CHAPTER XII.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.-A.D. 1714-1716.

GEORGE I.'-ACCESSION, A.D. 1714—DEATH, A.D. 1727.

Regency previous to the arrival of George I.-Selfish competition of parties-Arrival of George I.—Ministerial arrangements-Proclamation of the pretender-A Whig parliament returned-The new king's opening speech -The late ministers brought to account-Lord Bolingbroke escapes to France-Examination into the late war, and the treaty of Utrecht-Iniquitous disclosures-Lord Bolingbroke and the Earl of Oxford impeached -Imprisonment of the Duke of Ormond-Earl of Oxford sent to the Tower-Matthew Prior examined and committed-Intrigues of the high-church party against the new succession-Unpopular manners and appearance of George I.-Correspondence renewed with the pretender-Bolingbroke repairs to the pretender's court -His intrigues as the Jacobite minister of state-He is joined by the Duke of Ormond-Jacobite rebellion in Scotland headed by the Earl of Mar-Preparations to suppress it-A Jacobite conspiracy in England detected -The Earl of Derwentwater and Mr. Forster rise in arms and proclaim the pretender-The Scottish and English insurgents unite-The Earl of Mar's military incompetence-His irresolute movements-Progress of the rebellion on the English borders-The rebels attempt to hold Preston against the royal troops-They are compelled to surrender-Battle of Sheriffmuir-Mar compelled to retreat-The pretender lands in Scotland -His useless proceedings-His unpopular demeanour-Hopeless condition of his affairs-The rebels attempt to fortify themselves in Perth-They lay waste the country between Perth and Stirling-The Duke of Argyle advances upon them-Flight of the rebels from Perth-The pretender retires to France-Dishonourable character of his retreat-He dismisses Lord Bolingbroke-Retirement of the pretender to Avignon-Punishment of the insurgent Jacobites in Scotland and England-Trial and execution of the rebel noblemen and officers.

HE regency bill, passed in 1705, had provided for the government on the demise of Anne, and the seven great officers of state, together with eighteen peers, named in an instrument signed by the Elector of Hanover, took upon themselves the temporary administration. Of the eighteen peers named by George, the greater number were determined Whigs; and Argyle, Cowper, Halifax, Townshend, and Devonshire were among them. Marlborough was not named, nor was his son-in-law, Sunderland: this was not extraordinary, but it excites some surprise to see the illustrious Somers excluded also. The great general, on landing at Dover, received an enthusiastic welcome, and his entry into London was like a triumph. Two hundred gentlemen on horseback met him on the road, and the procession was joined by a long

train of horses and carriages. Marlborough went straight to the House of Lords and took the oaths to King George; but then, mortified at his exclusion from the regency, he retired into the country. The lords-justices appointed Joseph Addison to be their secretary, and ordered that all despatches addressed to Bolingbroke should be delivered to Addison. In the Scottish capital King George was proclaimed without opposition; but for some days there prevailed great doubt and anxiety as to Ireland: and the lords of the regency, or lords-justices, thought at one moment of despatching thither General Stanhope as commander-in-chief, and Marlborough's son-in-law, Sunderland, as lord-lieutenant, without losing time in waiting for the king's instructions; but they soon received intelligence that all was quiet, and that King George had been peaceably proclaimed at Dublin by the Lords-justices of Ireland, no small alloy of human frailties and of human passions. Some of the quiet I have mentioned may be imputed to corruption, as much as some of the troubles to faction. Our pride as legislators may sink when we discover that our constitutional preeminence has arisen still more from happy accident than from skilful design. We may likewise blush to think that even those years which, on looking back, are universally admitted as most prosperous, and those actions now considered irreproachable, by popular breaches of the law or by its rigorous execution. The were not free at the time from most loud and angry complaints. population augmented fast, but wealth augmented faster still; How ungratefully have we murmured against Providence at the comforts became more largely diffused, and knowledge more generally cultivated. Unlike the era of the Antonines, this prosperity did not depend upon the character of a single man. Its foundations were laid on ancient and free institutions, which, good from the first, were still gradually improving, and which alone, amongst all others since the origin of civil society, had completely solved the great problem, how to combine the greatest security to property with the greatest freedom of action.

"The era of the Georges may be compared to the era of the Antonines at Rome. It was a period combining happiness and glory-a period of kind rulers and a prosperous people. While improvement was advancing at home with gigantic strideswhile great wars were waged abroad-the domestic repose and enjoyment of the nation were scarcely ever for a moment broken through. The current was strong and rapid, but the surface remained smooth and unruffled. Lives were seldom lost, either

"It is true, however, that this golden period by no means affords us unmixed cause for self-congratulation, and contains

very moment when most enjoying its bounty! How much has prosperity been felt, but how little acknowledged! How sure a road to popularity has it always been to tell us that we are the most wretched and ill-used people on the face of the earth! To such an extent, in fact, have these outcries proceeded, that a very acute observer has founded a new theory upon them; and, far from viewing them as evidence of suffering, considers them as one of the proofs and tokens of good government."— Lord Mahon's History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht, vol. i. p. 1.

the Archbishop of Armagh, and Sir Constantine propose that the civil list should be raised to Phipps, whose Toryism had formerly been sus- £1,000,000, or to £300,000 more than had been pected to be of the Jacobite bias. granted to Anne; but the Whigs wisely disNot a moment was lost by the Whigs in Eng-couraged this very suspicious liberality, and the land in putting forth claims to the honours and sum voted was £700,000. A clause was inserted emoluments of office, and in scheming what should in the bill for the payment of £65,000 due to the be the new cabinet. The bishopric of Ely, and Hanoverian troops in the pay of England, but every good thing that happened to be vacant in hitherto withheld by the court because those the church, was asked for, and every place at troops had refused to join the Duke of Ormond court, such as the captaincy of the band of gentle- in 1712 in his base desertion from the allies. A men pensioners, the groomship of the bedcham- reward of £100,000, to be paid by the treasury, ber, &c., was grasped at by several competitors. was offered to any person that should apprehend Baron Bothmar was made the medium of these the pretender, in case of his landing; and, after applications to Hanover. the passing of some other money-bills, this short session was closed by prorogation.

But we may turn from these pettinesses, which were the inevitable consequences of a demise and a new succession, to matters of greater weight, in which the interests of three nations were concerned, and in which they were but too often sacrificed to private ambition and the interests of worthless individuals. According to a very important provision in the act of regency, the Houses of Parliament met on the day of the queen's death, though it was a Sunday, and all such members as were in or near town hastened to their seats. The Tories attempted to procure an adjournment till the following Wednesday; but Sir Richard Onslow represented that the state of the nation was too critical to allow

All those who wished well to the Protestant succession were impatient for the arrival of the

new king, whose delay on the Continent excited universal surprise. Other princes had shown. the extreme of eagerness for a far less glittering prize; but the phleg matic George I. seemed to look almost with indifference to the crown of three great and rising kingdoms; and it was not till six o'clock in the evening of the 18th of September, or nearly seven weeks after the death of Anne, that he landed at Greenwich with his eldest son, Prince George. His subjects of Hanover had witnessed his departure with regret and tearshis English subjects re

on a near view they saw little to admire in his personal appearance or in his bearing, which were plain and undignified.

of delay; and the houses met again on Monday. | ceived him with joy and acclamations, although Three days were spent in administering and taking oaths to the new sovereign. In the same breath, and with the same drop of ink, they expressed their deep grief at the death of their late sovereign lady Queen Anne, of blessed memory, and their lively pleasure at the accession of King George, whose right to the crown was so undoubted, and whose virtues were so princely. The most that the Hanoverian agents hoped or expected was, that the House of Commons would grant the king the same civil list enjoyed by the late queen, and that a new parliament would augment it on account of Prince George and his family; but the Tories, either to secure favour at court, or to produce in the beginning an extravagant notion of the avaricious and grasping disposition of the new sovereign, had the face to

His majesty presently proceeded to complete his ministerial arrangements: Lord Halifax was appointed first lord-commissioner of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer; Lord Cowper, again chancellor; Nottingham, president of the council; Marlborough, commander-in-chief and master-general of the ordnance; Wharton (who was made a marquis), lord privy-seal; Orford, first lord of the admiralty; Shrewsbury, lordchamberlain and groom of the stole; the Duke of Devonshire, lord-steward of the household; the Duke of Somerset, master of the horse; Sunderland, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland; and Robert Walpole, whose ability in debate was worth a

high price, paymaster of the forces. In Scotland, | finding that the public debt had been increased the Jacobite Earl of Mar was turned out, and since the treaty of Utrecht. He alluded frankly the Duke of Montrose put in his place; and the to the pretender, and to his boasting of assistance Duke of Argyle was intrusted with the supreme he expected to derive from England; but, in concommand of the forces there. In Ireland, Sir clusion, he declared that he would make the conConstantine Phipps was deprived of the seals, stitution, in church and state, the rule of his and Mr. Broderic made chancellor. These min- government, and devote his chief care to the isterial arrangements were all completed before happiness, ease, and prosperity of his people. the 20th of October, on which day the coronation Both houses joined in expressing their sense of was performed at Westminster with the usual the dishonour of the peace and the delinquency of solemnities. The old abbey was thronged with the late ministers.' The commons, in their adnearly all the peers, whether Whig, Tory, or dress, said, "It is with just resentment we obJacobite; the indolent insouciant-looking Oxford serve that the pretender still lives in Lorraine, was there, and so was his keen-eyed, animated and that he has the presumption, by declarations rival, Bolingbroke. The usual promotions in the from thence, to stir up your majesty's subjects peerage followed the ceremony. to rebellion. But that which raises the utmost indignation of your commons is, that it appears therein that his hopes were built upon the measures that had been taken for some time past in Great Britain. It shall be our business to trace out those measures wherein he places his hopes, and to bring the authors of them to condign punishment."

On the 29th of August (N. s.) the pretender, who had gone from Bar-le-Duc to drink the mineral waters of Plombière, signed and sent forth a manifesto asserting his right to the throne of Great Britain, and explaining somewhat too clearly the causes of his inactivity up to "the death of the princess our sister, of whose good intention towards us we could not for some time past well doubt: and this was the reason we then sat still, expecting the good effects thereof, which were unfortunately prevented by her deplorable death." | This was at once a capital blunder and a glaring proof of the little attention the exiled prince paid to the safety of his friends in England. Whigs instantly caught at the words as additional and incontrovertible evidence as to the intentions of the late ministry: the Tories insisted that the manifesto was a false document basely forged by the Whigs, to throw discredit upon them and dishonour the late queen; but they were driven from this position by the thickheaded and thick-hearted pretender, who openly acknowledged the authenticity of the manifesto.

The

Early in January two royal proA.D. 1715. clamations were issued-the one dissolving the parliament, the other calling a new one. At the preceding election, only two years before, five-sixths of the successful candidates were Tories, yet at the present election the Whigs were returned in triumphant majority. The new parliament met on the 19th of March, and Mr. Spencer Compton, the ministerial nominee, was chosen speaker without opposition. A few days after, the king went down in person, but being unable to pronounce English, he gave his written speech to be read by Chancellor Cowper. After thanking all his loving subjects for their zeal in defence of his succession, he lamented that many conditions of the late peace had not been performed; and showed the necessity of defensive alliances, in order to insure their due execution: he regretted the injuries suffered by trade, and expressed his surprise at

This was the first public intimation of the intention of the present cabinet to call their predecessors in office to account; and the intention was further avowed in the course of debate by General Stanhope. This leader of the commons

for at first Stanhope, rather than Walpole, was the leader-said, that a report had been industriously spread that it was not intended to bring the late ministers to trial, but only to censure them in general terms; that he could, however, assure the house that, notwithstanding all the endeavours which had been used to prevent a discovery, by conveying away several papers from the secretary's offices, yet his majesty's present government had sufficient evidence left to prove the former ministry the most corrupt that had ever sat at the helm.

With all his vivacity and rashness, Bolingbroke seems to have had less moral courage than his rival Oxford, whom he had always despised as irresolute and timid. His danger, however, was probably somewhat greater; and he may have apprehended that there was better evidence to convict him on an impeachment than what could be brought against the ex-lord-treasurer. But, however this may have been, Oxford remained to face the storm, while Bolingbroke fled from it. On the evening of the 26th of March he appeared publicly at Drury Lane Theatre; and at the close of the performance he bespoke, according to the custom of the time, the play for the next night.

But, upon leaving the theatre, he disguised him- | darkest suspicions. When the silence had lasted self as a servant to La Vigne, a French cabinet for some minutes, Mr. Hungerford ventured to messenger, set off for Dover, and landed with the Frenchman at Calais. We shall soon find Bolingbroke figuring as secretary of state to the pretender.'

In the meanwhile all the papers that could be found of Bolingbroke, Strafford, and Prior had been seized, and the poet had been recalled from Paris and kept under surveillance. On the 9th of April Stanhope brought forward these papers, with an immense heap of instructions, memorials, &c., relating to Ormond's withdrawing the troops from the allies, and to the treaty of Utrecht; and, representing that they were too voluminous to be perused by the whole house, he moved that they should be referred to a select committee of twentyone members. This proposal was adopted without opposition, and a thoroughly Whig committee, called a committee of secrecy, was appointed forthwith. The twenty-one commenced operations that very evening, appointing Robert Walpole their chairman. The task was long and tedious, and, as week after week passed over without any report to the house, Shippen, a decided Jacobite member, insinuated that, notwithstanding the great noise which had been made, the committee of secrecy would not be able to produce any proof of the guilt of the late ministry. But Shippen was silenced by Walpole the chairwho declared that, so far from this being the case, he wanted words to express the villainy of the late Frenchified ministry, as it appeared from the evidence in hand. At last, on the 9th of June, two mouths after the appointment of the committee, Walpole presented the report to the house, and read it himself. The reading occupied five hours.

man,

The report, ably drawn up, filled the vast majority of the house with rage and indignation, and even called some blushes to the faces of those who had sanctioned the dishonourable treaty of Utrecht, the disgraceful conduct of Ormond, the baser betraying of the Catalans, and the altogether unnecessary gift of Tournai to France: and if on one important point-the traitorous correspondence of Bolingbroke with the French court the report did not produce such indisputable evidence as has been laid before the world since the prosecution, and in part very recently -there was yet enough to excite and justify the

1 Of Swift and Bolingbroke, Mr. Hallam speaks thus: "In a single hour these great masters of language were changed from advocates of the crown to tribunes of the people; both more distinguished as writers in this altered scene of their fortunes, and certainly among the first political combatants with the weapons of the press whom the world has ever known. Boling broke's influence was of course greater in England; and with all the signal faults of his public character, with all the factiousness which dictated most of his writings, and the indefinite declamation or shallow reasoning which they frequently display,

say, that in his opinion there was nothing in the report, relating to Lord Bolingbroke, that amounted to the crime of high treason. General Ross also made use of a few timid expressions to the same effect; and this was all that was said in the House of Commons in support of the brilliant but flagitious minister; and the vote for his impeachment passed without a division. Lord Coningsby then rose and said, "The worthy chairman of the committee has impeached the hand, but I do impeach the head; he has impeached the clerk, and I impeach the justice; he has impeached the scholar, and I the master: I impeach Robert, Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, of high treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanours." More was said for Oxford than had been said for Bolingbroke; yet it amounted to very little; and this resolution of impeachment was also carried without a division. It appears to have been for some time a matter of doubt whether they should impeach the Duke of Ormond, who, in withdrawing the troops from the allies, had only obeyed positive orders; and that ministers were provoked to the affirmative by that weak and vain man's bravadoes. It was, however, not till the 21st of June that Stanhope stood up and impeached Ormond. Luckily for him, his correspondence with the friends of the pretender was less susceptible of proof than even that of Oxford. Many members, including some that were devoted to the house of Hanover, spoke warmly in his favour; the discussion lasted nine hours and a half, and Stanhope carried his motion by a majority of only forty-seven. On the very next day Mr. Aislabie stood up and impeached the Earl of Strafford, one of the two plenipotentiaries at Utrecht; but the charge was lightened to high crimes and misdemeanours, without the treason. The Duke of Ormond, after listening to a variety of Jacobite projects, which he had not sufficient spirit or talent to execute, followed Bolingbroke's example, fled secretly into France, and joined the pretender. Ormond never returned, living in exile and dying in it, at the age of fourscore, in the year 1745.

On the 9th of July, Lord Coningsby, followed by a great part of the House of Commons, carried up to the bar of the lords the articles of impeachment against Oxford. They were sixteen in they have merits not always sufficiently acknowledged. He seems first to have made the Tories reject their old tenets of exalted prerogative and hereditary right, and scorn the highchurch theories which they had maintained under William and Anne. His Dissertation on Parties, and Letters on the History of England, are in fact written on Whig principles if I know what is meant by that name), in their general tendency; however a politician, who had always some particular end in view, nay have fallen into several inconsistencies."-Constitutional History of England, vol. ii. p. 443.

number, but afterwards six were added to them. | odious distinction between a native and a foreign The first fifteen related to the peace of Utrecht; the sixteenth to the sudden creation of twelve peers, made on purpose to obtain a Tory majority in the House of Lords. After the articles had been read, a debate arose as to whether any of them amounted to high treason. As was not unusual on such occasions, it was proposed that the judges should be consulted; but a motion to that effect was negatived by eighty-four to fifty-two. The next motion was that Oxford should be committed to the Tower; and Oxford, after being reprieved for a few days on account of a real or pretended indisposition, was committed to the Tower by the house. Part of the viva voce evidence, alluded to by the committee of secrecy, was that of Matthew Prior, who, seven days after this, or on the 16th of July, underwent a long examination before the committee. It had been reported that Prior, to secure himself, would make ample revelations, and disclose quite enough to make out a case of treason against Bolingbroke and Oxford; but the poet refused to disclose the secrets with which he had been intrusted, and abhorred the idea of criminating his patrons and employers. To punish this obstinacy, Walpole, in all due form, moved the house for an impeachment against Matthew Prior, esquire, who had been for some time in the custody of a messenger, and who, on the 17th of the same month, was ordered into close custody, where no person was to be admitted to see him without an order from the speaker. In the following year, when an act of grace was passed, the poet, who still lay at the mercy of the House of Commons, was one of the persons excepted out of it; but being discharged soon after, he quietly retired into the country, and spent the remainder of his days at his own villa of Down Hall, or at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, where he died on the 18th of December, 1721. Oxford was left in the Tower; and his opponents continued long to deliberate whether there was sufficient evidence to convict him of high treason, or only enough to prove the point of misdemeanour.

The easy accession of the house of Hanover, after all the plots and plans that had been laid, and all the pledges that had been given to the pretender, struck the world with astonishment. Efforts, however, were made at a very early period to shake the new throne; and it was the high-church party that first applied their broad shoulders to this work. In their sermons, and still more in their pamphlets, they irritated the populace with suspicions of the king's temper and orthodoxy. They painted his religion in bad colours, representing that the old tyranny of the Presbyterian government, that the starch days of the Puritans were to be restored. They drew an VOL. III.

prince, and they prophesied that England would be eaten up by Hanoverian rats and other foreign vermin. Presently loud cries were heard throughout the land of "High church and Ormond for ever!" "Down with the Puritans!" "Down with the dissenters!" and where the orthodox mob was strongest they soon proceeded to realize the metaphor, and to knock down the meetinghouses of the dissenters. In Staffordshire these excesses were greatest; and scarcely a Whig or dissenter there could escape insult or more serious injury. To stop these excesses, the legislature had recourse to the well-known riot act, which was hastily carried through both houses of parliament. The ill-humour of the people, however, was not to be repressed; and the more they saw of the new king and the new court the less they liked both. And, indeed, though possessed of some solid qualities which seem to have fitted him for the difficult position in which he was placed, the first George was far from being a very prepossessing or brilliant prince. He was fifty-four years old, had a heavy countenance and a clumsy figure, and was plain in his dress, almost a sloven; he was taciturn and phlegmatic, and yet subject to violent fits of passion; he could neither confer a favour with grace nor refuse one with blandness. In the midst of this personal unpopularity of George and his court, numerous papers in behalf of the pretender were written, printed, and circulated. One of them, attributed to Mr. Leslie, drew a charming portrait of the chevalier. He was described as active, tall, and graceful, resembling in his countenance that respectable sovereign Charles II.; and as to his moral qualities, it was affirmed that he was candid, tolerant, and benevolent, just, firm, and altogether a prince of excellent principles. The multitude also recollected, as a favourable circumstance, that Charles II., though he had kept a great many, had kept none but very handsome mistresses, who had been exceedingly lavish of their money. As the popular discontent grew and increased, the Jacobites, and some of the selfish traffickers of state, who had been disappointed in their expectations, began to cabal again, and to renew or commence a correspondence with the pretender; and foremost among these renewed traitors was the illustrious Marlborough, who, though commander-in-chief of the British army under George, sent a sum of money to France as a loan to the chevalier, who was at the moment planning how to kindle the flames of civil war in Scotland.' The disaffected in England, as well as in Scotland, thought they had a tower of strength in Bolingbroke, whose genius was indisputable; and they opened a

1 Stuart Papers.
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