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CHAPTER XIV.

THE REBELLION OF 1715.

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THE pretender, meanwhile, remained in Lorraine, whence CHAP. neither the addresses of parliament nor the rupture by Townshend of diplomatic relations with the duke succeeded in dislodging him. There he maintained a busy correspondence in view of approaching action in concert with his supporters in England and Scotland. A description of him has been left us by a devoted adherent, George Camocke, a cashiered English naval captain. He was "slender, tall, and comely; the upper part of his face very much like Charles II.; the lower part very much like the late Queen Mother; sharp, quick, eye very perceptable (sic)”. He cherished a belief in his divine right to the throne and shared with his followers the sanguine credulity which is the characteristic of exiles. As to his intentions in the event of his restoration, his education, his creed-"all the superstition of a Capuchin, no tincture of the religion of a prince," as Bolingbroke described it-his refusal to Bolingbroke to give "a direct promise of securing the Churches of England and Ireland," his substitution in Bolingbroke's draught proclamation of October 25, 1715, of " very ambiguous" terms in his pledges regarding the Church of England, and his deliberate excision of a pledge for the security of the Church of Ireland, all point to the same inference. His design was to follow in the footsteps of his father and by armed violence of foreign soldiers to extirpate protestantism from Great Britain. The Roman catholic Jacobites looked for nothing less. In the palmy days of Bolingbroke's negotiations a large private meeting was held by them in London, admission to which was by tickets depicting a pope trampling down heresy. But we are not left to inferences. The appeals to the pope of the

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CHAP. queen mother, who had superintended her son's education, were in the name of " the re-establishment of both the catholic faith and our royal house". In December, 1709, James himself wrote to Clement XI. begging him "to aid, with the other assistance his most Christian majesty will give us, in restoring us and with us restoring religion in our states ".2 "The prosperity of the Roman Church," he declared to the pope, when actually in Scotland, "is inseparable from mine." 3

Between the courts of St. James and Versailles, despite official politeness, relations had become less friendly since the king's accession. There was an end of negotiations for alliance with England, defensive or otherwise. The attitude of the French in the matter of Dunkirk, which Steele had made notorious, was felt by the whigs as a galling grievance. The article of the treaty of Utrecht by which Louis XIV.. pledged himself to fill up the harbour and demolish the fortifications was esteemed by the shipowners of London to be of capital importance. When the regency learnt in September, 1714, that a fresh harbour was being made at Mardyck, connected by a canal with the town of Dunkirk and capable of sheltering ships in greater number and of larger tonnage than the harbour of Dunkirk, they ordered Prior to demand an explanation. The only answer vouchsafed was that the new works were for the drainage of the country, and that the king's pledges with regard to Dunkirk had been fulfilled. The Earl of Stair, who followed Prior in January, 1715, had as major-general covered himself with glory at Malplaquet and was neither of rank nor temper to be browbeaten. He carried his protest direct to the king. Louis was able to reply with some truth, as has been seen, that "the delay used in the demolition of Dunkirk is to be attributed to Great Britain only"; but he promised its speedy completion and offered a voluntary pledge not to make any work of fortification upon the new canal.

Stair conceived his duties as ambassador to consist in something more than the dilatory exchange of ceremonious negotiations. He created a system of intelligence. He held open

1 Queen Mary to Pope Innocent XI., Feb. (?), 1689, Stuart Papers, i., 37. 2 December, 1709, ibid., p. 235; cf. letter to Don Annibal Albani of September 14, 1709, ibid., p. 233.

3 December 31, O.S., 1715, ibid., p. 484.

1715

BOLINGBROKE IN FRANCE.

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house. He made himself intimate with the leaders of French CHAP. society, and even with some of the middle class. He dispatched to England information as to the resources, political condition, and prospects of France, which vied in painstaking accuracy with the relazione of a medieval Venetian ambassador. When Ormonde and the pretender were about to start on their attempts against England and Scotland, Bolingbroke wrote: "Stair has his spyes in every quarter, and even att the first posts on the several roads ". Stair's spies became as great a nightmare to the Jacobites as Pitt's gold to the French of another generation. No sooner had Bolingbroke, early in April, set foot in Paris than Stair had him under observation.2 Bolingbroke had intended to write to the pretender, but his friends in England advised him to be quiet for their sake: he called upon Stair and protested his loyalty to King George. He even addressed a letter to Stanhope, to be transmitted by Stair, to the same purport. Nevertheless on April 29 he had an interview with Berwick, at which he "made very great protestations of true zeal for" James. He appears even to have imagined that the home government would accept his assurances, for he suggested "that the best way for him to doe essential service would be his returning to Alençon (England), by reason he could then not only advise but act". It must be remembered that at this time the committee of secrecy was sitting and there was a belief among the tories, to which Shippen on June I gave utterance, that the "secret committee would end in smoke". He thought it prudent, therefore, to avoid the pretender, notwithstanding the prince's desire for an interview.1

There was yet time for him to reconsider his position. Three months were to elapse before the articles of impeachment were carried to the lords on August 6. But the news from England and Scotland was of a general irritation against the government, and he saw that he had already gone so

1 October 24, 1715, Stuart Papers, i., 447. So also ibid., pp. 440, 441, 502. 2" Mr. Raucourt [the Chevalier] cannot be absent himself nor Sably [Bolingbroke] travel without the knowledge of Lord Stairs," Duke of Berwick to James III., May 6, 1715, ibid., p. 364.

3 Ibid., p. 362.

James III. to the Duke of Berwick, May 3, 1715, ibid., pp. 361, 363; James III. to Lord Bolingbroke, May 1, 1715, ibid., p. 361.

VOL. IX.

16

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CHAP. far that, even if he were acquitted on the impeachment, he had no hope of office under George I. According to his own subsequent account in his letter to Wyndham, the news of his attainder was felt by him as a smart tingling in every vein. Whatever his anticipations may have been, the dates shew that it was not the passing of the act of attainder that drove him to take service with the pretender. His first interview with the pretender took place at Commercy about the second week of July. On July 12-23 he wrote his first letter as the Jacobite secretary of state. The articles of impeachment were exhibited on August 6-17 and the bill of attainder brought in on the same date.

Alike in England and France there was among the Jacobites an entire incapacity for organisation. Bolingbroke graphically describes the chaos reigning at Paris. It was an opéra bouffe conspiracy in which, as he complained, the most secret arrangements were common gossip “among women over their tea". Between fear of Stair and friendliness towards the pretender the French ministers were tormented with indecision. They did what they dared. While they refused troops and officers, they winked at the equipment of a few vessels at Havre under a fictitious name and they promised a surreptitious provision of 10,000 stand of arms. Money they had none to give. But Louis XIV. wrote with his own hand to his grandson of Spain, in consequence of which Philip V. promised These did not arrive until early in December. Alarmed by the dispatches of Stair and the prospect of an imminent attempt, the British ministry determined to appeal to parliament and through parliament to the country. On July 20 the king himself came down to the house of lords. In a speech read by the chancellor he exhorted the commons to take measures for the defence of the nation, "under a rebellion actually begun at home, and threatened with an invasion from abroad". The first half of this paragraph referred to armed Jacobite mobs which were then terrorising Staffordshire. Both commons and lords declared that "their lives and fortunes" were at the king's service. The commons unanimously

400,000 crowns.

1 See James III. to Lord Bolingbroke, July 2, 1715, Stuart Papers, i., 372, and July 19, ibid., p. 375.

2 Ibid., i., 529, Bolingbroke's marginal note.

1715

PREPARATIONS AGAINST INVASION.

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requested the king to commission an additional number of CHAP, men-of-war and to augment his land forces for the defence of the country against the designs of "a popish pretender". This last recommendation was not only a blow to the Jacobites-it was a defiance of tory prejudices. The land forces had been a subject of fierce contention. The maintenance of a standing army at the command of the sovereign had, since the revolution, been declaimed against by tories as a constant menace to English liberty.

The process of "discarding" the army, introduced by St. John, was now reversed. Tory officers were dismissed, and all whigs who had been cashiered or placed on half pay were reinstated. Thirteen new regiments of dragoons and eight of foot, in all seven thousand men, were ordered to be raised, the selection of the officers to be left to the Dukes of Marlborough and Argyll, and Generals Stanhope and Cadogan. The militia was also embodied, and those half-pay officers for whom no employment could be found in the army were appointed to commands in it. These military preparations were supplemented by other vigorous measures. A bill was rapidly passed suspending for six months the Habeas Corpus act. A novel precaution was devised by Stanhope for Scotland. The crown officials were authorised by statute to call upon any persons having estates or residences in Scotland to appear at Edinburgh and to give bail for their good behaviour. This power subsequently exercised some effect in paralysing the recruitment of the rebel forces from the ranks of the Scottish country gentry,1 though it is said to have frightened many who knew that they were already compromised into secret rebellion. An act was also passed for "extinguishing the hopes of the pretended Prince of Wales and his open and secret abettors" by exacting from all persons in positions of authority, civil or military, three oaths, the first of allegiance to King George; the second, of abjuration of papal authority; the third, of abjuration of the pretender, for whose seizure within the king's dominions £100,000 reward was offered. Addresses poured in upon

2

1 Hope-Johnstone MSS., pp. 129, 130, 132, Hist. MSS. Comm., 15th Rep., pt. ix. Tindal's statement (Continuation of Rapin, 1763, vi., 431 n.) that only two persons out of sixty-two summoned surrendered themselves appears therefrom to be inaccurate.

21 G. I., st. 2, c. 13.

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