XIII. CHAP. the interval of a month in which to make away with incriminating documents before his dismissal on August 31. On January 12/23, 1715, the Earl of Stair arrived in Paris as envoy in succession to Prior. His mission was to insist on the strict execution of the ninth article of the treaty of Utrecht, providing for the demolition of Dunkirk. He was, at the same time, instructed by Stanhope to demand the surrender of all Prior's official papers. Prior made no resistance and his correspondence was found in apparently regular order. Lord Strafford, Bishop Robinson's colleague at Utrecht, who had returned to England, was summoned on the 11th, without previous warning, before the privy council. Strafford's temper was arrogant and self-satisfied. A demand by the privy council in presence of the king that he should forthwith deliver his papers to the secretaries of state to be sealed up prior to examination, took him by surprise.. He blustered and protested against being "so treated, like a criminal". But Townshend and Stanhope, allowing him no delay, he proceeded to his house and took possession of the documents.2 Bolingbroke had till now been playing the part of a man unconcerned. Up to the moment of his dismissal he had entertained the hope that the king might continue him in employment. The court of St. Germain's, however, was hoping to persuade him, through the mediation of the restless intriguer, Lady Jersey, to head the English Jacobites. But, after the seizure of Strafford's papers, he shewed himself seriously alarmed. He raved to Iberville of prison and the axe. He begged Torcy to warn Prior, who had been ordered home, to bring back to England nothing beyond formal dispatches, above all none of his private correspondence on the negotiations for peace. He was, as will have been seen, too late. Prior returned to London on March 25 and it was currently reported that he intended to reveal all he knew. The behaviour of the court party gave colour to this impression. He was "very graciously" received by the king. On the 26th he was entertained at dinner by Town 1Portland MSS., v., 503, January 11, 1714-15. 2 The scene is graphically described by the Marquis of Wharton, ibid.. 3 The Duke of Berwick to James III., January 6, 1715, Stuart Papers, i., 342. J[ohn] D[rummond] to the Earl of Oxford, March, 1715, Portland MSS., v., 4 1715 FLIGHT OF BOLINGBROKĒ. 235 On XIII. shend, Stanhope, and others of the ministry, and afterwards CHAP. examined before a committee of the privy council. This was enough for Bolingbroke. His nerves could not face danger. When Guiscard attacked Harley he was said to have lost his head and to have fled from the council-room in terror.1 the 28th, he fled to France, disguised as courier to La Vigne, the official French messenger. A letter was shortly afterwards circulated, said to have been written by him to Lord Lansdown, justifying his flight on the ground that he had already been "prejudged, unheard, by the two houses of parliament". On April 9 Stanhope moved for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the circumstances of the peace. A committee of secrecy, numbering twenty-one, was packed by the majority. Walpole was elected chairman, but being taken seriously ill on the following day, was replaced by Stanhope. He recovered, however, sufficiently to draught the committee's report, which he presented to the house of commons on June 9. The proceedings of the late ministers were incriminated, as involving betrayal of the nation's allies, a secret correspondence with the queen's enemies, among them the pretender, and a sacrifice to France of the interests and honour of their country. Fortunate it was for Oxford that the discovery was not made that the original overtures had been prompted by him. Behind the offers from France of April 22, 1711, the committee had been unable to penetrate. At the conclusion of the second reading of the report, on the 10th Walpole formally impeached Bolingbroke of high treason. The impeachment of Bolingbroke was at once followed by that of Oxford. Although the dependence of a secretary of state upon the chief of the ministry was less complete than at the present day, the lord treasurer had, as the committee of secrecy observed, never failed to exert himself when he found it absolutely necessary". On the other hand, mere acquiescence in the proceedings of Bolingbroke on the part of a man frequently subject to illness and known to be in no friendly intimacy with him would, it was obvious, render the charge of high treason difficult to prove. Only on the assurance of a Harley's letter to [Abigail Harley], March 22, 1710-11, Portland 1 See MSS., iv., 670. 2 See above, p. 186. CHAP. member of the committee that there was also viva voce eviXIII. dence to be produced against the earl, did the house unani mously agree to the impeachment. Still more difficult was it, but still more necessary, to frame a case against the Duke of Ormonde. The mob of London idolised him as a hero. "Ormonde and High Church" had become the cry in every tumult. He had lived in and near London since his dismissal in a style of ostentatious magnificence, had refused the favour of a private audience with the king, and had held meetings of tory peers, "especially the young people". What the purport of these meetings was may be inferred from a letter of the pretender to the Duke of Berwick of April 16, 1715: "Orbec (Ormonde) is at the head of my affairs". He was at this very time advising on a rising in concert with the Scots.3 Ormonde was notoriously incautious, but an impeachment would be difficult to sustain. There can be little doubt that, as was currently reported, ministers anticipated that both Oxford and Ormonde would relieve them from further trouble by following the example of Bolingbroke. The Jacobites in France expected nothing less of Oxford. But Oxford enjoyed that presence of mind which deserted Bolingbroke in emergencies. During the interval of a month between the vote for his impeachment on June 10 and the exhibition of the articles against him in the lords on July 9 he led a tranquil life, occupying himself in the collection of precedents to prove that an absolute prerogative for making peace resided in the crown, and that in this matter ministers were not advisers but servants. The fourth impeachment was of Strafford. Bishop Robinson, who had since succeeded Compton in the see of London, had at Utrecht enjoyed the 1 Portland MSS., v., 508. 2 Stuart Papers, i., 358. 3 Duke of Berwick to James, May 21, 1715, ibid., p. 365; cf. ibid., pp. 371, 373, 518. See James to the Duke of Berwick, March 19, 1715, ibid., i., 354; cf. ibid., pp. 355, 358. Same to same, November 24, 1715, ibid., p. 464. I believe it is the first instance of a vote to impeach a man of high treason and letting him have so much time before the charge is carried up to the house of lords. People say that it is that he may have time to run away, but knowing his innocence he is resolved to stand it." Viscountess Dupplin, Oxford's daughter, to her aunt, Abigail Harley, June 14, 1715, Portland MSS., v., 510. 6 The Duke of Berwick to James, April 14, 1715, Stuart Papers, i., 357. 7 See John Austin to the Earl of Oxford, June 20, 1715, Portland MSS., V., 5II. 1715 IMPEACHMENT OF TORY MINISTERS. 237 XIII. precedence in his capacity of lord privy seal. But Robinson CHAP. had acted with discretion and caution, and had not shared Bolingbroke's confidences with his colleague. Strafford, it was alleged, had advised the suspension of arms and the seizure by Ormonde of Ghent and Bruges. He had the faculty of provoking animosities. The argument in his favour, which was a just one and applied to the other defendants, that two successive parliaments had approved their action, was held insufficient to protect him. By the great majority of 268 to 100 the house of commons voted to impeach him, not of high treason but of the minor offence of high crimes and misdemeanours. Sixteen articles of impeachment were exhibited at the bar of the house of lords against Oxford. Before the vote passed for his committal to the Tower, he made a short speech in his own defence, throwing the responsibility for the peace upon the queen, and for the surrender to the French of Tournay, which had been agreed upon as one of the barrier towns, upon Bolingbroke. After the concession of some days' delay, on account of his health, the earl proceeded to the Tower on the 16th, escorted by a crowd shouting "High Church and down with the Whigs," though a minority cried "Down with the Pretender". If it was difficult to justify these proceedings in law, still less can be said for them as instances of political wisdom. It was at the existing juncture impolitic to increase by action savouring of persecution the growing antipathy to the new king. In no case could it have been easy for a foreigner to popularise himself in England. The personal disqualifications of George I. were partly natural, partly due to his habits, and to tradition. Reserved in his disposition, he rarely shewed himself to the people. Unacquainted with the language, he could not, like Charles II., chat with all comers. He made no progresses. He was thrifty in expenditure. And yet the personal loyalty of the people to the sovereign was ready, had it been encouraged, to manifest itself. Addison, in a graphic letter,1 describes the enthusiasm when in June, 1715, the king, by the advice of his ministers, shewed himself at a review. By the clergy in particular he was looked at askance. Conformity to Anglicanism being a condition of his accession, he was 1 Blenheim MSS., p. 49, Hist. MSS. Comm., 8th Rep., App. XIII. CHAP. obliged every Sunday morning to attend a service of which he did not understand a word, and at which his demeanour was censoriously scrutinised. The Prince of Wales was not more popular than the king, and the endeavour of the tories in the house of commons to appropriate £100,000 to the prince's use of the £700,000 voted for the civil list was but intended, by increasing his independence, to foment the notorious scandal of the dissension between father and son. Behind the clergy and the populace stood the chiefs of the tory party, deeply irritated as well by their exclusion from office as by the impeachments of the late ministers. A general disquiet began to succeed the calm which had accepted the succession. During the summer of 1715 riots were reported in Worcestershire and Staffordshire, and at Birmingham, Oxford, and London. They were promoted, declared the tories, by the whigs to complete the ruin of the tory party. The mob, at any rate, put into practice the tory ideals by pulling down the meeting-houses of the dissenters. The government met the disturbances by reviving the riot act of 1553,2 and making the wrecking of registered places of worship a capital offence. The healths of Oxford and Ormonde were everywhere drunk. At Edinburgh juries refused to convict for toasting the pretender. Persons pilloried in London for disrespectful words of the king were protected from ill-usage by Jacobite mobs. In eight months, wrote Hoffmann, the Prussian resident, the cause of the Jacobites had made more advance than in the whole four years of the tory ministry. In this state of popular feeling, the whigs were unfortunate in losing in succession three of their leaders: Burnet, the champion of the whig Church militant, died on March 17; the Marquis of Wharton, their energetic whip, on April 12, and Halifax, the head of the treasury, who, despite his intriguing disposition, had retained the allegiance of the city financiers to the service of his party, on May 15. Somers, who was a member of the cabinet without office, had for some time past survived his strength and intellectual powers. In contrast with those who had so long engaged the public eye, the new men, Townshend, Walpole, and Stanhope, naturally appeared insignificant. 1 1 George Berkeley to Lord Percival, July 23, 1715, Egmont MSS., pp. 239, 247, Hist. MSS. Comm., 7th Rep., App. 21 Mar., st. 2, c. 12. 31 G. I., st. 2, c. 5. |