1698-1699 THE MINISTERS AND THE HOUSE 669 to a young man whose own territories were too small to give umbrage either to France or to Austria if he added to them those of the Spanish monarchy. This young man was the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the grandson of Leopold by his first wife, Charles's sister Margaret Theresa,' whilst small portions of the territory under the Spanish Crown were to be allotted respectively to Louis's eldest son, the Dauphin, and to the Archduke Charles, the younger of Leopold's two sons by a second wife. Unfortunately, the death of the Electoral Prince in February 1699 overset this arrangement and enormously increased the difficulty of satisfying both France and Austria, especially as it was just at this time that Parliament reduced William's army to 7,000 men (see p. 667), thus leading Louis to suppose that he might defy England with impunity. 9. Break-up of the Whig Junto. 1699. In home affairs, too, William was in considerable difficulty. When he had brought together the Whig Junto, he had done so because he found it convenient, not because he thought of binding himself never to keep ministers in office unless they were supported by a majority in the House of Commons. The modern doctrine that for ministers to remain in office after a serious defeat in the House of Commons is injurious both to themselves and to the public service had not yet been heard of, and this lesson, like so many others, had to be learned by experience. Again and again in the debates on the reduction of the army the ministers had been outvoted. The House also found fault with the administration of the Admiralty by Russell, who in 1697 had been created Earl of Orford, and appointed a 1 Genealogy of the claimants of the Spanish monarchy (the names of the claimants are in capitals, and the names of princesses who had renounced their claims in italics) : Philip III., king of Spain, Louis XIII., = Anne king of France, 1010-1643 Louis XIV., = Maria king of France, Theresa 1043-1715 Louis (the Dauphin), Charles II., king Margaret Theresa = Leopold L., Eleanor of Neuburg of Spain, Emperor, 1658-1705 commission, in defiance of the ministers, to take into consideration certain extensive grants of forfeited estates in Ireland which had been made by William to his favourites. Though William failed to perceive the impossibility of governing satisfactorily with ministers who had against them a joint majority composed of Tories and discontented Whigs, those who were personally affected by its attacks readily perceived the danger into which they were running. In the course of 1699 Orford and Montague resigned their offices. William fell back upon his original system of com. bining Whigs and Tories. The Whigs, however, still preponderated, especially as Somers, the wisest statesman of the day, remained Lord Chancellor. 10. The Irish Grants and the Fall of Somers. 1700.- After the reduction of Ireland large tracts of land had fallen to the Crown, and William had made grants out of them to persons whom he favoured, especially to persons of foreign origin. Amongst these were brave foreign soldiers like Ginkell and Ruvigny (see p. 656), now Earls of Athlone and Galway, as well as mere personal favourites, such as Elizabeth Villiers, who had, many years before, been William's mistress. In 1700, however, the Commons proposed to annul all William's Irish grants. Besides this the House proposed to grant away some of the estates to favourites of their own, and declared land forfeited which in law had never been forfeited at all. As the Lords resisted the latter parts of this scheme, the Commons invented a plan for coercing them. They tacked their bill, about Irish forfeitures to their grant of supplies for the year; that is to say, made it part of the bill by which the supplies were given to the Crown. As the peers were not allowed to alter a money bill, they must accept or reject the whole, including the provisions made by the Commons about the Irish forfeitures. William foresaw that, in the heated temper of the Commons, they would throw the whole government into confusion rather than give way, and at his instance the Lords succumbed. The victory of the Commons brought into evidence their power of beating down the resistance both of the king and of the House of Lords, but it was a victory marred by the intemperateness of their conduct, and by the injustice of some of the provisions for which they contended. Fierce attacks had also been made in the House of Commons on Somers, and William ordered Somers to resign. The principle that ministers with whom the House of Commons is dissatisfied cannot remain in office was thus established. II. The Darien Expedition. 1698-1700.-It was not in Eng 1698-1700 AN AGREEMENT WITH LOUIS XIV. 671 land only that William met with resistance. The commerce of Scotland was small, and Scotchmen were excluded from all share in the English trading companies. Paterson, who had been the originator of the Bank of England, urged his countrymen to settle in Darien, as the Isthmus of Panama was then called, where, placed as they would be between two oceans, they would, as he told them, have the trade of the world in their hands. Forgetting not only that Darien was claimed by Spain, but that its climate was exceedingly unhealthy, Scotchmen of all ranks joined eagerly in a company which was to acquire this valuable position. In 1698 and 1699 two expeditions sailed to take possession of the isthmus. By the spring of 1700 most of those who had set out with the highest hopes had perished of disease, whilst the few who remained alive had been expelled by the Spaniards. All Scotland threw the blame of the disaster on William, because he had not embroiled England in war with Spain to defend these unauthorised intruders on her domain. 12. The Second Partition Treaty. 1700. In the spring of 1700, whilst the weakness and unpopularity of William were being published to the world, he concluded a second partition treaty with Louis. The Archduke Charles was to be king of Spain, of the Spanish Netherlands, and of all the Spanish colonies; France was to have Guipuscoa, on the Spanish shore of the Bay of Biscay, and all the Spanish possessions in Italy, though Louis declared his intention of abandoning the Duchy of Milan to the Duke of Lorraine in exchange for Lorraine. The proposal of this Treaty came from Louis, who certainly had very little idea of carrying it into effect, whilst the Emperor, who would gain much by it for his son, the Archduke Charles, refused his consent, perhaps thinking that it was of little importance to him to place his son on the throne of Spain, if Italy, which lay so much nearer to his own hereditary dominions, was to be abandoned to the French. 13. Deaths of the Duke of Gloucester and of the King of Spain. 1700. Two deaths, which occurred in 1700, affected the politics of England and Europe for some time to come. Anne had had several children, all of whom died young, the last of them, the Duke of Gloucester, dying on July 29 in this year. The question of the succession to the throne after Anne's death was thus thrown open. Charles II. of Spain died on November I. Louis had long been intriguing for his inheritance, and his intrigues had been successful. Charles, before he died, left by will the whole of his dominions to Louis's grandson, Philip, hereafter to be known as Philip V., king of Spain. Louis accepted the inheritance, and threw to the winds the Partition Treaty which he had made with William. 14. A Tory Ministry. 1700-1701. It seemed as if the chief work of William's life had been undone, and that France would domineer over Europe unchecked. In England there was but little desire to engage in a new war, and, before the end of 1700, William was obliged to appoint a Tory ministry. There was a Tory majority in the new Parliament which met on February 6, 1701. The great majority of the Tories had by this time thrown off their belief in the indefeasible Divine right of kings, and acknowledged William without difficulty. Their chief political ideas were the maintenance of peace abroad, and the pre-eminence of the Church of England at home, though they-more or less thoroughly— accepted the Toleration Act. Their main supporters were the country gentlemen and the country clergy, whilst the Whigs, who supported William in his desire for a war with France, and who took under their patronage the Dissenters, were upheld by the great landowners, and by the commercial class in the towns. 15. The Act of Settlement and the Succession. 1701.--The first work of the Tory Parliament was the Act of Settlement. By this Act the succession was settled, after Anne's death, on Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her descendants. She was the daughter of Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia (see pp. 488, 490), and was thus the granddaughter of James I. The principle on which the selection rested was that she was the nearest Protestant heir, all the living descendants of Charles I., except William and Anne, being Roman Catholics. 16. The Act of Settlement and the Crown. 1701.-The view that the nation had a right to fix the succession was now accepted by the Tories as fully as by the Whigs; but the Tories, seeing that William was inclined to trust their opponents more than themselves, now went beyond the Whigs in their desire to restrict the powers of the Crown. By the Tory Act of Settlement the future Hanoverian sovereign was (1) to join in the Communion of the Church of England; (2) not to declare war without consent of Parliament on behalf of territories possessed by him on the Continent, and (3) not to leave the three kingdoms without consent of Parliament-an article which was repealed in the first year of George I. A stipulation (4) that no pardon under the great seal was to be pleadable in bar of impeachment, was intended to prevent William or his successors from protecting ministers against Parliament, as Charles II. had attempted to do 1701 A CONSTITUTIONAL STATUTE 673 in Danby's case (see p. 617). A further stipulation was (5) that after Anne's death no man, unless born in England or of English parents abroad, should sit in the Privy Council or in Parliament, or hold office or lands granted him by the Crown. These five articles all sprang from jealousy of a foreign sovereign. A sixth, enacting (6) that the judges should, henceforward, hold their places as long as they behaved well, but might be removed on an address from both Houses of Parliament, was an improvement in the constitution, irrespective of all personal considerations. It has prevented, ever since, the repetition of the scandal caused by James II. when he changed some of the judges for the purpose of getting a judgment in his own favour (see p. 639). 1701.-There 17. The Act of Settlement and the Ministers. were two other articles in the Act, of which one (7) declared that, under the future Hanoverian sovereign, all matters proper to the Privy Council should be transacted there, and that all resolutions taken in it should be signed by those councillors who assented to them; whilst the other (8) embodied the provisions of the rejected Place Bill (see p. 661), to the effect that no one holding a place or pension from the Crown should sit in the House of Commons. Both these articles were directed, not so much against the Crown as against the growing power of the ministers. At this time, indeed, the prevailing wish of the country squires who made up the bulk of the Tory party was to make the House of Commons effectively, as well as in name, predominant; and they therefore watched with alarm the growth of the power of the Capinet, as the informal meetings of the ministers who directed the affairs of the kingdom were now called. As the Cabinet, unlike the old Privy Council, kept no record of its proceedings, the Tories were alarmed lest its members should escape responsibility, and should also, by offering places and pensions to their supporters in the House, contrive to secure a majority in it, even when they had the greater number of independent members against them. The article relating to the Privy Council was, however, repealed early in the next reign, as it was found that no one was willing to give advice if he was liable to be called in question and punished for giving it, so that the system of holding private Cabinet meetings where advice could be given without fear of consequences was not long interrupted. The article for excluding placemen and pensioners, on the other hand, merely overshot the mark, and in the next reign it was so modified that only holders of new places created subsequently to 1705 were excluded from the House, as well as persons who held pensions revocable at the |