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CHAP. our domestic talk," writes a London resident to a nephew in the country. A royal proclamation invited collections in the churches in their behalf. Circulars were addressed to the county magistrates and municipal authorities all over the country by the lords of the council desiring them to find employment and assistance for the refugees. Many were thus distributed in the provinces. "Our country has whole loads of them," wrote an inhabitant of Lichfield. Many more the Quaker apostle, William Penn, selected for emigration to his transatlantic settlement, but his scheme became involved in his financial ruin, and these unfortunate persons, in want of the necessaries of life, fell a burden upon the English poor rates. Three thousand were shipped to New York, over 600 to North Carolina; 3,000 took military service. A hundred families were ordered to be shipped to the Scilly Isles. Eight hundred and twenty families, with the aid of a small grant from the Irish parliament and private subscriptions, were settled in Limerick and Kerry.5 Wharton, as lord-lieutenant, was active in this work, which proved a not unmixed success. Protestant landowners, glad to welcome an influx of co-religionists, provided them with houses and assigned them lands "at easy rates and often at a third part less rents than the like lands were sett to other tenants". Nevertheless, having arrived with the expectation of receiving lands rent free from the crown, and perhaps also because their Irish neighbours laid "hold on any opportunity to abuse them," a large proportion of them soon began to drift away from their holdings, some to Dublin, others to England. A return of February, 1711, states that of 821 families, numbering 3,073 persons who had been brought to Ireland in 1709 and 1710, only 507 families and 2,051 persons were remaining. In 1712 there were stated by the commissioners to be only 263 families and 979 persons left in Ireland. Of

1R. Palmer to Ralph Verney, August 17, 1709, Verney MSS., p. 507, Hist. MSS. Comm., 7th Rep., App.

2 Magistrates of East Riding to Duke of Newcastle, July 29, 1709. Magistrates of Notts to same, Portland MSS., ii., 207. Lords of the Council to Mayor of Chester, June 29, 1709, MSS. of Corporation of Chester, p. 395, Hist. MSS. Comm., 8th Rep., App.

3 Dartmouth MSS., iii., 147, August 23, 1709.

4 R. O., MS., State Papers, Anne, bundle 15, no. 47.

Stair MSS., p. 231, Hist. MSS. Comm., 2nd Rep., App. (Correspondence of Archbishop King).

1709

WHARTON'S ADMINISTRATION OF IRELAND.

143

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those settlers it is, indeed, added that they were employing CHAP. themselves industriously in raising flax and hemp. Their descendants are still known in some parts of Ireland by the name of "Palatines".1

2

The energetic temper of Wharton resolved to signalise his lieutenancy by building up the whig party in Ireland. The test, in his eyes, was a mischievous wedge introduced between the two great protestant bodies to the weakening of the entire protestant interest. Wharton's scheme to repeal it revived the movement for a union with England; the threatened monopolists, the prelates, and the great landowners looking to a union for an assurance of their supremacy. But the Irish house of lords was willing, in the meanwhile, to strengthen the protestant interest in another way. An act more irritating than effective was passed in 1709 having for its object the gradual devolution of land from papists to protestants. Children of Roman catholics, upon conforming to the established Church, were protected from being disinherited and were entitled to claim their share of the inheritance during their fathers' lifetime. Wharton also showed sympathy with the nationalist or Irish party, that is, the industrial and mercantile classes, of whom Archbishop King was the leader. But neither his English colleagues nor the English commercial classes were in a mind to strike off the fetters imposed upon Irish trade. The addresses for a union in 1703 and 1707 had found no encouragement, and Somers and Sunderland now blamed Wharton's headstrong zeal for Irish interests.

Since the middle ages, it had been customary to pass acts of grace relieving the mass of delinquents against the crown of forfeitures or other penalties. No such act had been passed since the accession of Anne. It was, however, much to the interest of distinguished politicians of both parties that a sponge should be passed over relations of a treasonable character with the exiled family. That both Godolphin and Marlborough had maintained a correspondence with St. Germain's had long been common rumour, and none was so sensible as they of the insecurity of their tenure of office and of the possibility

1 Report of "Commissioners for settling the poor distressed Palatines in Ireland". Hardwicke Papers, vol. dlxxxv., Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,933, f. 12. 28 Anne, c. 3, Ireland.

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CHAP. of impeachment by their successors. Tories, on the other hand, who had been similarly guilty, were acutely conscious that their impunity depended on the life of the queen, and that the Elector of Hanover was likely to show them no favour. When, therefore, on April 20, Sunderland introduced a bill for a general pardon, including high treason, neither side felt it to be its interest to oppose. Only those who had accompanied the pretender in his descent on Scotland were excepted by the proviso that the treasons pardoned should not comprise those committed on the high seas.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BARRIER TREATY.

VIII.

THE successes in the Netherlands of the campaign of 1708 and CHAP. the notorious exhaustion of France once more elated the Dutch war party, and the States-general responded with an augmentation of 6,000 men to the additional 10,000 voted by the British parliament. The winter of 1708-9 was spent by Marlborough in the Netherlands and by Eugene at Vienna in organising the allies for the next effort. Jealousies and grievances between the emperor and Savoy, Prussia and Hanover needed all the diplomacy of Marlborough to assuage them. Prolonged persuasion extracted from Frederick I. a promise of 31,200 Prussian troops. A fresh accession of strength to the Grand Alliance from the east was frustrated by a curious incident, In May, 1708, Peter the Great, anxious to be admitted to the comity of nations, made an offer to Heinsius, Marlborough, and Eugene of an auxiliary corps. His conditions were a guarantee of his conquests in the Baltic and support, if necessary, against the Scandinavian kingdoms. To the maritime powers, jealous of an intruder into the European system, the proposal and the conditions were alike embarrassing. In July while negotiations were pending, Peter's ambassador was, in violation of international usage, arrested for debt by one Morton, a London laceman, and some other creditors. The privy council ordered the arrest of seven of the principal persons concerned in the outrage and offered due apology to the ambassador. It was found, however, that, save by indictment for riot, no penalty could be exacted from the offenders. A formal demand by Peter for their capital punishment was refused, and the tsar in offended dignity withdrew his over. tures.1

VOL. IX.

1 See 7 Anne, c. 12 (1708).
145

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СНАР.
VIII.

The best prospect of peace was to be found not in the preparations of the allies but in the exhaustion of France. To financial distress was now added the calamity of famine. But the overtures for peace which had followed Ramillies were not renewed by the French at the opening of 1707. Hope had revived. In July of that year a violation of the understanding among the allies not to seek exclusive advantages unknown to the others was committed by the English envoy at Barcelona. General James Stanhope forced upon the reluctant archduke a secret treaty of commerce admitting English ships to trade with the West Indies upon the same terms as Spanish vessels during the war, and after the conclusion of peace granting England the exclusive privilege of sending ten ships yearly, of 500 tons, to Spanish colonies in America. A copy of this treaty, captured at the beginning of 1708, was transmitted by Louis XIV. to the States-general and might, it was thought, lead to an open rupture. There was the chance, also, of a successful attempt by the pretender upon Scotland, and a hope of the turn of the political wheel in England.1 Nevertheless, in the autumn of 1707, Petkum, the Duke of SchleswigHolstein's envoy at the Hague, a well-meaning political busybody, took upon himself to begin a correspondence with Torcy, as to the probable conditions of peace. The correspondence did little more than keep alive the impression that France was willing to come to terms, but it demonstrated Torcy's political foresight of the obstacle to a settlement. "The king" (Philip V.), he wrote in 1707, "would rather die than give up Spain and the Indies . . . so even if we accepted your suggestion, he could refuse to do so, "3

In the opinion of the English ministry, a definite arrangement between England and Holland of open questions was the best preliminary to a general peace. Accordingly, in March, 1709, Marlborough was commissioned to negotiate a treaty comprising a settlement of both the barrier and the British succession. Conscious of the difficulty of his position as commander-in-chief of the allied forces, the duke proposed the appointment of a second negotiator. The choice fell upon

1 Torcy to Petkum, October 6, 1707, Round MSS., p. 322.

2 The correspondence is among the Round MSS., Hist. MSS. Comm., 14th Rep., App., pt. ix.

3 Torcy to Petkum, October 30, 1707, ibid., p. 322.