1710

NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE.

175

IX.

Shrewsbury and Mrs. Masham. Gaultier had access to the CHAP. houses of some of the Roman catholic aristocracy, amongst them the Jacobite Earl of Jersey, whose countess was of that religion. Through him Jersey, as the mouthpiece of the new ministry, entered into communication with Torcy, advising him to reopen negotiations at the close of the campaign. Lest the French should be encouraged to raise their demands, Harley resolved to conciliate Marlborough. The resignation of the duke would, he knew, be followed by alarm among the allies and by a fall in the funds. At the time of Godolphin's dismissal he had taken steps to prevent such consequences. "Vast sums," he wrote on August 10, "are bought, and as soon as any one is ready to sell there are more buyers. Stock is not lower than it was this time twelvemonth." 1 But quotations could not long be supported. When the result of the elections was known Bank stock fell nearly 30 per cent. and the Bank refused to discount foreign bills.3

2

The selection of Jersey as the intermediary for the resumption of negotiations had the effect of compromising the ministry. His conversations with Gaultier in October, 1710, represented Harley and Shrewsbury as ready to restore the pretender after the death of the queen, and the queen herself as favourably disposed to the project. These discussions were not without their immediate uses to Harley and his following. The Jacobites in parliament were ordered to support the government. A change in public opinion had manifested itself since the Sacheverell trial. The illegitimacy of the pretender's birth had been an article of public faith, systematically countenanced by the queen, but the whigs, in order to insist on the supremacy of parliament, had now accepted his legitimacy. Anne was not exempt from this change of sentiment. It gained strength from the death of her husband, who was strongly anti-Jacobite, and was increased by her own sense of isolation. During the trial of Sacheverell she had shed tears in speaking of the misfortunes of her family. She had no fixed intentions; she abstained from discussing the pretender with Harley; but the irresolution of

[Robert] Harley to the Duke of Newcastle, Portland MSS., 11., 215. 2 Earl Rivers to Harley, September 12, N.S., The Hague, ibid., iv., 580. [John Drummond] to Harley, November 7, N.S., Amsterdam, ibid., p. 617; cf. p. 637. "The public credit is fallen past retrieve," Halifax to Newcastle, October 26-November 6, 1710, ibid., ii., 223.

IX.

CHAP. her mind awakened hopes in Rochester and the Jacobites. According to Jersey, she had a motherly tenderness for the pretender. All agreed, however, that conformity to Anglicanism was a condition precedent to a restoration. Mere pro

mises conveyed no sense of security. Certainly there is no indication that Harley, who was the reverse of a bigot, was willing to trust the pretender, though he might be disposed to strengthen his parliamentary position by a sympathetic attitude towards the queen's change of feeling.

Round the queen, as round a sovereign emancipated by their leaders, the tory party rallied with such enthusiasm as threatened to swamp the moderating counsels of Harley. To embarrassments of scrupulosity, to the ideal of a via media, to a taste for nicely balancing between extremes, to a dislike for the mob's plaudits, his followers, especially his lieutenant, St. John, were strangers. St. John was a politician of practical aims, of clear insight, and of no convictions save of the charms of office. "The principal spring of our actions," he wrote in later life of this period, "was to have the government of the state in our hands." To him the fervour of the heated partisan was welcome, for he knew how to use it. St. John had been out of parliament since the dissolution of April, 1708, passing a studious life upon his wife's estate of Bucklebury, in Berkshire. His biographers have spun fine-drawn theories to explain his retirement. The real reason is disclosed by a letter to Harley dated May 1, 1708.1 From this it seems that he had quarrelled with his father, apparently over politics, and having no hope of being returned for the family seat was searching in vain for a constituency. Whether or not his conduct had scandalised his High Church supporters in Wiltshire, he was utilising his retirement at Bucklebury to secure the votes of the freeholders of Berkshire. His appointment as secretary of state for the northern department was welcomed by the pamphleteers of the party. He had, in fact, forced himself upon Harley by intimating his resolution not to accept the minor office of secretary at war. His colleague, Dartmouth, was a mere third consul, and Harley and St. John were in every mouth as the inspirers of the new policy.

1 Bath MSS., i., 190.

2 See Henry St. John to James Graham, July 18, 1708, Bagot MSS., p. 341. H. St. John to Robert Harley, March 8, 1709-10, Portland MSS., iv., 536.

1710

HARLEY AND THE PRESS.

177

IX.

Both as a man of letters and as a burrower in unseen ways CHAP. Harley discerned the value of the press and was the first statesman to enlist it in the regular service of a ministry. In the natural course of politics the press would have been associated with the whig party, for, as Dr. Hare affirmed, "the men of letters will, by a great majority, be found to be among the whigs". Prior, the son of an obscure artisan, had climbed, through the patronage of Dorset and Halifax, to the rank of secretary to the Paris embassy. Addison had, on the recommendation of Halifax, been sought by Godolphin in an indifferent lodging, and had earned an under-secretaryship of state by his glorification in The Campaign of Marlborough and the ministry. Rowe and Parnell had also risen to fame under whig patronage. De Foe was a dissenter born. Yet all of these, save Addison, proffered their services to Harley. Literary men were sensitive to the fact that the condescension with which Marlborough and Godolphin dispensed their bounty was not the comradeship proffered by Harley and St. John. Prior had joined the tory party upon the accession of Anne. As whig influence grew, he was deprived of his commissionership of trade (1707), but he obtained through Marlborough a pension of £400 a year, and until the beginning of 1710 had penned adulation to the duke. When his solicitations to Marlborough did not result in his reinstatement by Godolphin, he vindictively assailed his former patrons in The Examiner. Swift, who, in 1704, had achieved notoriety by the Tale of a Tub, had been admitted to the tables of the leading whigs. Dissatisfied with his preferments, he had, he declared, been "used barbarously" by the late ministry. He took advantage of a visit to London in October, 1710, to obtain audience of Harley, to whom he was introduced as a man "discontented with his position". Harley, a gcod judge of men as well as of letters, at once admitted this invaluable auxiliary to his intimacy. "He told me the measures he would take"; "He charged me to come to him often," wrote Swift to Stella. On February 16, 1711, he records that "at last" St. John and Lord Keeper Harcourt had consented to let him join their regular Saturday dinner at Harley's house. He was thus qualified to prepare the public for the ministers' policy, to vindicate their measures, and to become the historian of their administration.

X.

CHAPTER X.

HARLEY'S MINISTRY.

CHAP. THE queen opened the new parliament in state on November 25, 1710, and the commons gave the first evidence of their political bias by the election as speaker of William Bromley, member for the University of Oxford, whose influence with the clerical party gave him importance to Harley and St. John.1 The session began peacefully. Public interest awaited the anticipated return of Marlborough. That the new ministry was hostile to him was notorious. Nevertheless, the responsibility of dismissing him before peace was declared was tremendous, and as the Elector of Hanover was his natural successor, such a step would offend as many tories as it gratified. St. John's policy was to provoke him to resignation. His dispatches at this date breathe the insolence of youth and the venom of ingratitude. Marlborough's secretary, Cardonnel, for whom the duke had procured the appointment of secretary at war, was dismissed. His favourite general, Cadogan, who had been envoy to the United Provinces, was recalled, to be presently replaced by the Tory Earl of Orrery. Lieutenant-General Meredyth, whose battle Marlborough had fought against Colonel Hill, Major-General Maccartney, and Brigadier Honywood were superseded (December 10), and Meredyth deprived of all his other appointments, on the charge that they had drunk "Damnation and Confusion to the New Ministry". In The Examiner, Swift charged the duchess with peculation. Amid such omens Marlborough arrived in London from the Hague on December 28, O.S. In his company travelled Baron Bothmer, accredited by the Elector of Hanover as his envoy-extraordinary to report on the state of parties and to use such efforts 1 St. John to Harley, October 11, 1708, Bath MSS., i., 191.

1711 DISMISSAL OF DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

179

as he discreetly might to assist in maintaining the duke in CHAP. X. command. Mortification added to the strain of successive campaigns began to affect the duke's health. Sir David Hamilton, the court physician, represented this to the queen in terms which moved her to "great tenderness". The duchess seized the occasion to attempt a reconciliation. In an audience on January 17, 1711, Marlborough himself presented a letter from her to the queen expressing her apprehension that he could not live six months. The overture precipitated the catastrophe. The queen insisted that within three days the gold key of the duchess's office should be surrendered. Although the duke threw himself on his knees to beg a respite, Anne remained inexorable.

The Earl of Peterborough was smarting with the grievances suffered by him at the hands of the late ministry. His recklessness in pecuniary dealings had caused Godolphin to attach his revenues until his accounts should be passed. This, he bitterly complained,' was "the reward he had to expect for all his services and uneasiness". His friends were now in power. The glorification of his exploits would serve to discredit Marlborough and Godolphin through the unfortunate Galway, their nominee. An inquiry was accordingly entered upon by the house of lords, with the support of Argyll and other enemies of Marlborough, extending retrospectively to the operations preceding the battle of Almanza. The protagonists were Marlborough as the champion of Galway and Argyll as the accuser of the late ministry. "Peterborough, the ramblingest lying rogue on earth," as his friend Swift described him, was the advertiser of his own achievements. To the door of the former ministers were laid not only the disasters in Spain but also the failure of the expedition against Toulon. A vote of censure was carried against the late ministry and the thanks of the house expressed to Peterborough by Sir Simon Harcourt, who, on October 19, 1710, had been appointed lord keeper. His speech, complimenting Peterborough on his generosity in accepting

'Treasury Papers, Anne, 1709 (about March 26).

2 In the Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. "Campbell, John," it is stated that the cause of Argyll's animosity against Marlborough is unascertained. Horace Walpole, however, says that it was because Marlborough was "against his (Argyll's) coming into our (the English) army with the same rank". Letters, i., 340.