a friend about whom she could
not be mistaken. The throng wonderingly made way for her, as
they had not been wont to do ; and when retiring, as she told
her favourite son," she might have walked upon their heads."
A few days later all thoughts of an Administrative change were
given up; and Ministers resumed their former places ; Compton
being made a Peer, and subsequently a member of the Cabinet.
The Duke of Devonshire remained President of the Council, and
Walpole, whom he had more than any other individual con-
tributed to make what he was, told him it must be so. There
were some things about which George II. was intractable. But
he was shrewd enough to perceive that if he could not have his
own way in forming a Ministry, he could sometimes exercise a
veto with regard to particular appointments; and if he must
submit, in common with the rest of the realm, to be ruled by a
majority of the old families, it was still something to be able to
keep in office a minority of the section that hated that which
was in the ascendant.
At last the brothers-in-law (Townshend and Newcastle) kissed
hands as joint Secretaries of State ; Berkeley was, of course,
removed from the Admiralty, which was offered to Orford, but
declined on account of advancing age and enfeebled health, and
it was then given to Byng, the victor of Syracuse, created Lord
Torrington, while his son was made Treasurer of the Navy.
One of the first acts of George II. was to continue Lord
Scarborough in the office of Master of the Horse, the duties of
which he had hitherto rendered him while Prince, and he had a
seat in the Cabinet, which he retained during his life. He was a
man of sense and ability, effective as a speaker in debate, and as
well qualified by his sound judgment to be consulted in affairs
of moment as by his discrimination and tact to be consulted in
366
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
matters of delicacy. There is little trace, however, of his having
ever exercised much influence. He disliked intrigue, and was
highly sensitive as to the imputation of want of candour and
consistency, in a degree approaching to eccentricity; but he had
long been a favourite at Leicester House, and was welcomed as
a useful and honourable addition to the Ministry.
When it was proposed to make Charles Stanhope, elder brother
of the Earl of Harrington, one of the junior Lords, his Majesty
indignantly refused, and not unreasonably showed that he re-
garded the proposition as little less than an insult. Nothing
indicates, indeed, more clearly the true condition of things as
they then existed, and the spirit of domination which animated
the monopolists of power, than the indecency of such a
proposal
It had been hard times for some who called themselves States-
men and rulers to know how to poise between father and son.
The enmity between them was such that few had the wit or the
pluck to abstain from openly taking one or other side. Which was
the wiser course puzzled the least scrupulous and most astute.
Could Court politicians have known that the First George would
die in a fit at the end of twelve years' reign, he would of course
have had but a minority in his favour. But how could anybody
dream of his making way for the Second George so soon? How
could the most loyal believer in the statutable succession feel sure
that the Prince would ever come to the throne? There were
some even so devoted to the status quo, and so contented with
the joint queenship of the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess
of Darlington, that they persuaded themselves their best game
lay in getting rid of the distractions of Leicester House and its
pretensions altogether : and to that end they formed the credit-
able design of making away with the Prince of Wales, and
carrying him off to America, whence he should never be heard
of more.
Among the late King's papers the original proposal in the hand-
writing of Charles Stanhope, was found by the new Sovereign.
Nevertheless, the First Lord of the Treasury did not scruple to
urge more than once the propriety of bringing his friend into the
Government, and it was not without difficulty he could be in-
duced to yield the point. The scheme was actually submitted
by Berkeley, when First Lord of the Admiralty, to the
INCREASED CIVIL LIST,
367
King To smother scandal, however, and not hopelessly to
alienate many votes in Parliament, Berkeley was made Keeper
of the Forest of Dean, and Constable of St. Brianel's Castle,
“Vice-Admiral of Great Britain, and Lieutenant of the Navies
and Seas of this Kingdom.”
George I. hated his son, and never forgave his unhappy wife
for her ill-fated attachment to Königsmark ; but he was not as
bad as some of those about himn. He kept the paper in a secret
cabinet till his death, and showed no resentment against the
authors of the nefarious proposal, while he would give it no en-
couragement. The conspirators were not ashamed to claim
positions of honour and profit from their intended victim, and the
comprehensive policy of Walpole led him, in one instance at
least, to back their suit. The Duke of Grafton retained the
Gold Key of Chamberlain ; Godolphin remained Groom of the
Stole ; Dorset, Lord Steward ; Argyll, Master-General of the
Ordnance; Henry Pelham, Secretary-at-War; the Post Office
was left in the hands jointly of Carteret's brother and Mr. Har-
rison, M.P. for Hertford, whose daughter was married to Towns-
hend's eldest son, and Methuen continued to be Treasurer of the
Household.
No one thought of proposing a lesser Civil List than had been
granted in the former reign; but the revenues set apart for the
purpose had gradually come to yield more by £130,000 a-year
than had been reckoned on; and the re-established Minister
moved in Supply that the augmented sum be given to the King
for life. On a subsequent day he made good his offer to the
Queen, by moving that in case she survived his Majesty she
should have a jointure of £100,000 a-year.
Shippen reviewed the system of expenditure recently pursued,
and the great sums voted for secret service money, and under
other heads of which no account had ever been rendered to Par-
liament. They could not wonder that the world was free in its
censures since none of these sums had been accounted for, and
as they had been employed in services not fit to be owned.
None but those who were in the secret, and who had the disposal
of them, could refute the reflections that were made without
| Lord Hervey, who had seen the original, quotes the following words :-“Il est
vrai l'est votre fils, mais le Fils de Dieu Même a été sacrifié pour le salut de genre
humain." 'Memoirs."
2 Com. Journal, 3rd January, 1727.
368
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
doors, not only on the Ministry, but even on both Houses of
Parliament : he must say no more. But he professed a wish
that Time, the great discoverer of hidden truths and concealed in-
iquities, might produce a list of all such, if any there were, who had
been perverted from their public duty by private pensions, and
who had been made slaves, and the corrupt instruments of a
profuse and vainglorious Administration. He moved that no
more than £700,000 should be settled, but as he was not
seconded the original motion passed without a division. Somer-
set House and Richmond Lodge were settled on the Queen for
life. The King induced Walpole to undertake the business in
the Commons, telling him that the better his condition was, the
better it would be for his own, and that it would be a benefit to
him for life. Sir Robert agreed, and though warned that it was
meant by his rivals to throw him over when he had earned un-
popularity by carrying such an exorbitant Civil List, he readily
took the risk of odium for the sake of present power.
Nobody could honestly say that the new establishment was not
excessive ; yet nobody but Shippen opposed it. The more they
added to the splendour of the Court, and the more numerous and
well paid its offices, the better it suited those by whom they
might be filled.
George II. fondly cherished the belief that he could govern as
well as reign, but luckily for him his Queen was equally desirous
of political power, though, unlike her lord, she had the under-
standing to perceive that the less Royalty claimed openly the
more it was likely to be allowed to have. Her devotion to him
as a wife was complete ; and her system of self-abnegation, where-
by during many years she continued to lead him with “invisible
reins " -(the only reins whereby the conceited and choleric little
man could have been quietly or decorously led), involved sacri-
fices almost incredible 1 She understood from the outset far
better than he could be easily brought to comprehend where the
real power of the Executive lay. Through the Minister, whose
measures and whose wishes she might privately further or thwart
by means of her undemonstrative but all prevailing influence
with the King, Caroline hoped to exercise a considerable share
of authority. Hence the intimate confidence she bestowed on
the Minister and expected from him in return; and hence the
See Herrey's " Memoirs" of 1735.
DISPOSAL OF PATRONAGE.
369
gradual growth of an intimacy and friendship the like of which
is seldom recorded in history. Without openly contradicting her
husband in anything, or questioning his antiquated notions of
prerogative, she warily and wisely accustomed him after a little
time to the Ministerial yoke, and brought him at length to draw
quietly in constitutional harness.
Carteret believed, with many hitherto excluded from the
inner circle of power, that the new reign would inaugurate a
fusion of parties; and if Compton became the nominal head,
Pulteney and himself might gradually become the legislative
hands of Government. But after it became evident that Walpole
and his confederates had triumphed, he resigned himself once
more to banishinent to Ireland, for six months in the year, for
the sake of sitting in Council during the remainder.
The King, finding it difficult to satisfy all the demands upon
him, desired to have the disposal, without Ministerial advice, of
Church patronage, and told the Chancellor that he expected to
nominate to all benefices and prebendaries theretofore filled by
his lordship. The keeper of his conscience felt himself bound
to tell him that this was a right appertaining to the office, not
only by immemorial usage, but expressly declared to belong to
it by a recent statute ; and with all due submission, he hoped
his Majesty "would not put things out of their ancient course."
George II. said Cowper told him that in his first Chancellorship,
he had laid before the Queen a list of all persons whom he
recommended to benefices, that she might be satisfied they were
good Churchmen. This is confirmed by an entry in Cowper's
diary in 1705 noting that he had leave to bestow livings of £40
and under, without consulting Queen Anne. The Chancellor's
remonstrances prevailed, and he was suffered to retain un-
disturbed what still continued to be called the Crown Livings.
Bishop Hoadly lost no time in persuading the new Queen
to exercise her influence in ecclesiastical appointments. The
diocese of Fernes was vacant, and at her instance his younger
brother was sent over to fill that see. He was soon after made
Metropolitan, and eventually Primate.
Carteret still lingered near the seat of power, where he pro-
bably felt he could exercise more influence, even in Irish affairs,
than at Dublin. He contrived to baffle occasionally recommen-
1 “Notes by Lord King on Domestic and Foreign Affairs,” p. 47.
VOL. I.
В В
370
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
away.” 1
dations at the Castle ; but a more difficult and delicate task was
the revision of the Irish Privy Council, rendered necessary at the
commencement of the new reign. Chief Justice Whitshed sank
under the weight of obloquy he had incurred by his conduct on
the Bench, and pressure was exerted to offer his place to some
trustworthy member of the English Bar. It was said to be more
than ever necessary that two at least out of the three Chief Judges
should not be natives of the subject realm, because in the Privy
Council there were more Irish country gentlemen than there
need be. Whenever anything of importance was transacting,
the best to be hoped for from a native was that he would stay
The Lord-Lieutenant failed in Cabinet to efface the
sinister impression thus made; and Reynolds, of the Inner
Temple, was accordingly made Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas.
The Primate was seldom seen in the northern province, ex-
cept during triennial visitations. The Archiepiscopal palace, so
called, was at Drogheda ; but Boulter lived in Dublin, where his
engrossing occupations lay, as a member of the Executive, and
of over-ruler in Parliament when the Secretary of State disap-
proved or distrusted measures of lenity or favour conceded by
the Lord-Lieutenant. A Bill to which Carteret had promised
his assent had passed the Commons, and would have been
adopted by the Peers, restoring to Lord Clanricarde large estates
forfeited in the last civil war. The family had since conformed
to the Established Church, and ceased to be an object of Govern-
ment misgiving ; but he was viewed with jealousy by the Prelate.
The Upper Chamber were persuaded by Boulter to vote an Ad-
dress to the Crown, setting forth the dangerous consequences of
reversing forfeitures; and the Bill of Restoration was lost.2
When a bishop fell ill his Grace forthwith opened beforehand
negotiations for filling up the see, and anticipated all applica-
tions that might possibly be made to Ministers in favour of
anyone not likely to act in concert with him in politics. Arch-
bishop King was reported as at the point of death, and Carteret
was duly reminded of the importance of placing an English
bishop in the see of Dublin. "A native of Ireland, whatever his
behaviour had been, or his promises might be, once in that
1 Boulter to Newcastle, 26th August, 1727.
2 Irish Lords' Journals.
ABSENTEE TAX.
371
» 1
station, would undoubtedly put himself at the head of the Irish
interest, in the Church at least, and would naturally carry with
him Trinity College and most of the clergy. There might be a
good deal of murmuring at the appointment of an Englishman,
but though there should be, he thought it a post of that con-
sequence to be worth filling aright.” About the same time he
poured his inmost thoughts into the confidential ear of Secretary
Newcastle. As there were then “but nine English bishops (out
of twenty-two) on the Irish bench, it would be for his Majesty's
service to fill the Archbishopric of Cashel from England."
The anomaly of the chief estates and employments in the
poorer Kingdom being held by nobles and citizens of the richer
realm was intensified by the residence of many in England, whither
they were irresistibly drawn by the superior openings to political
and social ambition. Swift had pressed on his viceregal friend
the justice and expediency of a discriminating property tax,
whereby these various classes of absentees should be made to
bear a greater proportion of local burthens than those who re-
mained at home; and Carteret recognised the present equity and
ultimate policy of such a measure.
In opening the Session, Carteret observed that from the pre-
valence of distress the revenue had fallen short, and the public
debt was seriously increased. A suggestion for additional taxes
on articles of luxury was not rejected by the Commons; but if the
Irish Parliament was often wanting in spirit, it sometimes was
impelled by a sense of social justice to acts of patriotism. The
absenteeism of official sinecurists was no new thing; but when
famine was sore in the land, and the surplus of resident in-
comes usually spent in gaiety or show was eaten up by the
hungry multitude, nobles and gentry, prelates and fox-hunters,
Tories and Whigs concurred in imposing a tax of four shillings
in the pound on all salaries, employments, places, and pensions
of those who did not reside six months in the year in the King-
dom. But the provision was added when the heads of the Bill
were sent over to Whitehall, “save when exempted under the
Sign Manual."
For some time a desire had been shown for emigration, from
four to five thousand persons of various ranks quitting Ireland
for the colonies during the summer of 1728. They said they
? To Carteret, 9th February, 1727.
B B 2
372
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
were driven by oppression and want of employment, there being
comparatively but little tillage or profitable trade. To check
the movement the law officers were set to look up old statutes
forbidding the export of money except by merchants, and it was
hoped that an order in Council might be of use prohibiting the
export of corn. In the following spring the infatuation, as it was
called by the authorities, spread specially in Ulster, seven ships
being reported in the harbour of Belfast to take away intending
emigrants. Three bad harvests had rendered provisions unusu-
ally dear, and subscriptions to mitigate the distress were of little
avail.
Boulter confessed to his patron and prompter their policy was
not successful with any class of the community, either high or
low. From Ulster, the special object ex-officio of his care, more
than three thousand discontented persons of the working class
had been seduced, he said, by American agents to emigrate, the
worst of it being that all of them were Protestants. Carteret
regretted the efflux he could not stay, and would fain have had
the Presbyterian ministers dissuade the younger members of
their flocks from venturous exile at the beckoning or bidding of
speculators in the transfer of labour of whom they knew nothing,
and from whom they could exact no satisfaction if deceived.
But the depression of trade by Acts of Parliament, the de-
moralisation caused by sectarian monopoly, and the resentment
arising from the spectacle of too many offices of trust and profit
in the gift of the Government being bestowed on strangers, con-
tinued to stimulate the outward flow of energy and enterprise.
At the instance of Boulter, instructions were sent to Carteret
to have the supply of funds for the payment of interest on the
debt voted for the life of the King or for twenty-one years.
Great efforts were made to compass this project, and the inde-
pendent portion of the Irish Commons feared it would be
carried. The final debate, however, was kept up all night, and
when at last they were about to divide at break of day, the
member for New Ross, Colonel Tottenham, appeared in the
ranks of Opposition, having ridden all night from Wexford
in order to be in time. His vote turned the scale, and his like-
ness might long be seen in the print shops with the title of
“ Tottenham in his Boots."
2 Boulter's “ Letters," I., 260-262, 1728.
RICHARD HAMPDEN.
373
By way of inaugurating the legislation of the new reign, a
draft scheme was sent on for adoption by the Privy Council
at Whitehall, disqualifying professed converts from Catholicism
for practising the law until after an interval of five years, and
unless they took the oath of abjuration and bound themselves
to bring up their children in the Anglican faith. The excuse
was that a majority of both branches of the profession were
said to be mere conformists, and that, if they were promoted
on the claim of learning or merit, there might come to be a pre-
ponderance of Jacobites on the Judicial Bench. This was one
of the last additions to the penal code, said to have been in-
effective for its malignant purpose from the facility with which
it was evaded, and consequently among the first to become
obsolete.
In public every man who wanted anything and sought to get
it by making himself troublesome got uneasy about the domestic
condition of the country, and the sad figure we cut in the eyes
of Europe. Hampden, no longer in office, was always filled with
sad thoughts as to our declining trade, and looking anxiously to
see the sun of Britain's glory go down for ever. And it is curious
to observe how essential a point of high breeding it was held
to be never to laugh in a noble lord's or a rich commoner's face
when he fell into this strain of observation. No one could tell when
it might be his own case and when he would have need to put his
hand on his heart and vow to God how much he would sacrifice
for the sake of his country. But in private, to save time and
misunderstanding, great frankness of speech was allowed.
Thus we find Mr. Hampden, when weary of neglect by his
party, telling Lady Suffolk, in order that she should repeat it,
that unless he could obtain a pension without further delay,
under the reigning family, he would very soon take service in
some other, meaning that of the Pretender.
All who were disappointed at the retention of the old Ministry
and some who had been displaced, forthwith formed a combina-
tion against Walpole and Townshend, which speedily gathered
strength and became so formidable that Sir Robert told the
Chancellor that he sometimes wished to retire. The Opposition
1 Boulter to Newcastle, 7th March, 1728.
2 Letter to Lady Suffolk, 30th June, 1727.
4
374
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
included Carteret, Roxburgh, Pulteney, the Speaker, Compton,
and all the discontented Whigs.1
The great-grandson of the celebrated leader in the Long Par-
liament was in 1716 named Teller of the Exchequer, and some-
what later Treasurer of the Navy. Like all the rest, he went
deep in the speculation of the day, and when the crash came was
obliged to own himself a defaulter to the extent of £80,000.
For some time he struggled vainly to repair his ruined fortune,
and kept his seat for Wendover, where his family had long been
paramount. Walpole at last carried an Act which sequestrated
his estate in Buckinghamshire to make good the loss the public
had incurred through his malversation; and there are letters of
his in the summer of 1727 begging for pecuniary assistance,
offering the reversion of his seat to Government, and ascribing
his frequent arrests since the dissolution to the ill will of Wal-
pole, who would have him end his days in prison : and this while
more than one of those who had profited largely by the South
Sea Scheme “were favoured by the very man who had sworn
his ruin.”
"2
1 Chancellor King's “Notes," p. 51.
2 To Mrs. Howard, August, 1727.
375
CHAPTER XII.
WALPOLE AND TOWNSHEND.
1728-29.
Inner Cabinet—Pulteney in Opposition-Refusal of Titles by the King-
Prince Frederick sent for-Walpole Chief Minister-Corrupt Practices
Bill-Congress of Soissons—French Alliance Unbroken-Question of
Gibraltar-Quarrel of Walpole and Townshend-Chesterfield Lord
Steward-Duke of Dorset Viceroy-Townshend Resigned-Contro-
versy in Prose and Verse-Origin of Pasquinades-Failure of Press
Prosecutions-Relief from the Test Act.
W "dence, including the Secretaries torf State, the Chancellor, the
ITHIN the Cabinet there existed a lesser circle of confi-
dence, including the Secretaries of State, the Chancellor, the
President of the Council, the Privy Seal and the First Lord
of the Treasury.1 Beyond these, matters of great moment were
not at first made known. In November, 1727, a secret treaty
was negotiated through Count Dehn with the Duke of Wolfen-
buttel, to which the Great Seal was put without the cognisance
of any other functionaries than those above named. The King's
reluctance to trust the other Ministers with the knowledge of its
contents is the reason assigned by Lord King for thus acting
without his colleagues. That would probably have weighed but
little with him, had he not felt that those who were consulted
constituted the real power of the Government, and tha: the
uncounted majority had no choice but to acquiesce whenever
they should be made acquainted with the transaction. The
“Select Lords," as the confidential minority are called by him,
met frequently at Devonshire House or at the residence of
Townshend, Walpole, or Godolphin. On particular points they
took counsel with persons holding subordinate positions.
Pelham, Secretary-at-War, was called on to give information
and advice on questions relating to the army, Torrington and
1 Chancellor King's “Notes, p. 50.
376
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Sir C. Wager regarding the movements of the fleet, and Horace
Walpole when diplomatic details were under consideration.
What Townshend or Sir R. Walpole might have thought at the
time of the first epistle of King George II., their position was
too equivocal to tempt them to avow. But the effect of the
eccentric communication soon appeared. Fleury, in the presence
of the new Foreign Minister, Chauvelin, declared that France
was resolved to cultivate the good understanding theretofore
existing between the two Governments. Chauvelin, though
known to be a disciple of Torcy, could not be set aside because
distasteful to a foreign Power; and the Jacobite spirit took com-
fort at having an enemy less in office.
The new Parliament gave Ministers a greater majority than
before, and chose Arthur Onslow, whose father had been Speaker,
to fill the Chair. When election returns were disputed by peti-
tion, and appeal in every case was to a party vote in the
whole House, the manifest injustice by the neglect of fact and
truth exceeded anything that had ever gone before.
There was
a string of cases so indefensible, says one who was in the thick
of the fray, that people grew ashamed of pretending to talk of
right and wrong, laughed at that for which they ought to have
blushed, and declared that in elections they never considered
the cause but the men.2
Such practices, however, grew prescriptive and gradually
formed part and parcel of the common law of Parliament. The
section of excluded Whigs led by Pulteney, and comprising
Sandys, Winnington, Sir J. Barnard, Lyttelton, with several
members of the House of Lords, coalesced thoroughly with Sir
W. Wyndham and Shippen as leaders of the Tories in system-
atic opposition. Their talents in debate were more formidable
than their numbers in division. To drive Walpole from power
was, they contended, indispensable to good government and the
welfare of the nation ; but with majorities in both Houses, con-
tent at Court, a buoyant revenue and expanding trade, his lease of
office seemed likely to be a long one. Against the employment
of 12,000 Hessian troops and the application of the Sinking Fund
from time to time to meet the varying exigencies of the Execu-
tive, continual protests were made ; but the great master of
finance traversed at will the intricacies of adverse calculation, and
| Chancellor King's “ Notes," p. 50. Hervey's "Memoirs," I., 102-3.
THE KING REFUSES TITLES.
377
showed that their debt was not augmenting, but diminishing,
and the maintenance of foreign troops in British pay was an
economical expedient for keeping continental jealousies from
taking fire. Within the Cabinet he was supreme, no one but
Townshend venturing to gainsay or question what he thought
fit to approve. No essential change of policy signalised the new
reign. Pulteney pushed the Ministry harder than before, and
many knowing men hinted their belief that Walpole went too
far in his exercise of power, and that the bow ere long must
break. Meanwhile, he managed, through the influence of the
Queen, to reduce Church patronage to a system thoroughly
organised for secular purposes.
George II. could not easily forget or forgive his disappoint-
ment at finding on his accession that the choice of a Cabinet lay
not with him. He probably attributed his mortification chiefly
to the strength of Walpole in Parliament and his indomitable
will in Council ; and he cherished, no doubt, in secret, inter-
mittent hopes that one day he should be delivered from his
Ministerial oppressor ; and left free to resume, after the manner
of his ancestors, the responsible privilege of selecting at will
the materials of Executive Government. Meanwhile, he took
minor opportunities to assert himself, to the annoyance and
sometimes embarrassment of his Ministers, whose promise of a
title or decoration he would hesitate to ratify, or whose scruple
about asking Parliament for more money he would obdurately
decline to regard. According to the custom at previous acces-
sions to the throne, expectations had been held out of advance-
ment and creations in the Peerage ; but he insisted that the
nobility were numerous enough; and though he at last con-
sented to reward William Stanhope for his services at Madrid
with the Earldom of Harrington, he repelled with reproach the
attempt to obtain for his elder brother a similar dignity, or the
first place at the Admiralty, which he truly said were more
fittingly bestowed on Admiral Byng.
Charles Stanhope did not fail to make known his discontent.
Townshend took pains to convince Poyntz that it was no fault
of his or Walpole's; but the only wonder is how they could have
urged the request; and his Majesty may be well excused for
being unrelenting. “Sir Robert recommended him in the
strongest manner, and espoused his interest with so much
378
HIISTORY OF CABINETS.
warmth as to hazard the loss of his credit with the King. As to
the peerage, I do not think that when Mr. Stanhope knows the
true state of the case he will have any reason to be dissatisfied
with the conduct of his friends."
Two days before the prorogation Walpole told the King this
would be a proper time to fulfil his intentions towards those
whom he had promised to promote to the Peerage. His Majesty
was much displeased, and said he was determined not to make any
promotions of the kind. Sir Robert renewed his instances, but
to no purpose. The next morning George II. told him, with
some vehemence, that if he must make some new lords he was
resolved only to make four. “My brother endeavoured to per-
suade him to add some with equal pretensions to those he
named, as this would be much smaller than the creations usual
at the beginning of a new reign. But he refused.” 1
George II. had a habit of asserting himself by affecting to
veto fresh propositions when made for his adoption by Minister
or Queen ; but it was well understood that that was only his
way, and in due time, when his fancied autocracy had been duly
mined, it surrendered, and sometimes the concession was made
to appear as though it were spontaneous on the part of his
Majesty. Meantime Scarborough, feeling that he had no real
influence as a Cabinet Minister, betook himself to Lumley. His
reserve and abstraction became a source of pain to his friends ;
but the master of Houghton cared for none of these things.
Monarchy had been obliged to accept the administrative yoke,
and if he used the goad forbearingly, he not the less firmly held
the reins. The Cabinet, for the most part, consisted of well-bred
indolent men, with whom it would have bored him often to con-
fer. The two exceptions were Townshend, on whose shoulders
he had climbed in days gone by, and Newcastle, on whose
submissive votes he intended to stand in days to come. In
truth he was transferring his reliance from the elder to the
younger Secretary of State, and their incompatibility of temper
had already begun to appear.
From motives which it is difficult fully to comprehend,
George II. had for some years deferred bringing his eldest son
into England. The evils of a foreign education for him who
seemed destined to fill one day the chief dignity in the State
1 Townshend to Poyntz, 3rd June, 1728.-MS.
PRINCE FREDERICK.
379
had already shown themselves conspicuously in the father and
grandfather of the Prince ; and it was natural that dissatisfac-
tion should arise at what appeared to be an indefinite exclusion
from his natural place at Court without the assignment of in-
telligible reasons. Ministers frequently suggested that Prince
Frederick should be sent for ; but finding no favourable response
from either of his parents, and foreseeing that opposition would
probably ere long turn the topic to account, they at length
plainly told their Majesties that if the Prince's coming were
longer delayed an Address from Parliament would certainly
oblige his Majesty to send for him.
Frederick was accordingly received by his Royal parents, and
in due time an establishment was formed for him at Leicester
House, where he too easily fell into the pleasures and occupa-
tions in which his companions delighted. The unfortunate
prejudice against him that speedily betrayed itself on the part
of his father may have accounted in some measure for dis-
similar tastes and tendencies; and too certainly for the re-
ciprocal distrust manifested by him. His father from the first
took his mother's side, and ere long it was an open secret that
the Prince of Wales was become an object of Royal aversion.
His expenditure quickly exceeded his limited allowance, and he
was not long before he had become entangled in usurious
debt.
Sir Robert freely owned to those he trusted his obligations
to Queen Caroline. He told the Chancellor that her political
capacity for Government transcended that of every other woman;
and it was said that, during many years, he committed himself
to no serious enterprise or project without paying her the defer-
ence of previously consulting her.
Experience showed Walpole the wisdom of consulting his best
friend about any measure he wished to propose, and when it
seemed difficult or doubtful, not to name it to the King until
warned, confidentially, that no Royal objection waylaid its suc-
Thus assured, he would sometimes but open the subject
in a contemplative tone, and hear, with well-feigned admiration
for its prompt sagacity, his own suggestion propounded by his
master as if it had been born on the spot. It is even said that
the most edifying instances of the kind occurred when Caroline
3rd December, 1728.
Cess.
1
380
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
herself was present, careful to take no part, by word or look, in
the excogitation unless supplementarily asked for her opinion.
Walpole's obvious ascendancy provoked strifes and envyings he
took small pains to allay. All ambitions converged towards his
undoing. Carteret, Roxburgh, Berkeley, Bolingbroke, Wyndham,
Pulteney, and Speaker Compton, each and all regarded him as
the chief obstacle in their way, and none of them were particu-
larly nice in the means for its removal; but it is hardly accurate
to describe them as confederates for his overthrow. In private,
they may have sympathised and schemed with one another ;
but in Parliament they were unable to keep a united front, and
Bolingbroke, who distrusted Pulteney, and who still thought
Wyndham qualified to lead, remained himself without voice or
vote as a peer. From the diary of Lord Chancellor King it has
been inferred that the Cabinet at large were seldom called to-
gether to confer, or even to dine, because Walpole, who was
given to the pleasures of the table, habitually invited those who
best understood the specific questions on which he wished to be
informed. Who can tell how many first impressions and incon-
gruous opinions were thus safely permitted to evaporate, which,
in a full meeting of the Cabinet, it might have been difficult to
forget or to withdraw? His general hospitality was not confined
to men of his own party. Savage, who met at Lord Tyrconnel's .
table many courtiers and politicians, formed no very high
opinion of their character and conversation. Walpole's attain-
ments, as disclosed in his after-dinner talk, struck him as some-
what small; the whole range of his ideas " appearing to be
from obscenity to politics, and from politics to obscenity.” 1
The tone of the Press was ruthless, that of the stage ribald, nor
was the critic nice; what then must have been the licence that
struck even him as foul ?
A Bill was brought in to put down corrupt practices by stern
penalties. Rich men who dared to ingratiate themselves with
the corporation or burgesses of a town, in the hope of being
chosen for Parliament, instead of the son or grandson of some
neighbouring proprietor, were made liable to be unseated, to
be disfranchised for life, and to be fined £ 500. The rigour of
virtue could no further go. Not a word was said in this spas-
modic effort at purity about close or rotten boroughs. New-
1 Johnson's “ Life of Savage."
INVESTMENTS IN SEATS.
381
castle continued to extend his investments in seats till the limits
of his fortune were overpast and he was obliged to mortgage
the rental of more than one of his possessions ; but he thought
office and patronage worth the money, and the Court and his col-
leagues thought the votes he had on hire worth the price of his
shortcomings. Every year the Pelham influence became better
organised.
Discussion in Cabinet in 1727-8 seems to have chiefly turned
on foreign affairs. Townshend had gradually become absorbed
in measures for the preservation of Hanover from encroachment
or attack.
Before the close of the late reign the Emperor
Charles sought to enlist in his support by specific treaties nearly
all the minor Courts of Germany, as well as those of Prussia.
If the menacing combination backed by Russia could, at the
outbreak of war, occupy Brunswick, there was danger that the
King's Electoral dominions would be overrun, and a way of
resistless invasion opened into the Netherlands. Owing pro-
bably to the absence of colleagues in the Cabinet able and
willing to sustain Walpole in checking the policy of Townshend,
he fell into a habit and tone of exaggeration on the subject,
highly acceptable to the new Sovereign, but suggestive of in-
numerable topics of complaint to Opposition. During the
autumnal recess of 1727 the Secretary planned and executed a
treaty with the Duke of Brunswick, whereby he hoped to regain
some of his lost possessions by a promised subsidy of £25,000
a-year to pay a corps of five thousand men ;1 and the reputed
designs of the Emperor, it was said, were thereby checked. It
had, apparently, the effect of disheartening the Court of Spain ;
and little progress being made in the siege of Gibraltar, renewed
hopes were subsequently confirmed of a general accommodation
of difficulties. Townshend was not a little proud of his success
in diplomacy, which more than ever was Hanoverian.
The death of George I. had been supposed at Madrid to in-
volve a change of the English Ministers, if not of the reigning
dynasty. Hopes revived of a combination with the Empire into
which France might be allured, that would restore its lost im-
portance to Spain and compel the restoration of Gibraltar and
Minorca. The convention previously negotiated by Williain
Stanhope, and which had been all but signed, was abruptly laid
1 Signed at Wolfenbuttel 23rd November, 1727.
382
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
aside, and the old talk resumed at Court that the inviolability of
the Peninsula must, in any treaty, be sine quâ non. With this
intelligence, the reinstated Cabinet of England were troubled
with vague misgivings, for some time laid aside, of the fidelity of
France. A demand was made of £250,000 from Parliament for
the secret service of the year. Opposition inoved an Address to
the Crown to know what the money was wanted for, and
Ministers formulated a reply that in the over-clouded state of
foreign affairs, it was idle to ask for a public account of what, if
spent at all, must be spent clandestinely. Pulteney, Wyndham,
Morpeth, and Shippen railed at such refusal to take the House
into confidence; and vowed that it was by such means corrupt
Ministers sought to perpetuate national burthens already op-
pressive; the more scandalous in a time of unbroken peace.
Walpole dwelt on the dangers of war looming near, and painted
in the darkest hues the thriftlessness of leaving their diplomacy
shorthanded. While he was yet speaking, amid interruption and
menace, a despatch was brought him from Whitehall conveying
the welcome intelligence that the Court of Madrid had given
way, that the Treaty of El Pardo was signed, and that points of
difference, still outstanding, were referred to a Congress to be
assembled at Soissons. With consummate art, he changed in-
stantly his tone, and announced the reprieve of Government
from its anxieties; thanked God there was once more hope of
peace; and told the House to acknowledge the wisdom of the
measures which had been theretofore taken to bring about a
consummation so devoutly to be wished. The House, delighted
at being delivered from an actual perplexity, voted the money
without a division. Nevertheless, uneasiness was caused by
frequent representations, for the most part by casual observers,
of the progress making in the restoration of the sea forts and
harbour works at Dunkirk, whose total abolition had been
guaranteed by the Treaty of Utrecht. Horace Walpole called
the attention of Fleury to the facts of which there could be no
dispute, and pointed out the irritation likely to arise in England.
The Cardinal disclaimed all knowledge of the affair, and
promised that nothing should be done contrary to the Treaty,
and that if anything had been done it should be rectified.?
4th March, 1728.
2 H. Walpole lo Newcastle, 8th May, 1728.-MS.
SLAVES IN ENGLAND.
383
Poyntz made a suggestion for settling the troublesome con-
troversy about Gibraltar at the Congress, which chimed in
exactly with Townshend's notions. But the Secretary reminded
him of the violent and almost superstitious zeal which had of
late prevailed among all parties in the Kingdom against any
scheme for restitution on any terms whatever ; and he was per-
suaded that the bare mention of a proposal which carried the
most distant appearance of laying England under an obligation
of ever parting with that place would be sufficient to put the
whole nation in a flame. All that they could do to soften the
King of Spain and appease the ill will the Spanish nation had
conceived against us, was to consent to such proposals as might
prevent the unlawful trade alleged by the Spaniards to be
carried on by the South Sea Company. A monopoly of the
trade in negroes for the West Indies and the Spanish Main was
as carefully defended by the Ministers of George II. as it had
been matter of boast under those of Anne, and the social ethics
of the time bear not a trace of compunction, philosophic or
religious.
From the beginning of the century the practice had grown
up of bringing into England negroes or half castes, who had been
trained as domestic servants in the colonies; and by degrees it
became a point of fashion to have one or more of them in
wealthy establishments. Many of them learning to envy the lot
of their fellow-servants, sought to assert their freedom, and were
led to believe that if publicly baptised they could not be sent
back to the places whence they came. Government were ap-
pealed to by some of their influential supporters to make
an announcement decisive of the question; and the Attorney
and Solicitor General, Yorke and Talbot, gave their
opinion that a slave by coming from the West Indies into
Great Britain or Ireland, with or without his master, did
not become free; and that the owner's right and property in
him was not thereby determined or varied ; finally, baptism
did not bestow freedom on him or make any alteration in
his temporal condition. They were also of opinion that the
master might legally compel him to return again to the
plantations. Absconding slaves were thenceforth commonly
advertised for in the public journals, to be sold by auction,
| Townshend to Poyntz, 3rd June, 1728.—MS.
as
384
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and frequently booked as cargo, to be delivered with other
goods on arrival.
Ties of mutual confidence between Cardinal Fleury and the
English Ministry did not slacken by change of times. Towns-
hend never failed to impress on his envoys at Paris and Soissons
the importance of contributing in every way to its continuance.
To Poyntz he wrote : "As you know I have more confidence in
you than in any man living, I cannot help giving, in the utmost
secrecy, you the trouble and myself the comfort of opening my
mind to you on the present situation of affairs. I agree per-
fectly with the Cardinal in what he says in his letters to Mr.
Walpole as to our not being justified in not coming to a rupture
(with Spain); and that no steps should be made by us till the
arrival of the galleons. What grieves me is to see the Cardinal so
averse to explaining himself in confidence. If he knew our situa-
tion here he would be convinced of the necessity there is of his
acting this friendly part, and that the true interest of France re-
quires it. He is mistaken if he thinks that the House of Com-
mons is influenced by money to be thus unanimous in the support-
ing his Majesty in all that he has done. This zeal proceeds from
the chief men in both Houses being convinced that the means
hitherto taken are right; but though they have heartily concurred
in what has been done hitherto, they are under the greatest anxiety
at the uncertain state of our affairs, and will not be kept much
longer in suspense. We shall raise £3,500,000 this year, which is
above £ 1,500,000 more than our ordinary expense in time of peace;
and if we are not enabled at least privately, to give assurances
to men of weight in both Houses before they are prorogued,
that there is a probability of an end to the present disturbances,
and that the allies of Hanover have not taken measures to do
themselves justice by force of arms, our credit and influence in this
Parliament will be entirely lost." Poyntz was told to speak to
Fleury as from himself on the danger of uncertainty continuing,
lest Ministers should be compelled to cut down their estimates
once more. He might show the despatch to him, or burn it, as
he thought fit. No progress was made in the dispute regarding
Gibraltar. In 1727 Sandys, supported by Pulteney and Wyndham,
had pressed for the production of the letter wherein George I.
had offered to restore Gibraltar six years before, but during his
? To Poyntz, 21st February, 1729.- MS.
GIVING UP GIBRALTAR.
385
1
lifetime Government had always prevailed upon the House to
abstain from enforcing the request. The question was still open
and angry, and another King had arisen that knew not the exi-
gencies of his father's time. The French Ambassador, M. de
Broglie, assured his Government, that if pressed in Parliament,
the Ministry must now yield; and rumours were industriously
renewed that a change of hands was probable in England. The
Spanish Plenipotentiary thereupon insisted on the surrender of
the great fortress, and it became once more the symbol of con-
flict at Westminster. To appease the ferment, it was thought
expedient to lay the Royal letter on the table. But strong dis-
avowals were made by Ministers of the construction placed upon
it, with repudiations of the alleged policy of their predecessors.
The Peers voted an Address, praying the King not to sanction
any treaty giving up Gibraltar or Minorca, and this being in con-
sonance with the desire of the Commons and the King, the Cabinet
were once more at ease.
Relations between Townshend and Newcastle did not improve.
From Hanover the Secretary acquainted Chesterfield in strict
confidence, for his guidance at the Hague, and for himself alone,
with certain critical passages in the pending negotiations, which
he was expressly forbidden to make known either to the Pen-
sionary or to Newcastle, or anybody else. He would think, no
doubt, that the Council in England went on pretty fast, and were
in more haste to form a fixed concert of operations than they
would find their friends either in France or Holland prepared for.2
The indications expressed of waning confidence in his ducal col-
league is significant when taken in conjunction with their subse-
quent quarrel, although it is endorsed in Secretary Tilson's hand-
writing “Not sent.” Townshend's first intention was modified by
the receipt of a peremptory despatch from the Council in Eng-
land by the pen of Newcastle to the Plenipotentiaries at Paris
and Madrid, stating the danger that would be incurred if Spain
were any longer permitted to trifle, and pointing to the necessity
for specific resolutions by France in case of an expected rupture.3
A more guarded communication was consequently sent to Ches-
terfield expressing the belief of Townshend that Spain would
1 18th March, 1729.
2 Draft to Chesterfield, June, 1729. —MS.
3 From Townshend, 20th June, 1729.--MIS.
VOL. I.
C C
386
HISTORY OF CABINETS. .
come to terms, and cynically noting the haste of his colleagues in
England in arriving at the opposite conclusion. The young
diplomatist, big with the importance of being made a confidant
in a Cabinet difference, responded in terms of sympathy, and
with protestations of entire reticence and devotion. The Dutch
Ministers were not pressed inordinately by him to take sides in
the expected European fray; and before Christmas Townshend
and Fleury had the satisfaction of seeing it averted.
If the protracted conference of Soissons disappointed sanguine
expectations, it at least enabled the Ministers of France and Eng-
land to sow dissension between the Courts of Vienna and Madrid,
and at length the latter began to listen to a project of a new alli-
ance, offensive and defensive, between the maritime States of the
West, the articles of which were signed at Seville on the gth of
November, 1729.
The liberation from risk and fear thus given to every branch
of foreign and colonial trade was, in Walpole's view, a splendid
purchase for German subsidies and the relinquishment of
venturous enterprises in arms. But Townshend was not
satisfied with the omission in the Treaty of solid compensa-
tion for injuries at sea and the specific renunciation of all
claim to Gibraltar; and he would have been willing, in various
ways, to keep open questions of difference with the Emperor,
insensible to his kinsman's far-sighted fear, that in case of a
reconciliation between the two Houses of Bourbon England
would be left no ally but Austria capable of preserving the
balance of power. Unacknowledged jealousy tended to widen
the divergence beginning to be observable between the two
Ministers. The death of Lady Townshend caused many com-
parative trifles to work in the same direction, and it took all
the care and sagacity of her brother Horace to prevent political
discussion from degenerating into personal wrangle.
Walpole, who had begun by leaning upon Townshend as his
closest neighbour in Norfolk, and who, after his sister's marriage,
had cultivated his friendship with more than political care, had
come to regard habitually their strings of life as intertwined
beyond the chance of separation. He had thrown up great
office for Townshend's sake in 1717, and stipulated three years
later for his restoration as an essential condition of his own.
Despite the ordinary differences of opinion to which all earnest
MINISTERIAL DIVERGENCE.
387
and able men are liable, they had worked to the end of one reign
and into the beginning of another in genuine and fruitful har-
mony. Sir Robert had gone so far as to declare, not only that
there was no one capable of dealing with foreign affairs like
Townshend, but that, in fact, the Government could not go on
without him. The correspondence with foreign Courts lay en-
tirely in his hands, and he so thoroughly satisfied the notions and
prejudices of George II. regarding Continental affairs that we find
draft after draft of despatches of the Secretary of State minuted
by the King with expressions of unqualified assent and approval
Enclosing despatches of importance from Chesterfield with the
draft of one from himself to the Minister at Paris (prepared
before their receipt), he proposed to forward by post that night if
his Majesty approved ; it was returned at once with the note, “I
approve entirely of this letter.-G.R."1 Not only on points of
Imperial delicatesse, but on matters touching most intimately the
feeling and pride of the Royal Family, we find the same tone
and style of communication. When a marriage was negotiating
between the Prince Royal of Prussia and a daughter of England,
Townshend had authority to indite a letter on the subject from
Queen Caroline to the Queen of Prussia, and the draft was sent
for their Majesties' approval, together with a despatch to H.
Walpole and W. Stanhope at the Congress, and one to M.
Dubourgay, in which the matrimonial alliance was mentioned.
The minute of George II. ran thus: “I think that you have said
everything that is possible in the letter you have writ to the
plenipotentiaries. As to that to M. Dubourgay, I am yet so
unsettled as to which of my two eldest daughters, that I must
speak to you before I come to a determination which of the two
should be sent (sic) to Berlin.” 2
Walpole disliked the drudgery of diplomatic correspondence,
and was content with his undivided direction of domestic affairs.
The Queen, acting as Regent, consulted him in everything, rarely
seeking to question his discretion. But power is the most insidi-
ous of intoxicants, and the coarse nature of Walpole was not
calculated to resist its seduction. He grew tetchy of Towns-
hend's self-confidence in details implying a sort of absolutism in
foreign affairs. Without retracting his oft-repeated confession
17th December, 1728.
2 Townshend Correspondence.
1
CC 2
388
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
of the Secretaries' departmental aptitude, he began to meddle,
then to doubt, sometimes to demur, at last to object bluntly, and
even to suggest alternatives, which Townshend's habit of deciding
without discussion rendered difficult of adoption. There was no
one strong enough in the Cabinet to essay the thankless task of
fusing their jarring ideas. The King nearly always confirmed
what the Secretary said, and the Queen what the Finance
Minister pleaded for in preference. No change for a time was
noticeable in the official relations between the brothers-in-law.
But in 1729 the correspondence discloses the jealous suscepti-
bility that was gradually becoming irrepressible. Serious dif-
ferences in the closet arose regarding £115,000, which the King
declared to be a deficiency in the payments on account of the
Civil List.1 The First Lord did his best in deprecating a
demand which he knew would be unpopular, and feared would
be injurious to the Treasury. There was in fact no deficiency;
but, as a last resource, he offered to procure the amount in
Committee of Supply under the semblance of an arrear; and
Scrope, the Secretary of the Treasury, actually moved a
vote of the sum in this fabulous form. The veil was too thin
to blind, and a Secret Committee of Inquiry was moved by
Opposition into the receipts of the Civil List. But in the
second year of a new Parliament majorities are seldom factious
in matters of finance; even popular constituencies might be relied
on to forget their arithmetic by the time reckoning came round;
and the invertebrate boroughs, whom a third of the House be-
strode, were no more suspected of capacity to exact an account
than the ghost on the Danish Castle wall. The amendment was
rejected by 244 to 115, and the grant was acceded to with-
out difficulty.
In the Upper House hard things were said by a protesting
minority, whose taunts could not be stifled by Ministerial sneers
at impenitent Jacobitism.
Townshend still maintained his position as Foreign Secretary,
yet it daily became clearer that there was a want of accord be-
tween him and Walpole ; and when he accompanied the King
to Hanover, the official correspondence between him and New-
castle betrayed no little susceptibility on both sides; the Duke
being the mouthpiece of the Cabinet generally, and Townshend,
1 April, 1729.
WALPOLE ASCENDANT.
389
1
assuming, in the name of the King, a tone which at times
savoured almost of reprimand.
By degrees Walpole had come to be regarded, and to regard
himself, as real head of the Administration. His untiring
energy, and versatility in intrigue, with the command of re-
sources for the purpose such as no Minister had ever before
possessed in a yearly expanding patronage, and a yearly
augmenting flow of secret service money, rendered him master
of the position. As his confidence in his power of overruling
opposition and undermining irresolute independence grew, his
contempt for conventionalities hardened apace into a settled
unbelief in the existence of personal purity and the sincerity of
patriotism, however vehemently avowed.
But on the whole his ascendancy was complete. He reduced
the practice of borough-jobbing to the method and the certainty
of a system ; and the part he personally took in its application
brought him into direct contact with men and women of every
sort, and rendered him the depository of more secrets than any
other man in the realm. Was it strange that he should rely
more and more upon himself and less and less on those by
whose aid he had risen, and whose friendship he had pledged ?
In the climax of invective Bolingbroke wrote of him: “The
serpent, we are told, was the most subtle of all the beasts of
the field. Wherever anything was to be gained he could coil
himself in ; wherever anything was to be feared he could wriggle
himself out. Golden pippins were his favourite fruit ; or, rather,
Sodom apples, fair without, but rotten at the core. Life he
promised, death he devised, and corruption he entailed from
generation to generation."
Townshend long believed himself to be indispensable, and,
being attached to Walpole, and proud of him as a relative and
friend, he did not easily take umbrage at his pretensions to
official pre-eminence or realise the possibility of being discarded
by him.
Occupied with foreign affairs, and the conduct of
business in the House of Lords, he left the management of the
other House to his ambitious kinsman; and through the
mazes of corruption left him to tread alone his devious way.
But when it came to be a question whether some of the greater
prizes—more especially those in the Church-promised by Wal-
i Chancellor King's “ Notes,” p. 102.
2 Letter to Sir W. Wyndham.
» 2
390
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
pole should be conferred without consultation in the Cabinet,
Townshend could not disguise his dissatisfaction, and would not
readily yield. Altercations and misunderstandings arose ; and
the trying question was in each case who should be greatest
amongst them. The Secretary often found himself in a
minority; and he chafed at what he instinctively felt to be
his gradual supplanting by one whose fortune he had con-
tributed so materially to secure. Still, while unreservedly
trusted by the King, he was powerful enough to tolerate and
forgive many official encroachments on the part of his brother-
in-law. But when he began to feel that in Norfolk men's eyes
turned first to Houghton, the scene of a more comprehensive
and splendid hospitality, and only afterwards to Rainham, where
less ostentation dwelt, and that, by some ineans or other, the
Whigs in the county had been brought to ask his advice sub-
sequently to having ascertained Sir Robert's wishes, he could
bear it no longer, and he resolved to make one final effort to
regain in the Cabinet at least the equality he felt to be his due.
From Hanover he endeavoured to pave the way for the re-
moval of Newcastle, who sided in the Cabinet with Walpole,
and the appointment in his stead of Chesterfield.
The Duke, on the other hand, sought to replace him with
Harrington ; while Chesterfield was told he might have the Seals,
with the certain consent of the Queen. Walpole, on learning
the design, leaned to the other alternative. He could not con-
template breaking with Newcastle on account of his Parlia-
mentary influence, and he knew Harrington would prove a far
more manageable roadster in his team. He, therefore, consulted
her Majesty, who did not disguise her distrust of Chesterfield,
not, as sometimes has been supposed, from any lingering jealousy
of Lady Suffolk, whom, as a rival, she contemned, but because
the irrepressible vanity and arrogance of Chesterfield seemed
to her to qualify him ill for so weighty a charge. On quitting
the Palace, towards evening, after a conference in which this and
other matters had been discussed, Walpole called in Cleveland
Square at the house of Colonel Selwyn, whose wife was Bed-
chamber woman to the Queen, and a trusted friend of the
Minister. Townshend happened to be there, and left alone, the
brothers-in-law soon warmly disagreed about negotiations which
had been abandoned at the instance of Walpole, but which the
Secretary persisted should be communicated to Parliament at
TOWNSHEND RESIGNS.
391
the same time that they were given up. The First Lord
objected to this as inexpedient and likely to lead to vexatious
questionings. Townshend-gave way, saying, “Since you object,
and the House of Commons is your concern more than mine, I
shall not persist; but upon my honour, I think the other mode
of proceeding would have been the most advisable.” Walpole,
losing his temper, rejoined : “For once, there is no man's
sincerity which I doubt so inuch as your lordships, and I never
doubted it so much as when you are pleased to make such strong
professions." Townshend, in a rage, seized him by the collar;
both laid their hands on their swords, and they were only parted
by the timely entrance of Mrs. Selwyn. Many efforts were
made to efface the painful recollection of what had occurred,
but neither would give way; Townshend resigned the Seals
and the Lord-Lieutenancy of Norfolk.
Their hostess never ceased to mourn that the unworthy
difference should have become irreparable in her house, and, as
she believed, because she had too considerately withdrawn.
Her Royal mistress only laughed when informed of what had
occurred, for the Viscount was not a favourite of hers, and she
did not always appreciate the haughty and rigid turn he was
apt to give to disputes in foreign affairs. Walpole was too
sagacious not to feel vexed with himself at having acted so un-
dignified a part; but he had neither the grace nor the generosity
to make amends while there was time: and the feud between
the old friends became inappeasable. The public scandal of
their quarrel was avoided, but a cordial reconciliation was
impossible. When subsequently asked about the origin of their
alienation, Walpole said: "It is difficult to trace the causes of
a dispute between statesmen, but I will give you the history in a
few words. As long as the firm of the House was Townshend
and Walpole the utmost harmony prevailed; but it no sooner
became Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong; and
a separation ensued.” Townshend perhaps supposed the pros-
pect of his defection would bring back Walpole to a sense of
obligation to preserve the family alliance. But if such had been
his hope it was quickly dissipated. His place was given to
Harrington, and, to the delight of the King and the bewilder-
ment of the Tories, Lord Wilmington, on whom they had
reckoned as one of their possible chiefs, became Privy Seal.
Old Horace, who knew his brother's methods and motives
392
HISTOKY OF CABINETS.
1
better, probably, than any other individual in or out of office,
told Newcastle long afterwards that the real cause of his quarrel
with Townshend was the refusal of Sir Robert to concur in the
proposal to remove the Duke from the Secretaryship of State, in
which he was no longer content to act with him as a colleague.
Townshend was truly said to have conferred more obligations
and yet to have met with more ingratitude than any man that
ever had so long filled a high place in Administration, for when
he retired he went alone, and as universally unregretted as unat-
tended. In the interval between his resignation and the arrival
of Harrington from abroad, Walpole performed the duties of the
Northern Department. Other changes followed. Wilmington
made way for Henry Pelham in the Pay Office, a more lucrative
post than that of War, where Sir W. Strickland, M.P. for Scar-
borough, succeeded him. Chesterfield, who had been threaten-
ing to plunge into Opposition, and who had gone to Rainham
to persuade Townshend to do the same, was beckoned back to
party allegiance by the Staff of Lord Steward. The Stanhopes
thus obtained two places in the Cabinet, while the Pelhams
retained as many, and Sir Robert himself both first and second
seat at the Board of Treasury. Chesterfield, whose impatient
ambition had prompted him to take a part in debate before
he was legally of age, to vote against the Court as one of the
Prince of Wales's staff, to accept and then discard the post of
Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, and to refuse the Order of
the Bath as unworthy of him, was recalled from the Hague as
Envoy, but was propitiated, but not long satisfied, with an office
which included him in the ruling Council without giving him
distinctively anything to do. His cousin, William Stanhope, was
worth more to the Government. In the schism between the
brothers-in-law he sided at first with Townshend, but did not
share his fall. Walpole wished to secure him as an ally, and,
beside the office of Secretary, gave him the Garter. Chester-
field could not resist the temptation of saying, as he re-
ceived the Staff, “I had lost the game, but you have taken
my cards into your hand and recovered it." His ambition was
to shine above his fellows as an orator, for which, in truth, he
had many and great qualifications. Elaborately forming his
style on the best models of antiquity, he disciplined his
abundant wit to seek expression only in the nervous simplicity
1 26th December, 1754.-—MS.
CARTERET AND THE KING.
393
of native idiom. Everyone longed to hear him, listened without
tiring, caught his meaning without effort, and joined in the
unanimous suffrage of admiration. But few were convinced by
his arguments, and fewer thought of him as a leader. Each fine
performance proved the surpassing cleverness of the Earl, but
failed to prove that Chesterfield believed that he was in the
right. The famous taunt flung by Demosthenes at his great
rival rose in every educated memory-You only act : and thus
it came to pass that a brilliant and versatile career added
nothing in legislation and in literature nothing but ingenious
ornaments to couple with his name. He has himself left the
receipt for his recondite compositions. Looking back in old
age on the share he had borne in the senatorial fray, he said to
his son, “I have sometimes spoken in Parliament, and not
always without success; and I can assure you there is very
little in it. Only give your hearers some happy phrase that
they may carry away with them like a favourite air from an
opera."
Carteret's term of Pro-Consulate having expired, the Duke of
Dorset was sent to reign in his stead at Dublin. On his return
to England he was received at Court with great marks of
favour, and for a time took no active part in affairs. But when
the arena of debate reopened, his pleasant resting-place at
Hawnes grew too still; and, with the falling leaf, had lost its
charm. He resumed the intimacy, never lony interrupted, with
Pulteney and Wyndham; and those who loved him not were
fain to add, with the Deus ex machinâ of the Craftsman.
Would he not lead Opposition in the Peers, where in debating
power he stood without an equal? Of the great men of his
time, it was owned by the most malignant of his critics that he
had the most genius in conceiving and eloquence in expressing
great political designs. Though still comparatively young, he
had the rare advantage of official experience in diplomacy and
administration ; and the ample fortune of his mother, whose
pride and joy of life were centred in him, supplied the means
of social influence that generous hospitality and free-handed
sympathy with wit and learning could bestow. Argyll and
Chesterfield lived in the belief each of his own superiority ; and
on special occasions either, if not both of them, divided public
attention. But, as was well said by Bolingbroke, "eloquence
that would lead mankind must flow like a stream that is fed from
394
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
a perpetual spring, and not merely pour forth its sparkling
waters on some gaudy day, and remain dry during the rest of
the year." The personal confidence of the King had no doubt
been put in quarantine by the combined influence of the Queen
and Walpole. Why the Queen disliked Carteret is not easy to
say. Why Walpole hated him need not be said ; but both
instinctively feared a resumption of the familiarity of talk in
German which had been a rare delight of George I., and which,
with his grandson Frederick, Carteret knew well how to use.
His aptitude for every species of affairs was shown whenever he
could prevail upon himself or be prevailed upon to take up his
pen--as his voluminous correspondence testifies--or his parable
in the Senate, as even the meagre records of debate, reveal.
There was a certain air of languor about him which the block-
heads who strove to gnaw away his influence mistook for indif-
ference—his greatest foible, that of contempt for the passing
whims and inconsistencies of the many. Such was the man in
whose hands Lord Cobham placed his youthful relative on
entering public life, and the ambitious Cornet in the Blues was
not slow in profiting by the experience of so great a master.
Carteret appreciated the capacity of his pupil for comprehending
the intricacies and combinations of foreign policy, and the
incipient powers of protest and persuasion which with cul-
ture and courage were destined to prove equal to his own.
Long after they had been severed in the paths of ambition, and
come to look on each other with the jealousy of rivals, and each
had had his day of supreme triumph, while the elder had been
gathered to the tomb, Chatham spontaneously testified the
weight of his obligations to his early teacher, with a fulness and
frankness all his own : “In the upper departments of Govern-
ment he had not his equal, and I feel a pride in declaring that
to his friendship and instruction I owe whatever I am."
By a singular fate, Townshend, driven from power, was again
succeeded by a Stanhope. Like his distinguished kinsman in a
former reign, Harrington had begun his career in Spain. As a
wary and painstaking diplomatist, he had earned the confidence
of his Government; and for the Treaty of Seville he was re-
warded with a peerage. Thenceforth he entered the political
train of Newcastle, and as a docile and diligent adherent, fol-
lowed faithfully. He was a cautious, inoffensive man, whom
nobody disliked for his own sake; but whom George II. hated
HARRINGTON.
395
as the mere prolongation of the shadow of the Ministerial turn-
key he abhorred. Hervey quizzed him, the Queen laughed at
him, and his cousin Chesterfield wondered how such an opposite
to himself could have come of the saine illustrious stock. But
he untied the tapes of his department for Newcastle, and tied
them again, and nobody was much the wiser. Between them
the joint Secretaries of State contrived to live easily, as the
phrase went, with the representatives of foreign Powers. Except
with Spain, there was for some time no question to occupy
diplomacy. But in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main,
buccaneering had attained formidable proportions; and every
merchantman that cleared from English ports, or was laden
with spice, sugar, or rum, on her homeward voyage, trembled at
the sight of the pirate craft that with impunity swept the sea.
Details of the plunder and cruelty to which unarmed or half-
.armed English crews were subjected filled the mercantile com-
munity more and more with grief, anger, and resentment. Bristol
and Liverpool petitioned frequently, and in ever-swelling tones
of indignation at the state in which their trade was left by the
Executive whose first duty was to protect it from violence and
depredation. Newcastle and Harrington listened to deputations
and promised that their complaints should be considered; but
nothing effectual was done to organise a police of the ocean, and
loss and suffering spread year by year. At the beginning of
1731 Opposition took up the matter as a party cause. The
petitions of the merchants were referred to a Select Committee;
and their reports rendered it impossible for Government to look
on passively any longer. A Bill was brought in to afford protec-
tion for the time to come, but it contained no pledge or pro-
vision of compensation for the past, and when amendments were
offered with this view, Members were asked in the lobbies by the
Whips if they really wanted to provoke a war with Spain, and
asked in the House if they meant to disparage the paternal care
and efficiency of the Sovereign. Brilliant debate sparkled off
ineffectually, and 207 to 135 voted against any substantial pledge
of redress. Nothing could persuade Walpole to hazard war.
When the Bill was sent up to the Lords it was laid aside and
was not heard of for a season. But again and again complaint and
attack were renewed, until by iteration they became irresistible.
The peerage for which Sir S. Compton had given up the
Chair of the Commons did not heal his mortification at adminis-
396
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
trative failure, nor was his vexation likely to be lessened by the
greater popularity rapidly attained by his successor, Arthur
Onslow. A seat in the Lords without gifts of personal distinc-
tion was valueless without a seat in the Cabinet, and as he was
of too much influence to make it safe to neglect him, Newcastle
pressed that he should be made Privy Seal, and later on Lord
President. In foreign affairs he muttered occasionally doubt and
dissent from the peace-at-any-price policy of Walpole, hoping
thereby to keep alive the Royal preference shown him. But he
was no match for the overbearing earnestness of the Chief
Minister in Council, and he had no name for wit or worth to
which many would rally out of doors.
Trevor moved through the crowd of courtiers and senators
much like any other domino at the Carnival, nobody taking the
liberty to ask what he was about, and few seeming to care.
But such was the man whom Walpole chose to entrust with the
Privy Seal for the space of four years. He had got rid of
Carteret and Townshend, and no one in Cabinet was left of
much more tenacity than one of Samson's withes. The third
Duke of Devonshire then entered the Cabinet as Privy Seal,
Lord Burlington taking his place as Captain of the Guard.
Lord Delawar was made Treasurer of the Household ; Lord
Leicester Constable of the Tower ; Horace Walpole the Elder
Cofferer, and Conyers D'Arcy 2 Comptroller of the Household
The Cabinet in 1731 stood thus :
EARL OF WILMINGTON
Lord President
DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE
Privy Seal
LORD KING ...
Lord Chancellor
DUKE OF DORSET
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
Sir R. WALPOLE
First Lord of the Treasury
DUKE OF NEWCASTLE
Secretaries of State
LORD HARRINGTON
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD Lord Steward
DUKE OF GRAFTON...
Chanıberlain
DUKE OF MONTAGU
Master of the Ordnance
HENRY PELHAM
Paymaster-General
EARL OF TORRINGTON First Lord of the Admiralty
EARL OF SCARBOROUGH Master of the Horse
DUKE OF RUTLAND...
Duchy of Lancaster
1 March, 1726, to May, 1730.
? Afterwards Secretary Holdernesse.
...
AND
...
..
FRENCH RECRUITING IN IRELAND.
397
While the King was in Hanover, with Newcastle only for his
Minister, permission was given to Louis XV. to enlist in Ireland
750 men to fill up the ranks of the Brigade in his service, which
consisted of natives of that kingdom. On the arrival in Dublin
of the French officers sent to engage the recruits no little stir
arose, and the Lords Justices not having been previously in-
formed, wrote to the Government in England for instructions
what to do. A meeting of the Cabinet took place at Secretary
Harrington's, when the promise given by the King was over-
ruled as ill-advised, and immediate steps were directed to be
taken for the purpose of inducing the Court of Versailles to
waive the claim for its fulfilment. The reproof thus administered
manifestly fell upon Newcastle, as he was the only Minister with
George II. at Göhrdt throughout the autumn. Without waiting
for the interchange of communications with Hanover a despatch
was prepared by the Secretary at home, approved by his
colleagues and forwarded to Paris, in which the Cardinal was
urged to obtain from his master a release of the King of Eng-
land from the pledge given in his name :1 and the project of
enlistment was abandoned.
Pulteney daily gained popularity out of doors, and influence
within. He had led the Opposition of George II., when Prince
of Wales, to the Government of his father; and he now began
to build up Opposition of his son. Gradually his winning
manners, great versatility, and command of words at will, drew
together discontented Whigs, yielding Tories, and desponding
Jacobites; all of whom mingled at Leicester House; and, by a
strange misreading of the popular mind, he thought it necessary
to volunteer repeatedly a pledge, that if they could but oust
Walpole he would in no case profit by his fall. Nobody
thanked him, or thought the more of him, for tying to his
girdle such shackles for his feet in the hour of triumph; and
when it came, he had cause to feel how weak he had been.
Lord Hervey, in private life, “loved Pulteney”; but he re-
spected Walpole, and did not wish to break with him. When
obliged to go abroad for his health, the Minister had secured
him a pension of £1,000 a-year, for which he felt that he had
done no manner of service, and by which he was all the niore
bound to support the Government. Lady Hervey (the sweet
i Chancellor King's “Notes," p. 126.
398
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Molly Lepel of Leicester House) hated Walpoie, who had
unsuccessfully made love to her; and with the help of Pulteney,
who was her intimate friend, she persuaded her husband to
resign his pension on his return home. His letter doing so is
full of professions of fidelity with a sprinkling of mild chagrin
at not having had before some office given him which would
entitle him to take part in Parliamentary debate. This he
could not do, he said, while receiving an unearned pension.
The hint had its effect, and he was given the Gold Key of
Vice-Chamberlain. Pulteney's advice thus tended to hasten
an alienation which ripened into active hostility. 1
The fury of the war of pens exceeded even that of debate.
The new Vice-Chamberlain was one of the most pungent and
provoking defenders of the Government. He wrote with equal
facility in prose and verse; smote hard at the heads of Oppo-
sition in pamphlets, which he frequently submitted to the
Minister; and in many a well-turned rhyme his wit stung
severely. Pulteney was so exasperated by the picture drawn
of him in Sedition and Defamation Displayed, that he chal-
lenged Hervey, whom he believed to be the author, and whom
he wounded in the duel which ensued. He afterwards dis-
covered that he was mistaken ; and then, ascribing the pam-
phlet to Walpole, published a reply which surpassed the provo-
cation in abuse. Ultimately, it turned out that Sir William
Yonge had really been his assailant; and Walpole had no
abler ally or more faithful friend. In Dr. Johnson's opinion,
he was the greatest speaker of his time ; and in one of the
pitched battles, in which every man did his best, and Sir
Robert by a rare effort of skill and vigour narrowly escaped
defeat, Pulteney, lost in admiration of his talent, said to him,
as he sat down, “Nobody else can do what you can.” The
Minister replied, “Yonge did better." Hervey's natural
deficiencies of person, and the vain attempts he made arti-
ficially to hide them, rendered him an inexhaustible theme
of ridicule, as his thorough-going partisanship did of hatred
to the wits of Opposition; and all the bitterness wherewith
Pope lashed the other Whigs was as nothing compared with
the concentrated malignity with which he impaled him on
the epithet of Sporus. In spite of his shrivelled form and
| Hervey's "Memoirs," Vol. I.,
,p. 141.
MORTIMER.
399
painted face, however, he succeeded, by the readiness of his
humour and the terseness and point of his writing and con-
versation, to make himself a favourite with the Queen, whom
he amused, and the Minister, whom he efficiently served. Had
he been a man of obscure lineage, he might have possibly fought
his way to a private secretaryship, and have had leave to dine
with the curate and the steward in the country, or at some
cheap coffee-house in town; and when he had been used,,
and his health was broken, he might have lingered on life's
brink upon a shabby pension; or, forgotten, starved. But being
the heir of the house of Bristol, he was in his father's lifetime
called to the Upper House, and, at last, made a Cabinet
Minister. 1
Walpole, feeling no longer under any necessity to restrain
his wrath, made George II. avenge him of his enemies, at a
Council held at Hampton Court. The King called for the
Book, and directed the name of Pulteney to be struck out of
the list of Privy Councillors; and he further ordered that he
should be removed from all Commissions of the Peace and
Vice-Lieutenancy of Counties.2
To suit the humour of the hour, Mountfort's Fall of Mor-
timer was revived. In the prologue the political purpose was
avowed :-
"The British Constitution so much prized,
You'll see by one bad man was almost sacrificed.
Grinding oppression large advances made,
And foul corruption was become a trade.”
The colloquy of discontented knights and nobles recalled the
many arrogant assumptions of the First Lord, and injustice
wrought at his bidding to make room for such as he preferred,
Especially he was reviled for making a showy Peace without
secure foundations, which it was said could not last, and yet
would cost the country dear. Grumbling of the meaner sort was
interwoven with seditious threats of mailed revolt in times gone
by. The openness with which offices and dignities in Church
and State were trafficked in to prop up power or gratify the
greed of favourites was pressed upon the notice of the Heir
to the Throne, as it had been in Plantagenet days. The over-
1 Privy Seal in 1740.
July, 1731, London Gazette.
2
400
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
bearing Minister of Edward II. exclaimed, “The weight of pri-
vate and public affairs hangs so heavy on my shoulders that
were it not for the Queen I don't know what I should do.
What with solicitations, envy, and keeping things easy and
quiet among my creatures, I'm plagued out of my senses." In
a dialogue with the Queen, he was made to foreshadow what
must be the consequence if his rivals should gain power by their
ascendancy with her son, and her Majesty was made scornfully
to own her unmaternal disposition, and to vow that she would
not submit in any event to drop the reins of Government.
The ignorance of the public was trusted to overlook the wide
disparity of circumstances between the flagrant scandals of
Isabella's Court and the decorum of that of Caroline; and her
unfortunate aversion for her son was rudely depicted in the
jealousy and hatred of the mother of Edward III. Even faction
did not seriously pretend belief in the analogy of regal dishonour;
but the re-edited text of the drama was packed full of obvious
allusions and insulting phrases that rendered their citation in
the daily Press intolerable,
Government was so incensed at its indecency and injustice,
that a posse of constables was sent to the stage door of Drury
Lane, with orders to arrest the chief performers. They had
notice, however, and made off in time to escape, while the piece
was suspended. The players made their peace as best they
could with the Lord Chamberlain, who peremptorily " forbade
their tongue to speak of Mortimer," and the dramatic prototype
of Ministerial usurpation was consigned to rest for another
thirty years.
Denied the advantages of histrionic scenery and costume, the
bitterness of political controversy sought fresh vent in pamphlet
and periodical. The hail of party invective was only inter-
rupted by laughing gleams of caricature in prose or ribald
rhyme unmeasured in the enmity they breathed and unmis-
takable in personality of aim. Walpole's greed of power made
him especially, if not exclusively, worth vilipending; and, with
all his toughness and phlegm, he could not keep his temper.
For him the Press was a pillory, which at Court he affected to
spurn as affording only harmless amusement to the mob; but
at the Cockpit he spoke of it as intolerable, and insisted that
the law officers should be instructed to put it down. He
PRESS PROSECUTIONS. .
401
believed that Caleb Danvers was Pulteney, and that the printer
might be scared into giving him up. The calmer-judging of
his colleagues would fain. have let the Craftsman spend its
classic vehemence in vain ; but the Dictator would have his
way, and prosecutions were resolved on.
The Grand Jury of Middlesex were asked to present as false,
scandalous, and malicious libels, tending to bring the Govern-
ment into contempt, and mislead the people into a belief that
they were aggrieved by needless taxation, as also to sow doubts
of the legality of the King's title to the Crown, and of the
wisdom of the foreign policy of the Government, the authors,
performers, and publishers of certain plays, pamphlets, and
journals, the inost remarkable of which were the new edition
of The Fall of Mortimer, Robin's Gaine, or Seven's the Main,
The Chelsea Monarch, or Money Rules All, particular numbers
of the Daily Courant, and Fog's Journal, and an ironical answer
to the Craftsman, all of which deserved to be brought to con-
dign punishment
A belief prevailed that Pulteney contributed good writing as
well as hard cash to the support of the Craftsman; and there is
no trace of his disavowal. But after Bolingbroke's death,
Franklyn, the publisher, on whose courage and fidelity the
promoters had good cause to rely, told Horace Walpole that,
beyond furnishing political hints, Pulteney took no part in
the publication and never wrote an article in it. 1 He and
Wyndham, with other persons of distinction, were recognised
among the crowd awaiting the trial. When asked had they
found true bills, eleven Grand Jurors only answered their
names, and they refused the suggestion of the Judge that one
of the Common Jury panel should be associated with them
in order to make up the legal quorum.
Hoadly, the ablest friend of Ministers on the Episcopal Bench,
in a letter doubtless intended for the eyes of the Queen, was
concerned to see the freedom of the Press at last break into ex-
cess; but what could usefully be attained by the prosecution of
printers and publishers now set on foot? “I defy them to name
any one instance (excepting the case of high treason) in which
a prosecution of this sort did not end to the prejudice of the
1 Letter to Mann, 27th April, 1753.
? IIth July, 1731.
VOL. I.
2
D D
402
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Administration, even where they succeeded in a sentence for
punishment; how much less where they, perhaps, can never
succeed, but must go on still to disappointment, as they have
done already. I wish they would consider this experience, in-
stead of consulting their present anger. I am sure I could name
twenty instances of the truth of what I now say, and what I have
often said to them and theirs heretofore."
The prosecution lay over till Michaelmas Term, and curiosity
was agape as to what the next step would be ; but the second
and third of November passed, and the Attorney-General made
no sign. The Courant published a paragraph noting the fact
without comment, but took care to give five columns of argu-
mentative answer to the fallacies and futilities of the Craftsman.
The savour of penitence was sweet in the nostrils of power, and
the peace-offering was accepted. The Craftsınan stuck to his
fight, and reiterated in plainer English, if possible, his re-ac-
tionary theories of democratic kingcraft.
While resident at Dawley, Bolingbroke corresponded with not
a few friends and officials of Government on terms of presumed
intimacy and genial profession of regard. Scarce a word some-
times was said of politics, and not even a grumble at bad weather
to mar the gentle flow of good taste and good humour, which he
knew so well how to affect even when he felt it not.i
Lord Essex, in his way, kept up a still less eclectic correspon-
dence, including leading members of the enemy in Parliament.
Pulteney excused his abstinence from rumours of the racier sort
by reminding the Earl that in the then state of the Post, “Sir
Robert would see everything he wrote to him, and his friend the
Duke of Newcastle would know a little of the matter.' But
Bolingbroke reverted under his breath to the gratification of the
power of invective that he loved, and Walpole engaged more
inveterately than ever in organising the resources of obloquy,
wherewith his opponents were bespattered. His creed was a
profound belief in metal-almighty, which when duly appealed to,
never failed. His first important office, sufficiently profitable in
clean hands, he risked and lost for the sake of a corrupt present
declared by Parliament to have been a bribe, the discovery where-
of lodged him in the Tower. But the mysteries of money-
To Lord Essex, Minister at Turin, ist Oct., 1732.-NIS.
2 November, 1732. —NIS.
» 2
1
RELIEF OF DISSENTERS.
403
making, commercial and political, retained their fascination.
More knowing than his mis-calculating colleagues, he early saw
through the chimerical imposture of Law, and would have warned
them individually and collectively against the South Sea snare;
but finding his expostulations useless, he went on with the crowd
just as if he were deceived, taking care to sell out in time. For
his family he was never tired of accumulating sinecures and
pensions, and that he contrived to pile up riches no one at-
tempted to deny. But if he loved gold, he was ready to spend
it not only in pomp and pleasure, but in constant and consider-
able expenditure for its defence. The openness of his dealings
in the lobby had become a by-word. And when denounced in
contemporary speech and writing, he did not grudge high pay
for stout and saucy contradiction. One of his chief minions in
the Press, Arnall, was said to have netted from time to time
£10,000, by the manufacture of fables serviceable to the Minister,
and the fearless satirist, provoked by their audacity, exclaimed in
irony, "Spirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie !"
Notwithstanding the repeal of the Schism Act, the dream still
troubled fitfully some of the zealots of ecclesiastical ascendancy,
that a license from the bishop of the diocese was in point of law
indispensable for the teaching of a grammar school. At Olney,
near Northampton, Dr. Doddridge had succeeded in establishing
an academy where the sons of Dissenters of the middle class
availed themselves of the opportunity of obtaining sound classical
and scientific education without being obliged to conform to the
rights of the Established Church. Leave had not been asked for
the opening of the seminary; and until its reputation spread, its
liberty of learning was not questioned. But at length Reynolds,
Vicar-General of Peterborough, in the name of Bishop Clavering,
served notice of a suit for " teaching boys and young men in the
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew speech, without any licence or faculty,
thereby endangering their souls' health, and the welfare of the
community.” Unlearned in the law, the master sought the ad-
vice of Dunk Halifax, the nephew and intimate of the Secretary
of State, who bade him fear nothing and make no concession
that might set a precedent for like proceedings elsewhere. The
result vindicated this course, Lord Chancellor King dismissing
the intolerant petition with costs. Walpole had devised and
carried in the Cabinet a practical scheme of relief from the bur-
D D 2
404
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
then of the Test Acts in England. Some years before an Act
of Indemnity had been conceded in Ireland to Presbyterians from
the penalties incurred by them for not taking the Coronation
oaths, and the Queen would have rejoiced that an equal mcasure
of relaxation had been obtained in England. Difficulties with-
out number stood in the way as they are always sure to do in the
path of everything new that is really good. It had taken no
little pains and trouble to bring timorous friends to this neutral
ground of toleration and to hold them there, and to keep up to
the mark those whose firmness thawed at every hot breath of
intolerance. But the Bill of Indemnity, once passed, was re-
newed every year after for a century, with ever-decreasing qualms
and quibbles, until at last the time-eaten statute of Charles II.
was swept away.
With Stanhope and Sunderland, the hopes of the Dissenters of
an absolute repeal of the Test Act had seemed to die, for nothing
could induce Walpole to attempt its repeal. He would not have
minded so much the dissatisfaction of the High Church clergy ;
but the exultation of the emancipated would, he feared, destroy
him. With the signal astuteness that formed so distinctive a
feature in his character, he had probably perceived a new in-
fluence maturing unnoticed by courtiers and intriguers, which in
the casualties of Royal life, might one day con:e to be of no little
weight Caroline, while Princess of Wales, ventured not to meddle
in affairs, or even in political conversations, lest her husband's
position, already difficult enough, should be said by any to be
further embarrassed by her open and unadvised speaking. Wal-
pole instinctively discerned that her thoughts were better worth
sounding than those of most of his colleagues, and that her re-
pressed but earnest leanings in favour of the opinions of Hoadly
and Clarke might hereafter exercise no little influence in Church
and State. Cautiously but continuously the wiliest of Aatterers
contrived to pay his intellectual court to this remarkable woman,
and sought to enlist her sympathy in the difficulties of creed and
caste with which he wished her to believe his political love of
religious liberty had to contend.
The Dissenters had hitherto acquiesced in their exclusion from
all higher offices, and relying on the fair words in private of some
of the party in power, had zealously supported them at elections.
But as year after year rolled by without the repeal of their
INTERPOSITION OF HOADLY.
405
statutable disqualifications, they began to think they had been
passive too long; and as a dissulution drew nigh they proceeded
to organise in every town and county committees to press their
suit and obtain if possible some definite answer before the
general election. All this was very embarrassing to those who
had never meant to risk their places by keeping their promises,
or weaken their party by alienating the many who regarded the
ascendancy of the Church as a prime consideration in the
political game. Queen Caroline was persuaded to send for
Hoadly, who had consistently advocated at all times the
rightfulness and policy of repealing the Test Act, and urged
him to use his known influence with the Dissenters not to press
their claim at so inconvenient a season. The Bishop seems to
have acted cautiously in the matter, but the part he undertook
inevitably drew upon him suspicion ; and he became the subject
of much misrepresentation accordingly. A false account of his
interview with the Queen was put about, which mortified him so
much that he went to Walpole to remonstrate and to warn him
that in defence of his own consistency he must reiterate his con-
viction that there was no ground either of expediency or justice
in further prolonging the disabilities of the Nonconformists.
The wily strategist assured him he had never heard of the
rumour ; thought the Bishop's character stood too high to be
touched by it; was sure no rational man could mistake his
opinions; and confidently intimated that his own were the same.
Hoadly was not duped, but he knew that an unreasonable dis-
cussion of the question in Parliament would split the Parlia-
mentary party, and commit many to the wrong side, without
securing any counteracting advantage. If he were only authorised
to assure his Dissenting friends of the Minister's real sentiments
and favourable intentions, something might be done to accommo-
date the difficulty. But Sir Robert would give no pledge, and
the Bishop was baffled. A London Committee, however, had
been chosen, to whom those of the provinces confided the task
of negotiating with Whitehall. A formal conference took place
between a deputation from the Committee and the Lord Chan-
cellor, Lord President, the two Secretaries of State, the Speaker,
and the First Lord of the Treasury. According to the Vice-
Chamberlain, who acted as Wag-in-Waiting, Sir Robert repeated
most of the things he had said to the Bishop of Salisbury. The
406
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Speaker avoided giving an opinion on the thing itself, but was
explicit on the inexpediency of bringing it now before Parlia-
ment. Lord President looked wise, was dull, took snuff, and
said nothing. Harrington acted a similar part. The Chancellor
and Newcastle had done better had they followed that example,
but “both spoke very plentifully, and were equally unintelligible,
the one from having lost his understanding, and the other from
never having had any."1 The result was that the deputation re-
ported in favour of postponing the question ; and between the
manoeuvring skill of Ministers, and the compliance of those
who had been entrusted with the conduct of the business,
the Dissenters were obliged to put up once more with dis-
appointment.
Two individuals, hitherto unknown, appear about this time
upon the scene, each without the adventitious aid of rank, wealth,
or connections, who were each destined to play a notable part in
the confidential councils of Government. Andrew Stone, a gentle-
man of good character, lately called to the Bar, was introduced
by his relative, Lord Barnard, to the Secretary of State, as being
worthy of his notice and possessing qualities likely to render him
especially useful and worthy of trust. The aspirant to official
employment rendered himself so agreeable, that his Grace made
him one of his private secretaries at a salary of £200 a-year, for
"he was the most charming man he had ever known.” 2 He
soon acquired unbounded influence, which in the main he
appears to have exercised usefully and sagaciously, having not
only the faculty of inventing at all times clear thoughts for his
often puzzled patron, but the rarer gift of making him believe
them to be his own.
Mrs. Howard, still reckoned beautiful, but growing rather deaf,
retained her place at Court; piquing so little the jealousy of
the Queen that when her husband became Earl of Suffolk she
was made Mistress of the Robes. Not long afterwards she was
left a widow with sufficient jointure to choose a residence for
herself beyond the rim of ceremony and splendour. Lords
Pembroke and Burlington designed for her Marble Hill near
Richmond ; Lord Bathurst and Mr. Pope the gardens, while
Gay and Arbuthnot undertook the decorations of the interior;
1 Hervey's “ Memoirs,” Vol. I., p. 157.
2 Newcastle to his wife, 29th August, 1732. --MS.
SOPHIA WALMODEN.
407
and here she was glad, as she said, to escape into quiet and
liberty after fifteen years of servitude.
Meanwhile, a younger and more gifted rival attracted the ad-
miration of the King. While at Herrenhausen in 1731, his wander-
ing fancy was captivated by the girlish looks and unartificialised
grace of Sophia Walmoden, daughter of one of his household
there. To this cause was ascribed the unusual length of his stay
abroad.
No pains were spared to make the utmost mischief of his
inconstancy, and as he did not revisit Hanover in the ensuing
year the Queen was led to believe that his affection was not
more fixed than it had sometimes been before. There was no
rumour of the new favourite appearing in England; and even
Hervey did not imagine that there could be any lasting cause
for Queenly misgiving or a Minister's mistrust.
408
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EXCISE SCHEME.
1732-34.
Transfer of Taxation from Land to Trade-Salt Tax-Tobacco and Wine-
Criticism of Pulteney-Dwindling Majorities—Excise Scheme Aban-
doned-Sir C. Wager First Lord of the Admiralty--Hardwicke on the
Woolsack—Talbot Chief Justice—Attempt to Repeal Septennial Act,
General Elections-Pelhams Everywhere Successful-Harrington a
Cypher-Hoadly's Hopes of Winchester-Relief of Quakers-Boling-
broke's Dissertation on Parties.
WA
VTALPOLE was now at the height of power. In the Cabinet
he had got rid of nearly every one suspected of clinging to
the old right of personal judgment; and from the Parlia-
mcntary harvest-field, if he had not driven all who sowed tares, he
was able to sift and scatter the fruit of their thwarting husbandry.
Majorities fluctuating from two to three score defeated every
attack on Government. The second Treaty of Vienna had won
back the friendship of Charles VI. by recognising his daughter
Maria Theresa as heiress of the Empire, reversing the policy of
Townshend ; and France being faithful to the policy of Fleury,
so long as a breach with Spain could be averted, there was no
contingency visible of Continental war. The revenue had not
lost its elasticity, and one year with another it adequately met
the expenditure. The number of regular troops under arms was
under 18,000; and, except by some inconsiderable additions to
the Artillery and Marines, the standing forces of the Kingdom
had not been augmented. Trade and Agriculture if not always
flourishing, were for the most part uncomplaining ; protecting
duties kept up the price of corn, and the spirit of maritime enter-
prise sought without check profit and adventure on every sea.
Dynastic disaffection hardly knew where to lay its head; the
Colonies did not murmur ; and Ireland was mute. Yet it was
SALT TAX.
409
in such a condition of things that the Minister matured projects
of finance tending thoroughly to change the balance of burthens
borne by the different classes of the community, and so to change
it as to fill the opulent more fully with good things, and to send
the needy emptier away. None of the specious reasons assigned
by the Minister when driven hard in defence of his memorable
scheme, nor all of them taken together, sufficed to account for
his confidence in suddenly launching it, or his angry and resent-
ful obstinacy in treating as enemies all who opposed it. Under-
neath all these there doubtless lay the hope and purpose of
rendering his power impregnable by the purchase of sympathies
and suffrages that otherwise he knew he could not gain. The
privileged orders had for half a century submitted to pay an
income tax of from ten to twenty per cent., in order to carry on
the Government upon the constitutional system : a smaller pro-
portion of the entire cost being borne by duties of excise on a
few articles of every-day consumption. If the number of these
could be sufficiently multiplied, nobles and squires might be
relieved by degrees from the weight of an impost which even
Whigs were never allowed to forget, and half the Tories could
never thoroughly forgive.
During the long wars with France the land tax had been
raised to four shillings in the pound, and the increasing wants of
the Exchequer were met by excise on beer, spirits, and salt,
customs on wine, tobacco, brandy, rum, and spice, raw silk, and
wool, and fabrics of every kind; lotteries and loans. On the
return of peace, and with the prospect of its continuance, various
schemes had been tried for the liquidation of debt, with but
indifferent success; one of the most plausible being Walpole's
device of the Sinking Fund. He had likewise done a good deal
în 1717 and 1722 in reducing import duties, and recently the
odious and mischievous salt tax, which had crippled the fishing,
curing, and tanning industries, had been allowed by him to
expire. Lotteries were still made use of occasionally to eke out
the revenue; but as everybody in good society gambled, nobody
could pretend to complain of the Treasury doing so likewise.
The yearly rate of the land tax had been lowered in the last
reign to two shillings in the pound. Such was the financial con-
dition in February, 1732, when Walpole, with the consent of the
Cabinet, opened his memorable Budget, the first chapter of which
410
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
was a Bill for reimposing the duty on salt recently repealed as
odious and pernicious. The measure was recognised as a ten-
tative step in the development of a comprehensive scheme for
shifting the burthen of taxation from income to consumption,
and lightening the charges on property by increasing those on
articles of first necessity. “Of all the taxes I ever could think
of,” he said, “there is not one more general or less felt than that
upon salt. It is a tax which every man in the nation contributes
to according to his circumstances, a poor man such a trifle that
it will hardly bear a name; a rich man who lives luxuriously
contributes more; a man of great estates keeps many servants,
and consequently contributes more. Upon the other hand, there
never was a tax laid upon this nation more unjust and unequal than
the land tax. Land-holders bear but a small proportion to the
people of this nation, or of any nation; yet no man contributes any
the least share to this tax but that he is possessed of a landed estate.
Yet it has been continued for above forty years. It has con-
tinued so long and has lain so heavy that I may venture to say
many a landed gentleman in this Kingdom has thereby been
utterly ruined and undone. This consideration has prompted
me to move that the former Acts for levying a duty on salt be
revived for three years. If successful in this motion, I shall move
that one shilling in the pound, and no more, be raised upon land;
but if the House does not agree to the motion I now make, I
must move for a land tax of two shillings in the pound, for so
much will be absolutely necessary for the current service of the
year.
I have no other view than a desire to serve the landed
interest, and I shall always look upon it as a great honour that,
after a continuance of a land tax of four, three, or two shillings
at least in the pound for forty years, it was at last reduced to
one at a time when I had a share in the Administration. Our
nobility and gentry were once famous for their hospitality and
generosity. If the unavoidable necessities of State have obliged
them for so many years to abridge their expense, and contract
their manner of living, let us do at least what is in our power to
restore them to their former state by relieving them of a part of
that burthen which they, and they only, have for so many years
been charged with."
Sir W. Wyndham led the refusal of the proffered boon.
Many of the country gentlemen, he said, were poor indeed, and
PULTENEY AND WYNDHAM OPPOSE.
411
most of them were pinched by taxation and mortgage, but they
looked for reduction of public expenditure as the legitimate
means of relief, not to asserting for themselves a special exemp-
tion from national liability. This change, on the contrary,
would involve a multiplication of Government officials, without
whom no indirect tax could be collected, while for the tax on
land no greater staff was needed for one rate than for another.
But, in truth, this was a dangerous precedent. It was a first
.step towards a general excise upon everything they could eat or
drink.
Walpole scoffed at the fears of the Executive being made
dangerously strong by the addition of 400 or 500 salt officers.
As for a general excise, he was persuaded that no man ever
thought of introducing it into this country. He could answer for
himself that he never did. But an excise was only a word for a
tax raised in a different manner; and if by experience it should
be found that the present method of raising taxes was more
burthensome than an excise, he did not see why they should be
frightened by the two words general excise.
Pulteney declared that public expectation had been raised
high by the promise of retrenchment in the Speech from the
Throne, that the Estimates for the current year would be found
less than in any preceding. How were these hopes to be dis-
appointed ? A part of the community was, indeed, to be
relieved, but the remainder, constituting by far the greater
portion, were to be obliged to pay a tax for which the only
excuse was that it was equally onerous to most of them. But
two years ago the tax on salt was taken off to relieve the manu-
facturers and artificers, who then were said to be especially
depressed, and whose condition was not said to be materially
improved now, though it could not be supposed that in the in-
terval the landed gentry had become perceptibly poorer. Could
his Majesty be supposed to have changed his opinion, or was it
only his servants who had changed theirs ? Giving them credit
for the best motives, he still contended that it were more for the
credit of the Crown, the welfare of the country, and content-
ment of the people, that fiscal arrangements should be allowed
to remain as they then were, rather than an invidious exemption
should be set up, without the excuse of any pressing necessity in
favour of the ruling classes. Nevertheless, the House, by 225
412
IIISTORY OF CABINETS.
to 187, voted the Resolution. Many amendments were attempted
in Committee, but the Ministerial majority rather increased than
dimninished, and in the Upper House the Bill passed with com-
paratively few dissentients.
Had Walpole been content with carrying the salt tax on
the grounds he assigned for it, the ferment might have died down,
and his expansion of the Bonding system to wine and tobacco
could only have tended to conciliate his opponents in the whole-
sale trade, as it eventually did, when that part of the scheme was
embodied without difficulty in a fresh statute. But in the elation
of triumph in his first essay, he indulged in the forecast that his
fiscal policy would be a very good thing, if applied to many
more articles capable of yielding excise. It was this unwary
threat that kindled widespread fear and anger in the community,
and justified the Press in reiterating the apprehension that he con-
templated a progressive transfer of taxation from income to ex-
penditure. Nobody looked for change, nobody wanted it; and the
clamour it raised was notable. But success had made Sir Robert
sanguine, and he persuaded himself that, above and below all the
controversies of party, he could appeal without fail to the selfish
motives of the rich and noble, and bribe them by a direct offer
to reduce their contributions to the State, increasing proportion-
ally those exacted from the many who live by labour. Did not the
whole of one House, and four-fifths of the other belong to the
ranks and conditions that he proposed to untax? Was it in
Parliamentary human nature to resist such temptation, whatever
the paulopost future reproach or peril might be ?
During the Recess, the managers of Opposition had not been
idle, and ere the year was out the varied tunings of the instru-
ments began to harmonise into a menacing approach to move-
ments in a minor key. The notes of warning sounded in the :
debate on the salt tax of a comprehensive excise to come, had
been caught up and repeated everywhere, and though Members
of the Government were not allowed to pretend uneasiness, they
were unable to stop their ears, or forbear giving sigh to sigh
when safe from overhearing. Even the experienced Delafaye,
who was confidentially in charge of all the Ducal Secretary of
State's half secrets and omissions, gave occasional vent to his.
concern at the general outlook
9th February, 1732.
1
FEARS OF A GENERAL EXCISE.
413
"The intended turning the customs on wine and tobacco, or
part of them, into an excise is what is likely to give the most
occupation this Session. - You will have seen in the prints what
caballing there has been all over the Kingdom to stir up the
people against it. There is not a cobbler but is made to believe
that he is to pay an excise before he eats his bread and cheese
and drinks his pot of beer. Some blame Sir Robert Walpole
for omitting to have something printed to explain his scheme.
I think it more becoming the dignity of the Government to let
the thing justify itself and the people see how they have been
imposed upon by incendiaries.” 1
Henry Pelham, who responded more closely to the views and
utterances of the undaunted Minister, tried to put a better face
on affairs.
" Parliament is now met, and the enemy ranged, and
talking big, but if I can judge by their countenances it is but a
copy; and I am satisfied the clamours they have endeavoured to
raise are local, and will be easier quelled than even those they
have been formerly foiled in.” 2
The produce of the revenue did not realise expectation ; and
if a grumbling clerk in the Department had possessed the gift
of prophecy, which the dullest of subsequent Chancellors of the
Exchequers is said to have possessed, he might have whispered
to a mate that the First Lord would after all find out “in fiscal
arithmetic twice two too frequently made one." The doubled
salt tax fell short of what was wanted by several hundred thou-
sand pounds; and Walpole was obliged to ask, in Committee of
Ways and Means, leave to take from the Sinking Fund half a
million to defray ordinary out-goings. Pulteney took away the
breath of the House by the announcement that something worse
was actually impending, something“more terrible and monstrous,"
which he called on Government to disclose before they were
asked to vote on this preliminary misappropriation. “I will not
call it robbery, for that is a harsh word; and I admit that on
former occasions lesser sums have been abstracted from the Sink-
ing Fund, on pretence of borrowing, but these have never been
repaid ; and now it is proposed to snip £500,000 more. The
right hon. gentleman had the vanity once to call himself the
father of the Sinking Fund; but if Solomon's judgment was
1 Delafaye to Lord Essex, 18th January, 1733.—MS.
2 To Lord Essex, 29th January, 1733.--MS.
414
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
right, he who is thus for splitting and dividing the child can
never be deemed to be the true father. He may claim, and I
shall allow him the honour of being the father of two other chil-
dren lately brought forth in this nation—a Standing Army and
an Excise.” The further development of the latter project was,
in fact, so far advanced that its approach had become generally
known, and the resolution dealing with the Sinking Fund was
looked upon by all parties as but an interpolation not worth try-
ing their strength upon. It was consequently allowed to pass
without division, after a debate in which the best defence of
Ministers was made by Henry Pelham, the favourite disciple of
Walpole, and who was in due time destined to take his place as
Finance Minister.
The commercial body likewise resisted for the most part any
scheme which, as was said by its defenders, would make all
England one free port—not because they were insensible of the
advantages that would thence arise, but because they viewed
with aversion and suspicion not to be appeased an augmentation
of the vexations and burthens of a general system of excise.
An Act was indeed passed without opposition, which gave the
option of warehousing tea, coffee, and chocolate free of the
customs charge, and paying the duty upon them in broken bulk
as they were taken out of bond by the wholesale dealers. But
when it was sought to apply the principle still further, people
took alarm. Government strove to rest their intended reforms
on the need of correcting great mischiefs and scandals in the
collection of the revenue. Abuses to an extent not generally
known existed in the Customs Department. From the great
extent of coast and the seafaring habits of the population, it had
become impossible to prevent the growth of smuggling in pro-
portion as the duties on articles of luxury brought from abroad
were gradually augmented. A Committee of Enquiry reported,
that the gains of this unlawful occupation grew greater every
year, and with them the number and hardihood of those engaged
in it. In the space of nine years 251,320 pounds weight of tea
and 652,924 gallons of brandy had been seized and condemned ;
and upwards of 2,000 persons prosecuted. 229 boats and other
vessels had been condemned, 185 of which had been burnt, and
the remainder retained for the service of the Crown. There
seemed to be more connivance with regard to wine, as within two
GROWTH OF SMUGGLING.
415
years 4,738 hogsheads were run in Hampshire, Dorsetshire, and
Devonshire alone, for which thirty revenue officers were dis-
missed, and 400 persons were indicted. Tobacco, subject to
somewhat less than sixpence-halfpenny a pound average duty,
was computed to yield a revenue of £754,131 : but the net pro-
duce, after deducting the cost of collection, drawbacks, and losses
by fraud of one description or other, did not amount to more than
£161,000. Persons esteemed rich and respectable were known to
be deeply implicated in this system, and among the most attrac-
tive ventures of trade those of contraband were notoriously
reckoned. To the demoralisation thus fostered was to be added
the disgrace of crimes of violence, which frequently went un-
punished. Within a short period 250 Custom House officers had
been beaten and abused, and six had been murdered. The First
Lord of the Treasury knew well how to make the most of such
a case for fiscal reform, and he relied on his power as an advocate
and his authority over his Parliamentary retainers, to carry the
change he meditated. Before his comprehensive plans were
matured, however, the storm against them had risen so high that
he contented himself with proposing a reduction of the tobacco
duties, and their immediate transfer from the Customs Depart-
ment to that of Excise. Everyone might thenceforth import
and re-export as much of the coveted leaf as he pleased, without
any charge upon entry. It was only upon being taken out of
the warehouse for home consumption that the duty was to be
levied as a part of the inland revenue. A small addition to
the number of officials to be employed in the collection of the
revenue ould be sufficient, and he ridiculed the apprehensions
ent tained of augmented patronage or influence; and de-
nounced the mob of sturdy beggars, as he termed the numerous
deputations and petitioners who thronged the approaches to
the House; and tried to persuade the landed interest that he was
their best friend.
The long-expected struggle began on the 14th of March, when
“there scarce ever was a greater appearance in the House, nor
a more numerous crowd in the Court of Requests, Westminster
Hall, and the adjoining places and passages. The precaution,
usual on such occasions, of having Justices of the Peace and
constables on hand was taken, but proved, happily, needless, for
there did not happen the least incident tending to a tumult.
416
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
The debate was opened at three-quarters past twelve by Sir
Robert Walpole, who, in a specch that lasted two hours and a
quarter, explained his scheme," which put a fourpenny excise
duty on tobacco, with an odd penny reserved to the Customs for
the Civil List, the transfer of the duty on wine being postponed
till after the holidays. “The Master of the Rolls had come," he
said (and everyone believed him), “quite unbiased, and fully re-
solved to be determined by the debate. He recapitulated the
arguments on both sides, adding some good reasons of his own
which induced him to be for the question.” Sir Robert, self-
possessed and confident, summed up the debate in a second
speech at midnight, and the inotion was carried by a large
majority. But, instead of abating, the storm grew greater than
ever. The minority bid the timid hearken to the general shout
of execration with which out of doors the project had been
received. The sunshine of faith in the majority was overcast,
and even incredulous Delafaye began to feel something of the
responsibilities :
We are now, after a week's cessation of arms, fighting the
excise over again. Yesterday the Bill was brought in, and
though it is not usual to have long debates upon a first reading,
the House sat till half-an-hour after midnight. At last it was
ordered a second reading by 236 against 200; so you see it
is a matter stiffly contended by the minority, and all manner of
art and industry is used by the Opposition to keep up a spirit
against it.
It is observed that Lord Chesterfield's brothers
voted against the majority. The motion to print the Bill was
rejected to-day by 128 to 112, and the proposal of an excise on
wine is put off till to-morrow sennight; so that we are for doing
nothing rashly, and probably it will be a long session." ? It was
vain to deny the significancy of these dwindling numbers. They
were in part explained by the successive defection of several
persons of note, and some even of those who held posts in the
Army and Household. The Minister was hustled on quitting
the House, and the language of petitions from all parts of the
country became daily more threatening. That of the Common
Council was conspicuously violent, and on all sides there were
indications of a state of feeling the most sinister.
? Delafaye to Lord Essex, 15th March, 1733. -- 11S.
2 Delafaye to Lord Essex, 5th April, 1733. --MS.
EXCISE SCHEME DEFEATED.
417
The Queen sent for Lord Scarborough, as one on whose calm-
ness and clearness of judgment she was accustomed to depend,
and sought his unreserved opinion and advice. He is said to
have replied that he would answer for his regiment against the
Pretender, but not against the opposers of the excise scheme.
Her courage, till then unshaken, gave way, and with emotion she
exclaimed that the measure must be dropped. Walpole called a
meeting of his Parliamentary supporters and desired to hear
what they thought should be done. His flatterers encouraged
him to persist, and he was assured by his Whips that they might
still pull through. But he felt that at last he must give way, and
on the 11th of April he deferred proceeding further with the Bill
till the 12th of June, before which time it was understood the
Session would have closed. He had become convinced that,
even if carried, the measure could not be executed save by
military force; and he would not, he said, incur the risk of
bloodshed for the sake of any tax, however gainful or just.1
Opposition were too glad to allow this to pass without conten-
tion, and then to triumph on the evidence thus afforded that
the comprehensive tariff of the Treasury was breaking down.
In the last division several whom Government depended on
deserted. In all twenty-seven Members who had originally
supported changed their votes. One of these was Colonel W.
Townshend, a younger son of the late Minister, who, besides the
patent office of Usher of the Exchequer given him by his father,
held the post of Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of
Wales.
The joy of the people broke forth in every variety of form.
All over London bonfires blazed, and merry-makers made the
night air loud. At Oxford the feasting lasted for three days;
and round the blazing piles healths were drunk to Ormond,
Bolingbroke, and James III., and it was not without difficulty
that the tumult, in which all manner of outspoken sedition was
interchanged by town and gown, was quelled by the joint efforts
of the proctor and the mayor. It was high time to have done
with the unpopular scheme of revenue.
In their eagerness to overthrow Walpole, his enemies, among
whom were reckoned Argyll, Montrose, Stair, Marchmont,
| Coxe, on authority of Mr. White, a confidential partisan of the Duke of New
castle.
VOL. I.
EE
418
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Bolton, Chesterfield, Clinton, and Cobham-all holding office
during pleasure—had resolved to ask an audience of the Queen,
in order to try how far they could work either on her reason or
her fear by telling her in the strongest terms the unfitness and the
unpopularity of the measure pushed by her favourite, setting
forth the hazards of maintaining him, and endeavouring to per-
suade her of the impossibility there was that he should be able
to carry it through. Lord Stair, as spokesman, complained
openly that Walpole absolutely governed. No instances more
signal were requisite, he said, than the ill-usage to which he him-
self had been subjected. When he talked of his conscience, the
Queen is said to have exclaimed: "Why talk of conscience or
the responsibility of representatives ?
The terms of the Earl's remonstrance and the Queen's reproof
may have been exaggerated by their cynical and unscrupulous
chronicler, but the number of the dissentients, threatened with
deprival, and the power they had shown to thwart the Minister
in legislation, led them, no doubt, to imagine it possible that
their collective protest would have weight if urged with sufficient
candour and in time. It is certain, however, that they mistook
the spirit of the Queen, who throughout was believed to have
sustained Walpole steadfastly to the end of her life.
Ministers were resolved to punish those who had contributed to
the defeat of their imposing scheme. Bolton and Clinton were
deprived of the Lieutenancies of their respective counties, and
Cobham of his Colonelcy of Guards. The Duke ceased to be
Ranger of the New Forest, Governor of the Isle of Wight, and
Colonel of his regiment. Montrose, appointed Keeper of the
Great Seal of Scotland since 1716, was deprived for his indepen-
dency, to make room for Lord Islay, who sympathised with his
brother but did not always side with him. The Earl of Morton
replaced Lord Stair as Vice-Admiral of Scotland. Lonsdale
became Privy Seal in England, while the Duke of Athol
acquired the same dignity in Scotland.
The terms on which Lord Islay personally stood towards his
elder brother were not supposed to be the friendliest, but this
did not affect the intimacy of their political relations. Their
alternate influence was great, and they had a mutual interest in
the prevalent belief that they understood one another. The
newly appointed Chancellor stuck more closely to the Whigs
CONSEQUENT DISMISSALS.
419
and was trusted by Walpole to the very eve of his fall. The
· Duke oscillated between parties; when he was in good humour
and got nearly as much as he wanted, siding with Government;
when put out of temper by importunities he could not obtain the
means of satisfying, going over to the Opposition and combining
with the Tories. But his followers being often hungry had to be
often fed, for he had adherents in the House of Commons, all of
whom in the well-bred language of debate, and in that of polite
Constitutional history, are gravely spoken of when ordered to
desert and mutiny as independent representatives of the people.
The most notable object of Ministerial resentment was Ches-
terfield. By nature incapable of contentment, he had not been
long in the Cabinet ere the perfunctory duties of Lord Steward
bored him; and even the opportunities at Court for displaying
his versatility in the arts of fascination were confined within too
narrow bounds. In Council his original suggestions came to
nothing, and he discovered, with surprise and mortification, how
little real share a younger member of the Cabinet might have in
the conduct of affairs. Walpole no longer took the trouble to
educate and manage his attachés ; and the morbid sensibility of
Chesterfield became convinced that he was ill-used. Having
held the rank for a season that he desired, why should he waste
life in a combination where he was not valued ? Others among
his colleagues had their specific causes of complaint, and it was
believed at the time that he and Dorset and Wilmington
mutually stimulated one another to disaffection on the great
trial of Ministerial stability. Two of Chesterfield's brothers
voted against the Excise Bill without fraternal reproof. What
need was there of further testimony ? Chesterfield was dis-
missed, and Walpole seized the opportunity for bringing in the
third Duke of Devonshire, to whom he paid unwavering atten-
tion to the end. A signal example was thus made of all who -
had been involved in the late mutiny and desertion, and
good things thus sequestered and redistributed would, it was
hoped, freshen the zeal of the numerous members of the privi-
leged class to whom a place was an object. The King, it was
thought, would have tried to save some of those who were thus
displaced ; but either he did not choose to try, or if he did he
failed to succeed in deprecating the wrath of the baffled
Minister, and things went on as before.
E E 2
420
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Care was taken to assure Diplomatists and Colonial function-
aries afar off that all that had occurred would not in the least
shake the Administration, and that everything would go on as
before. The removals from office of those who had deserted
during the fray would prove how mistaken were those who
flattered themselves that this incident would prove the Minister's
ruin," and the sanguine Under-Secretary was happy to say that
though there had been riots all over the country, there were many
on the right side. Ministers had, indeed, pulled through, yet the
Paymaster of the Forces owned to Lord Essex that they “had
all been put to their stumps ; but by the steadiness of the Party
in the House of Commons and the firmness of their Master they
were now got pretty firmly in their seats again, and he doubted
not in the least but that they should continue so." 2
Scarborough described himself as devoted to a new occupa-
tion, “looking after his own affairs, doing a little to improve his
seat at Lumley, which, though far north, had great natural
beauty. He was sorry for the recent changes," but knew
.nothing of what was going on in London.
In June, however, the Admiralty fell vacant by the demise of
Lord Torrington; and for once Walpole proposed to throw away
a great piece of preferment upon a fit and brave man, who was
a mere plebeian, Sir Charles Wager had served many years
afloat with distinction; he was an upright man, a staunch poli-
tician, and a personal adherent of the Minister. So little did he
expect such advancement, and so conscious does he seem to
have been of the censure his want of social pretensions would
entail on his patron, that in his letter accepting it, his sole
anxiety was to make out a decent pedigree for himself. The
storms he had braved, the fights he had won, and the scars
which he bore on his person, would, he well knew, go for nought
in comparison of a grandmother or a great-uncle of quality. Nor
was he mistaken in thus estimating the chances for and against
his being allowed to gain a foothold on forbidden ground. None
but a Peer was considered fit by George II. to preside at the
Board of Admiralty; and there were not wanting those about
him to say disparaging things of the gallant sailor's extraction.
Charles Delafaye to Lord Essex, 19th April, 1733.—MS.
? H. Pelham, 17th May, 1733. --MS.
3 To Lord Essex, from Lumley Castle, 28th July, 1733:--DIS.
SIR CHARLES WAGER.
421
Luckily for him and for the country, his all-powerful friend was
in no temper to be quizzed or cajoled out of the whimsical
preference he had just then conceived for vulgar merit : and
Wager was appointed.
He had been struck with the frankness and force of Sir
Charles Wager's way of dealing with practical difficulties in the
Department, where he had for some time been a member of the
Board. There were stifled murmurs, of course, and half-audible
cries of indignation, at a mere sailor, who was nobody, being
put over the heads of everybody of consequence who wanted the
post to succeed a member of the privileged House; but that was
rather an additional incentive to the angry dictator. He would
have him there and none else. One of the few letters of the Ad-
miral that have been preserved, sheds some light on the preference
thus shown for a brave and able man without ancestors, green
acres, or fashionable friends. Complaints had grown loud of the
lawless state of the Mediterranean, where the Spaniards, having
long been supreme, could ill reconcile themselves to British
competition :
"I perceive," wrote Wager," from the newspapers, that
though the money of the Assoynez ships was delivered, they
have found a pretence to stop some of the men-of-war, on
account of building a new Portobello, which I suppose is never
intended, for the country thereabouts is pretty much alike; but
it is as good a reason they find as any to stop the merchants'
money. It is said that the money they get from the clergy
pays for all their Barbary expeditions, though I do not see that
they have any prospect of propagating the faith among the
infidels; but by their own accounts they make great slaughter
amongst them. Have not the Moors a disadvantage that they
do not write newspapers and letters of intelligence? I tell the
Duke of Newcastle that if the Spaniards will not supply the
garrison of Gibraltar with provisions for their money, we must
have it from the Moors, and that upon their own terms, whether
it be powder or anything else. The seizing of the Register
ship at Campeachy no doubt put the Court of Spain out of
humour; but I have always said that, so long as they suffer
Garda Costas at the expense of private persons, such Garda
Costas (or pirates will rob and plunder, or they cannot subsist;
and if it should be continued-as I hope it will not-we shall be
422
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
sea.
forced to let loose our rogues from Jamaica and other places,
with the like commission, who would soon drive them out of the
I myself can remember to have seen it so in the West
Indies; but, indeed, it would be difficult to restrain or call in
our Garda Costas upon an accommodation, and there being but
few Spanish ships to be met with, they would be apt now and
then to take one of their own countrymen, as the Spanish Garda
Costas have done." What was most provoking was the way in
which habitually the Spanish authorities refused to pay com-
pensation for unjust seizures of our ships laden with negroes or
other valuable cargo, about which they seemed to banter us, to
see how much we would bear. “What can be said on their side
for these things I cannot see, or what our merchants or the
Parliament will say to it when such a stir, almost threatening us
with war, is made for our seizing one trifling ship of theirs, when
they have taken fifty of ours without making the least satisfac-
tion. Any ship that is carried in is entirely lost, though
acquitted, for the captors appeal, and the ship must lie, and
being perishable as well as the cargo, is sold, and the money is
put into the King of Spain's coffers, which in those countries
have no bottoms, or consume all that is put into them, for I
never heard that anything was ever taken out. The Spanish
Court think that we have so much advantage by our trade with
them that we will bear a great deal rather than have a squabble
with them, and, indeed, a trading nation should never be forward
to enter into a war with anybody, and I should be very sorry if
we should ever be obliged to enter into a war with Spain,
because it must be a great prejudice to both nations, let the
consequence of the war be what it would. No doubt Spain
may have as many ships as she pleases; she has bought some
in New England, and I believe she might build some in the
River Thames if she pleased ; but a nation that has not foreign
trade, and a navigation of their own sufficient to raise and
employ great numbers of seamen, can never have a sufficient
number of seamen of their own growth to have a fleet of
ships of war to be depended on. If we were to build ships
bigger than we do, we must make proportionable men to
handle them. Their arms are not long enough to reach over
the main yards to furl the mainsail, but great men are too
heavy generally, as well as too great ships. The King of
BIG SHIPS, BIG MEN.
423
Prussia's great Grenadiers are too heavy to march, and are
always carried in waggons.” 1
The Administration is described as at this period to have been
in a state bordering on mutiny, owing to the spread of the anarchic
belief that the ascendancy of Sir Robert was shaken, and his
reign drawing to a close : for was he not indeed king de facto,
and, if intellect were any title to govern, king by Right Divine ?
Devonshire, Grafton, and Newcastle, stood firmly by him; and
their station and property, as well as Parliamentary connections,
gave them great weight. But in Council they were of little use,
and in discussion, none.
The chief of the house of Cavendish
was an upright and good-natured man, fond of the fine arts
and fond of his friends, but fonder of his ease than either.
Attached to the Revolution settlement, and proud of the part his
family had borne therein, he supported Walpole as he had sup-
ported Townshend, for sake of the cause rather than for sake
of the man. His Grace of Grafton was a less conspicuous figure,
and in every way inferior in importance. With a good manner
and a good face, he had only made himself acceptable at Court;
and the Princes of the Hanoverian line were glad to have a
grandson of Charles II. for Chamberlain. Newcastle had less
social but more Parliamentary interest than either. Dorset, why
we know not, disliked the First Lord, and if Chesterfield is to be
believed, contributed with Wilmington to make him lend his aid
against the Excise Bill. Neither the Lord President nor the
Viceroy made the mistake of throwing away their places, and
their backbitings and intrigues were passed over.
Opposition, elated by victory, sought to press their advantage;
and a committee of twenty-one, to be chosen by way of ballot,
was proposed, to enquire into the frauds in the Customs, whose
prevalence and enormity were said to be unendurable. It would
not have been wise or decent to resist such a motion ; yet if a
majority of opponents were named, the prestige of Ministerial
strength would be further shaken, and none could tell what
expressions of censure upon the heads of departments party
spirit might introduce into the report. The night before the
committee was to be struck, Walpole harangued his supporters
at the Cockpit. He begged of them to waive all personal
preferences, and vote as one man for a given list. If they failed
1 Sir Charles Wager to William Cayley, 12th Nov., 1732.-M.S.
424
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
to do so, the ascendancy of the Whigs would be overthrown, the
Cabinet would be endangered, and, of course, the Protestant
succession put in jeopardy. For himself" he had always, to the
utmost of his power, obliged, maintained, and favoured that party
to whom he could give nothing because he owed everything, and
to whom if his situation enabled him to be useful and service-
able he was not conferring obligations, but paying debts, and
returning those kindnesses which he had first received. He was
not, therefore, pleading his own cause, but the cause of the Whig
party. He entreated them, therefore, for their own sakes, for
the sake of that Government and the reigning family, for the
sake and for the cause of liberty, to exert themselves with spirit
and unanimity on that occasion.” Such incantations had not
lost their charm, and next day the Government list was carried
by 294 to 209 votes : eighteen of the Opposition and but ten of
the Ministerialists having varied the names on their ballots.
This decisive vote put an end to the party struggle for the
Session; and it was some time before the discomfited Opposition
could rally their forces to a renewal of assault.
In the Upper House the anti-Ministerialists still looked about
for ground of quarrel, and for want of better arrayed their
strength upon a motion for enquiry into the affairs of the South
Sea Company, which being resisted, an animated debate on the
24th May ended in a division in which the numbers were equal,
seventy-five on either side. This was the result of several defec-
tions, including St. Albans, Manchester, Kent, and Montrose ;
the Earls of Scarborough, Pomfret, and Burlington ; Lords Fal-
mouth, Marchmont, Cobham, Onslow, and others. Other peers
were said to have been schooled and tampered with, and Govern-
ment influence waş stretched to the uttermost, but as it would
seem, with no graver effect than to procure, after many angry
debates, a bare majority of seventy-five to seventy, and with this
Walpole was fain to be content. He told the King that the
matter was in itself of no importance, and that as to the recu-
sants, he knew the reasons and the price of every one of them,
but that the one was not worth considering, nor the other worth
paying. But though not himself resentful, he found it impossible
to reconcile others to the retention of office by some who had
not only voted with Opposition, but signed a protest full of in-
vective against men in power
CIIANCELLOR TALBOT.
425
Government could not look without uneasiness on a state of
parties so nearly balanced in the Upper House, and resolved to
make some transfers thither from the Lower. Lord Hervey was
called up accordingly, and had an addition of a thousand a-year
out of the Civil List, and as he had a mind to strengthen the
interest of his family in Parliament, one of his brothers was
nominated in his stead for Bury. Ickworth thus gained an
additional voice in the Legislature, and the Treasury an additional
vote. Earl Powlett's eldest son, Lord Hinton, was likewise
called to swell the chorus, and made a Lord of the Bedchamber.
Two other additions were made to the Peers, but of a very
different kind.
Soon after the death of Chief Justice Raymond, the resigna-
tion of the Chancellor left the Chief Justiceship and the Great
Seal at the disposal of Government. The Attorney and
Solicitor General had for some time divided between them the
best business in equity ; Yorke was likewise eminent in the
Courts of Common Law, while Talbot declined practice in that
branch of the profession. It was therefore agreed that the
Attorney-General should take the Chief Justiceship, with an
augmented salary of £2,000 a-year, while the Solicitor-General
became Chancellor. The addition of Hardwicke and Talbot to
the Ministerial strength in the Lords was not regarded as super-
fluous to meet the resentful opposition of those who had been
recently dismissed. The new Peers, however, were not called
upon frequently in 1734 to serve their party, and their reputation
as judges was for the time unsullied by the suspicion of political
gratitude. Talbot is said to have been the only occupant of the
Woolsack who entirely escaped blame in his lifetime or de-
traction in his grave, and this is the more remarkable because
he was certainly believed to owe his early call to the Bar and
rapid promotion in the profession to the powerful influence of his
family. His rare merit as advocate, jurist, and judge vindicated
the preference shown him, and silenced the mutterings of envy
ere they became audible to the public ear. In the Cabinet he
probably took little part, and no trace is left of anything he said
or did during his brief tenure of power as a politician. Of Hard-
wicke more hereafter.
Upon the whole the Cabinet felt their power sufficiently re-
established to put into the King's mouth, at the close of the
426
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Session, words of contumelious reproof to the nation at large for
their alleged wrong-headedness in the matter of the excise.
“ He could not pass by unobserved the wicked endeavours lately
made use of to inflame the minds of the people, and by the most
unjust representations to raise tumults and disorders, that almost
threatened the peace of the Kingdom ; but he depended upon the
force of truth to remove groundless jealousies, and upon the
fidelity of Parliament to frustrate the expectations of such as de-
lighted in confusion. Let it be their care to undeceive the
deluded, and to make them sensible of their present happiness,
and the hazard they ran of being unwarily drawn by specious
pretences into their own destruction."
Chesterfield for a time devoted himself to his bride, the half-
sister of the King, and the completion of his house in Audley
Street, which he meant to excel in architectural taste that of his
contemporaries of high degree. Her father had bequeathed her
£20,000, which, with larger sums said to have been left her by
her mother, Royalty forgot to pay. A copy of the will of
George I. had been confided to Archbishop Wake, as one of the
executors, and on the rising of the first Privy Council on the
accession was deferentially produced by his Grace, with a request
for directions regarding it. George II. took it from the Primate's
hands, put it into his pocket without a word, and no one seems
to have heard of its contents for several years. But Chesterfield,
failing to obtain any official satisfaction regarding the legacy,
commenced a suit for its recovery from the Crown. How it
might have ended no one in the case ventured to say. It was
thought wise to avert legal debate, and when the money was paid
the Earl went abroad.
The Parliament of 1727 met for the last time in January, 1734,
and both parties occupied themselves in discussing the rival
demerits that might sway the susceptibilities of constituencies.
The essential sinfulness of keeping up a standing Army was
taken for granted on all hands, but the Mutiny Bill, which still
embodied the dogma, was no longer seriously endangered. Lord
Morpeth moved for leave to bring in a Bill to prevent the depri-
val of officers in the Army of their commissions by what was
called the arbitrary act of the Crown, but what in reality every-
one knew was the capricious edict of the Government. His
argument mainly turned on the security guaranteed by law to
DEBATE ON DISMISSALS.
427
the private soldier against punishment of any kind without
trial by a Court duly constituted, and the inconsistency of
those whɔ held commissions being liable to be differently dealt
with. In other countries of Europe, which pretended not to
.equal liberties with ours, they had each some wise law with
respect to their Armies. In Holland no officer could be broken
but by sentence of a Court-Martial, and in Sweden they had
suffered so much from the military caprice of Charles XII., that
on his death a statute was passed by the Diet securing justice
to their officers in this respect. The Bill was supported by Sir
J. Rushout, Mr. Sandys, Sir W. Wyndham, and Pulteney, who
from his own knowledge when in office testified that King
Williain being applied to by an angry Minister to dismiss an
officer for voting against Government, refused, saying, "I suppose
the gentleman voted according to what appeared just and right
to him at the time. I know him to be a brave and a good officer,
and one who has always done his duty in his military capacity.
I have nothing to do with his behaviour in Parliament, and
therefore I will not remove him from his command in the Army."
Earl Stanhope had actually prepared a Bill to secure this
righteous immunity, with the entire approval of George I., but,
through some influence not disclosed, he was diverted from his
:aim, and after his death no more was heard of the measure.
The present Bill was resisted successfully by Walpole, Henry
Pelham, and Sir W. Yonge, being rejected without a division.
A similar motion was made in the Upper House by the Duke of
Marlborough, and Bedford was amongst its most zealous sup-
porters. Both of these young gentlemen belonged to the section
of discontented Whigs, and followed the lead of Carteret. They
differed widely in other respects, the inheritor of Blenheim being
in disposition easy, idle, and profuse; the possessor of Woburn
prudent, diligent, and parsimonious. The grandson of the Great
Captain was ambitious of military fame, and when the long term
of peace was at last brought to an end, he insisted upon having
the command of a regiment, and at its head fought with distinc-
tion at Dettingen. The grandson of Lord Russell preferred
politics to arms, and after the overthrow of Walpole occupied in
succession many important posts in Administration. On the
amendment of Scarborough, the motion was rejected. Carteret
preferred to narrow the question to one of personal grievance, and
428
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
followed up the rejection of the Bill with an Address that the ill
advisers of Bolton's and Cobham's removal should be disclosed.
Bathurst, Montrose, and Anglesey dwelt on the assumption of
despotic power thus exercised, taking care to disown their
belief that it was in any sense fairly to be laid to the charge of
Royal whim.
Removals without ostensible or producible cause there had
been, indeed, in former days by the mere exercise of Royal pre-
rogative, but removals like those of the two Peers from regi-
mental command there had never been since the fall of the
Stuarts. Judges had, in like manner, been cashiered in other
days, when no man, in or out of Parliament, felt privileged to
ask the reason why, but the Revolution and the laws which were
its fruit had put an end to judicial tenancy at will, and Parlia-
ment could do nothing more honourable and useful than to
afford the same security of tenure to brave men who risked their
lives for their country, regardless of the caprice of Executive
power, which had ceased to be regal and avowed, and had
become Ministerial and inarticulate. Let the example be once
set that officers of rank and standing might be in secret judged
and condemned, not for any military fault, but for daring to ex-
ercise, according to their conscience, the political discretion
wherewith they were constitutionally clothed, and a silent terror
would be spread over all who bore arms as pernicious in its effect
as novel in its contrivance. But remonstrance was in vain. The
hitherto forbidden fruit of power was too pleasant to the eye and
racy to the palate to be given up. The rank and service of the
two nobles who had been victimised rendered the sacrifice more
valuable in the eyes of the Cabinet, for thus warning was given
to all who held a military commission that they held during the
pleasure of the Minister of the day, and not during good behaviour
measurable by law. It is worthy of note that no member
of the Cabinet who had advised or concurred in the acts com-
plained of spoke in their favour, but left their palliation to
adherents who could be charged with no personal knowledge of
the transaction, and who were at liberty, therefore, to offer such
conjectural excuses as they pleased. Carteret's motion was
rejected by nearly two to one, and the question, though revived
from time to time, has continued to form a subject even to our
own day. Scarborough had been expected, consistently with
SCARBOROUGH RESIGNS.
429
his lately-expressed opinions, to oppose the Address on behalf
of Bolton and Cobham. To the surprise of many, however, when
the debate came on he declared that he had changed his mind,
and would do his best to support: it. Opposition were greatly
surprised, but not half so much as his colleagues, whom he in-
formed that he must quit in order to satisfy his personal scruples
on the occasion, and to silence the tongues of those who would
impute his change to interest. They tried all methods to shake
his resolution, and set the King and Queen to try if they could
not dissuade him. With much hesitation he yielded so far at
last as to keep his regiment and retain his seat in the Cabinet,
but he insisted on relinquishing his place as Master of the
Horse. Far from appreciating the susceptibility and self-denial
of the Earl, the Dictator, when talking to Hervey of his be-
haviour, "only laughed, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head,
and pointed to his forehead," as though madness were the only
way of accounting for idiosyncracy so rare. Poor Scarborough
could not, indeed, be unconscious that his fastidious sense of
honour had simply made him ridiculous in the eyes of the crowd,
who, when his resignation was known, set about scrambling for
what he had surrendered. The King alone showed any just or
generous feeling on the occasion, embracing him frequently, and
shedding tears when he went to take leave. He remained
staunch to his party, notwithstanding the disgust and chagrin
to which they had moved him.
His friends and colleagues were all much concerned at his
quitting, and had frequent conferences upon it. The cause was
no dislike of measures or persons, but something which gave him
disturbance in his own mind. However, he was still just as
much among them, and as firm a courtier as ever.1
Next year Sir Robert, who was dissatisfied with Dorset's
administration in Ireland, offered him the Viceroyalty, pro-
posing to send Stephen Fox (afterwards Lord Ilchester) with
him as Secretary. The latter agreed to go; but, to the surprise
of everyone, the sensitive and scrupulous Earl declined, saying
quietly how much he was gratified by the offer, but that he
could not bring himself to accept it lest the world should say he
had given up one employment for another more lucrative.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Richmond asked to be named his suc-
I Pelham to Lord Essex, May, 1734.---MIS.
430
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
cessor, and pressed his suit so eagerly that at length it was
granted. His competitor was Pembroke, a man of greater
estate and of nobler extraction, who had in the eyes of his
friends a paramount claim from having been for years content
with a Lordship of the Bedchamber, and a regiment for whose
colonelcy he relinquished a troop of Guards that had cost him
£10,000. But the ducal coronet of yesterday weighed far more
than that of a ninth earl, and his Grace of Richmond possessed
beside the superior merit of spending more money on securing
seats in the Lower House for his nominees.
When Parliament drew near its end, the Tories, by the advice
of Bolingbroke, resolved to press for the repeal of the Septennial
Act. In resisting the proposal, the Cabinet were unanimous.
It was with them an instinct of self-preservation. The system
of administration was for them the best that could be devised,
but they did not disguise from themselves or one another that it
had been built up and could only be maintained by the
organised complaisance of Members of Parliament; and to
listen to the lure of annual re-election, plausibly offering fresh
materials for purchase, would have been to let go the substance
for the shadow. The Septennial Act had realised all the prac-
tical benefits its authors anticipated. It had enabled the same
party to retain power, under all vicissitudes, for eighteen years.
It could not prevent some from dying, and a few from being
found out in abuse of official opportunities. That was their
affair ; but in the main it had proved an effective instrument for
the multiplication of pensions, places, honours, and emoluments,
and the concentration of the benefits these things conferred in
the hands of Cabinet Ministers and their dependents in the two
Houses at Westminster. Everybody knew and acknowledged
the fact. What, then, was the use of discussing an opposite
theory?
Bromley was chosen to advocate the return, as he said, to the
ancient ways of the Constitution, resting his proposal on the
plea that Jacobitism was, in fact, no more, and that the cause
had ceased to operate that in 1716 was held to justify the for-
saking of Plantagenet tradition. Wyndham was violent beyond
his usual tone, though careful not to transgress the rules of order
in denouncing the subserviency of the Court to the arbitrary
dictates of the Cabinet, for which impunity could be only hoped
DEBATE ON SEPTENNIAL ACT.
431
for in a long-lived Parliament. "Let us suppose a man aban-
doned to all notions of virtue and honour, of no great family,
and of but a mean fortune, raised to be chief Minister of State
by the concurrence of many whimsical events. Suppose him
next possessed of great wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a
Parliament of his own choosing, most of their seats purchased,
and their votes bought at the expense of the public treasure.
Let us suppose this chief Minister pluming himself in defiances
because he finds he has got a Parliament, like a packed jury,
ready to acquit him at all adventures. Let us further suppose
him arrived to that degree of insolence and arrogance as to
domineer over all the men of ancient family, all the men of
sense, figure, or fortune in the nation; and as he has no virtue of
his own, ridiculing it in others, and endeavouring to destroy or
corrupt it in all."
Sir William's father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset, had, upon
his account, been formerly removed, as the Duke of Bolton was
now, for the Parliamentary sin of a kinsman, and the dexterous
orator well understood how he could wound his adversary's
power in no more dangerous part than in that susceptibility
which his high-born colleagues felt at the imputation of being
domineered over by him. But the composition of the Govern-
ment at every period of his career proves that whatever his
intellectual ascendancy may have been, the dignities and profits
of State were effectually engrossed by persons of that inner
social circle, to which men like Walpole were not considered to
belong. Wyndham closed his invective by saying that if they
felt bound to believe it impossible to guard against such a
Minister and such a Prince as he had described, they might,
at least, prevent the existence of such a Parliament as would
tempt men to evil by affording them impunity. Wyndham was
grown old in disappointment, and, like Swift, inveterate in
vexation at being excluded, as he could not but feel unjustly,
from the position in the State which nature, knowledge,
eloquence, and the discipline of experience conspicuously quali-
fied him to fill. Walpole, without fitting the cap to his own
head, asked permission to paint a counter portrait in the air.
The likeness he painted was obviously meant for Bolingbroke.
"He might, with equal justice, speak of an anti-Minister and
mock patriot, who never had either virtue or honour, but in
the whole course of Opposition was actuated only by motives
432
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
of envy against those who might have disappointed him in
his views, or might not, perhaps, have complied with all his
desires. Suppose him one who thought himself of so great
and extensive parts, and of so many eminent qualifications,
that he looked upon himself as the only person capable of
conducting public affairs, and christening everyone in Ad-
ministration by the name of blunderer ; suppose him lucky
enough to have gained over to his party some persons really of
fine parts, ancient family, and great fortune, and others of
desperate views arising from disappointed and malicious hearts,
all these gentlemen moved by him solely, all they said in private
and public being but a repetition of what he had put in their
mouths, and a spitting out of the venom he had infused into
them; and yet not really liked by any even of those who so
blindly followed him. Suppose this anti-Minister in a country
where he ought not to be, and where he could not have been
but by the effect of too much goodness and mercy; yet endea-
vouring with all his might to destroy the fountain from whence
that mercy flowed ; suppose him contracting friendships with
the Ambassadors of foreign princes at enmity with his own;
suppose one of them asking for a secret prejudicial to his native
country, and his answering, I will get it you. Upon this it was
moved for in Parliament by one of his creatures, and when it was
refused, his creatures spread alarm over the nation that the coun-
try was in danger from a wicked Minister and corrupt majority.
If they could suppose such a one, could there be imagined a
greater disgrace to human nature than such a wretch as this?”
As for the Septennial Act, it had upon the whole worked well, and
the time was unpropitious for reverting to the old-fashioned ex-
periment in Parliament-making when the country was rent by
faction. With Triennial Parliaments no policy could be steadily
pursued, "as the populace were apt to be too much elated by
success and too much dejected by every misfortune; they
wavered in their opinions on affairs of State, and were never
ong of the same mind; and if their choice were so often
renewed, it being impossible to carry on public affairs without
the concurrence of the House, Ministers would be obliged to
comply, and change their measures as often as the people
changed their minds." By 247 to 184 the motion was rejected,
and Parliament soon after was dissolved.1
13th March, 1734.
1
GENERAL ELECTION.
433
Pelham had previously been through the constituencies, “and
met with great success; yet it had been a work of trouble and
expense, and what he never met with before—most disagree-
able conversation throughout the whole county. He had
talked till he was hoarse, and hoped it would end in their satis-
faction. Conversation now turned upon foreign wars and home
elections, in both of which he foresaw great difficulties.” i “Sir
Robert had gone to Norfolk, and the Duke and his brother
were about to set out for Bishopstone, where their time would
be spent in nothing but canvassing, drink, and brutality, which
Pelham had had so much of that he was quite tired out." ?
Under-Secretary Delafaye played obligato. " The Duke of
Newcastle, still in Sussex, was treating his voters, of whom he
had had no less than 1,200 at dinner with him at Bishopstone."
The energies of Government were now concentrated on the
means and methods best fitted for securing a working majority
in the Commons.
Sir Robert took up his position at Norwich, commanding in
chief the great county of which he was the greatest man.
It was
a hard battle for the City, the fate of which would decide much
else. His excitement is embalmed in the following: "Ten at
night, the poll just closed, and the books now casting up; we
have carried it for both; the exact numbers you shall know
before the post goes. Great expenses made, great threats
ushered in the day, but a due provision to repel force by force
made it a quiet election. I think the county a more secure game,
and the success of this day will not much animate our an-
tagonists."
Yet, after all, it turned out to be only a drawn battle. Old
Horace was indeed returned, but his colleague designate was
beaten by half-a-dozen votes, and the friends of Bacon exulted
not unreasonably. A like result befell the speechless com-
petition at Thetford, where only one Fitzroy and another of the
family of Bacon divided the representation. Great Yarmouth
proved more responsive to the old rallying cry and sent once
inore to Westminster a Townshend and a Walpole. But th
county was not to be won over from its proclivities, and it
» 3
| To Lord Essex, 15th Oct. 1733.--MS.
2 Ibid., 21st Nov., 1733.
3 To Newcastle.--MS.
VOL. I.
FF
434
HISTORY OF CABINETS. .
supplied additional strength to Opposition. Ripon still ac-
knowledged the right of Aislabie to nominate its Members,
Aldborough and Boroughbridge that of Newcastle to do what
he would with their own.
His Grace was never weary of electioneering, and kept up a
correspondence with a staff of agents that is truly amazing, nor
was his far-reaching range of view confined to diocese or county.
He indited three pages of foolscap to his old friend Doctor
Sherlock, whom he had raised from the Deanery of Chichester
to the Bishopric of Bangor, asking his interposition with three of
his former neighbours. Mr. Parks, of Chichester, was trouble-
some, but might be reasoned with; Mr. Leland, of East Dene, was
not unfriendly, but doubtful. “He hoped his Lordship would
write a line to him which would fix him." i It never seems to
have occurred to his Grace to hint a religious motive of any kind
for clerical consideration. The Prelate, however, was not wanting
in gratitude or slow in letting it be seen. He wrote, forthwith,
to his old friends in Sussex, enclosing the letters to his patron to
prove that his zeal had not waxed cold, but, “having them
marked with the post-mark of Bangor, so that there might be
no suspicion of their coming through any other hand but his
own.”
" 2 And had he not his reward ? Salisbury fell vacant next
year and he was translated thereto. What happened further
will be presently seen.
Treating had not then been advanced to the dignity of a
political offence. It went on without let, hindrance, or qualm, ,
and was estimated chiefly by the prodigality with which it was
sustained. Sir W. Ashburnham mentions casually in writing to
the Duke that he had entertained all the freeholders in the Rye
district, and was about to feed those in the adjoining one, that
all might drink Mr. Pelham's health, who was present on both
occasions. The Duke of Dorset's influence was put in re-
quisition, and Hastings promised to help. The Paymaster
found the people on the whole were hearty, but “they must not
name Excise or Sir Robert.” The non-voters, too, had their bowls
of punch. Pelham was sorry to find “our friend” so unpopular.
He wished it might not be so in other counties. It would be of
1 Newcastle to Bp. of Bangor, 4th Sept., 1733.-MS.
2 8th Sept., 1733.
3 September 11th, 1733.-MS.
+ To Newcastle, 18th Sept., 1733.-MS.
3
TREATING VOTERS.
435
» 1
great use if his Grace could send a pardon for Newman to
Chichester. "Now Barabbas was a robber."
All his friends were his “dear brother's servants, and drank
his health twenty times a day.”
Sir John Shelley, who married Newcastle's sister, was candi-
date for Arundel against Sir Charles Goring. There were 130
electors, of which they claimed a majority. Lord Wilmington
reported as much in detail as a subordinate agent about what he
was able to do in the Pevensey district, "inclination as well as
gratitude obliging him to use the utmost efforts to promote his
Grace's interest."
In a letter, dated, 9th August, 1733, from Mr. Haye, election-
eering agent at Glynbourn, to Newcastle, he speaks of the
manner in which the Rev. Mr. Whitfield endeavoured to stir up
the people against his candidates. “ He had been trumpeting
the Excise into their ears, and assured the people he would scarce
get one vote in the Cliff, and wondered I did not call on him. I
believe he is only talking to be bought over, and Sir W. Gage
designs to set Ayres and Harrison on him to sound him.”
When the fight grew hot, there was no mincing matters. One
of the greatest men in the county wrote to headquarters : “I
must beg and entreat of your Grace to do Wilkinson's job for
him as soon as possible, for he and his two sons are confounded
surly about it, and it is of the utmost consequence to us that it
should be done immediately, and I must beg, if it is done, that
he has his superannuation from 13th November, 1731, when he
quitted. I know the difficulties, which at any other time would
be reasonable ones, but at present we must lay aside all reason
with these chaps, else we shall come off but poorly.
Everywhere placards in athletic type warned the unwary that
if they would have "no Excise," they must vote against all who
stood with the Pelhams. Lord Ashburnham and the Duke of
Somerset were friendly, but the latter undemonstrative. The
free and independent at Rye were ready to be all right, but their
Member must give a pledge against the Excise. Col. Pelham
made no scruple of engaging that they should have that satis-
faction ;3 and the Bishop of Chichester and the Duke of Somer-
» 2
1 Sept., 1733.—MS.
2 Richmond to Newcastle. Goodwood, 17th October, 1733.— MS.
3 To Newcastle from Ashburnham, Aug., 1733.-MS.
FF 2
436
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
set too; but the industry with which the cry was reiterated
throughout the county, and the easiness with which the “stupid
creatures ” listened and believed, afflicted deeply the Prelate, who
was faithful to Government as man could be. He wished
“something could be writ in the shape of a dialogue between
two farmers or persons of that kind, in a natural, easy, familiar
way so as to be intelligible to the meanest capacities, in which
the nature of the Excise might be thoroughly explained and
the objections fairly discussed and answered; such objections
as the country people were taught to make.” 1
Opposition sanguinely reckoned on 250 votes in the new
House. They failed egregiously in Scotland, whose Member-
makers shrewdly calculated on the superior strength of the
Ministry asserting itself for some years to come.
To Lord Islay had been committed the management of the
Scotch nobility, who had to elect their sixteen representatives in
the new Parliament. Except those actually in Government
service very few would declares themselves.
The activity of their opposers had raised the demands of
several whom he must deal with, an evil, he feared, that must be
yielded to, especially since there was good reason to hope that it
might be kept in bounds. Lord Hopetoun wanted a peerage
for his eldest son, and had influence with Lords Findlater and
Napier, his two sons-in-law ; Lord Strathmore seemed to have
forgotten the service done him by Secretary Harrington, and
Lord Haddington, though very civil, would not disclose himself,
and of him one might say, as Lady Bolingbroke said of Walpole
(when pleading for her husband), “Ou il etait trés poli, et trés
negatif." Chesterfield wrote sympathetically to Marchmont,
who was one of the rejected candidates, suggesting that they
(the Opposition) should endeavour to buy a confession from two
or three of the purchased peers that they had sold their votes to
the Government, and of the fact that they had done so there
seems to have been no doubt.
Pelham 'summed up the result of the elections: “Though
we had a great deal of trouble, and more expense than I
thought I should ever have been put to, we have the satisfac-
tion that the enemy was beat handsomely, not only in Sus-
sex, but in every borough where my brother or any of our
1 Bishop of Chichester to Newcastle, 18th August, 1733.—MS.
PELHAMS VICTORIOUS.
437
family had the least concern,” many of their old friends severing
from the others openly. The preponderance of supporters in
the Upper House, though considerable, was hardly beyond
doubt. On the eve of the Session of 1735, one hundred and six
lords, spiritual and temporal, were invited to meet at Secretary
Harrington's to learn the legislative intentions of the Cabinet.
The list included the two archbishops, twenty-two of their suf-
fragans, thirteen dukes, and thirty-four earls, &c., of whom fifty
attended.?
George II. grew impatient of mere prominence in the picture
of still life hitherto presented by the Court of England since his
accession. Nature, he often suspected, had meant him for a
great general. The lust of war, not for the sake of territorial
acquisition, for of this he did not dream, but for the sake of
fighting as classical education taught every great King he ought
to fight, stirred his soul. What would his contemporaries of
France and Austria or Poland think of him if he remained for
ever shut up thus tamely in his island paddock, never daring to
clear territorial fences, or make a Royal rush in any direction?
Even his hated kinsman, Frederick of Prussia, would look down
upon him if he did not form some offensive alliance, sack some
city, or cause a respectable number of some neighbour's soldiery
to bite the dust. Then there was the martial honour of Eng-
land to be maintained, which Providence had entrusted to his
keeping. How could he justify himself to his loyal subjects if
he never led any of them out to be slaughtered in the good old
style of his predecessors? What his Majesty's loyal subjects
would have said upon the point had they been consulted must
be left to surmise. Voice potential in the matter they had
none, their casual and incoherent efforts to make themselves
heard appearing to attract little notice in any quarter where the
question of desirableness or undesirableness of war was seriously
discussed. Sir Robert, indeed, in his loose, general, give-and-
take way of talking, when he had exhausted other topics in his
conferences with the King, used frequently to say something
about the distaste of the multitude for standing armies and
taxes; but this he did not in a vulgar or low-spirited tone as
though he really thought too much of such a consideration, or
1
To Essex, 23rd May, 1734. --MS.
2 Mem., Newc. N:ISS.
438
HISTORY OF CABINETS,
could be guilty of the mean affectation of caring what the flock
thought of the shears. He was too shrewd a man to put on a
mask which even his Majesty would have seen through. Never-
theless, Walpole was sincerely averse to war, and in a sense of
his own took into account popular antipathy thereto as a inatter
not wholly undeserving of consideration. He was at the head
of the uppermost section of the governing class—without the
name, but to all intents and purposes King: what could he
have more ? Or what could they whose spokesman and chief
he was, if they but clearly discerned their true interest as a
class? They were a minority all powerful for the time being,
while they held together by the monopoly of office and the
possession of seats in the Legislature, and in the social influence
attached to great landed possessions. What could they have
more ? They might have inuch less, and they would, if by
going to war they provoked France again to lend her aid to the
exiled Stuarts, and furnished at home a rallying cry to the
numerous sections of discontent, now powerless because they had
no aim in common. The measurement of future contingencies,
however, is a gift so rare, and demonstration of their most
certain realities is so much beyond the capacity of ordinary men,
whether of high or low degree, that the First Lord found, even
amongst his colleagues, few to comprehend his policy of peace,
and fewer still to back him in maintaining it. Newcastle knew
not how to refuse assent in the Royal hankering after war.
Unable to realise by anticipation the perplexities and perturba-
tions it would entail especially on himself as Secretary of State,
he only shrank from thwarting too openly the desire he saw so
strong in the Royal mind. He knew that George II. disliked
him, and he had neither the wit to discern nor the courage to
express what was best for the order to which he belonged, and
as one of which alone he could ever have obtained, or ever held
the portfolio of Secretary of State. It may be that already he
began to entertain views on the succession to the first place in
the Ministry, and that his timidity over-estimated the influence
which the Court might at some unforeseen juncture exercise,
and that he under-estimated his own. When driven to the wall,
as we shall hereafter see, he could set Royalty at defiance and
prevail. But his nature bid him shun the conflict and distrust
the issue; and sometimes at the Cabinet and at his own table
$
THE KING'S WARLIKE IDEAS.
439
he inconsistently muttered the bellicose sentiments of the
Palace, for which he was contemned by Sir Robert as a truck-
ler, and not much trusted or loved by the King for his pains.
The other Secretary, Lord Harrington, neither took any
active part in debate nor exercised any sway in Council. After
concluding the Treaty of Seville he had come home with a high
character for diplomatic skill, and great things were expected
of him. Thenceforth, he seems, however, to have given himself
up to indolence and pleasure, content with what he had.
The Queen once, in speaking of him, said, “There is a heavy
insipid sloth in that man that puts me out of all patience. He
must have six hours to dress, six more to dine, six more for his
mistress, and six more to sleep; and then if now and then he
borrows six of those turns to do anything relating to his office,
it is for something that might be done in six minutes, and
ought to have been done six days before."
Grantham made a point of humouring the King while in his
presence, and of passively acquiescing in the opposite views
of the Ministry at other times, not so much from any design
to play false as from incapacity to play clear, and a thorough-
bred indifference as to all theories and opinions that took
trouble to argue.
Hervey, by his own account, always combated the Royal
tendencies to war, and kept Sir Robert advised of all that
threatened to stimulate them. He kept the favour of the
Queen, who made him her confidant in almost everything, and
insisted upon arguing the Balance of Power question with him
over and over again. Though often vanquished in the con-
troversy, and sometimes vexed, she so little resented his coll-
tumacy, that she persuaded the King, about this time, to add
£1,000 a-year to his pay as Vice-Chamberlain, which he said
gave another handle to his enemies, amongst whom he reckoned
Frederick, Prince of Wales. He lost no opportunity of
urging upon the Queen that the true interest of her family,
as well as of the nation, lay in the preservation of peace, and
in retaining as long as possible the position of umpire between
the contending States of Europe.
When Harrington, to please George II., indited a dispatch
to Robinson at Vienna, giving hopes of England's coming into
the Imperial purpose to place the Elector of Saxony on the
440
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Polish Throne, and, in alliance with Spain and Tuscany, to
humble the pretensions of France, Walpole took care to make
Newcastle write in a contrary sense, which the English
Ambassador understood to be that which he was to obey; and
the First Lord himself took care to tell the Austrian Minister
in England that he had no intention of being driven or drawn
into any species of hostility, or further than the strictest punc-
tilio of neutrality. It was impossible to keep all this from the
knowledge of the Court of Versailles month after month, as the
growing antagonisms of the Continent kindled and died down
under changing circumstances, and ever and anon blazed
out again and threatened to wrap all Christendom in flame.
M. Chauvelin bitterly complained of the insincerity of diplo-
matic England, and laboured, not without success, in weaning
the States-General from their old alliances, and frightening
their merchant Statesmen at the risk they would run if unde-
fended Flanders should be overrun by the armies of France.
To countervail the effect of these threatenings, Horace Walpole
was specially employed to expostulate with his old friend,
Cardinal Fleury, on the folly and mischief of war with the
Empire, and though he failed to nerve his Eminence into any
definite pledge of a general kind, he succeeded in getting him
to agree to a convention guaranteeing the neutrality of the
Low Countries in all events. Louis XV. was, however, too
wrapt in the spell of depraved influences to be relied on to
keep his Minister's word, or to resist the corrupt impulses
that were steadily impelling him to take the field, and at the
end of 1734 the prospects of peace seemed more hopeless than
ever.
In the course of the autumn, the Vice-Chamberlain learnt
that the aged Bishop of Winchester drew near his end; and,
wishing the advancement of Hoadly, with whom he had long
been intimate, he lost no time in apprising him of the expected
vacancy. “Willis is certainly dying, and this messenger comes
to charge you on this critical conjuncture not to let your
natural modesty and hitherto insuperable awkwardness in solici-
tation so far get the better of your prudence as to induce
you, Mahomet-like, to sit still and fancy the mountain of
preferment will walk to you to Salisbury : come up im-
mediately, and, in the meantime, since application must be
HOADLY BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.
441
mean
made, I need not tell you where (you know the K.'s two ears?
as well as I do) apply to them both; and if I may advise, act
as if you were not secure, and write to them as if you were.
Be sure you exert yourself on this occasion, and remember
you are now shaking that die upon the cast of which the future
happiness of your life depends; the odds are on your side, but,
as long as there is a possibility of losing, nobody with so great
a stake depending can play too cautiously. Do not talk to me
of security from former promises ; I know Court promises too
well to believe they are ever kept, though ever so solemnly
made, without being claimed ; the best Court paymaster must
be dunned, and dunned a good deal—they pay few debts for
the honour of paying them; their memories, too, are abominable
I
to debts of gratitude, not of resentment. Re-
member how you failed of Durham--at least that you were
told you failed from silence.
. Write therefore now, come,
speak, dun, and behave not as your laziness inclines you, but
as your interest directs, as common prudence dictates, as your
friends advise, and as what you owe to yourself and family
requires." 2
The Spiritual Lord of Salisbury replied: "All the entertain-
ment you have ever given me by your former letters (which has
been in truth as great as one ought in reason to wish for) bears
no proportion to the real pleasure I had in reading yours this
morning. The kind and good advice you give me is the advice
of all the packets from my friends at London, and of every
heart except my own. But I now yield up that, and am
resolved to come up to London, and, as our friend Mr. C.
particularly advised me, if this case happened, to write to the
Queen herself as well as to Sir Robert, from both of whom I
have had an express assurance of the thing as if one of their
messengers with a post-boy before him and a greyhound upon
his breast were sent down to me upon the prospect of a vacancy
with a strong letter in form. As I have the most express pro-
mises given and renewed without my asking, to claim upon, I
can more easily prevail upon myself to work for myself than I
could in a former case in which that particular happiness was
1 The Queen and Walpole.
2 Hervey's “Memoirs," Vol. I., p. 442.
442
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
wanting. I should be glad of stronger nerves and more
courage.” 1
Winchester was reluctantly conferred upon Hoadly. The
King did not speak a word when he kissed hands; the Queen,
after finding she could not put him off, told the Bishop she was
now glad to see him advanced as high in dignity and profit as
he had long been in merit and reputation, and assured him of
the pleasure this occasion gave her of proving to him the
sincerity of all her former professions.
For the vacant see of Gloucester, Chancellor Talbot recom-
mended the favourite Chaplain of his father. Rundle's eccle-
siastical views were said to waver as willows in the wind. At
Oxford a zealot for the dreams of Whiston regarding primitive
simplicity in the Church, resting on the antiquity of certain
patristic writings,—when made Prebend of Durham he was said
to have discovered that these authorities were but of the fourth
century. “Make him Dean of Durham," exclaimed his old
leaders, "and they will not have been written till the fifth
century." By some he was suspected of leaning to Arianism ;
but as this could not be proved, the Bishop of London charged
him with having spoken disrespectfully of Abraham some four-
teen or fifteen years before, which one of his clergy, a worthy
man, was ready to prove on oath.
He had no one himself to recommend, nor any shibboleth to
offer of episcopal promotion, but he would beg the King at all
events to give them a Christian. The controversy grew every
day more animated. Many pamphlets were written and
sermons preached on the subject, some of them vainly appeal-
ing to the judgment of the absent King, others reflecting on the
supposed predilection of the Queen Regent to the doctrine of
Samuel Clarke. Her pride and her philosophy alike were
wounded by sarcasm and insinuation it was impossible to repel;
and Walpole, who understood her feelings, set himself the task
of getting rid of the difficulty by inducing Talbot to postpone
the claims of his friend. He agreed that Rundle should be
made a Dean, and if the see of Derry fell vacant, as was soon
expected, to give it him by way of compensation. This was
soon afterwards done.
The Queen, however, obtained an Irish mitre for a very differ-
1 Hervey's " Memoirs,” I., 444.
BISHOP BERKELEY.
443
ent man.
When Berkeley's fame in combating materialism
was comparatively young she had been foiled in securing him
.capitular wealth and distinction, but Caroline was only Princess
then, and Berkeley had to be content with a less lucrative pre-
ferment. Now that she was Queen, Walpole took care that she
should have her way, and the Dean of Derry was made Bishop
of Cloyne, where, the world forgetting, by the world almost
forgot, he went about doing good, irrespectively of creed, and
casting out the devils of intolerance wherever he found them.
George II. was glad to spend the latter half of 1735 in
Hanover, where the nominal cares of his kingdom and of Euro-
pean diplomacy encroached little on his personal pleasures, and
the Queen was left Regent of the Kingdom with her wonted
responsible counsellors. The Duke of Dorset returned from
Ireland in September, leaving Primate Boulter, Chancellor
Wyndham, and Speaker Boyle Lords Justices, and the business
of Administration was conducted for the next two years by
them, under the direction of Newcastle as Secretary of State.
The confidential despatches of M. Chauvigny, French Ambas-
sador in England in 1735, were constantly opened, and their
.contents reported by Walpole to the King and Queen, upon
whom they reflected severely. The warrants to the Postmaster-
General probably were signed by one or other of the Secretaries
of State. M. Chauvigny lived on terms of well-known intimacy
with Pulteney, Carteret, Bolingbroke, and other chiefs of Oppo-
sition; and when, through the mediation of England, peace was
secretly negotiated between the Courts of Vienna and Paris, the
English Ministry deemed it requisite that the French Envoy in
London should be kept in ignorance to the last of what was in
contemplation. This was so effectually done that when the
news of the proclamation of the preliminary armistice arrived,
he and his Parliamentary friends were equally taken aback, and
forced to admit that they had been outwitted egregiously.
Notwithstanding the signal ability, energy, and tact displayed
by Opposition, they were alınost invariably outvoted in the
Peers by two to one, and in the Commons by considerable
majorities. Unprecedented efforts. had been made at the
general election to carry some seats previously occupied by
adherents of the Administration, and a few seats were lost,
.and notwithstanding £60,0001 were lavished by the First Lord of
1 Etough,
444
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
the Treasury, out of what funds the gossips of the time are not
agreed. Yet upon the first question of confidence raised in the
new Parliament, the representatives of the dominant section
proved more numerous by eighty than their rivals; and in the
Upper House a majority of eighty-seven to thirty-five decisively
attested their continued preponderance. A petition from the
Scotch Peers who had not been elected, complaining of the
prodigal use of corruption on the late occasion, was eloquently
supported by Carteret, Argyll, Cobham, Clinton, Chesterfield,
Marchmont, and Burlington. But their indignation availed
nothing. A majority of the great families had renewed their
lease of power, and re-let the Exchequer to the best working
tenant they knew they could find, on the old terms, namely,..
that he would strictly preserve the patronage for them and
those whom they honoured with their friendship. He had
liberty to do and say many things which they would not have
done. He might talk liberality to the Dissenters, and, as an
inducement to their support, promise them a repeal of the Test
Act; but when it came to the point of keeping his word, the
paramount obligations due to creed and class compelled him, as
he averred, to abet the denial of what he confessed to be
justice, and by his help the Municipal outlawry of Noncon-
formists was maintained.i
A Bill to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts was brought in.
by Mr. Plumer, M.P. for Herts, at the request of the three denom-
inations, and supported by all the influence they could command;
but it was opposed by Walpole, who acknowledged frankly his
coincidence with its principle; and a debt of gratitude his.
Administration owed to its promoters; but declared the time
was inopportune, and that he must resist the second reading. It
was consequently rejected by more than two to one, and the
proposal was not renewed for many years.
After hope long deferred, the heart of the Dissenters grew sick,
and Dr. Chandler, as one of a deputation that waited on Walpole,
asked if he thought the time would ever come for realising the
expectations he had repeatedly bid them entertain. The party
leader, who for twenty years had polled their suffrages for his
nominees at county and city elections, by the profession of
personal sympathy and zeal for their civic enfranchisement, was.
1 Debate on motion to repeal the Test Act, March 1736.
DR. CHANDLER,
445
stung by the justice of their long-stified reproach, and forgetting
his usual reserve, he replied that if they required a specific answer
he would give it them in a word-Never! Conscious of the
damage to his interest his ruthless candour was likely to cause,
he clutched at the first opportunity that offered for showing the
numerous but not least influential body of the Nonconformists
that he could and that he would help them to a remedy for a
practical grievance of which they bitterly complained.
From peculiar scruples of conscience the Quakers persistently
refused to pay tithes or Church rates, and mutely submitted rather
to have their goods distrained. The amount due by a wealthy
inerchant was annually discharged by the sale of a single piece
of furniture ; and the liability of the humble trader was defrayed
by the unresisted seizure of the first articles of drapery or hard-
ware that lay to hand. To prevent oppressive aggravation of
the proceeding, power had been given by statute to two local
magistrates to adjudicate in all cases under £10 on payment of
a trifling fee ; but the superior Courts had not been divested of
their right to hear formal and elaborate plaints, which, though
undefended, enabled lawyers to charge heavy costs; and the oppor-
tunity was frequently resorted to where poor men were unable to
bear the additional burthen. Some who indignantly resisted the
exaction were said to be ruined in their business, and some, it
was said, had died in the poorhouse, or in prison. Petitions
were presented to Parliament for redress, and a Bill for the pur-
pose was warmly supported by Sir Robert, and carried by a
majority of one hundred on the third reading. ? But in the
Upper House is was successfully opposed by Gibson, whom he
had promoted to the See of London, and others on whose
concurrence he implicitly relied. Argyll, Richmond, Pem-
broke, and Hervey were the only Members of the Cabinet who
supported it, while Grafton, Newcastle, Scarborough, Godolphin,
Wilmington, Talbot, and Hardwicke voted against it, and
others stayed away. Walpole was not prepared for the result, ,
which mortified him deeply. He had promised his numerous
and influential supporters among the Society of Friends in
Norfolk, that this very moderate and partial favour should be
· Gough, “ History of the People called Quakers," IV., 285.
? 30th April, 1736.
* Parliamentary History, May, 1736.
446
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
secured them by statute ; and confident of his power in keeping
his word, he had allowed the Bill to be drawn so carelessly, and
to be so little amended in the Commons, that its defects afforded
grounds of special cavil to its learned critics in the Lords. Of
the worth or wisdom of these objections he took small heed
but to be beaten by a majority of his own Cabinet and outvoted
in Parliament by men many of whom he had ennobled, was a
mortification of which he had not dreamed, and which he took
no pains to conceal.
The centripetal tendency of power began to show itself every
year more and more in the dispensation of patronage. A
vacancy being caused in the Treasury by the advancement of
Sir W. Yonge to the Secretaryship of War, more than one of the
Government supporters urged the claim of Winnington, who by
common consent was deemed one of the ablest and most accom-
plished politicians of his time. He had returned himself to
Parliament for the family borough of Droitwich, and espoused
the Ministerial side, on which upon all important occasions we
find him prominently contending. In the fashion of the time he
openly jested at public principle; and his versatility, when his
ambition was not gratified, is spoken of by his contemporaries as
a foible so natural as hardly to merit the name of fault. He
was a Lord of the Admiralty, and would have been content with
this step of promotion, but Sir Robert made the excuse of there
being too many competitors for it, whose pretensions were fair.
To disappoint them all, he gave the vacant post to his own son-
in-law, Lord Cholmondeley, as he had given the Lieutenancy of
Devonshire to his son, Lord Walpole. Godolphin had £5,000 a-
year as Groom of the Stole, an office he did not like, and which he
was ready to forego for a pension, if he could have a patent entail-
ing his honours upon collateral heirs. To console Pembroke for
being compelled to give way to Richmond, he was given the Gold
Key at a reduction of £2,000 a-year, which made the retiring
pension of the out-going Earl, who got what he wished regarding
the descent of his title. The public purse was thus nobly saved
from further encroachment, and everybody was pleased, except the
King, who complained that Sir Robert was always teasing him
to do things that were disagreeable to him ; nor was it until the
Minister made it a point on which he could not be refused that
1 See his epitaph by Sir C. H. Williams.
DISSERTATION ON PARTIES."
447
the unusual patent was granted. Not long afterwards Lord
Lonsdale withdrew from public life; and the King, to save the pen-
sion to Godolphin, suggested that he should be made Privy Seal.
Walpole, who never forgot his having been first brought into
office under his father, and who knew that he could entirely depend
on him, at once agreed to the proposal ; and for some time the
Civil List had the benefit of the saving.
Bubb Dodington held a Lordship of the Treasury, and the
chief place in the household of the Prince of Wales, whose
political conduct he had the credit in a great measure of guiding ;
and as this was often very unfriendly to Government, the Mem-
ber for Melcombe naturally incurred the reproach of playing fast
and loose with his Parliamentary patrons. He was a man of
fortune but not of family; and his ambition in life being to die a
peer (which just on the end of it he finally accomplished),
and having no political convictions whatever, he attached him-
self in turn to every party that he thought rising, and in turn
forsook them all when his over-complacency failed to achieve
what he wanted.
Pulteney, for some cause which has never been clearly ex-
plained, refused to make his confederate's restoration to his
privileges and honours a condition of the coming triumph of the
party; and Bolingbroke, seeing that his ten years' service in the
siege of power was to be allowed to go without acknowledgment
or just share of the spoil, resolved to shake the ungrateful dust
from off his feet, and withdraw from political contention for the
residue of his days. Gathering up the best and brightest thoughts
he had desultorily squandered in past years into one splendid
trophy of historical research and rhetoric, he published in 1734-5
his Dissertation on the State of Parties, which, containing all his
distinctive doctrines and the most vital of his memorable invec-
tive, he left as his testament to the crowd of unbelievers whom
he had so long dazzled, but found himself unable to convert.
He quitted England in 1735, not until he became convinced
that some schemes which were then on the loom, though they
never came into effect, made him one too many, even to his
most intimate friends."1
There was a rumour in town of Bolingbroke's having sud-
denly absconded and filed, to prevent a Parliamentary censure,
1 Marchmont l'apers.
448
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
which his many severe writings would have drawn upon him;' but
there seems, after all, little, if any foundation for the report,
which, if true, would probably have been confirmed by a recur-
rence to legal proceedings, trusting to their success in his absence;
and of these no trace remains.
Harrington had made himself acceptable to George II. in
ways that are not recorded. A voluptuary without scruples, and
one whom the prejudices of family and class served for opinions,
he had the distinctive merit of conformity that looked like con-
viction, and was consequently ready now and then to gratify
stalemated Majesty with the idea that he could still make a
move after all. Walpole was not so undeft a player as to allow
this to happen ; but when he was at Houghton, and Royalty
was at Göhrdt, and nobody there who knew the Cabinet truth
and would tell it, the Secretary of State would sometimes frame
a proud-looking despatch in the manner of King William or his
forbears in other times, signifying practically little more than
that he wished it to be borne in mind that he, the Elector-King,
was somebody, and meant to make his voice heard. Harrington
probably never meant that he should ; but his compliance
marked the difference in his master's mind between himself and
his blunt admirers at home, whose candour was almost harder
than their obstinacy. For the rest, Harrington passed the
autumn in the lazy and luxurious ease that best suited him and
least disturbed the indolent but irritable temper of the King.
Their tastes and habits were congenial; and to the Earl it was
said that Madame de Walmoden owed her introduction at the
secluded autumnal Court. The singular influence she subse-
quently acquired, and her unexampled, if not unimitated, absti-
nence from abusing countless opportunities to factious or indi-
vidual purpose, leave little room to doubt that she possessed an
intellectual nature very different from those with whom her name
has been ordinarily associated.
When at length it became necessary to nominate a succes-
sor to Archbishop Wake, the early condemnation of Hare was
pleaded effectually in bar of his promotion ; and his ducal
patron had no longer the willing ear of the chief Minister. They
had had more than one serious difference of late. Newcastle
had, in fact, gone all lengths with Carteret with a view to bring-
1 Southwell to Coghill, 16th January, 1735.—MS.
POTTER ARCHBISHOP.
449
ing him into administration without the permission or knowledge
of Walpole ; and in doing so had so far misled the Earl as
almost to beguile him into acts of secession from his party.
Gibson and Sherlock were not to be forgiven for the part they
had respectively taken in compassing the defeat of the Quakers
Relief Bill; and thus it came to pass that Potter was preferred
above them all for no other assignable reason than his having
in language as decorous as the subject would allow, written for
the use of schools the “Loves of Olympus."
VOL. I.
Ꮐ Ꮐ .
450
CHAPTER XIV.
PARLIAMENTARY PEDIGREE OF PITT.
1735.
The Pitts in Parliament—The Great Interloper—'Tom Pitt for Old Sarum-
Law Suits with East India Company.--Governor of Madras—The Pitt
Diamond-Robert Pitt-His Son the Future Statesman-Flatters the
Court Ineffectually-Carteret, Pulteney, and Pitt Organise Opposition
-Civil List of the Prince—Sir J. Barnard's Financial Proposals--
Death of Queen Caroline.
E
RE the conflict of parties was resumed at St. Stephen's a
change had taken place in the Members' Roll fraught with
results more notable than perhaps any other of the time.
Thomas Pitt, returned for both Old Sarum and Oakhampton,
had elected to sit for the latter, and returned his nephew
William, then a cornet of Horse, for the former. The name of Pitt
was not unknown in Parliamentary records. Worcestershire
sent one of the family in 1654 to the United Parliament called
by Cromwell for the three Kingdoms, and when the experiment
of Legislative Union failed, Leominster, Weobley, and Wareham
returned three of the name to the House of Commons that
welcomed back the King. In the days of evil that ensued they
seem to have taken no public part. The elder branch of the
family inherited the Manor of Strathfieldsay from a Comptroller
of the Green Cloth to Elizabeth and James I., and prudential
marriages had enabled them considerably to extend their poss-
essions. The younger branch was less fortunate save in their
capability for speculation and adventure, destined to make the
name eventually known throughout the world.
In the twilight of Indian colonisation, when the first Char-
tered Company were struggling to establish on the Coromandel
coast, and at the mouths of the Hooghly, a practical monopoly
TOM PITT.
457
of trade, private adventurers frequently tried, often with golden
success, to break the covenanted blockade, sometimes without,
and oftener with, complicity on the part of local agents and
officials. In the records of the Councils of Surat, Bengal, and
Madras, the names occur of Taylor, Dorrel, Mathias Vincent
and his cousin Tom Pitt, described as “a fellow of a haughty,
huffying, daring temper," who was supercargo for more than one
ship of the “ Interlopers," as they were called. Their vessels,
freighted at home with merchandise suited to Eastern tastes and
wants, usually contrived to elude the Company's sparse and
venal coastguard, and under various pretences to reload with
precious cargoes unmolested, to the vexation and envy of the
half-hearted and slack-handed authorities. These exploits were
so notorious and provoking that the Court of Directors, being
informed that Thomas Pitt and Edmond Taylor were on board
the Crown intending for Bengal, sued out a writ ne exeat regno,
until their suit in Chancery against them should be determined.
The Crown lay in the Thames with Pitt on board, wherefore
they ordered one of their captains to make all imaginable haste
to get before him into the Bay of Bengal so as to make good
their great design of preventing the mischief that might be done
by that hardy Interloper. Lest their nimble foe should attempt
to rescue his accomplice Vincent, they directed that a corporal
and twenty men should be sent from Fort St. George to
strengthen their representatives at the Hooghly, and if Pitt should
land they were “to secure his person, whatever it cost, and when
they got him into their custody they were to be sure to hold him
fast, he being a desperate fellow, and one that they feared would
not stick in doing any mischief that lay in his power. But the
Interlopers arrived before the defenders, landed in great state,
set Vincent at their head, engaged the Dutch and the natives in
their cause, enlisted Rajpoots, Peones, and Portuguese, declared
the old Company was broke and that they were come to found a
greater factory for a new Company, by whom a fresh Purwannah
had been obtained. After six months' struggle the Covenanted
Service reasserted their ascendancy, and the Interlopers set sail
again for England with more valuable investments than ever.
Criminal informations were filed against Vincent, Pitt, and
Dorrel, at Westminster, and they were held to bail for £40,000
? Documents appended to a diary of Sir W. Hedges. Ed. by Col. Yule.
GG 2
452
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
each. Litigation flagged, however, while the contrabandists
continued to drive a profitable business in the best Indian goods,
over-buying the factors of the Company on the Hooghly and
under-selling them on the Thames. In a notable case Chief
Justice Jefferies held that the exclusive patent of the Company
to trade to the East was good, and that judgment must go
accordingly. The decision ruled the other cases pending, and
thereupon led to compromise and settlement, of which the public
heard nothing. But no little sympathy was shown by wealthy
and intelligent merchants for the cause asserted by the aggressors
as that of free trade against monopoly, a system which had been
going out of favour in the city since the days of Elizabeth. Pitt
was sentenced to pay a fine of £1,000, which was given by Gov-
ernment to the Company in consideration for the wrongs they
had sustained, but some time after their astute adversary per-
suaded the Directors to remit more than a moiety thereof.1 Fast
sailing craft no longer raced with the Company's vessels of
broader beam in the Indian Seas, and their irrepressible owners
turned their attention to ventures of a different kind.
Seats in Parliament, like most other public trusts, under the
Restoration had become marketable. The tradition of Triennial
dissolutions had almost died out; and the substitute of Septen-
nial elections was as yet unknown. A small borough tbat could
return two Members for an indefinite period to Westminster was
considered worth money by a neighbouring proprietor whose
family longed for recognition at Court; by a city merchant
ambitious of a baronetcy; or by a barrister in growing practice,
who saw no shorter way of access to the Bench. Irish peers,
who desired appointments abroad or elevation to the rank of
English nobles, could desire no readier method of becoming
marriageably known, and the Treasury, though it continued
ostensibly to recognise the right of a majority to call it to
account, laid out no inconsiderable sums in hedging against
casualties at St. Stephen's. In addition to all these there came
gradually another set of bidders for legislative rank. Men
without grandmothers of quality or green acres of wide extent,
professional celebrity, or wounds incurred in war, half hid by
decoratioris, began to offer themselves as purchasers of Parlia-
mentary seats, and privateering free traders, checked in their
i Court Book, 30th November, 1687.
“INTERLOPING."
453
hazardous ventures at sea, betook themselves in several instances
to this newer mode of investing capital. Mathias Vincent,
cousin of Thomas Pitt, who from being chief of the Company's
Agents at Balasore had become the most formidable of their
subverters there, came home half as rich as a Nabob, bought his
way into the representation of Lostwithiel, one of the smallest of
the Cornish boroughs, and his kinsman made a bargain with the
owners of Old Sarum whereby he became one of its Members
in the Convention that clected William and Mary King and
Queen. Having taken part in this memorable act of State he
was unseated on petition for some unwary proceeding which
subsequent experience enabled him to avoid; and he was obliged
to resort to the adjacent city of Salisbury instead until the next
dissolution, when he made Old Sarum safe for the future. He
seems to have had no gift of Parliamentary talk, and perhaps he
found Parliamentary privilege less available for purposes where-
on his mind was set than he anticipated. But in 1693 the zest
for unlicensed enterprise in the far East revived, and the
Member for Salisbury undertook once more in concert with
others to set at nought the prohibitions imposed on private
trade with Hindoostan. Sir John Goldsborough, Chief Governor
of the Company's settlements, warned their factors at Fort St.
George and Vizagapatam that “Tom Pitt and Allen Catchpole
in the Seyinore were come again to try what could be made of a
run thither. He had writ to the Nabob and King's Dewan at
Dacca, and to the Governor at Hooghly to let them know who
Pitt was, and how he stole thither without leave. He would do
the utmost he could to hinder his being permitted to trade."
From the Interloper himself he acknowledged the receipt of a
letter threatening to divulge the circumstances of the Company
if he was obstructed in his way. As if he (the Governor) was
to be frightened thereby. "If," he replied, "you have any license
from the King of England or the Honourable Company to trade
in those parts show it to me and I shall readily obey it ; but if
you refuse such authentic satisfaction I must take it for granted
that you have no such power, but are come hither either a-
pirating or at best Interloping, and I shall deal with you accord-
ingly.” The lawless competitors in Indian wares disregarding,
? Governor Goldsborough to Captain T. Pitt. From Chuttanutte, ist November,
1693.
» 1
454
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
however, all warnings off, established themselves at Hooghly, and
won the goodwill of the natives as buyers on better terms, by
paying ready money.
Meanwhile the Company's prospects at home visibly drooped ;
their stock continued to fall, and projects of rivalry more and
more gained public attention. The Directors lost courage in
their contests with those whom they denounced as poachers on
their once secure preserves ; and a bustling minority in the
Court half-worried, half-won their colleagues over to the ex-
pedient of accommodating differences with their tormentors.
Even before Tom Pitt's last expedition to Bengal they had en-
tertained the notion of absorbing the adverse interests of the
invaders and incorporating the chief of them in the Company;
and when he returned triumphant to enjoy the fruits of his ex-
ploits, the prudence of agreeing with an enemy in the gate
stifled the memory of resentment for past wrongs. An opulent
and independent man, he was now as little disposed to be con-
trolled by a constituency as by a Company; and easy though
his seat for Salisbury had been, he resolved to revert to the de-
cayed suburb whence he first took his title of M.P. He pur-
chased from Lord Salisbury the Manor of Stratford-under-the-
Castle, which included the half-score burgage tenures that
nominally returned two Members to Parliament; and an old-
fashioned residence called Mawarden's Court, above the entrance
to which he placed the inscription-Parva sed apta domino.
There, however, he took up his abode, and in 1695 returned
himself one of the representatives of Old Sarum; the lingering
holder of a smaller portion having enough interest in the neigh-
bourhood to make it worth while allowing him to retain the other
seat.
So notorious had the progress of jobbing of this kind be-
come that it was made a theme of vehement, though vain, de-
nunciation. Some places still called towns, “whose charters
remained though the towns themselves seemed to be dead, were
so mean and contemptible that nothing remained of them but a
despicable village, with the ruins of what they had been. It
would be but reasonable that the charters and privileges should
die with them ; for when they were depopulated and desolate
there could be no need of any person to represent them. Yet
Bramber, Old Sarum, Stockbridge, Gatton, Queenborough, and
GOVERNOR OF FORT ST. GEORGE.
455
others sent up gentlemen to represent beggars, and had more
money spent at some of their elections than all the land in the
parishes was worth.”i But, as safe investments, such boroughs
continued to be at a premium throughout subsequent generations,
and Tom Pitt lived to see his purchase enjoyed by more than
one of his family.
Negotiations with his old censors in Leadenhall Street ended
in his appointment by them as an able person duly qualified
to take charge of the Presidency of Fort St. George. He was
specially instructed for the “defeating of Interlopers, and wherein
his advice might be helpful; and this he undertook to do." He
kept his word, and made his authority felt by all who dared to
imitate his former example.
A salary of four hundred a-year with allowances 3 would not
have tempted the Member for Old Sarum to accept a trouble-
some charge in the far East had not the position held out the
promise of untold advantages. He was to be free to trade as a
merchant on his own account in what and with whom he pleased,
as well as to deal in the capacity of factor for the Company, and
he retained his post for eleven years.
Far from concealing his
activity in private enterprise, he took his eldest son Robert with
him, with special leave to engage in the business of a merchant
at Fort St. George; it was well understood that father and son
had ventures in common, and their investments were shipped in
the same vessels that bore those of the Company. Preceding
Governors had grown rich by the use of mercantile opportunities,
and no one doubted that the great Interloper, won over to the
side of authority, would improve on their example. His private
letters enumerate the varied produce the Pitts sent to England,
and the variety of wares and fabrics imported by them in ex-
change. His searching eye discerned a source of profit easier
and something more exquisite still. He heard there were large
diamonds in the country for sale, which he encouraged their
owners to bring to Madras, promising to be their chapman.
Janchund, one of the most eminent diamond merchants, came
in December, 1701, and brought with him a large rough stone,
1 Defoe,
" The freeholder's plea against stock-jobbing elections of Parliament
men.
2 Court Book, 24th Nov., 1697.
3 Court Book E. 1. Company, 2nd Feb., 1698.
456
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
which the Governor bought for 48,000 pagodas. Once possessed
of the treasure, he lost no time in transporting it to a place of
greater safety
Content with five years' acquisitions in trade, Robert Pitt
went home in the autumn of 1702, charged with many austere
precepts for his future guidance and entrusted with the keeping
of the Great Diamond, about which nothing was then to be made
known, but whereof the world was to know all in due time.
Robin was enjoined to spend three years at Oxford and to enter
his name at the Inns of Court, with a view to practise Civil
Law : he was to beware of early wedlock, and never to lend
money without good security. Nothing particular was said
about resuming the paternal seat at Sarum, but the agent of
the family there had instructions to prevent the admission of
any claim on the part of doubtful voters : for already the
Governor had thoughts of returning to England. In the prime
of life, and possessing a fair competency, society in Mayfair had
more attractions for Robert Pitt than that of Oxford ; helping
to make laws at Westminster seemed an easier occupation than
the study of them at Lincoln's Inn, and a handsome wife with
rank and fortune, the best of friends with whom to spend his
days. Harriet Villiers, daughter of the fourth Lord Grandison,
was deemed by everyone except his father an eligible match ;
but disobedience was a sin not to be forgiven by the despot of
Fort St. George. To an old friend in England he gave vent to
his ill-humour. "My son has not followed any one direction or
order of mine. His sudden captivation must certainly have
rendered him a light and inconsiderate fellow in the eyes of all
men of business and thought. The lady I am a stranger to,
and I believe shall always be so. I wish she may not have the
worst of it; though with her fortune, and what he has of his
own, with the advantages I have given him in his education, are
very good working tools, and all that he must ever expect from
Further mortified by the different feeling shown by the
rest of the family on the occasion, he wrote to Sir Stephen
Evance : "I can say little to my son's marriage since 'tis done.
What money he carried with him hence, including my note,
with his wife's fortune, will be near ten thousand pounds : a good
beginning for a young man who has been brought up to business.
1 To Captain Edward Harrison, 23rd April, 1704.
ine." I
THE PITT DIAMOND.
457
I have no money to spare, nor shall any of mine be fooled away
by my wife or children while I am living, nor afterwards neither,
if I can provide against it. As to what you write of my wife,
if she can't live upon the income of my land let her starve, and
all her children with her; therefore, pay not one penny that she
draws upon you. I hereby enclose a Bill of Exchange upon any
son Robert Pitt for three hundred dollars, being so much paid
to discharge his bill from the Cape, which he is to make good to
my cash, as also the thousand pounds his mother gave him, she
not having power to dispose of a penny of mine, nor never shall."
A model of the great stone was sent, in 1703, to Sir S. Evance,
and it was consigned next year jointly to him and R. Pitt, not
to be parted with on any account for less than its value. “What
would contribute most thereto would be the concealing of it."
Having staked so much in its purchase he reiterated his direc-
tions that they should not try to dispose of it till after the war
was over, nor in any case for less than £1,500 a carat, though it
ought to be more. “There was not the fellow of it in the world,
and it was his whole dependence.” When first polished he was
advised that the portions cut off were worth £1,500, a mistake
he supposed for as many thousands. Again and again he en-
joined the utmost secrecy and care in the keeping of that "great
concern of his, the good success of which was to crown all his
labours.” Meanwhile there had been anxious enquiries at
Madras, by orders from the Company, as to what had become
of the big diamond ; it therefore as much concerned him to
have it secreted in England as there. To his jeweller in Lon-
don he wrote promising to requite him for his inestimable
favours in this grand affair. “If the English were so lucky as
to put Charles on the throne of Spain, nothing he could pur-
chase to make his acknowledgments to Queen Anne (would be)
so acceptable.” 1 Rumours affecting his bankers' credit being
whispered froin afar, he begged of Mr. Dolben to have the
matchless gem deposited in an iron chest at the Bank, of which
he, Sir S. Evance, and his son should each have a different key;
and if on the union with Scotland it was intended to present the
Queen with the title of Empress, he was sure nothing was so
proper to accompany it, being the biggest and best in the world.
1 To A. de Ffonseca, 13th September, 1706.
2 To I. Dolben, February 5:h, September 11th, 1707.
458
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Yet for two years longer he suffered the width of a world to lie
between him and his treasure.
From the far East his hope and pride still turned to Old Sarum,
which he wished his son, who was soon forgiven for making a
good match without leave, to represent in Parliament while he
was himself away. It would be very hard (he wrote to his agent
there) if he should meet with any opposition at the next elec-
tion, when so much of the interest was in his own hands; and
he hoped Mr. Mompesson, the other Member, would understand
it so and join with him. Charles Mompesson and Robert Pitt
consequently agreed, and returned each other.
The new M.P. sided apparently with Opposition, and though
the War Office allowed him to purchase a cavalry commission
for his younger brother at £1,200, he professed to be so dis-
gusted with the management of affairs that he retired into the
country, and refused to attend for some time. His father was
mortified at not having been consulted, and wrote to a friend of
the family that he never intended that his younger children
should depend on their elder brother, and he hoped the Lord
would have mercy on those who did.i He was much dissatisfied
with his family, but told Colonel Windham he would give £6,000
to each of his daughters if they married with his approval. On
the eve of his return home in 1709, he was charged with having
purchased a rare diamond, and with having sold it at a great
price for his own profit instead of that of the Company ; but his
accuser having broken down in many of his statements was sent
home in custody, and Governor Pitt himself afterwards quitted
Madras.
Resuming his avocations in the City, the ex-Governor con-
tinued to import goods from India on an extensive scale. If
anyone understood the mysteries of the Eastern markets it was
he; and his accumulated gains enabled him to speculate wisely
and well. His differences with the great chartered bankers of
Leadenhall Street were over; and he long kept up friendly re-
lations with them. There was no attempt on their part to
question his loyalty while in their service, or his right to enjoy
the wealth he had acquired therein. No purchaser had been
found for the wondrous jewel he used to speak of as his chief
dependence; and as he was content for several years with its
1 To R. Raworth, 13th September, 1707.
SOLD TO LOUIS XV.
459
1
safe custody in a dark room, while he lived luxuriously and
bought landed property, people felt warranted in styling him the
rich Mr. Pitt. He once more became M.P. for Old Sarum, while
his eldest son was returned for Salisbury. At the next election
his Parliamentary influence expanded. Son Robin was saved
the trouble of standing for the cathedral city and was nominated
with his parent for the Roman ruin ; while his brother Thomas
was made a burgess of Wilton, in time to become Member for
that expensive village. Nor did the aspirations of the family
end there. The Pitts joined the Whig Opposition and voted
with them against the expulsion of Steele; and on the proposed
commercial treaty with France declared against it in spirit and
detail, the ex-Governor moving as an amendment that the
Tory Ministry of the Queen should be lent to his Majesty,
Louis XIV., for three years, as they seemed best qualified to
.carry into effect his designs. Exaggeration of this sort was of
·course cheered, laughed at, and speedily forgotten, but one may
imagine how similar opinions, subsequently uttered without re-
straint by the fireside, must have caught the ear and fired the
imagination of a susceptible boy like William Pitt, taught to
look
upon his grandsire as one of the ablest and most remark-
able men of his time. Who will say when the seeds of predilec-
tion and preference, sown casually, strike root in the opening
mind; or by what stimulating elements they are gradually reared
to maturity? At the dissolution on the accession of George I.,
while Governor Pitt and his two eldest sons retained their seats,
:a fourth at the neighbouring hamlet of Hindon was procured
for John, the youngest of the family, and a fifth at Bridgwater
for a youthful cousin ; while George Pitt, of Strathfieldsaye, was
elected for Southampton, and George Pitt, of Shroton, in Dor-
setshire, for Wareham. The two latter were indeed indepen-
dent of the ex-Governor, but a name is fortunate that counts in
the seventh power at Westminster. Good society opened its
· eyes, and Thomas the younger winning the hand of Lady
Frances, sole heiress of Ridgway Lord Londonderry, the Earl-
dom was revived in his person. In 1716, the old adventurer
consented to undertake the Governorship of Jamaica, whose dis-
ordered state it was supposed his administrative experience
would peculiarly fit him to retrieve. He was probably flattered
1 P. Wentworth to Lord Strafford, at the Hague, 23rd April, 1714.
460
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
at being thus chosen, and set himself to master the details of
the problem he would have to solve. His appointment was
duly gazetted, and he undertook to return Sir W. Strickland in
his stead on his recently taking office. But for some cause, un-
explained, he renounced the colonial trust. Not choosing to
subside out of English public life, he managed to re-enter Parlia-
ment for the borough of Thirsk. Soon after, negotiations began
for the purchase of the great diamond for the young king of
France. The Regent Orleans feared popular blame if in a time
of dearth and scant revenue he lavished an unprecedented sum
on his nephew's diadem. St. Simon took credit for having per-
suaded him not to lose the opportunity of signalising his
administration by securing for Louis XV. the most brilliant
jewel in Christendom, and told him the nation would applaud
his prodigality. He agreed to the price accordingly of two
million livres ; crown jewels of equivalent value to be given in
pledge till the Treasury could afford to redeem them, and
£40,000 as a first instalment to be paid down. France, not-
withstanding her penury, exulted in the acquisition. The boy
king wore the gem at his coronation, and through all the vicissi-
tudes that have since befallen, it remains a symbol of national
pride in the pre-eminence of all that belongs to France.
Before the year was out old Tom Pitt had invested the first
instalment, and some thousands beside, in the purchase of Bocon-
noc, a goodly mansion and estate of 1,700 acres in Cornwall,
which he gave during his life, and left by will to his eldest son.
There the Eton holidays of his grandson William were usually
passed, and there his parents dwelt with their other children when
Court and Parliament were not in town. Robert Pitt was elected
in 1722 for Oakhampton, leaving room at Old Sarum for his kins-
man George, who in due time took an office under the Crown,
and was succeeded by another relative. Electoral casualties else-
where somewhat reduced their legislative strength, and but five
of the names thenceforth appeared at St. Stephen’s.
Early fondness for classic and historic reading seemed to have
led to that devotion to political life which .became in manhood
William Pitt's absorbing passion. Inheriting but a slender pri-
vate income, his family had obtained for him a cornetcy of Horse,
but his entrance soon after into Parliament confirmed his pre-
ference for other pursuits than those which in times of peace had
WILLIAM PITT.
461
not even the attraction of adventure. He took his seat in Op-
position near Richard Grenville and young Lyttelton, whom his
brother had named as his colleague for Oakhampton. Both were
related by marriage to Lord Cobham, and thence arose the ban-
tering epithet, long familiar in the Lobby, of the Cobham Cousins.
The voice of Thomas Pitt was never heard in debate, nor was that
of his ambitious kinsman, until upon the marriage of the Prince
of Wales Pulteney suggested that an Address of thanks and con-
gratulation should be moved and seconded by two of the youngest
friends of his Royal Highness; opportunity thus being afforded
for the expression of regret that an event so much desired by the
nation had been so long deferred. The Prince was still a resident
at St. James's, though his years rendered it reasonable that he
should have a suitable establishment of his own. It was no secret
that he was fast getting into debt, and that partly in consequence
he had become the object of matrimonial designs which neither
King nor Ministers could endure with complacency. One of these
was ascribed to the old Duchess of Marlborough, who hoped he
might be induced to marry her favourite grand-daughter, Lady
Diana Spencer, having for her dowry £100,000. It was even said
that the nuptials had been privately arranged, when the vigilance
of Walpole enabled him betimes to disconcert the scheme. The
Heir Apparent, it was said, had conceived a preference for his
cousin, the Crown Princess of Prussia, and that the attachment
was reciprocal ; but the inveterate aversion of George II. for his
brother-in-law of Brandenberg rendered secrecy indispensable;
and it was only through a misplaced confidence by the Prussian
Queen, who favoured the attachment, that its existence became
known to the English Ministry, and was thereby defeated. It
was thought prudent to guard the Prince against other attrac-
tions, and the diplomatic choice of a consort fell on the Princess
Agusta of Saxe Coburg Gotha. The Address of congratulation,
moved by Lyttelton in a maiden speech, was seconded by Pitt,
who spoke also for the first time. Both indulged in compli-
ments to the King, for having thus, in his wisdom and goodness,
provided the best guarantee for the happiness of his son and the
continuance of the Protestant succession to the Throne. As re-
ported, the speech of the latter justifies in no degree auguries of
future oratorical fame. Remembered indistinctly, after lapse of
29th April, 1736.
462
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
» 1
years, merits were claimed for it as Ciceronian; and it is possible
that happy turns of expression gave signs of the mastery of lan-
guage that later on was to win such wide renown. In covert satire:
they were unlike the florid and inflated eulogies of Royalty with
which they were mingled, for, by all accounts, they cost the youth-
ful orator rather dear. George II. is said to have resented keenly
the insinuation that he had very little merit in bringing about
the match; and Walpole was, of course, treated unceremoniously
for having neglected too long the duty he owed to the nation.
When the festivities were over, and his Majesty had once more
made his escape from captivity of kingship, and the Queen had
resumed the functions of Regency, the young Cornet Pitt was de-
prived of his commission in the Blues, for no other reason that could
be assigned than for his having given his opinion prematurely on
delicate affairs of State. It has been truly said, by one who was
himself no inexperienced judge of the arts of cynicism, that "his
speech, though it seems vapid enough as reported, must have
been forcible and stinging, for it was the foundation of that long
and irreconcilable personal animosity of George 11. against Mr.
Pitt."
In conformity with his recent declaration, Walpole asserted the
right and duty of Ministers to deprive officers of their commis-
sions who voted against them. “A Minister," he said, “must be
a very pitiful fellow if he did not turn out those who pretended
to meddle with the Civil Government: and he would leave that
advice as a legacy to those who might succeed him”; on which
his inveterate enemy, old Duchess Sarah, characteristically ob-
served, "If I had been a Parliament man I should have been so
saucy as to have asked why the soldiers were in Parliament, for,
according to his notion, they were only to be a standing army to
plunder and ruin as occasion offered, and to vote away our pro-
perty when they sat in the House." ?
George II. soon got tired of Harrington, and wanted him
removed to make way for Horace Walpole. But the discreet
Cofferer well knew that he and his brother would not be endured
in the same Cabinet by those who already cast envious looks
upon the numerous places held by the family; and he told
the Queen that he dare not accept the post. But his Majesty,
J. W. Croker's note to Hervey's “Memoirs,'' II., 118.
2 Private Correspondence.
1
H. WALPOLE VICE-SECRETARY.
463
when leaving for Hanover, insisted on his accompanying him in
the exceptional capacity of Vice-Secretary of State. As Elector
of Hanover he loved to take part in all German affairs, without
amenability to Cabinet control which fettered his will in Eng-
land ; and as there was always a danger of his committing him-
self further than his English Council and Parliament would sanc-
tion, it was considered rather hazardous to suffer him to spend
the summer abroad without a keeper of his diplomatic con-
science.
A twofold correspondence was confidentially kept up between
the brothers during the autumn, one set of letters being always
shown to him in which foreign affairs were discussed as though he
had really a potential voice in them, and another set as scrupulously
kept from his sight wherein the First Lord of the Treasury dic-
tated what course in each case the King was to be persuaded to
take. The Vice-Secretary detailed from time to time the diffi-
culties of his task, and how he accomplished it. In this way Sir
Robert and the Queen were kept informed of all they were most
curious to know, and much that Harrington would have probably
shrunk from reporting
George II. promised Madame Walmoden to return in the fol-
lowing May. He kept the engagement to himself, however, as
did Harrington, who had set his heart on an earldoin and the
Rangership in reversion of Richmond Park, neither of which
Walpole was ready to concede.
Through Weston, Under-Secretary for the Northern Depart-
ment, Lord Hervey learnt the fact of the Royal promise to the
new favourite, and communicated it to Walpole, who was more
concerned than he cared to-show. “He shan't go for all that,"
he exclaimed. “His Majesty imagines frequently he shall do
many things, which, because he is not at first contradicted, he
fancies he shall be let to do at last. He thinks he is devilish
stout, and never gives up his will or his opinion; but he never acts
in anything material according to either of them, but when I
have a mind he should. Generally it is the policy of Ministers
to throw the blame of everything wrong done on their master;
but I am willing to own whenever our master does wrong it is
the fault of his Ministers, who must either want resolution
enough to oppose him or sense enough to do it with success.
Our master, like most people's masters, wishes himself absolute,
464
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and fancies he has courage enough to attempt making himself
so; but, if I know anything of him, he is, with all his personal
bravery, as great a political coward as ever wore a crown, and as
much afraid to lose it." I
George II. quitted Hanover reluctantly. There, he said, every-
one looked up to him as the fountain of honour, and the source
of wealth and power, instead of being, as he was in England,
little more than the nominal Head of the State. His return was
at length announced. The Queen evinced less satisfaction than
she had done on the last occasion, when she regarded his coming
with some degree of triumph as promising the renovation of her
former influence and the breaking of a spell in which he seemed
to have been bound. Nothing she had recently learnt of Court
life at Hanover led her to hope for the resumption of relations
she had so long valued. Nor were the Cabinet more elated.
The continuance of bad weather for several days caused great
anxiety even at the Admiralty till a letter from the King arrived
to say that, much against his will, he was still detained at Hel-
voetsluys. On inquiry it was found that "Walpole was gone
with Miss Skerritt to Richmond Park; which, considering the
anxiety at the continuance of the storm, her Majesty looked
upon as a piece of gallantry that might have been spared."
During the ensuing week, with Devonshire, Newcastle, Rich-
mond, and Grafton, Sir Robert strove to keep a cheerful counte-
nance and hide the misgivings that still haunted them ; but on
the 26th things looked so dark that he felt bound to tell Queen
Caroline all he feared, and to prepare her for the worst. A few
hours later a letter from the weather-bound Monarch was
brought by a venturous fisherman to bid his desponding people
to be of good comfort, for that he was enduring patiently the
duress put upon him by the elements, and that until the storm
ceased he would not risk the lives of his faithful officers and
their crews." The Queen made known the purport of the letter
to those around her; and told them how glad she was to be
assured that the damage to the ships and risk of life incurred in
a futile attempt to sail before the storm went down was not
caused by any petulant temper of his Majesty, “who had sub-
mitted himself entirely to Sir Charles Wager's government, and
had debarked in consequence of his directions." But this ac-
1 Hervey's "Memoirs."
THE KING IN DANGER.
465
count, according to the Vice-Chamberlain, few believed. Nobody
in the room had not heard, and few had not seen, accounts from
all who were about his Majesty at Helvoetsluys that his
impatience was insupportable, Sir C. Wager's and Horace
Walpole's letters being full of nothing else. The King had
declared if the Admiral would not sail, he would go in a packet-
boat. Sir Charles told him that he could not. “Let it be what
weather it might," he said, he was not afraid, and the Ad-
miral had replied “If, sir, you are not, I am"; but his Majesty
swore he had rather be twelve hours in a storm than twenty-four
more at Helvoetsluys; on which Sir Charles said he need not
wish for twelve, for four would do the business; and at last ex-
claimed, “Well, sir, you can oblige me to go, but I can make
you come back again.” To the Queen he owned that he had
told the Admiral that he wished to see a storm at sea, and that
when obliged to put back Sir Charles asked him if his curiosity
was satisfied, which drew forth the reply: "So thoroughly that
I do not desire ever to see another.” In the letter reporting this
dialogue the laconic First Lord said that thenceforth “his
Majesty was as tame as any about him.” To the Queen's con-
gratulations on his escape he responded at great length in terms
full of the affection and admiration of a young lover. The
Queen observed to Walpole, “Do not think because I show you
this that I am an old fool, vain of my person and charms this
time of day. I am personally pleased with it, but I am not un-
reasonably proud of it.” The Ministers who saw the epistle
agreed that in the gift of writing love-letters no one ever sur-
passed their incomprehensible master.
The Prince of Wales, whatever may have been his inciting
motives, behaved well throughout the period of uncertainty
respecting the Royal Squadron, and justly gained no little popu-
larity thereby. His attendance on his mother was daily and
deferential, and his readiness to take pains to conciliate the
good opinion of all classes, though spitefully criticised by those
who feared his accession to the throne, could not be denied even
by them. Before any rumour had spread of the danger to the
Royal Squadron at Helvoetsluys he had invited the leading
men of the City to dine; and even Hervey felt bound to own
that it would have been wrong to put them off when there was
no certain news of his father being in danger. He could not
VOL. I.
HH
466
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
have been unaware of the unpopularity of the King, chiefly
caused by his frequent and prolonged absence abroad; and the
belief of his preference for his German courtiers. He too was a
German, but he had mastered the difficulties of the English lan-
guage, and spoke it with a fluency his father or grandfather had
been unable to attain. His defects and vices were but too well-
known to those about him to allow of any reliance in his pro-
fessions of superiority to party and patriotic love of country;
and even his mother, when pleading for his support by those
whom she knew distrusted and disliked him, could not conceal
her fears that his instability of purpose would render him in-
cessantly the dupe of the worthless and deceiving. He had
already exceeded his income of £50,000 from his father, and
£10,000 from the Duchy of Cornwall, and having married—not
his cousin of Prussia, whom he loved, but a daughter of Saxe-
Gotha, who had been chosen for him—he not unreasonably
thought himself entitled to a separate establishment, and as
much to support it as his father had enjoyed when Prince of
Wales. This, however, was refused, as lessening still further the
means of parental control, and he resolved to apply to Parlia-
ment for what he deemed his due.
Carteret, Pulteney, and Chesterfield, Lyttelton, and Pitt con-
tinued to be the advisers of the Heir Apparent, who was sup-
posed by them to regard himself as the most ill-used of sons.
The Chancellor and Newcastle on many points differed from
the First Lord, and on this, amongst the rest, they would fain
have striven to prevent the widening of the breach in the Royal
Family. But their advice was rarely asked, and still more
rarely taken. Walpole was supreme in the Closet and in Parlia-
ment, as well as in the Council Chamber ; and his disapproving
colleagues saw that unless they could reinforce their influence in
the Cabinet they must still act in subordination to their domi-
nant, and at times domineering, chief. Though he would not try
to reconcile father and son, he insisted on his Majesty's offering
to grant the Prince, upon his making becoming submission, the
extra £50,000 a year, during good behaviour, out of the privy
purse, and settling a jointure on the Princess. George II.
angrily resisted, but the Minister was inflexible and Royalty at
last gave way.
The advisers of the Prince bade him reject this offer, which
PRINCE OF WALES,
467
would have taken him out of their hands and made him depen-
dent for half his income on the pleasure of his father. They
undertook to obtain all he wished by a vote in Parliament with-
out any humbling conditions. He told the Lords of the Cabinet,
therefore, who brought the message, that he was sorry that the
matter was now entirely out of his hands. His Majesty's rage
was unbounded, and bitter were the reproaches heaped upon
Walpole. But the fruit, he said, of his suggestion was to be
reaped not to-day but to-morrow; by it he counted on bringing
the House of Commons to reason, not the Prince. And so the
event proved.
Both Sir Joseph Jekyll and Bishop Sherlock told the Queen
that it were better to concede the claims of the Prince than to
risk the issue of an angry debate. Lady Hervey, who, notwith-
standing her husband's position at Court, kept up her friendship
with Pulteney, upbraided him with taking the lead in the
threatening movement there. Sweet Molly Lepell had never
disguised her admiration for him above all his rivals for fame;
or her belief that he was the fittest man to be Minister whenever
Walpole should succumb; and, exercising the right, as few
others ventured to do, of saying what she thought with fasci-
nating frankness, she rated the orator keenly but kindly on
making himself the mouthpiece of a proposal which she knew
from the first he had disapproved. All that Pulteney, in excuse,
could say was, that failing to prevent the motion being made he
thought it safer in his hands than any other's, and that he could
not afford to take a subordinate part if discussion there must
be. The part he actually took impressed even those who
loved him not, as specious and splendid ; rich in historic prece-
dent and recent example, and sparkling throughout with
imagery and wit. His great antagonist was likewise equal to
the occasion. Relying mainly on the Civil List having been
granted to the King for life, without any stipulation of income
to be allowed the Prince of Wales, the interference of Parlia-
ment would amount to a direct resumption of a portion of what
was given ; and, as such, would be a change in the balance of the
Constitution, the consequence of which no one could foresee.
The effect of this artful appeal to feelings and sentiments,
stronger than even those of party, was seen at the close of the
debate. Had the division been called when Pulteney sat down
H H 2
468
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
a mingling majority of various sections would have carried his
motion ; but after the Minister's speech five-and-forty Tories,
led by Wyndham, withdrew, and the Tellers at midnight
reckoned but 204 votes in its favour, while 234 were counted
against it. In the Upper House Carteret moved a similar
Address, which was also rejected.
The Chancellor and the Secretary of State thought it would
be a high stroke of policy to detach Carteret from the Oppo-
sition and bring him into office once more. The ambitious
Statesman had no prejudices or opinions which stood in the
way, and readily embraced the proposal. He had, indeed, for
some time been out of favour with the Court; but, through
Lady Sundon and others, he took pains to repudiate many of
the wayward acts of the Prince of Wales; and occasionally he
perplexed some of his more eager associates by his secession or
silence in the House of Lords when they counted on his aid.
In short, he did all which could well be done by him to allay
personal animosities, and to qualify himself for joining the Ad-
ministration. But when at length Newcastle opened the matter
to Walpole, who had silently noted all these preliminary man-
œuvres, he repelled the suggestion with passionate disdain.
am glad, my lord,” he said, "of the opportunity, once for all,
to let you know my determined sentiments on this matter, and
without further expostulation on what you would have me do
which I will not do, or what I would hinder you doing and can-
not. Your Grace must take your choice between me and him ;
and if you are angry at my saying this I care not; I have said
it to your betters, and I'll stick to it.” He had, in fact, more
than once taken pains to convince Royalty of what he termed
the duplicity of Carteret, and to make them understand that he
could not and would not endure him as a colleague.
Flushed with the confirmation, as he deemed it, of his un-
fatherly resolve, George II. wished to signalise his triumph by
revoking the concessions he had offered, and by serving the
Heir Apparent with notice to quit St. James's. But the prudent
head of the Government would sanction neither act of folly,
which could only tend to make many repent the votes they had
just given. A Motion of Censure would be infallibly carried,
and in self-vindication the Minister must ask next day for a
1 Hervey's “ Memoirs,” Vol. II., p. 335.
APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT.
469
Vote of Confidence, which he was sure to win. Thus exonerated
from blame, he must retire, " for how could any Minister serve a
Sovereign and say he could carry his own points and not his
master's ?” The eviction was thus averted for the time, but it
was only suspended. He urged the ratification of the promise
to settle the £50,000 a-year, and the jointure; but he was met
with a refusal on the ground that these were terms of accommo-
dation which, not having been accepted, were no longer binding;
they were articles of a treaty to prevent the discussion in Parlia-
ment, and as the Prince had allowed the question to be debated
it must be looked upon as a release from the obligation of per-
forming the conditions, and things must be left where they were.
Sir Robert, losing patience, answered brusquely that the message
conveyed through Hardwicke contained no such condition, and
that Parliament and the rest of the world would look upon it as
a temporary device, if the promises were not performed.
George II. rejoined, “I see my affairs, then, are upon that foot
that I must yield in everything." Nor was his sense of practical
subordination to the will of those who ceremoniously called
themselves his Majesty's Ministers, lightened by the prepon-
derance apparently in his favour in the House of Lords, or by
the moderation of Carteret's tone in appealing to that assembly
Newcastle, who attempted to reply to him, had as usual striven
to conciliate both sides. He had in fact privately told the Qucen
that nothing would settle the question but a substantial addition
to the income of the Prince, and it was left to Scarborough
and the Chancellor to defend the resistance of the Court.
Walpole discerned clearly his motives, and resented what he
felt to be the Duke's preparation to desert him for Carteret,
with whom he was known to live on intimate terms. When
asked why his Grace had not made a less temporising speech,
he said, "I cannot mend the Duke of Newcastle's understand.
ing; and if he will not believe what I have told him, that that
nail will not drive, I cannot help it. I know him well and see
very plainly his manner of working ; he is linking himself with
the Chancellor, and thinks to stand by that help on his own legs
without me." Hervey confirmed his distrust; for beside the
Duke cultivating the Chancellor, his courting the Bishop of
Salisbury showed plainly he proposed to keep an interest at
Court by means of the greatest enemy Sir Robert had there;
470
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
and as he thought Lord Carteret's a better life than Sir Robert's,
he determined not to be desperate with the reversionary Minister
any more than with the reigning one, for the obligations he had
to the one could not prevent his turning his eyes towards the
other.
To the Queen the Ministerial Dictator explained his position
and his purpose with subtle flattery, but without reserve. He
was sensible that somewhat of her confidence in him had heen
withdrawn of late, and he thought it hard if after so many years'
success in carrying out her wishes in Administration he should be
supplanted in her favour by those who had frequently opposed
them. “I know Lord Carteret has offered to sell your son to
you, and I know the hands through which he has tried to make
the bargain.” The Queen owned to him that the Earl had
endeavoured to excuse taking the Prince's part by sending her
word that he was driven to it. “He said that he found you were
too well established in my favour for him to hope to supplant
you; and upon finding he could not be first, that he had morti-
fied his pride so far as to take the resolution of submitting to be
second; but if you would not permit him even to serve under
you, who could blame him if he continued to fight against you?”
Sir Robert said it was impossible business could go on long with
him and Carteret. He knew him thoroughly; and knowing
this was an impracticable scheme, and that a reconciliation of
this kind would be nothing more than a short introduction to a
new rupture, he must beg leave to tell her Majesty, impertinent
as it might sound, that she must take her choice between them ;
that he could never serve with Lord Carteret ; but he was very
ready, if she thought it for her interest and her service, to qu
He knew that Bishop Sherlock and Lord Carteret had offered
her Majesty to bring in the Tories and fight this battle for her
against her son ; but he wished her to consider, before embark-
ing, how the matter would stand. They could not answer for
the party; and if they could, in what manner was it to be done?
Were they to turn out all those who voted in the majority of
thirty to take in those who voted the other way, in order to carry
it by a greater majority ? How were they to save appearances
but by advising the gift of another £20,000 a-year to her son ;
and would that quiet him? No; he would be just as ready to
fight for the rest, and more able. If he forced a change of Ad-
REDUCTION OF DEBT.
471
o do
ministration he would have conquered. She knew he said so
himself when Mr. Hedges tried to divert him from pursuing the
affair in Parliament, telling him it was impossible he could ever
get the money. His answer was, “ At least I shall show I can
do more by opposing than the Opposition have been able to do
in sixteen years without me; I shall turn out Walpole.” Let her
Majesty consider too what she would do by taking a Tory Ad-
ministration, and bringing people into her service who never
could be in her interest; the Whig party, the natural support of
her family, would unite in the interest of her son; and rising in
audacity as he pressed the argument, Walpole added
not flatter yourself, Madam, that a party that is strong enough
to support you though divided, will not be strong enough to dis-
tress you if you unite them against you." Had Caroline believed
that it was really in her power or that of the King to change at
will the Administration, the naked insolence of such a threat
would have roused her pride, for the time at least, to resentment,
but she knew too well the weakness of her husband and the
strength of the Minister to misinterpret his egregious flattery as
anything more than clever compliment, and her manner at part-
iny with him showed that he had prevailed, for she dismissed
him with the strongest assurances of satisfaction with his con-
duct, and promises of her support.
Under the advice of Pulteney, Sir John Barnard brought in a
Bill to reduce the interest of the Public Debt from four to three
per cent., by which a saving of £500,000 a-year would have been
effected. The fundholders alone would, it was imagined, oppose
the scheme, and Opposition looked to reap much credit from its
adoption, which by implication cast on the Minister of Finance
the just reproach of having omitted to suggest the saving.
Walpole's friends thought that he could only acquiesce in it
silently, or affect to lend it his support. Strange to say, he would
do neither, and on the motion for leave to bring in the Bill he
voted in a minority of 157 against 220, many of his colleagues
being in the majority. His motive was satisfactorily explained.
By some it was ascribed to jealousy, which could not endure the
taking of the conduct of finance out of his hands; by others it
was attributed to fear of a defection of the monied interest. It
is only certain that he spared no pains, and it is probable stuck
at no expedient to defeat the measure. Whilst the Bill was
472
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
preparing he went about persuading, intimidating, arguing, and
by his “Exchequer knowledge" puzzling, with regard to details,
many who had approved of the proposal. He failed to convince
his own brother or Mr. Pelham, but nevertheless he had worked
so effectually that on the second reading it was rejected by
almost a greater majority than that by which it had been
brought in. Walpole, however, applied himself to the task, and
borrowed considerable sums from the old Duchess of Marl-
borough and other persons of wealth, to convert certain loans
from six to four per cent. Their amount was comparatively
small, having been raised for special occasion; but with the
limited revenue of the Kingdom at the time the saving in this
way was perhaps as large as could have been prudently
attempted.
Meanwhile Carteret, seeing that the doors of the Cabinet
would not be opened to him from within, resolved to try whether
from without they might not be broken. Supported by the
cheers rather than by the votes of the Opposition, whose con-
fidence for a time was shaken, he moved for an inquiry into the
circumstances of recent tumults in Edinburgh, and the causes
which had led to them. The exceptional violence of the mob, ,
the tragic ending of the outbreak, and the weakness of the local
executive throughout have been described too often to require
recital here. The Queen had, as Regent, exercised discretional
lenity to the authorities accused of undue rigour.
Carteret gave notice in the Lords of a motion to take the
Speech from the Throne into consideration, and the Cabinet met
at Lord Harrington's the night before to consult how best it
should be met ; but having no light as to its immediate purpose
they separated without coming to any determination. It was
the last time Chancellor Talbot went abroad; he was then very
unwell, and he died of pleurisy a few days after, much to the
regret of all who had the opportunity of estimating his integrity
and learning as a judge, and his candour and good sense in
council. The Cabinet were ill-agreed on Scotch affairs. New-
castle was all for vengeance and the suppression of what re-
mained of local administrative independence north of the Tweed;
Argyll, on the contrary, contended hotly, if not consistently,
that the authorities had done all they could to curb the irrepres-
sible force of national opinion.
DEATH OF TALBOT.
473
To appease the wrath of the Court at the murder of Captain
Porteous, Walpole's majority in the Cabinet agreed that a Bill
of pains and penalties should be brought in by which the Capital
of Scotland was to be deprived of its charter, its gates to be
razed, and the city guard taken away. A majority at first
seemed ready in each House to adopt that measure, but the
Scottish peers and Members made such a stand against it that
in spite of all that Walpole and Hardwicke could say in palliation
of its undiscriminating provisions, they were commuted for a
heavy fine upon the whole body of citizens, the greater part of
whom were blameless in the affair. Argyll took a conspicuous
part in the discussion. Referring pointedly to an expression
ascribed to the Queen Regent, "that Scotland must be reduced to
a hunting ground," MacCullamore said with a low bow, “Then,
Madame, I must retire to my part of the country to get ready
my hounds."
On the death of Talbot, no doubt prevailed among either
lawyers or politicians to whom the Great Seal ought to be given;
but some days' delay was unavoidable, and meanwhile a Com-
mission, sealed by his Majesty himself, appointed Lord Hardwicke
Speaker of the Upper House.
Although ambitious of the higher dignity, he hesitated about
giving up the permanent emoluments of the King's Bench; and
haggled for pensions and reversions before finally accepting the
.coveted promotion. Walpole was not to be deceived, and firmly
resisted what he felt were exorbitant demands; tired of the
discussion, he took out his watch and said drily," I suppose. I
must offer the Seal to Fazakerly,”—an eminent practitioner in
Chancery. “What!” exclaimed Hardwicke, "to a Tory, if not
a Jacobite ?” “It'is all very true," said the Minister, “but if by
one o'clock you do not accept, by two Fazakerly becomes Lord
Keeper and one of the best Whigs in England.” My Lord's
hesitation thereupon vanished; and he was content with a
promise of the next Tellership for his son. On the 21st of
February he received the Great Seal from the King, with the
title of Chancellor; and for the next five-and-twenty years
enjoyed uninterruptedly the privileges of a seat in the Cabinet.
Sir George Oxenden, noted chiefly for his debauched life, was
turned out of the Treasury for voting against Government on
the Prince of Wales's claim for an increased annuity. He had
474
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
seduced the wife of the First Lord's eldest son, a woman of weak
intellect, whom Lord Walpole had married for sake of her great
fortune, and who was the cause of much misery and mortification
to all whose name she bore. It might have been thought
difficult to find a successor to Sir George in every way worthy
of him, but Sir Robert had a keen appreciation of character.
Giles Earle, M.P. for Marlborough, was originally a political
adherent of the Duke of Argyll. By his dependability, and,
perhaps, by his congenial coarseness of humour, he had so
gained the after-dinner favour of Walpole, that in spite of many
remonstrances and even reproaches for what was thought a
reckless abuse of patronage, he was added to the Board of
Treasury. Many grumbled at his appointment, particularly
those who coveted it for themselves or their friends. Hervey
was one of these, and lost all patience when Earle was given
that which he thought his friend Stephen Fox should have
had.
At the end of the Session his Lordship renewed his complaints
that his friends and connections were still overlooked in the
dispensation of patronage, and at last his importunities seem to
have prevailed, as he notes with satisfaction that the younger
Mr. Fox got the surveyorship of works, worth £1,100 a year, the
elder a positive promise of a peerage, which was redeemed in
1741 ; and the Hon. Thomas Hervey “a
a sum of money in
present, and a promise to provide for him the first vacancy."1
The last named was the well-known Tom Hervey, the oddity
and license of whose conduct was gilt and varnished by a grace
and wit peculiarly his own. Lord Westmoreland was deprived
of his troop of Guards for voting for the Prince, the Duke of
Montagu being named in his stead. It so happened that this
very troop had been bought by Lord Westmoreland from the
Earl of Pembroke, to whoin the Duke had sold it a few years
before; and “Old Sarah," whom nothing escaped, remarked
in her own bitter way that Government had robbed Lord
Westmoreland who had never had anything in the army except
what he bought, to enrich his grace of Montagu, who had never
had anything but what he had sold.
The Prince, having no longer anything to expect from
Ministers, threw himself completely into the arms of the Op-
Hervey's "Memoirs," II., 345.
1
SEPARATION OF HANOVER.
475
position, and voted with the minority in the Peers, which at
Court was denounced as the climax of all his misdeeds.
One of the private purposes to which the Church Establishment
was put systematically was the making provision for used-up tutors
of noble houses. It was only most matter of course that when his
unlearned pupil proceeded to Oxford or went into the Guards,
the chaplain, if he had behaved well, should be pensioned off by
Government in some prebend or country parish. The com-
petition between noble friends of the Ministry for these favours
was sometimes greater than the means available, and the Ducal
Secretary of State had, in addition, to appease numerous claims in
his wide electorate of clergy who had done their best to promote
his interest at the poll. His willingness to gratify them all is
-unaffectedly professed in his replies, which acknowledge frankly
the value of the consideration given. On one occasion he regrets
his inability to provide for the tutor of a noble friend because he
is already engaged to do the like when he can to the Duke of R.
and the Earl of H.; and, unfortunately, he can oblige neither
just then having to do for his own nephew's preceptor, which
he is sure Lord A. will admit ought to come first. And
about the same time he is compelled to put off the claim of
a reverend supporter in Sussex because two other parsons are
before him on his list, and he is not sure whether Dr. Gooch will,
by taking a bishopric, make room for any of them. It is only
just, however, to note that neither side profaned their corres-
pondence with the least allusion either to faith or works.1
A proposal, which twelve years before seems to have been first
entertained, was now seriously considered, for separating Hanover
from Great Britain, and settling the succession to the Electorate
on William Duke of Cumberland, the King's eldest son. Strange
to say, both parties to the family quarrel embraced the project, and
this seems to have been the sole cause of its frustration, for had
it once been promulgated, so general and so intense was the feel-
ing that English interests were sacrificed to those of the Elec-
torate that all parties would have been only too glad to adopt
the suggestion. It was not, of course, to be thought of. Frede-
rick's advisers suggested that it would be a capital bargain for
him and them if his Royal Highness should offer to sell his re-
version to Hanover for the much longed-for addition to his income.
1 Newcastle to Mr. Barttelot and Lord Lymington, 7th April, 19th May, 1737.
476
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
His mother, he knew, would be tempted by the only chance of
making a splendid provision for her favourite son ; his father, he
hoped, might be reconciled by the prospect of his being himself
stripped of the favourite flower of his inheritance; the Govern-
ment, it was calculated, would not object to have an excuse for
resisting in future diplomatic entanglements, and the nation at
large would shout for joy at the prospect of having done for ever
with an appendancy they loathed. Finally, Opposition would
reap all the credit of the measure, and the Court of the Prince
would be twice as well worth belonging to.
Walpole's sagacity foresaw many objections to the practical
working of the scheme, and would not urge it on the Queen. That
singular woman, who had secretly had two drafts of the scheme
prepared some time before, both of which she had destroyed, and
then had a third drawn up which she kept by her, expressed the
utmost surprise on being told that the public initiation of the
thing was likely to come from her son. There were few proofs
of folly she did not believe him capable of giving, but this was
too extravagant to find credit with her. In a word, she was not
prepared for this kissing of the rod she had secretly laid by for
her disobedient first-born. It was, in her eyes, the greatest
penalty he could have provoked, and that he should have invited
its infliction disappointed and pained her. But why, after all, it
never was proposed in Parliament remains one of the many
things which history does not tell.
Cabinet discussions on the difficulties with Spain, leading to
stifled but not extinguished differences, arose in June, 1737. The
Chancellor, notwithstanding his instinctive caution, had been
somewhat abrupt, by his own confession, in trying to cut matters
short at a meeting late on the night of the 16th,after which he spent
two hours with Sir Robert, who “declared his intention to have
two or three more Cabinets before he went into Norfolk, in order
to consider what possible measures might be undertaken in case
an unsatisfactory answer should come to their last proposition ;
and he did not talk in the most sanguine manner about its suc-
He expressed strong apprehensions lest Newcastle should
write to Mr. Keene invitâ Minervâ, and that should spoil it. Hard-
wicke hoped that his Grace would give no handle for suggestions
of that kind on this occasion. The whole Cabinet had gone so
far in it that he need have no tenderness or nicety to state the
cess,
MARIA SKERRIT.
477
affair fully, and that in a probable light, and to give all the in-
structions that were suggested or could be necessary." A post-
script ran : Do not fail to burn this letter.” 1 The screws were
already loosened in the Cabinet, and it is evident that the great
Over Lord had begun to lose his hold over the chief proprietor
of votes in Parliament, and Walpole thought it worth while using
the Chancellor's influence over the Duke to forbear what temper
or tact would not suffer him directly to ask himn not to do.
Tired of the despotic ascendancy of the First Lord, more than
one close observer began to ask by what authority any man could
claim to be absolute, and whether Administration might not do as
as well, or better, without him. The pitiless critic of Marlborough
House discerned that with all the varied talents of Opposition,
there was no one amongst them manifestly entitled to be chief
and that by reason of acknowledged jealousy among leaders pro-
fessing to be animated only by their patriotism, the cause might
never win or be lost on the morrow of victory. 'I am nothing,"
she wrote, “but an ignorant old woman, but I have seen a great
deal of courts; and I do really think, that without having any of
the old Roman virtue, it is wiser for any great man not to be a
Premier Minister, which, if we should ever happen to have a
weak or an ill King, must lead a terrible life, besides being very
insecure; and, consequently, it would be best for King, as well as
the nation, and everybody that has any property, to have all
things done in Council without a Premier Minister, which I have
often heard is the law.” On which Lord Hailes truly observed,
" Yet the Duchess knew that under her own Administration all
things were not done in Council," because in it there was, in fact,
“a Premier without personal responsibility.”
On the 20th August, 1737, Lady Walpole died at Chelsea, where
the Minister had for many years kept up a costly establishment
and entertained his Parliamentary friends. Saturday and Sunday
he usually spent at Richmond Lodge, where a few of his most inti-
mates visited him, and over whose more exclusive and fastidious
luxury presided the young and beautiful Maria Skerritt, to whose
society his leisure hours were devoted, and whom he eventually
married.
The first Lady Walpole was the daughter of a city merchant,
and brought him a considerable fortune. The marriage was
1 Hardwicke to Newcastle, 16th June, 1737.- MS.
478
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
never, perhaps, a very happy one, and the terms of mutual
licence on which the Minister and his wife lived were almost in-
credible.
Without apparently intending it, the Prince deeply offended
his father by quitting Hampton Court without notice for St.
James's, where his first-born son, the future George III., was born.
Notwithstanding repeated apologies, he was, with the advice of
Walpole, ordered to leave the Palace, and for some time was
compelled, with his wife, to reside at Norfolk house, where, to
mark his contumacy, he was deprived of the customary guards.
He soon after purchased Carlton House from Lord Burlington,
and lived there during the remainder of his life. He had the old
mansion at Kew for a country house, where all the notable of
Opposition congregated.
Lord Bute, a Scotch representative Peer, till then but little
known, and the young Cornet of Horse, William Pitt, deprived
of his commission for his speech on the proposed increased
allowance, were appointed to the new Household. It had
originally been formed from amongst the friends of Government,
and many of those who composed it still wished to maintain
their position in the Ministerial party. After the open rupture
with the Court their position became not a little embarrassing;
and when his Royal Highness, in the autumn of 1737, appointed
Lyttelton his Secretary, Lords Carnarvon and Baltimore, with
Messrs. Herbert, Montagu, and Evelyn, took prudent council
together, and gave the Prince notice that though willing to vote
in Parliament on all questions relating to him personally as he
might desire, they must, in other respects, act with the Ministry.
Lyttelton was, indeed, one of the foremost in Opposition of Cob-
ham's connection, and owed his new place in the Household ap-
parently to this circumstance. He was not wanting in parts, but
was said to be irritable in temper, reckless in counsel, unpractical
in speech, and more of a clever essayist than a suasive orator.
Walpole tarried at Houghton longer than usual, being in the
hands of his physicians, who were obliged to operate from time
to time for the grievous malady, whose progress they could but
retard. His house was full of company, and he hoped before
Christmas to be again in town; till when he desired the Secre-
tary to make his apologies for failing to render “his infinite duty
and respect to the Queen,” for whom alone, perhaps, in all the
DEATH OF CAROLINE.
479
world he felt unalloyed respect and affection. Next day he
had tidings of her Majesty's illness, which her indomitable
spirit had too long concealed, but which at last filled all around
her with dismay. Sir Robert wrote that the news had put them
in such consternation that he knew not what to say or do. A
later letter had made them hope that the worst was past, and in
that persuasion only he was still at Houghton under the promise
of news being sent him of any change. “God send us good news.
The event is great, and would prove wonderful.”2 Henry
Pelham, who was staying at Houghton, told his brother that
Walpole was not in a condition to come up to town, and for
some reason, which he did not explain, that he himself could not
leave. “There was some company there that Sir Robert trusted
in everything, and was fonder of than ever, but the last people
should wish to be with on such occasions." The following day
Walpole prepared to set out for town. The allusions by Pelham
to the company at Houghton are, in some degree, explained by
the fact, not yet avowed, that she who then presided at the hos-
pitable table of the Minister had shortly before been made his
wife, but as yet was only known to his visitors as the fair daugh-
ter of Skerritt, and probably many of his visitors at this time
were unrecognised by Court and fashion.
The physicians were informed too late of the real cause of the
Queen's suffering, and in the course of a few days the case was
pronounced hopeless. The devotion shown by George II. from
the moment he became aware of her danger, and his solicitude
about all that related to her comfort is the best trait related of
him. He seldom left her apartment, and day and night was
constantly by her side. The patience and magnanimity of the
Queen throughout her sufferings, which were great, touched the
hearts of all about her. Her daughters, Caroline and Emily,
and the faithful Vice-Chamberlain, whom next to her own family
she seems to have regarded with affection, attended her to the
last. Sir Robert was admitted more than once to her presence,
and she conversed with him composedly as she was wont on
public affairs. Conscious of the imminency of her condition, she
exclaimed, " I have nothing to say to you, my good Sir Robert,
but to recommend the King, my children, and the Kingdom to
1 To Newcastle from Houghton, Nov., 1737.—MS.
2 To Newcastle, ioth Nov., 1737.---NIS.
480
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
your care.”
The pride of the Minister could not blind him to
the significance of words so singular addressed to him in presence
of the Monarch whom he had for years been governing through
the Queen. For once he misread the mind of Royalty and feared
that the unveiling of his own real mastery in the hour of death
would never be forgiven. He could not deny himself the satis-
faction of retailing the notable words of the Queen, to many who
were certain to repeat them; yet he could not believe that the
King would remember them without mortification, if not resent-
ment. But in this he soon found that he was in error. On the
evening of the 20th November, the Queen asked Dr. Tesier in a
calm voice how long it was possible that all this could last. Too
soon he feared she would be released from pain. She muttered
faintly, Tant mieux ! and not long afterwards expired.
Far from Court and its vicissitudes many thoughtful men
lamented her loss.
Townshend, resolved to put away ambition, spent the residue
of his days in the tranquil care of his health and his estate.
Both had suffered during his official life, and they were equally
benefited by the resumption of country pursuits to which he
devoted his remaining years. Letters (unaddressed, but pro-
bably to old Horace Walpole, with whom he had never quar-
relled) give us a picture of the ex-Secretary at Rainham. “You
will easily imagine, from the consternation you saw in town, the
effect the news of the Queen's death has had in these parts. I
shall ever retain a great regard for her memory, though it was
my fate to be often in a very different way of thinking from her
Majesty, which was the chief reason that induced me to retire
(as I may venture to tell you in confidence), as fortune had no
share in this resolution. So it has been attended with greater
success than I could possibly have proposed to myself. I have
been perfectly happy for seven years past, and more than that,
have got a relish of that way of life which, in my opinion best
becomes, at my age, one who has had a great share among the
busy part of mankind. The making myself, my children, and
those about me cosy, as far as my circumstances will allow, is
now my chief employment, and takes up so much of my time
that I have as little of that upon my hands as when I was Sec-
retary. My thoughts are all confined to the little circle in which
I move ; and, if I am not very much deceived, my endeavours
TOWNSHEND IN RETIREMENT.
481
succeed at least so far as to make my family and neighbours
very unwilling to lose the little that remains of me. Farther
than this I have no desires, save that the few friends I have in
town would not entirely forget me. Yours affectionately, &c.,
TOWNSHEND."
He had not, indeed, outlived the political feelings of earlier
days, and still watched with solicitude the course of national
policy, characteristically taking a more tenacious view of the
duty which the Executive owed to the commerce and industry
of the country, than was as yet acknowledged by Walpole. “I
fear our influence and credit abroad are but little, and from that
reason the inconveniences you mention may attend a breach
with Spain ; but the loss of the plantation trade would be such
a wound to the wealth and navigation of this Kingdom as it has
never yet felt since its being a trading nation, and if the diffi-
culties under which the Spaniards by their captures have
already laid us be not removed, our merchants must give over
trading to those parts. It is my opinion, therefore, that no
dangers ought to deter us from entering into such measures as
may oblige the Spaniards to treat us with the same regard their
Crown did formerly pay to this nation. But you will, perhaps,
say that I am of a reckless spirit and must always be doing;
and in this opinion of me most of my neighbours will, I fear,
join with you; for about two years since I formed a scheme
against the corn merchants which has succeeded to the entire
satisfaction of the farmers, and now I am attempting one against
the butter.factors, but not with the same prospects of success ;
and now I am engaging in a burning project by which I oblige
myself to enclose at least five hundred or six hundred acres of
land into enclosures of thirteen or fourteen acres.
character may suffer by these projects I cannot tell ; of this I
am sure that my purse does, but in return I pass my time with
great happiness and content, and that ought, in my opinion, to
be our chief care whilst we are in this world.” 1
1 28th Nov., 1737, and 27th March, 1738.—MS.
How far my
VOL. I.
II
482
CHAPTER XV.
THE SPANISH WAR.
O
1738.
Debate on Standing Army-Election Petitions—Complaints of Merchants
against Spain-Jenkins' Ear-General Agitation-Walpole's Unpopu-
larity-Spanish Aggression--Should the Spanish Flota be Seized ?-
Cabinet Disagreed— Newcastle's Subserviency to Clamour-Convention
with Spain-Excited Debate-Pitt's First Telling Speech-Argyll
Breaks with the Ministry—Walpole for Peace, but Outnumbered-War
Declared-State of the Navy-Rejection of Pension BillHardwicke
Absents Himself from Cabinet-Hervey Privy Seal.
PPOSITION once more renewed the party claim for
reduction of the army. There was no need of troops to
meet an enemy abroad, or to keep down sedition at home
and commissions, it was daily alleged in the Press, were used only
as a means of patronage, the price being kept high to render them
exclusive. Ministers easily retained, however, the limited number
hitherto employed; and the fears expressed by Shippen and
Pulteney that a force of 17,000 men might prove a danger to
public freedom evoked little response, either in or out of doors.
Speaker Onslow tried to scare those who came by night to
harass Ministers, reporting what they said, and what was said of
them; and he reminded the House that taking such a liberty
was an unhallowed infraction of privilege. Walpole, Yonge,
and Winnington thanked him effusively for his offer of retrograde
encroachment on the freedom of the Press; but Wyndham and
Pulteney gave warning that public curiosity, once allowed to
listen, would not tamely submit to be told it must be deaf and
dumb; and the door, long left ajar, was never closed again.
Votes becoming scarcer and more valuable than heretofore,
the struggle on clection petitions became keener, and the resort
to all manner of public and private influence more unscrupulous.
PEERS AT ELECTIONS.
483
A contest for Windsor ending in a tie between Lord Vere,
Ministerialist, and Mr. Oldfield on the other side, the question
of double return was decided in a full House by a large
majority in favour of the Government. It was a struggle
between the Marlborough and St. Albans interest, and the
Duchess was more than usually vigorous in canvassing, and
vehement in her denunciation of all concerned in her defeat.
A poor soldier, who had lost an arm at Oudenarde, having
refused to vote at the election against the relative of his old
commander, was threatened with the loss of his pension, on
which she sent forthwith to say that she would make it good to
him ; and she tells with scorn how the King had said at Court
that Windsor was his borough and must return Lord Vere.
Grenville was pledged to side with Opposition ; but though a
near relative of Lord Cobham, he was not ashamed to express
regret at being unable to do so because his wife was a relative
of the other candidate. Mr. Compton, a nephew of Lord
Wilmington, proved false to his friends, though he had not
been in the House if Marlborough and Spencer had not chosen
him in Northamptonshire, which her Grace hoped they would
remember “if this country subsisted so long as to have another
election.” Dorset commanded one of his sons to break his
word, and there were numerous other recusants.
Mr. Hay, a Commissioner of the Victualling Office, one of
the dutiful retainers of Newcastle, naturally wished his return
made safe for Seaford ; and thought it would save time and
trouble if his patron expressed publicly what he expected to be
done. Non-interference by peers at elections was still sometimes
invoked as constitutional tradition ; but it had come to be too
habitually regarded as of little avail. It was but a withered fig-
leaf of decency which no one ventured rudely to brush away.
Newcastle, however, disdaining meaningless hypocrisy, thought
it might as well disappear; and, conscious that he was himself
the electing faculty of the borough, he issued an Address "to the
Bailiff, jurats, freemen, and inhabitants of Seaford": "I need
not tell you, gentlemen, how glad I shall always be to do every-
thing in my power for the service of the Corporation of Seaford
in general and of every particular member of it; and I shall
only add that the continuance of your favour to Mr. Hay on
this occasion will be an addition to the many obligations already
II 2
484
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
conferred on, gentlemen, your most obedient and humble servant,
HOLLES NEWCASTLE.” The Lord of the Admiralty was of
course returned.
Grave topics agitated both Houses and the Cabinet. Petitions
from the merchants engaged in the trade with Spain and the
Indies set forth in highly-coloured language the affronts and
injuries they had recently endured, and prayed that they should
be heard by counsel at the bar. Walpole rebuked the tendency
to rhetoric and exaggeration which the suggestion of counsel
seemed to indicate, Parliament did not need forensic skill to
lead them to judge justly of the facts in question; and without
moving any amendment he left it to the Speaker, who ruled that
petitioners, conformably to precedent, must choose whether they
would state their case themselves, or by the lips of counsel only;
and Government did not venture to question their having the
alternative. Vehement speeches were made in support of
Pulteney's motion to produce the whole of the correspondence
that had taken place between London and Madrid ; but the
danger of precipitating a quarrel while negotiations were still
pending was effectually urged by Sir W. Yonge, Sir Chas.
Wager, and Henry Pelham. Seamen and supercargoes at
the bar of the House gave vivid accounts of what they had
suffered. Enormities, hardly utterable, drew cager audiences,
who broke up full of threatenings of national revenge. Some tiine
before the Rebecca, trading to Jamaica, had been boarded by a
Garda Costa, and its crew cruelly ill-used. In anonymous
publications, the story had been made the theme of violent
invective, and the captain, Robert Jenkins, became the hero of
article and ballad for the hour, as having suffered torture and
mutilation. But the effect on Cabinet or Parliament was not
appreciable, though he seems to have turned it to account at
the East India House, by getting the command of one of the
Company's ships. When, however, Sir C. Wager's prophecy of
the danger of showing indifference to outrage on the high seas
began to be realised, the case was cited in popular proof of
the systematic wrongs inflicted on an unprovoking people ; and
Jenkins was appealed to as a conclusive witness to verify
the tale. In after years Burke did not hesitate to treat
the story he told of being half hanged three times, and los
ing one of his ears, as a party fable ; but it was published
OUTRAGES ON THE HIGH SEAS.
485
and re-edited till every household in the Kingdom knew the
ghastly details; and such a chorus of indignation rose as made
it difficult for Ministers to keep back the correspondence be-
tween the two Governments, whereby they still hoped to find
off war.
On presenting the report of the Committee, Murray appealed,
as counsel for the petitioners, with all his wonted versatility and
vigour for reparation of their wrongs. Pulteney moved a string
of resolutions which Walpole dissuaded the House from confirm-
ing as calculated to bring on war; but the Peers on the same
day adopted the language of menace after a warm debate, in
which prominent Ministerialists took the belligerent side. The
King was obliged to affect the saine tone in reply to their
Address; and this encouraged the Opposition in the Lower
House to return to the charge.
Pulteney brought in a Bill practically asserting the lex talionis,
and holding out the prospect of compensation to the injured
inerchants that would have been afforded by sudden and indis-
criminate seizure of the Plate fleet. The Minister's superiority
of knowledge and judgment enabled him to recall the House to
the perilous fact that the bulk of the splendid argosies they were
urged to seize belonged to the traders of France, Holland, and
other nations of Europe, with whom they were at peace; and
that nearly the whole of the property afloat was insured in
England. The Bill was rejected by a large majority, and an
early prorogation afforded breathing time for renewed en-
deavours to accommodate the points in dispute. But the lust
of revenge blinded the public to the difficulties of the question,
and Walpole was becoming so unpopular that any policy was
odious if identified with his name.
Walpole lost no time in securing an influence that might
replace that of the illustrious friend he had lost. Within twelve
months of the Queen's death Sir Robert authorised a warrant to
the Lords Justices of Ireland charging £3,000 a-year on the
revenue of that Kingdom for thirty-one years, to be paid to his
son, Lord Walpole, and his son-in-law, Lord Cholmondeley, in
trust for Madame de Walmoden, thenceforth recognised as the
mistress of the King. In the list of pensions laid before the
Irish Parliament the names of the Trustees only were given,
though that of the recipient was well-known.
486
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
:
...
...
In 1738 the Cabinet consisted of :-
Potter
Archbishop of Canterbury
WILMINGTON
President
GODOLPHIN
Privy Seal
HARDWICKE
Chancellor
WALPOLE
First Lord of the Treasury
DEVONSHIRE
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
GRAFTON
Chamberlain
NEWCASTLE AND HARRINGTON Secretaries of State
SIR C. WAGER
Admiralty
H. PELHAM
Paymaster General
RICHMOND
Master of the Horse
DORSET
Lord Steward
ROXBURGH
Secretary of Scotland
PEMBROKE
Groom of the Stole
ARGYLL
Master of the Ordnance
In reward for many party services by tongue and pen, Hervey
claimed the Privy Seal. It had for a time been held by
Lonsdale, and more recently by Godolphin, whose displacement
Newcastle resisted to make room for one by whose bitter sar-
casm he had been often stung.
Assuming the function of Cabinet Whip, he wrote to his Ducal
brethren, urging their attendance. Richmond replied that Good-
wood was full of compaạy, of whom he gave a list, and that he
did not contemplate being drawn from his hounds till after
Christmas, when he promised to be punctual in their meetings
at the Cockpit, to help in settling the Speech from the Throne.1
Argyll manifested much ill-humour at what he deemed too
long forbearance shown to Spain. Before a numerous company
Walpole said that upon the prospect of a war the King and his
Grace would always be angry because they both had a mind to
command the army, which was impossible for either of them to
do.
It was with reference to foreign policy that the first symptoms
appeared of decay in the judgment and influence of the chief
Minister. In domestic policy he had for many years been
supreme; and though incessantly assailed by Opposition boast-
ing of the highest rhetorical resources, he was able to keep the
confidence of the King, to preserve unbroken acquiescence, if
not unity, in the Cabinet, and to carry most of the measures he
24th November, 1738.-MS.
DEBATE ON SPANISH CONVENTION.
487
deemed indispensable. Carteret, Chesterfield, and Bathurst
vainly inveighed against the extravagance of a standing army,
while Pulteney, Shippen, Wyndham, and Pitt wasted their elo-
quence in denouncing his domineering and corrupt sway. For
a time the country had lain in a political torpor, from which the
utmost ingenuity of individual ambition had seemed unable to
arouse it. The awakening came at last from afar. The Spanish
navy rigorously and ruthlessly overhauled the contraband trade
with their American Colonies carried on from British ports,
The smuggling profits were large, and those of the slave trade
larger. On being threatened, attempts were made in its defence
by the use of arms; gradually the tropic seas were covered with
privateers and red-rovers, whose daring seamanship enabled
them to elude the Spanish men of war; and whose ghastly
deeds served rather to stimulate the lawless spirit of adventure
and revenge at home. Notwithstanding the check put by Par-
liament on the exaggerations of the previous year without
measuring nicely the effects that might ensue, Opposition Peers
and Members of Parliament devoted themselves to depicting
conflicts and heightening the colour of the injuries sustained.
Walpole sought to negotiate a Convention with a view to clear
up doubtful questions of maritime jurisdiction and to lessen the
excuses for collision on the high seas.
Sir B. Keene, the able Resident at Madrid, laboured assidu-
ously, as he was bidden in the private letters of Sir Robert, to
soothe the irritability of the Spanish Court, and to keep in mind
the coinmon interest of the nations in the continuance of peace.
From Newcastle he received inore than one despatch in the
opposite sense, and was sometimes sorely puzzled what to do.
But the balance of his own judgment coinciding with that of the
chief Minister, he was glad to get the Convention for the pay-
ment of damages signed, notwithstanding a counter claim for
two-thirds of the amount, said to have lain over from the War
of the Succession, which he consented to transmit without
specific note or comment. Ere the Convention could be made
public in England, the popular temper had got thoroughly
heated with the old passion for naval combat; and the cry was
raised on all sides that reprisals should be ordered forthwith by
our ships on the Flota returning home. The Minister disdain-
fully argued against such a breach of international amity. But
488
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
in Cabinet Newcastle betrayed his readiness to yield to clamour;
and his example threatened to prove contagious. When the
Convention was at length made known excitement boiled over.
The 6th of March being fixed for its consideration, a hundred
Members were said to have taken their seats at cight o'clock in
the morning, and a long day was occupied in receiving petitions
and hearing complaints at the Bar. Next day nothing else was
done, and it was not until the eighth that Horace Walpole, as
the oldest diplomatic hand available, was put forward to defend
a compromise which at heart he disapproved. Never suasive or
felicitous, he toiled through details without disarming any angry
prejudice or anticipating any serious objection. Sir T. Sanderson
led the storming party against the proposed Address of thanks.
He declared that ninety-nine out of every hundred persons
viewed the compromise as delusive and dishonourable ; futile as
a means of averting resort to the sword; and lowering to the
credit of the nation. Others followed in a similar strain, and
were but ineffectively answered on the Ministerial side. But the
event of the day was the first telling speech delivered by Pitt,
which friends and foes concurred in extolling to the skies.
Notes in the handwriting of Sir Robert, during the debate, fully
confirm the impression made by the young tribune. “ Are we,”
he exclaimed, “any longer a nation, or what is an English Par-
liament, if, with more ships in your harbours than in all the
navies of Europe, with above two millions of people in your
American Colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of
receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable
Convention ? I call it no more than it has been proved to be in
this debate. It carries the fallacy of downright subjection in
almost every line. It has been exposed in so many glaring
lights that I can pretend to add nothing to the conviction and
indignation it has raised. As to the Right of Search, it is, in-
deed, mentioned in the preamble, but stands there as the re-
proach of the whole, as the strongest proof of the submission
that follows: on the part of Spain, a usurpation, an inhuman
tyranny claimed and exercised over the American seas; on the
part of England, an undoubted right by Treaties, and from God
and Nature, declared and asserted in Resolutions of Parliament,
which are referred to the discussion of Plenipotentiaries on the
same foot. Spain has told you that you shall steer a due course
.
PITT'S SPEECH.
489
if you draw near to her coasts; and though from the circum-
stances of the navigation you must do so, you shall be seized
and confiscated: What is the use of treaties, if there is not
dignity and vigour to enforce the observance of them? This
intolerable grievance has arisen and has grown upon you, treaty
after treaty, through twenty years of negotiation. I will not
attempt to enter into a dark, confused, and scarcely intelligible
account, but conclude with a word upon it in the light of a sub-
mission and an adequate reparation. Spain stipulates to pay to
England £95,000; by a preliminary protest of the King of
Spain the South Sea Company is to pay £68,000 of it. If they
refuse, Spain is still to pay the £95,000, but how does it stand
then ? The Assiento contract is to be suspended. You are to
purchase this sum at the price of an exclusive trade, pursuant to
a national treaty, and of an immense debt of God knows how
many hundred thousand pounds due from Spain to the South
Sea Company. Here is the submission by Spain of a stipulated
sum, a tax laid upon the subjects of England under the severest
penalties, with the reciprocal accord of an English Minister, as a
preliminary that the Convention be signed. This Convention is
nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy, an illusory
expedient to baffle the resentment of the nation, a truce without
a suspension of hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of
England a suspension of the first law of Nature-self-preservation
and self-defence—a surrender of the rights and trade of England
to the mercy of Plenipotentiaries; and in this infinitely highest
and most sacred point-future security—not only inadequate,
but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament and the
promise from the Throne.” Henry Fox was put up to answer
him, and the discussion lasted till past midnight, when 260 to
232 voted with Government. But Walpole is said to have
muttered: “We must stop this Cornet of Horse." To the sur-
prise and perplexity of their friends, Pulteney, Sandys, and
Wyndham announced their resolution to refrain on the follow-
ing day. Pulteney assigned as his reason his reluctance to
being a party even by acquiescence in a bargain which sacri-
ficed practically our right to compensation. The Chancellor
judicially held in poise the principles of international law; but
he alternately deprecated hasty measures tending to a rupture
with a friendly State, and denounced the outrages committed on
490
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
our merchantmen in terms so inflammatory that Walpole,
standing on the steps of the throne, was said to have exclaimed
audibly, “Bravo, Colonel Yorke, bravo !”
Argyll resolved to break with the Ministry ; and on the Con-
vention with Spain threw away the scabbard. His speech, care-
fully prepared, was delivered in his best manner, and produced
a sort of sensation. The old Duchess Sarah, who formerly loved
him not, but had now forgiven him, thought he would do more
for Opposition than any other three men could effect; and as
salary was not an object with him she hoped they would turn
him out, and make the quarrel thereby irreparable. Newcastle
wished it to be believed that Hardwicke leaned his way; while
Walpole claimed him as a supporter of his moderate views.
Hatred of Spain and lust of war spread to all classes, and
Leicester House openly sympathised with the national feeling.
The Cabinet felt no longer stable of purpose ; and when the
Prince of Wales did not scruple to appear in the streets, sur-
rounded by a frantic multitude shouting for revenge, Ministers.
began to waver. Words between Newcastle and the First Lord
of the Treasury ran high, and finding that a majority of his col-
leagues were against him, his Grace suggested that he and his
friends should retire. But when this threat failed to shake the
resolution of Sir Robert, he and they thought better of it and
quietly remained.
Walpole's policy was peace, and so long as he retained his as-
cendancy in the Cabinet and at Court, his rivals found it hope-
less to drive the nation into war. But from the death of the
Queen his supremacy in the palace was undermined ; and from
the threatened secession of the Newcastle section, his authority in
the Cabinet was shaken. Contrary to his own judgment and in
spite of many and varied efforts to avert what he deemed a great.
error, he began to yield. In the main he considered unjust the
complaints of the merchants who sought to carry on a contra-
band trade with South America, and whose protests against the
right of search by Spanish ships of war, though justified by the
law of nations, were vehemently backed by the Opposition, and
by several of his own colleagues. Many years afterwards, not a.
few of those engaged in blowing up that flame confessed that
they were sensible how factious their conduct had been, and
how little their counsels had served their country. But to em-
WAR WITH SPAIN.
491
barrass the Minister there was nothing they would not have
done, and the demand for war was popular because it was one
“which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories
that were attended with something more solid than glory. A
war with Spain was a war of plunder.” 1 No man saw and felt
all this so clearly as the hitherto undaunted Minister; and had
he been advised by his best friends he would have retired with
honour and left to others the responsibility of a course he dis-
approved. But power by long use and by long abuse, had be-
come indispensable to him. His habits of expenditure had
gradually become so lavish and so loose that, notwithstanding
the large profits and perquisites he enjoyed, he could not bring
himself to fling away official income. His private estate in
Norfolk, originally small, had been indeed increased ; but over
Houghton there still hung a mortgage of many thousand pounds.?
He had given valuable offices to his eldest and his younger sons,
but the delicate and dilettante Horace, and the uncle whose name
he bore were still insufficiently provided for. Above all, he could
not bring himself to subside into a private station, and though
he made an offer to retire at the beginning of 1739 he readily
availed himself of some deprecating words of the King to put
his continuance on the score of public duty. To over-trump his
rivals, a Speech from the Throne denounced the policy of Spain;
and war being declared, the Minister did not scruple to adopt
belligerent language, and thus justify all that had been said by
those who had goaded him at length to hostilities. The results
abroad were unfortunate. One expedition after another failed,
and in the following Session he was accused loudly of mis-
management and short-handedness.
Uninterrupted success had at length demoralised the Minister.
He had ceased to believe in the worth of any judgment but his
own; or to regard professions of political conscience as anything
more than the showy costume to be worn out of doors. So long
as he could manage his master at Kensington, and frown or
laugh down unsatisfied expectants at Whitehall, his vast power
of administration would remain. Taxation was light, the coun-
try was growing fat; religious differences no longer caused
serious trouble; the colonies were still in their swaddling clothes;
1 Burke's “ Thoughts on a Regicide Peace.
2 Horace Walpole's account of his conduct.
492
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
republicanism was only to be found in the fossil state at Geneva,
Venice, and the Hague. The old military monarchies diploma-
tised or demonstrated now and then about scraps of border-land
or the reversion of a duchy without entangling our Government
in courtesan squabbles, and though in country houses the health
of the Pretender might still be occasionally drunk in ambiguous
terms late at night, the Hanoverian succession seemed about as
secure as national acquiescence and a Septennial Parliament
could make it. Walpole grew over-confident, careless, super-
cilious, insolent. He called the Cabinet together more seldom
than formerly ; neglected uninfluential friends oftener than of
yore, pooh-poohed earnest remonstrances at jobs too bare-faced
to be defended, and summarily confirmed favours and promo-
tions suggested by unaccountable whim or indefensible par-
tiality. He was drunk with power. His colleagues chafed at
his arbitrary decisions come to before they met in Council; and
such of them as valued, more than pay or patronage, the privi-
lege of being of the Cabinet, resented silently, then half inau-
dibly, and at last in sympathetic grumblings at each other's
country houses, the assumption of exclusive wisdom by the First
Lord of the Treasury. For a good while before he could be
awakened to what was thus going on around him, the dry rot of
discontent had made insidious way in the fabric of Administra-
tion; and it was not without surprise and vexation that he
occasionally found a crumbling beneath his unceremonious
touch where he would have sworn coarsely all was staunch and
firm.
Newcastle's social vanity and his expanding pretension to
dictate in divisions, made him especially susceptible of neglect
in Council. Sir Robert had grown tired of making believe that
he would not decide on legislative measures or give hints to ain-
bassadors affecting the peace of Europe without previously in-
quiring how little his Grace had to say at great length on the
subject. The wise Chancellor had always enough to do in his
own department, which he conducted to perfection, to take ill any
omission of the kind. With Devonshire and Pelham it was
often, though not regularly, a pleasure to confer, and neither
affected to be affronted when not asked beforehand their opinion
of what was proposed to be done. But lesser men were less able
to feel with equanimity that they were regarded as of no account.
NEWCASTLE GROWS MARTIAL.
493
If a candle could tell its mind it would hardly deny a sense of
mortification at being snuffed out even by a great man, though
certain of being relighted an hour after. And when several
tapers, even of the finest wax, are thus dealt with simultaneously,
it is not possible that the atmosphere should be quite free of re-
proachful odour even in the palace of a King.
Certain of Walpole's colleagues felt themselves unable to
resist the atmospheric influence around them. At a conference
on the evening of the first of June, the subject forced itself upon
attention. The First Lord began in a strain of melancholy to
complain, not personally, but in relation to things and circum-
stances. Hardwicke endeavoured to show him that his difficul-
ties arose chiefly from a fixed opinion in many, and a suspicion
in some of his friends, that nothing would be done against Spain,
“that as things had come to a crisis, and Spain had broke the
Convention, there was a new event, upon which even he might
take a vigorous part without contradicting any opinion or
measure he had avowed before, and that this was new ground
to go off upon." Walpole allowed a great deal of this, and
Hardwicke really thought he was determined to act with vigour.
He went so far as to say that he thought it advisable to begin
immediately, for that nothing would be more embarrassing than
that Spain should now offer to pay the £95,000 attended with a.
suspension of the former Treaty. The object was to settle what
should be proposed in Cabinet. It was decided that orders
should be sent forthwith to Admiral Haddock, to lie before
Cadiz, and commit all kind of hostilities at sea ; to strengthen
Brown's squadron, and send like orders to him as to hostilities,
and in particular to seize the galleons which were starting for
America, to send for eight regiments from Ireland, and augment
them to English numbers ; notice to be given to our merchants
in Spain ; and immediate orders for the press gang to be issued
in the chief seaport towns.
Sir Robert was averse to expe-
ditions, but apprehended that the Field Marshal might press
something of that kind. He threw out, “Who should propose
this scheme as his own ? And it was soon agreed that it could
be nobody but himself or the Duke."
When the cry for war grew loud enough, Newcastle, who had
previously run with the hare, thought it time to hunt with the
hounds. We have a long memorandum in his own hand of
494
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
proposals to be made in Cabinet, some of which were anticipated
by the Admiralty and War Office. Letters of marque to be
granted, and the Indians to be let loose on the Spaniards, which
was postponed until Lord Granard should have arrived, with
more of detail.1
Yet in changing front Walpole's self-content misgave him.
By a series of measures little understood, and for which he was
not weak enough to expect any thanks, he had contrived to
reduce the public debt from fifty to forty-six millions in ten
years; and the annual charge was little more than two millions.
He had, indeed, sequestered the Sinking Fund, remitted half
the land-tax, and dissipated £1,453,400 Secret Service money,
to hush sedition at home and keep Jacobites in pay abroad.
But for the indulgence of these clandestine luxuries, he might
have brought down the Debt to a lower sum. But he probably
viewed with sinister satisfaction the practical forgetfulness by
the community of the weight of paper on its back, and thought,
as was said by one of his great successors, that there might be
many worse things for a nation than a respectable debt. One
of these he thought was war, which carried in its prolific womb
the twin evils of more debt as well as more taxation. But the
country, like Jeshuran, “waxed fat and kicked," and nothing the
Minister, grown old and unpopular, could say could tame its
anger. He reluctantly consented, first to the issue of letters
of marque on the plea of exacting reprisals, and at length, on
the 23rd of October, to a declaration of war. The confidence of
the nation rested mainly on the old reliance in its superiority at
sea.
When stripped to fight, its muscular strength stood thus : In
the Mediterranean, under Admiral Haddock, twenty-two sail of
the line, five ships of twenty guns, three fire ships, and two
bomb vessels, to guard Minorca and Gibraltar ; a squadron of ten
to cruise between Cape Finisterre and Ferrol; a Channel Fleet
of thirty men-of-war, two-thirds only being manned to their full
complement; while Vernon had nine ships of the line, two bomb
vessels, and five fire ships in the West Indies, and some sixteen
more of various build and force on other stations. Against this
array Spain had nine ships of the line and three frigates in
Cadiz Bay, five line-of-battle ships at Carthagena, six defending
1 Mem. 3rd June, 1739.—MS.
COMPARATIVE NAVAL STRENGTH.
495
Ferrol; at Barcelona three men-of-war, a transport flotilla.
France had at Brest a squadron of twenty-two, and at Toulon
twelve, all ships of from fifty-four to seventy-four guns. At
first these hoisted a neutral flag, and were but a possible
element of danger to be watched. A few months later they
were added to the maritime equipment of Spain by a treaty
under whose provisions the long period of amity with France
was closed, and Louis XV., by the counsel of Madame de
Pompadour, declared war.
When Sir Charles Wager told the Cabinet that the Grafton
frigate was found to be unfit for sea, and Newcastle backed his
proposal that another ship should be sent instead from the
Home Station to strengthen the West India fleet, Walpole
broke out into angry sneers against strengthening every defence
but that of England, and challenged the Secretary of State to
prove that what was asked for was but reasonable and, in fact,
indispensable. The Duke said that if the order were refused,
he could not be responsible. Walpole replied “Well, it is your
war, and I wish you joy of it.” The inextinguishable feud went
on from day to day, when by his own showing in public argu-
ment the country was embarking in a contest without an ally in
Europe, or the chance of one. Nothing, in short, can be more
inexcusable than his submitting to be dragged against his
deliberate judgment into a struggle which cost unnumbered
lives, and added many millions to the public debt.
On former occasions both Houses had been communicated
with in formal fashion on the outbreak of hostilities. The
great Peace Minister, disliking the work he had to do, and
knowing how inferior to that of Opposition was the debating
power of his colleagues in the Lords, chose to depart from
precedent and to overrule Newcastle in his unwise ambition to
be allowed to open the War Budget to the Peers. Carteret and
Chesterfield pounced on the omission as a proof of the temper
of the Chief Minister, who thought no assembly worth consult-
ing on the finance of the Kingdom but that in which his own
voice could be heard. Were the Peers to abdicate their Consti-
tutional share in legislative control, because a dozen or a score
members of their order had become his retainers, and had been
drilled into silence or acquiescence in his despotic decrees? The
* J. Wilson Croker. Supplemental Chapter to Hervey's "Memoirs.”
496
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
feeble Lord President only provoked ridicule by his ineffectual
attempts to repel such taunts; and when the Chancellor, never
wanting at a pinch, stoutly contended that matters of taxation
were not within the proper province of the Lords, and that the
clective and responsible members of the Legislature might best
be left to judge of what war loans or taxes their constituents
could afford, the Duke of Argyll called him roughly to task for
trifling with his hearers and toying with words and phrases as
he might with immunity do when dealing with exceptions to a
Master's report in Chancery. The dissent of forty in a House
of one hundred and two sufficiently justified the minority of the
Cabinet in their discontent, and some angry discussions in the
Lower House with diminishing majorities did not render them
inore disposed to be submissive. But with the despot it was
too late to mend. The consciousness of his ineffable superiority
to the inen whom he had chosen to surround himself with
rendered him daily more impatient of their demand to partici-
pate in the exercise of dictatorial power. Alternative policy,
coherent and comprehensive, they had none to offer, and his
chief trial of temper lay in refraining from articulate expression
of contempt.
The coolness of Ministerial friends brought the muster of
Opposition nearly to an equality with them; and a Place Bill
was flung out only by a majority of sixteen. Had it passed it
would have carried such a reflection upon Members of the House
that it would be difficult to obtain a Whig Parliament afterwards.
“Our enemies are so elated with the success they have achieved
that they are resolved not to move from town, but to fetch up
the small number away in the country. They have already
given notice of business. The Prince's Bill, The Repeal of the
Septennial Act, the calling of Ministers to an account for some
steps relating to the late Convention with Spain, will, some or
all of them, be immediately brought before the House, and, in
these circumstances, no man can be a friend to the Administra-
tion, and not determine to come up to town.' A Motion of
Pulteney's for a call of the House betrayed indeed misgivings
that the zeal of many was liable to chill; and Govern-
ment, having more faith in their means of rallying aid in
emergency than any which their rivals had at command,
1 Newcastle to Ashburnham, M.P. for Ilastings, ist Feb., 1740.—MS.
» 1
EMBARGO ON SHIPPING,
497
ridiculed the appeal to patriotic urgency, though they abstained
from objecting
Their sense of weakness was evinced more signally when
Sir Charles Wager introduced a Bill for the universal registra-
tion of seamen, in order to provide for more effectual impress-
ment in time of war. In the past year but 21,000 men could be
secured to man the Fleet, and many line-of-battle ships were
consequently left in harbour practically useless. Indignant
protests and petitions came from all the outports, shipowners
and sailors exclaiming vehemently against a measure borrowed
from the practice in France, and fraught with pretensions on
the part of Government to reduce the whole mercantile marine
to a state of subjection bordering on vassalage. The First Lord
of the Admiralty defended the expedient in Parliament as he
had in the Cabinet, on the ground alone that he knew of no
other way of making sure of crews when suddenly required ;
but the Opposition was so strong that the measure had to be
abandoned. The Lords of the Admiralty had laid an embargo
on shipping from the ist of February, and it was found to be
such a hardship upon the export trade that a petition for its
removal met with strong support when brought before the
Commons, and though a motion for the referring of the petition
to a committee of the whole House was rejected by one hundred
and sixty-six to ninety-five, on the news of the taking of
Portobello by Vernon, Government resolved to withdraw the
embargo early in April, on condition that the merchants should
take on board one-third of landsmen ; and that one in every four
seamen should be liable to serve.
These and other random blows the First Lord turned aside in
debate, and his sycophants rejoiced at his being unwounded-un-
wounded, but not unwasted. Long experience had taught him how
uncertainly triumphindebate contributes to the ultimate judgment
or the passing infatuation of the hour; and he began to look forward
to the end. Perhaps even then he was not convinced of the truth
which others had for some time seen, that retributive justice had
come upon him for the long indifference and contumely where-
with he had treated every man out of Parliament or office who
could influence opinion. Individually of small account, they were
in the aggregate irresistible. In the Cabinet he might despise
17th March, 1740.
VOL. I.
1
Κ Κ
498
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
those whom he called his enemies ; but there was one enemy he
could not or would not overcome, and that enemy was Walpole.
For the fifth time, the Bill making it penal for any Member of
Parliament to receive a bribe or pension was brought in, and
Government, fearing a discussion on its merits in the feverish
temper of the House, suffered it to pass through all its stages
silently. The practice it proposed to check had become so
notorious that personal details and flagrant instances were but
too likely to crop up in .debate ; and, easy as it came to the un-
abashed head of the Treasury to deny any knowledge of un-
savoury transactions, or, when that was impossible, to explain
them away, he had grown too conscious of falling off in the com-
plaisance of his majority needlessly to put his waverers just then
to the proof. But, with hardihood all his own, he determined to
signalise the rejection in the Lords of so indecent an exposure
of the provident working of Constitutional Government under
his guidance, by a chorus of solemn regret that anyone should
propose a measure so superfluous, and one that, if enacted, could
clearly be shown to be certain to prove abortive. His eldest son,
,
who had done nothing for his peerage up to this time, and who
had recently been made Auditor of the Exchequer, an office of
£ 3,000 a-year for life, was entrusted with the exposition of his
father's sentiments on the second reading: and the concise and
cogent turn of his expressions could not have failed to suggest
the source of his inspiration. “It had always been a maxim
not to make any alterations in the fundamental forms of our
Civil Government or Constitution unless some grievance or incon-
venience sensibly felt rendered it absolutely necessary, for such
alterations were usually attended with convulsions in the State,
and the remedies provided were generally worse than the grie-
vances meant to be cured. In time of war we ought to be even
more cautious in departing from custom and usage than in time
of peace. To suppose that there was corruption in the other
House by ready money or by private pension, would be throwing
a very great and unjust slander upon that assembly. This he
should be very easy about, considering how often they had sent
up this Bill, if it did not throw a very great and a very unjust
slander upon Government. It was a crime to corrupt as well as
to be corrupted, and to suppose that there was in the other House
any man corrupted by the Crown was to suppose that the
BRIBERY BILL.
499
Crown was guilty of an infamous crime which no noble lord,
he supposed, would impute in the existing reign. The preroga-
tive our Sovereign had of rewarding merit in what shape or in
what manner he pleased was a fundamental part of the Constitu-
tion, and any change might be attended with inconveniences
difficult to foresee. There were many sorts of public services which
could not be immediately explained, which it would be incon-
sistent with the public good to divulge ; and yet if this Bill were
to pass his Majesty could reward no services in any Member of
the other House without explaining or divulging those services,
and giving that House a power to judge whether those services
deserved such a reward; and this might occasion disputes between
that House and the Crown, and would certainly discourage every
Member of that House from rendering any secret service to the
public. This would be a great prejudice to our Civil Govern-
ment, and the frequent oaths that were to be introduced would
be of the most dangerous consequence, not only to our estab-
lished religion, but even to natural religion itself. For the sake
of their own character, as well as the reason of the thing, he
hoped they would give this proposal the same treatment it had
so often met with before." To enforce these pious and patriotic
views, his brother-in-law, Cholmondeley, spoke in a similar
strain, Newcastle and Hervey being left to answer the argu-
ments of Carteret and Argyll, and the Bill was rejected by a
majority of twelve. On a subsequent day Bathurst moved a
Vote of Censure on Government for not having sent a body of
land forces on board the Fleet to enable Admiral Vernon to make
good his success at Portobello; Argyll declaring that he no
longer cherished any hopes or fears from either party, but de-
ploring the condition of contempt whereinto Great Britain had
fallen—no foreign Power courting her alliance or fearing her hos-
tility; and the motion was rejected.
Hardwicke discerned, sooner than the rest, that the tide of
their prosperity was on the ebb, and that nothing he could say
or do would avail to stay their drifting out to open sea. But
loyal to the rival chiefs, to both of whom he felt under many
obligations, he sometimes pleaded the increasing weight of
business on his part, and the lateness of the hour at which the
Lords occasionally sat, as excuse for absence from conferences
which oftener tended to widen differences than to close them.
K K 2
500
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
His querulous Grace complained and hinted at desertion. The
Chancellor thought it "hard to be suspected of a disinclination
to meet one's friends, when he firmly believed that he had come
to more nightly meetings than any man in his busy, laborious
station ever did. He did not get home till half-past eight
o'clock, and what time there was to attend consultations after
that he left to his Grace's imagination. His indisposition and
lowness of spirits had induced him to appoint his surgeon to
come and bleed him; and to-morrow he set out for Carshalton,
where he hoped quiet and rest would restore him. But if his
Grace and Sir Robert thought it necessary that he should return
on any particular occasion he would obey,"i
At a Cabinet, at which Walpole, Newcastle, Hardwicke, Islay,
Harrington, Sir C. Wager, and Sir. J. Norris were present, it was
decided that all prizes taken from the Spaniards before declara-
tion of war should be divided between the captors and mer-
chants who had suffered loss, and that the value of prizes since
war was declared should be divided amongst captors.?
Sharp disputes arose subsequently about the distributions be-
tween sailors and merchants, Newcastle contending for an equal
division in all cases and Sir Robert for a preferential appropriation
out of the most valuable captures to satisfy the original claims
for compensation made by the West India trade before the out-
break of war. Each side held with feminine tenacity to their
own opinion, and the united wisdom of supreme rule was rent in
twain upon the question, the Great Seal vainly urging some com-
promise for sake of peace, and the Privy Seal trying to avoid
giving any opinion in a controversy the beginning of which was
before his time. 3
Through culpable negligence, if not from a wish to affront a
troublesome opponent, Argyll found himself included in an order
to take charge of an ordinary detachment. He wrote to the
Secretaries of State : “As I have had the honour to serve about
four and forty years in the army, having seen the enemy with
success in all the ranks through which I have passed ; and as
I am now the first officer of his Majesty's army, I humbly hope
that he will be graciously pleased to excuse me from taking the
1
To Newcastle from Powis House. " Past ten at night,” 3rd April, 1740.--MS.
2 Minute of Cabinet, IIth April, 1740.--MS.
MS. Correspondence.
ARGYLL DISMISSED.
501
single charge of a particular number of troops, exclusive of any
command over the rest of his Majesty's forces, unless such de-
tachment be to march to the enemy, in which case I am ready to
put myself at the head of twenty Grenadiers whenever it is his
Majesty's pleasure to command me to do so."1 The folly of
their lordships' reply would be unbelievable if it were not on
record. They briefly state, that having laid his letter before the
King, they acquainted him that "the discharge which he required
therein having never been given to persons of his Grace's rank
and service, his Majesty did not think proper to give any orders
upon it." 2
Not content with this refusal, George II. was advised to autho-
rise Argyll's dismissal from the army as the penalty of his exer-
cise of the right of individual judgment. He acknowledged the
insult with becoming spirit: “Your Lordships having signified
to me his Majesty's pleasure of dismissing me from his service
without communicating to me the reasons of it; yet by the
method of my removal I humbly conceive it cannot have pro-
ceeded from iny being accused of any military offence; may
I not therefore hope, from his Majesty's justice and generosity,
that I may be indulged with a discharge, importing that during
the many years I have served the Crown, in the reigns of King
William, Qucen Anne, King George I., and his present Majesty,
I have behaved myself honestly, faithfully, and honourably? This
is a favour which every common soldier receives who is dismissed
the service without being guilty of any military offence, and this
is the request of yours, ARGYLL.”3
Next morning he received for answer that the Secretaries of
State had laid his letter before the Sovereign, who had made no
order upon it. 4
But where was Lord Islay all this time?
Speaker Onslow, presenting to his Majesty the Money Bills for
the unusual sum of four millions sterling, unanimously voted for
carrying on the war, Parliament was prorogued.5
In May the King set out for Hanover, accompanied by Har-
rington and Mde. Walmoden, created Countess of Yarmouth.
Argyll to Newcastle and Harrington, 25th April, 1740.--MS.
? Newcastle and Harrington to Argyll, 27th April, 1740.-MS.
3 To the Secretaries, 30th April, 1740.--MS.
Ist May, 1740.--N1S.
- 29th April, 1740.
1
502
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
From a loss of temper or a feeling that the ground whereon he
had so long stood in haughty over-confidence, was beginning to
tremble beneath him, Walpole indulged in capricious acts of self-
assertion that probably tended to pique rather than daunt those
who would undermine him. Courtesy and policy, as well as a
higher sense of duty, dictated attendance at the Council of
Regency when it sat even for the performance of perfunctory
acts of State, and all the more because the Heir Apparent
notoriously stood ill with his father, and was surrounded by
the chiefs of Opposition. Yet Walpole chose frequently to ab-
sent himself, provoking the Prince to observe upon his neglect.
The old subtlety of humour and of guile that had converted
George II. from a suspicious client into a fast friend might have
gone far to instigate the enmity of his son, and to perplex, if it
did not baffle, the schemes of Leicester House. But he stayed
away repeatedly from the Council of Regency without deigning
to allege unforeseen detention by the gout at Chelsea, where the
Cabinet were constantly called on to assemble.
Some notes found among Hervey's papers throw a curious light
on the proceedings in the Cabinet at the time. Of the seven
Dukes who were members of it, his Grace of Newcastle alone
took any active part. He was at the time closely allied with the
Chancellor and Lord Harrington, frequently contesting Walpole's
measures and resisting his advice, but in turn submitting some-
times to be snubbed and put down by him. The particulars of
one remarkable instance deserve to be recalled. Ten ships of the
line under Sir Chaloner Ogle had been detached from Had-
dock's squadron cruising off the Spanish coast, and were ordered
to join Vernon's fleet in the West Indies. Ata Cabinet on the 28th
of April Wager read letters showing that two Spanish squadrons
nad united at Ferrol, and formed an over-match for the Mediter-
ranean fleet thus weakened in numbers. Misgivings prevailed as
to the intentions of France, Lord Waldegrave's letters from Paris
confessing his inability to penetrate the reserve maintained re-
garding them. Should an invasion of Ireland or England be
suddenly undertaken upon a declaration of war the Channel
Fleet was in no condition to encounter singly those which might
thus be united against it. Walpole grew uneasy, and proposed
to take immediate steps for the better manning of the ships at
home, ten of which out of thirty were confessedly useless solely
DIFFICULTY OF IMPRESSMENT.
503
for want of hands. The burthen of his song for months had
been “Seamen, seamen, seamen !” But recruiting for the navy
went on more slowly than ever, and the press-gang failed to
secure anything like the complement of men required. This
was owing in part to the unpopularity of the service, in conse-
quence of the hardships endured and the mortality known to
prevail in it, and partly to the numerous "protections," as they
were called, which had from time to time been given to colliers,
fishers, and out-going vessels, by which it was calculated upwards
of 14,000 sailors were exempted from liability to be impressed.
These "protections” he proposed to suspend to meet the exi-
gency. It was no time for thinking of unpopularity; and though
the clamour thus occasioned might be loud, he was ready to
disregard it when the safety of the Kingdom was at stake. When
Sir John Norris, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, was ques-
tioned as to the force immediately required, and how it could
most quickly be got together, he submitted a plan for putting on
board two regiments of the Line and 1,800 Marines to work the
guns, and these 3,000 men would more than answer the demand.
Newcastle and the Chancellor at once endorsed this recom-
mendation, and, regardless of Walpole's remonstrances and
arguments, founded on the smallness of the land forces which
could ill afford to be thus further reduced, it was carried against
him.1
Denmark had undertaken by treaty to furnish 6,000 men
when required for a subsidy of £ 52,000 annually for three years.
Eighteen months had expired, and we had now information that
the Government of Copenhagen had secretly bargained to
transfer to France the service of this force on the expiration of
the treaty with Great Britain. The question arose at a meeting
of the Cabinet whether any further payment should be made for
the support of troops who might in a few months be employed
against us. Harrington had been directed to ask for explana-
tions which required a categorical answer on the subject, and had
received an evasive reply; and it was agreed that no further
instalment should be paid until the equivocal conduct of the
Danish Court had been cleared up. Meantime an offer from the
King of Sweden to supplyan equal force of Hessians was adopted.?
1 Proceedings of the Cabinet, May, 1740.
2 Minute of Cabinet, Cockpit, 6th May, 1740.
504
HISTORY OF CABINETS. .
The wretched state of the armament for defence by land at this
period is indicated by a brief note of what took place at another
meeting of the Cabinet 1 some days later : "11,000 men in Ireland
in want of arms; and no man-of-war on the coast; 13,000 stand
of arms reported to be still in the magazines in England, and 5,000
in Ireland, of which 2,000 were useless." The Board of Ordnance
had contracted for the delivery of 12,000 muskets between Sep-
tember, 1739, and September, 1740, but of these only 3,000 had
as yet been delivered. Utrecht and Liège were to be tried for
an additional supply. No wonder the veteran Argyll had grown
ashamed of his Civil comrades.
The Cabinet had got through the Session without defeat, but
their escapes in division were too narrow to be reassuring. Elec-
tioneering recommenced in many quarters, and Newcastle's cor-
respondence with his adherents in Sussex and elsewhere resumed
its old proportions. Small freeholds in the market were reported
duly for his consideration, and all manner of posts, pensions, and
promotions were pressed upon his beneficent attention. Aspir-
ing dignitaries of Church and State grew eloquent in praise of
the Administration, and explicit in proofs of their activity on its
behalf. The Bishop of Chester, who did not forget to whom he
owed his first mitre, and believing in the possibility of an ad-
vancement to a richer one, furnished copious details of how he
managed to secure a majority of the Chapter and the choir, and
how Sir Watkin Wynn might best be baffled in Cheshire and even
in Denbighshire. He was stout for war with Spain, "a vigorous
prosecution of which would, he hoped, bring that King to reason.” 2
About social improvements, the spread of the Gospel, Church ex-
tension, or even limitation of our profit from the sale of negroes
(one of the points in dispute) he says not a word.
Lewes was a home farm in the Duke's political estate, but it
needed top-dressing and manuring. Its thoughtful owner lay
awake thinking what could be done to improve it; and the first
thing to be done was to appoint a proper person to look after his
interests, and to lay out work to be undertaken and the artificers to
be employed. To take the names of all the empty houses in the
interest and to fill them forthwith; and to propose persons for
that purpose. To see what more voting houses could be got,
)
27th May, 1740.
9 To Newcastle, 7th November, 1739.—MS.
A POLITICAL HOME FARM.
505
either by building, repairing, or hiring, and how many might be
taken on lease or bought. To consider what women were in
houses that could be removed to make room for voters. To :
agree upon proper parish officers for the next two years in the
several parishes; to keep a list of all the sure electors and of the
doubtful ones, and what persons should apply to the latter, and
the means of getting them ; "to see what persons could be got off
from the other side, and by what means. To consider a place for
a proper sum of money to be lodged to be disposed of, and what
the sum should be.” 1
The Chancellor had enough to do occasionally to keep the
peace in Council. The First Lord's arrogance, grown in the
course of official years, was difficult to bend, as was his tenacity
in holding to his opinion once expressed decidedly on any ques-
tion of importance. Newcastle's nearly equal term of office,
and the never-ending adulation with which his vanity was fed by
every rank and condition of men, had rendered him daily more
difficult to bear with. He was fretful, captious, and exacting
beyond belief; and Sir Robert took little pains to avoid ruffling
his susceptibilities. Hardwicke, who understood them both
thoroughly, seldom lost an opportunity of adjuring him to
avoid needless discussions in Cabinet, where, right or wrong, he
was sure (though Newcastle was not) that he would get the
worst of it. At the end of a letter on important matters of
inquiry pertaining to his whole department, the wise Chancellor
added a postscript which probably had more use and meaning
than all that went before. “I am glad to find you think our
Friend is at present off from his point on what you call the great
question” (regarding Spain). “I think nothing can tend to
keep him off from it so much as avoiding altercation and dis-
puting with him at our meetings and councils, as much as may
be; and for which I own I do not, in his present turn and way
of acting, see much occasion." 2
Walpole felt his position in the Cabinet needed strengthening.
Newcastle, with the aid of the Chancellor, Godolphin, and Har-
rington, and the occasional help of Richmond and Wilmington,
had more than once asserted a transient ascendancy, mortifying
to his once undisputed sway. Godolphin's easiness of dispo-
19th August, 1739.-MS. in the Duke's handwriting.
2 Hardwicke to Newcastle, 29th September, 1739.—M1S.
506
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
ܐܙܙ
sition and near relationship to the Duke rendered him an adverse
cypher on critical occasions, and he was told that he must relin-
quish the Privy Seal. To this no objection could properly have
been made by his friends, or thought of by himself, had it not
been for the intimation that his seat in the Cabinet was wanted
for Lord Hervey, whose satiric pleasantries had too frequently
been aimed at Newcastle, as Secretary of State. Godolphin
wrote to Newcastle that“ His Grace might be sure he could not
but be extremely sorry that the disposition Sir Robert intended
to advise the King to make of the Privy Seal upon his resigning
it, was like to be so unacceptable to many of his friends, and in
danger of producing consequences so unfortunate, if not fatal,
to the Administration ; but as the indulgence of leave to resign
was wholly owing to Sir Robert's interposition, he must be ad-
vised by him as to the time of doing it." The Duke replied
that "he was extremely sorry that Sir Robert still persisted in
his resolution, which he could not but think very unkind to many
of his friends. But there was no way to prevent such an unfor-
tunate, and, he was afraid, fatal incident to the Administration,
but Godolphin's suffering himself to be persuaded to continue in
his employment till the end of the Session. Nothing but a cer-
tain knowledge of the consequence of this step could make him
mention, or at least press a thing which he knew was so disagree-
able to him." 2 In other words, he wished Godolphin to defer
tendering his resignation in order to avert his own. He actually
threatened in an angry interview with Sir Robert at Claremont
that Hardwicke, Pelham, and himself would retire if the obnox-
ious Hervey was appointed. But Walpole felt that he had gone
too far to yield; the Privy Seal was promised to the heir of
Ickworth, and the word of a chief Minister must not be for-
feited. Bishop Hare, who owed his mitre to the friendship of
his Grace, learned with regret the disunion prevailing in the
Cabinet. In a conversation he had with Sir Robert the differ-
ences between Newcastle and him for three years past were
recounted. He said it was hard for him to serve with the Duke.
“As all these misunderstandings seem to have arisen from your
Grace's uneasiness that he should have the lead and be first in
the King's favour, give me leave, since this is the rock great men
i Godolphin to Newcastle, 12th Oct., 1739.—MS.
2 To Godolphin, 12th Oct., 1739.-MS.
NEWCASTLE AND WALPOLE.
507
oftener split upon than any other, to say two things, which take
to be most certain truths: one is, that while Sir R. is in the
King's service, you can be but second ; the other, that when-
ever his death, or any other incident shall make it be thought
necessary to take in any of the patriots, they will never suffer
you to be the first. If you would conjure your friends to tell
you their real sentiments, I'm persuaded you would find them
all of the same opinion. The consequence, if this be so, is
plainly this, that your Grace should again unite heartily with Sir
R. with the same intimacy as formerly for the common cause,
and live upon a good foot with his friends, and so be upon your
guard against the patriots. If I did not find this to be the
opinion of everybody, I should think it inexcusable in me to
take the liberty of saying these things. Nobody living is privy,
either directly or indirectly, to my writing this, and I desire your
Grace not to trouble with any answer to it.” 1
Several changes were made in the Administration, Hervey
being admitted to the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal instead of
Godolphin, and being replaced by Lord Sydney Beauclerk as
Vice-Chamberlain. The Duke of Montagu became Master-
General of the Ordnance, and the Duke of Bolton Captain of
the Band of Pensioners. The Cabinet stood thus :-
POTTER
Archbishop of Canterbury
HARDWICKE
Chancellor
WILMINGTON
President of the Council
HERVEY
Privy Seal
DORSET
Lord Steward
GRAFTON
Chamberlain
RICHMOND
Master of the Horse
DEVONSHIRE
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
NEWCASTLE AND HARRINGTON Secretaries of State
ISLAY
Minister for Scotland
WALPOLE
Treasury
SIR CHAS. WAGER
Admiralty
MONTAGU
Master of Ordnance
HENRY PELHAM
Paymaster-General
PEMBROKE
Groom of the Stole
Newcastle adhered to Walpole so long as it was clear that
Sir Robert's influence was paramount, but he was amongst the
1 Bishop of Chichester to Newcastle, 8th Oct., 1739.—MS.
...
...
...
...
...
508
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
first to discern the symptoms of its decay, and to promote it for
his own purposes. The great Minister wrote his characterin a word:
his name is "Perfidy." Intellectually his natural gifts were few
and of a very ordinary description. The contrast he presented
with his shuffling, confused, and paltry manner, to the all-accom-
plished Carteret who had preceded him in the office of Foreign
Affairs, drew forth on all sides expressions of contempt or mirth,
and his demeanour, exacting from his subordinates, servile to the
powerful, hurried in speech, and unmethodical in business, lavish
of promises, and reckless in breaking them, fretful in temper, and
vacillating in judgment, rendered him an object of incessant
ridicule by opponents, and of misgiving on the part of political
friends. George II. from the outset, disliked his mean ways,
and irregular mode of conducting business, and despised his
incapacity for the conduct of great affairs. Time served only to
strengthen the Royal antipathy, and it needed all the tact and
watchfulness of Walpole to ward off its open expression on
the part of his Majesty, who could only be restrained on more
than one occasion by prudential considerations. For in many
respects the Duke was stronger than the King, and by dint of
his vast Parliamentary influence wielded a power in Church and
State which their nominal head was impotent to countervail.
Pelham guardedly noted expressions of dissatisfaction by the
Prince when Walpole failed to attend the Council of Regency.
The Paymaster-General was not surprised to hear that Newcastle
spoke out when Sir Robert was not at their meetings. Why
was he absent? Whatever were his faults, he was certainly
not a man of whim; and the illness of his son, the cause no
doubt of some anxiety, could hardly have been the reason.
May there not have been to him a motive sufficiently strong in
the sort of competing importance of the Two Councils which
claimed respectively Executive and Administrative pre-eminence
in the absence of the Court ? 1
Certain acts of importance had to be decided by the Lords of
the Regency, and Hardwicke had no little to do in preventing
Walpole and Newcastle from openly differing. Henry Pelham
and Horace Walpole did what they could to keep the breach
from widening between their suspicious colleagues. Both ex-
postulated roundly on the fatuity of their quarrelling, and stoutly
1 Pelham to Newcastle, 28th June, 1740.—MS.
NEWCASTLE'S MYSTIFICATION.
509
denied that there were any real grounds to justify it. Pelham
went the length of praising Horace warmly to his Grace, and
begged him to believe that he had no truer friend.1
The discontented Secretary would have had the tired Chan-
cellor stay in town all autumn to back him up in controversies
on all manner of questions. But having, as he said, made all
his arrangements for leaving, he begged to be excused, for he
felt that he required rest, being worn down with attendance at
the Cockpit and in Court. If one were to be prevented by every
incident that should arise, there would be no period of time at
which one would be able to get away; if he saw that the King's
or his Grace's real service required his stay, there was nothing
he would not sacrifice to either. But, with great submission, that
did not, he thought, appear to be the case on any of the points
mentioned. It was about this time that the Chancellor pur-
chased from Lord Oxford the estate of Wimpole, in Cambridge-
shire, where he spent the leisure hours of his subsequent life,
and to which he became greatly attached. Hardwicke's long
intimacy with Newcastle and the many favours he owed him
suggested frequently recurrent rumours of his readiness to aid
in the intrigues for modification of the Government. The ab-
sence of documentary proof of his complicity in schemes for
superseding his chief has been relied on by eminent critics as
sufficient ground to clear his reputation from the charge: and
the discussion now of subordinate degrees of loyalty and bad
faith would be a waste of time. Hardwicke's judicial habit of
weighing conscientiously opposing facts and conflicting obliga-
tions must have often led him to condemn the imperious tone of
Walpole, which, if he could, he would have honestly wished him
to qualify or amend. On the other hand, the peremptory and
essentially partisan temper of the Minister disqualified him from
estimating fairly any resistance, however honest, to his will ; while
his impetuous and unscrupulous way of talking in private, and
especially in his own house, furnished incessantly fresh fuel to
the suspicions of those about him regarding all who thwarted
him in seeming from time to time. His son Horace has accused
the Chancellor with conspiring his father's overthrow. But he
gives no proof beyond the reproaches of the statesman himself.
1 To Newcastle, June, 1740.--MS.
2 Hardwicke to Newcastle, 9th August, 1740.—MS.
510
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
A sample of the Duke's inveterate tendency to mystification is
to be found in his mode of keeping an ordinary official act from
the rest of his associates.
Special instructions were framed for Cathcart, who was about
being sent on a special mission. Newcastle imagined that
George II. would not dislike signing them himself at Herren-
hausen, which would avoid communicating them to fifteen
people. But this, like much else, was said in confidence to
Harrington. Thus the Secretary was ready to achieve what he
expected would prove a diplomatic advantage without letting
his Cabinet colleagues before-hand into the secret.?
A treaty was signed at Hanover with Count Ostoin,
Landgrave of Hesse, on the oth June, by George II. to carry
into effect the arrangement previously discussed by his Ministers
for Hessian troops, of which Parliament knew nothing. Har-
rington sent his colleague the counterpart of the treaty, which
he wished him to communicate to those lords who were ac-
quainted with the particulars of the negotiation, before he left
home. It concluded with the words : In quorum et mag-
num nostrum Magnæ Britannia Sigilluin appendi fecimus.
Debantur in Palatio nostro, Apud Herrenhausen, 9 June,
1740."
As the Great Seal was in England it could not be affixed to
an instrument signed at Herrenhausen, nor could any act pass
under it there; but he desired the point to be considered at
their meeting on Monday night, whether they might venture to
alter it, or it might be sent back. If that company or the Lords
Justices should be of opinion that they might change the words
and make it at Westiinster, he would not scruple to comply ;
and he thought that the King's signature would be no objection
to the doing so, since it was the Great Seal gave force to the act,
and the signature was only to signify this was the very instru-
ment which he willed should pass under his Great Seal.
A complaisant Secretary was not quite sure which was right
or which was wrong, and was only clear that it would be weak
on his part, either to thwart his Majesty or his colleagues : and
as he kept no copy in his office he begged the Duke to destroy
his letter immediately, which his Grace was careful to forget to
do?
? To Harrington, 24th June, 1740.—MS.
? From Harrington, most secret, 14th June, 1740 – MS.
CABINET AND CROWN.
511
He forwarded the questionable communication to the Chan-
cellor, who sent it back without the confirmation desired, not
sealed, because he apprehended a difficulty arising upon it as
now framed. If the Duke should write to Lord Harrington on
the subject he begged of him not to mention all this reasoning;
but merely say that a difficulty had arisen by the instrument
being made to bear date out of the Kingdom, which it was
necessary should be considered by the Lords.1 The shade of
Somers manifestly stood before him, and warned him off
dangerous ground of complaisance to Royalty, where he had
lost his way. The Lord Chancellor was evidently more afraid
of what might be said in Parliament than of what might be
thought at Hanover, which when it came to a supreme act to
receive the Great Seal, the national instrument, it was necessary
should be considered by Ministers, the wisdom of the Cabinet
being above the authority of the Crown.
Though the Keeper of the Great Seal grumbled on occasion
at his lot, others thought it had fallen to him in peculiarly plea-
sant places. Horace the younger, who was already developing
his gift of cynical portraiture, notes: Beside being in himself
so great a man, what luck the Chancellor had in accidents! He
was made Chief Justice and Peer (1733), when Talbot was made
Chancellor and Peer. Talbot died in a twelve-month and left
him the Great Seal, at an age when others were scarcely made
Solicitors. The same year he married his son to the daughter of
Lord Breadalbane, grand-daughter of the Duke of Kent, for whom
he obtained a Marquisate and £8,000 a-year after his Grace's
death ; Kent died in a fortnight and left him all. People talk
of fortune's wheel that is always rolling ; troth, my lord Hard-
wicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled along with it." ?
An offer was made through Harrington to furnish the Board
of Ordnance with some thousand stand of arms in store at
Hanover, which Ministers, fearing it might furnish a new pretext
for cavil in Parliament, referred to the Council of Regency. As
their proceedings were public, a majority shrank from entering
into the bargain, and without making any formal vote, persuaded
Newcastle to write confidentially to his comrade that though
“highly sensible of his Majesty's goodness in being willing to
| Hardwicke to Newcastle, 20th June, 1740.— MS.
2 Ilorace Walpole to H. Conway.-- NIS.
512
HISTORY OF CABINETS,
part with a number of arms in store at Hanover, to supply the
ordnance here, they were very apprehensive that if the manner
of purchasing them were not managed with great prudence and dis-
cretion, it might be attended with inconveniences; and therefore
they suggested that they should be contracted for in the name
of some Hamburg merchant, and that the arms should appear
to be the property of that merchant, and not to have come from
his Majesty's own stores : which they thought might be done
without much difficulty, and whether, for the sake of greater
secrecy, this might not be managed by Mr. Trevor at the Hague,
with some trader at Hamburg, under his general order to pro-
.cure what quantity of arms he could get. If the bore were not
exactly the same the arms would be of no use here ; but if they
could be furnished at the prices they could be furnished for at
other places, they might be bought for the ordnance here. But
they hoped Lord Harrington would take care that they should
go under the name of a Hamburg merchant. But as to the arms
that either had been used (tho' possibly not much the worse), or
those that might have been laid by, and might not be agreeable
to the pattern here, the Lords Justices did think that though
great abatement were made in the price, and consequently they
might not be an ill bargain for the public, yet, in the present cir-
cumstances, and to avoid any disagreeable incident in an affair
of this nature, it would be most advisable not to have them. As
to the proposal that some of the arms which had long lain by or
been repaired might do for the Irish militia, the Government had
lately sold 5,000 first-rate muskets to the Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland for that purpose, and they had found the Irish Execu-
tive so exacting, that they refused to take over others from the
Tower, which, though of very good quality, were a little short in
the barrel, and therefore their Lordships apprehended that these
from Hanover would not be thought fit for that service.” 1
Lord Waldegrave apprised the Government of naval prepara-
tions going forward at Brest and Toulon, the precise object of
which he was unable to extract from the French Ministers.
Cardinal Fleury told him that "so long as we did not make our-
selves masters of the Spanish Possessions in the West Indies, and
did not seek to keep them for our own, he had nothing to say ;
but if we did, as such a step could not but be a great detriment
1 To Harrington, June, 1740.—MS.
WAR WITH FRANCE.
513
to France, and curb her trade in the tropics, she should be forced
to take part in the war.”! This language was not regarded as so
decided that any of the undertakings in readiness ought to be
suspended, or any of the instructions prepared for Lord Cathcart
altered, or those for Norris, who had fifteen men-of-war ready for
sea. To this resolution Walpole, Hardwicke, Sir Charles Wager,
Lord President, and Newcastle were parties. But the Ambassa-
dor, unable to give the assurance that permanent conquests at
the expense of Spain were not possible, gave up at last regret-
fully the policy he had so long maintained. The war party
became ascendant at Versailles ; and orders were despatched to
the frigates and line-of-battle ships cruising off various coasts of
the Mediterranean, to rendezvous in August at Malaga, where
their pennants were to be mingled once more with those of a
Bourbon power. Waldegrave was not easily convinced of the
fact, or what it implied, and he was allowed to remain at Paris
some weeks longer; but the English alliance was atan end.2
On the King's return from Hanover in October, Sir Robert
took care to have the first audience, and to impart his own version
of the state of affairs. Some days later, when the Secretary was
alone with his Majesty, he reported what had passed the night
before about a despatch to Vienna, pressing for closer alliance,
with which he was much pleased. The King, in a set speech,
said that "he did not value the Opposition in Parliament if all
those in his service acted together and were united, but if they
thwarted one another, and created dissensions in the carrying on
of public business, then indeed it would be another case." The
Duke easily saw from whom this came, for Sir Robert had been
with the King nearly an hour, and had come out in high
spirits and humour. He answered that to be sure all his servants
would unite in doing the best service they could. Finding Sir
Robert in the outer room, he said he had found the King quite
altered from the day before, and that he had made a pretty ex-
traordinary speech to them ; which he repeated, saying that he
had heard this language often before. Sir Robert replied, “I
know you mean from me"; which he did, for he could almost
swear to the words. “ However agreeable to my own way of
thinking,” said Walpole, “or true in itself, I have said: nothing
1 Newcastle to Harrington, 4th July, 1740.—MS.
2 Richmond to Newcastle, 19th September, 1740.—MS.
VOL. I.
LL
514
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
now to the King to that purpose.' Newcastle then said :
“When measures are agreed amongst us, it is very right that
everybody should support them; but not to have the liberty of
giving one's opinion before they are agreed, is very wrong." He
said shortly, “What do you mean?
“What do you mean? This war is yours. You
have had the conduct of it.” Newcastle contented himself with
denying this fact, and so they parted.
Commenting on the foregoing, the Duke asked Hardwicke
“whether it was possible that business could go on, when what
was agreed amongst them was often equally overhauled after-
wards, both by Lord H. and Sir R., if it was not quite agree-
able to their own inclinations, and when they had reason to fear
that their united credit with his Majesty might not prove sufficient
to induce him to do quite right in this great conjuncture. One
would govern all, and fill the King's head with complaints and
unreasonable jealousies of part of his servants.” 1
I Newcastle to Hardwicke, 25th October, 1740.—MS.
515
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FALL OF WALPOLE.
1741.
Opposition Calling for Naval Victories-Debates on Foreign Affairs-
Walpole Defends his Policy-Shippen Requites a Service-Boling-
broke in France-Walpole Clings to Ascendancy-General Election
- Pecuniary Shortcomings-Courting the Lord of Petworth-Wager
Returned for Westininster-The Grenvilles and Pitts—The Cabinet
Despond-Newcastle's Success in Elections - The Pelhams at their
Zenith— Treachery of Newcastle--Ministers Lose Ground—Walpole
Defeated-Reluctant to Retire--Reconstruction of the Cabinet.
H
AVING forced the Government into war, Opposition were
importunate in demanding victories, or the disclosure of
the causes why there were none. Motion after motion
was made in Parliament disparaging the conduct of Administra-
tion in not having sent an army to support Vernon in the con-
quest of Spanish America. Everyone was proud of his success
at Portobello, but why had not Carthagena been taken? In-
structions from the Admiralty ought to be produced, and the
cautionary missives from the Secretary of State, like those
which had paralysed Hosier when, with a larger squadron, he
might have achieved greater success. The chief assailants were
Argyll, Carteret, Bathurst, and Chesterfield, in the Lords; and
Pulteney, Sandys, Lord Gage, and Waller, in the Commons ;
but every division endorsed the Ministerial draft on public con-
fidence, and after the Christinas recess it was still doubtful to
outsiders whether the stability of the Cabinet was really shaken.
To its Members their prospects were less assured, for disunion
more than ever reigned amongst them, and the temper of the
Dictator was become more peremptory and his will more abso-
lute.
Motions of directly-applied censure were still defeated, but by
L L 2
516
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
diminishing numbers ; fresh votes were scarce at St. Stephens
and the device was once more resorted to of keeping legal pre-
ferments open with the unacknowledged aim of influencing
wavering competitors in the House of Commons, or their
immediate relatives. A vacancy had for some time existed on
the judicial Bench, which Hardwicke wished to see filled up prior
to the spring circuit. Two of the judges were disqualified by ill
health, and in their stead serjeants-at-law, not over-laden with
practice, were glad to be sent. The Chancellor thought it would
be objectionable to name a third locuin tenens of the same class,
but Walpole had no qualms on the subject, and thought the
empty place more useful than the most unexceptionable ap-
pointment. The tone of Hardwicke's expostulation in writing
betrays a lack of his usual command of courtesy, strongly indica-
tive of the growing differences in the Cabinet.
In his conduct of the war the Minister was accused of being
as thriftless as he was unthriving. His belief in his indispensa-
bility, perhaps unconsciously, grew upon him, and his habit of
indulgence and expense kept pace with his indifference of
opinion. Opposition gained strength, and at the beginning of
1741 the dissatisfied Whigs concerted with the more eager Tories
an attempt to take the Treasury by storm. The leaders of the
separate sections came at last to see that without previous con-
cert and engagement to lend mutual help they could effect
nothing. The attempt of Argyll to snatch the Leadership in
attack, provoking as it had done a conspiracy of silence, and
ending in utter failure, was a warning too signal to be neglec-
ted, and by the time Parliament reassembled it had been re-
solved at Leicester House that motions for the dismissal of
Walpole should be moved simultaneously by Carteret in the one
House and Sandys in the other, which it was expected that
patriots of every hue would support.
A dining club of opposition met every Tuesday during the
Session at the King's Arms. Five dukes, one marquis, fifteen
earls, three viscounts, and three barons, drank to the overthrow
of Sir Robert Walpole, and pledged life and fortune in the
The appointed day at length arrived, and Carteret
cause.
1 Hardwicke to Walpole, 13th January, 1741.-MS.
2 November, 1740.
3 13th Feb., 1741.
NO PRIME MINISTER.
517
spoke for two hours, but without materially affecting votes. He
moved an address to the King praying the removal of an usurp-
ing autocrat who had betrayed his master into manifold depar-
tures from the path of the Constitution. Argyll vehemently dwelt
upon the dismissals from the army of men whose loyalty was
not impeached, and whose sole offence was that of presuming to
differ in Parliament from a despotic Minister. Newcastle pro-
fessed to regard the Motion as an attack on the whole Adminis-
tration, cited the case of Lord Strafford, and adjured the House
not to set a precedent for cumulating censures on measures in
past years which had been at the time approved.
The young Duke of Bedford, who had become an active ad-
herent of the malcontents, indulged in sharp, if not severe
comments on the sort of defence made by the Government
Hardwicke did not venture to justify (perhaps at heart did not
approve) the arbitrary treatment of the Duke of Bolton, Lord
Cobham, and Mr. Pitt, but contented himself with specious
platitudes about the necessity of the Sovereign having, at all
times, absolute discretion over the officers of the army, in which
Jacobites or Rebublicans might be found, whom any faithful
Minister would advise his Sovereign to remove. The speech of
the Chancellor probably went as far in defence of the First
Minister as was useful to gain votes; but its arguments were
carefully winnowed of everything likely to prove indigestible by
a possible successor.
Within twelve months the wary occupant
of the Woolsack reaped as he had strawed; and when Walpole
had ceased to govern remained Keeper of the Seal in a coali-
tion Cabinet. But fifty-nine peers divided with Carteret, while
one hundred and eight held fast by the Minister. Wilmington
did not vote.
If ever a Minister enjoyed the power and privilege of Premier-
ship in everything but the name, it was Walpole. He had long
ceased to relish unqualified or unacknowledged ascendancy; but
the sagacity of his selfishness constantly bid him beware of
using a new and innovating title. Premiership was not merely
a function unknown to the law, undefined in its nature and un-
welcome, alike to Cabinet and the Court, as implying more or
less assumption or dictation, but it was in his time and long
after a theme of jealousy and suspicion to the governing classes
in Parliament, whose individual hopes and pretensions it was
518
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
looked on as tending to mar. On the rejection of Carteret's
Motion, a protest was signed by a number of Peers against the
usurpation by anyone of the unconstitutional rank and au-
thority of a Prime Minister; and Hardwicke, who doubtless
chuckled at heart at any impediment thrown in the way of
superior control by a First Lord of the Treasury, either in
being or that might be, over the other great officers of State,
took no exception to its being enrolled among the records of the
Peers. They protested “because they were persuaded that a
sole or even a First Minister was a functionary unknown to the
law of Great Britain ; inconsistent with the Constitution, and
destructive of liberty in any Government whatsoever."
Sandys, in the other House, opened the discussion by urging
every topic of diplomatic and military mismanagement, es-
pecially that of allowing France to annex Lorraine, and, by
implication, imputing every species of corruption in domestic
affairs. Wortley Montagu moved that Walpole be ordered to
withdraw pending the debate; and when the injustice of this
proposition seemed to scandalise many on both sides, Gibbon
characteristically suggested as a modification that the Minister
should be heard in his own defence and then be ordered to with-
draw. But neither would this go down with the more dis-
interested of his opponents, and the accused Minister hoped he
might be allowed to hear all that could be said against him,
before he was called upon to speak. The debate was conducted
chiefly by men of comparatively little note. Pulteney was
answered by Stephen Fox, Wyndham's vacant place was occu-
pied by Pitt. More was expected of him on the occasion than
the meagre reports of his speech would lead us to suppose was
realised. That which is ascribed to the editorship of Dr. Jolin-
son differs essentially from those delivered on other occasions,
and bears indelible marks of the predilection of the venerable
grammarian for lofty abstractions and magniloquent forms of
expression. It is not easy to comprehend how such a discourse
was likely to wean fretful adherents from their hitherto all-
powerful leader, or to withhold hostile waverers from deserting."
Walpole waited until the eloquence of jealousy and aversion was
1 The report alluded to appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine after the lapse of
many months, and was omitted (probably by desire) in the two volumes of debates
published by Johnson.
WALPOLE ON HIS DEFENCE.
519
Scorn.
spent, and then entered upon his defence with all his wonted
ability, and in a tone of contemptuous indifference to and supreme
confidence in the result, too consistent and unfaltering to have
been feigned. Upon all the high-flown professions of sympathy
with the people and zeal for the national good he trampled with
Gentlemen had talked a great deal of patriotism—a
venerable word; but, he was sorry to say, of late so much
hackneyed that it was in danger of falling into disgrace; the
very idea of true patriotism was lost, and the term had been
prostituted to the worst of purposes. He had never been afraid
of making patriots ; but he disdained and despised all their
efforts. There was not a man amongst them whose particular
aim he was not able to ascertain, and from what motive he had
entered the lists of Opposition. “My great and principal crime,"
continued Walpole,"is my long continuance in office, or, in
other words, the long exclusion of those who now exclaim
against me.
This is the heinous offence which exceeds all
others: I keep from them the possession of that power, those
honours, and those emoluments to which they so ardently and
pertinaciously aspire. I will not attempt to deny the reason-
ableness and necessity of party war; but in carrying on that
war all principles and rules of justice should not be departed
from. I am called, repeatedly and insidiously, Prime and Sole
Minister. Admitting, for sake of argument, that I am, in this
country, Prime and Sole Minister, am I therefore Prime and
Sole Minister of all Europe? Am I answerable for the conduct
of other countries as well as of my own ? If my whole adminis-
tration is to be scrutinised and arraigned, why are the most
favourable parts to be omitted ? If facts are to be accumulated
on one side, why not on the other ? Was I not called by the
voice of the King and the nation to remedy the fatal effects of
the South Sea project, and to support declining credit? Was I
not placed at the head of the Treasury when the revenues were
in the greatest confusion? Is credit revived, and does it now
flourish? Is it not at an incredible height, and if so, to whom
must that circumstance be attributed ? Has the true interest of
the nation been pursued-has trade flourished? Have gentle-
men produced one instance of this exorbitant power, of the
influence I extend to all parts of the nation, of the tyranny with
which I oppress those who oppose, and the liberality with which
520
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
I reward those who support me? Is ambition imputed to me?
Why, then, do I still continue a commoner-I who refused the
white staff and a Peerage? I had, indeed, like to have forgotten
the little ornament about my shoulders, which gentlemen have
so repeatedly mentioned in terms of sarcastic obloquy, but
surely, though this may be regarded with envy or indignation
in another place, it cannot be supposed to raise any resentment
in this House, where many may be pleased to see those honours
which their ancestors have worn, restored again to the Commons.
But while I unequivocally deny that I am Sole and Prime
Minister, I will not shrink from the responsibility which attaches
to the post I have the honour to hold.” 1
Edward Harley, whose vote both sides counted as certain in
support of Sandys, surprised and disappointed both. He had
opposed Ministers because he thought their measures wrong,
and as long as they were he should continue to do so. War
was destroying us abroad, and poverty and corruption were de-
vouring us at home. But without convincing evidence, he would
not censure any man.
A noble relative of his had been im-
peached and imprisoned, whereby his years had been shortened;
and the prosecution had been pressed by the Minister then as-
sailed. He was glad of the opportunity to return good for evil ;
and to do that justice which had been denied his predecessor.
So saying, he and his nephew left the House without voting.
Shippen, from a different motive, took a similar course. A
Jacobite friend, against whom the Minister was known to have
convicting proofs, had been suffered to escape at his personal
solicitation, with the remark only that if by any accident their
relative positions should be reversed, the obligation would not
be forgotten. The contingent which Shippen led, numbering
thirty-four, quitted the house with him, and thus materially
contributed to swell the majority of 290 to 106, by which the
motion was rejected. Nevertheless, the controversy still went on.
One of the most protracted and excited discussions was that on
a renewed proposal to carry a Bill for the more effectual im-
pressment of seamen, which led to the interchange of invectives
and imputations that have long been made familiar to the youth
of later days in lesson books of Parliamentary rhetoric. Had
stenography been a popular profession, or journalism been the
1 From his own notes of his speech, “ Parlt. Hist.," Vol. II.
THE MINISTER TRIUMPHS.
521
cheap luxury of all classes at the time, the denunciations of Sir
J. Barnard, Pulteney, and Pitt, would doubtless have had some
effect; but the limited attendance and the great preponderance in
division of those who supported Government show how little
the Admiralty apprehended from the odium which their critics
sought to incite against them; and subsequent changes in legis-
lation have so completely raised the condition of the seamen as
a class that it would serve little purpose to dwell minutely on
the accusations of cruelty and solemn repudiations of the in-
justice of a happily forgotten state of things. The Bill, after
many days' debate, passed the Commons by two to one, the
chief reason assigned for it being that France had a powerful
navy ready for sea, the destination of which could not be
ascertained.
The death of Sir W. Wyndham and of a still more powerful
assailant, Alexander Pope, had been followed by the retirement of
Bolingbroke in despair to France. Well might the Minister put
faith in his star, and indulge in dreams of practical irresponsi-
bility. He suffered the country to drift still deeper into war;
and instead of attempting to curb his colleagues in their blind
acquiescence in the King's desire to meddle in German politics,
with the authority and arms of a first-rate Power, he affected to
espouse with zeal the cause of the Queen of Hungary, and led
the Commons to vote a subsidy of £300,000 and a contingent
of 12,000 German and Danish troops to maintain the integrity
of her dominions. By treaty, England was bound to sustain
the title of Maria Theresa, and the supplementary Conventions
with Denmark and Hesse were confessedly intended to furnish
the means of defending Hanover in case the federal fidelity of
George II. should endanger that portion of his dominions. It
was possibly not foreseen that his loyal adhesion to the cause of
the Empress-Queen would draw down upon the Electorate the
concentric hostility of France, Prussia, and Muscovy; and the
English Government wisely sought to bring about a compromise
regarding Silesia, a few places on the confines of which were all
that Frederick II. as yet demanded. The Court of Vienna,
however, haughtily spurned the proposal of any surrender of ter-
ritory, and a sanguinary struggle began which soon involved
all Christendom in its calamities and crimes.
H. Walpole, tired of his duties as Cofferer, exchanged that
522
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
lucrative but temporary post for the less profitable permanent
place of Teller of the Exchequer,--not a bad ending after twenty
years of political office. Sir Robert felt the shades of evening
closing on his long career, and, with brotherly love, wished to
provide a secure and agreeable repose for one who had served
him so variously and faithfully. While the tide ran strongly
against Walpole individually, he appeared unconscious of the
perfidy of more than one of those about him, and, sunk in what
was truly called at the time "a lethargy of power,” used little
exertion to baffle their machinations. The Lord President de-
sired his fall in the hope of becoming his successor, as head of
a moderate Tory and Whig coalition. His Grace of Newcastle
cherished similar hopes for himself, and opened communications
to that end with his Grace of Argyll. Lord Islay's proceedings
in Scotland did not escape suspicion, to which the event gave
colour. Of all this Sir Robert was fully aware ; yet he remained
almost passive, as though he had grown weary of counterplotting
the intrigues of men whom no intimacy or confidence could bind,
and whose double dealings he had so long known and despised,
that he had ceased to regard them as formidable.
The Septennial term of Parliamentary life having expired, a
general election for England and Scotland took place in May,
1741. Neither Triennial nor Septennial Act had been passed by
the Colonial Parliament of Ireland, and its occupying lease, like
that of arable farms, was for the life of the King. It had long
been foreseen that the future fate of Administration would
depend upon the constitution of the next House of Commons,
and for months beforehand every instrument and device had
been employed to make safe doubtful seats, and to gain ad-
ditional ones. The organisation of coalesced assailants of
Government had never been so complete, and the direction of
resistance was chiefly left, as formerly, to Newcastle.
Reckless outlay in elections was at length beginning to tell
seriously on a large income. His Grace had borrowed £3,000
not very long before, which he supposed he should somehow or
other be able to repay; but when called upon for reimbursement
no way seemed immediately available but to break up his estab-
lishment at Claremont and be content for a while with life in
Sussex, where country hospitality would cost less than frequent
dinners and festivities au Prince at Claremont. His devoted
NEWCASTLE IN DIFFICULTIES.
523
wife, who was used to accommodate her wishes and tastes im-
plicitly to those of her whimsical lord, could not easily reconcile
herself to what was to her banishment from a circle in which she
had been brought up, and out of the chime of whose joy bells
and gossip she looked upon life as not worth living. “I see
nothing in my life to come but what must make me very un-
happy if the consequences of this unfortunate affair are to be
what you tell me. The natural consequence will be living in
Sussex. You know how little you will have to support your
way of living. Here is a fresh debt of £3,000, which cannot be
paid off but by saving it out of your income, which will then be
a small one to save it out of, and added to this the elections
coming on, which you know will be a heavy expense. So that
two years hence, I fear, instead of having paid this three thou-
sand the debt will be much increased, and no possibility of pay-
ing it. You know the way of life must be always disagreeable
to me, but if that were all that were to happen to me from being
there I would endeavour, at least, not to let you know how un-
happy it made me, but one thing more sits heavy upon me—the
leaving my sister1”2
Claremont, however, was not shut up, and the steward was left
to arrange as best he could with the tradesmen without clearing
up accounts with his irritable employer. Things naturally went
on from bad to worse, till in April, 1740, they had reached the
vulgar condition, unsuspected by the world at large, of being
unable to get ordinary credit. “One Cole, a very honest man,
who furnishes me with hay, writes that he must never expect the
money, and looks upon it as lost. How is it possible for a man
in his senses to say so? Sure, there must be some mistake.
The Kingston butcher has refused to serve us, and the labourers
at Claremont, though inconsiderable, have not been paid these
three months. I wish you would send for Mr. Waller on Tues-
day, talk everything over with him, and see how things stand.
As my business will really not allow me to look into these
things, I must beg you would do it for me, and keep Mr. Waller
constantly to the business, and make him come to you once a
week."
1 Mary, afterwards Duchess of Leeds.
2 Duchess of Newcastle to her husband, 4th Sept., 1739.-MS.
3 Newcastle to his wife, 27th April, 1740.--MS.
1
524
IIISTORY OF CABINETS.
The indefatigable Comptroller-General of Seats devoted him-
self once more to the repair and renewal of the collateral influ-
ences that made what was called his interest irresistible. To
the innumerable seekers for places he became more than ever
bountiful, to the dealers in jobs more than ever gracious, to the
lookers to advancement in the Church or the army more than
every encouraging, and to members of his own order deferential
to a degree that was not his wont. Primus inter pares among
these was the Lord of Petworth, to whom he disclaimed all pre-
tensions of equality and of the possibility of any adequate
requital for his favour, but who was open to that which New-
castle had to give without stint, and which at election times cost
him not a penny to offer. To the Duke of Somerset he professed
“how highly sensible he was of his Grace's great goodness in
honouring him and his brother in so distinguished a manner
with his countenance and protection. His Grace knew how
extraordinarily and how personally his friends and relations
were attacked at the last election, not only in the county, but in
boroughs where his family had been constantly chosen, before
the memory of anybody then alive. He was always sorry when
he had the misfortune to differ with his Grace in anything, and
should ever retain the most grateful sense of his Grace's con-
tinued goodness and favour to him and to his family."1
The first notable contest was at Westminster. The fame of
Vernon was at the zenith, and with the Admiral was named on
the popular side Mr. Edwin, husband of one of the ladies-in-
waiting to the Princess of Wales. Most of the electors were in
the habit of voting for whomsoever Government brought forward,
and Sir Charles Wager, it was believed, was popular enough to
carry along with him a Lord of the Treasury without talent or
repute. Large sums were subscribed, it was said, by the Prince,
Mr. Pulteney, and the old Duchess of Marlborough, and Mr.
Glover, Chairman of the Local Committee, afterwards confessed
that £12,000 had been expended on the contest.? But old habits
were too strong to be suddenly broken, and the Treasury Whips
confidently spoke of the Royal city of Westminster as an electoral
curtilage of Whitehall. Nor did the voting undeceive them, and
both the official candidates would have been duly returned had
| Newcastle to Somerset, 2nd Aug., 1740.—MS.
2 Posthumous Memoirs.
GENERAL ELECTION.
in
525
5
not Lord Sundon, in a fright at some casual outburst of the
mob, sent for the Guards and made the High Bailiff close the
poll, while they surrounded the hustings. This reckless viola-
tion of law and usage secured for the moment the disputed
seats ; but it turned the tide of fortune throughout the Kingdom,
and the author of Leonidas indeed lost his own election, but
Vernon was returned for Ipswich some days later; and in numerous
places the polls were obviously affected by the use made of the
incident. The Sussex boroughs were for the most part strictly
preserved. Thomas Pelham, of Stanıner, had sat many years
for Lewes with his relation Thomas Pelham, of Crowhurst, and
the former having died not long before, Mr. Trevor, of Glynde,
as his Parliamentary executor, took over his pledges and liabili-
ties as assets. The senior Member reported to his chief how he
had given a large entertainment to their friends the electors.
He "talked to them each separately, and most of them said
their demands were satisfied.” They would all vote for Trevor
and him. Sergison made great offers to the voters, and kept
open-house, which put them to “a great deal of trouble and
expense to keep old friends steady.” But having been, as he
said, the least of the family benefited by a long possession of
office, he thought the occasion suitable for obtaining reimbursal
of certain liabilities he had incurred years before. In 1720 he
paid his Grace £6,000 for 2,000 £3 subscriptions.
certainly a South Sea bargain, but of a particular sort, and such
as the Duke would, upon the fall, have recouped to any other
person. The interest had doubled the sum, and it had indeed
since been nearly doubled upon him the contrary way by his
great expenses at Newark. He observed, too, that he was the
only one that his Grace had allowed to spend his own money at
any of his towns ;- his small estate was now mortgaged for the
sum, and if he was out of all employment he would not have
£ 50 a-year to live upon at the latter end of his days. This was
the only time at which he could represent his case with any
prospect of being relieved. It would be a very trifle compared
with the grand affair depending, though of the utmost impor-
tance in keeping up the only branch of the family that could
ever want support, and here he rested it. The contest at Lewes
ended : Pelham 156, Trevor 154, Sergison 117.
Beside patronage of all kinds and pressure more or less in-
It was
526
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
direct, numerous applications were made to the Secretary of
State for money, indispensable to keep the poorer voters until
the day of poll. £100 at a time was wanted for this purpose,
sometimes by Thomas Pelham and sometimes by other trusty
Members of the same stamp. The returns periodically made by
them to their chief show that the number of voters in the Sussex
and Surrey boroughs was very limited.
The Cinque Ports were reserved for particular friends and
favourites. Hastings was directed to return James Pelham, a near
relative of the Duke, and Andrew Stone, his private secretary, who
next year was given the sinecure post of Secretary of Barbadoes,
the duties of which were performed by deputy. Dover, in like
manner, sent Lord George Sackville and Thomas Revell, at the
desire of the Lord Steward. Rye furnished seats for Phillips
Gybbon, who became Lord of the Treasury, and Sir John Norris.
Sandwich had for its representatives Sir George Oxenden, a
name familiar at the Board of Treasury, and John Pratt. Seaford
returned Sir William Gage and W. Hay, both active members of
the ducal organisation in Sussex. Winchelsea was honoured by
the nomination of Lord Doneraile and T. Orby Hunter, New
Romney alone was beguiled by the managers of the Opposition
into returning Sir Francis Dashwood and Mr. Furnese, a friend
of Lord Chesterfield's. In Yorkshire the course of affairs went
smoothly. The Duke's four nominees were returned without
show of opposition for Aldborough and Boroughbridge-T.yrrell,
Gregory, Jewkes, and Wilkinson. It was not a time to be nice.
Finch and Townshend stood for the University of Cambridge,
and the Secretary of State addressed a personal request to the
Master of St. John's, Peter House, Christ College, and others on
their behalf, and they were returned. In the following year
Finch was made Groom of the Bedchamber.
Lord Falmouth undertook to carry several of the Cornish
boroughs. Dodington, who had linked his fortunes with those
of Argyll, promised to secure Melcombe and Weymouth, and
his Grace made certain of being able to turn the Scotch Mem-
bers, for whose fidelity his brother Islay was still held account-
able.
Dodington's support, which amounted to more than half-a-
1 From Boroughbridge, 29th April, 1741. -NIS.
2 From Newcastle, 25th April, 1741.-NIS.
LOSS TO GOVERNMENT.
527
dozen votes, had been rewarded by Walpole with a seat at the
Treasury; but being suspected of holding secret communications
with the enemy he was summarily dismissed, and thenceforth he
joined in active opposition. His nominees at Weymouth and
Melcombe, Poole, Winchilsea, Wells, and Bridgewater received
orders to change sides, and they contributed accordingly to the
final issue of the struggle.
From the marriage of Walpole's son with the daughter of
Sir S. Rolle, one of the nominations for Callington was added to
those of the Minister, and Horace Walpole the younger was
returned as junior Member for the borough during his absence
abroad with Coplestone, a staunch supporter of Government.
Strenuous efforts were made by the coalesced Opposition to win
seats from the Ministerialists, and under the management of
Thomas Pitt they mustered in formidable array when Parlia-
ment met. Richard Grenville kept his seat for Bucks, his.
brother George for the county town ; George Lyttelton and
Thomas Pitt for Oakhampton; John Pitt and Henry Drax for
Wareham; William Pitt and James Grenville for Old Sarum ;
George Moreton, Pitt, and Lord Galway for Pontefract. The
general battle over, Newcastle sat down to count losses and
gains. The loss of rank and file to Administration was palpable
and great, though not so definable as party writers chose to name
---not so measurable as anybody could tell who did not know
how it had been individually got, kept or lost.
Thomas Pelhain had £300 from his colleague, Mr. Trevor, of
Glynde, for his share of election expenses remaining unpaid at
Lewes, and the same sum from Newcastle for his proportion.
But everywhere this wholesale business more and more involved
serious outlay, without definite prospect of reimbursal.
Vernon was said to have inflicted a severe blow on the
Spaniards at Carthagena, reducing its fortifications to ruins; but
renewing the bombardment of the town immediately after, the
attack was made a dear purchase by the havoc of our best men.2
The victory was gazetted and glorified, and wherever country
elections had still to be fought bonfires blazed.
By the middle of June the failure of Vernon to realise the
results of which Government had prematurely boasted caused
1 T. Pelham, from Lewes, 4th July, 1741.—N/S.
2 Capt. Jackson on board the Fleet, 10 Mr. Corbiere; from Jamaica, 30th May,
1741. -MS.
528
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
much chagrin. To Harringtori, at Göhrdt, his colleagues affected
no disguise. They were all under the greatest concern at the
melancholy news from the West Indies. The loss of so many
brave men, the disappointment after they had published their
anticipations over all Europe touched everyone who had the least
concern for the honour of the King and the nation, and, he was
afraid, would be felt in their operations and negotiations abroad.
To what it was owing he would not pretend to judge. His own
opinion was that the war in America must be supported, or they
would lose all their credit and reputation, and be for ever after
at the mercy of Spain in the West Indies, and this could not be
done without a great reinforcement of land forces, well provided
with ordnance and other necessaries, and a proper convoy to go
with them. He saw the difficulty and hazard of such an expe-
dition, but the necessity of it. The Chancellor learned the ill
news with dismay. He never found himself so much affected
with any misfortune. Though he had had some misgivings from
what appeared in the first letters of Vernon and Wentworth,
yet he wished they had reserved their messengers of success till
they had seen further into the event. He was glad that they
were agreed that America was not to be given up, and that they
must go on with their measures there, otherwise they must give
up their plantations and trade. This would require all possible
attention, deliberation, and prudence, and all possible temper
and union too, amidst the chagrin and ill-humour which such ill
success naturally raised. He was sure to be at the next meeting
of Cabinet at Chelsea, for he would not contribute the least to
Tuesday's passing without some material resolution being
taken.2
The King had requested that Walpole, Newcastle, Wilming-
ton, and he should specially confer, and let him know their opinion
how the exigency should be met. Hardwicke, knowing the tension
existing between the Secretary and the First Lord, advised the
former to write a conciliatory note to Sir Robert, which he did,
in well-meant but strangely awkward terms." It would be very
improper in them to have their consideration interrupted by an
improper behaviour towards each other. He was, therefore, de-
termined for his own part to lay aside all warmth or personal
1 To Harrington, 20th June, 1741.—MS.
2 To Newcastle, from Wimpole, 20th June, 1741.-NIS.
VERNON'S FAILURE.
529
considerations, to proceed to the business with as much coolness
and deliberation as he was capable of, and a resolution to hear the
opinion of those whom he was to consult with, with candour and
deference, and when he had the misfortune to differ, to do it
in such a manner as might be best for the King's service.”1
Richmond was “vext to a degree he could not express by
their misfortunes in the West Indies. He was sorry to find that
Vernon and all therethrew the blame on Wentworth. If he was not
well with Vernon, he should be recalled, and some good officer
sent in his place that was fit to command. Six regiments should
be sent at once to reinforce them, two of which should be old
corps from Ireland with good officers, to be replaced by those
now raising. The nation was undone if they did not repair this
misfortune by giving a great stroke in the West Indies. New-
castle might say to him, 'Why don't you come up and give your
opinion at Whitehall ?' but he saw how little weight his opinion
had at that board. It was bad the officers abroad should have
disputes, but disputes amongst the Ministers at home would be
fatal to the Government, which had stopped his mouth upon
several occasions. He need say no more, for the Secretary knew
his meaning, and no mortal living but himself knew his senti-
ments.'
The Duke never was so loth to write on public affairs which
had in them no spice of comfort from any quarter ; but he told
Harrington (obviously for his Majesty's car) that Wentworth
must be superseded, and a resolute effort made to retrieve his
blunders. As he was for going on, he was for doing it effectually
by sending four regiments thither with officers of experience and
service. “We shall be the least of men, disgraced in the eyes
of both friends and foes, submitting our commercial interests in
that part of the world to the arrogance and resentment of a
merciless and provoked enemy, if we do not make one more
attempt." 3
How needful for his purpose it seemed to give George II. the
notion that the minority in the Cabinet were the true sticklers
for honour, is constantly observable in the correspondence of this
period. George II. had no ear for music and no taste for ex-
1 Newcastle Correspondence. -MS.
? Richmond to Newcastle, 21st June, 1741 -MS.
14th July, 1741.-MS.
VOL. I.
» 2
M M
530
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
travagance, but he delighted in the rattling of the scabbard in
peace, and the diapason of artillery as often as it could be heard
in war: and if these things were costly, that was Parliament's
affair, not his. If the defencelessness of Hanover had led him
to bargain for its neutrality just then between the combatants
on the Rhine, all the more desirous he would naturally be of a
right policy in the West Indies. This was just the sort of insight
into motives of which Newcastle was capable. On the other
hand, his infirm colleague at Herrenhausen was like Issachar of
old," between two burthens." Walpole loaded him with reasons
and suggestions of one kind and the Secretary of State with
their antidotes upon the other. How much of either he com-
municated to the King nobody could tell ; but the foolish
vehemence of the latter in deprecating and actually denouncing
the Hanover Treaty, helped only to confirm the Sovereign
in his reliance on the magician of the Treasury, with whom he
dare not dispense. While a confidential despatch from the
Duke was on its way to Harrington, a still more secret and con-
fidential letter from the King to Walpole crossed it.
By the end of September the aspect of affairs had not im
proved. The despatches were sent in circulation to Wilmington,
and his only comment on them was conveyed in an elderly
whine over "the melancholy and distracted state of affairs
abroad, which appeared to him quite desperate." I
Meanwhile Newcastle chuckled over the unthinned muster-
roll of the contingent under his personal command, and scru-
tinised again and again the incidents and causes of defeat else-
where. But it was not in his nature to grieve inconsolably at
a total diminution of force that virtually enhanced beyond
expectation his personal power. The Pelham votes, always
numerous, had, by careful culture, grown to be conclusive.
Henceforth they were indispensable to Whig possession of
office. The days of his submission in the Cabinet to the rude
and overbearing dictation of Walpole were at an end. He could
now afford to be independent, obdurate, unpersuadable, patriotic,
if he chose. He had made Hardwicke, Richmond, Harrington,
and Henry Pelham what they officially were ; and they had
vowed, times without number, that they would live and die with
him, and his credulous egotism really believed it. He had a
1 To Newcastle from Eastbourne, 30th September, 1741.-AIS.
SECRET TREATY AT HANOVER.
531
long account of unforgotten snubbings and mortifications to
settle with the great usurper of authority, as he had come to
regard Sir Robert; but he must still bide his time and wait for
events. They were not long coming. The King at Hanover
daily grew more uneasy at the consequences of the recent
treaty with the Empress-Queen. When the pledges given by
England became known at Versailles and Potsdam, resolutions
were taken of co-operation in Germany which plainly menaced
the integrity of the Electorate; and when a French army of 40,000
men, under Marshal Mallebois, entered Westphalia, George II.
began to tremble for the safety of his ancestral Duchy. Har-
rington, without consulting his colleagues at home, consented to
negotiate a secret treaty with the French, whereby his Majesty
covenanted not to oppose their advance in Germany nor continue
the march of his succours to Maria Theresa. He also engaged
not to oppose the elevation of the Elector of Bavaria to the
Imperial Throne, on condition that Hanover should be regarded
as neutralised.
There were many disputes at the Cockpit about what should
be done.
To guard against the way in which altercations might be re-
ported to Hanover, the Duke wrote: “They had it under con-
sideration whether they should send for the King home or not,
but it was thought they had not yet a sufficient handle for it,
and that, under the circumstances, his Majesty would not come,
and be displeased with their recommending it. Everybody was
truly concerned for the distress things were in at Hanover, and
heartily wished they could do more to help it to an end than
they possibly could. For himself, he might differ from those he
loved and esteemed, but must give his opinion according to his
conscience. He saw Europe almost swallowed up by France,
and he would do anything he could that might possibly tend to
save it; and if that could not be, he would at least put it out of
the power of the most willing, and perhaps the most blameable,ever
to reproach them. ”i A private letter from the King, announcing
the conclusion of the Treaty of Neutralisation, was received by
Sir Robert in presence of Newcastle, without its contents being
communicated to his Grace, and a reluctant acquiescence having
been accorded by the First Lord, the treaty was actually con-
Newcastle to Harrington. ---A/S.
1
M M 2
532
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
cluded, and transmitted in copy for the approval of the Cabinet
before the Duke was acquainted with its contents. He there-
upon denounced the transaction as dishonourable to England
and the allies, and protested against the secrecy of the negotia-
tion in terms which his brother thought intemperate and dis-
respectful. Pelham wrote to soothe his irritation by pointing
out that in the critical situation of the Elector no other course
was open to him. He had gone over the despatches at Houghton
with Walpole, and was obliged to own that he felt the House of
Hanover had been deserted by all the other Powers of Europe;
and he hoped, therefore, that something might be struck out to
secure the Low Countries at least from invasion. He was no
partisan of Harrington, but he did not regard his conduct or lan-
guage as deserving the reproaches heaped upon him. “We2 may,
by a nearer access to the King than others, know his weakness,
and be sorry to see them take such hold of him as frequently to
obstruct the good intentions of his servants ; but in conscience
it cannot be said, whatever his private views, that in this great
affair to all Europe he had omitted anything in his power to
keep the natural friends of the Queen of Hungary together ;
and he had, undoubtedly, supported her as far as prudence would
permit him, with more than his own contingent. I dare say when
you consider these things coolly and without prejudice you
will
think so too; if not, you will at least think it prudent not to talk
otherwise." But the Duke was not to be appeased; the strongest
expressions of indignation were repeated in a letter to the Chan-
cellor, 3 who was expected to side with him in resistance, and a
counter scheme of policy which he had begun to form. His
Grace proposed that Ministers should transmit a strong remon-
strance to Hanover, representing the unpopularity and impolicy
of the measure, and requesting its reconsideration. He even
proposed that the Cabinet should make an appeal to every
Court in Europe, declaring that, as King of England, his
Majesty would adhere to the engagement contracted with Maria
Theresa in 1731, and use his best efforts to maintain the liberties
of Europe in concert with those Powers that should be disposed
to support Austria. “ If something of this kind were not speedily
1 From Wolterton, 13th Sept., 1741.
2 or the Cabinet.
3 18th September, 1741.
NEWCASTLE THREATENS TO RESIGN.
533
done, the Electoral neutrality would be, to all intents and pur-
poses, a: Royal neutrality; and the English Ministers who ac-
quiesced in the one would thus make themselves authors of the
other; and the Lord have mercy upon them.” This was plainly
to impose a collective censure on Walpole, and hardly less
directly upon the Sovereign. Neither the Chancellor nor Henry
Pelham gave the suggestion any support. Yet he persisted in
Cabinet, though alone, in urging the proposal; and when formally
rejected tried to persuade himself and others that it was his duty
to resign. “When I reflect seriously upon the present system of
administration and public affairs, I cannot but be of opinion that
it is very improper for me to remain in business. I am afraid
it is certain that there is no one in the active part of the
Ministry that has either any confidence at present in me or I in
him, except my Lord Chancellor. I must own I think the King's
unjustifiable partiality for Hanover, to which he makes all other
views and considerations subservient, has manifested itself so
much that no man can continue in the active part of the Ad-
ministration with honour and satisfaction to himself, for he must
either own himself a cypher or be thought to have advised and
concurred in measures which are both dishonourable and fatal
to the interest of Europe. If all would agree to remonstrate like
men against these measures on the King's return, something might
yet be done, but this cannot be expected. If ever man was drove
out of an Administration for measures, and I may say measures
only, I am, if I go out now.” But he was willing to go into the
country, though it would be disagreeable to him, rather than re-
main at Court or go into Opposition. 1 His brother, who under-
stood him better than he understood himself, comprehended how
unlikely he was to resign after all, and that what he really was
in want of was an excuse for sitting still. He differed with him
frankly but fraternally about his motives. He was convinced
that they proceeded from a dislike to both persons and things.
The partiality to Hanover in general was what all men in busi-
ness had found great obstruction from ever since this family had
been upon the Throne; and, indeed, upon Newcastle's principle,
no man that ever served them could preserve his integrity. All
they had to do was to secrete their weaknesses, and if not called
upon to sanction their indiscretions, he did not see how the
Newcastle to Pelham, 2nd October. 1741.
534
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
honour of the most scrupulous Minister could be called in ques-
tion. He fancied that if he went out he need not go into Oppo-
sition, but before next Session was over he would be as declared
an opponent as Carteret or Pulteney. They professed what he
really thought, and when he was out would tell him they meant
the same things, and would act for a time in subservience to him,
until it would be difficult for him to separate from them. Owing
everything to the Duke, he must, of course, go out with him,
though differing altogether from him on the reasons for that
step; but he honestly thought the necessity very hard. If his
objections centred in the conduct of the office he then filled, why
should his Grace not take another place, look on, say nothing,
and be content? If his objections went further, there was nothing,
in his opinion, could remove that but what was not improbable a
few days ago, and might probably happen in the course of nature
very soon.
Walpole understood the good offices thus rendered by his favour-
ite pupil in office, and when the time came he did not forget
to requite them. It is hardly necessary to say that the Duke,
having thus vainly endeavoured to put Walpole in a minority of
one in the Cabinet, and having instead only contrived to place
himself there, saw the necessity of waiting for another oppor-
tunity to achieve the predominance he had set his heart upon,
When Sir Robert began to feel himself losing his hold of power
he bethought him of reviving the design respecting a severance
of the union with Hanover which Chancellor Parker had dis-
suaded George I. from initiating, but which had at intervals been
recurred to by the Opposition from time to time as a desirable
way of getting rid of the financial drain for Hanoverian troops.
George II. is said to have cherished the possibility to spite his
son. May he not have come in his old age to feel sometimes that
the Electorate was a source of weakness and danger rather than
of strength or credit; and that his island realm would, on the
whole, be better worth having without it? Be this as it may,
Speaker Onslow tells us that a little before Sir Robert's fall he
took him aside one day, and said, “What will you say, Speaker,
if this hand of mine should bring a message from the King to
the House of Commons declaring his consent to having any of
his family, after his death, incapable of inheriting the Crown and
· Probably alluding to an illness of Sir Robert.-Coxe's • Memoirs of Pelham."
APATHY OF WALPOLE.
535
possessing the Electorate at the same time?” Onslow replied
that “ It would be received as a message from Heaven.” He re-
joined that it would probably be done ; but it was not done,
because, in his belief, it would have been opposed by many who
formerly were clamouring for it.1 Another project was that of
a mixed Ministry, which would afford Walpole and his brother a
golden bridge to go over with their adherents. He told Sandys
that perhaps his opponents "might get the better of him, but he
was sure no other Minister would ever be able to stand so long as
he had done—twenty years”; to which Sandys replied, “he hoped
he never should.” The final struggle began in December. In
the Lords Ministers had a great majority on the Address. In the
Commons an amendment to the Address was agreed to, implying
à reproach for the misconduct of the war. An attempt to elect
Gyles Earle Chairman of Committees failed, and a majority of
242 against 238 preferred Dr. Lee.
Baffled in his favourite schemes of finance and foreign policy,
Walpole had grown indolent and more than ever unbelieving.
Save Carteret and Pulteney, the competitors of his prime stirred
his self-love no more. Harley, Sunderland, Halifax, Townshend,
Wyndham, were dead, and Bolingbroke was gone to end his days
abroad. Sir Robert had, indeed, his six Dukes in the Cabinet,
but he knew how little most of them could do for him in the day
of need. Bodily pain oftener tempted him to shirk the drudgery
of correspondence and the fret of altercation with peevish col-
leagues, whom he knew to be unstable or suspected to be insin-
He had bought so many majorities that he could not
imagine another was not to be had at a price. He relapsed into
apathy. But his table was amply spread, and wine and wanton-
ness still made merry numerous guests. The political vigour of
the man observably declined, and weariness stole over him. His
hold of power was abandoned : habit had made it second nature,
and to the end he continued to dispose of patronage for the benefit
of his many friends and relatives. But his zest for ascending flag-
ged. Desire had failed, though the mourners did not yet go about
the streets.
Small majorities permitted the Ministerialists for Heydon and
Bossiney to retain their seats; but on a petition the election for
Westminster was declared void by a majority of four, and Sir
1 Note to Burnet, Hist., IV., 502.
cere.
536
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
1
Charles Wager and Lord Sundon did not stand again. It was
on this occasion that the suasive voice of Murray was for the
first time heard. Even opponents joined in the cheers which
greeted the matchless advocate, and the bitterest critic amongst
them owned that he spoke divinely.
During the Christmas recess Lord Perceval and Mr. Edwin
were returned for Westminster without a contest, no Minis-
terialists caring to oppose them. Popular feeling ran so high
against the tenacious occupants of power, Chesterfield boasted to
Lord Lovell,2 that Opposition "could have returned two broom-
sticks." "So I see," was the staunch old Whig's reply. The
town was ablaze with bonfires, and the electors were glad of an
opportunity to break a yoke of which they had grown ashamed.
Mr. Edwin was a dull and docile man whom old Horace Walpole,
punning on his colleague's name, called Mr. Perceive-nothing.
Often disputed elections were ruled in favour of Government
by narrow majorities, but Ministerialists lost heart and withdrew
their petitions, when those in sympathy with Opposition pressed
their claims.
It was common for the House to sit throughout the night, and
the bodily and mental vigour of the Minister, which never seemed
to fail, kept alive the spirit of his followers, as much as it pro-
voked the spleen of those who sought his overthrow. The latter
was indeed accused of trying to wear him out by unintermit-
tent conflict; and loud complaint was made of an attempt by
Pulteney to induce the House to sit on Saturday, when Sir
Robert was accustomed to rest or take the air. His son Horace,
writing from amid the scenes of tergiversation and intrigue by
which the fate of parties was swayed, describes with cynical
candour the meanness of the motives by which the waverers
and trimmers were impelled. An untimely refusal by the Duke
of Newcastle had alienated one, and the natural instinct of
ingratitude for a special service rendered by Sir Robert another.
Sir Thomas Lowther, though brought down to vote by his
nephew, Lord Hartington, voted in his teeth notwithstanding ;
and Lord Doneraile, to avert a petition against his return, suddenly
went over to the other side. But twenty years of power made the
1 H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, 24th Dec., 1741.
2 Thomas Coke, created 1728 Baron Lovel, and in 1744 Earl of Leicester.
3 H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, January 7th, 1742.
FAILURE OF AIVERSE MOTIONS.
537
« Sir
Dictator still incredulous of deposition, and the adjournment for
the Christmas holidays gave him three weeks' respite.
“ Both
sides spent the interval trafficking deeply in votes.” Govern-
ment counted on having a preponderance of twenty-six.
Robert says more; but now upon a pinch he brags like any bride-
groom.”i Among the shufflers of the time was Lord Hervey,
whose character and countenance have been preserved by a few
.strokes of the caricaturist's pen. “He is too ill to go to operas;
yet with a coffin-face, is as full of his little dirty politics as ever.
He will not be well enough to go to the House till the majority
is certain somewhere, but he lives shut up with Lord Chester-
field and Mr. Pulteney, a triumvirate who hate one another more
than anybody else they could proscribe, had they the power.”
Pulteney's motion for a secret committee of twenty-one to
inquire into the conduct of Administration was defeated by 253
to 250,-extraordinary numbers in the House as then con-
stituted. “,
It was a most shocking sight,” says Horace Walpole,
" to see the sick and dead brought in on both sides ! Men on
crutches, and Sir William Gordon from his bed, with a blister on
his head, and flannelhanging out from under his wig. I could scarce
pity him for his ingratitude. The day before the Westminster
petition Sir Charles Wager gave his son a ship, and the next
day the father came down and voted against him. However, as
we have our good-natured men too on our side, one of his own
countrymen went and told him in the Lobby that his son was
dead. The old man, who looked like Lazarus, bore it with great
resolution, and said he knew why he was told of it, but when he
thought his country in danger he would not go away.” The
return of Mr. Turner for Yorkshire after a severe contest, raised
for a moment the spirits of the Ministerialists.3
It is a highly significant fact that Walpole's Administration
was finally overthrown upon no question of public policy or
principle, but by a succession of defeats each more telling than
the last, upon the most scandalous of all controversies, namely,
that arising out of election petitions.
Schemes of Parliamentary reform had already been broached
in the Press; and one or two prominent Members affected to
| H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 7th January, 1742.
2 Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, 22nd January, 1742.
3 Newcastle to the Duchess, 23rd January, 1742.
538
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
lend their countenance in a certain vague and patronising way.
Nothing, however, it was supposed, could be done, till the great
Father of Corruption was displaced and brought to justice ; and
if this consummation could be secured by the winning of battles
for seats at St. Stephen's, who, at such a crisis, would waste words
in nice objections? One after another, therefore, these contests
proceeded with varying success, until at length on the 28th of
January, Government was left on the Chippenham petition in a
minority of one. The wavering balance of votes on a scrutiny
was determined by the desertion of half a score nominal sup-
porters of the Minister, who had not courage to vote either way.
The spell of domination was dissolved, and on a final effort to
retrieve their defeat on the 2nd of February, it was confirmed
by a majority of sixteen. Walpole clung to office even yet,
though the talisman had fallen from his hand; but all who had
access to him counselled retirement, his brother and his sons being
among the most earnest of those who thus advised. He had
hitherto kept up his spirits tolerably well, but it was perceived
that he was now uneasy, and, indeed, he had very good reason to
be so
Except Admiral Wager, none of his Cabinet colleagues
showed any disposition to resign. Many of them rejoiced at
heart as much at the prospect of being rid of the despot as his.
open foes. For some time schemes had been afoot for reconsti-
tuting the Administration without him. Writing to Devonshire,
the staunchest and most powerful of his supporters, he said
“the panic was so great among his own friends that they all de-
clared his retiring had become absolutely necessary as the only
means to carry the public business with honour and success.
When at length he was persuaded to give up, the King, though
hardly taken by surprise, was deeply moved. No Minister since
the time of Elizabeth had filled so great a place so long, or ren-
dered such undoubted services to the Monarchy. He had often
thwarted George II. in personal objects, and he had not failed to.
hold him back, sometimes with a rough hand, from folly and in-
justice ; but his fidelity had never been mistaken, and in admin-
istrative ability he had certainly proved himself to be without an.
2
» 3
1
Hartington to Devonshire, 30th January, 1742.—MIS.
? Ibid., 2nd February, 1742.-MS.
3 Devonshire MS., 2nd February, 1742.
WALPOLE RESIGNS.
539
equal. But the current of recent events had swollen to such a
tide that resistance was evidently no longer possible. Not all the
flattery and promised complaisance of Sir Robert's enemies
could blind the King to the greatness of his loss, and, falling on
his neck, he wept bitterly.
Charles Pratt, one of the majority, writing a day or two after
the event, confesses the prevalent doubt in which it had left the
outer world as to the result among the actual players of the
game. " The last division put an end to Sir Robert's reign and
glory, for he next day left the House of Commons, gave up the
cause, and resigned all his plans. So that I am complimented
by many persons as having assisted in giving the last fatal blow
to this great man,-a compliment which I don't desire the credit
of, but am content with the honour of having served my clients
faithfully. I daresay you imagine that we in town know all
that is to happen upon this great change, and expect to hear
from me a complete list of the new Ministers, and the future
plan of their measures. The town is full of this discourse, and
every man has already settled the Government as he wishes it
inay be settled. But I assure you that as yet we remain in as
profound an ignorance of what is to be as you do in the country.
Sir Robert is created Earl of Orford, and is said to have a pen-
sion of £4,000 a-year. How far his retreat will be safe I cannot
tell ; most people think there will be some angry motions in
Parliament—perhaps impeachments; but probably they will end
in nothing. Mr. Pulteney has refused everything. He will con-
tinue, he says, a lover of his country, and do his utmost to sup-
port The Family and any good Administration. This is a great
character, if he can persist in it. Most people think the Tories
will get nothing by the change, but will be left in the lurch. No
talk yet of a reconciliation between the King and Prince." 1
Walpole's profuse style of living was made an excuse for the
party cry of public plunder. His estate on entering political
life was worth little more than £2,000 a-year; and this his early
ambition had so dipped, that when out of office at the end of
Queen Anne's reign, it was said by his enemies that few would
lend him a hundred pounds on his own security. This could
hardly have been true ; but it is certain that he was somewhat
embarrassed, and this may account for the fact that though he
| To Mr. Davies, a brother barrister, 6th Feb., 1742.
540
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
disapproved publicly of the South Sea Scheme, and did what he
could to prevent its excessive inflation, he dabbled in its rising
stock, made money, like others, of its transient popularity, and
was eventually saved only by an accident from being overtaken
in the storm. Twenty years would more than have sufficed, no
doubt, to enable him to clear his patrimonial estate and to add
many a field to field, to live hospitably in the old Manor House,
and to keep in town such an establishment as befitted a Minister
of State ; to indulge in moderation his taste for pictures, and to
leave a competency to his children ; for he was, during many
years, Chancellor and Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer, as
well as First Lord of the Treasury, and had, besides, the Ranger-
ship of Richmond Park; while his relatives were provided for
by gift of patent places for life. But all this did not content
him. Of his original encumbrances he paid off none, and added
to them considerably. His new house and grounds at Houghton
cost an inordinate sum ; and, besides the Lodge at Richmond,
and the official residence in Downing Street, he had a house at
Chelsea, and afterwards in Arlington Street, where he continually
entertained. It is said that the highest price he ever gave for a
picture was £640; and though his gallery contained many covet-
able works of art, French and Flemish, it must have absorbed,
after all, but a very small portion of his income. He was by
nature indolent and extravagant, sensual in his pleasures, and
thoughtless for the future. His opponents, who had felt so long
his political astuteness and foresight, could not be persuaded
that in his private affairs he was not equally provident. Some
gave out that he had invested large accumulations in the banks
of Amsterdam and Genoa?; while others feared that even when
driven to resign he would still stand behind the curtain, and
through the influence of great fortune, and power of intrigue,
make it very uneasy for those that might follow him. "Sir
Robert," says Chesterfield," is gone to his country seat loaded
with the spoils and the hatred of the public”?: and Pulteney,
in one of his invectives, did not disdain to hold up to ridicule
the water-works, and other embellishments at Houghton, as
instances of a prodigality which could not have been supplied
by "income of his estate, and the known salaries of his visible
Craftsman, 28th November, 1730.
2 Letter to his son.
1
FAMILY BENEFACTIONS.
541
N1
employments. He seemed to have thought his triumph not
complete unless he showed how little he regarded detection, and
how much he despised the resentment of the nation.' His
endowment of his family admitted of no dispute. His three
sons held between them places and sinecures worth £ 14,900 a-
year, which, being patent offices, no attempt was made to dis-
turb. He himself had a retiring pension, which for a time he
relinquished, and then resumed. Long afterwards, the possessor
of Strawberry Hill amused the world by publishing a vindication
of his share of his father's benefactions. "In my youth he gave
me two little patent places, of Clerk of the Escheats and Comp-
troller of the Pipe, which, together, produce about or near £300
per annum.
When nineteen, he gave me the place of Inspector
of the Imports and Exports in the Custom House, which I re-
signed in about a year, on his giving me the patent place of
Usher of the Exchequer, then reckoned worth £900 a-year.
From that time I lived on my own income, and travelled at my
own expense ; nor did I during my father's life receive from him
but £250 at different times; which I say, not in derogation of
his extreme tenderness and goodness to me, but to show that I
was content with what he had given me, and that from the age
of twenty I was no charge to my family. George I. had bestowed
on my father the patent place of Collector of Customs for his
own life and for the lives of his two elder sons Robert and Ed-
ward; but my father reserved in himself a right of disposing of
the income of that place as he should please during the existence
of the grant. When he afterwards obtained for his eldest son
Robert the great place of Auditor of the Exchequer, and for his
second son Edward that of Clerk of the Pells, he bequeathed by
an instrument under his hand, £1,000 a-year to me out of the
patent for the remainder of the term, and devised the remainder,
about £800 a-year, to be divided between my brother Edward
and me. Though my position was much inferior to my brothers',
still it was a noble fortune for a third son, and much beyond
what I expected. The duty of my office is to shut the gates of
the Exchequer, and to furnish paper, pens, ink, wax, sand, tape,
pen-knives, scissors, parchment, and a great variety of other arti-
cles; to pay the bills of the workmen and tradesmen ; and on those
large profits are allowed to the Usher, whence my profit arises."
Speech for removal of Walpole, 1741.
542
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Before entering the House of Lords, Walpole obtained letters
patent conferring the rank of an Earl's daughter upon his only
child by Maria Skerritt, and nothing added more, it was said, to
the exasperation of feeling against him than this last proof of
his personal influence with the King.
Many attempts there have been to fabricate cheap but showy
images of Walpole as entitled to historic gratitude as a great
and good Minister ; and if greatness consists in suffering com-
mercial enterprise to grow fat, and agricultural industry to grow
lean ; art and literature to become half-starved, the Church es-
tablishment to be debased to the level of a working trade, and
political morality to be regarded as a mere lingering superstition,
he may be entitled to the epithet. But neither nationally nor
socially can the claim be made out for Statesmanship entitling
his memory to be held in grateful recollection. His Ministerial
career began with the repression of one Scottish rebellion, and
ended on the eve of one still more sanguinary. His Government
is identified with the prevalence of rural distress in England so
keen as to drive one of his oldest colleagues into secession and
denunciation, and with the presence in Ireland of a famine more
pitiless and unpitied, save one, that has ever afflicted that unhappy
land. Without a pretence of religious zeal, the Cabinet of which
he was the animating spirit, kept up the code of sectarian op-
pression, branded by the greatest political thinker of his time 1
as the most "fitted to obliterate in a people the best instincts of
human nature itself that ever proceeded from the perverted
ingenuity of man.” When forced at length to relax his grasp of
power, the good nature for which he was sometimes extolled
showed itself chiefly in paternal solicitude for his natural children,
his legitimate offspring having already been amply provided for
at the public cost. A clergyman, eager for promotion, under-
took in 1741 to marry one of the former, with a parochial dowry of
£700 a-year; but on her father's fall he agreed, as compensation
for breach of promise, to pay one year's income. To the father
of the beautiful Maria Skerritt he was said to have paid £ 500
for the loss of her services; and by way of consoling her lover,
the organist of the church, he proposed to have him inade a
Middlesex magistrate. A letter from the Chancellor, objecting,
is highly characteristic.
1 Edmund Burke.
PULTENEY.
543
As soon as Walpole's decision to retire became known, New-
castle desired to see the Leader of Opposition at the house of
Andrew Stone. Pulteney declined, but offered to receive him
at his own residence, if Carteret were present. The condition
was accepted, and with the Chancellor the conference took place
the same evening. His Grace stated that the King consented
that Pulteney should be placed at the head of the Treasury.
Instead of accepting the offer, the presumptive heir to the
Leadership of the Commons proposed that Carteret should be-
come First Lord. Nothing was determined, and, the fact of
their having met being industriously circulated, surprise, dis-
trust, and disappointment spread rapidly on both sides, while
the friends of the falling Minister once more cherished hopes
that in the clash of rival pretensions the victorious coinbination
might possibly be dissolved. Carteret, clearly facile princeps,
could not be expected to take secondary place in the new Cabi-
net, and Pulteney was naturally looked upon as the fittest man
to be at the head of the Treasury. No one could be compared
to him as a speaker in the Lower House, and no one possessed
greater experience in financial affairs. Yet, for some reason never
thoroughly explained, he hesitated in the hour of triumph to
clutch the fruit of his long years of tantalisation and toil, and
frankly preferred that Carteret should be entrusted with the duty
of forming a new Cabinet. To this Sir Robert, still confidentially
consulted by his Majesty, would not agree. His personal hatreds
were not many, but they were implacable; and from the time
that he had plotted the expulsion of his noble antagonist fifteen
years before, his jealousy and aversion had never slept. A second
conference, in the presence of the Prince of Wales, between the
chiefs willing to come in, and those unwilling to go out, disclosed
further difficulties. For Cobham and his cousins, as they were
called, there was not room in the proposed coalition, and they were
consequently not consulted. The Grenvilles and Lytteltons were
incensed at such a slight, and Pitt forthwith declared himself to
be, on high moral grounds, utterly opposed to the unpatriotic
combination. Other sections who had indispensably aided in
winning the battle were eloquent in indignation and despondent
in the prospect of being left out. Had they, after all, been
merely made use of? Was ever such inconsistency heard of, and
what would the country say? In a new Parliament popular dis-
544
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
enchantment with high-flown professions signifies little, but it
would seem as if the great orator, who had hitherto held his.
heterogeneous partisans together, could not stand the concentric
reproaches that beset him ; and in a fit of temper, affecting to
rise superior to all intelligible Parliamentary motives, he an-
nounced, to the amazement of all, his resolve not to take any
office whatever. Though it should be admitted that personal
pique and party resentment were among the motives which in-
flamed his long course of opposition, he was credited with being
a sincere friend to the Constitution, and as a man of wealth he
would probably construct measures that might beget disorder
and unhinge authority. Why not concede his chicf demands, let
there be as few changes as possible, introduce not too many
questionable persons, and discountenance retrospective interro-
gation? The scheme inight be put so plausibly on lines of Sir
Robert's tracing that Pulteney, by degrees, might take them for
his own.
A remarkable letter above the signature of Walpole, but about
the authenticity of which doubt exists, is said to have been ad-
dressed to the King at this critical juncture, advising him not to
discard the great Tribune, or drive him once more to resort to a
vehement agitation. If Majesty would but send for him, tell him
he was indispensable to the public good, and offer him a Peerage,
great ease and comfort might thereby ensue to all concerned.1
Awell-known exclamation of the ejected Minister, when Pulteney,
after long hesitation, actually fell into the snare spread for him,
tends to confirm the verity of this strange epistle. Having
quitted the House of Commons himself, he could not feel easy
at leaving his rival there in undisputed mastery, but, as junior
Members of the Upper House, they would once more be equals.
It was a signal proof of the value Walpole set upon the ability
and independence of Pelham that he should have in this
crisis urged his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
notwithstanding the recent differences between himself and the
Duke of Newcastle. Pelham was flattered at the offer, and it
was not in the nature of his Grace to thwart him if he should
accept; but he shrank from undertaking the Leadership of the
Lower House while Pulteney remained, and for aught he could
tell might continue to remain, its undisputed master in debate.
1 Burke's “ Dormant Peerage.”
MEETING AT THE FOUNTAIN.
545
Waller claimed the precedency for himself as, next to Pulteney,
best entitled to it; but Pulteney disappointed him, having already
led Sandys to expect it.
At a second conference held at Lord Carteret's, Wilmington
was named as First Lord of the Treasury, probably by Hard-
wicke at the desire of the King; and on the other hand Win-
chilsea was proposed for the Admiralty with Granard and Chet-
wynd for Junior Lords. The rumour of these suggestions getting
wind, created much dissatisfaction. Sandys, Rushout, Gybbon,
and Compton were believed to be acting under the guidance of
Carteret in the attempt to form a coalition with the Pelhams and
their friends in office. A public meeting was hastily called to-
gether at the Fountain in the Strand, where the bulk of the
victorious party met, Carteret not deigning to attend. Argyll
complained, on behalf of the Tories, whose advocate he had
never professed to be before, that there was no intention of giving
them a share of the spoils they had helped so materially to win;
and taunted Pulteney with clandestine approaches to the rem-
nants of the shattered Ministry. Pulteney proudly replied that
overtures had been made to him and not by him ; that the in-
clusion of Tories in office would come, but it must be a work of
tiine; and that their admission would greatly depend upon them-
selves. Sandys avowed his acceptance of the offer that had been
made to him. If he did not take the second seat at the Treasury
somebody else would, and if nobody else it must be left to the
choice of former officials. The meeting, though angry, could
not be brought to agree, and some days later another conference
was held in presence of the Prince of Wales, without any definite
result. Meanwhile, negotiations were actively carried on between
Newcastle and Hardwicke on the one side, and Carteret and
Pulteney on the other, with a view to settle the basis on which
joint action might be maintained. Though heartily glad to be
delivered from an exacting master, Walpole's colleagues had
served him, if not wisely, too well, to make the contemplation
agreeable of a vindictive inquiry into his alleged misdeeds. If a
party majority should declare, as they had done in the case of
Harley, that he had betrayed the best interests of the nation,
how were they to be exonerated from the charge of having been
accomplices after, if not before, the fact? Carteret was ready to
repudiate all recriminatory proceedings, and he proved, when
VOL. I.
N V
546
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
brought to the test, that he would not abet them. It was not
Walpole's blood, but his places, that he wanted. It was easier
for him to forgive his adversary now that he was overthrown
than for the adversary to pardon him. Pulteney, who had no
intention of incurring responsibility in person for the conduct of
the future Administration, took loftier ground, and disdained
making any conditions ; but he gave it to be understood that
neither did he contemplate vindictive or penal inquiry. Pul-
teney's position became inextricably embarrassing, for he had
virtually been admitted to the Cabinet, while practically his
party forsook his lead. The dangerous illness of his daughter
kept him at home, and precluded urgent interrogation for some
time, and when Lord Limerick, at the head of more than 240
accusers, demanded a Committee of Secrecy to overhaul the
conduct of the late Ministry for the past twenty years, they only
escaped, after a long debate, by a majority of two. Pulteney
and Sandys were absent.
Pulteney's explanations failed to satisfy Argyll, who insisted
that the combination to overthrow Walpole had been founded
on professions of desire for coalition; and although he was him-
self named Commander of the Forces in Scotland, and Master-
General of the Ordnance, he could not agree to the continued
exclusion of nearly every Tory from the direction of affairs.
He specially demanded an office in the Household for Sir John
Hynde Cotton, who was known to have rendered himself par-
ticularly obnoxious to the King, and the demand being peremp-
torily refused, he once more resigned. His last appearance in
the Lords was for a Bill to indemnify anyone who could substan-
tiate the charges of maladministration alleged against Lord
Orford. He withdrew thenceforth from affairs, and died in the
following year.
In the negotiations which took place for the formation of a
new Ministry, Sandys had been named as one of the men who
would fitly impersonate the interest and feelings of county Mem-
bers. They were impatient at what they termed the jugglery of
officialism, and wished for a straightforward, outspoken owner of
broad acres, who cared nothing for office, would set his face
against jobs, and keep a sharp eye over the rogues who fattened
on public spoil. His own account of the bewilderment of Oppo-
1 Ioth March.
2 May, 1742.
SANDYS IN THE CABINET.
547
:sition on the morrow of their triumph may be gathered from
his private notes, written from memory twenty years later. It
was proposed that he should have the second seat at the Board
of Treasury, which he eventually obtained. “This took up some
evenings' debate, sometimes at Lord Carteret's, sometimes at Mr.
Pulteney's, I constantly refusing to act under Lord Wilmington,
as a tool of Sir Robert Walpole's. We should not have the
whole power, but it would revert again into the same hands, in
which I proved a true prophet. Mr. Pulteney excused himself,
partly out of indolence, and partly out of a scruple that he had
in public inadvertently vowed Sir Robert Walpole's destruction,
and had frequently declared he would accept of no employment,
though later he was greatly encouraged to persist in by persons
who expected great preferment from him, and wrought bitterly
afterwards against him for not assisting them when they had
advised him against the very measure by which he would have
been enabled to answer their expectations. When this would
not do I desired Lord Carteret might be at the head of the
Treasury, though much more fit for the place designed for him
as Secretary of State, his Lordship having no knowledge of the
revenue, nor the House of Commons-two things absolutely
necessary to be at the head of affairs; but these things I thought
I could make out. I thought his Lordship could inanage the
King, to whom I was an utter stranger, unless by report for a
behaviour (tho' in many things false) not at all agreeable to his
Majesty.. At all these meetings there were present the Duke of
Newcastle, his brother, Mr. Pelham, and generally, the Chan-
cellor, Lord Hardwicke. To these we were supposed to be allied.
I soon found Lord Carteret was not relished by any of them, not
even by Mr. Pulteney, on whom I wholly relied, like the dog in the
manger, who would not suffer another to act, though he would
not himself. Indeed, I always found throughout all the oppo-
sition I was engaged in with Mr. Pulteney, such a secret attach-
ment to the Pelhams, especially to the younger, that I could
hardly sometimes bear it. And I attributed this opposition to
the scheme then laid, and which after took place : to put the power
wholly into the Pelhams. But I could not help myself, I was at
last after many days' struggle obliged to submit to be Chancellor
of the Exchequer and second Commissioner of the Treasury
with Lord Wilmington, I to choose the other Commissioners."
N N 2
548
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
Sandys thus recounts his initiation into Cabinet life: "His
Majesty in his closet delivered to me the Seals of the Exchequer.
I met Sir Robert Walpole in his chariot leaving the Court as I
came to it. His Majesty seemed disconcerted at seeing me, and
trembled much. I kissed his hand as soon as I came into his
presence, before any words passed. He said he had sent for
ine to give me the Seals of the Exchequer. He was told that I
was a person of firmness and resolution, and that I was true and
faithful in what I engaged in, that I had always strenuously
opposed his measures, but that he hoped I was now come to him
with other dispositions, and that that firmness I had always
shown would now be employed in his service.
I said some
things to excuse my former conduct, and assured his Majesty
I was come fully determined to serve him truly and faithfully;
of which his Majesty could not help showing some doubt. He
questioned me much about the elections in which I
thoroughly engaged, contrary to his inclinations, then at other
times saying, "What, must all my friends be given up?' There
was one I told his Majesty was not engaged, which proved to
be a person he had been mad to affront, but I told him the
reason that it was a bad cause. He treated that as a jest,
saying, ' Phew. I then left him without kissing his hand after
receiving the Seals, as a friend of mine, a man of form, told
me I ought to have done. However, a day or two after, I kissed
his Majesty's hand in public, with the rest of the Board of
Commissioners of the Treasury. The evening after I received
the Seals I took the oaths of office before my Lord Chancellor.
I was pressed to exercise my office by setting the Seal to work
before I was sworn, as it was the last day of term and business
was postponed; but my Lord Chancellor advised me not, and
expedited my patent to cause as little delay as possible. I con-
tinued in this office full of uneasiness till the 22nd of December,
1743, when I resigned the Treasury on being made a Peer and
Cofferer of the Household, which I was promised I should be
continued in, to enable me to support my new dignity."1 While
Pulteney declined any place for himself, he made it a point that
certain of his friends should have office. Furnese, M.P. for New
Romney, a staunch supporter, was accordingly made Secretary
of the Treasury; and Legge was dropped into the Surveyorship
1 Lord Sandys' Mem.-NIS.
RETENTION OF OLD COLLEAGUES.
549
of Woods, etc., with less salary, but less to do. John Scrope
had hitherto had the charge of the secret service money,
£1,052,210 a-year, about the application of which he stoutly
refused to be examined when the Oath of Discovery was put to
him, unless he had special leave from the King; and the accusers
of Walpole not being prepared, while the new Administration
was forming, to risk a refusal, waived further inquiry and
acquiesced in his keeping his post. Mr. Scrope was the only
man,' said Pulteney, that thoroughly understood the business
of the Treasury; on this foundation he stood secure, and was
immovable as a rock.'»i
During Walpole's long reign at Whitehall no one had served
him more faithfully and efficiently than the Member for Lyme
Regis. Through his half-hidden hand passed the greater num-
ber of the furtive payments made to agents foreign and domes-
tic, Parliamentary and parochial, of high and low degree. The
filaments of this subtle web of influence impalpable to common
sight, often costly, often frail, spread far and near; and were
continually liable to be broken or exposed without the reparative
touch of a skilful hand. The transformed Ministry felt as
much in need as the former of his daily intervention, intimate
knowledge of the weakness and worthlessness of public men,
and impenetrable reserve regarding them. Scrope quietly at-
torned to the new possessors of power, and kept his seat and
his place until his death ten years later. Sir C. Wager alone of
Walpole's colleagues resigned with himn; and he was subse-
quently made Treasurer of the Navy.
Wilmington and Newcastle wished to secure the retention of
those colleagues who were least obnoxious to the victors, and
whose fidelity might be most depended on. To make way for
Carteret, Harrington was named Lord President, and to make
room for Argyll at the Ordnance, Montagu was offered the
Admiralty. The veteran Duke, however, declined a post for
which he felt himself to be unfit. He had served the King
with fidelity and zeal, as well before he came to the Crown as
since, and would continue to do so, provided it was in a post
of which he understood the business. That of Master-General
was one which he felt himself capable of executing, and he
hoped he had acquitted himself in it without reproach. He
1 To the Duke of Bedford, 5th July, 1742.
550
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
knew himself unfit for the Admiralty, and therefore refused it.
But if the King should think fit to make again such an officer,
who should, by virtue of his office, be a Cabinet Councillor, he
would serve with pleasure, as he believed himself capable of it.
"If not, he would submit to his fate, with this comfort, that
though he was dropped as an insignificant wreck by those
whom he once thought his friends, he knew he did not deserve
it.” 1
His project was laughed at, and the opportunity seized for
introducing another member of the Pelham connection into the
Cabinet. Lord Winchilsea was placed at the head of the navy,
with Lord Baltimore and Lady Archibald Hamilton's husband
as Junior Lords, to represent the Prince's household. For Sir
J. Hynde Cotton and Mr. Pitt there was thus hardly room.
Henry Pelham held fast to the profitable Paymastership of the
Forces.
Bishop Sherlock used the freedom permitted him to warn his
patron of the rekindling discontent with Government. Jonah
had been thrown overboard, but the waters were not calmed.
Niggardly concessions of office made to Opposition seemed in
the vulgar eye to amount to little more than buying off the
hostility of half-a-dozen of the openest-mouthed assailants.
Sherlock, identifying himself unreservedly with the Pelhams,
urged substantial coalition, which, being interpreted, meant a
slice of power worth having for the Tories, in recognition of
their renovated strength in Parliament. He had hoped some-
thing would be done during the Easter recess to allay the
present heats. All who wished well to the Government con-
ceived the same hope, and if nothing of the kind appeared,
he believed that the King's best friends would be the persons
most disappointed; when all was at stake all must be ventured.
The ferment must soon abate or it must soon break out. One
saw the temper of the people, what addresses, what instructions
were sent to Members. What would be the case if an im-
peachment were threatened ? Would not the eyes of the
Kingdom be turned upon the Lords, would not the same
inflamed spirit, which called upon the Commons to accuse,
be loud in demanding justice of the Peers ? And should
this be accompanied by riotous gatherings and by tuinults,
I To Newcastle, 17th February, 1742.-—-_J1S.
THE NEW CABINET.
551
1
they would find themselves in the same case their ancestors
were in a century before.
On the other hand, there were many who were for keeping the
Whig preserve strictly. Lord Tankerville wrote that he was
ready at all times to back the continuing Ministers with his
vote, and to resist any attack on Sir Robert. “Let us be
united, and keep out the Jacobites. We can do without them,
but I am sure we can never do long with them."? Distraction in
the ranks of Opposition became every day more fruitful of
embarrassment. Among the more moderate, no two agreed
upon what was necessary, some thinking that all security lay in
a good Place Bill, about the degree and extent of which they
differed. Some were for a Pension Bill, which others justly thought
would signify nothing. Some were for Triennial Parliaments,
which others thought dangerous and dubious ; some called for
Annual Parliaments, as the real old thing ; some for exemplary
justice on the deposed Minister ; others against party revenge ;
some for a reduction of the Civil List, which others felt bound
to leave intact, having been given by statute ; some for divesting
the Executive of all patronage, without which others feared the
wheels of State would not quietly go round.3
Berkeley, in his Episcopal seclusion at Cloyne, marked with
interest the course of events. A correspondent, whom he
described as a considerable hand, writing from the midst of
intrigue and faction, told him that though Whigs and Tories had
gone hand-in-hand to pull down the old Administration, when
it came to erecting a new one they could hardly be brought to
combine. Some of the former insisted on excluding all Tories
from high office. Lord Wilmington and the Dukes of Bedford,
Dorset, and Argyll, refused to have any hand in building on so
narrow a basis ; and the Prince of Wales held out firmly for a
coalition. For a time no accord seemed possible, but at length
the difficulties were got over, and it was resolved to form a
Cabinet without any First Minister. Berkeley had long dreamt
of such a combination, and hoped it would prevail, for it held
out the only hope of the unsectarian policy for Ireland he had
so long cherished in his lonely meditations.
Bishop of Salisbury to Newcastle, 25th April, 1742.— I/S.
2 Tankerville to Newcastle. From Up Park, 22nd May, 1742. — J/S.
3 Faction detected by Lord Perceval, M.P. for Westminster.
Berkeley to T. Prior, 26th February, 1742.
1
.
552
HISTORY OF CABINETS.
The Cabinet as remodelled contained :
...
:
...
POTTER
Archbishop
IVILMINGTON..
Treasury
HARDWICKE
Chancellor
HARRINGTON...
President
HERVEY
Privy Seal
NEWCASTLE AND CARTERET ... Secretaries of Stato
DEVONSHIRE
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
GRAFTON
Chamberlain
PULTENEY
Leader of the Commons (without
office)
DORSET
Lord-Steward
RICHMOND
Master of Horse
MONTAGU
Ordnance
CARTERET
... Secretary of State
WINCHILSEA
Admiralty
SANDYS
Chancellor of the Exchequer
PELHAM
Paymaster
TWEEDDALE
Secretary for Scotland
...
:
...
...
...
:
Carteret stipulated that his cousin, Lord Gower, who was
father-in-law to the Duke of Bedford, should have the Privy
Seal, but failed to obtain it for him until some months later,
when Hervey reluctantly resigned.
Lord Bathurst became Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners;
Lord Palmerston, who sat for Weobly, had the reversion ; and,
after him, Lord Limerick, M.P. for Tavistock. Henry Vane, of
Raby, M.P. for Ripon, was made Vice-Treasurer of Ireland ;
Lord Cobham was given a regiment of Guards, with the rank of
Field-Marshal, to heal the affront put upon him by Walpole ;
and Lord Stair, with the same distinction, was sent as Envoy to
the States-General. William Finch, M.P. for Cockermouth,
succeeded Lord Sidney Beauclerk as Vice-Chamberlain ; and
Edward Finch, who sat for Cambridge University, was made
Groom of the Bedchamber. The Duke of Bolton was made
Governor of the Isle of Wight and Keeper of the New Forest,
with a pension of £2,000 a-year.
Hanbury Williams, whose pasquinades had contributed to the
result, was jostled aside in the scramble; and, somewhat impro-
vidently, nothing was given to still his love of provoking
HANBURY WILLIAMS'S PARODY.
553
laughter. In profane parody he gave an account of the "break-
up” and of the “break-in":"All these things came to pass,
that the saying of the Prophet Jonathan might be fulfilled-
those that are in shall be as those that are out, and those that
are out as those that are in.”
554
APPENDIX I.
TO SECRETARY CRAGGS.
“DUBLIN CASTLE, 25TH AUGUST, 1719.
“I have transmitted to the Lords Justices by this packet nine more
of the public Bills, which will not, I believe, be found liable to many
objections so as to take up much of your time. The Popery Bill as it
came from the House of Commons inflicted no greater punishment on
the priests of the Romish religion than that of burning on the cheek, but
it being observed that when that punishment was exercised in this
kingdom in other cases the rapparees in their robberies made it a
common practice to brand innocent persons with that mark in order to
destroy the distinction it was intended for, and that nothing less than a
very severe punishment would be effectual to prevent the frequent
arrival of priests here, it was thought proper by the Privy Council to
deter them with the penalty of castration. If that be thought in
England too severe, yet, as the Bill contains several very material
clauses, and very beneficial to the Protestant interest, I cannot but
think it very proper to be returned, whatever alterations may be made
in that particular.—I am, with very great truth, your most obedient
servant, BOLTON.-To Mr. Secretary Craggs."
))
APPENDIX II.
ANNO QUARTO GEORGII REGIS.
AN ACT TO ENABLE HIS MAJESTY TO BE GOVERNOR OF THE
SOUTH SEA COMPANY.
Whereas the King's most Excellent Majesty is duly Entitled to a
Share announting to Ten thousand Pounds of and in the Capital Stock
1 Original MS., Ir. St. Papers.--Record Office.
APPENDIX II.
555
of the Governor and Company of Merchants of Great Britain, Trading
to the South-Seas, and other parts of America, and for Encouraging the
Fishery : And whereas an humble Address hath been made to His
Majesty by the said Company in a General Court of the same, That
His Majesty would be Graciously pleased to Honour the said Company
by being their Governor; whereunto His Majesty being willing to
Condescend, some Doubts have arisen or may arise touching the Quali-
fications and Duties prescribed by Law, or by the Charter Granted to
the said Company, in relation to the Governors or Government thereof :
For Obviating which Doubts, It is hereby Enacted and Declared by the
King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent
of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in this present
Parliament Assembled, and by Authority of the same, That His Majesty
is and shall be Capable of being and of continuing Governor of the said
Company for such time or times as are prescribed by the said Charter
for the Continuance of any Governor therein.
And it is hereby Declared and Enacted by the Authority aforesaid,
That the Oaths prescribed by the said Charter, or by any Law now in
Force, and all other Acts necessary or requisite to Qualifie a Subject of
this Realm to be Governor of the said Company, cannot and shall not
be Administred to His Majesty, or be necessary or requisite for His
Majesty's Qualification in respect of the said Government (His Majesty's
Share in the Capital Stock only excepted) and that His Majesty in all
Cases where any Vote is to be given, or Act to be done by Him as
Governor of the said Company, may (if His Majesty think fit) by any
Warrant or Warrants under His Royal Sign Manual, appoint the Sub-
Governor or Deputy-Governor of the said Company to Vote or Act for
Him, or on His Behalf; Any former Law, Statute, or Provision to the
contrary notwithstanding."
1 Original printed statutes of 1718 (many of them long since obsolete), Br. Mm.
coll. Gen. Acts.
END OF VOL. I.
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