IT

CHAPTER XXXV.

GEORGE I. AND THE PROTESTANT SUCCESSION.

1714-1727.

The

T pleases Providence to bring to nought both the anxieties and the hopes of men. The moderate party, as well as those passionately attached to the Protestant succession, and not only they, but the great mass of the nation with them, had looked forward for some time with anxiety to Queen Anne's death, while the Jacobites awaited it with an ill-disguised confidence as the hour of their triumph. forebodings of the former, and the hopes of the latter, were equally mistaken; King George I., absent, a stranger, unknown by all, was proclaimed without opposition, and his name received with public acclamation, as if it had been a most beloved son peacefully ascending his father's throne ; -a powerful and striking indication of the serious and firm resolution which the English nation had taken to remain attached to its religious faith and political liberty, an indication which the faithful partisans of the fallen house long misunderstood, blind as they were, not only to the state of men's minds in England, but also to the character and designs of the princes for whom they persisted, generation after generation, in sacrificing their fortunes and lives.

King George I was proclaimed, but he did not arrive; he lingered in his electorate, which he regretted leaving. By nature slow and thoughtful, just and moderate, without any charm of mind or manner, he was surrounded by fa

vorites even more foreign to the English nation and more antipathetic to it than he was himself. The Council of Regency governed in his absence; it contained all the illustrious names of the whig party, and of those who had rallied to it, except the Duke of Marlborough, who was soon recalled to the head of the army, and Lord Somers, old and enfeebled by sickness. Louis XIV. had hastened to recognize the new monarch, and one of the first measures taken by Parliament in his reign was to raise, from five thousand to a hundred thousand pounds sterling, the reward offered to any one who should arrest the Pretender if he dared to set foot on English ground. The prince immediately protested, and writing from Plombières, where he had gone to take the waters, proclaimed his rights to the crown of England, as well as his grief at the death of the princess his sister, "whose good intentions we could not for some time past well doubt." He added: "This indeed was the reason why we then sate still, expecting the good effects thereof, which were unfortunately prevented by her deplorable death." Exiled princes, thrown among strangers by revolution, often forget the language of the people whom they aspire to govern; and in the face of the public indignation aroused by the manifesto, the friends of the Pretender and of Queen Anne's last ministry were obliged to pronounce the proclamation of Plombières an odious fabrication.

The king at length arrived, landing at Greenwich on the 18th of September, with his son the Prince of Wales. A ministry was at once formed, conferring all power on the whig party; Lord Nottingham alone adhered theoretically to tory principles, although parliamentary intrigues had for some time drawn him towards the triumphant party. William III. had tried to unite in the same government the

chiefs of the two great political factions, but powerful as was his mind and strong his personal action, party struggles and internal jealousies had proved more than he could control. George I. gave himself up without reserve into the hands of the party which he thought most faithfully engaged to his cause; and, even before he arrived in England, the king had commanded Bolingbroke's dismissal. The seals of office had been taken from him. 66 "I am not surprised or saddened by my fall," he wrote to Atterbury, "but the mode of procedure gave me a shock for two minutes. I am not at all intimidated by the malice and power of the Whigs; but what distresses me is this: I see clearly the tory party is destroyed."

The new Parliament had just assembled, more passionately whig than the Commons of 1713. Lord Townshend was at the head of the Cabinet, honest and sincere, uncompromising in his passions as in his proceedings; General Stanhope, Under-Secretary of State, shared his sentiments, and both had received from their adversaries precedents of violence. Walpole, still without any important official charge, but more influential than any one else in the House, had answered for the Commons on condition that they left the Whigs full liberty of action. The Peace of Utrecht was severely censured in the two Houses; seals were placed on the papers of Lord Strafford, the intimate friend of Bolingbroke, and Prior was recalled from Paris. The report spread that the poet had promised to reveal the secret of the negotiations, and a bill of accusation against the fallen ministers was imminent. Bolingbroke went to the performance at Drury Lane on the 25th of March, 1715, applauded loudly, and, according to the custom of the time, designated the performance for the next day; but during the same night, carefully disguised, he reached Dover, and on the evening of the 27th