QHA'

PT’

ER 1

II was decreed ‘

by Fromdenoe that the younger

sit upon the throne of England? and be its nominalruler during a period unsurpassed, throughout

E ngl ish h istory , for splendour in letters and fame

in war . Yet few of her subjects were less fitted to

estimate the mil itary gen ius of Marlborough , or the

l iterary gen ius of Swift . Devoutly attached to the

Church of England , simple in her habits , decorous

in her l ife, she never showed any power, and

seldom any wish , to comprehend the great issues

of European pol i tics , the fierce struggles of pol it ical

parties, which were decided and fought out by her

soldiers and min isters in her name . I n rel igion

narrow, constant, and sincere , she gave the rest of

her sm all mind to determin ing the rival claims of

her favourites upon her preference and her affec

tions . I f she had been born to a private station,she would have passed almost unnoticed as a good

woman and a regular churchgoer, with a singular

i ncapacity for rea ring the numerous chi ldren toB

Q

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r

Er

EAZO

'ANNE

whom she gave b 1r th”The .tempests that rocked

the wor ld inwh ich , from no choice of her own , sheplayed a Lonspicuous, if not an .

'important, part,

scarcely stifled: the odullz zshallows,of her soul .

Greatn ess , in'

thé of the word , was

thrust up'

qflher, but it on ly .made her wretched .

I n obscximt‘

y she m igh been happy . She

would nev erj‘

ha’

v’

e herein.

1= able for intel lect or

character .fl

Anne ’s parentage was i l lustrious in more than

the hera ldic sense . Of her two grandfathers , one

would have been thought by al l men capable of

reign ing if he had never reigned, and the other

wrote books which are sti l l read with del ight by al l

lovers of good l iterature , or of h istory at first hand .

Charles the F irst had some kingly qua l it ies, among

them the fatal bel ief that a King of England coul d

be above the law . Of art and letters he was a

carefu l student, and an excellent judge . His Chan

cellor of the Exchequer , Edward Hyde , afterwards

Ear l of Clarendon , the father of Queen Anne ’s

mother, was a man of h igh character and great

abi l ities , an honour to the Roya l ist cause , and to

the profession of letters . His Autobiogr aphy, sti l l

more than his Rebellion , has a permanent fascina

tion even for those readers who look upon the Long

Parl iament as the saviour of Engl ish freedom .

Queen Anne ’s father has achieved an unenviable

POLITICS

fame as the worst of Engl ish sovereigns , and the

redeem ing features in h is character are not easy to

discover . He had a real love of cruelty , and h is

heart was pronounced by Marlborough , who knew

him wel l , to be as hard as marble . The private

character of Charles the First was beyond reproach .

James the Second was in youth almost as dissolute

as his e lder brother, but h is taste in women was

such that the Merry Monarch described his brother’s

mistresses as given him by his confessors in

penance for h is s ins . Although James Stuart and

George Jeffreys endeavoured, when their crimes had

landed both of them in ru in and disgrace, to throw

the blame for their un ited wickedness upon each

other, there is quite enough for the two, nor is it

necessary to settle the proportions of publ ic in iqu ity

between them . When James secretly married Anne

Hyde in 1 660, he was sti l l a Protestant . He was

Duke of York , and heir presumptive to the throne .

His father-ih -law had been Prince Charles’s titular

Chancellor since 1 658, and received the Great Seal

at the Restoration , with the title which his books

have made for ever famous . The Duke of York

became Lord High Admiral , and, as we know from

the diary of Samuel Pepys, was assiduous in the

discharge of h is official duties . As a soldier or

sai lor,he might have won credit, if not distinction .

As a civi l servant he would not perhaps have risenB 2

QUEEN ANNE

to the top of the tree . But he would have earned

by laborious and methodical di l igence h is salary ,

his pension,and the approval of h is superiors . He

had a lso , it must be admitted, that parsimon ious

economy which,disagreeable as it may be in private

l i fe,is a shin ing virtue in publ ic men . That he did

not find out Mr . Pepys’

s defalcations , which were

unknown ti l l the recen t discovery of that ingen ious

gentleman ’s most secret cipher, on ly proves that

Pepys was a good deal cleverer in manipu lat ing

figures than His Royal H ighness . James ’s first

wife has left no mark upon history , though her

features have been preserved on the canvas of Lely .

She had been before her marriage maid of honour

to the Princess of Orange , and it was at Buda that

she met James, then , l ike h is brother, i n exi le . Of

her chi ldren only two survived chi ldhood, but they

became successively Queens of E ngland . Anne ,

the younger, was born at St . James’s Palace on the

6th of February , 1 665 , and educa ted in the rel igion

of her parents, then both members of the National

Church . The reaction against Puritan ism was at

its height . Charles the Second, though his natural

abi l ities were great, far greater than the ab il ities

of James , detested al l business, loved on ly pleasure ,and hated only to be bored . His one settled deter

mination was that never again , to use h is own

words, would he“ go on his travels .

” His desire

POLITICS 5

was to govern , so far as possible, without a Par

liam ent , and to put himself u nder the protection of

the French King . His patriotism,so far as he had

any , was hampered by his vices , and‘h is court iers

taught him to bel ieve that Ol iver Cromwel l ,“ the

greatest Prince who ever ruled England ,” who

made the name of E ngland honoured by every

Protestant , and dreaded by every Cathol ic, Power,

was an execrable traitor . Charles the First,

” says

Jun ius , with rhetorical exaggeration , l ived and

died a hypocrite . Charles the Second was a hypo

cr ite of another sort, and should have died upon

the same scaffold .

” He died in his bed , with the

courtesy and good humour that seldom fai led him .

But long before his death he had thrown away the

fru its of Cromwel l’s victories, and made England

contemptible . By the infamous Treaty of Dover,

signed and sealed in 1670, he had“ bound himself

to make publ ic profession of the Roman Cathol ic

rel igion,to join h is armies to those of Louis for

the purpose of destroy ing the power of the Un ited

Provinces,and to employ the whole strength of

England,by land and sea, i n support of the rights

of the House of Bourbon to the vast monarchy ofSpain . I n return for these degrading promises

Charles the Second obtained from Louis the Four

teenth a large annual dole , and“ a guarantee of

1

(Macaulays W or ks, Vol. I. pp. 164

6 QUEEN ANNE

support against h isown subjects if they were driven

to rebel l ion . Wel l might Charles Fox say that the

worst of al l revolutions was a restoration .

Charles the Second , who never had any real

rel igion,was for proc laiming himself a Roman

Cathol ic at once . His more prudent al ly , who had

taken care to become acquainted with E ngl ish

opin ion,and knew that the Protestantism of the

Engl ish people was incorrigible , induced him to

practise for the t ime a hypocr it ical concealment , and

to attend the services of the Church of E ngland .

One service was the same as another to Charles , i f

on ly the sermon were short . He went to chu rch as

seldom as he decently could, and usually provided

himself with a plentifu l supply of l ight l iteratu re ,

i n case the sermon should be long . He even took

the sacrament in both kinds, and on account of h is

pol it ic acquiescence the Pope refused h im t i l l the

last m oment admittance into the Church of Rome .

H is brother James was less compl iant . It is prob

ab le that James had already become a Roman

Cathol ic , and at all events he warmly supported

the Treaty of Dover . He was in his way a rel igious

man . Moral ly far worse than h is brother,for h e

was cruel as wel l as l icentious , he did put h imsel f

under the priests with a thoroughness that left

nothing to be desi red . His rel igion may be cal led

superstition , for it. had no. influence upon his

POLITICS

moral i ty, and was as far as possible removed from

the teaching of Christ . But, such as it was, i t was

genuine, and he adhered to it at al l costs for the

rest of h is l i fe . After the Treaty of Dover he ceased

to appear in the Royal Chape l . The law as i t then

stood did not exclude a Cathol ic from succession

to the throne , and by a declarat ion of doubtfu l

legal ity the King dispensed Cathol ics from the

penal laws against them . I n 1673 , however, the

Test Act was passed, and the Duke of York found

himse lf under the necessity of abj uring the Cathol ic

faith , or resign ing h is office as Lord High Admiral .

He resigned ; though eleven years afterwards he

was permitted,by a flagrant i l legal ity

,to take his

place again at the Board . His two daughters, by

express command of his brother, were brought up

to be Protestants . For Charles , who was no fool ,

perce ived clearly enough that if , in a matter for

which he was responsible, the Church of Rome were

given precedence over the Church of Eng land , the

secret article of the Treaty of Dover,that which

concerned his own rel igion , might as wel l be pub

lished i n the Gazette . Anne, Duchess of York ,

had been received with her husband into com

mun ion with Rome . But she died in 167 1 , and her

husband married Mary of Modena in 1 673 . This

open un ion with a Cathol ic Princess increased an

unpopularity Whiph. teqpired. 99 augmentatipn t and.

8 QUEEN ANNE

was even censured by the House of Commons .“My dear James

,

” said Charles , on receiving from

his brother some hint about the danger of assassina

tion,

“ they wil l never ki l l me to make you King .

”

James,however, bigoted as he was, did not attempt

to interfere with the education of Anne .

Left motherless when she was only eight years

old,the l i ttle Princess Anne formed after a t ime an

affectionate attachment to Sarah Jenn ings , a gi rl

five years older than herself, whose strong wi l l

and violent temper gradual ly and completely domi

nated her own . On the 23 rd of January, 1676, at

the age of thirteen , she was confi rmed in the Church

of England by Henry Compton , Bishop of London ,

who had been a com et i n the Horse Guards, and

was said by her father to talk more l ike a colonel

than a bishop . He was undoubtedly a pugnacious

personage, and a vehement antagonist of the

Roman Church . Thus a l l Anne’s surroundings

at the most impressionab le period of her l i fe were

Protestant, and her rel igious estrangement from her

father was complete . Her sister Mary was married

at fifteen to Wil l iam, Prince of Orange , then

twenty-seven , the greatest statesman in Europe,a

staunch Protestant, and the“

sworn enemy from boy

hood to the magnificen t King of France . Anne’s

own marriage was much discussed . The E lector

of Hanover, afterwards George the First, was a

POLITICS 9

su itor for her hand . Her own predi lection was for

John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave , whom she cal led

Jack . But her personal lean ings were set at nought,

the Act of Sett lement was not anticipated, and in

1 683 , being then eighteen , she became the wife of

a Lutheran Prince,George of Denmark, brother of

King Christian the F ifth . What Pope falsely said

of most women is perfect ly true of Prince George .

He had no character at al l . So many things sur

prised him , that h is favourite ejacu lation was Est-i l

possible ? He seemed to care for nothing but h is

dinner and his bottle . Char les the Second, a pretty

shrewd judge of men,said,

“ I have tried Prince

George sober, and I have tried him drunk . Drunk

or sober, there is nothing in h im .

”

Far more important than her marriage in the l ife

of Anne , as in the h istory of Europe , was the

appointment of her old playfel low Sarah Jenn ings,

now Lady Churchi l l , to be her woman of the bed

chamber . For Lady Churchi l l ’s husband was the

first soldier of his age , i f i ndeed as a soldier he has

ever in any age been surpassed .

The later career of this extraordinary man , with

its sh in ing magn ificence and its shameless treason ,

fi l ls the publ ic stage during the reign of Queen

Anne . When the old connection between h is wife

and the young Princess became official in 1 683 , he

had been for a year Baron Churchi l l of Aymouth

l o QUEEN ANNE

i n the peerage of Scotland . While he was page to

the Duke of York , who seduced his sister , Arabe l la

Churchi l l,and befriended him in consequence, he

had fascinated one of the King’s favourites, the

Duchess of Cleveland,by h is handsome looks . The

result was in one particu lar unusual . For the

Duchess gave her lover a large sum of money , and

he invested it on the best landed security without

scruple or de lay . Few are the young men of rea l

l ife who have profited in a financia l sense by their

vices,l ike Tom Jones and Porthos in fict ion . But

John Churchil l was an exception to most rules . A

miserly soldier is not common . Churchi l l ’s love of

money amounted to a passion , and for better for

worse , for richer for poorer, he c lung to it through

out his l i fe . What Macaulay wel l describes as his“ far-sighted, sure-footed judgment kept h im true

to h is own interests , and eager for h is own promo

t ion , al ike in youth and in manhood , when he was

the unknown son of a penni less courtier,and when

the sovere igns of Europe were his obedient su itors .

Of fide l ity and of friendship he seemed almost

incapable . Yet there were two points on which his

conduct is absolutely beyond criticism or reproach.

He was the staunchest of Protestants . Notwith

standing his lawfu l and unlawfu l re lations with

James , the most devout of Catho l ics, he never wou ld

hear, of changing his re l igion , The other point isi

t

POLITICS n

more closely connected with the subject of this

book . When he was twenty-eight, and a colonel

of foot, he fel l i n love with Sarah Jenn ings , a high

spirited gi rl of e ighteen , with a fury temper, and

a fairy face ” ; and , though she had not a penny ,he married her . From that moment she was the

only human being that he either loved or feared .

The i ntimacy between h is wife and the Princess was

not affected by the marriage of either . They called

each other by pet names . Anne was Mrs. Morley,

Sarah was Mrs . Freeman . The ascendency of Mrs .

Freeman over Mrs . Morley, of a strong character

over a weak one, grew absolute by degrees . I t

must be remembered that at th is time,i n 1683 , the

probabil ity of Anne becoming Queen was just one

of those n ice calcu lations on which a mind l ike

Churchi l l ’s loves to dwe l l . The King was on ly

fifty-three, but he had severe ly tried h is constitution

by his excesses , and he had no legitimate chi ldren .

His brother was three years younger,and Mary of

Modena , the second Duchess of York , might at any

time have a son . Anne ’s sister,the Princess of

Orange,stood before her in the succession . But

her husband was Stadtholder of Hol land, and it was

conce ivable that on that account the Parl iament of

England might pass her over . A Bil l to exc lude

the Duke of York from the throne on account of his

Qneed had passed the House of Commons in 1680,

1 2 QUEEN ANNE

Misled by the gen ius of George Savi le , Marquessof Hal ifax

,a consummate debater, but a man more

witty than wise,the Lords rejected i t, and thus

prepared the way for the most disastrous reign in

Engl ish history,with the poss ible exception of

Mary Tudor’s . But a B i l l wh ich had already

passed one House m ight in future pass both Houses,

and receive the Royal Assent, so that the succes

sion of James was not secure unti l , on the 6th of

February, 1685 , Charles the Second died after a

short i l l ness,having first been received into the

Church of Rome, and confessed h imself to a

Roman priest .

Churchil l was at the outset a faithfu l subject of

the new Sovereign . He went on an embassy to

Paris for a renewal of the disgracefu l subsidy which

Charles had received from Louis,and he was

created an Engl ish peer for h is pains. He took a

part , though a subord inate part , in putti ng down

the rebell ion of Monmouth , Charles’s natural son

,

at Sedgemoor . But th is strange man ’s conscience

was as uneasy as h is convictions were unsettled .

Difficult as it may be to reconci le some incidents of

his l ife with the precepts or practice of any rel ig ion,

there can be no doubt that he was sincerely attached

to the Protestant Church of E ngland . He had,

moreover,many sources of information , h is j udg

ment was almost infa l l ib le , and he soon perceived

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1 4 QUEEN ANNE

the Court with a fool ish secrecy, and an irrational

incredul ity prevai led throughout the ranks of Pro

testant Whigs . I n any case it was too late to draw

back . James persisted in his lawless oppression ,

and on the anniversa ry of the Gunpowder Plot

Wil l iam landed at Torbay . Anne ful ly bel ieved

that the child cal led James Stuart was suppos i

titious. Otherwise, she thought, she would herse lf

have been summoned to her stepmother’s bedside ;

whereas she was in fact made the victim of practical

jokes,and sent on a wild-goose chase, which natur

ally mystified her, and made her suspect foul p lay .

She was fond of her sister, and the knowledge that

Mary would be, at least in name, a reign ing Queen

helped to reconci le her to the Revolution . On the

1 1 th of Apri l, 1689 , she attended the coronation of

Will iam and Mary . She soon found that her

sister ’s Queenship was a mere fiction . Mary was

the most submissive of women , and Will iam was

the proudest of men . He had not left his beloved

Holland, for which his heart always yearned, to be

his wife ’s gentleman usher . Although Mary was

legally Queen , Parl iament had given the power, as

distinguished from the title, of Sovereign exclu

sively to him, and he was not even in al l respects

minded to be a constitutional King . The example

of James was indeed quite sufficient to prevent h im

from overriding, or attempting to override, the law .

POLITICS 1 1 5

He treated the House of Commons with puncti l ious

respect . But he had not the modern idea of acting

upon the advice of h is M in isters,nor of changing

them on account of a Parl iamentary vote . A master

of European statecraft , he determined to be his own

M in ister for Foreign Affairs , nor was there any one

of h is subjects who would so wel l have discharged

the duties . Churchi l l was i n 1 689 created Earl

of Marlborough , and was invested on various

occasions with important commands . But Wil l iam

never trusted him , and he is said to have been the

one man before whom that intrepid spiri t quai led .

Late in the summer of 1689 was born the only

one of Anne ’s numerous chi ldren who survived

babyhood . This l i ttle boy was created Duke of

Gloucester by Wil l iam,who petted him , and g ave

him in charge to Marlborough for his mil itary

education , say ing :“ Make him l ike yourself .

At last i t appeared as if the succession to the

throne were establ ished, and for some years to

come noth ing was said about the House of

Hanover . But though Wil l iam , i n h is cold , dry

way , was kind to his wife’s smal l nephew , the

Princess Anne was not on the best of terms with

the King and Queen . The great King, who was

never popular with his subjects , had no charm of

manner,and no superficial accompl ishments . His

noble character, his dauntless courage , and his

1 6 QUEEN ANNE

profound intel l igence, were the objects of his wife’

s

idolatrous admiration,though asa husband he had

at first given her good reason to be jealous of the

gifted E l izabeth Vi l l iers, a fterwards Countess of

Orkney,cal led by Swift the wisest woman he ever

knew . Anne was qu ite incapable of appreciating

or understanding him . I n her fami l iar correspond

ence with her Mrs . Freeman ” she cal led him“ Cal iban

,a lias the Dutch Monster .

” Mary cou ld

not endure any disrespect shown to Wil l iam , and

her devotion succeeded at last in win n ing h is heart,

so that they became an absolutely un ited couple .

When,i n conversation about her al lowance , Anne

talked of appeal ing to her friends, Mary said tartly,“ Pray, what friends have you but the King and

me ? ” She dis l iked the moody si lence and the

sul len temper of her sister, so different from her

own vivacious gaiety . Anne ’s income was raised,

after some demur, from thirty to fifty thousand

pounds a year, much of which probably went to the

Churchi l ls . But her estrangement from the Court

was increased by the King’s most wise refusal to

employ Prince George in any publ ic s ituation , and

completed on the z l st of January, 1692 , by the

sudden dismissal of Lord Marlborough from al l

the offices he held . For this step on the King’s

part there was ample ground . Marlborough was

in secret and treacherous correspondence with the

POLITICS 1 7

exi le of St . Germains . He was seeking to influence

Engl ish op in ion against the Dutch favourites of

the King , especial ly Bentinck, and he was qu ite

prepared to assist, if it became necessary , for h is

own purposes in the conditional restoration of

J ames . Legal proof against h im may not then have

been forthcoming, and the strongest, though cer

ta inly not the sole, evidence is suppl ied by the post

humous Memoirs of James himself . But Will iam

knew a great deal , if not everyth ing , and Mar l

borough was far too dangerous an enemy to be

treated with i ndulgence, or with contempt . Anne

shared the fate of the Marlboroughs , and left the

Court with them . To live without her precious

Mrs . Freeman was impossible for her . With Mrs .

Freeman she was always happy, and her husband

was always happy with his bottle . So matters

remained unti l Queen Mary died of smal lpox, the

great scourge of the age , on the a8th of December,

1 694 . She was on ly th irty-four, and her death

was quite unexpected . I ndeed, i t had been pretty

general ly assumed that she would survive her hus

band,marry again , and have chi ldren who wou ld

destroy al l chance of Anne’s succession to the

throne . Anne was now by the Bil l of Rights the

heir presumptive . She had a son l iving . The

revival or continuance of the Stuart dynasty might

come through her,“and at al l events, when she

c

1 8 QUEEN ANNE

succeeded to the throne, Marlborough would be the

most powerfu l person in the State . He ceased

to engage in Jacobite plots, and actively sought

through the Princess Anne a reconci l iation with

the Court . Will iam was the most placable of men .

I t was always from pol icy that he acted, being

devo id al ike of cruelty and of fear . After her

sister’s death Anne was again treated with the

ceremon ious honour appropriate to her rank, which

had been , after her“quarrel wi th Mary, withheld

from her, and in 1698 Mar lborough recovered his

posit ion , not because the King had ceased to dis

trust him , but because Will iam’s c lear i ntel lect per

ceived the change in the situation , which destroyed

Marlborough ’s motive for treason .

The l ittle Duke of Gloucester,though he had a

smal l cannon and a tiny regiment of h is own,

was not left exc lus ively to Marlborough . B ishop

Burnet instructed him in history,and was del ighted

with a progress which may have been forced.At

any rate , the chi ld of so many hopes did not enter

his twe lfth year . When he died at the age of

eleven , on the 3oth of July , 1 700, the ultimate

success ion to the Crown was again in jeopardy .

After so many disappointments , bel ief in Anne as

a mother had ceased,and it became necessary that

Parl iament should make provision for the future

of the State . Such was the origin of the famous

POLITICS 1 9

Act of Settlement, which received Wil liam’s assent

on the r ath of J une,

1 70 1 . By this statute the

Crown of E ngland devolved upon Anne after the

death of the King, and, i n the event of her dying

without further issue,upon the E lectress Sophia of

Hanover, granddaughter of James the First . A

few months after the House of Hanover had thus

been i ntroduced into Engl ish history James the

Second died at St . Germains . Before the breath

was out of James ’s body , the French monarch,whose treatment of the royal exile had always been

extremely generous, had, with singular imprudence,

assured the dying man that his son should be

recogn ised as James the Third of England . The

English people were deeply and justly incensed and

alarmed . The Pretender was at once attainted .

Men and money were voted for mil i tary operations

against France . The Abj uration Bi l l , requ iring al l

persons who held any publ ic office to abjure the

pretensions of James Stuart, was hurried through

Parl iament .

Will iam the Thi rd l ived j ust long enough to

give this Act h is sanction . On the 8th of March ,

1 702 , he died of internal inj uries caused by the

stumble of a horse,and Anne became Queen of

E ngland . Marlborough could not have hoped

for a more favourable conjunction of circumstances .

His old master James was no longer al ive toc 2

reproach or i ncriminate h im . The very different

King who had just passed away was almost the

only person he could not begui le or dece ive . The

new Queen was the obedient slave of his wife . The

opening of a great campaign on the Continent of

Europe against the first Cathol ic power of the

world cal led for a Protestant general of mil itary

gen ius, or, i n other words, for the Earl of

Marlborough . His various treacheries were not

known as they are known now . He had had the

good fortune to be once fal sely accused by an

unprinc ip led adventurer, and the victim of a

forgery is always sure of a strong presumption in

favour of his general innocence . Marlborough

entered under the best ausp ices upon the most

glorious phase of h is l ife .

On the a3 rd of Apri l , St . George’

s Day , Anne

was crowned in accordance with the Act of Settle

ment, and the reign of the Churchi l ls began . The

Earl of Marlborough was made a Duke,and

Captain General of her Majesty ’s forces,with an

annual pension of five thousand pounds,settled

upon him for the Queen’s l ife . The Duchess

became Mistress of the Robes . Godolphin,a man

of Marlborough ’s own choic e , received the appoint

ment of Lord Treasurer, to whom the First Lord

of the Treasury is the nearest modern approx ima

tion .

“S idney Godolphin ,

” said Charles the

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22 QUEEN ANNE

Exclusion B ill , and to some extent was st i l l , a man

or woman who bel ieved in divine right . Anne

could scarcely help asking in her heart of hearts

whether this boy of fourteen was not lawful King

of England,Scotland

,and I reland . Probably the

Churchil ls quieted her fears . The Duke and

Duchess were not troubled with many scruples .

But Protestants they were,and they held it a duty

to del iver the country from Papists . They could

easily represent to Anne that if she were to abdicate ,

Parl iament wou ld at once send for the E lectress

Sophia,and that her brother James would not

have the sl ightest chance of taking her p lace . They

could appeal , no doubt they did appeal , to her

love for the Church of England, which was deep

and sincere . But whatever Mrs . Freeman wanted,

Mrs . Morley wou ld readily give her,even to the

half of her kingdom . As Captain General of the

Forces, Marlborough was pre-eminently in h is

right place . Louis was stil l bent upon the r estor a

t ion of a Cathol ic King in England,and the death

of Wil l iam had encouraged his hopes . England

was committed to a great war, and stood in need

of her great General to cope with the Marshals of

France . I n her first Speech to the Privy Counci l,

where her musical voice was much admired,the

Queen announced that the country with its al l ies

would“

oppose the great power of France .” Some

POLITICS 2 3

offence was caused , though it is unl ikely that any

was meant , by her protest on the same occasion

that her heart was entirely Engl ish . This was

thought to be a reflection upon her predecessor ,

whose heart was entirely Dutch,and who had

placed his head alone at the service of his adopted

country . But Anne had a Danish husband , who

spoke the French language,and it is unnecessary

to look for hidden meanings in a phrase of perfectly

natural sentiment . Prince George had been created

Duke of Cumberland, and was entitled to sit in

the House of Lords, where he duly took h is seat .

An annu ity of a hundred thousand a year was

secured to him in case he survived the Queen , who

was ten years younger than himself . Otherwise he

received no increase of dign ity , and continued to be ,

as he always had been , a cipher in publ ic affairs .-“ One good trooper would have been a greater loss ,

”

said King James on hearing that he had been

deserted by Prince George .

!When Marlborough received his Dukedom , he

was fifty-two , and in the ful l enjoyment of al l

his magn ificent powers . I n the summer of 1 702 he

left England to command the all ied forces on the

Continent,and establ ished his head-quarters at

Nim eguen on the Rhine in Hol land . War with

France had been declared in May , and was at

that time popular with both parties i n the State ,

24 Q UEEN ANNE

except with those logical ly consistent Tories who

were also Jacob ites . For , though it carried out

the pol icy of Wil l iam , and was to that extent a

Whig war,it was national because directed against

the French King , who had presumed to dictate

the devolution of the British Crown . Marlborough

had learned the ar t of soldiering under Turenne .

But he was not in the least reluctant to turn against

the French the lessons they had unconsciously

taught h im . The head of the M in istry, Godolphin ,

was at that time a Tory . Marlborough was osten

sibly sometimes a Tory and sometimes a W hig .

In truth and in fact he was ne ither one nor the

other He disl iked party heats,

” and party

government, then in i ts infancy, did not appeal to

his cool , subtle, calcu lating mind .

Unhappily rel igious discord was rife not merely

between Cathol ics and Protestants,but among

Protestants themselves . The toleration of D is

senters, who were Whigs almost to a man,was

thoroughly displeasing to the High Churchmen,

who were without exception Tories . The Queen

sympathised with these H ighflyers, as they were

called, but she was rather embarrassed by the fact

that her own husband was a Lutheran Protestant,

not in communion with the Church of England .

The High Churchmen could not very wel l get at

Prince George . A man of gen ius wasan easier prey .

POLITICS 2 5

Daniel Defoe had not yet become immortal as the

author of Robinson Cr usoe, and he was l ittle known

to fame . Dissenters at that t ime,and for more

than a hundred years afterwards , were incapable

of holding office without taking the sacrament

according to the rites of the Establ ished Church .

I t was even proposed to go further against them ,

and by an Occasional Conformity B il l,that is a

B il l against occasional conformity,to exclude them

from c ivi l employment altogether at the very time

when Lou is the Fourteenth,having crushed Pro

testantism i n France , was seeking to crush it in

Eng land . Defoe, assuming the character of a High

Churchman , grave ly recomme’

n’

ded that Noncon

form ists should be exterminated . This proposal ,

cal led the Shor test W ay with the Dissen ters, is a

masterp iece of savage irony,not unworthy of Swift .

I t did its work too wel l for the author’s own ease

and comfort . Hundreds of readers were taken

in , and supposed that they had before them the

genuine pamph let of a Tory zealot . Those High

Churchmen who understood the stratagem did not

see the joke . They cal led upon the Government

to prosecute the author, and in July 1 703 , seven

months after the publ ication of the tract, Defoe was

sentenced to imprisonment, as wel l as to exposure

on the p il lory . He stood on that bad emin ence in

Cornhi l l,i n Cheapside, and at Temple Bar . The

26 QUEEN ANNE

people did not share the fol ly of their ru lers . They

gathered round him,not to pelt h im , nor abuse h im ,

but to cheer him,and to drink his health . I n

November he was re leased from gaol on the inter

cession of Robert Harley , afterwards Earl of

Oxford,then Speaker of the House of Commons .

Defoe came out of prison to find his bus iness as a

manufacturer ru ined . But H arley appreciated his

l iterary talents,and the value of his services . The

a l l iance between them was for the mutual benefit of

both,and Harley owed more to Defoe than Defoe

owed to Harley . For years after Harley ’s admis

sion to the Cabinet he was a regular spy in the pay

of the Government,although

,as the Portland

Papers show , he often complained to Harley of his

inadequate remuneration .

Defoe regained his l iberty j ust in time to describe,

with his in imitably graph ic power,the storm which

swept over England at the end of November 1 703 ,the most terrible that has visited this island withi n

recorded times . The loss of l ife was considerable.

The loss of property was immense . On the estate

of John Evelyn , the Diarist, two thousand trees

were destroyed . Ships were sunk by the score.

London and Bristol looked as if they had been

taken by storm . The Palace at Wells col lapsed,

and crushed the B ishop , Dr . Kidde r, who had

succeeded the saintly non-juror Ken . Parl iament

POLITICS 2 7

voted an Address to the Crown , and a general fast

was ordered by the Queen . There were as many

people in mourn ing as i f a great battle had been

fought . The House of Commons intervened,not

merely on general grounds of sympathy with the

publ ic distress , but also because so many of her

Majesty’s sh ips had been ru ined that it became

necessary to make better provision for maintain ing

the strength of the fleet .

The last Parl iament of Wil l iam the Third left

to the fi rst Parl iament of Anne the legacy of a

constitutional struggle between the two Houses ,

which arose out of the celebrated Aylesbury case ,

known to lawyers as Ashby White . Aylesbury

was one of the boroughs which enjoyed the widest

possible suffrage for men long before the days of

Parl iamentary reform . The House of Commons ,

which at that time,and for more than a hundred

and fifty years afterwards,claimed to be the sole

authority in determin ing the legal right to vote,

had declared the franchise of Aylesbury to be vested

in al l adult male inhabitants not maintained by

parochial rel ief . A poor ostler named Ashby , then!j ust above the l ine

,though he soon sank be low it,

tendered his vote to White , the Constable acting on

behalf of the Sheriff, which White refused to accept .

That White broke the law was clear . The question

was what remedy belonged to the disfranch ised

2 8 QUEEN ANNE

Ashby . Having put h imself, it may be presumed ,

i n the hands of some local attorney , Ashby brought

an action against White at the Aylesbury Assizes ,

and recovered fiv e pounds by way of damages . This

simple proceeding on his part , or on the part of

his backers , shook the fabric of the Constitution .

His antagonist White , the defendant in the cause ,

appl ied to the Court of Queen ’s Bench for an order

to set as ide the verdict as bad in law upon the

admitted facts . The Lord Chief Justice of that

Court in those days was a‘ very great and famous

personage , Sir John Holt . Ho lt ranks among the

sages of the law , and is honoured for having taken

a leading part i n ra is ing the judicial bench from

the discredit into which i t had fal len before the

Revolut ion . But on th is occasion he was outvoted

by h is co l leagues , and the Court dec ided against

h is opinion by three to one that Ashby had suffered

no tort, no actionab le wrong , for the reason , among

others , that the candidates of h is choice had both

been e lected . From this j udgment the poor ostler,

through his attorney , or the attorney through h is

poor ostler , appealed to the House of Lords .The

Lords, not the Law Lords , but the whole House ,reversed it , and then the trouble began .

For the

peers had presumed to meddle with an election to

the House of Commons . By this time Wi l l iam the

Third had died, Anne was on the throne , another

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3a QUEEN ANNE

if the Queen had‘ not interrupted it by the simple

process of prorogu ing Parl iament . This sens ib le

course , for which Godolphin was responsible , put

an end to the matter,and it was never revived .

Historians,too contemptuous

,and perhaps some

times too ignorant , of the law, have represented the

Lords as vindicators of electoral right . But to

argue thus is to miss the true point,which was

not the wrong , but the remedy . I f Ashby had

petitioned the House of Commons , the decision of

the Constable would have been set aside , and the

vote would have been al lowed . The suffrage was

not given him as a material possession on which

he could set a pecun iary value,but as a pol itical

privi lege to be used for publ ic pu rposes alone . No

legal tribunal ‘had any right to a voice in the

question , which was exclusively for the House of

Commons . It is on ly by statutes passed long after

Anne ’s reign that the j udges have acquired rights

which Holt most proper ly disclaimed .

I n 1 705 another great constitutiona l change was

made , and made, as al l such changes should be ,by Act of Parl iament . During Wil l iam the Third’s

reign there had been unsuccessfu l attempts to ex

olude al l p lacemen from the House of Commons.

I f these efforts had succeeded , the House of Com

mons would have been deprived of active partic ipa

tion in the government of the country,and would

have lost control over the M in isters of the Crown.

POLITICS 3:

Such a disab i l ity was long afterwards inser ted in

the Const itut ion of the United States by the

pol i tical phi losophers who drew up that famous

i nstrument, and the result has been to make the

American Cabinet l ittle more than clerks under

the orders of the President . The statute of Anne,

which, though modified, has never been repealed,

enacts that no one holding an office of profit under

the Crown which was not in existence on the 25th

of October, 1 705 , shal l s it i n the House of Commons, and that the acceptance by a Member of that

House of an office which did then exist shal l vacate

h is seat, though he may be re-elected . I f h is office

has been created since that day, he is disqual ified

for election , unless of course he be expressly

qual ified by the Act which establ ishes the post, or

by some later statute . The broad resul t of this

legislation , and the ru les framed in accordance with

i t for the discipl ine of the publ ic service, is that

pol i tical offi cers may, and practical ly must, s it in

the Legislature, while permanent members of the

Civi l Service are excluded from Parl iament alto

gether . From 1 705 to 1 867 every member of Par

liam ent who accepted an offi ce of profi t under the

Crown vacated his seat, and submitted himself, if

e l igible,for t e-e lection , even though he

'

passed in

due course from the Sol icitor to the Attorney

Generalsh ip . I n 1 867 it was provided that trans

ference from one office to another should not create

32 QUEEN ANNE

a vacancy . By this rough and ready method,

i l logical,i nartistic

,and practical ly sound, two great

and paramount objects a re achieved . I n the first

place the Cabinet, the govern ing body of the

Empire,is entirely composed from the two Houses

of Parl iament,and constantly associated with them .

I n the second place, the Civi l Service, upon which

M in isters of al l parties al ike depend, is kept free

from controversial strife , and is confined to the sole

business of efficient admin istration .

The Queen , who bel ieved in divine right, took

l ittle interest in constitutional questions, except so

far as they affected the Church of England . To

that Church she gave in commemoration of her

thirty-ninth birthday,which fel l upon the 6th of

February, 1 704, a splendid present, ever s ince

called by her name, and known as Queen Anne’s

Bounty . The First Fru its and Tenths,being a

charge upon land, original ly levied for eccles iastical

purposes, had been diverted from the Roman to

the Engl ish Court by Henry the E ighth . Charles

the Second could find no better use for them than

to make provis ion for his favourites and the ir

chi ldren . Bishop Burnet, a staunch Churchman ,though a friend of Dissenters, and a ferven t Whig,had tried hard in the previous reign to procure th is

fund for the smal l beneficesof the Church . Where

he had fai led with Will iam he succeeded with

POLITICS 33

Anne The assent of Parl iament was obtained,

and the statutes of mortmain were so far repealed ,that bequests to the particular corporation which

had charge of th is fund became by statute legal .

Two ci rcumstances , however, postponed and ham

pered the beneficial operation of Queen Anne ’s

Bounty . The charges upon it were not cleared off

unti l the Queen and Burnet were both in their

graves . But long after that date , 1 7 1 5 , long after

181 5 , the other and more serious h indrance con

tinued to Operate . The amount of a benefice was

no gu ide to the means of the incumbent . For he

might, and often did, hold other preferments besides ,

putting in curates to do the work for which he

rece ived the st ipend . To reform the Church of

England in 1 704 , or in 1 804 , wou ld have been con

sider ed sacri legious . The Estab l ishment was stil l

the rich man ’s Church, and i t was not the poorest

parsons who,before the year 1 838, derived most

benefit from the bounty of Queen Anne .

Lord Godolph in , though not a free trader in

the mode rn and scientific sense of the term , was

too good a man of business to neglect the vast

importance of i nternational trade . By the Methuen

Treaty with Portugal,s igned at Lisbon in Decem

ber 1 703 , and called after the Brit ish M in ister

accredited to the Portugue se Court , the woollen

manufactures of E ngland were admitted in to KingD

34 QUEEN ANNE

Pedro’s domin ions , and the British Government

on the other hand agreed that the duty on Portu

guese wine should always be less by one-th ird than

the duty on the wine of France . Accustomed as

we are to see such taxes regulated not by place of

origin,but by degree of alcohol ic strength, we may

feel surprised at a measure so l ittle l ikely to pro

mote the cause of temperance as the encouragement

of port at the expense of claret . I t appears, how

ever, that burgundy , rather than bordeaux, was

the favourite drink with the wealthier classes at

the beginn ing of the eighteenth century and there

is more gout in burgundy than there is in port . I f

we turn to the opposite side of th e treaty, the

extension of the wool len trade,i t may be said

with fairness of this commercial i nstrument,which

dimin ished taxation and opened markets,that E ng

land gave noth ing which was not for her adv an

tage, and yet rece ived a premium for what she gave .

The effect upon the habits of Engl ishmen was not

immed iate ; and Will iam Murray, Lord Mansfield ,born in 1 705 ,

“ drank champagne,

” sweet cham

pagne,“ with the wits , including Pope . But the

supremacy of port, which may be said to have

culm inated with the younger Pitt, to whom it was

first medicine and then poison , had its origin i n

the Methuen Treaty of 1 703 .

At the time , however, the pol itical rather than

POLITICS 35

the commercial aspect of the treaty engrossed

publ ic attention . The War of the Span ish Suc

cession had already begun . Louis the Fourteenth

had put forward as his candidate for the throne of

Spain his own grandson , Phil ip , Duke of Anjou ,second son of the Dauphin . Portugal favoured the

claims of the Austrian Archduke Charles,which

were adopted by th is country to preserve the

balance of power from the overween ing ambition

of the French King . England,freedom ,

and Pro

testantism , which are almost convertible terms,never had, not even in Napoleon , a more danger

ous enemy than the vain and cruel bigot who then

governed France . By revoking the Edict of

Nantes Louis and Madame de Maintenon had

made war upon the Protestant faith . By acknow

ledg1ng the Pretender as King of England the

King of France made war upon the Engl ish people .

By assuming to treat the throne of Spain as an

appanage of the House of Bourbon , he claimed

un iversal domin ion in Europe . The death of

Will iam the Thi rd had removed from his path the

statesman best qual ified to baffle French diplomacy .

Now the appeal was to arms, and there stepped

forward as the Engl ish champion , in the hour of

need,a figure of surpassing splendour . Enough

has been said to show that the character of John

Churchi l l,Duke of Marlborough , was neither pure

D 2

36 QUEEN ANNE

nor high . He was not truthfu l . He was not

straightforward . He was not honest . I n his love

of money,and his capacity for hoarding i t, he

rival led those wretched misers who have done no

more than contemplate thei r gains . And yet, such

are the strange freaks in which nature indulges ,

th is mean and selfish i ntriguer was endowed with

perfect courage , with an i rres istib le charm of

manner,with a temper which even h is wife fai led

to disturb , with a brain that no sophistry could

obscure,and with a mil itary gen ius before which

criticism is humbly si lent . Lord Chesterfield,

whose taste has become proverbial , and whose intel

lect was far stronger than those who know him

only through his letters would suppose,pronounced

that the graces were absorbed by the Duke of Marl

borough . As fearless as Wil l iam of Orange,and

not less able, he succeeded where. the King fai led ,and failed where the King succeeded . No one ever

doubted Wil l iam ’s word . The keenest J acobites

acknowledged in their candid moments that he was

a just and mercifu l man . Moral confidence was a

feel ing which Marlborough never , except in battle ,insp ired . He was treacherous even for a treacher

ous age . Wholly devoid of cruel ty , and by nature

humane , he is said never to have sacrificed an um

necessary l ife . But he used h is fe l low-creatures for

his own purposes, and when he had no further use

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38 QUEEN ANNE

E lector of Bavaria , faithless to the cause of the

Empire , was ready to help them . With the E lector

was Marshal Marsin . Marshal Tal lard entered the

Black Forest in May to reinforce them both . Marl

borough made up his mind that the French shou ld

never reach V ienna . After much tiresome negotia

t ion with the States General of Hol land, in wh ich

his tact and dexterity prevai led over Dutch jealousy

and weakness , he left the Hague for Cob lentz on

the sth of May . From Coblentz he marched to

Mayence , and then , after crossing the Neckar,he

met at Mindelheim Prince E ugene,a Savoyard

born in Paris , and now in command of the Austrian

armies . A lthough his name has been ecl ipsed by

Marlborough ’s , Eugene was a great general , and

took his share in the mighty victories by which the

pride of Lou is was humbled to the dust . Entire

friendsh ip and concord were always maintained

between these i l lustrious commanders . With them

was joined on th is occasion,a man much inferior

to e ither, Prince Louis of Baden , who would not

acquiesce in Marlborough ’s supremacy,and cou ld

not be restrained from taking part in the Bavarian

campaign . Whi le Prince Eugene moved to defend

Baden against Tallard , Marlborough , accompan ied

against h is wil l by Lou is , crossed the A lps at

Gieslingen , and proceeded by U lm to Donauwerth,

where there was a bridge across the Danube . To

POLITICS 39

occupy Donauwerth , however , i t was necessary that

he should first take possession of the Schel lenberg,

a hi l l which rose gradual ly,and overhung the

town . By an absurd arrangement,which the great

general accepted because it was inevitable,Marl

borough and Prince Lou is commanded on alternate

days . The second of July was Marlborough ’s day,

and he directed that the Schel lenberg should be

stormed . His orders were carried out by the Eng

l ish foot after two unsuccessfu l efforts,with the

assistance of their German al l ies,and the Bavarians

fled in confusion , leaving sixteen pieces of artil lery

behind them . . The Engl ish losses were heavy .

But Marlborough ’s object had been accompl ished .

I nstead of marching triumphantly on Vienna, as

he otherwise wou ld have done , the E lector of

Bavaria was compel led to fal l back upon Augs

burg . Marlborough establ ished himself ar Donau

werth,and Bavaria lay at h is disposal . He offered

terms to the E lector, and it was not unti l they were

refused that he orde red the country round Mun ich

to be laid waste . He was by nature mi ld and

placable . He did nothing contrary to the laws of

war as then understood . He was simply bent upon

bringing the campaign to a successful issue in the

shortest possible tim e .

On the 3 rd of August, a month after the seizure

of Donauwerth,and the invasion of Bavaria, the

40 QUEEN ANNE

French Marshal Tal lard,having made h is way

through the Black Forest with twenty-fiv e thou

sand men,was able to reinforce the Elector at

Augsburg . At the same time , Prince Eugene with

e ighteen thousand men reached Hochstadt on the

Danube,a few mi les above Donauwerth , and a

week later he was joined by Mar lborough . After

an anxious consultation , and a careful reconnais

sance,Marlborough and Eugene decided that on

the 1 3 th of August they would attack the French

and Bavarians under Tal lard and the Elector .

The respective numbers of the opposing forces

showed no very marked disparity,though the

advantage was on the side of the French . But

Eugene,to say nothing of Marlborough , was far

superior in strategic capacity to any commander

on the other side . The French , however, had more

cannon than their opponents . They were encamped

on the left bank of the Danube , at that po int three

hundred feet broad , and too deep for an army to

cross . Tallard with h is best infantry occupied the

vi l lage of B l indheim on the same bank , henceforth

known to Engl ishmen always as Blenheim,close to

the spot where a l itt le stream called the Nebel flows

into the Danube . On the morn ing of the 13th of

August, 1 704 , Marlborough with the greater part

of the A l l ied Force confronted Tal lard,whi le

Eugene with a much smal ler force was opposed to

POLITICS 4 1

the E lector, and to Marsin . The Battle of Blen

heim began at noon by a dashing charge upon

the French which was led by Lord Cutts,Sala

mander ” Cutts , so named from his disregard of

fire . But it was Marlborough himself who con

ducted the battle . He seemed to be everywhere .

He commanded the caval ry i n person , and it was

a charge of caval ry which final ly determined the

fortune of the day . The fascination of his eager

alacrity , and his intrep id ca lm , as he“ taught the

doubtful battle where to rage ,” breathed his own

spir it into h is men , and did far more than make up

for the sl ight numerical inferiority of the Al l ies .

At five in the afternoon a genera l charge , led by

Marlborough h imself , and at first repulsed , broke

up the French troops , led by Tal lard , and drove

them into the Danube,where thousands of them

were drowned . Tallard h imself was taken prisoner .“M . Tallard and two other Generals are in my

coach,wrote Marlborough to the Duchess,

“ and I

am fol lowing the rest At Blenheim itself , eleven

thousand of the best troops i n France were forced

to an unconditional surrender, and this fact made

an ineffaceable impression upon the Continent . On

the 1 4th of August , Marlborough and Eugene

entered Hochstadt together, joint champions of the

l ibert ies of Europe . They had fourteen th ousand

prisoners,of whom three thousand took service with

42 QUEEN ANNE

the All ies . Of sixty thousand Frenchmen who went

into the batt le , not more than forty thousand came

out from it free and unscathed . The losses of the

A l l ies were comparative ly smal l , and Eugene’s

force suffered far more severely than Marl

borough ’s . Among those who distingu ished them

se lves ou the losing side a consp icuous place was

won by the I rish B rigade , who fought against the

country they detested , for the rel igion they loved .

In the same year , and the same month , which

Blenheim has immortal ized , Sir George Rooke ,assisted by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt

,cap

tur ed Gibral tar from Phil ip of Spain . Human

beings are not prophets , and l ittle was though t of

this conquest at the ‘

tim e . Its pecul iar importance

is due to Rooke . The German Prince,who aecom

panied him ,was for ho isting the imperial flag .

But Rooke, as an Engl ish Admiral , objected to so

m isleading a performance . England was the mis

tress of the seas ; England had taken the Span ish

fortress which commands entrance to the Mediter

r anean, and he promptly raised the Engl ish flag

over the Rock , where it has ever since remained .

The se izure of G ibraltar was probably with in the

vast designs of Marlborough , whose p lans were as

wide as they were deep . But , for the moment, the

stupendous victory of B lenheim diverted attention

from Spain and the Mediterranean . The Queen

POLITICS 43

was seated with the Duchess in the turret-chamber

of E l izabeth ’s l ibrary at Windsor,when the famous

note was brought to them,which Marlborough had

scribbled from the field of battle in penci l to his

wife . Below her lay the Thames,and the vil lage

of Eton , and the chapel of Hen ry the S ixth , and the

tableland of Buckinghamshire , rol l ing up to the

hil ls of Dropmore . Although modern trees , and

sti l l more modern bu ildings,have changed the face

of the landscape , to imagine it as it was is not diffi

cult,and on the wal l there hangs a facsim ile of the

letter, surmoii nted by a portrait of the officer who

conveyed the news . Mrs . Morley and Mrs . Free

man had al ready been drawn together by the ties of

a common affl ict ion , for the Duchess’s only son ,

Lord B landford,had died at Cambridge in 1 703 ,

three years after the Duke of Gloucester . They

were now un ited in a common triumph , which was

also a triumph for the nation , and for the l iberties

of Europe . Had it not been for B lenheim , and for

Marlborough,the beautifu l Engl ish country upon

which the Queen looked that day m ight have been

restored to Cathol ic domination , might even have

become a province of France .

Louis the Fourteenth never quite recovered from

the effects of B lenheim . Marlborough did what

Wi l l iam of Orange tried to do against superior

generals to Tal lard and Marsin . He humb led to

44 QUEEN ANNE

the dust the pride of France . He raised to a higher

pitch than had ever been known before the martial

glory of England . Strange character that he was ,

and fu l l of mystery, he spent the n ight before

Blenheim in prayer , and in receiving the sacrament

with the rites of the Engl ish Church . Yet no one

trusted him,and he did not deserve to be trusted .

Men are the creatures of their age, and breathe

fashionable views with the air in which they l ive .

Marlborough ’s faults were, in k ind, i f not in degree ,

too common to be shocking . But they account for

what has been too hast i ly stigmatized as the ingra

titude of the Engl ish peop le towards him . Even

on the morrow of Blenheim , when popular rejoicing

at home was apparently un iversal and enthusiastic,

the voice of the grumbler was heard . At that

period Marlborough , whosepol itica l principles were

vague and indefin ite , was classed with the Whigs .

I t was a Whig war, and the Tories attacked it .

What,they asked

,was the use of kil l ing French

men The French King could wel l spare as many

more . What was the Holy Roman Empire to us

that we should fight for it ? An echo of such ques

tions may be heard in Southey’s poem about old

Kaspar , s itting at his cottage door . The Empire ,

which Marlborough saved from premature ex

tinction,was useful as a counterpoise to France

,

and French supremacy in Europe would have

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46 QUEEN ANNE

Houses of Parl iament, but often sat together in the

same Cabinet . Godolphin passed for a Tory . I n

1 704 he had taken into his government Robert

Harley,a Tory of the moderate type

,who actual ly

became Secretary of State without at once ceas ing

to be Speaker, and Henry St . John as Secretary

at War . Yet before the dissolution he made over

tures to the Whig Junto, of whom Somers was the

most eminent, and afterwards he gave the Great

Seal to Will iam Cowper, a Whig of the purest

water . I n this year, 1 705 , Har ley surrendered the

Speakership,remain ing Secretary of State for the

Northern Department, which included foreign

affairs . Har ley had the singular fortune to be in

tim ately connected with men of gen ius, who made

his name immortal . He had no shin ing talents ,and his character , though for the age respectable ,

was of the ordinary kind . Yet Pope has devoted

to him some of the noblest l ines in the language,and the Journal to Stel la proves that Swift was as

fond of h im as he could be of any man . He was

indeed the Maecenas of his age, a genuine lover of

l iterature, an assiduous col lector of manuscripts ,and a m unificent patron of letters . He was also a

sound admin istrator , without the financial capaci ty

of Godolphin , but wel l versed in the practice of

Parl iament and of the publ ic offices , an unrival led

authority on the business and procedure of the

POLITICS 47

House of Commons . He had been brought up in

a Whig family, and in the principles of the Revola

tion , so that he was never able to share, though he

sometimes found i t conven ient to simulate,the zeal

aga i nst Nonconformists which an imated the Tories

of his time . What really un ited him with them,

and made him the ir ocasional leader,was his

disl ike of E uropean intervention , his distrust of

Wil l iam ’s anti-Gall ican po l icy, his den ial that i t

was England ’s duty to maintain the balance of

power,and his bel ief in peace at almost any price .

I t was the war, and the war alone, which separated

him from the Whigs ; and , though he held office

when Marlborough won the battl e of Blenheim, few

Engl ishmen can have rejoiced in the victory less

than he did . Harley loved wine, and shared the

convivial hab its of Queen Anne ’s reign . But, l ike

Swift, he valued h is b il l of company more than his

bi l l of fare,and he addicted himself to the society

of h is in tel lectual superiors without a particle of

jealousy or of ostentation . Harley ’s col league St .

John was an almost complete antithesis to him .

A born scholar,orator, and man of letters , the

master of a bri l l iant and powerful , if somewhat

too artificial style,St . John dazzled and charmed

his readers and his hearers into thinking him a

statesman of importance and weight . Although

his oratory has whol ly perished, the enthusiast ic

48 QUEEN ANNE

admiration of h is con temporaries must be accepted

as conclusive testimony to its merits . His writings,

though Burke declared that no man then read them ,

and that no man had ever read them through , have

been extol led by many later critics, for instance

Matthew Arnold and Lord Stanhope , as models of

lucid and idiomatic Engl ish . But he added nothi ng

in his long l ife to the strength , the welfare , or the

prosperity of his country , because his character had

no foundation . A free thinker and a loose l iver , he

was a Jacobite in the service of a Par l iamentary

Sovereign , and he would if he could , have sub

stituted the persona l ru le of a popular monarch for

the ordered freedom of the revolutionary settlement .

The best of boon compan ions , he was the most

unpr inc ipled of pol i ticians, and , i n the Op in ion of

his own father, the chief question raised at the

outset of his career was , whether he would be

hanged or,

beheaded .

Few contrasts in history are more striking than

the association of Queen Anne with the scholars and

statesmen of her court and cab inet . A narrow

minded and i ll iterate woman , devoted to her

favourite Duchess , who had no more learn ing than

herself , and in a femin ine way to the pleasures of

the table , she never seemed to real ize the fact that

her reign was made i l l ustrious by the verse of Pope,

and the prose of Swift, as well as by the finance of

Godolphin , and the arms of Marlborough . She

POLITICS 49

visited in due course the ancient Univers ities,

‘and

in Apri l 1 705 , she had the honour of kn ighting

Isaac Newton at Cambridge . But the last of the

Stuarts differed from the last of the Tudors,and

from the rest of her own race , in no respect more

strongly than in her blank indifference to the things

of the m ind . Anne was not without taste for

pleasure , or enjoyment of l ife . Although she did

not care for l iterature , she loved music , and was so

fond of driving , and of sport , that Swift , when he

came to Windsor, called her a Jeh u and a N imrod .

I t was her vanity to think that she ruled as wel l as

reigned . But no publ ic act made her so popular as

her reviva l of the superst itious practice,discon

tinued by Will iam , and known as“ touching for the

K i ng’s evi l .” The King ’s evi l was scrofula , and

one of the chi ldren whom she fruitlessly touched

was Samuel Johnson .

On the last day of March 1 705 Marlborough left

England , sail ing from Harwich for the Hague .

His main object was a renewal of mil itaryr opera

tions,then always suspended from the autumn to

the spring . But so much hampered was he by the

reluctance of the States General , and so much

irritated by the Tory attacks upon him at home ,

that he wrote to Godolphin in June expressing

wea riness of h is l ife . The Empire was no better

than the Republ ic . The death of the Emperor

Leopold in May,and the succession of the Emperor

50 QUEEN ANNE

Joseph,King of the Romans, produced no improve

ment . Prince Eugene, upon whom alone Marl

borough could rely, was sent to I taly , and with

Prince Lou is of Baden he could do noth ing at al l .

While he was chafing and fuming with an im pati

ence he rarely displayed , a gl ittering adventurer ,

who does not deserve to be named in connection

with him,achieved in Spain the one real success

of h is l ife . Char les Mordaunt, thi rd Earl of Peter

borough,had been despatched by Marlborough

himself to the Pen insu la W ith an auxi l iary force,

Dutch and Engl ish,of seven thousand men . Sir

C loudesley Shovel joined him at Gibraltar as

Admiral of the Fleet . Before reaching Gibraltar ,

however, Peterborough took up the Archduke

Charles , the candidate of the Al l ies for the throne

of Spain , who had not yet been able to set foot

in the domin ions he claimed . They landed in

Valencia, where Charles was received with enthu

siasm , and Peterborough proposed an immediate

advance upon Madrid . I n this, however, he was

overruled by a counci l of war , and the expedi tion

next sai led to Barcelona . A long and wearisom'

e

siege fol lowed . By the middle of September 1 705 ,the fail ure of the enterprise seemed so certain

,that

the inhabitants of the town celebrated by publ ic

rejoicings the inevitable departure of the heretics .

At this moment the desultory mind of Peterborough

POLITICS 5 1

hit for once upon a practical expedient . On the

side of Barcelona which is away from the sea rises

the hi l l of Montjuich , with a castle and a garrisonat the top . The garr ison , bel ieving their position

to be impregnable, expected no attack . For that

very reason Peterborough led a small force up the

hi l l at midn ight, su rprised the Span ish troops,sca led the heights, and took the citadel . General

Stanhope , fol lowing with a reserve, supported his

chief , and the vantage-ground was secured . With

in a month Barcelona had fal len,and Charles had

at least secured a footing in the kingdom of Spain .

Peterborough became a popu lar hero . Swift wrote

“Mordanto fills the t rum p of fame,The Chr istian wor lds h is deeds proclaim ,

And pr ints are crowded with h is name.

”

His daredevi l recklessness, and the profus ion with

which he squandered any money he had, compared

favourab ly with the rapacious meanness of Marl

borough . It is related of him that he was once

mistaken for the Duke, and mobbed as he came from

the House of Lords . “ Gentlemen ,” said he,

“ I wi l l

give you two proofs that I am not the Duke of Marl

borough . I n the first place I have only five gui neas

in my pocket . I n the second place they are very

much at your service .’ Yet Peterborough scarcely

belongs to history . He had no principles, no char

acter, no fixed resolutions of any kind . He was inE z

5 2 QUEEN ANNE

truth more than half mad , and he flashes but for an

instant across the world ’s horizon . I t wil l not be

necessary to mention him any more .

The sleepless gen ius of Marlborough , unhasting ,

unresting , had devised for the vear 1 706 a new plan

of campaign . He wou ld march with an a l l ied force

on I taly,and join Prince Eugene . So earnest ,

however, were the remonstrances of the Dutch , who

feared a French invasion if he left them,that he ‘

changed his plans , and entered Flanders in May .

On the 23 rd of the month , he and General Cadogan ,

almost h is on ly real friend , with about sixty thou

sand men , Engl ish and Dutch , met Marsha l V il

leroy , with rather superior num bers , at the vi l lage

of Ram i l l ies on the Litt le Gheet . There was fought

the second of Mar lborough ’s great victories, equal ly

decis ive with Blenheim , though much less sanguin

ary and protracted . Marlborough was associated

with the Dutch Marshal Over kir k , and Vi l leroy

with the luckless Max imi l ian , E lector of Bavaria .

The French and Bavarians lost fifteen thousand

men , the Al l ies not above a fourth part of that

number . Brussels was evacuated by the French

troops , and Marlborough entered it in triumph .

Ghent , Bruges , and Oudenarde l ikewise surren

dered; The French garrison of Antwerp marched

out with the honours of war .

At Ramill ies Marlborough had the narrowest

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54 QUEEN ANNE

ledge Charles as lawful King of Spain , and Anne

as lawful Queen of England , if Naples , Sicily , and

M i lan were ceded to his grandson , Phil ip of Anjou .

With this offer Marlborough and the Eng l ish

Government m ight we l l have c losed . I f i t did not

g ive Eng land al l that she wanted , it was an outward

and visib le s ign that France no longer dominated

Europe . I t amounted to a formal confession of

defeat from the haughtiest despot that had ever

threatened the independence of this country . But

Marlborough ’s ambition was insat iable , and his

trade was war . He used his unrival led influence ,

the influence of a man who has conquered appar

ently invincible foes , to such purpose , both with

Godolphin in London , and with Pensionary

Heinsius at the Hague , that he was authorized to

cont inue the campaign . The Dutch were bound to

him by the strongest ties of gratitude . He had the

ear of his own Sovere ign , not because he was the

greatest commander since J ul ius Caesar,but because

he was the husband of Sarah Jenn ings . When he

returned home at the end of 1 706 , equal ly triumph

ant in counse l and in war , his Dukedom was em

tai led upon his daughters and thei r sons,his own

son , the Marquess of B landford , having died in

early manhood ; and his son-ih - law,the Earl of

Sunderland , founder of the splendid l ibrary atA l thorp, was made a Secretary of State,

POLITICS 5 5

I n 1 706 was prepared, and in 1 707 was consum

mated , the Un ion between England and Scot land .

Since the accession of James the First,which intro

duced the Stuarts to England,the two countries

had been un ited , except during the Commonwealth ,by the golden l ink of the Crown alone . Want of a

closer t ie , which Cromwel l had temporarily formed ,led to much inconven ience , especial ly in matters of

trade , which requ ired custom-houses on the frontier

for its regu lation , and pr ovoked smuggl ing , as the

protective duties then un iversal a lways do . The

Scottish people , moreover , were demanding the

same commerc ial privi leges as England enjoyed ,

abroad as wel l as at home , and one risk in refusing

the demand was that Scotland might form an

all iance with France . The pol icy of a Par l iamentary

un ion was not new . Although Cromwel l ’s Union

was disso lved at the Restoration , Will iam made

several attempts to restore it, and Anne herself , as

we know,and other authorit ies , from Clerk of

Pen icu ik,had it much at heart . Defoe , who spent

a great deal of time at Edinburgh , kept Harley con

stantly i nformed of Scottish opin ion , and impressed

upon him that the alternative was un ion or war . I t

must be remembered that England was at war

al ready . If peace had been made after Ramill ies ,

the Treaty of Un ion would have been less urgent ,

though equal ly essential . But. the Government had

56 QUEEN ANNE

yielded to Marlborough ’s opin ion that the struggle

for Continental supremacy should go on . I f Scot

land had taken the side of France , the difficulties

would have been mu lt ip l ied , and the resu l t uncer

tain . I reland was already hosti le , being predom in

antly Catho l ic , and mainly disaffected . To make

the interests of England the i nterests of Scotland

too was the part of wise and prudent statesmanship ,

of just and considerate foresight . Anne ’s genuine

zeal for the un ion was , from a personal point of

view , the most creditable i ncident of her reign , as

it was pol itical ly the most lasting and successful .

Before Wi l l iam d ied the commercial s ituat ion h ad

become almost intolerable . The wool len manu

factures of England had been excluded from the

northern kingdom , in revenge for the King’s re

fusal to he lp the Scottish co lon ists of Darien, dupes

ofWill iam Paterson ’s madcap scheme , and of their

own insane credu l ity , against the Span ish troops

who expel led them . On the 16th of Apri l,1 706 ,

Engl ish and Scottish Commissioners met i n the

Cockpit at Whitehal l . There were sixty-two of

them , thi rty-one upon each side , whose signatures

may be read in the Scottish copy of the Treaty kept

at Windsor , where Anne is described as Queen of

Scotland , England , France , and I reland . But a

single man took the lead , and kept it . Lord Somers

was head and shoulders above h is col leagues . He

saw that i f equal privi leges of commerce between

POLITICS 57

London and Edinburgh were the chief inducement

which Scotland had for engaging in the Treaty of

Un ion , Engl ish interests were principal ly concerned

in preventing the use of the northern kingdom ,

espec ial ly the Highlands , as a nucleus of Jacobite

plots . Very few days sufficed for setting the pre

l iminary propositions to be laid before Parl iament

in due course . Lord Chancel lor Cowper formal ly

moved, and Lord Seafield, Chancel lor of Scotland,

seconded, that the two countries should be united in

one kingdom , cal led Great Britain ; that there

should be one Brit ish Parl iament , and one only ;

and that the succession to the British , not merely

the Eng l ish , Crown should be regulated by the Act

of Settlement . A single system of taxation , the

natural consequence of po l it ica l un ion , i ncreased

the amount h itherto paid by the Scottish people ;but by way of set off, a gr ant of four hundred thou

sand pounds,known as the Equ ivalent , wasmade to

Scotland from the Engl ish exchequer for the en

couragem ent of manufactures, and in partial com

pensation for the loss of Darien . When this

financial detai l had been arranged, the rest of the

business went smoothly enough . The separate

Chancel lorship of Scotland was abol ished , and one

Great Seal for both countries was ordered to be

struck . But the Lord Chancel lor acquired no legal

jurisdict ion in Scotland,except as a Peer of

Parl iament when appeals came to the House of

58 QUEEN ANNE

Lords . The Court of Session remained intact , and

continued to adm in ister the Scott ish system of law ,

founded on the Roman , total ly different from the

Engl ish . That the Episcopal Church of England ,

and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland , should

be alone recognized by the State was taken as a

fundamenta l article , wh ich the Commissioners were

precluded by the terms of their appointment from

even discussing . The Stuarts had had enough of

trying to force episcopacy upon the Covenanters

north of the Tweed The number of Scottish

members in the British House of Commons was

fixed at forty-fiv e, and the number of Scottish

Representative Peers to sit i n the House of Lords

at sixteen . I t was inferred from this provision that

no Peers of Scot land were henceforth to be , nor

have they since been , created . No Scottish Peer

could sit , or has ever sat , i n the British House of

Commons . The House of Lords passed a Resolu

tion which was observed , and not rescinded , ti l l

1 784 , that no Peer of Scotland could be made a

Peer of Great Britain . This Treaty was submitted

fi rst to the Scottish , and afterwards to the E ngl ish ,Parl iament . I n Scotland the un ion was opposed by

the j acobites , who judged qu ite correct ly that it had

been aimed as a b low at their cause,and by the

H igh-flying Preachers , especial ly the Cameron ians ,who considered that to have anyth ing in common

POLITICS 59

with Prelatists was/

an abominable sin . I n the citv

of Edinburgh the merchants apprehended some loss

of custom from the removal of Parl iament men to

London , and throughout the country there were

those whose national pride represented to them that

un ion would mean absorption in England . Their

feel ings were fantastical ly , but vigorously , ex

pressed by Lord Belhaven . The Ratification of the

Union was not final ly carried in Edinburgh ti l l the

16th of January , 1 707 , after it had been determined

that the representative Peers of Scotland shou ld be

chosen by the whole of the Scottish Peerage for the

term of a single Parl iament,then three years .

“ There , said Lord Seafield, i n a p icturesque and

memorable phrase , there is the end of an old

song .

” At Westminster , the Act of Un ion passed9 ,with great rapidity ,

“ post haste , as some indignant Tories exclaimed . But Harley and St . John

contro l led the moderate men,while the extreme

Jacobites were not numerous enough to cause

much delay . High Churchm en , incl ined to protest

against the formal recogn it ion of Presbyterian ism ,

were qu ieted with the assurance , such as it was ,

that an Episcopal Church of England was equal ly

part of the Constitution . The injustice of forcing

an al ien Church upon the people of I reland does

not seem to have struck any one at that time , nor

indeed would it have been possible to recogn ize the

60 QUEEN ANNE

rel igion of the Pretender . Catho l ic emancipation ,

either in Great Britain or in I reland , would have

been difficult,if not impossible , whi le the Jacob ites

were strong and dangerous . On the 6th of March ,

1 707 , Queen Anne gave her assent to the Act of

Un ion , which came into operation upon the Ist of

May , and thus the last of the Stuarts un ited the

Legislatures , as the first of the Stuarts had un ited

the Crowns .

Early in the year 1 707 the hopes of the French

King were revived by the bait of a profitable

a l l iance . The young King of Sweden,Charles the

Twelfth,had achieved by his successes in Poland

,

where he put down one sovereign and set up

another, a mil itary reputat ion second to Mar l

borough ’s alone . I t al l came to nothing , and

Charles the Twelfth wou ld have been justly for

gotten long ago if two men of gen ius,as wide

asunder as the poles , had not combined to give him

a double immortal ity . Vo ltaire’s H istory is a

standard book , Carly le thought h is best piece of

writing , and Johnson’s Vani ty of Hum an W ishes

embalms the man who “ left a name at which the

world grew pale , to point a mora l and adorn a ta le .

”

I t is a poor ta le , and a cheap moral . Charles

wasted his l ife , and exhausted his country , i n futi le

campaigns against enemies of his own making,

unti l a stray bul let put an end to h is career . But

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62 QUEEN ANNE

would have succeeded without such aid . To a mind

l ike h is the task must have been chi ld’

s p lay . He

soon found,as Voltaire informs us, that Charles

was jealous of Lou is,and that a map of Russia lay

open on his table . He suggested that an invasion

of the Czar’s domin ions would receive aid from the

Cossack Mazeppa,and would put Charles the

Twelfth on a higher pinnacle of fame than Lou is

the Fourteenth . The trick was won . When

Marlborough returned to the Hague on the 8th

of May,having been absent from the Dutch

capital less than three weeks, Charles had struck

his camp,and disappeared from the purview of

the All ies .

Nevertheless,when Marlborough returned to

England in November 1 707 , having concluded the

year ’s campaign with the approach of winter, he

found the country dissatisfied and despondent .

Since Ram i l l ies there had been no mil itary success

worthy of the name , and the prospect of an honour

able peace seemed remote . A great naval cata

strophe saddened the autumn . On the 22nd of

October Sir C loudesley Shovel , who had risen

from the position of a cab in-boy to be Admira l of

the Fleet,went down among the Sci l ly I sles in h is

flagsh ip Association with n ine hundred men . There

was no poet to rank the Association with the Royal

George . But there was another Royal George,

POLITICS 63

Prince George of Denmark , whose hopeless incom

petence as Lord High Admiral had become more

conspicuous than it otherwise would have been

through the rapacity and inefficiency of Admiral

Churchi l l , the great Duke’s brother

,his creature

and tool . The Admiral ’s retention in office was a

scandal , not the less odious because Churchi l l did ,

so far as it was done at al l , the work which the

Queen ’s husband received money for not doing .

Meanwhile the influence of the Churchi l ls at Court

had begun to wane . I t had been wielded by the

Duchess on ly , and her Grace had abused her power .

The Queen wasa pious Churchwoman , and a Tory .

The Duchess, so far as she had any pol itics , was

a Whig , caring nothing for the Church , and very

l ittle for rel igion of any kind . Her sordid avarice,her scornfu l temper, and her ungovernable rage

were driving Anne into sul len rebell ion . A

favourite the Queen must have . She wanted some

one to lean upon,and her husband was nought

‘

.

The proud Duchess looked with a contemptuous

eye upon Abigai l H il l , a poor relation of her own ,

for whom she had herself procured a place at Court

as a woman of the bedchamber . Abigai l was a

very qu iet, and a very artful gir l . She had con

tr iv ed to give herself a good education , which the

Duchess was almost whol ly without ; her powers of

mind were considerable , and she formed unobtru

64 QUEEN ANNE

sively a close al l iance with her kinsman , Secretar v

Harley . Her pol i tical opin ions were h is and the

Queen ’s . She was an orthodox Churchwoman ,

and poor Anne found her placid temper a sure

re l ief from the tempestuous reproaches of “ Mrs .

Freeman .

” Abigai l Hil l enters the sphere of h is

tory in 1 707 , the date of her secret marriage with

Samuel Masham,a gentleman-in-waiting to Prince

George . Discovery of this clandesti ne un ion , per

fectly regular as it was, made the Duchess furious .

But her violence against Mrs . Masham only

widened her breach with the Queen , and establ ished

the new favourite ’s position .

The first Par l iament of Great Britain , which met

on the agrd of October , 1 707 , passed through both

Houses joint reso lutions in favour of conti nu ing the

war so long as Spa in , or any part of the Span ish

monarchy , remained under the House of Bourbon .

This was the Whig pol icy , the pol icy put forward

by Lord Somers , ablest survivor of the statesmen

who had made the Revolution, and had placed

Will iam of Orange on the British throne . I ts

avowal at this j uncture made Marlborough a W hig ,not perhaps with the less wil l i ngness on his part

because his unpopular bother at the Admiralty was

a vio lent and i rrepressible Tory . Before Parl ia

ment met in 1 708 Godolphin , acting in concert with

Whigs outside the Cabinet , and especial ly with

POLITICS 65

Marlborough , determined that Harley must go .

The struggle was long and obstinate . The Queen ,

supported by Mrs . Masham,clung to her favourite

M in ister , not so much because he was a Tory, as

because he was , or professed to be , a High Church

man . Somers, more powerful at that moment than

any Min ister, carried a measure for cementi ng the

un ion with Scotland by the abol ition of the separate

Privy Counci l which North Britain had hitherto

possessed . On this point, and on others , the

Cabinet was at s ixes and sevens . The Queen

habitual ly attended the confidential meetings of her

servants , which it was then the fashion to ho ld on

Sundays . On Sunday, the 8th of February, 1 708 ,

the Cab inet met at Kensington in the absence of

Godolphin,Lord Treasurer, and Marlborough , Cap

tain General . The two Prime M in isters , whose

authority was real ly equa l , refused to attend so long

as Harley remained a servant of the Crown . The

Queen wou ld gladly have accepted Godolph in’s

resignation,and might possibly have been induced

to accept Marlborough ’s . But Harley saw that he

was beaten,or perhaps that the sooner he went, the

sooner he would come back on h is own terms .

Three days afterwards he resigned , along with St .

John,and the Cabinet became , i n the rapidly shift

ing nomenc lature of that time , exc lusively Whig .

As usual,the most sign ificant part of the trans

66 QUEEN ANNE

action was that which attracted least notice at the

time . Henry St . John ’s successor at the War

Office was a young Norfolk squire named Robert

Walpole .

The victory of the Whigs , to give them the nam e

which they gave themselves was for the moment

complete . Godo lphin and Marlborough used and

abused their triumph . They insisted that the

Queen , who had been making ecclesiast ical

appo intments on her own account from the ranks

of Tories and High Churchmen , should for the

future be gu ided by the advice of her Whig M in is

ters in the Church as wel l as i n the State . They

cou ld not deny that Anne had chosen pious and

excellent men . Where rel igion or moral ity was

concerned , she was always strictly conscientious .

But, with motives which were certain ly not of the

highest, the Lord Treasurer and the Captain

General were asser ting a principle which has ever

since prevai led, and is essent ial to the maintenance

of the Constitution . The Crown cannot be r espon

sib le to Parl iament, except in case of revolution or

c ivi l war . For every act of the Sovereign some

Min ister must be prepared to answer i n the House

of Commons, and he cannot be expected to defend

a course or a pol icy of which he disapproves.The

Church of England being establ ished by law,being

in fact part of the Constitution,Parl iament has a

POLITICS 6 7

right to know the reason why,

a particular clergy

man is made a Bishop , or a Dean , or a Regius

Professor of D ivin ity . Anne sul len ly acquiesced in

what she regarded as the tyranny of her M in isters ,

and private ly sought occasion to overthrow them .

She had, however, some time to wait , rely ing upon

Harley ’s friend, the faithfu l Abigai l . Harley him

self was accused of high treason in the common

form of those days,correspondence with St . Ger

mains . The charge , which may have been pre

mature , broke down for want of posit ive evidence ,

and Har ley was not forma l ly impeached . He was

left i n an atmosphere of suspicion which rendered

him an object of hatred and d istrust among Pro

testants, Low Churchmen , and Whigs .

The General E lection of 1 708 gave the Whig

Min istry a preponderance i n the House of Com

mons, and there was a steady Whig majority in

the House of Lords . I t was no mere question of

party n icknames. The friends of “ James the

Third,” a dul l youth

,but an ardent Cathol ic, were

active and venturesome . They planned an invasion

of Scotland,where the large party who had opposed

the Un ion were favourable to their cause , and

Madame de Maintenon, who was Queen, i f not

King,of France

,in everything but name , lent al l

her influence to support the Pretender . This

exped it ion fai led inglor iously . But the Queen’

sr 2

68 QUEEN ANNE

throne was not secure from what she cal led , or was

made to cal l,the designs of a Popish Pretender ,

bred up in the principles of the most arb itrary

government . The Whig Min istry , which was

rea l ly the M in istry of Marlborough , determined to

prosecute the war,and early in Apri l 1 708 the ever

v ictorious Captain left E ngland for Hol land , that

he might consult Prince Eugene and Pensionary

Heinsius at the Hague . At this consu ltation it

was decided to fight the French in the Netherlands ,

and Marlborough made Brussels h is headquarters ,

whi le Eugene , after an interview with the Emperor

at V ienna , took up a position on the Mosel le . The

situat ion in the Netherlands was unfavourable to

the A l l ies . The States had made themselves so

unpopular in Brabant that the ch ief cities , Ghent

and Bruges,surrendered almost without resistance

to the French . This was on the sth of Ju ly , and

then Marlborough , w ith h is unerring v is ion , per

ceived that he must strike the enemy at once . On

the oth the French army began the siege of Oude

narde on the r iver Schelde . Send ing General

Cadogan , a renowned soldier, to occupy Lessi nes ,which the French had designed for cover

,Marl

borough moved quickly upon the Sche lde opposite

Oudenarde on the morn ing of the t i th . His force

was in numbers inferior to the French . But it was

directed by the gen ius of a s ingle commander,while

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70 QUEEN ANNE

Vauban , the first mil itary engineer of that age .

Marshal Boufflers , the Governor , had a garrison of

fifteen thousand men . The French were in posses

sion of Ghent,which commanded the course of the

Schelde . Nevertheless,Eugene , covered by Marl

borough,began the s iege on the 22nd of August ,

1 708 , and just two months later Boufflers surren

dered . This bril l iant achievement was made pos

sible by the battle of W ynendale , where , On the

28th of September , General Webb repulsed the

French attack from Bruges under La Mothe ,

designed to cut off a convoy of suppl ies from

Ostend for the rel ief of the besiegers . Before the

end of the year Marlborough had recovered‘

from

the French both Ghent and Bruges . To the

haughty monarch who had revoked the Edict of

Nantes he must have seemed l ike the scourge of

God .

When the Parl iament of 1 708 met on the 16 th

of November , the power of the Whigs seemed to

be establ ished , and their ascendency was for the

time complete . On the a8th of October Prince

George of Denmark , natus consum er e fr uges, had

drunk his last bottle,and departed this l i fe

,having

perhaps done as l ittle good, and as l ittle harm ,

as it is possible for a human being in a h igh posi

tion to do . His creature Admiral Churchi l l was

at once dismissed from the Admiralty,the

POLITICS 7 1

Admiral’

s i l lustrious brother being entirely in

different to h is fate, and Lord Pembroke became

head of the Board . Pembroke’s place as President

of the Counci l was taken by John,Lord Somers ,

the most j ustly famous of those great lawyers

who have maintained the l iberties of E ngland in

troubled and dangerous t imes . To Somers is

main ly due the Dec laration of R ights,and he had

taken a leading part in the Treaty of Un ion with

Scotland . His influence in the House of Lords

was almost unbounded , and an attempt to impeach

him in the last days of King Wil l iam had igno

m in iously fai led . His publ ic character was stain

less , and h is enemies were so destitute of material

for calumny that they were driven to accuse him of

undue susceptib il ity to the charms of the other sex .

But he was identified with the Revolution,a'nd

therefore obnoxious to Queen Anne , a Jacob ite

Sovere ign with a Parl iamentary title . Godolphin ,

aided by Marlborough , extorted from her with

great difficulty her consent to declare Somers Lord

President of the Council , and Wharton Lord

L ieutenant of I reland . Her Majesty ’s objections

to Lord Wharton were neither unnatural nor d is

creditable . He was a coarse p rofligate and blas

ph em er , utterly without pr inciple both in publ ic

and private l ife,pronounced by Swift, not often

random in his abuse , to be the most un iversal

72 QUEEN ANNE

vil lain he had ever known . But Wharton was

always a staunch Whig , and in the triumph of

the Whig party he could not be neglected . The

Queen was made to feel in the hour of' her bereave

ment that she was the puppet of a faction , and the

iron entered into her soul . Her miseries were not

al leviated by the joint Address from both Houses

in January 1 709 , praying her to contract for the

publ ic interest a second ma’rriage . I f we consider

what Anne’s maternal experience had been , and

that she was now forty-five years old , this request

must appear not only discourteous , but repugnant

to decency and human ity The Queen decl ined

to give a particular answer, and consoled herself

with the company of Mrs . Masham . She refused

to see any member of the House of Hanover , and

would not l isten to the suggestion that the E lectress

Sophia,heir presumptive to the throne , or her

son the Elector , or her grandson the E lectoral

Prince , Duke of Cambridge in the Engl ish peer

age, who had fought gal lantly for the al l ies at

Oudenarde,should be i nvited to England . The

prospects of the succession might wel l make Brit ish

statesmen uneasy . I t was now practical ly certain

th at Anne would not hav e issue , and no man could

say for certain who would succeed her . The Act of

Settlement was clear enough , for it fixed the Crown

in the Protestant branch of James the First’s

POLITICS 7 3

descendants . But an Act of Parl iament can always

be repealed , and if a Tory House of Commons were

elected i n three years,or i n six , the Cheval ier de

St . George , as the French cal led him ,might be

adopted , i n case he gave Up his Popish rel igion ,

as James the Third . The Queen ’s predecessor had

been a Dutchman . Her successor would be a

German . The Cathol ic Highlands of Scotland

were ready to rise for the Pretender . How many

Tories were also Jacobites no human being could

precisely tel l . Although some men of education

and intel l igence sti l l firmly bel ieved in the story

of the warming-pan , which made James Stuart

a suppos ititious ch i ld,there was not a particle

of evidence to prove it, i t had indeed been dis

proved , and i t was gradual ly fal l ing into disrepute .

The Queen ’s deep and sincere affection for the

Protestant Church of E ngland, the only strong

element in her character , and the guiding principle

of her l ife , prevented her from acknowledging her

brother to h ave a higher title than her own . James

himself,a man of sense and courage

,though not

attractive or i nteresting,had fought with the French

at Oudenarde,and it was notorious that there were

Engl ish Jacobites who , l ike Fielding’s Squ ire

Western,fervently desired the success of the

French arms . Among publ ic men there was general

and mutual distrust,for no one knew who might

74 QUEEN ANNE

be corresponding with the Pretender , or on what

terms . I t is practical ly certa in that if James would

have abandoned the Roman Cathol ic fa ith , he

might have been King of England on h is s ister’

s

death,and there was no guarantee that his Catholi

cism would bear a strain which had broken down

the nominal Protestantism of Henry the Fourth . I f

Paris was worth a mass,London might be worth

a Bible . The Whigs were considered at Court to

be not only ha‘rd taskmasters,but much tainted with

irrel igion,and Marlborough ’s attachment to the

principles of the Reformation,though the one

genu ine feel ing in his nature , except h is love for

Sarah , h ad certainly not much influence upon his

publ ic conduct . But,treacherous as he was , he was

true to Protestantism , and the War of the Succes

sion in Spain was also a“ war for the Protestant

Succession in England .

Of that war Lou is the Fourteenth had had more

than enough . His long reign,the longest in

European history , was c losing in ru in and disgrace .

The massacre and expulsion of the Huguenots in

1 685 had deprived France of her ablest and most

industr ious manufacturers and artisans . Wil l iam

of Orange , though his campaign in the Netherlands

was indecisive,and partook largely of defence

,had

baflled the plans and drained the resources of the

French King. Marlborough had comp leted what

POLITICS 7 5

Will iam began , and France was per ish ing for lack

of m anhood . The miserable superstition of the

doting monarch and his pious spouse sought

rather to expiate by penance the sins of h is youth

than to repair by prudence the errors of h is man

hood . An atmosphere of devotion was prescribed

at Versai l les , and , as Macaulay dryly puts it, the

Marshals of France were much in prayer . But their

prayers , as m ight in the circumstances have been

expected , avai led them nothing , and after Oude

narde , as after Ramil l ies , the King sued humbly.

for peace . De Torcy , his M in ister for Foreign

Affairs , made overtures to Heinsius, the head of

the Government at the Hague . His object was to

detach Hol land from Great Britain,and conclude a

separate treaty with the Dutch States . But Heinsius

was a friend of Marlborough,and thoroughly loyal

to the Al l iance . He decl ined to treat alone,and

he indicated,moreover

,i n qu ite uncompromis ing

language , the prel im inary concessions which France

would have to make . The Empire must be secured

in possession of Spain and the Spanish Indies , of

Naples and Sici ly,and of the Netherlands . As for

the Dutch themselves,they must have a barrier of

strong towns to protect them against the possibi l ity

of invasion . This , however , was not enough for the

B ritish Government . Marlborough , who returned

from the Hague to London in March 1 709 , urged

76 QUEEN ANNE

upon his col leagues demands sti l l more irksome ,

to which he obtained their consent . Lou is m ust

acknowledge the Protestant Succession in Great

Britain , expel the Pretender from France , and

demol ish the fortifications of Dunkirk , from which

the invading squadron had sai led for Scotland .

Both the Houses of Parl iament agreed to the pro

posals of the Cabinet , and with these instructions ,

really drawn by himself , Marlborough , aecom

panied by Lord Townshend as second P leni

potentiary , met Prince Eugene from Vienna at the

Dutch capital in April . The first French Plen i

potentiary was President Rou i l lé . But in h is

extreme desire for peace de Torcy came himsel f ,

and on the 27 th of May received from Heinsius the

requ isitions of the All ies . Newfoundland was

claimed for England . Ten fortresses in Flanders

must be assigned to th e Dutch as a barrier . Wh en

these points , and those previously put forward , had

been accepted by France , the consideration given

her would not be a lasting peace,but simply and

solely a truce for two months from the Ist of June

to the 1 5 1: of August . During that time the Duke

of Anjou , pretending to be King of Spain , and

being actual ly in possession of Casti l le,which he

h eld without French aid , was to leave the Pen insu la ,and take up his abode in France . I f he fai led to

do so of his own accord,the King of France

,his

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78 QUEEN ANNE

by Boufflers, the defender of Li l le , marched to its

rel ief . On th e 1 1 th of September , about seven in

the morn ing,Marlborough and Eugene fel l upon

him at the vil lage of Malplaquet , and a most

sanguinary encounter fol lowed . The numbers were

nearly equal,about a hundred thousand on each

s ide,and the French fought with desperate courage .

Mar lborough exposed h is l ife as freely as if he h ad

been a young subaltern in his fi rst engagement ,

and the slaughter was terrib le . The battle lasted

seven hours,and at the end of i t the French were

driven from their position . But they retreated in

good order,and the losses of the Al l ies were far

greater than the ir own .

“We have had this day ,”

wrote Mar lborough to his wife ,“ a very bloody

batt le ; the first part of the day we beat their foot

and afterwards their horse . Even Marlborough

was moved to real concern by the s ight of

Malplaquet after the engagement, and he must have

felt that the l ives lost were thrown away . For there

were no reasonab le conditions which Lou is wou ld

not , through de Torcy, have accepted in the spring

of 1 709 . The immediate and the sole result of

Malplaquet was the surrender of Mons,which

capitu lated on the 20th of October .

At this moment Marlborough,

flushed with

victory , and stimulated by his Duchess , made the

one fatal mistake of his glorious,infamous career .

POLITICS 79

He held the office of Captain General , or Com

mander-in-Chief , during the pleasure of the Crown .

He requested the Queen to confer it upon him by

Letters Patent for the term of his natural l ife . From

the mi l i tary point of view the proposal was not

al together unreasonab le . Marlborough ’s gen ius for

war is without a parallel in the history of the

modern world . Compared with him Napoleon was

reckless of l i fe , and W el l ington devoid of origin

al ity . Caesar’s thrason ica l boast might have been

made in sobe r earnest by John Churchil l . When

he had come , and seen , he had already conquered .

The Marshals of France were h is washpot . Over

Lou is the Fourteenth he had cast his shoe . He

never besieged a town without taking it, or fought

a batt le without winn ing it . A stil l greater fame is

h is . Given the object which he desired to ach ieve ,

he never wasted l ives i n achieving it . Even at

Malp laquet,bloody as it was, there had been no

useless or avoidable slaughter on the side of the

A l l ies . Nor was he less triumphant in negotiation

than in war . His i nfal l ible tact and his irresistible

charm made statesmen and potentates the instru

ments of h is sovereign w i l l,so long as the power

of France was dangerous to the peace of Europe,

and the Protestant succession to the throne of

Great B ritain was i nsecure . But his success had

been so complete that he had ceased to be indispens

80 QUEEN ANNE

able, and the peri l of his own inordinate cupidity

seemed far more imminent to the Brit ish Constitu

tion than the designs of the Pretender at St .

Germains , or of the decrep it , exploded impostor at

Versail les . Even the Whig Chance l lor,Cowper ,

rejected as unconst i tutional the claims of the Wh ig

General to be recompensed by a nove l Dictatorship

for a Whig war . The Queen herself was not much

concerned with the arguments which prevailed upon

lawyers l ike Cowper ; but she had been for some

time surely,though gradual ly

,transferring her

affections from the Duchess of Mar lborough, who

worried her w ith r eproaches,to Mrs . Masham

,who

soothed her with compl iments . There was only

one person who cou ld endure the Duchess ’s temper,

and that was the Duke . His pat ience in bear ing

her stormy outbursts was not the least wonderfu l

part of h is unrufli ed affab il ity and calm . He had

been g i fted by nature , and had cultivated by

assiduous art an easy,happy

,placable d ispos it ion

,

which gave enjoyment to every one who came near

him , and not least to h imsel f . He charmed every

one without caring for any one,and was agreeable

because he l iked it . The Duchess,except i n her

love of money, was nothing that he was , and every

th ing that he was not . She had made herself

into lerable at Court,as she would have made herself

intolerable anywhere . Mrs . Masham,whose intelli

POLITICS 81

gence was far above the common , did not fai l to

take advantage of Sarah ’s blunders,and the Duke’s

petition was rejected . The Whigs did not know

how to manage the Queen,who had inherited her

fath er’s su llen and obstinate temper . For the

moment , however, they were successful . They

required that she should dismiss Lord Pembroke

from the Admiralty,and appoint in his room

Edward Russel l,Earl of Orford , who had been

ennobled by Will iam the Third for h is nava l v ic

tory over the French at Barfleur i n 1 692 , but was

general ly be l ieved to have been connected w ith

the intrigues of Marlborough’s nephew,Berwick .

With Orford ’s appointment the power of the Wh igs

reached its zen ith . Marlborough returned from the

wars on the 8th of November, 1 709 . Parl iament

met on the 1 5 th , and the House of Commons voted

a sum of s ix mill ions sterl ing , without hesitation ,

for the cont inuance of the campaign .

CHAPTER I I

POLITICS! II

W HEN the Wh igs were at the height of the ir

power,an unforeseen

,and, to a superficial observer,

a tr ifl ing inc ident,produced a convulsion , and led

to a catastrophe . The numerous and powerfu l

body of pol itical High Churchmen , among whom

Francis Atterbury , then Dean of Carl isle , was the

most eminent and intrepid, raised a cry that the

Church was in danger . By the un ion with Presby

terian Scotland Presbyter ians had been necessarily

admitted to both Houses of Parl iament , from which

Cathol ics were excluded by the Test Act . The

occasional conformity of those D issenters who

took the sacrament in the Church of England as a

qual ification for mun icipal office gave great offence

to jealous ecc lesiastics, and severa l attempts had

been made without success to prevent this mode

of escape from the statute . The Form of Prayer

for the thirt ieth of January stamped with official

approval a strange and blasphemous comparison

between the execution of Charles the First and the

Passion of Christ . Atterbury,who was a Jacob ite

,

82

POLITICS 83

and many other clergymen,though they would not

acknowledge the Pope , were much nearer to the

Church of Rome than to Protestant Dissent , and

pushed the doctrine of divine r ight,with its

corollary of passive obedience, far beyond the point

where it would have been logical ly consistent with

al legiance to Queen Anne . They abhorred the

principles of 1 688, and regarded the Revolution

much as thei r m'odern successors regard the

Reformation . A turbulent specimen of this class,

Henry Sacheverel l, Doctor of Divin ity and Fe l low

of Magdalen Col lege , Oxford, had been elected by

popular votes, a rare anomaly in the Church of

England, to the benefice of St . Saviour ’s,South

wark . There he preached h is favourite doctrines

with much animation , and engaged in vehement

controversy with Benjamin Hoad ly, a Low Church

man and a Whig,who was at that time Rector of

St . Peter le Poer in the City of London . I n

August 1 709 , Sachevere l l preached the Assize

sermon at Derby upon the Commun ication of Sin .

On the sth of November, the ann iversary of the

Gunpowder Plot and of Wi l l iam ’s landing at Tor

Bay, he discoursed the Lord Mayor at St . Paul’s

on the peri ls of false brethren . Both sermons were

covert attacks on the Revolution , and the second

was the less covert of the two . I n it he went so

far as to designate Lord Treasurer Godolphin , notG 2

84 QUEEN ANNE

obscurely,by the n ickname of Volpone , the

scoundre l in Ben Jonson ’s famil iar comedy . The

Lord Mayor was a Tory , a High Churchman , and

a member of Parl iament . He was so much de

l ighted with the preacher that he took him home

to d inner,and begged him to print the sermon . He

even moved the Court of A ldermen to make a

forma l request in that sense The aldermen

refused . But Sacheverel l took his patron ’s advice,

and sold forty thousand copies .

Few less interesting persons than Henry Sache

ver ell have ever intruded themselves into the pages

of history . But when Macaulay talks of a foo l ish

parson,and Lord Stanhope refers to “ the buzz of

a single ins ign ificant priest ,” they overshoot the

mark . Sacheverell was not a foo l . Nor was he in

his own t ime and place altogether insign ificant .

He was a popular preache r,verbose and rhetorical ,

but quite capable of expressing himse lf in a forcible

manner, and of appeal ing to sentiments which thou

sands shared . The Act 0f. Settlement,and the

Protestant Succession , were by no means secure .

The Queen ’s l ife was a bad one . Her misfortunes

as a mother had weakened her health,and she was

prone to indu lgence in the pleasures of the table .

She was a chi ldless widow,not l ikely to marry

again , nor to have chi ldren if she d id . The he i r

to the throne by statute was a German woman

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86 QUEEN ANNE

was impeached . The opin ion of Somers is not

l ightly to be dismissed . But on the other hand

we have the del iberate, considered j udgment of the

greatest constitutional theorist who wrote in Eng

l ish, Edmund Burke . Although Burke was not

born til l twenty years after Sacheverel l ’s impeach

ment, he was nursed in the creed of the Engl ish

Revolution , and the Whigs of 1688 were the fathers

of his Church . I n his Appeal from the New to the

Old W h igs, he says,“ I t rarely happens to a Party

to have the opportun ity of a clear, authentic, t e

corded declaration of the i r pol it ical tenets upon

the subject of a great const itutional event l ike that

of the Revolution . The Whigs had that oppor

tunity, or, to Speak more properly , they made it .

The impeachment of Dr . Sacheverel l was under

taken by a Whig Min istry and a Whig House of

Commons , and car ried on before a prevalen t and

steady majority of Whig Peers . I t was carried on

for the purpose of condemn ing the pri nciples on

which the Revolution was first opposed, and after

wards calumniated, i n order, by a juridicial sent

ence of the highest authority, to confirm and fix

Whig principles as they operated both i n the

resistance to King James and in the subsequen t

settlement ; and to fix them in the extent and

with the l imitations with which i t was meant

they should be understood by posterity .

” These

POLITICS 87

are weighty words, and so are those in which

Burke describes the managers of the impeachment .

They were not,

” says he,“um brati les doctores,

men who had studied a free constitution only in

its anatomy and upon dead systems .” Unl ike most

writers on constitutional law,they knew it al ive

and in action .

’ I t was not the pun ishment of Dr .

Sacheverel l that the Cabinet desi red , but the

authoritative repudiation of his doctrinesby Parl ia

ment, and the impl ied guarantee of a Parl iamentary

title al ready vested in the House of Hanover .

Before the end of the year Sacheverel l had been

impeached by the Comm ons, and ordered into the

custody of the Serjeant-at! arms . When he was

transferred in due course to B lack Rod,the Lords

admitted him to bai l , and fixed his trial for the

a7th of February , 1 7 10, i n W estminster Hal l . The

trial lasted for three weeks , and absorbed publ ic

attention in a manner highly flattering to Sache

v er ell . I t was the happiest time of the doctor’s

l ife . Nothing pleased him more than to be the

cynosure of every eye ; and as he drove each day

from the chambers he occupied in the Temple to

Westminster Hal l , crowds of admirers surrounded

his coach, shouting for the Church and Sacheverel l ,or, i n sti l l more agreeable phraseology , for Sache

v er ell and the Church . Col ley Cibber mentions in

his Autob iography that the trial withdrew numbers

88 QUEEN ANNE

from the Opera at the Haymarket . When the

Queen went privately without state i n her sedan

chair to hear the proceedings, the populace ex

pressed without ceremony a hope that she was on

the doctor’s s ide . Two eminent divines , Atterbury

and Sm alr idge, with some of Her Majesty’s own

chaplains, stood by Sacheverel l i n the Hal l . She

began to perceive that clerical Toryism was unan i

m ously in favour of the accused, and she therefore

leaned in that direction herself . The managers for

the Commons were j udiciously moderate and dis

creet . One of them , Sir Robert Eyre , Sol ic itor

General , den ied that“ the resistance at the Revolu

tion could bear any paral le l with the execrable

murder of the royal martyr, so j ustly detested byi )the whole nation . Sacheverel l ’s counsel

,of whom

Sir S imon Harcourt was chief , were equal ly pru

dent,and the question between the two sides became

extremely narrow . Both agreed that obedience was

the rule,and re fusal to obey the law an exception ,

which only extreme necess ity would justify . It

was argued for Sacheverel l that exceptions need

not be named in sermons ; and against h im that ,

i f they were ignored , the rule was fundamental ly

changed . But what the Whigs chiefly valued was

the opportun ity of laying down in the most publ ic

place, and the most authoritat ive form , the cardinal

doctrines of their pol it ical faith . These were not

POLITICS 89

at the t ime popular with the lower orders . While

Eyre and Jekyl l and Stanhope and Parker were

e'

xpounding the l imits of royalty , and the safe

guards of freedom , a London mob W ere pull ing

down conventicles and burn ing the pews . The

Lords treated Sacheverel l with singular indulgence .

Though defended by the ablest counsel , he was

al lowed to read , on his own behalf and in his own

name , a speech which Atterbury had composed for

h im . I t abounded in zeal for the Protestant Suc

cession , which Atterbury would have maintained

by restoring the Cathol ic Pretender . On the asth

of March the Lords gave thei r verdict upon their

honour in response to Lord Chancel lor Cowper,

who called upon them by their rank, beginning with

the jun ior Baron . By a majority of sixty-n ine voices

against fifty-two Sacheverel l was found gui lty of

the offence charged against him . Four B ishops ,

i ncluding Burnet of Sal isbury, the h istorian ,

voted against the doctor . Archbishop Sharp of

York,and B ishop Compton of London , were in h is

favour . Nottingham and the other Tory leaders

voted Not Guilty,as a matter of course . Three

Whig Dukes,Shrewsbury, Somerset , and Argyl l

refused to vote with thei r party,and were regarded

with approval by the Court . Shrewsbury pro

nounced the doctor to be innocent . Somerset stood

neutral on the steps of the throne . Argyll , after

go QUEEN ANNE

voting Guilty,voted aga inst the proposed suspen

sion from preaching,which was the on ly pun ish

ment infl icted on Sacheverel l . The period was

reduced on a division from seven years to three ,

but i t was ordered that the two incriminated

sermons should be burnt by the common hangman .

Although Godolphin expressed to Marlborough , in

rather undign ified language , his disappointment at

the i nadequacy of this resu lt, the Whigs had, as

Burke points out,achieved their main and chief

object . Their principles had been adopted , and the

principles of the Tories had been condemned, by

both Houses of Parl iament, after a so lemn and ex

haustiv e discussion i n the great Hal l of Wil l iam

Rufus . They could afford to let Sacheverel l enjoy

his bonfires and i ll uminations, his progresses and

plaudits , even the benefice to which a Tory patron

preferred him in Wales . They had vindicated the

Revolution and the Constitution by showing that

the two words were pract ical ly synonymous .

When Parl iament was prorogued on the sth

April , 1 7 10, with a speech from the throne adv is

ing men “ to be quiet and to do the ir own business

rather than busy themselves in rev iving questions

and disputes of a very high nature,

” the Whig

government seemed unassai lab le at home and

abroad . Marlborough , who was never real ly a

Whig, though he was always a Protestant , reposed

POLITICS 9 1

upon his mil itary laurels,and took more interest

in an“

unsuccessfu l attempt to obtain for h imself the

lucrative Vice-Royalty of the Netherlands, which

he had formerly refused , than in the prosecution

of Sacheverel l . The love of money is not apt to

dimin ish with years , and John Churchil l fel t it

strongly from his cal low youth . His wife , who

shared it with him , did not share h is prudence or

his se l f-control . The day after the prorogation ,

whi le her lord was in Hol land,she forced herself

upon the Queen at Kensington , and poured out a

flood of reproachful sel f-defence . The Duchess was

not real ly a clever woman,and , notwithstanding

their long intimacy , she had fai led to understand

the Queen . Her profoundly sagacious husband ,

who read men much more easi ly than he read books ,

had observed and noted a characteristic trait i n

James the Second,which was that , at the close of

a long argument, his Majesty would repeat h is

original opin ion in precisely the same words . Anne

was l ike her father . Writing before the i nterview ,

the Duchess , in order to procure it, promised that

it would not requ ire the Queen to give an answer .

Her Majesty laid hold of this concession and would

by no means let i t go . Neither the expostulations

of the Duchess nor her tears could el ic it from her

royal mistress any change in the sul len formula,“ You desired no answer, and you shall have none .

”

92 QUEEN ANNE

At last,

finding that her angry playmate would not

go,Anne hersel f left the room , and the Duchess

saw her no more for ever .

The reign of the first favourite was over, and

the ascendency of Mrs. Masham was complete . A

few days afterwards , Lord Kent , the Whig Lord

Chamberlain,was dismissed , and the Duke of

Shrewsbury,who had voted for Sacheverel l ,

ceiv ed the appointment , without the consent or

knowledge of Godolphin . The Lord Treasurer

submitted meekly to the affront , and went on bet

t i ng at Newmarket as if nothing had happened .

A l l th is time Marlborough was at the Hague ,

employed in considering fresh negotiations for

peace . He was no longer desirous of continu ing

a war in which he could gain no glory that he had

not already won . His position , and the position

of Great Britain , which was due to him ,were truly

splendid . No Engl ish statesman , not even Crom

wel l,would have thought i t possible i n the seven

teenth century for any European power or concert

of powers , to prevai l over the comb ination of

France and Spain . The eighteenth century was

but ten years old , and the proudest of French

sovereigns washumbly suing England for peace on

any terms , short of compel l ing his grandson by

arms to surrender the Span ish throne . England,

however , was in the hands of her al l ies , with whom

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94 QUEEN ANNE

Churchman,and something very l ike a Jacob ite

himself . That Marlborough should retain his com

mand,despite the insult to h is fami ly , was natural

and proper . His country was sti l l at war , and he

was worth a hundred thousand men . But Godol

phin,and even Somers, showed on this occasion a

spirit unworthy of themselves . For, though the

doctrine of collective responsibi l i ty was not then

establ ished, and it was not yet regarded as essential

that a Cab inet should be whol ly Whig, or wholly

Tory , two such nominations as Sh r ewsbury’s and

Dartmouth’s amounted to a withdrawal of the

Queen ’s confidence from her Whig advisers . They

were designed to express her disapproval of

Sacheverel l ’s“

impeachment . They were directed

against Godolphin and Marlborough . They were

known to ! have been prompted by Mrs . Masham ,

and through Mrs . Masham by Harley . The

Tories,the country pa rty , were del ighted, and

assured poor d istracted Anne that she was now

Queen indeed . The Whigs , the moneyed party ,

were alarmed, and the Governor of the Bank

headed a deputation of protest to the Queen . They

got a short dry answer to the effect that they had

nothing to fear from “ any further changes wh ich

might be made .

Sunderland had been dismissed on the 13th of

J une . But it was not ti l l the 8th of August that the

POLITICS 95

Queen struck her great blow . On that day , taking

advantage of some uncourt ly words employed by

the Lord Treasurer at a Counci l in her Majesty’s

presence , she ordered Godol phi n to break his staff ,

the symbol of office , promising him at the same

time a pension of four thousand a year . Godolphin

was sixty-fiv e, and o ld for h is age . Although he

had clung to h is post as long as he decently could ,

and perhaps longer , he reti red with dign ity , and

without unmanly complaints . Had it not been for

h is pension , he wou ld have been a poor man . I n

a corrupt age he was i ncorruptible , and the finances

of this country never had' a more vigilant steward .

He would spend money freely where it was re

qu ired , and his name must always be coupled with

Marlborough ’s in joint responsib i l ity for cam

paigns which were not less providently organized

than they were bri l l iantly designed and splendidly

achieved . His financial admin istration , assai led by

unscrupulous opponents , was so conclusively de

fended by Walpole,that the ma l ice of his critics

was put to silence and to shame . Wa lpole himself

soon fol lowed his chief i nto retirement . It had

not, however, come to be acknowledged that there

was any head of the Government except the Queen ,and the removal of Godolphin did not of itsel f

destroy his Cab inet . The Treasury was put into

Commission with a tit led nonentity as First Lord,

96 QUEEN ANNE

and Robert Harley as Chancellor of the Exchequer .

But Harley became in effect Prime M in ister , and

proceeded to reconstruct the M in istry . Harley’

s

principles were fluid . Brought up a Whig and a

Nonconformist,he had become a Tory and a

Churchman . He was,however , a moderate

Churchman,and a lukewarm Tory . His Tory ism

indeed ch iefly consisted in a desire to stand wel l

with Mrs . Masham and the Queen . Having got

what he wanted for h imself , he tried h is hand at a

coal ition . He induced John Ho l les , Duke of New

cast le,unc le of the notorious placeman , to rema in

Lord Privy Seal . He made fru i tless overtures to

Ha l ifax . He did h is best to keep Somers , Cowper ,

and espec ial ly Walpole . But , finding that they

were not prepared to act with h im , and did not

be l ieve in his strange professions of being a Whig

at bottom , he turned them out , and presented Anne

w ith the Tory Cabinet wh ich was her heart’s desire .

Harcourt became Lord Chancel lor in the room of

Cowper,Rochester

,the Queen ’s unc le , succeeded

Somers as Lord President, and Ormond was

dec lared Lord L ieutenant of I re land instead of

Wharton . With Wharton fe l l his Ch ief Secre

tary , Joseph Addison , the best and most popular

representat ive of VVh iggery in the world of letters .

The new Secretary of State was Henry St . John,

Harley ’s principal confederate , a man of bound less

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98 QUEEN ANNE

had been at any time since the Revolution . The

country party,who resorted to general and un

scrupulous intimidation of electors , were zealous

against Whigs, Dissenters, and the moneyed in

ter est of the towns . They had no confidence in

Marlborough,and though they cal led themselves

Protestants,many of them were Jacobites at heart .

The Whigs in those days were better patriots than

the Tories,for Tory hatred of the Al l ies had in

1 7 10 reached a p i tch at least as h igh as Whig

hatred of Napoleon ’s enemies rose duri ng the first

min istry of Pitt .

No sooner had the new Parl iament met on the

asth of November , than the Queen declared herse l f

for the Protestant Succession and the House of

Hanover . Yet in the early months of 1 7 1 1 Harley

and St . John employed a French Cathol ic priest,

Gault ier by name , to negotiate secret ly with the

King of France and the Pretender for the con

elus ion of peace , if not for something more . While

the House of Commons was voting six mil l ionsfor a cont inuance of the war

,and Marlborough was

aga in at the Hague,planning fresh m ance uv res,

th is dark and sin ister plot was conducted by the

Queen ’s confidential servants i n the Queen ’s own

name . De Torcy, the French M in ister for Foreign

Affairs, was assured that Anne had the most tender

feel ings for her brother James , and that Harley

POLITICS 99

wished the Pretender to come by hisown j i pon“

the

next demise of the Crown , Few‘m’

ore dn racéfulep isodes besmirch the pages .

of Engl ish history ,

and the final touch of infant!; 13 added by a recom a‘

m endation that the Archduke,OGliaf l

e-é , the55111; b fGreat Britain

,should be kep

t by French Generalswith in the wal ls of Barc

’

e‘

lona. Different indeed

was the management of Br i t ish‘

diplomacy

under Harley and St . John f-i'om'

whant ft lied

‘

been

under Marlborough and Godolphin. W h i le the

principal M in isters of the Queen , her“ prime

min isters , as they were cal l ed in the plural ,

coquetted with the Pretender,and cabal led against

the a l l ies of Great Britain , a British General ,

James Stanhope,who had served under the i l lus

tr ious Duke , was compel led by no fault of his own

to cap itulate to Marshal Vendome at Brihuega in

Spain , and become a pr isoner of France . But

Stanhope,founder of the Earldom

,was a Whig ,

and in the rage of party spirit wh ich then prevai led

the Tories regarded his discomfiture as a triumph

for themselves . The temper i n which they had

accepted office is described with entire candour by

St . John . I am afraid,” he wrote ,

“ that we came

to court by the same dispositions as all parties

have done ; that the pr incipal spring of our act ions

was to have the government of the State in our

hands ; that our principa l views were the conserva11 2

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tion‘of th i employm ents to ourselves,

( and great f rewarding those who had“

h e lped to ra ise us ,'

a;fidof hurt ing those who stood

W ffi opposition to us .’

TimGé r rhaar . it iStor ian von Ranke has expressed

an opinionihat, i n the last four years of Queen

Anne’s reign , dur ing

’

th'

e Cabinet of Harley and

S t John , l ies itsjreal hi storic importance . That

is‘

to'

confound the.

' i’

1:ansitory with the permanent

part of h uman. affairs . Tory predominance from

1 7 1 0 to 1 7 14 , described in the feeble apo logetics of

an author who usurped the famous name of Swift ,

was no more than the prelude to the Whig ascend

ency of the first two Georges . This period has

atta ined a fascinating , but a delusive , celebrity ,

from the number of great writers who dignified by

thei r gen ius its pitiful intrigues . As statesmen ,

Harley and St . John were worse than useless,almost entirely contemptible . As generous and

sympathetic friends to men of letters whom they

appreciated, and not mere ly rewarded , they have

r eceived from posterity a gratitude too indiscr im in

ate to be just . St . John’s own writings,of which

Burke fu lly understood the real value,are sti l l

admired by some , and if style were an end in itself ,if the art of expression were valuable without refer

ence to the th ing expressed, they would be adm ir

able indeed . But though he fai led equally to

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1 02 QUEEN ANNE

which early hardships , and the patronage of his

kinsman Sir Will iam Temple, had developed to

insolent arrogance,made him jealous for the estab

lishm ent of which he was a min ister, the Church

of I reland. I t was not the Church of the I rish

people , most of whom were Cathol ics , while many

in the north were Presbyterians . I t was the Church

of the Engl ish Pale , and i t was only for the Pale

in I reland that Swift real ly cared . The Irish

Cathol ics were in his eyes scarcely human , though

he rel ieved , w ith a generosity in honourable con

trast to his personal penuriousness , the necessities

of the Dubl in poor . The I rish Presbyterians were

dangerous enemies , to be fought by tests in l ieu

of faggots . The Protestant Episcopal Church was

his own ; and he stood up for its rights , real or

imaginary , as a soldier maintains the honour of

h is regiment . The Tale of a Tu b, which appeared

in 1 704, had already made h im famous . For

though , l ike almost al l h is writings , i t was anony

mous , the secret had not been kept, and connois

seurswere aware that the poor parson was a power .

Swift had no pol i tical principles , and he had

become intimate with the Whigs in 1 707 , when he

tried his best to arrange for the partic ipation of the

I rish Protestant Church in Queen Anne’s Bounty .

They had not, however , rewarded him in any sub

stantial manner, and he was a peri lous al ly for

POLITICS 1 03

them , because he could not be civi l to Dissenters .

Th ere were indeed few people to whom he could

be civi l . I ncapable of the passions which soften

human nature , though they may corrupt it , he was

a prey to envy , hatred , malice , and all uncharitable

ness . Although he l iked c lever women , and they

l iked him , he was in truth a real misanthrope , and

his mind was ful l of loathsome images,which he

loved to del ineate for the benefit of his less for

funate fel low-creatures . A more manly side of h is

character was his vaulting ambition , which by 1 7 10

had estranged him from the ungrateful Whigs , and

prepared him for the reception of St . John ’s flattery .

I n November of that year he became a contributor

to the Tory Exam iner , and wrote for it regularly

t il l J une 1 7 1 1 . His principal colleagues were Prior

and Defoe . His chief opponents were Addison and

Steele . Not one of them could in controversy hold

a candle to h im . Time,which displays the true

proportions of things , exhibits the reign of Anne

as dominated by Marlborough and by Swift .

Neither of them had any nobi l ity of soul . Both

were time-servers and self-seekers . But these are

moral deficiencies . I ntel lectual fau l ts they had

none . At the very time when Swift had made him

self the slave of a party, when he was writing for

h is employers two of his masterpieces , The Con

duct of the Allies, and A L etter to the October

1 04 QUEEN ANNE

Clu b, he appeared, so consummate is his art , to

be simply putting plain good sense into good plain

Engl ish . H is triumph , and the triumph of h is

employers, W as short . But, whi le it lasted , it was

complete,and to no man were they more indebted

than they were to h im . They did not real ly trust

h im . He was not , as he fondl-y imagined , i n their

secrets . With al l h is faults he was a truthful man ,

and they w isely kept him in ignorance of their

clandestine comm unications with the Pretender,so

that he might deny what he did not know . He

proved a wonderful ly dexterous , and an infin itely

useful,agent . Macaulay has written on the margin

of h is Swift that a man must have been behind

the scenes in pol itics to appreciate the excel lence of

the L etter to the October C lu b. I t is indeed

a storehouse of practical sagacity , and it had the

desired result of qu ieting those Tory h ighflierswho

expected al l things in an hour,whose minds were

clouded by their October beer , who bel ieved that

Harley was one of themselves , and that St . John

was a High Churchman , mean ing what he said .

When Harley and St . John , who were at this

time o-n famil iar and intimate terms,had secured

the services of Swift , th ey made up thei r minds to

get rid of Marlborough . He was their most dan

gerous enemy , as Swift was the i r most valuable

friend . But it was necessary to proceed against

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1 06 QUEEN ANNE

she characterist ical ly threw the key at h is head .

She received,without a murmur from the Queen ,

the lavish pecun iary compensation which she was

not ashamed to demand . But her k ingdom was

taken from her,and divided among the Medes and

Persians . The Duchess of Somerset, whose hus

band , though a Whig, was an early fr iend of the

Queen ’s , and had not voted against Sachever el l ,

became Mistress of the Robes , while Mrs . Masham ,

who had done it a l l , was made Keeper of the Privy

Purse . E l izabeth Duchess of Somerset, wife of“ the pr oud Duke , the last of the original Percys ,was satirized by Swift in the W indsor Pr ophecyas carrots from Northumberland . The Tories

were afraid of her influence over the Queen,and

of her intrigues with the Whigs . Marlborough,

whom the Somersets hated, continued to be Cap

tain General , though not for l i fe , and on the

1 8th of February , 1 7 1 1 , he sailed for the Hague

to consult with Heinsius about the renewal of the

war .

The Government were seeking an opportun ity

to abandon the European a l l iance,and to make

peace with France . I f they had open ly and avow

edly, with the knowledge of the Empire and of

the States General , m ade overtures of peace , thei r

conduct would have deserved rather praise than

blame . Lou is the Fourteenth had ceased to be a

POLITICS m 7

danger , or even a bugbear . Great Britain was in

a pos ition to dictate her own terms , for Marl

borough had placed her on a pinnacle of greatness

which even Cromwel l scarcely reached . But honest

statesmen , Somers for i nstance , or Walpole , would

have made a point of acting with Austria and

Holland unti l i t became clear that those Powers

would not accept a reasonable arrangement . Harley

and St . John , on the contrary , behaved as if Eng

land’s al l ies were her enemies,as if her enemies

were her friends , and as if the Pretender were her

lawful k ing . They rel ied upon the undoubted and

by no means surprising fact that the war had

become extremely unpopular . I f Southey had

written his poem about Malplaquet, instead of

Blenheim , the reason would have been at least as

good as the rhyme . After Ramil l ies there was no

sufficien t cause for prolonging the struggle , and

by 1 7 1 1 i t had become palpably futi le . When

Lutheran emigrants from the Palatinate ,“ poor

Palatines as they were cal led, rece ived publ ic

money to establ ish them in I reland and in the

North American Colon ies , while many Engl ishmen

were suffering severely from distress , popular dis

content became vociferous , and Marlborough’s

name no longer served to al lay the tumult . The

House of Commons,which in 1 7 1 1 was more l ike

Convocation than it has ever been before or since ,

1 08 QUEEN ANNE

protested aga inst the importation of these dest itute

al ienson the ground , amongst others , that by multi

plying Dissente rs it endangered the Church . Even

the impeachment of Sunderland , who as Sec retary

of State had brought them in , was proposed . But

Sunderland was no longer in office , and the matter

was al lowed to drop .

Harley might have found some difficul ty in re

ta in ing a position wh ich the more impetuous Tories

would gladly have transferred to St . John , i f an

unforeseen accident had not sudden ly made him a

popular hero . A French exile residing in London,

the Marquis de Guiscard , who had given valuable

in formation to Marlborough and Godolphin at

earl ier stages of the war,demanded money from

Harley , which that pruden t financier refused to pay .

Guiscard the reupon wrote to the French court dis

c losing what he knew, and was arrested by order

of St . John , who discovered his treachery, on the

8th of March , 1 7 1 1 . Brought before the Privy

Counci l at the Cockpit i n Whitehal l,Guiscard suda

denly rushed at Harley , and stabbed him in the

breast with a penknife . The wound was sl ight ,and it was Guiscard who died

,by the swords of

St . John and other Privy Counci l lors . But Harley

was laid up for some weeks with fever,and the calm

courage which he displayed under the murderous

attack , as by intention it had undoubtedly been ,

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n o QUEEN ANNE

On the 26th of Apri l , 1 7 1 1 , he reappeared in the

House of Commons after his i l lness, and received

the congratulat ions of the Speaker . A few days

afterwards he made his financial statement as

Chancellor of the Exchequer, and proposed, without

a g l immer of l ight on the real nature of what he

was doing,the incorporation of the South Sea Com

pany . A month later he was gazetted Earl of

Oxford , reviving the ancient t itle of the De Veres,

which had become extinct less than ten years before ,

and on the b lessed ann iversary of the glorious

Restoration he took the oaths as Lord Treasurer

before Simon Harcourt , Lord Keeper . Meanwhi le

there had occurred on the Continent a great change .

How much the history of the eighteenth century

was affected by the smal lpox would be an interest

ing subject of invest igation . I n Apri l 1 7 1 1 it

carried off the French Dauphi n , who was soon fol

lowed by his son and the Emperor Joseph,a young

man of thirty-two . Joseph was succeeded,with the

consent of the E lectors , by his brother Charles, the

candidate of the All ies for the throne of Spain .

The ironic texture of human affai rs,on which great

sati rists have exhausted the ir vocabularies,

'was

seldom il lustrated in a more grimly practical way .

Even those who objected most strongly to the

aggrandisement of the Bourbons did not desire to

see Spain a fief of the Empire,as she had been in

POLITICS r r r

the days of Charles the Fifth,and no further

attempt was made to disturb Phil ip of Anjou . The

old King of France,who had reduced his country

from the heights of glory to the depths of degrada

tion , was left to enjoy such comfort as he could

der ive from the fact that h is grandson now reigned

without dispute over a country not less humbled

than his own .

The campaign of 1 7 1 1 , though for pol it ical

reasons it led to no tangible result , was not less

i l lustrative of Marlborough ’s mi l itary genius than

the battle of B lenheim itself . He p lanned with

Prince Eugene a great project for invading French

territory from Tournay . Eugene , however, was

recal led,by orders issued from Vienna, to guard

the Imperia l E lectors at Frankfort , and Marl

borough had to act alone against Marshal Vi l lars ,

who was so proud of his defensive l ines that he

cal led them,i n the spirit of King Canute, his ne

plus u ltr a . Marlborough watched the Marshal’s

designs with calm disdain , and was no more im

peded by them than the ocean was impeded by

Canute . When the time had come , in the month

of August,he crossed the Schelde , and besieged

the garrison of Bouchain , which he took , with three

thousand prisoners,on the 1 2 th of September . The

French were in numbers far stronger than the Eng

l ish army,and there was not another soldier in

1 1 2 QUEEN ANNE

Europe who would have regarded Mar lborough’s

enterprise as feasible with the men at his disposal .

This achievement relaxed the Queen’s purse-strings ,

wh ich had been closed since her quarrel with the

Duchess, and she gave another sum of twenty

thou-sand pounds towards the completion of B len

heim Palace .

Marlborough never asked advice, and seldom

took it,being indeed accustomed to receive it with

the one word of comment,“ Sil ly .

” But he did

announce his intentions at th is j uncture to his old

col league Godolphin , who had never fail ed h im .

At the same time , with the serene, high-bred cour

tesy so much admired by Chesterfield , be furnished

special protection at Cateau-Cambresis to the

diocesan estates of the i l l ustrious Archbishop

Fénélon . Whatever he may have been below,

Marlborough was always on the surface a great

gent leman . But the position of this s ingular and

incomparable personage was being steadi ly under

m ined by intriguers , who resembled him only in the

want of scruple and of sham e . The Duchess had

been banished from the Court, and the“ all-aecom

plished St . John was pul l i ng every wire with in h is

reach to compass the ru in of the Protestant Succes

sion in the person of its champion . He and Lord

Oxford,who for th is purpose , though h is nominal

superior , was his actua l tool , sent Matthew Prior the

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1 1 4 QUEEN ANNE

the requirements of this country alone were con

cerned,thei r proposals were reasonable enough .

The greatest of Brit ish interests at that time was

peace . St . John was entitled to say that , i f the

Spanish crown were always separated from the

French,a Bourbon might be suffered

,as Phi l ip the

Fifth,to reign at Madrid . Prior was instructed to

demand,i n return for th is concession , Gibraltar,

Port Mahon,and Newfound land for Great Brita in ;

the sin ister pr ivilege of the Asiento, or right of sup

p lying the Spanish Colon ies with negro slaves ; a

guaranteed frontier on the Rhine for Austria, and a

Barrier Treaty for the Dutch . When Prior returned

to London,he was fol lowed by a French envoy ,

Ménager by name,who further undertook on behalf

of h is master that France should acknowledge the

t itle of Queen Anne , and the val idity of the Protest

ant Succession . At the same time , with a r efine

ment of treachery which may safe ly be attr ibuted

to St . John , a different set of proposa ls,omitting

al l the advantages secured by England , was drawn

up for commun ication to the Hague . Hol land,

however, was most re luctant to accept terms , and

the Emperor was fur ious at the very suggestion of

them . The Engl ish Whigs took up the cry,and in

the month of October 1 7 1 1 the peacemongers were

bitterly lampooned . That the Tory Government

were substantial ly right in their pol icy wou ld not

POLITICS 1 1 5

now be in any quarter den ied . There was nothing

left i n dispute for which a civi l ized nation could

with j ustice , or even with decency , wage war . Not

the thi ng done , but the manner of doing it, has left

an i ndel ible stain upon the characters of Oxford and

St . John . Oxford’s nature was crooked,and St .

John preferred , whenever he had a choice , to aecom

plish his objects by dishonest means .

When Marlborough , return ing , as usual , from

the Hague , landed at Greenwich on the ann iversary

of Queen E l izabeth ’s accession,the 1 7th of Novem

ber , the re were popular demonstrations in London

aga inst the Pope and the Pretende r . Although

Mar lborough wisely avoided them,and the Govern

ment treated the demonstrators wi th fool ish sever ity,

the Whigs were not discouraged, but resolved to

fi nd an opportun ity for turn ing the M inistry out .

I n the House of Commons the Tory majority was

too strong for them , and the y therefore diiected

the ir attent ion to the House of Lords , which had not

then lost its control over executive affairs . The

ba lance of power among the Peers was held at that

time by Nottingham,who resented his exclusion

from office,and was wi l l ing to coalesce with the

Whigs,i f they wou ld help him in enforcing upon

Dissenters a regu lar,and not merely an occasional ,

conformity to the Estab l ished Church . The igno

minious bargain was struck , and the aid of Marl1 2

1 1 6 QUEEN ANNE

borough was secured to protest against Spain , with

her West I ndian possessions , being left to the House

of Bourbon . The Elector of Hanover,who had an

envoy in London,Baron Bothm ar , allowed it to be

known that he , who after h is mother was hei r to the

British crown,shared the Duke of Marlborough ’s

v iews . On the other hand the Queen , as became a

woman,was sincerely anxious to stop the further

effusion of blood . When Parl iament met on the

7 th of December , the Speech from the Throne was

earnestly pacific . Nottingham met it w ith an

amendment wh ich,immediately and directly , raised

the quest ion of Spa in and the Bourbons . He was

supported by al l the Wh igs , i ncluding B ishop

Burnet,except the Duke of Shrewsbury

,who went

over to the Tories . Marlborough spoke w ith dig

mity and power ,“ in the presence of Her Majesty ,

of th is i l lustrious assemb ly , and of that Supreme

Being,who is infin itely above al l the powers upon

earth .

” His d i rect reference to the Queen i s

h istorical ly interest ing, because Anne was the last

Sovereign who attended debates in the House of

Lords , as she was the last to exercise the legislat ive

veto,and to preside over meetings of the Cabinet .

When Marlborough denounced the peace as danger

ous to the po l i tical balance of Europe,the effect must

have been profound, and Nottingham’s amendme n t

was carried by 62 Contents against 54 Not Contents .

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1 1 8 QUEEN ANNE

Restoration , it had been necessary for al l the per

sons described by the Act to qual ify themselves by

taking the sacrament in the Church of E ngland, and

the“Occasional Conformity ” thus prescribed by

law was , not without reason , regarded as scandal

ous . But to substitute an inj ustice for a scandal

is not an improvement, and the pol it ical fol ly of

this legislation was enhanced by the fact that, while

many Churchmen were Jacob ites, the Nonconform

ists were, every one of them , loyal to the Act of

Settlement . The moral principle of the Occas ional

Conformity Act,i n which the dismal Notti ngham

sincerely bel ieved , must be j udged i n the l ight of

St . John ’s enmity to the Christian rel ig ion,though

his true sentiments had not then been fu l ly avowed .

Although St . John was destitute of pol it ical

honesty, and of moral courage , there is a daredevil

recklessness in his brief offi cial career,which com

pels a sort of admiration . That such a man as he

was should have conceived, and executed, i n con

junction with Oxford , the idea of dismissing

Marlborough from the publ ic service,reminds one

of the two private soldiers who,i n the terse lan

guage of Tacitus, undertook the task of transferring

the Roman Empire, and transferred it . They

struck at Marlborough , these l i ttle men , in h is most

vulnerable part, his rapacious avarice . But even

so their case was not a good one . A Tory Com

POLITICS 1 1 9

mission , appointed by themselves , reported that

Marlborough during his campaigns had rece ived

large sums of money from a wealthy Jew,Sir

Solomon Medina, and from other contractors for

suppl ies . Marlborough admitted the fact, al leging

that he had fol lowed the example of previous com

manders, and that he had employed the money in

obtain ing information of the enemy’s designs .

There can be no doubt that, i f the standard of

publ ic moral ity which then prevailed be taken as

a standard , this particu lar charge against Marl

borough breaks down . That a general in the field

should make money by his position , and should

even , l ike Marlborough , real ize a considerable for

tune by his mil itary command , is now impossible ,

almost unthinkable . But the histor ian has no right,

if he passes ethica l j udgments at al l , to incorporate

the ideas of his own age with that of which he is

writing“,and the best proof that Marlborough ’s

acceptance of these perqu is ites from Sir Solomon

Medina impl ied no special depravity may be found

in the fact that s imilar presents were received

without a qualm by his successor the Duke of

Ormond,who was as far above him in purity of

character,as he was unequal to h im in renown .

This ostentat ious crusade against the il lustrious

soldier was a fru it of the narrowest partisanship .

I t was pecul iarly mean and low, because it had

QUEEN ANNE

been careful ly kept for the time when the services

of the Captain General would be no longer requ ired .

Just as a famous and e loquent Professor of Medicine

was said to be a very good doctor , i f you had

nothing the matter with you , because he amused

you with anecdotes , and did you no harm , so the

Duke of Ormond commanded the Queen ’s forces

with great success and dign ity in t ime of profound

peace,when the power of France had been shattered

for more than a generation at B lenheim , at Ramil

l ies , at Oudenarde, and at the terrible battle of

Malplaquet . Even in the character of Swift, then

the unscrupulous tool of Oxford and Bol ingbroke,there are few such sin ister traits as the tone in which

he writes of Marlborough . I n his ]oum a l toS tella,

the most intimate and the tenderest record of his

thoughts,for the 3oth of December , 1 7 1 I, he te l ls

h is“clears ,

” Esther Johnson and her compan ion,

Mrs . Dingley , that“ the Duke of Marlborough was

at court to-day , and nobody hardly (sic) took notice

of h im . Who cares now what the courtiers of

Queen Anne,or even Swift h imself , thought of Mar l

borough ? Moral ly , they were , most of them ,qu ite

‘as bad as he was . His gen ius has long outsoared

the shadow of their n ight, and remains the most

splendid luminary in the martial firm am ent of Eng

land . The day after Swift’s entry in h is journal

Queen Anne herself , inspired by the evil gen ius of

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QUEEN ANNE

tution would cal l it so now . That Queen Anne was

badly advised in making so sudden and decisive a

use of her prerogative, is an arguable proposit ion ,

or at worst, a defensible paradox . The existence of

the prerogative itsel f, which has never fal len into

disuse, was at the root of the kingly commonwealth

of England . The fountain of honour has always

contained a pipe which may be turned upon the

House of Lords . Lord Oxford ’s Min istry, i n which

St . John was the leading sp irit, desi red to conclude

peace with France . Their pol icy,which in prin

c iple, if not in method , was sound , had the approval

of a large majority in the House of Commons . To

bring the two branches of the Legislature i nto

harmony, by lawfu l means, for a j udicious purpose ,is a transaction which may be censured by the

pedant in h is closet, but wil l receive a ready con

donation from all who understand publ ic affairs .

With a prudence characteristic of Oxford, though

not of St . John , Min isters began their efforts with

the Peerage itself . They called up in their fathers’

baron ies,as the saying is, the sons of two earls .

Two other eldest sons of Peers received baron ies of

their own,and an I rish Peer became a Peer of Great

Britain . The Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,

Sir Thomas Trevor,and a couple of baronets , left

room for on ly three untitled commoners , who be

came respectively , without changing their names,

POLITICS 1 23

Lord Foley, Lord Bathurst, and Lord Masham .

Masham was the husband of the Queen ’s favourite,

and he was noth ing more . Perhaps he reminded

her Majesty of the late Prince George . Some

apprehens ion seems to have been felt lest Lady

Masham , once Abigai l Hil l , should be thought to

lower the dign ity of a Peeress, by continu ing to dress

the Queen , for which exalted purpose she sometimes

lay on the floor . But Lady Masham was always

wil l ing to make herself useful , and the dignity of a

Peeress has survived more serious , if not more

ludicrous , shocks . Lord Stanhope has recorded the

wholesome answer of a country gentleman , to whom

one of these th ings was offered .

“ No ,” said be ,

“ this looks l ike serving a turn . Peers used to be

made for services which they have done , but I

shou ld be made for services that I am to do . One

of these services was very soon required . On the

2nd of January , 1 7 1 2 , the Twelve took the oaths

required by law,and were sarcastical ly asked by

Lord Wharton,in one of the few real ly good Par

liam entary jokes, whether they would vote by their

foreman . They had to vote that very day . The

Queen desired the Lords by message to adjourn ti l l

the 14th of Janua ry, when the Commons were to

meet.This message might plausibly be cal led

unconstitutional,the righ t of adjournment being a

privi lege of each House itself . The motion of the

1 24 QUEEN ANNE

Government was, however, carried by a major ity of

th irteen , with the aid of the Twelve , against the

oppos ition of the Whigs .

When both Houses met on the 1 4th of January,

Prince Eugene had arrived in London , and the

Plen ipotentiaries had met at Utrecht to arrange the

prel im inaries of European peace . Eugene could do

nothing for Marlborough , to whom he was always

consistently devoted,and the Tories attacked him

with calumn ious insinuations, as engaged in a plot

against the Queen,because he was, l ike h is Royal

master,the Emperor Charles the Sixth , unfavour

able to the French terms . Lord Oxford had the bad

taste to describe him in his presence , as the fi rst

Captain in Europe . I f I am so,

” said the chival

rous Prince ,“ i t i s because you have removed my

superior .’ The triumphant Tories were carrying

everything before them , and Eugene retired to the

Hague without the smal lest measure of success .

The Tory desire for revenge took the ephemeral

shape of a zeal for purity , and found a victim in

Robert Walpole . The Commissioners of Publ ic

Accounts had formal ly charged Walpole,whose

sense of publ ic honour was never n ice , though his

sense of publ ic duty was always high , with m aking

i l l icit gains from Scottish contracts for forage,

while he held the office of Secretary at War in the

Admin istration of Godolphin . Walpole was not

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1 26 QUEEN ANNE

Cardonnel , Member for Southampton . Lord Town

shend, who had negotiated the Barrier Treaty , was

declared an enemy to the Queen and kingdom .

Mar lborough himself,in a publ ished reply to h is

accusers,said with dign ity

,and what is more, with

truth,The Commissioners may have observed very

r ightly that , by the strictest inqu iry they could

make , they cannot find that any Engl ish general

ever received this perqu isite . But I presume to say

the reason is that there was never any other Engl ish

general,besides myself

,who was Commander-in

Ch ief in the Low Countries .” Marlborough was

always plausible,and rel ied much upon the secrecy

in which h is most scandalous transactions were

buried . Justly and widely suspected as he was, his

worst vi l lain ies were not unearthed until he had

passed beyond the reach of a l l human tr ibunals ,

except the court of the historian .

The Par l iament of 1 7 1 0 was chiefly concerned

in assert ing and establ ishing the supremacy of

Episcopal ian Protestantism in genera l,and of the

Eng l ish Church in particular . The Occasiona l

Conformity Act, an eternal discredit to the Whigs

who voted for it in the House of Lords,d isqual ified

al l honest Dissenters for pol i tical and mun ic ipal

office . Roman Catho l ics were of course excluded

from Parl iament by the Test Act, . and Anglo

Cathol ics had not been heard of Scottish Presby

POLITICS 1 27

ter ians could not be prevented from sitting in a

Legislature not merely Engl ish,but British , and to

interfere d irectly w ith the Presbyterian Church of

Scotland would have been to destroy the Union .

St . John had no re l ig ion of h is own,and was in

capable of understanding what other people meant

by the term . He took his idea of a parson from

Swift, ah -d supported High Churchmen , such as

Atterbury , because they were Jacobites, or pol itica l

al l ies . Scottish Episcopal ians were under the

pecul iar protection of the M in istry,and that they

needed the secular arm even so patriotic an historian

of h is own country as John Hil l Burton does not

deny . A c lerk in holy orders, a min ister of the

Estab l ished Church of I re land , one G reensh ields,

sett led in Ed inburgh,and read to h is voluntary

congregation the Eng l ish Liturgy, as he had a

perfect right to do . That beautifu l serv ice had

se ldom been heard by the Presbyter ians of Scotland

s ince Laud foo l ishly tr ied to force it upon them , and

the Presbytery of Edinburgh , to whom re l ig ious

toleration meant tampering with the accursed th ing ,

forbade G r eensh ields, as an unqual ified intruder, to

read or preach w ithin the bounds . When he dis

regarded the ir prohibition , they brought h im before

the magistrates,who sent h im , l ike Paul and Silas,

to gaol . This tru ly monstrous sentence , al ike

i l legal and unchristian,was uphe ld by the Court of

1 28 QUEEN ANNE

Session , the supreme embodiment of j ustice in Scot

land . A Scottish House of Lords,to whom a

“ remeid of law,

’ in Eng l ish an appeal,would have

lain , no longer existed , hav ing been destroyed by

the Act of Un ion . The British House of Lords,

contain ing bishops , then an abomination to the

Scottish m ind , having ostensib ly inherited the

powers of the Scottish Peers,reversed the j udgment

pronounced at Edinburgh . The devi l was thus let

loose , and Episcopal clergymen in Scotland were

rabb led by the mob . Parl iament natural ly and

properly passed an Act for the ir protect ion at the

hands of the sheriffs,aided by the secular forces

of the Crown . But unfortunately,through sheer

ignorance , or perhaps by way of wanton insult , the

Presbyterian m in isters were directed by th is statute

to pray in express words for Queen Anne and the

E lectress Sophia . There could hardly be a better

example of the prov inc ia l arrogance and stup idity

w ith which Engl ishmen are sometimes charged .

The Presbyterians were as much attached as any

Church of England man could be to the Protestant

Succession,and they would natural ly have prayed

for it,if they had been left to themselves . But that

Parl iament should prescr ibe their prayers was i n

their eyes a profane aggression of the secular power

upon sacred th ings,far more important than any

title to any throne on earth . The Act became even

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1 30 QUEEN ANNE

and discredited Jacobites, he would not condescend

to acknow ledge , until peace , on his own terms , had

been final ly concluded . The Dutch M in isters , with

timely wisdom and judicious foresight , caused these

arrogant demands to be publ ished in their Gaz ette,

and they were thus speedi ly known in England ,

where the Tory , semi-Jacob ite Cabinet would wil l

ingly have concealed them . The wrath of the

Whigs at the news was shared by many patriotic

Tories, and notwithstanding the new Peers, Charles

Montagu,Earl of Hal ifax , carried unan imously on

the 1 2 th of February, a hosti le motion in the House

of Lords,which Lord Oxford , the most prudent of

men,durst not oppose . Misfortune fel l at the same

time,and fel l heavi ly, upon the House of Bourbon .

The very day on which Hal ifax carried his Resolu

tion the Dauphiness, Marie of Savoy, Duchess of

Burgundy, d ied of measles, and within a fortn ight

she was fo llowed to the grave by her husband, the

heir to the throne of France . Their e ldest son

expired on the 8th of March , and the succession

devolved upon the King ’s great-grandson , a sickly,

unwholesome chi ld, afterwards infamous as Lou is

the Fifteenth,next to whom by French law came

Phil ip the Fifth,King of Spain . England renewed

preparations for war . She had chosen , or her

M in isters had chosen for her, to d iscard the most

un iversal ly victorious of al l her soldiers , and in

POLITICS 1 3 1

Apri l they made themselves the laughing-stock of

Europe by appointing the Duke of Ormond to be

General in Flanders, and to join Prince Eugene at

Tournay . Eugene, a great soldier, and as true to

Marlborough as the dial to the sun, wished to

resume the great project of his former colleague,to

fight Marshal Vil lars, and to invade the heart of

France . But Lou is the Fourteenth,though he could

afford to despise such a commander as Ormond,

knew we l l“

the capacity of Eugene, was conscious of

the evi l pl ight to which, since 1 704, his own arm y

had been reduced, and perceived the necessity of

making more acceptable overtures . De Torcy was

directed to inform St . John that Phil ip should never

become King of France, un less he expressly re

nounced, both for h imself and for his descendants,

the crown of Spain . The King of Portugal was

suggested as Span ish monarch in Phi l ip ’s r oom,

for no one antic ipated that the baby Louis would

survive to make the French Revolution salutary and

inevitable . St . John repl ied that th is would not

do,and that Phil ip ’s renunciation of either the

French or the Span ish Crown , instead of being left

for the future , as a l ikely cause of another war, must

be put at once into the Treaty of Pease . Lou is

agreed to th is proposal, with some un important

reservations,and on the 1 0th of May Ormond was

directed from London to suspend hostil i ties ti l l thex 2

1 32 QUEEN ANNE

receipt of further orders . With characteristic

treachery,St . John concealed the issue of these in

str uctions from the Dutch Government, the faithfu l

a l ly of this country , and even the loyal , gal lan t,

honourab le Eugene was left to find them out for

h imself . Eugene, however, was not easi ly foi led,

and he insisted so warm ly upon the duty of investing

Le Quesnoy,that Ormond could not decen tly refuse

his cc-operation . I n the British Parl iament the

Whigs,small i n number as they were , at least in

the House of Commons, warm ly protested against

these transactions, and M in isters were reduced to the

subterfuge of maintain ing that a siege might be

lawful , though a battle was not . I n the House of

Lords Marlborough poured j ust contempt upon

St . John ’s nefar ious design , and Oxford only

escaped defeat by tell ing the del iberate falsehood

that the A l l ies were satisfied with their own be

trayal We got a great victory last Wednesday,

”

Swift wrote to Stel la on the 3 ISt of May, 1 7 1 2 ,“ we

got a great victory last Wednesday in the House

of Lords by a majority, I think, of twenty-eight

(Contents 40, Not Contents and the Whigs had

desired their friends to bespeak p laces to see Lord

Treasurer (the Ear l of Oxford) carried to the1Tower .’ The second part of the sentence is not of

course seriously meant . But the victory was hardly

to be cal led a moral one ; and if the Tower were the

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1 34 QUEEN ANNE

the tremendous revolution effected by the Reform

Act of 1 83 2 , which enfranchised the middle classes ,

and abol ished the pocket boroughs . Even in

1 7 1 2 , the House of Commons possessed the power

of the purse,and the practical control of the Execu

tive Government which that power impl ies . On

the other hand,the col lective responsibi l ity of the

Cabinet was sti l l in the making, a majority in the

Lords was considered essential to a min ister,and

many members of Parl iament were returned by

Peers . St . John,however

,behaved w ith h is usual

servil ity . I n abject letters to the Queen he en

t reated that the Earldom of Bol ingbroke , which had

belonged to his family , might be revived in his

favour . If he had been on good terms with the

Lord Treasurer, it is possible that this request

might have been granted . As he had chosen,

against the sagacious advice of Swift, to quarrel

with Lord Oxford , who had the ear of Lady

Masham , and therefore of the Queen , it was re

fused , and he had to be content, or as content as he

ever could be, with a mere Viscounty . Oxford

himse lf received the Order of the Garter,and thus

completely asserted his supremacy in the Cab inet,

though to cal l h im Prime Min ister would be a

techn ica l anachronism .

Bol i'

ngbroke at once went to Paris,with the

double object of courti ng Madame de Paraber e, an

POLITICS 1 35

easy prey , and of obtain ing a general armistice, not

confined to the Netherlands,for four months , i n

which he also succeeded . He did a th ird th ing,

by far the worst of the three . He abandoned to the

vengeance of King Phil ip those inhab itants of

Catalon ia , who, relying on British honour, had

fought on Britain ’s s ide . I n his Pu blic Spir it ofthe W h igs, as unscrupulous a piece of sophistry

as ever appeared, Swift, replying to Stee le , vainly

attempts an apology for this crime . Where Swift

failed no one else is l ikely to succeed, and Bol ingbroke 5 treatment of the Catalans l ies under the

final ban of al l impartial h istorians . The negotia

t ions for peace had real ly been conducted by a much

more usefu l person than Bol ingbroke, Matthew

Prior . A treaty,however , could not be ratified by

a man of Prior’s plebeian rank ; and the Duke Of

Hamilton was appointed Ambassador for that pur

pose , with secret instructions to bring over the

Pretender . All readers of Thackeray’s Esm ond

wil l remember what became of Hamilton . He was

first insulted , and then chal lenged, by Lord Mohun .

Both the duell ists were kil led in the encounter, and

the Duke of Shrewsbury , a magn ificent , if not very

effective personage,upon whom the Jacobites could

not rely , was sent to Paris as Hamilton’s successor .

Throughout July Prince Eugene , as commander of

the Imperial forces, endeavoured to carry on the

1 36 QUEEN ANNE

war with the aid of the Dutch . But there were no

British soldiers , and there was no Duke of Marl

borough . Eugene had to look he lplessly on“

, while

Marshal Vil lars defeated a Dutch force under Lord

Albemarle at Denain on the 24th of July ; and from

that day the Dutch Republ ic acceded to the cause

of peace . Even Bouchain,which had been taken

by Marlborough , was in his absence recovered by

Vil lars . Bol ingbroke was at this time in strict

secrecy using Gaultier as an instrumdnt, and pro

posing that the Pretender should be restored to the

B ritish throne , on the next demise of the Crown .

One reason made his success impossib le . James

was a strictly honourable and a sincerely re l igious

man , devoid of al l shin ing talents , but as honest as

the day , and therefore as unl ike Bol ingbroke as

might be . Nothing would induce him even to con

template the possib il ity of changing h is faith,and

after the disastrous re ign of his father the E ngl ish

people , though thousands of them bel ieved in div ine

right, wou ld not endure the notion of a Cathol ic

Sovere ign . The E lectress Sophia,a German old

enough to be the Queen ’s mother,was a ph ilo

sopher , and a d iscip le of Leibn iz , bel iev ing in

revealed rel igion no more than Bol ingbroke him

self But she had one supreme merit . She was not

a Papist,” and her son , as wel l as her grandson ,

had fought under Marlborough . The Engl ish

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1 38 QUEEN ANNE

choose,for his weal th was enormous, and his

Duchess would have accompan ied him anywhere .

With her he sai led to Ostend in November 1 7 1 2 ,

and after a vis it to the Principal ity of M indelheim ,

once his own , fixed his residence at Antwerp early

in 1 7 13 .

The prospects of peace, improved, or at al l events

not dimin ished,by Marlborough’s reti rement from

publ ic affairs, were much assisted by the pen of

Arbuthnot,who introduced John Bul l, in h is l ively

satires, as the typical name of an Engl ishman .

Although the power and influence of Grub Street,or, i n other words , of the pol itical pamphlet and

news-sheet, were h igher in the reign of Queen Anne

than they have ever been , before'

or s ince, the Parl ia

ment of 1 7 1 0 was hosti le to the Press as an organ

of Opin ion . The Stamp Act of 1 7 1 2 , opposed by

authors so celebrated for the ir gen ius,and so diverse

i n their views , as Swift, Addison , and Defoe , r e

tained i ts bad eminence on the Statute Book for

nearly a century and a half . I t imposed upon al l

newspapers and pamphlets the duty of a hal f-penny

for each half-sheet . This tax upon knowledge,or

upon ideas, almost rui ned a number of journal ists,and their fate was witti ly described i n the Spectator

as the fal l of the leaf .” I t weighed of course most

heavi ly upon the humblest scribblers,and could not

seriously affect such a journal as the Spectator , or

POLITICS I39

such a pamphleteer as Dr . Arbuthnot . John

Arbuthnot, physician in ordinary to the Queen , was

an ardent Tory , a pol ished , elegant writer, the mostde l ightfu l of companions, and the most amiable of

men . He was not, l ike Swift, a statesman , and he

was content to in terpret the opin ions which found

most favour with the Court . Anne be ing in 1 7 1 2

enthusiastical ly pac ific, her doctor was easi ly in

duced to pub l ish a satire on the war, which he cal led

Law is a Bottom less Pitt . The secondary title, ex

plain ing the scope and purpose of the tract, is,

Exemplified i n the case of the Lord Strutt , John

Bul l , N icholas Frog, and Lewis Baboon , who spent

al l they had in a Law Su it .” Arbuthnot was incapab le of distinguish ing between the Europe of 1 7 12

and the Europe of 1 704 , nor was it any part of h is

design to appreciate the splendid serv ices of Marl

borough . On the main question , whether peace on

honourab le terms should be made when he wrote,few would now d ispute either h is arguments or h is

inference . Marlborough had done , and more than

done,his work . All possible danger from France

had long passed away, and a continuance of the

armed struggle was useless s laughter . Bol ing

broke, upon whom , as Secretary of State, the main

responsib il ity for the negotiations fel l , was a traitor

to the Act of Settlement, if not to h is Royal mis

tress, and had been in treasonable correspondence ,

1 40 QUEEN ANNE

through Gaultier,with the Pretender . But , as

James remained obstinately Cathol ic , and as

Cathol ic ism was unpopular in Great B r itain , Bol ingbroke

,to whom al l rel igions were al ike , gave him

up in publ ic,and even pressed, with a vehemence

wh ich deceived many of h is countrymen , for the

immediate departure of the “ Cheval ier de St .

George from France . James hesitated to comply

with a demand il l suited to the dign ity of h is claims,

and Louis , who on ly persecuted Protestants , shrank

from expel l ing h im . At last,on the 1 7 th of

February, 1 7 1 3 , Bol ingbroke directed Shrewsbury

to cal l for an immediate reply from the French

Government , and three days afterwards the

Cheval ier left Chalons for Bar in Lor raine . When

this step had been taken , the business proceeded

more rapidly, and on the g1 5 t of March , 1 7 1 3 , the

Treaty of Utrecht was signed .

This famous instrument, which gave Great

Britain peace for a generation , was i n no way due

to the statesmen who actua l ly signed it . Oxford

and Bol ingbroke were responsible for dece iv ing

the Dutch, and betraying the Catalans . Gibraltar,

Newfoundland , Nova Scotia , and Hudson’s Bay

,

the substantial fru its of the great war,were due to

the financial capacity of Godolphin,who was dead

,

and to the mil itary gen ius of Marlborough,who was

in exil e . The Tories had Opposed the war , and were

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1 42 QUEEN ANNE

in the ir favour . One was the staunch Cathol icism

of James ; the other was the restless amb ition of

Bol ingbroke . A Cathol ic sovere ign of Great

Britain was impossible , and the only alternative to

James the Third,unless the E lectress survived the

Queen,was George the F irst . The House of Han

over was essential ly and inevitably Whig . I ts ti tle

to the throne of Great Britain and I reland was

Parl iamentary . I ts enemies, bel ievers in divine

right,were al l Tories . Hanover had taken an active

part with the Empire against France in the War of

the Span ish Succession . I t was Protestant to the

core , and commanded the support of al l Whigs .

While the Whigs were un ited by adversity, the

Tories were divided by prosperity . Some were

Hanoverians, others were Jacobites . Tories who

would not wil l ingly in set terms acknowledge any

one except James Stuart as their lawful sovereign,

were wi l l ing to recogn ize a King by Act of Parl ia

ment, as their legal ruler, to whom obedience might

without prej udice be rendered . Bol ingbroke,even

after he despaired of inducing the Pretender to

abandon the Cathol ic faith, had his own game to

play . His nominal subordination to Oxford galled

him , and it was not a sol itary grievance . With al l

his accompl ishments, he had a trivial m ind, and he

was bitterly disappointed to be put off with a

viscounty when he expected an earldom . The Port

POLITICS I43

land manuscripts preserve the proofs of his chagrin ,

which was i nflamed by Anne ’s bestowal of the

Garter upon the Earl of Oxford . He who thinks

his place unfit for h im , said the Marquess of Hal ifax ,

wil l be unfit for his place . So it was with Bol ing

broke in 1 7 13 . His mind was not real ly given to

foreign affairs, not even to the Treaty of Utrecht .

His main purpose was to supersede Lord Oxford,

and to become Lord Treasurer himself . For the

White Staff, the symbol of power , or at least of

patronage , he would have bartered such prej udices

as remained to him,and such principles as he pos

sessed . He would gladly have accepted it under

James . He would wil l i ngly have accepted it under

George . He was bent upon rece iving it under

Anne . He cultivated an al l iance with the Tory

Highfliers, and even affected to be a High Church

man , be l ieving that persecution oi Dissenters would

be as popular with the nation as it would be con

genial to the Queen . He was a disturbing element

in Oxford ’s cabinet, and in the Tory ranks . So far

as he had any settled convictions in pol itics , he was

agai nst Constitutional monarchy , and favourable to

personal rule . Few Tories who were not also

Jacob ites, and perhaps not al l who were , would have

fol lowed him in abandoning the restrictions placed

by the Revolution upon the Crown . Even the Treaty

of Utrecht contained unpalatable matter . Little was

1 44 QUEEN/“ANNE

said or thought at the time about the fish ing rights

reserved to France in Newfoundland, which have

s ince given rise to so much trouble . But there were

also questions of trade .

Besides the general peace,Bol ingbroke had con

cluded a commercial treaty with France , which

gave her the rights of the most favoured nation ,

providing that no foreign imports should pay a

lower duty than the French . I n 1 7 13 this was

regarded,and with reason , as a long step towards

complete freedom of trade . But it was a direct

infringement of the Methuen Treaty with Portugal ,

under which the duty on Portuguese wine must

be one-thi rd less than was paid by the wine of

France . The Whigs took this point in the House

of Commons, and the manufacturers of wool lens

were so much alarmed for the possible loss of the ir

business with Portugal , if the Methuen Treaty

were infringed, that the B i l l adopting the conven

tion was fina l ly defeated on the 1 8th of J une . Nor

was this the only Whig triumph . Both Houses

agreed to address the Queen in favour of removing

the Pretender from Lorraine, although she had in

fact no contr ol over the Duke of Lorraine,or over

her own brother, and nothing happened in con

sequence of these votes .

Bol ingbroke ’s avowed pol icy of using his power

for the benefit of his friends was adopted in ecclesi

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1 46 QUEEN ANNE

h im the greatest man in I reland , though he derived

no happiness from the influence he wielded . He

had sold himself to Oxford and Bol ingbroke . By

dint of always preaching Toryism he had un

consciously become a Tory . But Swift was no

Jacobite He was attached to his Protestan t

Church as a pol it ica l i nst itution . Of min isterial

intrigues with St . Germains he knew noth ing, and

it is to his honour that he was never entrusted with

the knowledge . Fa'r different was the case of

Francis Atterbury , promoted at this time from the

Deanery of Christchurch to the Deanery of West

minster and B ishopric of Rochester, then usually

combined . Atterbury ’s H igh Churchmanship

stopped short of Rome , from which it was divided

theologically by a th in , impalpable l ine , and prac

tical ly by the Pope . But he wou ld certain ly have

had no object ion to a‘Cathol ic Sovereign,and there

was not a more thorough-going Jacobite i n the

Church of England than he . His removal from

Christchurch was a blessing to the Col lege,which

was never at peace during the short period of his

headship , and which he would have reduced, i f

more time had been given him,to the condition of

Trin ity under Bentley . I n the House of Lords,if

circumstances had not soon placed him on his own

defence , he would have agitated for repeal ing the

Act of Settlement with as much pugnacity,and as

POLITICS 1 47

l i ttle information,as he disp layed in arguing for

the absurd Letters of Phalaris .

Atterbury’s appointment was a declaration of

open war against Whigs, Low Churchmen , Dis

senters , and Hanoverians . Yet it produced

strangely l ittle effect upon the country , when the

Parl iament of 1 7 1 0 came under the Trienn ial Act

to be dissolved in the summer of 1 7 1 3 . The peace

was so popular that a Government which contained

at least one ardent Jacob ite rece ived votes from

electors who burnt together in effigy the Devil , the

Pope , and the Pretender . The Whigs gained a

few seats , but not enough to disturb their opponents ,

or to encourage themselves . The Tories were

resolved to make hay while the sun shone . On

the 1 8th of March , 1 7 14, they expel led R ichard

Steele, Member for Stockbridge, a Whig essayist

i nferior on ly to Addison , from the House of

Commons for publ ish ing a pamphlet cal led the

Cr isis i n favour of the Hanover ianl

succession ,

which happened to be the law of the land . That

succession was altered by death on the 28th of May .

The E lectress Sophia once said that she would die

happy,i f she could be described on her coffin as

Queen of England . Considering that her son was

older than Queen Anne, the E lectress may be

thought immoderate in her ambit ion , near as she

came to fulfi l l ing it . She died suddenly in herL 2

1 48 QUEEN ANNE

e ighty-fourth year, pa‘rtly, it is thought , from vexa

tion,because Anne, who had no wish for the society

of her own heirs,decl ined to receive in England

Sophia’s son the Elector, or her‘

grandson the

E lectoral Prince, who as Duke of Cambridge was

entitled to a writ of summons for the House of

Lords . Although the E lector had quarrel led with

Marlborough,who would not trust him with mil itary

secrets in 1 708, his Whig lean ings were well known ,

and the Engl ish Tories were pul l ing fast towards

the rapids . The nearer they came,the harder they

pul led . I n the session of 1 7 1 4 they carried the

Schism Act, for which the much abused word

incredible seems the most appropriate ep ithet . By

this statute , which was never, as th ings turned out,

enforced,Engl ishmen were forb idden to act as

tutors or school-masters,except in noblem en

’

s

famil ies, without conforming to the Church of

Eng land . A touch of burlesque is imparted to the

infamy of such a law by the ludicrous exception

al ready named, and by the fact that its most

strenuous champion was Henry St . John,Viscount

Bol ingbroke,a nominal Deist

,an actual sceptic

,

scoffer, and rake . After this Act had been passed ,and before Parl iament had been prorogued

,the

Government offered a reward, hypocritical so far as

Bol ingbroke was concerned,and not very sincere

on the part of Oxford, for the apprehension of

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1 50 QUEEN ANNE

bel ieved , would be frustrated by James’s loyalty to

the Cathol ic faith . He cherished a hope , which

must have been faint,of making h ispeace with the

E lector,and meanwhile he was resolved to be the

First M in iste r of Anne . Oxford’s incapacity helped

him,and so did the growing sottishness which made

the Lord Treasurer odious to the Queen . Even

Lady Masham,to whom Bol ingbroke paid assidu

ous court in a pol itical sense,had turned against

her kinsman , partly because Oxford was out of

favour with her mistress , and partly , it is probable ,

because he had failed to co-opera'te with her in some

scheme of making money .at the pub l ic expense .

The best account of th is miserable squabble is to

be found in a sombre and mournful letter,written

th irteen years after the event by Swift to Oxford’s

son . Swift had scarce ly been instal led i n his

Deanery of St . Patrick’s when numerous letters

from England implored him to return,and to effect

a reconci l iation . No one could appeal to the reason

better than Swift , so long as he retained his own .

But Oxford and Bol ingbroke were beyond the reach

of argument . Oxford was in an almost chron ic

state of alcohol ic torpor , and Bo l i ngbroke was

madly bent upon oust ing his rival without delay.

“W h en I returned to England ,

” wrote Swift on the

1 4th of June , 1 737 , I found their quarrels a‘nd

coldness increased . I laboured to reconci le them

POLITICS 1 5 :

asmuch as I was able . I contrived to bring them

to my Lord Masham’s, at St . James

’s . My Lord

and Lady Masham left us together . I expostulated

with them both but could not find any good con

sequences . I was to go to Windsor next day with

my Lord Treasurer : I pretended business that

prevented me , expecting they would come to some

agreement . But I fol lowed them to Windsor, where

my Lord Bol ingbroke told me that my scheme had

come to nothing . Things went on at the same rate

they grew more estranged every day . My Lord

Treasurer found his .credit daily decl ining . I n May

1 7 14 I had my last meeting with them at my Lord

Masham’s. He left us together , and therefore I

spoke very fu lly to them both ; and told them‘ I

would reti re , for I found al l was gone .

’ Lord

Bol ingbroke whispered me ,‘ I was in the right . ’

Your father said , All would do well .’

Swift,who knew better , was powerless , and

ret ired to Berkshire, where he stayed , a strange

guest,with a clerical friend . I t was on the 27th of

July , 1 7 14 , that Bol ingbroke achieved his momen

tary triumph in the dismissal of Oxford,after a

stormy altercat ion in the Royal Closet , and a torrent

of undign ified reproaches from the Queen . Who

was to be the new Lord Treasurer A more utterly

insign ificant question never presented itself to the

mind of man . But to Bol ingbroke it was the one

1 52 QUEEN ANNE

th ing in al l the world th at mattered . He did not

get the White Staff h imself . The disputes wh ich

led to Oxford’s compulsory ret irement had pro

si rated the Queen , and on the 3oth of July she was

at death’s door . Bol ingbroke was no favour ite of

hers . His irrel igion a'nd immoral ity were not to her

mind. With her dying hands she gave the staff to

the Duke of Shrewsbury , who was recommended by

the Cabinef, with the sulky acquiescence of Bol ing

broke , and bade him use it for the good of her

people . Shrewsbury , though he played a double

part,l ike so many statesmen of his time , was an

active supporter of the Revolut ion , and of the

Exclusion B i l l . Whatever he may have been in

1 700, or in 1 7 1 5 , when the Whigs had ousted him ,

he was in 1 7 14 a staunch adherent to the Protestant

Succession , and to the House of Hanover . I f the

Queen had l ived, Bol ingbroke might have sup

planted Shrewsbury, as he supplanted Oxford, and

a Jacobite conspiracy might for a time,though not

for long , have succeeded . But the Queen ’s strength

was dwindl ing every hour . She had no wish to l ive .“ Sleep ,

” said Dr . Arbuthnot ,“was never more

welcome to a weary travel ler than death was to her .”

There is no truth in the legend that she showed

remorse for her treatment of her father,or of h er

brother . “ Death is the triumph of the physical,

”

and the appointment of Shrewsbury was Anne’s last

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1 54 QUEEN ANNE

George,he was too late , and his services were not

requ ired . The Whigs of those days were essential ly

placemen,and their standard of publ ic moral ity

would now be considered deplorably low . Bo l ing

broke himself was not more greedy of power and

patronage than they . But they were also men of

action,bo ld

,resolute

,determined ; unl ike the

Tor ies,except Atterbury , who was a bishop , and

alone . They understood business , diplomacy , and

war . Forma l praise wou ld be wasted upon states

men whose interests coincided with their duty .

For the Whigs the Hanoverian dynasty sign ified a

long,an indefinite prospect of honour and emolu

ment . They took the tide at the flood, and i t led

them on to fortune . There was probably no one

whom Bo l ingbroke , the l iterary dreamer , hated or

despised as he despised and hated the il l iterate

Walpole . But while Bol ingbroke quoted Horace ,

and wrapped h imself in his own virtue , a threadbare

su it, Walpole , consol idating his position by al l

means , good and bad al ike , became the first states

man in Eng land , if not in Europe . England passed

under the domination of the Whigs with the final

breath that left the body of Queen Anne .

As George th e First was sti l l in Hanover,a l ist

of Regents had been drawn up before the actual

demise of the Crown . Besides seven offi cers of

State who were ent itled to places in it,the Arch

POLITICS ISS

b ishop of Canterbury standing first,and the Lord

Chancellor second, it i ncluded eightee n noblemen ,five of whom were Tories . Marlborough and

Somers were conspicuous by the ir absence, pr ee

fu lgeban t qu ia non v isebafntur . The Proclama

tion wh ich actual ly notified the death of Anne,

and the accession of George,was signed by

Bol ingbroke , and several other Jacobites . When

it was read at Westminster , and in the City of

London , the loyal cheers were unbroken by a single

hiss. That sign of publ ic fee l ing was reserved for

Oxford and Bol ingbroke , who in their quarrel with

each other had ru ined themselves . The Whigs

carried everything before them , though Ormond’s

personal popularity ensu red him a' good reception .

The sentiments of the people admitted of no doubt .

A Protestant sovereign and a tranqui l reign were

the objects of thei r desi re . The Act of Settlement

had the support of publ ic op inion because it saved

England from the Pope and the Pretender .

Th e l i fe of Anne resolves itself at the beginn ing

of her reign into the history of England,of Scot

land , and of Europe . The history of I reland,a

mere history of oppression , was il luminated in

subsequent years by the savage satire of the great

Dean , who withdrew at the death of the Queen to

Dub l in, and there wreaked his vengeance upon

W h igs in part icular, and the human race in general .

1 56 QUEEN ANNE

Throughout the mighty drama‘ of the disputed

succession and the Span ish war Anne was a dumb

character,a lay figure

'

on the stage . Of the four

Engl ish Queens she is by far the least sign ificant .

Even Mary Tudor is redeemed from nonentity by

her po l icy of “ thorough ” i n rel igious persecution .

!

Anne did her best,i n circumstances of pecul iar

embarrassment , to fulfi l her obl igations amidst the

se lfish i ntriguers who surrounded her . But her

task was almost impossible . She laboured for the

peace which only came in the last year of her reign,

not because she was a prudent sovereign,but

because she was a‘ conscientious woman . She gave

lavish ly to the Church of E ngland . Otherwise she

was l ittle more than a bone Of contention between

ambitious statesmen and plotting favourites . Her

one po l it ical conviction was that the W higs were

enemies of the Church . I n that and some other

respects she was curiously l ike George the Third .

If she had been gifted with h is cunn ing and his

strength of wil l , she would ha’ve made a push for

personal rule . She presided , as we have seen , at

her own Cabinets . She assisted , almost as regularly

as Charles the Second , at the debates in the House

of Lords . She resented the coercion of Godolph in’s

Whig min istry , and it was by playing upon th is

resentment that Mrs . Masham acqu ired the influence

which put Harley in the place of Godolphin . When

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CHAPTER I I I

LITERATURE

BEFORE Walpole and the Hanoverians ban ished

l iterature from publ ic l ife, men of letters were.

almost an estate of the nation . Addison , Pope,

Swift, and Bol ingbroke were not on ly un ited in

good fel lowship ; they were also glad to welcome any

man of gen ius, l ike Prior, and ready to assist every

young author who deserved it . London was then

so smal l a place that nothing good could be pub

lished there without the write-r becoming , in a short

time, famil iar to the l iterary circle of the metropol is .

I t was not unl ike the Augustan age so admirably

described by Ben Jonson in Sejanus, although

there was no cultivated Caesar . Hal ifax, Oxford,and Shrewsbury , if the two former were not

competent critics, were all three generous patrons ,so that, though the sp irit Of party was at

its height, l iterature un ited men whom pol itics

divided . There cou ld be no better example of th is

pleasant freemasonry than the case of Wil l iam

Harrison . Harrison was the son of a country

doctor, and became through Addison governor

or tutor to the Duke of Queensberry ’s son . Addison1 58

LITERATURE 1 59

also recommended him to Swift as an ingen ious

composer of Latin verse , and author of some

Engl ish poems in the Tatler .

“ A l ittle prettyfe l low , Swift called him in wri ting to Stel la, with

a great deal of wit, good sense, and good nature .

When Steele gave up the Tatler at the end Of 1 7 1 0,

Swift, with great kindness, helped Harrison to ca rry

it on , freely correcting what he frankly described as

Harr ison ’s “ trash .

”The enterprise was not suc

cessful , and Harrison was qu ick to spend whatever

he earned . But Swift’s unaccustomed benevolence

was not exhausted . A man , he thought, might fai l

i n l iterature,and yet succeed in diplomacy . St .

John was Secretary of State , and the Peace Con

ference was about to meet at the Hague “ I was

this morn ing at the Secretary , St . John s , wrote

Swift to Stel la, on the 1sth of March , 1 7 1 1 ,“ and

he has given me for young Harrison the Tatler , the

prettiest employment in Europe , Secretary to my

Lord Raby , who is to be Ambassador Extraordinary

at the Hague,where al l the great affai rs wil l be

concerted,so we shal l lose the Tatler in a fortn ight .”

Harrison came home with the Barrier Treaty at the

beginn ing of 1 7 1 2 , but died of a fever in his twenty

e ighth yea r . Swift’s attention to him during his

last i l l ness was extraordinary , and he told Stel la

that no loss had ever grieved him so much . Harri

son is not h imse l f an important person , though his

1 60 Q UEEN ANNE

W oodstock Par k, i n Dodsley’s collection of poetry ,

is sti l l read . The interest of his brief career l ies in

his relation to the Older writers who befriended him

and provided for h im . I t was a real confratern ity

of letters to which Swift introduced Harrison , and

even Congreve, i n h is bl indness, was at pains to

write for the young man ’s Tatler . Such th ings are

on ly possible in a smal l society, where every den izen

of Grub Street knows al l the rest . Addison ’s course,

though chequered and disturbed by pol itics, is a

very remarkable instance Of l i terary merit rewarded

by publ ic office and honour . But sti l l more striking

and more agreeable than the patronage Of Hal ifax

or Godolphin was the cordial sympathy with which

the masters of the pen regarded each other . There

has been noth ing quite l ike it since . There are too

many people i n the world, especially in London ,

and competition is too fierce . After the censorship

of the Press had ceased, and before Parl iamentary

reporting had begun, the l ittle group of pamphlet

eers who could write were more powerful than the

Cabinet, and at least as wel l known .

Ere Queen Anne became sovereign of England ,

Scotland, and I reland, the founder of the l i terary

school which i l lustrates her reign had passed away .

John Dryden died i n 1 700 , after predicting that his“ cousi n Swift,

” a distant cousin , would never be a

poet . Dryden had seen only the crazy Pindarics

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1 62 QUEEN ANNE

paraphrased Homer and Horace , partly from the

perfection of h is l iterary form . Yet he was no great

classical scholar, no match for Swift , or for Lady

Mary Wortley . The question how much Greek he

knew,or whether he knew Greek at a l l , l ies outside

the period Of Anne . I t is enough to say here that

a man of Pope ’s unrival led cleverness might have

written his pretty poem ,as Bentley cal led his Iliad,

from Chapman and Dacier , or from a Latin crib .

A good Latin ist Pope undoubtedly was, slender and

fragmentary as his education had been . He was

born in the year of the Engl ish Revolution , and his

parents were Cathol ics . Taught by four priests in

succession,with two private schools in terposed

between the th ird and the fourth,he began from a

chi ld to read vorac iously,and was scarcely out of

his ch ildhood when be commenced author . “ I

l isped in numbers , for the numbers came, he says,imitating a verse of Ovid

,whom in many respects

he resemb led .

1 Pope’s rel ig ion,or the rel igion of

his father and mother,shut him out from the publ ic

schools, the un iversities, the legislature , the bar,and every kind of pol itical

,mi l itary

,or mun icipal

offi ce . But for such things he had no aptitude and

no incl inat ion . His weapon was the pen,and the

success with which he wielded it i s embalmed in

his own famous couplet1(E 1 quad tentabam dz

'

cer e v ersus ew t. )

LITERATURE 1 63

Yes, I am proud, and justly proud , to see

Men not afraid of God afraid of m e.

”

His compl iments are among the m ost exquis ite ever

paid i n verse . His invective was so tremendous

that the least susceptible shrank from it in fear .

The disab i l it ies imposed on him by his hereditary

faith he never attempted to remove . He was no

more a real Catho l ic than Bol ingbroke was a real

Protestant . He was simply a Deist,whose genu ine

convictions are expressed in the Univ ersal Pr ayer .

I f he adhered to the Church of his parents,the

reason may be found in that devotion to his mother

which is the most amiab le feature in a strange ,

crooked, sidelong character . I nj uries received in

babyhood produced a physical weakness and de

formity to which his moral perversity and falsehood

may perhaps be traced . Yet, addicted as he was

to a gal lantry of the most prurient sort, he seems

to have been real ly fond Of Martha B lount, and his

friendship for Swift was undoubted ly sincere .

Although his treatment of Addison and Of Lady

Mary Wortley is inexcusable,his love Of impish

m ystification is a peccadil lo, and Pope was nothing

l ike the monster of incredib le in iqu ity that he

appeared to Whitwel l E lwin .

Pope took Addison ’s early advice to remember that

h is gen ius was national , and though he ca l led him

self a Whig, kept out of pol i tical controversy altoM 2

1 64 QUEEN ANNE

gether . He was a man of letters pure and simple ,

with an added taste for good company , and an

especial appreciation of the fairer sex . His masters

i n l iterature were Horace , Spenser, Dryden , and

Boileau . The majesty of Dryden ’s verse was

beyond him , for he had no dign ity of mind . But

he learnt rhythm from Spenser and Dryden , as he

learnt criticism from Horace and Boileau . The

original part Of him was his style ; i n imitable for

neatness, terseness, and point . The part that

belonged to his age , and is therefore most to the

purpose here , was his sceptical, mocking spir it ; his

exaltation of common sense ; h is acceptance of

Shaftesbury’scanon that ridicu le is the test of truth .

I n these things he resembled Voltaire . Easi ly as

rhymes came to Pope, he pol ished them to the last

degree before they saw the l ight . His Pastor als,

imitated from Vi rgil ’s E clogu es, and pub l ished in

1 709 , were by his own account the poems on which

he spent most care, and the Messiah , a modern

setting of the Pollio, was always his favourite .

Whatever else may be thought of these Pastor als,

they are copies taken from copies , for Vi rgi l

fo l lowed, and almost translated, Theocritus . And

although the best Greek l iterature wil l bear a good

deal Of watering down , even Theocritus at two

removes bears a peri lous resemblance to salt with

out its savour . At twenty-one Pope was a mere

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1 66 QUEEN ANNE

feel ing of his author . When Pope paraphrased

Horace , he was conscious Of the excel lent oppor

tunitiesgiven him by the Latin for the development

of h is own pecul iar talents . Few poets have

achieved earl ier fame . Will iam Congreve , who

admired his Pastor als, was then at the summit of

his own renown . Congreve’s bri l l iant comedies had

all been produced in the late re ign before he was

thirty . His one tragedy , The Mourn ing B r ide, so

extravagantly praised by Johnson , had succeeded

beyond its deserts . Godolphin had provided for

h im by a Commissionership of L icenses , which

enabled h im to l ive in comfort , to set up for a man

of fash ion,and to pose as an arb iter of taste . Lord

Hal ifax , whose steadfast Whiggery excluded him

from Office during the reign of Anne , affected the

ai rs of a l iterary critic without much right to assume

them . He was , however, a generous patron of

letters,and though Pope derived no material assist

ance from him , he owed to Hal ifax his friendship

with Addison , and to Addison his friendship with

Swift . The relations between Pope and Addison

were not altogether satisfactory . But no one ever

had a better friend than Pope had in Addison , or

than Swift had in Pope .

The Essay on Cr iticism received warm and due

praise from the Spectator , Of which the first number

appeared on the wt of March,1 7 1 1 . I t was followed

LITERATURE 1 6 7

in 1 7 14 by W indsor For est and the Rape of the

Lock . W indsor For est, an academic exercise ,destitute of real ity and nature

,had the honour to

be praised by Wordsworth . Otherwise it possesses

l ittle interest now , except to show how Pope assimi

lated the metre of Dryden . The Rape of the L ock,on the other hand , was a new thing in Engl ish

poetry , and is a perfect thing of its k ind . Founded

on the simple fact that Lord Petre,i n the fervour of

his adoration , cut Off a tress of M iss Bel le Fermor’s

hair , and designed at first merely to mitigate the

he inousness of that Offence, i t afterwards became ,

by the introduction of the sylphs as part of the

machinery, a singu lar example of poetry improved

by the praeter natural . The powers of the air, good

natured sp irits,are martial led by Pope with such

grace and skil l that a trumpery incident of a

frivolous amour becomes quite romantic, and almost

subl ime . Addison incurred Pope’s undying resent

ment by begging him not to touch the original ver

s ion,in which there were no sylphs . But that most

amiable of men wou ld have been the first to acknow

ledge that his advice was bad, and that Pope had

done what any j udicious critic would have told him

he could not do . Pope’s Cathol ic train ing may have

suggested to him the idea of “ metaphysica l aid.

”

NO one less prodigiously clever could have invoked

it in such a cause without incurring the sl ightest

1 68 QUEEN ANNE

touch of ridicu le . The result, charming as it is

to-day,was even more appropriate to the age of

Anne . It was an age of fops and beaux , Of wigs

and swords, Of love-making rather ostentatious than

c landestine , Of masks and dominos, duels and dice .

London society was qu ite smal l enough to know al l

about Miss Fermor , and Lord Petre , and Sir George

Brown , who figured as Pope’s “ Sir Pl ume ,” and

did not l i ke being made to talk nonsense al l the

time ; Sir Plume of amber snuff-box justly vain ,

and the n ice conduct Of a clouded cane . The read

ing publ ic, however, were of a different op in ion

from Sir George Brown ’s . Pope was not real ly

more mora l than Congreve , perhaps less . But he

had written a poem which was l ike a p roper L ov e

for L ov e, a prim W ay of the W or ld, and he seemed

to have taken from the devi l some of his best tunes .

Congreve wasgu ilty of an anachron ism,which laid

him open to the unsparing lash of Jeremy Col l ier .

He had transferred to the Revolution the moral ity

of the Restoration , when al l the world, especial ly

Dryden , was young . The Court Of Anne was

strictly decorous ; and if the whole Of the town was

not qu ite so correct as the Court,the parade of vice

had ceased to be popular . Wh en Pope was writing

only to please himself, as in h is version of Horace’s

second satire, which has never been publ ished since

1 738, he could be far more l icentious than Dryden

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1 76 QUEEN ANNE

With the Revolution began the reign Of reason

in pol itics,i n morals

,and in faith . The ponderous

Theism,or Pantheism

,of Toland and his school

was regarded as a bore . When Swift sneered at“ that qual ity of their voluminous wr itings which

the poverty of the Engl ish language compels me

to cal l thei r style ,” he made a palpable h it . He

would have been the last to depreciate the style of

Pope,which

,i n simpl ic ity and directness , was not

un l ike his own . Although Pope was not a member

Of the dominant Church , although he nominal ly

adhered to a smal l and persecuted commun ion of

disfranchised Engl ishmen , he hit the lay publ ic

between wind and water . Coll ier had too much

rel igion for them . Shaftesbury had too l i ttle .

Berkeley was over their heads . Swift frightened

them . Pope was every man ’s poet, the poet of the

golden mean , who had true wit because he said

what everybody thought, and nobody else could

say so wel l .

Yet i n the l iterature of Anne there was a mightier

than Pope . Pope in h is most ambitious specula

tions never went much below the surface . His

vein was thin . His mine was shal low . Carlyle

loved to tel l the story of a Scottish miner,who

was asked how far down he had been in the course

Of his work , and repl ied that he had heard the devi l

hoasting , or in E ngl ish coughing . Swift seemed

LITERATURE 1 7 1

often to hear the sound . He was cursed with a

lurid insight into evi l , with an eye’

wh ich pierced

the trappings of conventional ism and saw the

hypocrisy i nvolved in al l c ivil ized behaviour . True

goodness he did not see ; or, if he saw it, he did

not care to dwel l upon it . He was that rarest of

God’s creatures, a misanthrope, to whom the degra

dation of humanity was a real joy . That the rela

t ions of the sexes were the same in men and women

as in other an imals , was a revolting paradox on

which he loved to dwel l . All pretence of sanctity ,

or even of rel igion , apart from a cold , dry , legal

orthodoxy , to be enforced by the secular arm , was

to him dishonest affectation . He said openly in

talk , and impl ied in his own ghastly epitaph on

himsel f, that his sermons were pol i tical pamphlets .

He seldom in al l h is various writings appeals

to a lofty motive , or shows any enthusiasm for a

great deed . His chief friends , such as Pope ,

Harley,and St . John , had neither rel igion nor

vi r tue . His love of fi l th amounted to a man ia .

On the other hand,i n a drunken age he was strictly

sober,and he was qu ite capable of disinterested

kindness to the few people he real ly l iked . His

nature was warped . Capable of i nsp iring , but in

capable of return ing, passion , he broke the hearts

of two women by his coldness , and the death of

Vanessa,Hester Van Hom r igh , affected him no

1 72 QUEEN ANNE

more than the death of a dog . Of Stel la,Esther

Johnson,he was truly fond . But his fondness was

not the love of a man for a woman ; i f it ended in

some mysterious,clandestine marriage

,of wh ich

there is no positive evidence, the marriage was

not a real un ion ; and though he was the absorb

ing interest of her existence , he made her in

the end almost as miserable as'

he made himself .

He hated I reland , where he had to l ive ; he hated

the human race ; he hated l ife itself . On his b irth

day , the day on which , in h is own elegant phrase ,

he was “ dropped” on the wrong side of the I rish

Channel , he always read the fearfu l chapter in

which Job opened his mouth , and cursed his day .

”

He was marked from his bi rth with the stamp of

misery and genius . His final catastrophe,the

fai lure of his intel lect , belongs to a later period

than the period of this book . Til l h is appoi ntment

to the Deanery of St . Patrick’s i n 1 7 1 3 , and long

afterwards , his mind was almost miraculously

acute . His humour is not of the deepest kind,

because i t lacks reverence . Rabelais,his favourite

author, hating monks and monkery , revel l ing in

audacious an imal ism , despising the ceremon ies of

the Cathol ic Church , never lost h is faith in know

ledge 01 i n God . Although Swift is traditional ly

said to have spent much time at his Deanery in

private devotion , his publ ished works show very

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1 74 QUEENQ’ANNE

took advantage of his c loth to scatter insults which

would have cost a layman many duels , and possibly

his l i fe . Women no less than men were the victims

of his fury,especia l ly i f the ir social rank was high ,

for he could not see that to insult a Duchess was

simply to insult a woman . His fi rst publ ication of

any importance was evoked by a fool ish dispute

about the respective merits of ancient and modern

writers . Swift’s Battle of the Books, an excellent

piece Of Engl ish , has not many other merits, being

chiefly designed to cover the deficiencies of his

patron , Sir Wi l l iam Temple , who was wel l qual i

fied to write in defence of the moderns , because he

did not know a word of Greek . But Swift’s great

contribution to l i terature in the reign Of Queen

Anne was the Tale of a Tub . I t is useless to cal l

in question the merits of a book which critic fol lows

critic in pronouncing to be among the glories of

Engl ish l iterature . I wi l l only ask,without an

swer ing, how many people read it now . Swift’s

ostensible object in the Ta le of a Tu b is to prove

that the establ ished Church of England and I re

land , of which he was an ordained min ister,is

superior to Romanism on the one hand,and to

Calvin ism on the other . Both Cathol ics and Pro

testant Dissenters are adroitly contrived to look

exceedingly contemptible and ridicu lous The

Church of England, on the other hand, is r epre

LITERATURE 1 75

sented, much less adroitly , to have made the best

of a bad job , and to be the only rel igious com

mun ion with which a man of sense may in reason

connect h imself . I f there was one person who held

the views which the Tale of a Tu b professes to

inculcate , that person was Queen Anne . Yet the

Queen said, and ins isted, that the man who wrote

that profane ribaldry should never be a b ishop .

On a point of this kind one can only express one’s

own opinion , and I agree with the Queen . I do

not bel ieve that any one would have written the

Tale of a Tu b who had any reverence for Chris

tianity, for rel igion , or for the Church as a divine

institution . Swift never committed himself to a

direct statement of disbel ief in revelation , in the

B ible , or in Christ ; but a long course Of s ilence ,varied by profane jests at the expense of every

other rel igious body except the jester’s own , has

a cumulative effect , and leaves upon the mind Of an

impartial reader a conviction that Sw i ft was far less

spiritual ly minded than the sectaries, or even the

Deists,he denounced . The l iterary merits of the

Tale of a Tu b are a different quest ion . There is

a popular legend tha t when Swift’s intel lect was

decaying, he took up the Tale and exclaimed ,

What a gen ius I had when I wrote that book .

”

I f he had written nothing else , would he now be

considered a man of gen ius at a l l The story of the

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wil l,and of its interpretation by the three brothers ,

though exquisitely drol l in itself , does not corre

spond with any historic facts . The brother who

represents the Church Of England, Martin by name ,is no more logical and consistent , though he may

be less extravagant, than Peter or Jack . Cathol ics

are treated as if they were not Christians at al l , and

everything worthy of respect or admiration in thei r

Church is studiously ignored . Nonconformists are

to Sw i ft hypocrites of the most loathsome kind ,

consciously dishonest , and habitua l ly profane .

The rel igious,and even the respectable, part of the

community, said that this parson was a jack pud

ding,to whom al l form s of faith were food for

flouts and jeers . Even the style is very inferior to

what the style of Swift afterwards became, and

the whole treatise is unworthy to be mentioned

in the same breath w ith his priceless, incom par

able satire On the inconveniences which might

result from the immediate abol it ion Of Christian ity

by law .

Swift 's poetry, or rather verse , belongs for the

most part to the Georgian era , when he had done

with ambit ion , and with England . His pre

decessor, Matthew Prior, though inferior to h im in

humour, far excel led him in beauty of expression ,and was endowed with a poetical imagination which

Swift whol ly lacked . I n sheer intel lectual power

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1 78 QUEEN ANNE

too often for the boudoir and the alcove , he charmed

their senses without shock ing their tastes .

The typical prose Of Queen Anne ’s reign is the

prose Of Addison and Steele i n the Spectator .

A lthough Addison wrote some of the finest hymns

in the Engl ish language,such as “ The spacious

1 ,

firmam ent on big and “ How are thy servants

blest O Lord, together with a drama called Cato,

from which quotations are sti l l somet imes made ,

he is chiefly known to posterity as the painter of

Sir Roger de Coverley . Addison ’s scholarship , as

Macau lay points out , was almost confined to the

Roman poets, whom at Charterhouse and Oxford

he reproduced with wonderful. ski l l . He travel led

in Italy , then an unusual feat, and everyth ing he

saw there brought to h is mind either Latin hexa

meters, or Lati n elegiacs, or Latin lyrics . I t was

in Engl ish verse, as we have seen , that he ce le

br ated Blenhe im . But it was in Engl ish prose that

he made his ineffaceable mark . The shal lowest

Observers of Engl ish pol it ics find the party system

the easiest thing to abuse . I t had not made much

progress in the reign of Anne , and the man ifesta

tions of it in her last four years are seldom edify

ing . But one Of the debts that l iterature owes it

is the production of the Spectator , founded as a

successor to Steele’s Tatler , and a counterblast to

Swift’s Exam iner . Swift a lways wrote anony

LITERATURE I79

m ously, save when he recommended Lord Oxford ,

in a rather sti lted pamphlet , to found an Engl ish

Academy of Letters , which would soon have died

of ridicule . Addison publ ished his Rem ar ks on

Italy and his Dialogues on Medals in h is own

name . For the Tatler and the Spectator , as after

wards for the Guardian , he wrote without a signa

ture . The Spectator , which lasted in its original

shape for about a year and a half,contains h is

three great characters of S i r Roger de Coverley,

S ir Andrew Fr eepor t, and Wil l Honeycomb , repre

senting the Tory Squire, the Whig fund-holder,

and the man about town . The tale is of the sl ight

est . The persons are fin ished and typical portraits ,which hold the mirror up to nature . Addison ,

assisted in the Spectator by Steele, who had a

true and individual gen ius of h is own,was qual i

fied by nature and art to be instructive and at the

same time amusing,to read moral lessons i n perfect

taste without ever becoming a bore . He was

th roughout’

h isshort l ife a consistent Wh ig, and yet

even Queen Anne could not accuse him Of being an

enemy to the Church . He was sincerely rel igious,

without a trace of fanaticism ; he had a kind heart

and a generous temper ; his wit was so gentle that

when it i s keenest it never wounds ; and his style is

exactly the mode in which an educa ted gentleman

would write to his friends . Very rarely , as in theN 2

1 80 QUEEN ANNE

Vision of Mir z a, he rose higher than that, and

showed that the deep-

er mysteries of existence were

not beyond h is ken . As a rule he gave the culti

v ated society of his time useful and del icate hints

concern ing rel igion,pol itics

,manners , l iterature ,

drama,and art . He became the ar biter elegant

iarum , the fashionable dictator of an age when

fashion had nothing to do with wealth or luxury ,

but was ident ified with breeding and behaviour . I f

Addison had not been rather too fond of wine , he

would have had no faults at al l ; and if he had

preached a rigid sobriety , he would have preached

to deaf ears . He did succeed in persuading an age

wh ich remembered the P lays of Congreve that vice

was dull , dyspeptic, and il l bred . He made the9Protestant Succession “ the thing,’ and insinuated

without obtruding, a case for the unpopular House

of Hanover . Above al l , he did what Swift’s

savage sat ire could not do . He showed how fool

ish and how unmannerly it was to laugh at the

Christ ian rel igion , upon which civi l ization de

pended .

Hardly less celebrated as an essayist than Addi

son, and scarcely less deserving Of celebrity, was

his friend and coadjutor Richard Steele,also a

Charterhouse boy, and also an Oxford man , his

col lege being Merton . Steele’s early career was

spent in the army,and he had incurred some ridicule

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1 82 QUEEN ANNE

actual creator, though not the complete author, of

S i r Roger de Coverley . That Addison was a lways

above Steele is an exaggeration . His general l evel

is perhaps higher,and certain ly more correct . His

humour is far more subtle and del icate . On the

other hand,he had no enthusiasm , and could not

have depicted the lady whom it was a l iberal educa

tion to love . Nor has he,with al l his grace and

sympathy, written anything l ike Steele’s r em ini

scences Of h is brief mi l itary course , which it m ay

be wel l here to set down“Who can have l ived in an army , and in a serious

hour reflect upon the many gay and agreeable men

that might long have flourished in the arts of peace,and not join with the imprecations of the fatherless

and widow on the tyrant to whose ambit ion they fel l

sacrifices ? But gal lant men who are cut Off by the

sword move rather our veneration than our pity ;and we gather rel ief enough from the ir own con

tempt of death to make it no evi l which was ap

proached with so much cheerfulness, and attended

with so much honour .”

To learn an essay of Addison ’s or of Steele ’s by

heart , would be a far more profitab le occupation

than to show why one was better or worse than the

other .

During the whole of Queen Anne’s re ign , I saac

Watts was a Nonconformist min ister in London,a

LITERATURE 1 83

man of l iberal mind , author of many noble hymns ,

and of some bad Cou rt odes . He is said to have

written six hundred hymns in al l . Two at least are

un iversal ly popular and superlat ively good .

“ Jesus

shal l reign where ’er the sun,

” has the more personal

interest because Watts himself incl ined to Arianism .

But his masterp iece , perhaps the finest hymn in

the E ngl ish language , first publ ished in 1 707 , is“

O God , our help in ages past . It is of course a

pa raphrase of the n inet ieth psalm , that subl ime ex

pression of pure theism . Whereas,however

,most

metrical versions of the psalms are faint and feeble

efforts , almost parodies, th is stands out as superior

i n dign ity, majesty, and beauty , even to the Splendid

translation from the Vulgate in the Book of

Common Prayer .

I f Isaac Watts , educated, and very wel l educated ,at Stoke Newington , was the glory of the free

churches, or the churches which ought to have been

free , the glory of the Establ ished Church was not

Swift,who should never have been a clergyman at

al l,but Berke ley . George Berkeley, the greatest

ph i losopher ever produced by Trin ity Col lege ,

Dubl in,came to England in 1 7 1 3 , where he was

welcomed by the ci rcle of Pope, Swift, Addison , and

Steele . He had already publ ished his New Theory

of Vision ,his Tr eatise Concerning Hum an Know

ledge, and his Dialogues between Hylas and

1 34 QUEEN ANNE

Philonous, that is to say , between a material ist and

a Spi ritual ist in the proper sense of those terms .

Berkeley was one of the few Greek scholars in any

un iversity at that time, and no Engl ish writer has

come nearer to the perfection of Plato i n the art of

philosophical dialectic . Th e assailants of Chris

tianity, Shaftesbury and Mandevi l le , at whom he

more particu lar ly aimed his shafts, were not form id

ab le in themselves . Berkeley ’s own philosophy has

long survived the controversies of his own day, and

become the permanent heritage of speculative man

kind . He was subject to much vulgar ridicu le be

cause he den ied, or at all events doubted , the real ity

of the external world, and“ coxcombs vanquished

Berkeley with a gri n,” as they have continued to do

ever s ince . He who den ied that the world was

manifest to our senses would of course be a lunatic .

But appearance is not real ity, and th ings ar e not

what they seem . Of those who maintained , l ike

Tyndal l in our own day, that matter alone existed,Berkeley inquired how they knew that matter existed

at al l . He did not foresee that Hume would carry

the investigation a step further,and ask what

proof there was for the existence of mind,to which

perhaps the best answer is, that we can put the

question . Berkeley had to deal with material ism ,

i n h is time a not unfash ionable creed,and be dea l t

it a blow from which it has never recovered . His

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1 86 QUEEN ANNE

would have enjoyed an argument with Mandevi l le ,

whose thesis that private vices are publ ic benefits is

quite in the ve in of Polus o-r Th r asym achus. At the

time of the Restoration , when Hudibras was

popular,Mandev i l le m ight have had the honour

of being taken to church by Charles the Second .

But he came too late, except for Berkeley, and other

wise he on ly amused the curious . From 1660 to

1685 vice, publ ic and private, had had ful l swing .

I t was glorified after the Revolut ion with exquis ite

taste , in the Comedies of Congreve , which sti l l kept

the stage , Jeremy Col l ier notwithstanding . The

Engl ish people , however , did not want to make a

theory of it . Most of them would rather be hypo

crites than pay no homage to virtue at ad .

The principa l dramatist of Queen Anne ’s re ign

was Vanbrugh , the architect of B lenheim ,and of

Cast le Howard . George Farquhar, who died before

he was thirty, brought out in 1 707 his best play ,The B eau

’s Str atagem , and Mrs. Centliv r e, wife of

the Queen ’s cook, herself an actress, wrote e ighteen ,which have entirely perished , except one phrase ,“ the real Simon Pure .

’ Professor .Saintsbury has

acutely observed that a moral improvement,perhaps

due to the strictures of Jeremy Col l ier,may be traced

in the plays of this reign . They turn indeed,l ike

Dryden ’s and Congreve ’s , upon intrigue and

gallantry . But the intrigue is commonly unsuccess

LITERATURE 1 87

fu l , and the gal lantry therefore wasted . This is

perhaps not very much for the non-j uring parson

to have accompl ished by al l the eloquence which

he bestowed upon his S hor t View of the Imm or alityand P rofaneness of the English S tage . But it is

better than nothing, and every l ittle helps . Van

brugh was in the habit, a habit which did not die

with him , of adapting plays from the French , and

his most successful p iece, The Confeder acy, wasderived from Dancour t

’

s Bourgeoises cl la Mode .

There is l ittle to be said for the moral ity of such

plays as the Confeder acy,and the good Queen

always decl ined to patron ise the stage in any way .

Her standard of decorum was high , not to say

prudish , and for l iterature, which Vanbrugh ’s

dramas certain ly are, she did not care at al l . Shake

speare was not then in vogue , and no one ventured

to bring him on the stage , until Colley Cibber had

rewritten him . Anne had herself, at the instigation

of Charles the Second, been taught the management

of her musical voice by an actress, Mrs . Barry, who

did not reti re ti l l 1 7 1 0, when she and Mrs . Brace

girdle,the friend of Congreve , were both ecl ipsed

by the rising star of Mrs . Oldfie ld . The chief actor

was Colley Cibber,who may be said to have bridged

the period between Betterton and Garrick . No one

claimed for the stage, i n Queen Anne’s time, that

it was a virtuous profession , or expected actors and

1 88 QUEEN ANNE

actresses to be bound by the princip les of average

decorum . Their principle was that those who l ive

to please must please to l ive . That the stage had

a mission,or any other object than the amusement

of the publ ic, would have been regarded as a priggish paradox . I t was not meant for puritans ,

parsons,or young ladies, nor was it recru ited from

the upper and middle ranks of society . All that

can be said for it is that actors l ike Barton Booth,

whom even Queen Anne condescended to notice, or

Robert Wilks,or Thomas Doggett, founder of the

Waterman ’s badge, knew thei r business , and that

the profession was appreciab ly less immoral than it

had been in the days of the Merry Monarch .

Music, for which the Queen was as enthusiastic

as she could be for anyth ing , except the Church ,

included one i l l ustrious name . George Frederick

Handel, a native of Saxony, born in 1685 , came to

England in 1 7 1 0, and never left this country after

1 7 1 2 , when he broke his contract with the E lector

of Hanover to remai n here, so that he is not unfairly

reckoned among Engl ish composers . Most of h is

operas, and his mighty oratorios, were produced

under Hanoverian ausp ices . But his Rinaldo, his

Pastor Fido, and his Utrecht Te Deum,glorified the

reign of Anne . Although he studied in I taly, and

was the pupil of Scarlatti, his native force and his

inexhaustible gen ius rank h im with the great

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1 90 QUEEN ANNE

ment of h is powers . His treatment of Marlborough

is conventional . But his portrait of the Duchess,

now at Windsor , is painted with wonderful verve ,

and helps one to real ize , as nothing else does, the

empire she exercised over the greatest man of her

time . Knel ler’s Sarah shows what he might have

done if he had‘ been left to himself, and not confined

in gi lded cha ins . For Marlborough we must go to

the bust in the British Museum , or to the print,

also at Windsor, which depicts him as a bri l l iant

young ensign in the French Guard .

The age of Anne has been cal led Augustan , and

was certainly, except the latter part of E l izabeth’s

re ign,the greatest l iterary age in the history of

England!

. Of its science there is not much to be

said . A lthough Newton ’s Optics appeared in 1 704,

his marvel lous series of discoveries had been made

before the Revolution ; he reti red from the r epre

sentation of his Un ivers ity in Parl iament at the

death of Will iam ; and his later years were spent in

furthering the cause of Liberal theology . Richard

Bentley, as eminent in scholarsh ip as S ir Isaac

Newton was in science , had also establ ished his

reputation before the c lose of the seventeenth

century , by his unrival led treatise on the forged

letters of Phalaris, and had settled down as Master

of Trin ity to that chron ic struggle with his Fel lows

which main ly occupied his last forty years . He

LITERATURE 1 9 1

was too far above his contemporaries in class ical

scholarship for them to judge him accurately , or at

al l . But i t is unnecessary for arriving at a crit ical

estimate of his powers to fol low,or even to approach

,

the case of Phalaris. Bentley’s short letter on a

very bad book , Joshua Barnes’s edition of Homer,

which wi l l be found in B ishop Monk’s biography,

is a perfect example of philological crit icism at its

h ighest and best . I t i s curious that Richard

Bentley and Lewis Theobald , the first two scholars

and critics of their age, were both included in the

Dun ciad by Alexande r Pope, who knew, in the true

sense of knowledge,nothing at all . No comment

ator on Shakespeare ’s text can be compared with

Theobald , who restored the true reading ,“ babbled

0’ green fields,

”to Mrs . Quick ly

’s account of Fal

staff’s death in H enry the Fifth . No edition of

Shakespeare , not even Johnson’s , is so utterly

worthless as Pope ’s . I t may seem paradoxical to

cal l the age of Newton and Bentley shal low . Nor

must we forget that Edmund Hal ley, of St . Pau l’s

and Queen ’s Col lege , Oxford , Newton’s worthy

coadjutor,predicted in 1 705 that the comet of 1682

would return in 1 758, as after his own death it

punctual ly did . Few discoveries in scholarsh ip can

be set above Bentley ’s restorat ion of the lost

digamma to the metre of Homer, as explained by

him with his habitual lucidity in 1 7 13 .

1 92 QUEEN ANNE

The days of newspapers hal f know ing every

thing, from the cedar to the hyssop, had not begun ,

though the Dai ly Cou ran t was founded , by way of

experiment,i n 1 702 . And yet the age as a whole

was shal low,spite of lonely th inkers, l ike Newton ,

and obscure students,l ike Theobald . Lady Mary

Pierrepont,afterwards Wortley, and final ly Wort

Icy-Montagu

,who made herse lf a sound class ical

scholar wh i le other girls fl irted and danced, is a

rare exception which proves that the ru le was the

other way . The Tatler and the Spectator repre

sented, even in cultivated society, the utmost stretch

of learn ing that cou ld be expected from a lady, or

even from a gentleman . The whole controversy

about ancient and modern writers, which produced

Swift’s agreeable trifle, The Battle of the Books,was conducted by men none of whom understood

both sides of the question , while few of them under

stood either . Most of them thought that Atterbury

had scored a bril l iant triumph over Bentley,whose

position he could not appreciate, and whose proofs

he was incapable of correcting . Swift was justly

severe upon the superficial Deism of Col l ins and

Toland . But Swift’s own philosophy was of the

flimsiest ; he did not even see what Berkeley meant ;nor did Samuel Clarke’s Lectures on the Being and

Attributes of God advance the science of theology .

I ndeed the chief point about these Boyle lectures

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1 94 QUEEN ANNE

condition that they devoted it to the service of thei r

employers .

That the publ ic was the best patron could hardly

be perceived in the absence of copyr ight, and there

was no copyright in publ ished matter at common

law . I n 1 7 10 the first Copyright Act was passed,

and a very mi ld statute it proved to be . All cop ies

of printed books were vested in their authors, with

a power of sale, for the brief period of fourteen

years, provided that the book was registered at

Stationers’ Hall , and deposited with certain publ ic

l ibraries in Great Britain,of which the B ritish

Museum was the chief . The act did not apply to

I reland, where books printed i n England or Scot

land could be freely pirated, if any one were found

to buy them . So the law remained more than a

hundred and th irty years . I nadequate as was the

protection it afforded to authors, it recognized a

great principle , and, except the Act of Union with

Scotland,this was the most important statute passed

in the reign of Anne . The idea that property can

consist of ideas had been foreign to the law of Eng

land . By way of encouraging l iterature,i t was

held that if a man wished to remain owner of h is

thoughts, he must keep them to himsel f, and that

if he wanted to derive any advantage from his

written compositions , he must not publ ish them .

Letters were sacred, and could not be printed with

LITERATURE 1 95

out the consent of the writer . Books were profane ,

and anybody could m ake what use he pleased of

them . I t was a good beginn ing for the age of

reason , as the eighteenth century has been cal led ,

to destroy th is false antithesis,and to bring the

common law for once into harmony with common

sense .

Common sense is indeed the chief characteristic

of l iterature i n Queen Anne’s re ign . The poetry

of Pope,and the prose of Swift

,are almost perfect

i n form . Even Swift’s famil iar verse,which can

scarcely be called poetry,is punctil iously and invar i

ab ly correct . But unti l he wrote G'

u lli fv er’

s Tr avels,

which be longs to a later period , Swift showed very

l ittle imaginat ion,and it is sat ire , not fancy , which

insp ired that savage immortal book . Cadenas and

Vanessa , which purports to be a love-poem , is as

dest itute of poetry as of love . Prior ’s amatory

verses are simple , direct, and human enough for the

most exacting of l iterary natural ists . But they

have no a ir and fire,such as redeem the songs of

the seventeenth century from the charge of mere

l icentiousness . There are few ideas in Pope, con

summate ar tist as he was, which could not be equal ly

wel l expressed in prose ; and when he came to Eng

l ish Horace,though no other writer has Engl ished

Horace so wel l,i t is the serm o pedestr is, the sty le

which never leaves the ground , that he chooses foro 2

1 96 QUEEN ANNE

his model . Pope ’s pecul iar excel lence as a letter

writer,in which difficult art he has been surpassed

only by Gray,who had more learn ing, and Byron ,

who had more wit,is closely connected with h is

mundane wisdom ,his inveterate hab it of de l ivering

h imself l ike a man of this world. No wonder that

the England of Pope was Voltai re ’s ideal , without

superstit ion , without enthusiasm , without sp iritual

ity , with complete freedom for every writer who did

not attack the Government of the day . Th e one

real ly rel igious man in the circle of Pope and Swift

was Addison , whose p iety is essentia l ly rat ional .

He loved to Show how reasonable Christianity was ,how moderate

,how gent le , how wel l bred . So with

Pope’s Deism,which hardly comp l ied wi th the

standards of the Roman Cathol ic Church . I t was

because his creed natural ly commended itsel f to the

m inds of educated people , that Pope offered that

creed for thei r acceptance . Swift appl ied the test

of r idicu le to the rel igion of others , and said as l i ttle

as possib le about his own . Berkeley was an except ion . He had an imaginative, as wel l as a phi lo

sophica l , i ntel lect . He is our Engl ish Plato . But

upon the men of Queen Anne he made no impres

sion , and his philosophy conveyed no more to the

mind of Swift than the music of Handel conveyed

to his senses . He , the most powerful writer of the

age , could no more distingu ish Berkeley from Male

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1 98 QUEEN ANNE

strained by his own sanity and j udgment , had en

couraged by h is exuberance the vagaries of others ,

and Swift’s youthful efforts to emulate Pindar are

but a car icature of the general looseness that was

sett ing in . Swift h imsel f became afterwards a

model of correct versification . But it wasPope who

establ ished once for al l the reign of law in metre and

rhyme . I f some of his successors chose to fancy

that noth ing more was needed in poetry than accu

rate metre and regular rhyme, that was not the faul t

of Pope .

Pope, i t must be remembered, was under the per

vading influence of Horace . With Homer, who is

al l nature and subl im ity,he had nothing in com

mon . He sympathized instinctively with Horatian

methods, at least in the Horatian Satires and

Epistles . The Odes he left to Prior, who also was

steeped in Horace , and had to persuade Cloe that

she need not be jealous of Lydia . Est m odus in

r ebus, swat cer ti denique fines, might be taken as

the motto of Queen Anne l iterature , except where

love-making is concerned . Pope and his school

worshipped moderation , looking upon enthusiasm

with a superci l ious sneer . I n sp ite of Prior’s

i rreverence, they set great store by Boi leau , and

paid almost as much respect to French models as

Horace paid to Greek . Yet they wrote the ver

macular . Pope is a wel l of Engl ish undefiled. At

LITERATURE 1 99

a time when Shakespeare was e ither neglected,or

mauled by the gross taste of Col ley Cibber, and

Milton was abhorred , except by Addison , as a Re

publ ican Dissenter, Pope’s epigrams‘ and phrases

passed into common speech and language . The

Spectator , for which every one who professed any

l iterary taste subscribed, had taught even before

Pope , through Steele and Addison , that nothing

could be good in any way which was not in good

taste . Profan ity was i n bad taste . So was ostenta

t ion . So was vice . The furious diatribe of Col l ier

was not half so effective i n promoting virtue , which

certainly needed pro-mot ion in 1 7 1 1 and 1 7 1 2 , as

Addison ’s quiet scorn of everything base,vulgar

,

and profane . He never reached , nor attempted to

reach , the lower orders . He scarcely real ized their

existence,and probably thought that the clergy must

deal with them . His aim was to make goodness

and piety modish , to turn the laugh against the

other side . He was the best of good company ,

Lady Mary Wortley thought the best in the world .

Lord Carteret contrasted him in that respect with

Steele . They were both , he said , the most agree

able of compan ions at dinner . But Steele shone

more brightly at the beginn ing , and Addison at the

end . For by the time that Steele had drunk himsel f

down,Addison had drunk himse l f up . Addison ’s

convivial intemperance , the only kind of which he

200 QUEEN ANNE

could be accused , was the vice of a shy man , whose

tongue wine un locked . To none of h is contem

porar ies would it have been imputed as a fault at

al l . I t is only because Addison resembled “ a

parson in a tie-wig ,” that any account was taken of

the number of bottles he consumed . They cannot

have affected him much in the morn ing . His head

must have been very clear and cool when he

described Sir Roger and Wil l Honeycomb .

Jonathan Swift is an apparent exception to the

ru le of mediocrity which marks the reign of Anne .

Swift’s gen ius was in some respects pecul iar . His

misanthropy was of later growth , or at least of later

deve lopment . His sardonic humour was con

gen ital ; and the fierce indignation of which he

boasted on his tombstone was excited by what ap

peared to him the hypocrisy of mankind . To Swift

it was hypocrisy if a weak woman showed a l ittle

more sorrow for the death of a friend than she real ly

fe lt . As a writer of prose or verse he fel l in with

the temper of his time by the closeness of h is reason

ing , and the sobriety of his style . Any kind of

rel igious excitement moved h is b itter scorn . Of

hero-worship he was incapable , and he cou ld not

understand why the m an who won the battle of

B lenheim should be spared by the scribes of the

party to which he was opposed . That Swift as an

Engl ishman owed his l iberty and independence to

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QUEEN ANNE

the range of Swift in eloquence , i n imagination , and

in statesmanship . But Burke always rouses an

tagon ism ,never fai ls to suggest that there must be

considerations which he ignores . W hat made

Swift so consummately dexterous a controversial ist

was the dry l ight of cold reason which be shed upon

the dispute . The slave of party as he was,no Pro

fessor of Mathematics could in appearance be more

completely abstracted from al l passion or prej udice

than he . I f anybody wants to see what Swift cou ld

be l ike when his self-love was wounded , and he

really cared,let him read those awfu l verses on

the I rish Parl iament cal led The L egion C lu b . I n

Queen Anne’s days , before h is final reti rement to

Dub l in , he wrote up Harley , and wrote down Marl

borough , with as much semblance of impartial ity

as i f he were pr oving a pro-position of Eucl id,with

al l the b ias of an advocate, and al l the dign ity of a

j udge . The dign ity was not genuine . Swift

boasted of the rudeness which his cloth protected .

He never knew his own place , and he was always

trying to take somebody else ’s . I t was on ly when

he handled his pen , and became the man of letters ,that his false pride fel l away

,and h is intel lect

worked with unerring singleness of aim . He

be l ieved in neithe r Whigs nor Tories . He did

not even bel ieve in their honesty . The Tories

had taken him up when the Whigs dropped him ,

LITERATURE 203

and in serving the Tories he wreaked his vengeance

on the Whigs . He exhausted his powers of sar

casm on the I rish bishops . The grapes were sour .

He wanted to be a b ishop himself . Yet,i f Swift

did not feel the restraint of h is profession,he fel t

the influence of his t ime . He is never bombastic ,never turgid, never obscure . His humour is never

forced, always spontaneous, i rrepressible , unex

pected. His art is h igher than Pope’s because it

conceals itsel f . Whether or no he actually said that“ a man should write his own Engl ish , he acted

upon the saying . Rabelais and La Rochefoucald

were th is strange par'

son ’s favourite reading . To

them,to Cervantes , and to the c lassics of Greece and

Rome,rather than to any Engl ish author, he was

i ndebted for whatever was not original in his style .

There is scarcely in al l Swift’s voluminous writings a

si ngle reference to Shakespeare, who was too great

for the eighteenth century , and simply bewildered

its critics . According to Spence , Pope enumerated

the best Engl ish comedians as Etherege, Vanbrugh ,

Wyche rley , Congreve , Fletcher, Jonson , and

Shakespeare . Thomas Parnel l , author of The

Herm it, an I rish clergyman , who helped Pope in

translating Homer,and drank himself to death

after the loss of his wife , a martyr, as Spence

quaintly says,to conjugal fidel ity , was more in the

correct l i ne of poetry than the author of plays which

2 04 QUEEN ANNE

Cibber then edited, and sonnets which nobody then

read . Voltaire’s opin ion that Shakespeare is a bar

barian wasreally the opin ion of Pope , and Pope was

the arbiter of taste . Th ere is more wit in L ov e’s

L abour L ost than in a ll Pope , and yet if L o'v e

’s

L abou r L ost were lost i tself , the fame of Shakes

peare would not appreciably suffer . The patient

industry , the ingen ious fel icity , and the sound taste

of Lewis Theobald,h ave done more than the

editions Of Pope, of Malone , or even of Johnson ,

to redeem the eighteenth century from the charge of

ignoring what i t could not understand .

Men of letters i n Queen Anne ’s time we re so

c losely connected with pub l ic l ife that thei r careers

are part of h iétory, and necessary to explain it .

Swift was a far more practical statesman than

Bol ingbroke , and Harley l ives not in the legis lation

of the period , but in the verse of Pope . Literature

lasts when po l it ics are forgotten , and hundreds

know Prior as a poet, who would not recognize the

Treaty of Utrecht under the name of “ Matt’s

peace . And yet a biography of Prior,who was

nei ther a professional pol i tician nor a member of

the gov ern ing class , would involve reference to the

principal events both i n Will iam ’s reign and in

Anne’s . His patron was the magn ificent Dorset,

Charles Sackvi l le, author of that lovely song“ To

al l you ladies now on land ,” and the patron also of

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206 QUEEN ANNE

for whose Commissionersh ip of L icenses Hal ifax

inte rceded with Harley i n 1 708 , and received

the Vi rgi l ian answer

Non obtuse; adeogeslam usped an t Poem,Nee tam aoer suseguasTyr z

'

a sol j ungz‘

t ab ur be.

I n 1 7 1 1 Prior suddenly found himsel f at the very

centre of affairs,plunged into business of the high

est nationa l and European importance . While

Marlborough was in the Netherlands , preparing

to renew the campaign and outm anmuv re Vil lars ,

Louis made overtures of peace to Grea t B ritain

through de Torcy and Gaultier . These proposals

were commun icated to Heinsius at the Hague by

Lord Raby,created Earl of Strafford with the t itle

of his great-uncle Wentworth . Heinsius, not um

natu ral ly annoyed , attempted to deal on his own

account with the French King . This unsuccessful

effort was made in Apri l,and in July Lord Oxford,

never precip itate , thought that the t ime had come

for a special m ission to France . The utmost

secrecy was observed,not merely in fraud of the

publ ic, but with the m ore particular object of de

ceiv ing the Duke of Marlborough . Oxford and

,8 t . Joh n looked about them for a trusty and ski lfu l

envoy who could accompany Gaultier . Their

choice fel l upon Matthew Prior . I t must be borne

in mind that Prior was a professional diplomatist,

not merely a man of letters . But his friendship

LITERATURE 207

with St . John arose from common tastes , and

to patron ize gen ius without condescension was

Oxford’s worth iest aim . Prior amply justified the

confidence reposed in “him . His enterprise was fu l l

of difficulty , and not unattended with danger . At

first his course was smooth . He crossed with Gau l

tier from Dover to Calais in a fish ing-boat,and was

wel l received at Fonta inebleau . De Torcy had

known him at the Embassy in Paris,and Prior was

just the sort of Engl ishman that Frenchmen l iked .

The British demands , however, were not such as

de Torcy cou ld have pleasu re in submitting to his

royal master . So far as Spain and Phil ip of

Anjou were concerned,St . John , or Prior, was not

exacting . He would be satisfied with a stipulation,

as easy to grant as it would be easy to break , that

the same person shou ld never inherit the French and

Span ish Crowns . A much more practical , and a

much less flexible , demand was that Spain should

g ive Great Brita in in a l l commercial matters the

terms of the most favoured nation . For,!

whi le

Louis had at one time supposed France to be in

vincible in war,he had never cherished the delusion ,

at least since he revoked the Edict of Nantes , that

his subjects could compete oin equal terms with

Engl ishmen in affai rs of trade . Another formidable

demand Prior had also been instructed (perhaps at

h is own suggestion ) to put forward at the same

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time . The right of supplying the Span ish planta

t ions with negro slaves must be transferred from the

French company,which then held it

,to the hands

of British merchants . Besides these economic

advantages, real or imaginary , some territorial con

cessionswere prescribed . Spain was to yield Gib

raltar and Port Mahon . Newfoundland and Hud

son ’s Bay were to be surrendered by France . Prior

supported these proposals with a vigour and abi l ity

wh ich entire ly refute the mal ice of Pope . England,

he said , had not the least desi re to injure the pros

per ity of other nations . Monopol ies were bad for

every one . Free trade was good for a l l The

Span iards had misemp loyed their excl usive powe rs ,and it was time that these should be shared by more

enl ightened commun ities . I f the Archduke Charles

were King of Spain , he would readi ly gran t the

commercia l faci l ities requ ired . I f the right of

Phil ip were acknowledged, the least he could do in

return wou ld be to prove himse lf as l iberal as

Charles . Mr . Freder ick Wyon,in his valuable

Hlistory of Gr eat B r itain d/ wing the Reign of

Queen Anne, sarcastical ly observes that Charles

m ight wel l promise what he could not perform,and

that the All ies , having fai led to drive Phi l ip from

Spain , could scarcely expect to be put i n the same

position as if they had succeeded . This i s a fal lacy .

There wasone war, not two wars, and the Span iards

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2 ro QUEEN ANNE

Godolphin the Whigs had been seeking without

finding an opportun ity for revenge . They could

not hope for a better chance than the discovery of

the business which brought Ménager to London

with Prior . Accident favoured them . Early in

August,Prior

,Ménager

,and Gaultier landed at

Deal . Their too obv ious anxiety to elude notice

excited the suspicion of the local magistrates, who

had them fol lowed,and arrested them at Canter

bury . They were , of course , released by an order

from the Secretary of State,so soon as St . John

heard of the i r mishap . But it was too late . Prior,

though he gave another name , had been recogn ized

by an officer of the customs at Deal , and the story

was at once publ ished not merely in London , but

also in Amsterdam . The publ ic,however , had not

d iscovered much . Noth ing was known of Ménager,

and even Swift , who prided himse lf on the especial

accuracy of h is information , was complete ly in the

dark . Ménager was privately presented to the

Queen , who rece ived him graciously, but he was

di rected to remain in his lodgings during the day,

and to take the a i r at n ight . He held nocturnal

meetings , most of them at Prior’s house

,with

Oxford, St . John , Shrewsbury , Dartmouth , and

Jersey . Edward Vi l l iers , first Earl of Jersey,who

then held the office of Lord Chamberlain,was a

Jacobite , and in the pay of France . He died,how

LITERATURE 2 1 1

ever, on the 26th of August , and his col leagues were

i n no hurry to alter the proposals already made .

Ménager tried in vain to el icit from the E ngl ish

statesmen how far they would support the demands

of the Empire and of the Dutch States . Oxford and

St . John were not the kind of men to risk their own

necks, or to trust the mercy of their pol itical oppo

neuts . While they were havering about the for tifi

cations oi Dunkirk,the secrecy of their interview

was maintained, and even when Ménager took leave

of the Queen at the end of September, he was

brought to her room in Windsor Castle by the back

stai rs . It was not t i l l the 1 3 th of October that the

Dai ly Cour ant obtained from the M in ister of the

Empire , Count Gal las , to whom they had been

confidential ly imparted, the prel iminary articles of

peace . They appeared at an unlucky moment, fou r

days after the arrival at Spithead of the squadron

despatched under Admiral S ir Hovenden Walker

and General Hil l to take Quebec . General Hil l was

Mrs . Masham’s brother , a total ly incompetent per

son,whom Marlborough had refused to promote .

His expedit ion had ignomin iously fai led, the French

were confirmed in their hold upon Canada,and now

it transp ired that the Government were prepared to

throw away the fru its of the war by recogn izing the

grandson of Louis as King of Spain . To get rid

of Count Gallas by handing him his passports wasP 2

2 1 2 QUEEN ANNE

simple enough . He had abused his position by a

breach of confidence,and had acted as an open a l ly

of one pol i tical party in the State to which he was

accredited . But no enforcement of diplomatic regu

lar ity, however just ifiable, could make it popu lar to

surrender what Marlborough had won while Marl

borough himself was actual ly i n the field .

Prior had served the Government faithful ly, and

was not responsible for carrying out his instr uc

t ions . When the Peace Congress was appointed

to meet at Utrecht on the rst of January,1 7 1 2 , Lord

Oxford desired that Prior should be named a thi rd

Plen ipotentiary with B ishop Robinson of B ristol ,

Lord Privy Seal , and the Earl of Strafford . Straf

ford , however, was what we now cal l a snob , and

objected to being associated with a man of Prior ’s

plebeian origin . A modern M in ister would have

dispensed with the services of the nobleman who

had troubled him on such frivolous grounds .

Oxford, perhaps under pressure from the Queen ,

withdrew the name of the only Plen ipotentiary who

is remembered, or worth rememberi ng, now . St .

John at least had no sympathy with the vulgarity

of the fool ish Earl . When at the close of the

Session of 1 7 1 2 he had been created V iscount

Bol ingbroke , as a reward for serv ices which it would

have been diffi cul t to specify , he started for Paris

to settle with de Torcy the quest ions not solved at

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2 1 4 QUEEN ANNE

happen before a King of France admitted that there

was any French institution not subordinate to h im

self . Lou is had been much elated by the successes

of Vi l lars i n the absence of Marlborough . He

received Bol ingbroke with the most flattering atten

tion,feel ing instin&iv ely that if this man had been

at the head of affairs i n England, France would sti l l

be the first mil itary power in Europe , and the

Treaty of Utrecht would have been another Treaty

of Dover . The States General were not to be men

tioned. Engl ishmen did not understand France .

But Louis could rely upon Bol ingbroke to help h im

against Marlborough , and the Engl ish charlatan ,

who was worth far more to France than the costly

diamond given him by Lou is , went home to pro

claim a truce of four months , which was celebrated

by several bonfires . Prior,who had rece ived the

King’s portrait set in diamonds , remained in charge

of the Embassy at Paris . The correspondence

between him and Bol ingbroke when not strictly

offic ial was affectionate and famil iar . I t was ‘my

dear Harry ” and “my dear Matt ” Madame de

Pa rabére, who must have been strangely uncom

for table at the Court of Madame de Maintenon,was

taught in the more congen ial company of Prior to

drink the healths of Harreet Robin,

” Henry Lord

Bol ingbroke and Robert Lord Oxford . Shrews

bury was despatched to sign the treaty . Prior

LITERATURE 2 1 5

stayed at Paris so long as Queen Anne l ived . At

her death he was recal led in disgrace , being too

much impl icated in Bol ingbroke’s designs for

bringing over the Pretender to be employed by a

Whig M in ister or a Hanoverian Sovereign . But

while his own party were in power, he was trusted

by Bol ingbroke , and perhaps by Oxford , with

secrets which might have brought them to the block .

Jonathan Swift was a man of very different cal ibre

from Prior’s . Although he sometimes descended

to write for his party what he must have known was

nonsense , he had the mind of a statesman , and

would have been a far better M in ister than either

St . John or Harley . Swift l ived in pol itics , and

was a clergyman mer ely by acciden t . He was

on ly twenty-s ix when Sir Wil l iam Temple sent

him to urge upon the King his arguments in

favour of the Trienn ial B i l l . Swift’s dependent

position in the household of Temple had inspired

him with a ferocious hatred of al l persons in

authority who did not show him personal respect .

He came to London in 1 705 at the age of thirty

eight,al ready a disappointed man . Temple had

died without doing anything for him , and Temple

was a Whig . What would the other Whigs do ?

They did not care for parsons , and they did nothing .

Swift had been at school with Congreve , then at the

height of h is l i terary fame . Congreve made him

2 1 6 QUEEN ' ANNE

acquainted with Charles Montague Hal ifax, the

Whig Maecenas of the age . But Hal ifax was out

of oflice, and his successor Godolphin knew more

about race horses than l iterature . Swift went back

to his benefice in I reland a sad and sour man . But

i t was not unti l he returned to London in 1 707 on

the business of Queen Anne’s Bounty, which he

wished to extend to I reland , that he discovered the

ful l in iquity of which Whigs were capable . They

took l ittle in terest in Queen Anne’s Bounty, or in the

I rish Church,or in the Reverend Jonathan Swift .

He left England in deep disgust, and attacked the

I rish Presbyterians in h is L etter on the Sacram ental

Test . Next time he came to London , in 1 7 1 0 , when'

the journal to S tella begins , he was more success

ful . The Tories , especial ly St . John , took him up ,

settled his business , and secured him as their scribe

for the remainder of Anne’s reign . I t may be

doubted whether any Engl ishman has ever wielded

more practical and immediate influence with his pen

than Swift exercised during this period . He could

appeal to any class of readers , from the highest to

the lowest . He never missed his point,or fai led i n

controversy to get home . He never shrank from

attacking greatness , as in Marlborough , or valou r ,as i n Cutts , or virtue , as in Somers . He feared no

man ’s intel lect, and he was too much engrossed in

his subject to think of the ultimate consequences to

which his pr‘

oposals might lead . The ]ournal to

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2 1 8 QUEEN ANNE

a Down ing Street man if ever there was one , cannot

have regarded as serious Swift’s proposal for the

repeal of the eighth commandment . His own way

of rais ing funds was a lottery , which the publ ic

op in ion of the time did not condemn . He was , no

doubt,wil l ing enough that his predecessors should

be attacked as rogues and traitors for upholding

the honour of their country , and paying her debts

by fair means . Swift did not stop there . He

counted the price of Marlborough ’s glories , elabo

r ately comparing his salaries , pensions , and Parl ia

mentary grants with the laurel crown and the copper

medals of a Roman conqueror . No man was a hero

to Swift, and no hero has been more open to

criticism than Mar lborough . But by this sati re ,

c lever as it is , the writer did himself more harm

than he did the Duke,and the ribald parson who

wrote the Ta le of a Tu b seemed a strange champion

for defenders of the Church .

Swift’s social success , however , was qu ite as great

as his pol itical services were valuable . A l though

he seldom smiled , and never laughed , his drollery

was irresistible,and his eccentric behaviour added

to the joke . Har ley and St . John flattered him by

cal l ing him Jonathan . He l ived , dined , and in his

sober way drank , with the wits . Prior became h is

constant compan ion . Addison , who seldom let

pol itics interfere with friendship,del ighted in

LITERATURE 2 1 9

Swift’

s sardon ic humour , so un like h is own . Pope

looked up to him with an awe and reverence which

he fel t for no other human being . Arbuthnot trum

peted his fame , and copied his style . They even

endured his puns , i n which Swift, unl ike most

genu ine humourists, took great pleasure . Many of

these were execrable , as he frankly admitted him

self , protesting that he learned the trick from Stella .

The best that survives is a Latin one . A lady had

knocked a viol in off a table with the sleeve of her

mantle Swift quoted , with exqu is ite neatness

Mantua we m z'

serw m’

m z’

um m’

ez'

na Cr emame.

Swift had a curious fascination for women . He

puzzled , amused , and frightened them . He differed

from other men , for he never made love . He had

no home l i fe . I f the fine ladies of his acquaintance

heard of the mysterious friend in I re land, they

would have been attracted al l the more . Swift

showed them no mercy . I t was not in his nature to

be ch iv alro-us. He felt no respect for women , unless

they had minds,and used them . But he would talk

i n a boudoir by the hour, and write comic verses

by the hundred for the mistress of it, i f the fancy

took him . His Verses, W rote on a L ady’s Ivory

Table-Book are worth quoting , not merely for their

excel lence , but also because they show what Swift

real ly thought of the other sex .

220 QUEEN ANNE

Peruse my leaves through every par t,And think thou seesmy Owner

’s Hear t,

Scr awled o’er with Tr ifles thus, and quiteAshard, assenseless, and as l ightExposed to ever y coxcomb

’s eyes,

But h id with caution from the wise,Here you m ay r ead (Dea r char m ing Saint) ,Beneath (A new Recezzfitfor Pain t )Her e in Beau-spelling (tr u tel a

’etfi),

There in h er own for an e] or et/z ) .Here (L ov ely Nympfipr onounce my Doom ) ,There (a safe W ay to use Perfume)Here a page filled with B illet -DouxOn t’other side (laid outfor shoes)(All aa

’am

,Idie w z

'

tfiozctyour g r ace),Item , (for fzalf a yar d of lace)W ho that had wit would place it here,For every peeping Fop to jeer ?

W hoe’er expects to hold h is par t

In such a Book, and such a Hear t,If h e be wealthy, and a Fool,

Is in all points the fittest ToolOf whom it m ay be justly said,He

’sa Gold Pencil tipped with Lead.

Of Swift’s ways with men there are endless stories .

Perhaps the best and most characteristic is Pope ’s

experience as recorded by Spence

One even ing Gay and I went to see h im : you

know how intimately we were al l acquainted . On

our coming in : ‘Heyday, gentlemen ,’ says the

doctor,‘what’s the meaning of th is visi t ? How

come you to leave a l l the great lords , that you are

so fond of , to come h ither to see a poor dean ?

Because we would rather see you than any of

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222‘

QUEEN ANNE

i t . We may perhaps feel doubtful whether Popequite understood Swift’s mean ing . Swift , of

course,knew his ow'n reputat ion for narrowness , and

suspected his visitors of conspi ring to save him

the expense of their entertainment . His pride was

touched,and he would not take advantage of thei r

early meal . Yet stil l the ru l ing passion was strong .

The quantity of wine suggested was remarkably

smal l for the age of Anne . Swift ’s oddities must

have been heightened by the gown and bands which

he habitual ly wore He was below the middle

height,his garb was not at that t ime held i n h igh

esteem , but Swift himself was un iversal ly dreaded

for his temper and his tongue . Although he dis

l iked and despised most of his brother c lergymen ,

he insisted that the clerical p rofession should be

treated in his presence with respect . When he

c losed his series of articles for the Exam iner with

the prorogation of Parl iament i n 1 7 1 1 , he might

boast that he had turned the tables against the

Wh igs . He had made many people bel ieve that

Marlborough fought fo-r his own hand,that Godo l

phin p lundered the nation , and that Harley was a

stern , unbending patriot , a“ soul supreme . One

instance wil l prove the lengths to which Swift would

go in exalt ing Tories ,over Whigs . I t is the almost

inconceivably loathsome copy of verses cal led

Descr iption ofa Salam ander , and publ ished in 1 7 1 1 .

LITERATURE 223

Salamander Cutts , John Lord Cutts of Gowran in

the I rish Peerage, distinguished himself at the battle

of B lenheim , and was famous for his coolness under

fire , whence his n ickname . But he was a lso a Whig

Member of Parl iament, and therefore Swift, four

years after h is death , assai led him with a venomous

scurri l ity which he would certain ly not have used

while Cutts was al ive . When the dead man ’s sister

complained to the Lord Treasurer,Swift lofti ly ad

vised his patron to take no heed of such tr ifles. He

was not even ashamed of mention ing the Sa lam ander

to Stel la . Swift’s greatest service to the Tory party,

greater even than his L etter to the October C lub,

was his Condu ct of the A llies. So far as it pro

tested against a continuance of the war,it was

unanswerable , and served the interests of the nat ion

no less than the prospects of the Tories . His

sati rica l ba l lad on Dan iel Finch,Earl of Notting

ham , which begins w ith the words An Orator

disma l of Nottingham sh ir e, who had forty years let

out h is consc ience for h i re,though it enraged

Notti ngham himself,made both Wh igs and Tories

laugh at the pomposity of that t iresome pedant , who

was, however , a perfect ly honest man , as Swift must

have known . The Duchess of Somerset , from her

s ingular hold upon the Queen , wasa more formidab le

enemy . Sw ift cal led her an insinuating woman , and

wasnever ti red of demanding that the Lord Tr easurer

224 QUEEN ANNE

should remove her from the Court . Oxford,how

ever, was pretty wel l convinced that if he made any

such attempt he was far more l ikely to be removed

than she . The Duke , who was always intr igu ing ,

he did succeed in dismissing from the Cabinet before

the end of 1 7 1 1 . The Duchess, so long as Anne

l ived , was immoveable . I f Abigai l Masham’s rank

had been h igh en, she m ight have succeeded the

Duchess of Marlborough as Mistress of the Robes .

But Anne was a stickler for precedent and custom .

Her M istress of the Robes must be a Duchess, and

even a Percy was not too proud to take the post .

Once there,the Duchess of Somerset knew how to

make herself indispensab le,often as Swift m ight

vent h is spleen upon “ Carrots from Northumber

land When he thought of “ Carrots ,” even in

writ ing to Stel la , he cursed and swore . His entry

for the 9th of December, 1 7 1 1 , gives a vivid picture

of the terror wh ich her Grace inspired i n h im ,and

the many victims of h is pen would have been con

so led if they could have seen how the i r persecutor

shivered, the man who accused Marlborough of

cowardice .

“ I was this morn ing with the Secretary (St .

John ) ; we are both of opin ion that the Queen is

false . I told him what I heard,and he confirmed

it by other circumstances . I then went to my friend

Lewis (Erasmus Lewis, the d iplomatist) , who had

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2 26 QUEEN ANNE

and had taken measures to turn it to advantage . I

said God send it ; but do not bel ieve a syllable ;and , as far as I can j udge, the gam e is lost . I shal l

know more soon and my letters wil l at least be

a good history to show you the steps of this

change .

St . John never took quite such good care of any

one else as he took of himself . B ut he was habit

ually kind to Sw ift, and on this occasion Oxford

jo ined in reassuring that fa int heart . Swift’s idea

of a dip lomatic appointment,which may have been

suggested by the despatch of Bishop Rob inson to

Utrecht, came to noth ing, and was not seriously

regarded by his friends . His immediate fears were

qu ieted on the 29th of December, 1 7 1 1 , when the

Queen agreed to the creation of twelve new Peers ,

and the Duchess of Some rset was forgotten . The

charge of double deal ing , often made by Swift

against Anne, who hated him ,during these trans

actions , seems to be unfounded . The Queen stood

by her Tory M in isters to the point of turn ing out

the Duke of Marlborough , and even the Duke of

Somerset . The Duchess of Somerset she retained

on private and personal grounds, such as Queen

Victoria pleaded when she refused to part with her

Ladies of the Bedchamber in 1 839 . Somerset h im

self had the honour of fol lowing , though not of

accompanying , Marlborough . I t is amusing to find

LITERATURE 22 7

that Swift wrote , when Marlborough was dismissed,“ I do not love to see personal resentment mix with

publ ic affairs . Swift’s vivid insight into other

people ’s characters did not extend to his own .

His reward was not the diplomatic one he ex

pected. His j ournal to S tella c loses with his depar

ture for I reland in May 1 7 1 3 , to be instal led in the

Deanery of St . Patrick ’s , wh ich had been conferred

upon him in Apri l . He then considered his friends

to be safe in office, and regarded himself, not with

out reason , as the cause of their being stil l there .

The time had come to think of h is own prospects .

Swift ’s amb it ion had no sordid taint . Hish abits

were simp le and frugal . He was generous to Ste l la

and Mrs . Dingley . He was qu ite content to be

poor . But he was conscious of immeasurable

superiority to al l the b ishops and other c lergymen

of h is acquaintance . He expected and demanded

ecclesiastical promotion from the Government which

he had served as faithful ly and unscrupulously as

Cardinal Wolsey served Henry the E ighth . I f the

Government had been ab le to do exactly as they

pleased,Swift wou ld probably have been first

B ishop of Hereford , and then Archbishop of York .

The Archbishop of York,John Sharp , who died in

1 7 14 , wasa favourite with Queen Anne , and did not

conceal h is opin ion that Swift was qu ite unfit to

be a bishop . Sw ift always be l ieved that Sharp

Q 2

2 28 QUEEN !ANNE

prevented his appointment to Hereford,but it is

doubtful whether the Queen wou ld have al lowed it

in any case . Her Majesty looked upon Swift as an

obscene athe ist who disgraced his gown,and to

argue with her was l ike arguing with a mantelp iece

or a stone wall . Happily for Swift an I rish see

became vacant at the beginn ing of 1 7 1 3 . The

Queen wou ld indeed by no means consent that he

sh ould have it , or a Canonry of W indsor, which

also fel l in at the same t ime . B ut the Dean of

St . Patrick ’s was ready to become B ishop of Dro

more,and the patronage of the Deanery belonged

by custom to the Duke of Ormond as Lord L ieu

tenant . So the bargain was struck w ithout preju

d ice to the virtue of good Queen Anne . One last

service Dean Swift rendered to his patrons,and his

gratitude on this occasion was certainly no sense of

favours to come . His Public Spir it of the W higs,

pub l ished in 1 7 14 , was an answer to Steele’s Cr isis,

for which a Tory House of Commons expelled the

author . Swift might have suffered a more severe

pun ishment than expulsion if he had not concealed

h is authorship of th is pamphlet with unusual care .

For it cons isted chiefly of an attack upon the Un ion

with Scotland , written in language studiously in

sulting to the Scott ish nation .

“ Imag ine,

” he said,

“ a person of qual ity prevai led upon to marry a

woman much his inferior and wi th out a groat to her

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2 30 Q UEEN ANNE

over , when Swift had retired finally to Dubl in,and

left the strife of Brit ish pol itics, so far as they did

not concern Ireland, for ever, on the 22nd of Novem

ber,1 7 1 6 , Archbishop King of Dubl in wrote to him

from London on ecclesiastical business,and con

cluded his letter with these sign ificant words We

have a strong Report that my Lord Bol i ngbroke

wil l return here, and be pardoned ; certain ly it must

not be for Nothing . I h0pe he can te l l no i l l story

of you .

’ To this letter Swift at once repl ied . King

was one of the few people he respected , and he is

supposed to have trusted the archbishop with the

secret of his l ife . The first part of this famil iar

epistle is taken up with protestations of Bol ing

broke ’s innocence,which we re quite sincere , because

the writer did not know the truth , then only known

at St . Germains . There fol lows th is solemn and

emphatic passage “ But,whether I am mistaken or

no in other men , I beg your Grace to bel ieve that I

am not mistaken in myself . I always professed to

be against the Pr etender ; and am so still . And

this is not to make my Court (which I know is

vain ) for I own myself fu l l of Doubts, Fears, and

Dissatisfactions ; which I think on as seldom as I

can : yet, i f I were of any Value , the Publ ic may

safely r ely on my L oya lty ; because I look upon the

com ing of the Pr etender as a greater evi l than we

are l ike to suffer under the worst W’

hig M inistry

LITERATURE 2 3 1

that can be found . Swift ends this letter with the

words “ I beg your Grace ’s blessing . It seems to

me beyond al l question sincere ; and , if so, it proves

that Swift was never a Jacob ite . Throughout h is

publ ic career he always maintained that the Tories

were not Jacob ites , but‘

true Church of England

men , and that the Queen detested the Pretender ,whom , th ough he was her father

’s son,she never

knew . To suppose Swift a Jacob ite is to suppose

him as dishonest as Bol ingbroke and as stup id as

Oxford . He was not a scrupulous pol itician . But

at treason and Popery he drew the l ine . Bol ing

broke concealed from him the essential circumstance

of h is own i ntrigues with the Pretender, knowing

h is friend’s regard for “ the Security of the Pro

testant Succession in the House of Hanov er : not

from any par tial ity to that i l lustrious House, further

than as it hath'

had the honour to mingle with the

B lood Royal of Eng land.

” I n a melancholy retro

spect,cal led Som e Idle Though ts upon the Pr esent

S tate ofAffairs, and referring,

to the year 1 7 14 , Swift

took leave of the busy scene where he had played

so powerful and consp icuous a part . “ I t may

serve,

” he wrote,for a great lesson of Humil iation

to mankind to behold the Habits and Passions of

Men otherwise highly accompl ished triumph ing

over I nterest,Friendship

,Honour, and their own

personal Safety, as wel l as that of their Country;

232 QUEEN ANNE

and probably of a most gracious Princess who hath

entrusted it to them . A Ship ’s Crew quarrel l ing in

a Storm ,or while their Enemies are within Gunshot,

is but a faint idea of th is fatal infatuation .

” The

reign of Anne could have no more fitting ep ilogue

than this masterly l ittle essay , which Swift wrote

from his retirement in Berkshire after the fai lure of

h is efforts to reconci le Oxford and Bol ingbroke .

The real Sw ift cannot be better expressed than in

the words which he wrote to his fondest admirer

Pope on the 27th of September, 1 725 I have ever

hated al l nat ions,professions, and commun ities , and

all my love is towards individuals : for instance , I

hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love counsel lor such

a one,and judge such a one . It is so with physi

cians (I wil l not speak of my own trade) , soldiers ,

Engl ish , Scotch , French, and the rest . But princi

pally I hate and detest that an imal cal led man ;

although I hearti ly love Joh n , Peter , Thomas , and

so forth . This is the system upon which I have

governed myself many years (but do not te l l ) and

so I shall go on ti l l I have done with them . I have

got material s toward a treat ise proving the falsityof that defin ition anim al r ationale, and to show it

shou ld be only rationis capax . Upon this great

foundation of misanthropy (though not in Timon’s

manner) the whole bui lding of my travels is erected ;and I never wil l have peace of mind

,ti l l al l honest

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234 QUEEN ANNE

and after the Whig victories at the pol ls in 1 708,

he became Chief Secretary to Wharton , Lord

Lieutenant of I reland . He was then Member for

Malmesbury in the British House of Commons . At

Westminster he never spoke , being unable to

conquer h is natural shyness,even when he became

a Secretary of State under George the First . I n the

I rish House of Commons he did venture to address

a smal ler, and quieter audience . But it is never

theless true that no man of letters , before or since ,

has risen so high in pol itics as Addison by mea’

ns

of l iterary ta lent alone . I t was while he l ived in

I reland, with the uncongen ial company of Wharton ,

that Addison began to write for Steele’s Tfatler ,

pub l ished on Tuesdays,Thursdays , and Saturdays ,

when the country post went out of London .

Addison ’s articles in the Tatler are not as a rule

pol itical . I t was after he and his friends had been

turned out of office,i n 1 7 1 0 , that he wrote for the

Whig Exam iner against Swift . Although the

General Election crushed the Whigs , Addison was

returned without opposition for Malmesbury , and

Swift admitted , perhaps with excessive modesty ,that i n Addison as a pol itical journa l ist he had for

once found his match . During the months of 1 7 1 1

and 1 7 1 2 , when the Spectator appeared, the Tories

were in oflice and in power . The Spectator , though

its two principal contr ibutors were Addison and

LITERATURE 235

Steele , was not avowedly pol itical . Sir Roger de

Coverley , the Tory squ ire , took more hold upon

the publ ic than Sir Andrew Freeport,the Whig

merchant . But Addison , whose exquisite tact pre

vented him from ever preaching out of season , lost

no good opportun ity of putting in a word for the

Protestant Church and the House of Hanover .

He was always true to his principles,and never

deserted his colours . His tragedy of Cato, acted

at Drury Lane in 1 7 1 3 , was treated by the Whigs

as a Whig play , though the resemblance of Whar

ton , or even of Ha l ifax, to Cato was far from

obvious . Bol ingbroke made a palpable h it by

sending for Barton Booth , who p layed the title

part, and g iv ing him fifty guineas,pub l ic money no

doubt, for defending the cause of l iberty against

a perpetual dictatorship . The point was double

edged , because Caesar refused the proffered crown ,

whereas Marlborough had asked to be made Captain

General for l ife . At the death of Anne , Addison

was engaged upon the eighth volume of the Spec

tator , which he conducted during six months of

its prosperous existence without the help of Steele .

Steele himself,who became Member for Stock

bridge, in Hampshire , at

’

the General E lection of

1 7 1 3 , did not shine as a pol itician . He was greeted

on ris ing in the House of Commons with cries of“Tatler , wh ich , though really compl iments, were

2 36 QUEEN ANNE

not so intended , and his expu lsion from the House ,

scandalous as it was, would have been impossible

if he had understood the temper of the assembly .

This ignomin ious transaction is redeemed by a

picturesque incident of a personal k ind . The Earl

of Nottingham ’s eldest son,Lord Finch

,tried to

speak for the first time on Steele ’s behalf . But

nervousness sealed his l ips , and as he sat down ,

he was heard to say, i n artless language more

cheered than any eloquence would have been ,“ I t is

strange that I cannot speak for this man,tho-ugh I

could readily fight for him . Steele had as many

friends as faults , though he had a facu lty for getting

into scrapes which often.tried his best friends hard .

I t is painful , on the other hand , to record , on the

unimpeachable evidence of his own letters in the

Portland Correspondence , that Dan iel Defoe urged

the“

Government to insist upon the expuls ion of

Stee le . Defoe ’s character wil l n-ot bear much

scrutiny , or indeed any scrutiny at al l . He was in

Harley ’s pay , and he did what Harley told him to

do , rather overacting the part than otherwise . His

books , by which he l ives , were none of them

publ ished in Queen Anne’s reign . But his pol itical

influence was not the less strong or marked because

it was exercised behind the scenes . I n 1 705 Harley

sent him to Scotland,and his correspondence shows

that he kept the Secretary of State exceedingly wel l

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23s QUEEN ANNE

in their pol icy of continu ing the French war after

Ramil l ies . He defended , from the Whig point of

v iew ,the impeachment of Sacheverel l . But when

Harley returned to office in 1 7 1 0, he engaged Defoe

to plead his cause in the Rev iew, and that versatile

d isputant then went over to the cause of peace .

Defoe never troubled himse lf about consistency,and

he had no character to lose . The publ ic devoured

what he wrote without regard for his personal ity ,

because he had the gift of making the wildest

fiction or the merest imagination look l ike sober

truth , so that it was read by thousands and bel ieved

of course . His arguments , on the other hand , were

conv incing,and his grasp of econom ic science was

unusual in his age . He had done much to al lay

the financial pan ic wh ich fol lowed the dism issa l of

Godo lphin,by prov ing that the security for the

publ ic funds and the national debt was parl ia

mentary , not min isteria l , thus counteracting , so far

as he could,the mischievous advocacy of repudia

tion to which Swift stooped . Defoe ’s Rev iew was ,as we have seen , ki l led by the statute against know

ledge , the Stamp Act of 1 7 1 2 . But h is pen could

not be idle , and in 1 7 13 his i rony , surpassed only

by Sw i ft’s , brought him again i nto misfortune , as

it had led h im to the pi l lory ten years before . Then .

he had held the mirror up to High Churchmen by

pretending to be one himself . Now,he wrote as

LITERATURE 239

a Jacobite , and the Jacob ites did not l ike it at al l .

But i t was the Whigs who , very fool ishly, took

action . Perhaps they had not forgiven Defoe for

h is able , though unsuccessful , support of that com

m ercial treaty with France which was appended

to the Treaty of Utrecht . They might cer tainly

have known better than to suppose that his. two

pamphlets, cal led respectively Reasons against the

Suc cession of the House of Hanov er , and Con

sider ations of the Advantages of the Pr etender’

s

possessing the Cr own of Gr eat Br itain ,meant

what their titles impl ied . Defoe’s object was purely

sati rical . He had no more wish to help the

Pretender than Swift had to make the I rish people

eat bab ies,or to abol ish Christianity by law . But

the W h igs were so much afraid of Jacobite plots

that they fel t l ike men l iving on a volcano , and

Anne cou ld not bear to be reminded of any suc

cessor , Jacobite or Hanoverian . Defoe was taught

once more by pract ica l experience how dangerous a'

gift the sense of humour may be . I n this case its

consequences could only be averted by a pardon

under the Great Seal .

Defoe,however, did not stand alone among his

contemporaries as a victim of transcendent gifts.

The Deanery of St . Patrick’s, that symbol of dis

appointed ambition , was far worse than a pi l lory to

Swift . There was scarcely a bishop in the Church

24° QUEEN ANNE

of I reland or the Church of England for whom Swift

did not feel inte l lectual contempt . I n h is essay on

the Fates of C lergym en ,contrasting the neglected

gen ius with the promoted dul lard , he has disp layed

the b itterness of his soul . The least unhappy period

of his unhappy l ife is covered by the journal to

Stella . He was then a leading and dominating

figure in a society which has never been surpassed

for wit,ease

,and charm . How dul l the Court was

at th is t ime we know from Swift h imself . “ There

was a Drawing-room to-day ,” he writes to Ste l la

on the 8th of August , 1 7 1 1 ,“ but so few company

that the Queen sent for us into her bedchamber,

where we made our bows,and stood about twenty

of us round the room whi le she looked at us round

with her fan i n her mouth , and once a minute said

about three words to some that were nearest her,

and then she was told dinner was ready , and went

out . Very!

d ifferent was the company which Swift

hab itual ly kept . It had its seamy side . There was,

for instance,Mrs . Man ley

,author of a scandalous

book cal led the New A tlantis, and a woman of

notorious character,whom he was not ashamed

to emp loy in the work of l ibel l ing Whigs . But

on the other hand there were Add ison,Prior

,St .

John , Congreve , Arbuthnot, and Pope .

“ I think

Mr . St . John ,” he wrote to Ste l la

,

“ the greatest

young man I ever knew ; wit , capacity , beauty,

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2 42 QUEEN ANNE

Anecdotes we read that Addison’s chief com

panions,before he marr ied L ady

'

W arwick ( in

wer Steele,Budgell !Eustace Budgell , afterwards a

vict im of the South Sea Bubble], Phil ips !Ambrose

Phil ips,author of Pastor als], Carey !Henry Carey ,

author of Sally in ou r A lley], Davenant !Char les

Davenant, the economist], and Colonel Brett

!Henry Brett, He used to breakfast with

one or other of them at his lodgings in St . James ’s

P lace,dine at taverns with them , then to Button

’s ,

and then to some tavern again for supper in the

even ing : and this was then,the usual round of his

l ife .

” I n another anecdote,Pope says that Addison

studied al l the morn ing , and then dined at Button’s

‘

,

where in his own l i ttle senate he made laws , and

sat attentive to his own app lause . Button was h is

own servant, who-m he establ ished at a coffee house

in Russe l l Street,opposite the defunct Wi l l ’s ,

which is sacred to the memory of Dryden . Stee le ’s

idolatrous veneration for Addison , who sometimes

played a l ittle on him,excited kindly mirth . But

most of us wish we had had the chance of showing

it . Addison was the most characteristic gen ius of

that age,for Swift belongs to no age in particu lar

,

and Marlborough was simple effic iency ideal ized .

There are no mysterious depths in Addison ’s

thought,and no unapproachable heights in his

style . His refined scholarship,his del icate humour

,

LITERATURE 243

his d ignified courtesy , his exquisite breeding , h is

simple p iety , and his unwil l ingness to give pain,

make up the characteristics of a Christian gentle

man . The absence of enthusiasm and the pre

dominance of reason fix a

as an object imitation

years death .

CHAPTER IV

SOCIETY AND MANNERS

DURING Queen Anne’s chi ldhood at St . James ’s

Palace,the society of the Court , and of fashionab le

London,was in the ful l sw ing of reaction against

the Puritan strictness of the Commonwea lth . Never

before,and never since

,not even under the

Regency or in the reign of George the Fourth , has

either the stage or the wor ld of fash ion been so

open ly l icent ious and profane . With a few excep

t ions , such as B ishop Ken , who did not , however,

become a b ishop unti l Anne was n ineteen,the

Church of England made no protest against vice

in high places . The Church had regained its posi

t ion of ascendency,the K ing had h is own again ,

besides a good deal that was not h is own , and a l l

was wel l . Anne ’s secluded l ife and careful educa

tion kept her out of harm ’s way . Mrs . Barry,who

first appeared on the stage under Roc‘hester’s

patronage when the Princess was a ch ild of eight ,taught Her Roya l Highness the use of her voice

in publ ic, and taught that exceeding ly wel l . Anne’s

other l inks w ith the world were Sarah Jenn ings,

244

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246 QUEEN ANNE

the one to the other . Charles the Second acted a

l ie whenever he went to Church , and it was only

fear of the priests that checked the dul l l icentious

ness of James . Th at the Princess Mary and the

Princess Anne shou ld have grown up modest and

innocent in such surroundings is wonderfu l . They

both made excel lent wives, though one was married

to a great man , and the other to a mere fool . But,whereas Mary was true to the husband she idol ized

even when he was not faithfu l to her , and had a

singularly amiable temper, the effect upon her

sister of the examples she saw was to plant i n her

mind the seeds of suspicion and distrust . She lost

her mother , Anne Hyde, a woman of blameless char

acter, when she was only. six years o ld,and differ

ence of rel igion was an insuperable barrier to al l in

tim acywith her young stepmother,Mary of Modena .

Her on ly real fr iend of her own sex in youth,

Sarah Jenn ings , was a type of the woman fostered

by the Restoration , save in the one matter of con

j uga l fidelity, for which she indemn ified herself by

scolding and storming at her il l ustrious husband .

Although she chose to ca l l herse l f a Whig,Sarah ’s

real pol itics were avarice , pride , and the advance

ment of her own family at the publ ic expense . To

suppose her imbued with the principles of Locke and

Somers would be ridiculous . If she had any reason

for bei ng a W h ig , it was that she hated the Church ,

SOCIETY AND MANNERs 247

and i t was probably she who imbued Anne with

the notion that the Whigs were enemies of that

institution . What exactly i t was that Anne meant

by the Church cannot easily be ascertained . She

was , and Sarah was not , a religious W oman . But

to cal l the Church of the Restoration a rel igious

body is to strain a point . The Whigs of the

Revolution were Erastians . They were in favour

of the ecclesiastical Estab l ishment . They were

wi l l i ng to let its proctors s it in Convocation , and

its b ishops attend the House of Lords They

merely insisted on Dogberry ’s principle , if two

men ride on a horse , one must ride behind,” that

the Church should be servant, and the State should

be master . I t is not to be supposed that Anne

ever formulated to herself the reverse of th is pro

position . It is more l ikely that she regarded the

Church as the one safeguard against moral evi ls

with which she had been brought into such early

contact . During the short reign of her father ,

however,the Church of England appeared as the

champion of popu lar l iberties , which happened for

the nonce to coinc ide with its own . The seven

bishops whom James prosecuted for not reading

the i l legal dec laration of independence were the

idols of the people , and their acquittal was the

signal of h is downfal l . W i l l iam’s accession pro

duced a change, and indeed a reversal of parts .

248 QUEEN ANNE

Five of the seven bishops , i ncluding Sancroft and

Ken, r efusedIal legiance to a sovereign who did not

reign by divine right, and these non-j urors were

deprived of thei r sees . The abusive language in

which Anne wrote of Wil l iam may have been partly

due to his confl ict with the High Churchmen , and

i t certain ly brought her into serious disfavour with

Queen Mary . Whoever offended Mary offended

Will iam ten t imes more . For the remainder of

Mary ’s l ife,the Princess Anne was made to feel

herself in disgrace by the withdrawal of official

homage to her rank , and by the dism issal of her

friends the Churchi l ls from al l the ofli ces they

held . She accompanied them into their retirement,

and remained with them in seclusion unti l M‘

a ry

died .

The death of Mary , which completely shattered

for a time the adamantine fortitude of Wil l iam,was

due to the most terrib le scourge which had affl icted

Europe since the black death . Even in these days

of vaccination , cleanl iness , and sanitar v science

smal lpox is a serious disease . I n 1 694 , and long

afterwards , there was no remedy for it known to

the medical profession except careful nursing and

the strength of the patient . Wi l l iam himself

suffered from it, and had been saved by the extra

ordinary devot ion of h is friend Bentinck , the first

Earl of Portland . Dr . Radcl iffe , whose name is

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2 5 6 QUEEN ANNE

The l ittle boy whom Wil l iam made Duke of

Gloucester was the single one that attained any

developm ent of mind or character . After h is loss

she became more sul len and moody . She had dis

missed the first physic ian of the age , j ohn Rad

cl iffe , because she disl iked his uncourtly manners ,and her acquaintance with Dr . Arbuthnot was of

more recent date . The death of her father, i n 1 70 1 ,

m ade a considerab le , though not a legal , change

in the position of Anne . Her succession to the

throne depended constitutional ly upon the B il l of

Rights , and the Act of Settlement . But a large

number of Engl ishmen ceased to be Jacob ites on

the death of James , because they did not think that

the person cal l ing himself -Prince of Wales was his

son . Anne hersel f bel ieved for some time in the

story of the warming-pan , and some think that she

died bel ieving it . I n any case i t was bel ieved by

thousands,and no formal stepswere taken , perhaps

could be taken , to refute it unti l i t had become an

accepted legend . So long as Jam es the Second

l ived, the credibi l ity of the tale, or the credul ity of

the pub l ic , was immaterial . He , and he alone ,could be the lawful sovereign of those who held

the div ine right of Kings . Many Jacobites were

w i l l ing to obey Will iam the Third as the Chief

Magistrate whom Par l iament had chosen to set

over them custos r egn i , as Sancroft cal led him

King de facto in the language of the text writers,

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 2 5 1

but not de jur e . But though they obeyed him , and

would have obeyed Anne in her father’s l ifetime ,the i r consciences would not have allowed them to

take the oath of abjuration . The old James gone ,

and the young James assumed to be spurious ,

there was no obstacle whatever to Anne ’s peaceful

and legitimate succession . Resentment against the

French King for acknowledging the Pretender

became doubly strong where it was thought that

the chi ld he acknowledged was not the son of King

James and his I tal ian wife .

Thus,when Anne came to the throne , her sub

jects might conven iently be divided into four

classes . There were those who held that she was

s imply a usurper , and that their lawful ruler was

James the Third . They were energetic, but not

numerous , and mostly Cathol ics . Then came a

considerab le proportion who waited for better

times,holding that , for the sake of peace , they

might recogn ize a Parl iamentary arrangement of

which they did not approve . A third party , who

had been Jacob ites while the dethroned monarch

l ived,held the Pretender to be a mere impostor .

Lastly , there were the Whigs , who thought that

Parl iament could do as it p leased , and that Anne’s

title rested on the sure foundation of two statutes .

Peop le who were not pol iticians were apt to reflect

th at , after al l , the i r Sovereign was a Stuart and a

woman . Her Stuart blood gave her a respectable

2 52 QUEEN ANNE

degree of legitimacy,and the last woman who

reigned alone in England had been the greatest of

al l her Sovereigns . El izabeth,however , with her

many sp lendid attributes , had one sordid vice . She

grudged the payment of money actual ly due even

to the gallant sailors who had destroyed the power

of Spain , and made her mistress of the seas . Anne

was remarkably l iberal . Besides her m unificent

benefaction to the Church she gave a sixth part of

her Civi l L ist, an annual sum of a hundred thou

sand pounds , to the expenses of the war . Blenheim

Pal-ace is estimated to have cost her not less than

two hundred thousand sterl ing ; and when she

final ly dismissed the Duchess of Marlborough,

after innumerable provocations, from employment

at Court , she paid her old friend without demur the

exorb itant demands for pecuniary solace which that

unprincipled woman put forward . She spent com

par ativ ely l ittle upon herself , and never bought a

jewel during her reign . She would not even pur

chase the famous diamond brought home from

Madras by Governor Pitt, Lord Chatham’s grand

father , and sold after her death to the Regent

Orleans for about one fourth of its market value .

Unti l they quarrel led about matters unconnected

with money , she was a monarch after Godolph in’s

own heart . The popular phrase “ good Queen

Anne had a very different mean ing from the once

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254 QUEEN 1ANNE

belonged, at least in publ ic , to El izabeth . Her

wretched health was not favourable to the pre

servation of queenly pomp , and her courtiers often

saw her in circumstances of ignomin ious helpless

ness . Even strangers were sometimes admitted to

curious scenes . S i r John C lerk of Penicu ik has left

in his Mem oirs a quaint description of roya l ty at

Kensington in 1 704 . Sir John was a supporter of

the Un ion with Scot land, which the Queen had

much at heart, and while that measure was prepar

ing, he was admitted to the private apartments,

through h is patron the Duke of Queensberry .

“ One

day ,” he says , not in the spirit of a courtier , or

perhaps of ‘a gentleman ,“ one day I had occasion

to observe the calamities which attend human

nature, even in the greatest dign ities of l ife . Her

Majesty was labour ing under a fit of gout, and

in extreme pain and agony , and on this occasion

everything about her was much in the same dis

order as about the meanest of her subjects . Her

face , which was red and spotted , was rendered

something frightfu l by her negl igent dress,and

the foot affected was tied up with a pultis and some

nasty bandages . I was much affected at this sight,

and the more when she had occasion to mention her

peop le of Scot land , which she did frequently to

the Duke . What are you , poor mean-l ike mortal

thought I , who talks in the style of a Sovereign

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 255

More interesting , because less tri te , is the account

given by the same writer, of a second interview

with the Queen two years later, when the Union

had been successfu l ly accompl ished,with the

earnest encouragement and assistance of Anne her

self . On this occasion Clerk kissed hands on his

appointment to be a Baron of the Exchequer in

Scotland . I cannot remember this incident,

” he

adds,“ without making th is refl’ex ion, as I have

done before that, tho’ th is great Queen had in her

shor t reign,I mean to the year I saw her, made a

very glorious figure in Europe by her armies and

fleets abroad , and even in bringing about the

Un ion of the two Kingdoms , which could never be

accompl ished by any of her predecessors , tho’ she

was in al l respects arbitr ix of peace and war in

Europe , and by her sovereign authority held the

Ba lance of Power in her hands , yet at the time I

was introduced to her to receive her commands for

Scotland, she appeared to me the most despicable

mortal I had ever seen in any station . The poor

lady, as I saw her twice before, was again under a

severe fi t of the gout , i l l-dressed , blotted in her

countenance,and surrounded with plasters, cata

plasims (sic) , and dirty l ittle rags . The extremity

of her pain was not then upon her, and it diverted

her a l ittle to see company with whom she was not

to use ceremonies , otherways I had not been

256 QUEEN ANNE

al lowed access to her . However , I bel ieve she was

not d ispleased to see anybody , for no Court

Attenders ever came near her . All the I ncense and

adoration offered at Courts were to her M in isters ,

particular ly the Earl of Godolphin , her chief

M in ister,and the two Secretaries of State ; her

palace of Kens ington , where she common ly r e

s ided , was a perfect so l itude , as I had occasion to

observe several times . I never saw anybody attend

ing there but some of her Guards in'

the outer

Rooms,with one at most (sic) of the Gent lemen of

her Bedchamber . Her frequent fits of s ickness and

the distance of the place from London , did not

admit of what are commonly cal led Drawing-Room

n ights , so that I had many occasions to th ink , that

few Houses in England belonging to persons of

qual ity were kept in a more private way than the

Queen ’s Royal Palace of Kensington . I t must

be remembered that Kens ington was then a v i l lage

of grave l pits , with one handsome square before

the palace, far beyond the l imits of London ,though a not unfash ionab le resort for Londoners

in search of fresh ai r . Swift,however

,when he

was at W indsor in 1 7 1 1 , drew a different and much

more agreeable picture . Among many references

to the Queen ’s love of hunting and sport,he

writes : “Mr . Vice Chamberlain lent me h is horse

to ride about and see the country this morn ing .

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2 58 QUEEN ANNE

of Marlborough,after al l his victories had been

won,inv ited a blackguard peer who had affronted

him in debate to “ take the air in the country . This

particular encounter did not ensue, because the bul ly

was also a coward . But duels were almost of dai ly

occurrence,and were not uncommon ly fatal . They

were fought at Hampstead, at Paddington , i n

Bloomsbury, even in Hyde Park , and it was never

thought necessary to leave England for the purpose .

Yet by the Engl ish law , then and always , duell ing

was criminal,and to ki l l a man in a duel was murder ,

even though the party who lost h is l ife were the

party who sent the chal lenge . That no j ury would

in the eighteenth century have convicted of a

capital crime a man who had fought according to

the rules is doubtless true . The utmost the Crown

could hope was a verdict of manslaughter,and the

sentence would have been a l ight one . Nev er the

less due l l ing is a singular instance of publ ic opin ion

brought round by degrees to the law, not, as usual ly

happens,of the law mou lded in accordance with

publ ic opin ion .

Duel l ing was fostered by drunkenness,and the

age of Anne was emphatical ly drunken . I t would

be difficult to mention a single man in publ ic l ife

who was habitual ly sober, except Marlborough , who

depended upon the c learness of his head,Swift

,

who was a dean,and Atterbury, who was a bishop .

SOCIETY AND ll/IANNERS 25 9

The fashionable dinner-hour was five, which

a l lowed plenty of time for steady soaking, and for

suppers, when bottles could again be opened . Bur

gundy was be ing gradual ly superseded by port in

the later years of the reign . Claret and sweet cham

pagne were also coming into vogue . Immense

quantities of ale , home-brewed October, were con

sumed in the country . I n towns the most popular

drink was gin,but there was a considerable demand

for the more salutary cider . Many men,l ike

Harley, were scarcely sober before they began to

dri nk again . Their habits made them prematurely

old, and apoplexy or paralysis carried them off in

middle l ife . Gout was almost un iversal,and stone

,

which requ ired a surgica l operation without anaes

thetics , was very common . A dr inking bout some

times ended in a murderous quarrel,and sometimes

in what was cal led death from natura l causes .

Societies for the promotion of temperance would

have been regarded as insane , and the law rather

encouraged than checked '

the consumption of excls

able l iquor . When gentlemen began seriously to

drink , ladies reti red . But a man under the influence

of wine must have been one of the first s ights to

which a girl entering society became accustomed .

I t was perhaps partly for that reason that girls had

very l ittle freedom , and were seldom al lowed to

leave the house unaccompan ied by some sort ofs 2

260 QUEEN ANNE

duenna . On the other hand, men were at great

pains to dress well,thei r behaviour was cere

m onious, and their compl iments to the other sex

elaborate . They had almost as wide a range of

choice as women in the selection of costumes , and

if their wigs partly concealed the ir faces, the ir knee

breeches set off thei r legs . The sword was even

more essential than the wig,i n days when every

man might at any moment be required to defend

himself or his lady compan ion . A knowledge of

fencing was part of every gentleman ’s education ,

and even in the streets of London it was not safe to

rely upon the forces of the law . The streets were

dimly l ighted with oi l lamps . The constables were

seldom n imble-minded, and not always able-bodied .

They had not alte red very much since Shakespeare ’s

t ime , and were far more afraid of the Mohawks than

the Mohawks were of them . These Mohawks, or

Hawcubites, exc ited terror in 1 7 1 2 , and gave rise

to much the same kind of pan ic as the garrotters

establ ished in London a hundred and fifty years

later . But they belonged to a very different order

of society . They were young bloods and men about

town who,from mere insolence and brutal ity

,attacked

foot passengers of both sexes, beat them and cut

their noses . The rage of faction attributed the ir

exploits, without a particle of evidence , to a Whig

conspiracy,and Swift was so much alarmed by them

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262 QUEEN ANNE

that bail iffs se ized the Russ ian Ambassador in a

London street,and Chief J ust ice Ho lt , before whom

they were brought,could do noth ing to th em . The

Czar,however

,i n 1 7 1 2 , wasPeter the Great , whose

wrath , not unnatural ly , knew no bounds , and led

to the passing of a statute which exempted foreign

d iplomatists for the future . Peers and Members of

the House of Commons, w ith their servants, were

also protected,so that priv i lege of Parl iament was

worth having in the eighteenth century , and did not

become abso lutely meaningless unti l al l arrest on

civi l process was abol ished in 1 869 . Human ity i n

gaols was never thought of, and debtors’ prisons

were as bad as any . Lunatics were chained and

flogged,under the horrib le de lusion that there was

no other safe way of treating them . Cockfigh t ing ,

bul l-bait ing , and even bear-baiting, were st i l l

fash ionable pursu its . Kindness to an imals was

disregarded as mawkish sentimental ism .

Addison ’s account of the Tory foxhunter in the

Fr eeholder waswritten two years after the death of

Anne . But the time is too short to s ign ify,and the

in imitable portrait of the man would do for any

period from the Dutch del iverance to the Hano

ver iam Succession . That foxhunting impl ied Tory

ism , Addison assumes as a matter of course . Wh igs

attended race-meetings , and ran horses . Wharton ,for instance, did both , and usua l ly won . But fox

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 263

hunters i n Addison ’s day were all,it seems , friends

of passive obedience,and enemies of fore ign trade ,

who considered Whigs to be dogs,whelps, and

curs . Witches and Presbyterians Addison ’s fox

hunter held ln equal horror . For the impossible

offence of witchcraft was stil l capital in Anne ’s

reign , and the foxhunter enlarged upon the happi

ness of the neighbouring county, probably Wilt

sh ire , where there was“ scarce a Presbyterian except

the bishop .

” The foxhunter was against al l foreign

al l iances . Our wooden wal ls ,” he said, are our

security, and we may bid defiance to the whole

world, especial ly if they should attack us when the

m il itia is out . He was a logical protection ist,

maintain ing that foreign trade was the ru in of England . Addison , a free trader before Adam Smith ,

reminded him that al l the ingredients in the punch

they were drinking came from abroad except the

water . At th is point the landlord ran to the rescue,

and observed with a humour too Addison ian to be

qu ite i n character, that“ there was no l iquor l ike a

cup of Engl ish water provided it had malt enough

in it .” Foxhunting soon became a national sport

and ceased to be identified with passive obedience .

But Addison ’s paper il lustrates very wel l the social

condit ion of the Engl ish squires under the last of

the Stuarts . They were ignorant , for there was

l ittle education e i ther at school or col lege , except

264 QUEEN ANNE

in the case of those who,from ambition or love of

learn ing, educated themselves . The only tests

were theological , and there were no exam inations .

Travell i ng was slow,difficult

,tedious, and expen

sive . The squire who was not a Parl iament man

se ldom came even to London . He could not afford

it . He knew, as a ru le , l ittle more than the labourers

on his estate , and had as l ittle desire to rise . Eng

land was an agricultural country,exporting corn ,

importing most of the manufactures she consumed,

hardly suspecting the wealth of her coal , and feed

ing her population from her own resources . There

was no overcrowd ing , and food was cheap . The

merchants who did business beyond the seas,l ike

Mr . Walter Shandy , whose trade had been with

Turkey , were mostly Whigs, hated rivals of the

landed interest . The character of Sir Andrew Free

port in the Spectator is a faithful and sympathetic

description of a class to which the commerc ial

prosperity of England is main ly due . The South

Sea Company , founded in Queen Anne’s reign ,

came soon afterwards to a disgracefu l and calam it

ous end . The East I ndia Company,which dates

from Charles the Second , was gradually rising to

the sp lendid position that might have lasted ti l l our

own day if it had not been destroyed by the Indian

Mutiny in 1 857 . So early as 1 687 the Directors of

that Company , merchant princes in every sense of

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266 QUEEN ANNE

origin of the Indian Empire,and of the British

Empire itse lf . The chief British colon ies existing

in Queen Anne ’s time were those of North America,

to which Newfoundland was added by the Treaty of

Utrecht . They began with the arr ival of the May

flower in 1620 . The charters taken from them by

James the Second were restored by W i l l iam the

Third,who supported James’s al ly , Will iam Penn ,

the i l lustrious Quaker , i n the foundation of Penn

sylvania . Canada was sti l l French ; and the

colon ies were regarded with disfavour by the Tory

party as focuses of Whig po l it ics and Nonconform

ist sch ism . Scot land was looked down upon as a

nest of Presbyterian ism , which was as the sin of

witchcraft , and I reland , who wou ld wil l ingly have

joined in a'

union with Great Britain i f she could

have been assured of re l igious toleration,even for

the Protestant Nonconformists of the north,was

treated as a barbarous land , the home of wi ld Pap ist

rapparees . The ideal of the country party,which

ruled the roost from 1 7 1 0 to 1 7 14, was that good old

England shou ld eat Engl ish beef,drink Engl ish

ale , and l ive on Engl ish corn .

I n London , which had a population of half a

mil l ion , then thought stupendously large , coffee was

a favourite drink with the wel l-to-do, and coffee

houses were the resort of the people who now

frequent clubs . The first number of the Spectator

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 267

describes a few of these haunts . Sometimes , says

the anonymous writer,

.

“I am seen thrusting my

Head into a round of Pol iticians at Wil l ’s , and

l isten ing with great Attention to the Narrat ives that

are made in those l ittle Circular Audiences . Some

times I smoak a Pipe at Chi ld’s, and while I seem

attentive to noth ing but the Postm an , overhear the

Conversation of every Table i n the Room . I appear

on Sunday n ight at S t . j am es’s Coffee-house , and

somet imes joi n the l itt le Committee of Pol iticks in

the I nner Room , as one who comes there to hear

and improve . My Face is l ikewise very well known

at the Gr ecian ,the Cocoa-Tr ee, and in the Theatres

both of Dru ry-L ane and the Hay

-Mar ket . I have

been taken for a Merchant upon the Exchange for

above these ten years , and sometimes pass for a

j ew in the Assemb ly of Stock-Jobbers at jonathan’s.

I n short,wherever I see a Cluster of Peop le , I

always mix with them , though I never open my

Lips but in my own C lub .

”

Of these Clubs the Beefsteak, for actors, is the

on ly one which now survives . Thereference in the

Spectator is p robably to the Kitcat, a Whig Club ,

founded in 1 699 . The members of the Kitcat had

their portraits pai nted by Knel ler, and it is only in

reference to the p ictures that we now use the name .

Christopher Katt was the pastrycook in Shire Lane

over whose shop the club first met , consisting of

268 QUEEN ANNE

th i rty-n ine Members,al l attached to the Protestant

Succession . Among them were Marlborough ,

Somerset,Sunderland , Wharton , Hal ifax , and

Somers . Garth,Vanbrugh

,and Congreve were the

l iterary stars . Of Congreve and Vanbrugh enough

has been said . Sir Samuel Garth , author of a poem

cal led The Dispensar y ,is better known from Pope’s

description as

Gar th , the best good Chr istian h eAlthough h e know it not.”

The mutton-p ies of this dist inguished society were

known as “ kitcats . Their toasts, and the inscr ipt ions on thei r glasses , were st i l l more famous .

When Prior was expel led from the Kitcat as a Tory,

he assisted St . John to found the Brothers, who

began to meet on Thursdays in 1 7 1 1“ for the im

provement of friendship , and the encouragement of

letters ,” as St . John wrote to Lord Orrery . Besides

St . Joh n and Prior, Harley , Arbuthnot, Granvi l le

the pol ite ,’ afterwards Lord Lansdowne

,Peter

borough , and Swift were Brothers . Bo l ingbroke’s

extraordinary reputation with men of his own time,

so difficu lt for posterity to understand,was not due

merely to his speeches in Parl iament,bri l l iant as

they must have been . There was no Hansard in

Queen Anne ’s days , and it wasa breach of privi lege

to report what it wou ld now be considered almost

a breach of privi lege to suppress . E lectors were

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2 70 QUEEN ANNE

and begged him to take Oxford ’s post . But Bol ing

broke could dazz le, ii he could not persuade . Pre

eminently clubable,to use Dr . Johnson ’s word , in

a clubable age,he was the l ife and sou l of the

Brothers,to whom even Swift considered it an

honour to belong . The Brothers were not a Club

in our sense of the term . They had no club-house ,

no newspapers,no l ibrary . They dined at different

taverns,and were often charged sums wh ich Swift,

the sober man among them , considered , not um

j ustly, to be extortionate . Professing to desp ise the

toasts and merriment of the Kitcat, they met to talk

and to drink . They did not gamble . There were

gaming houses for those who l iked them ,and no

attempt was made to check a vice which publ ic

lotteries under the sanction of the Legislature

directly encouraged . The expenses of the war were

provided by loans, taxes , and lotteries . But betting,

though common enough , was in those days the

pursuit of idlers rather than , as it afterwards became ,

the relaxation of statesmen . Even Godolphin laid

most of his wagers at Newmarket , where the races

were actually run . As to shutting up those tab les

which existed, i t would have had to be done by the

army . The watch , who could not keep the streets

in order , nor prevent chairmen in search of a job

from levying blackmail upon foot passengers,would

have been as unfit for the purpose as Dogberry and

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 2 7 I

Verges themselves . Col ley Cibber,who wrote h is

Apology for his Own L ife in the reign of Georgethe Second, says , with a truly insu lar spirit,

“We

are so happy as not to have a certain Power among

us which , i n another country, is cal led the Pol ice .

Better, he thought , endure even disorder in the

P layhouse than fly to such a remedy as that .

The pos ition of women in Queen Anne ’s reign

would now f be regarded as intolerable . A married

woman was the slave of her husband , who could

compel he r by force to l ive with him . Marriage was

indissoluble, except by Act of Par l iament, and no

woman could obtain a divorce . All property

acquired or earned by a wife, except under sett le

ments, then just becoming known , was the property

of her husband, who could squander it without

redress in any way he pleased . He might even

beat her i f he did not use too large and heavy a

stick ,“ reasonable chastisement being legal i n her

case, as in her children’s . Extreme indulgence to

the l icentiousness of the male sex was combined

with extreme severity to the victims of seduction,

especial ly if their offspring became chargeable upon

the parish . On the other hand,a pretty woman in

easy circumstances had a very agreeable l ife whi le

she was single , and a good deal of practical freedom

after matrimony had abridged her nominal rights .

The art of gallantry has never been more assidu

2 72 QUEEN ANNE

ously cul tivated than by the beaux of Queen Anne .

Amongst the famous toasts of the Kitcat Club was

Marlborough ’s favourite daughter, the Countess of

Sunderland, cal led by her father“ the l i ttle Whig .

”

Addison has described, as he alone could, the privi

leges of those fair charmers whom he cal ls Idols .“ The Playhouse,

” he writes,is very frequently

fi l led with Idols; several of them are carried in

Procession every even ing about the Ring , and

severa l of them set up their worship even i n

Churches . They are to be accosted in the language

proper to the Dei ty . Life and Death are in their

Power Joys of Heaven and Pains of Hel l are at

their disposal : Paradise is i n their Arms, and

Etern ity in every moment that you are present with

them . Raptures, Transports, and Ecstasies are the

Rewards which they confer ; Sighs and Tears,Prayers and broken Hearts are the Offerings which

are paid to them . Their Smiles make men Happy ;their Frowns drive them to Despair . I shal l on ly

add under this Head, that Ovid’s Book of the Art

of Love is a kind of Heathen Ritual,which contains

al l the Forms of Worship which are made use of to

an Idol .” Then , with a del ightfu l touch of the tr ue

Addison ian humour, not lost upon a humorist of

our own day, Mr . Anthony Hope, the essayist con

tinues,“ Imust here observe that those Idolaters

who devote themselves to the Idols I am speaking

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2 74 QUEEN ANNE

according to the taste and fancy of the spel ler .

Some l ight is thrown by the invaluab le Spectator

upon what the ladies of 1 7 1 1 read . There were no

novels, except some col lections of short stories , such

as Mrs . Aphra Behn ’s , and The Gr and Cyrus,

translated from the French of Mademoisel le de

Scudery , the only book in the lady’

s l ibrary

descr ibed by Addison which had a Pin stuck in

one of the middle leaves The Court of Cyrus was

the Court of Loui s, and his real cap ital was Ver

sai l les . Addison ’s lady had also an Engl ish trans

lation of Malebranche,which does not give a very

high idea of her l iterary accompl ishments . For

some acquaintance with the French tongue , which

Mar lborough is said to have known better than his

own , was then regarded as essential to an educated

woman , j ust as an educated man could not afford

to be ignorant of Latin , unless he was a soldier ,however complete might be his lack of science ,

h istory , modern languages , and Greek . The lady ’s

copy of Locke on the Hum an Understanding had a

paper of patches in it,which meant, I presume , that

she had lost them . The classic authors,on the

other hand, were“ in wood,

” while Mrs . Manley ’s

New A tlan tis had a key to it . Tom Dur fey’

s Ta les

in Verse, which cannot have done their owner much

good , were bound in Red Leather gi l t on the Back ,and doubled down in several Places .” The lady

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 2 75

had Dryden’

s j uv enal, which is coarser than J uvenal

h imself , and somebody else’s Virgil, which must

have been far inferior to Dryden ’s . Congreve’s

Millamant i n The W ay of the W or ld, perhaps the

most fascinat ing woman of the Engl ish drama

outside Shakespeare, was doubtless the type of

excel lence i n the younger circles of Queen Anne .

Besides the Duchess of Marlborough and Lady

Masham , the most prominent women in the Court

of Queen Anne were the Duchess of Somerset and

the Duchess of Shrewsbury . Charles Seymour,

s ixth Duke of Somerset, was appointed Master of

the Horse on Queen Anne ’s accession . He had

been c ivi l to Anne as a young Princess,when l ittle

notice was taken of her,and continued in her favour

unti l he was dismissed with Marlborough in 1 7 1 1 .

He was known as the Proud Duke, though what he

had to be proud of h istory does not disclose . His

wife , who was a Percy, the last Earl of Northumber

land ’s daughter, succeeded the Duchess of Marl

borough as M istress of the Robes , and had great

influence with the Queen . She remained at Court

after the Duke had been turned out, and Swift’s

impatience to get rid of her is one of the most

comical ep isodes in the j ournal to S tella . Her lean

i ngs were Whig , and Opposed to Lady Masham’s,

so that the two women were constantly struggl ing

for the poor Queen ’s soul . Swift cal led the DuchessT 2

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a design ing woman , because her designs were con

trary to h is own , and even alarmed him for h is

personal safety . They did not procure , as he feared

they would,the dismissal of Oxford and Bol i ng

broke . But they were successfu l so far as she her

self was concerned . For she retained her p lace

throughout the re ign,and was chief mourner at the

Queen ’s funeral . Queen Anne was a stickler for

etiquette, and l iked to have a Duchess as M istress

of the Robes . The Duchess of Somerset was, more

over, an Eng l ish woman , whereas the Duchess of

Shrewsbury , though descended in the female l ine

from Robert Dudley , Queen E l izabeth’s Earl of

Leicester, was an Ital ian . I t was she who first gave

Swift the name of Presto , being unable to pro

nounce his own , and was thought to have“ wonder

ful art in entertain ing and diverting people , though

she would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency .

She was, or thought herself , a Tory , and Lady

Cowper , who was a Whig , des ignates her as“ the

most cunn ing , design ing woman al ive, obl iging to

people in prosperity , and a great party woman .

”

Unl ike her stately husband, a fine gentleman,and

a real scholar,she was a l ively

,agreeable rattle

,

attractively indiscreet, and much admired by Swift ,whose neighbour she became in I reland when the

Duke was Lord Lieutenant . Everybody l iked the

Duke of Shrewsbury , and nobody trusted h im . He

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2 7s QUEEN ANNE

of highwaymen , highway robbery being at that t ime

a lucrative pursuit, of which the profits were large ,

and in which the risks were smal l .

Defoe,who could not be happy for long without

a pen in his hand , conducted during the first decade

of the eighteenth century a journal which he cal led

the Rev iew,and of which he wrote the whole , or

almost the whole , himself . Although Defoe’s

pol it ica l conduct was not wise, and his relations

with Harley are very l i ttle to h is credit,he remained

in his publ ished writings staunch to W hig prin

ciples and to free trade . He sati rized the J acobites

with such successfu l i rony that the Queen took him

to be a Jacob ite h imself , and Harley had solemnly

to assure his Sovereign that his facetious friend was

joking . He supported the unpopular Treaty with

France in with arguments which Cobden might

have appl ied to the Commercial Treaty of 1 860 .

Against bribery at elections, which there was then

nothing to check save publ ic opin ion , he declaimed

in words of almost brutal indignation . More l ight,

however, i s thrown upon the habits of the t imes by

Defoe’s curious outburst against begging .

“ I f al l

the beggars of this nation ,” he writes, had a

charter to join themselves i nto a body , they would

be the richest corporation i n the kingdom . The

disease is corroded ; the leprosy is on the wal ls ;

we are possessed with the begging devi l ; we have

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 2 79

poor without begging,and beggars without poverty

.

Strange that nature can be depressed to so much

meanness, to ask a man’s charity for mere covetous

ness , and stoop to beg without want . How often

have we known men that have stood with a broom

in thei r hands to sweep a passage,and beg your

alms for God’s sake , leave a thousand pounds in

gold behind them P Two or three famous instances

of this we have had very lately,one of wh ich has

left three thousand pounds to a charity . The laws

against vagrancy at th is time were very severe . But

whipping sturdy beggars had about as much effect

as hang ing highwaymen . I t made criminals more

desperate without subtracting from their number .

On this subject Addison wrote better , and with

more knowledge , than any of his contemporaries .

I nto the mouth of h is Whig merchant , Sir Andrew

Freepor t, he has put language as sound and plain

as any to be found in the W ealth ofNations, which

did not appear t i l l 1 776 . Addison introduces his

d iscourse,which occupies the two hundred and

th irty-second number of the Spectator , with his

usual simpl icity and ease .

“The other day , says

he,

“ as soon as we were got into h is chariot, two or

three Beggars on each side hung upon the Doors ,

and sol icited our Charity with the usual Rhetor ick

of a sick W ife or Husband at home , three or four

helpless l ittle Chi ldren , al l starving with Cold and

2 80 QUEEN ANNE

Hunger . We were forced to part with some Money

to get rid of their Importun ity ; and then we pro

ceeded on our Journey with the Blessings and

Acclamations of these Peop le . Sir Andrew moral

izes . What good,he asks , have they done by the ir

generosity ? Their healths wi l l be drunk at the

next alehouse . They wi l l have promoted the trade

of the victua l ler , and contributed to the excise of

the Government . But how much wool have these

poor creatures upon thei r backs ? Will they be

better dressed next time No,they must wear rags

to exci te compassion . I Hav e often thought ,” he

goes on,

“ that no Man should be permitted to take

Rel ief from the Parish , or to ask it in the Street

ti l l he has first purchased as much as possible of

h is own Livel ihood by the Labour of his own hands ;

and then the Publ ick ought on ly to be taxed to make

good the Deficiency . I f this Rule was strictly

observed we shou ld see everywhere such a mult itude

of New Labourers as would in al l probabi l ity reduce

the Prices of al l our Manufactures . I t is the very

Life of Merchandize to buy cheap and sel l dear .

The Merchant ought to make his Out-Set as cheap

as possible that he may find the greater Profit upon

his Return , and nothing wil l enab le him to do th is

l ike the Reduction of the Price of Labour upon al l

our Manufactures . This too wou ld be the ready

way to increase the number of our Foreign Markets.

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282 QUEEN ANNE

and Expedition,and the hundred Watches would be

finished in one-fourth Part of the Time of the first

one,and every one of them one-fourth Part of the

Cost,though the Wages of every man were equal .

The Reduction of the Price of the Manufacture

would increase the Demand of it , al l the same

Hands would be sti l l emp loyed , and as wel l paid .

The same Rule wil l ho ld in the C loath ing , the Ship

ping , and al l the other Trades whatsoever . And

then an Addition of Hands to our Manufactures

wil l only reduce the Price of them , the Labourers

w i l l sti l l have as much Wages,and wi l l conse

quently be enabled to purchase more Conven iences

of Life,so that every I nterest in the Nation would

receive a Benefit from an I ncrease of ou r workingasPeople . I f to be in advance of one’s age is to state

clearly and prove conclusively propositions un iver

sal ly accepted a hundred years after one ’s death ,

Addison is certain ly entitled to that praise . But it

m ust not be supposed that Si r Andrew Freeport and

his theories are pure creations of the Addison ian

fancy . There would have been no point in Sir

Andrew , who fil ls so large a place in the Spectator ,

i f he had not expressed , of cou rse with that curious

fel icity which was Addison ’s own,the ideas that

prevailed among the better informed members of h is

own class . Not one man of business in a hundred

had then , or has now , any theory of trade at all .

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 283

He subsists on experience and rule of thumb . Even

in the seventeenth century there were exceptions,

such as Si r Dudley North,and in the eighteenth

cen tury there must have been many more . The

most interesting part of Addison ’s Sir Andrew is

that he saw the immense value of foreign trade in

promoting native industry . Woollen manufactures

owed much , as we have seen , to the Methuen Treaty

with Portugal , though unhappi ly the nature of that

instrument precluded a commercial treaty w ith

France in 1 7 1 3 . But it is impossible to conce ive

Sir Andrew Freeport sympathizing with the igno

rant outcry against the l inen trade of I re land , or

bel ieving that its restriction,even if just

,would

help the wool len trade of England . S i r Andrew

knew , and therefore Addison knew , that trade was

not war, and that if I reland were a foreign nation

instead of part of the Queen ’s domin ions , her pros

per ity would sti l l be advantageous to Great Britain .

The most wholesome feature of l ife in those days

is that so much of it was spent in the open air , not

in mines,factories

,or workshops . I f wages were

low,and all combinations to raise them il legal ,

food was reasonably abundant , and land was

plenti fu l . There were smal l yeomen , as wel l as

large squires,and copyho ld , wh ich is now a

nu isance,was then a protect ion . Poaching was

ordinary trespass , not pun ishable as a crime ,

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though man- traps and spr ing guns were set by

the cruel for the unwary,and j ustices of the peace ,

if we may bel ieve Fielding,who wrote in the middle

of the century with his eye on the beginn ing , did

not always!

confine the ir j urisdiction with in the

l imits of the law . Game , however , was by no

means strictly preserved,and the l ives of men were

not sacrificed to fur or feathers . Sheep-steal ing

was the great crime in the country , as shop- l ifti ng

was the great crime in the town,both being capital ,

part ly on the ground that they were d ifficul t to

detect . When manslaughter was not an offence

for which a man could be hanged,and larceny was,

the law might fai rly be said to regard property as

m -ore sacred than l ife . But indeed the Parl iaments

of Queen Anne were more concerned with the

exti rpation of heresy than with the amendment of

criminal jurisprudence . Latitudinarian divines of

the establ ishment , such as Clarke and Hoadly ,

were safe enough . Cathol ics were Jacob ites,and

could not be real ly patriots . To give them votes

would have been l ike giving arms to rebels . Non

conformists , on the other hand , acknowledged a

Parl iamentary title to the throne,and were the

most zealous champions of the Protestant Succes

sion . To persecute them was as fool ish as i t was

unjust , though it can scarcely be said to have been

unpopular , for the rigid ru le of the Commonwealth

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286 QUEEN ANNE

approached more nearly than any other Whig or

Churchman of h is day to the modern idea of

rel igious equal ity . But Burnet’s first wife had been

an ardent Presbyterian , and he was freely charged

by High Churchmen,as Archbishop Tait was in

the succeeding century , with bei ng a Presbyterian

himself . To Bishop Atterbury , a courageous man ,

whose private character was beyond reproach , the

heresy and schism of Presbyterians and Congre

gationalists were more offensive than the ribaldry

of Swift or the immoral ity of Bol ingbroke . While

the Queen,unassisted by any of her M in isters ,

laboured for the spread of rel igion through the

Church,the Church itself , at least as represented

by Convocation , was absorbed in b itter eccles iastical

disputes . Addison ’s jovial innkeeper was under the

especial patronage of the Tory foxhunting squ ire

because though he seldom went to church,he had

taken part in pul l i ng down several chapels . Atter

bury ’s eloquent and ostentatious zeal for the Church

of England did not prevent him from doing his best

to violate the Act of Settlement , by setting up a

sovere ign who was devoted to the Church of Rome .

The Jacobite Cathol ics , i ncluding almost every

Cathol ic except Pope , did work , whatever may be

thought of their methods,for the cause Of a rel igion

in which they sincerely bel ieved . Being forbidden

to take an open part in pol itics,they were exempt

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 287

from many of the temptations which beset the

practical pol itician . I t was their misfortune as

much as their fault that their interests were not

the interests of the nation , and that they could

hardly be patriots , except in I reland .

Froude has expressed the opin ion,for which there

is much to be sa id, that an Act of Un ion between

Great B ritain and I reland should have immediately

fol lowed the un ion between England and Scotland

in 1 707 . So early as the 4th of October , 1 703 , the

Duke of Ormond, then Viceroy of I reland , wrote

to an Engl ish Secretary of State , Lord Notting

ham , and told him that the I rish House of

Commons,which was exclusively Protestant

,

“ con

sider ing the many misfortu nes the country lay

under in point of trade ,” desired a un ion . The

reference is to the unjust and unwise legislation

of Will iam which,treating I reland as a foreign

country,prohib ited the import of I rish wool lens

to the Engl ish market . That this protective measure

injured England as wel l as I reland few , i f any ,

statesmen of that age were enl ightened enough to

see . Engl ish M in isters,such as Godolphin , did

make an honest effort to right the balance , not of

trade but of j ustice,by fostering and extending the

encouragement granted to the manufacture of I rish

l inen by a statute of Charles the Second . The

project of a Un ion between England and Ireland ,

2 88 QUEEN ANNE

though earnestly supported by the I rish Chan

cellor , Sir Richard Cox, was quietly a l lowed to

drop . Th e difficulties were enormous . Cox was a

staunch Protestant,who had adhered at the Revolu

tion to Wil l iam of Orange,and had been present at

the battle of the Boyne . He would have regarded

Cathol ic emancipation as madness, as equ ivalent

to making the Pretender a gift of I reland . The

Penal Laws were i n fu l l force , and no one in

authority dreamt of consulting the Cathol ic popula

tion,inside or outside the Pale . They were as

pol itical ly dumb as the people of I ndia are to-day .

The Presbyterians of the North,of the Ulster Plan

tation, were a much more serious obstacle to Un ion

from the Engl ish Churchman ’s point of view . The

Irish Church was the Church of a smal l minority ,

but it monopol ized pol itical power . If men unfit

to be b ishops anywhere were appointed to Engl ish

sees, the I rish sees were sometimes fi l led by men

whom no Min ister would have set over an Engl ish

diocese . Most clergymen of the I rish Church ,

including Swift, would have fought hard against

any relaxation of the tests imposed upon Pres

byter ians. Even the un ion with Scotland would

hardly have been carried without the personal

influence of the Queen,and there is no evidence

that Anne cared anything for I reland . Scottish

Jacobitism was dangerous . I rish Jacobitism was

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290 QUEEN ANNE

fined its operations to Ulster,with results that have

profoundly affected the history of I reland from that

day to this . The Penal Laws of Anne require no

epithet . A bare statement of them is enough . By

an Act of 1 703 a Cathol ic was forbidden to be the

guardian of his own chi ldren , or to disinherit a

Protestant ch ild . A Cathol ic could not purchase

real property,nor take a lease for more than th irty

year s , nor succeed to an estate held by a Protestant .

Another Act, passed in 1 709 , compelled a Cathol ic

father to support any of his chi ldren who became

Protestants , and gave rewards to informers against

unregistered priests . Cruel as these laws were,i t

does not appear that in Anne ’s reign they were

rigorously enforced . For one th ing,I rish Pro

testantswere not un ited . An I rish Churchman did

not regard a Presbyterian as a Churchman at al l .

He could not deny that title to a Cathol ic without

impeaching the val idity of his own orders . For

another thing , publ ic opin ion , even when most

hosti le to Cathol ic emancipation, was not in ' favour

of the pena l laws , and it would have requ ired a

whole country-s ide of informers to carry them out

in ful l . Cathol ic land-owners had Protestant

friends who were wil l i ng to help them by legal

subterfuges , and in I reland the person of a priest

has always been sacred to the people. Through

out the eighteenth century I rish hatred of England

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 29 1

grew , unti l at length it became real ly formidable .

During the W a r of the Succession I r ishmen were

eager to fight for France . But in I reland itself the

Boyne and Aughrim had crushed out al l danger

of rebel l ion .

I f any age in Engl ish history can be descr ibed

as one of temperate fel ici ty, i t is probably that

which fol lowed the Treaty of Utrecht . Twelve

years of war had not raised taxation to an oppressive

level,nor the debt to an alarming height . Pope

and Swift , Addison and Steele, were open ing a

new and rich mine of l iterature , as various as it was

ful l and deep . The Spectator contained the germ

of the Engl ish novel , destined in a few years to

supplant for ever translations from Mademoisel le

de Scudery , and Tom Durfey, and Mrs . Aphra

Behn . That the Dai ly Cour ant would develop into

the modern Press was then as l ittle foreseen as

that Dan iel Defoe,the pol itical reviewer and

pamphleteer,would write the best story of adven

ture in the Engl ish language . I ndia was al ready

a source of profit,and not yet a cause of anxiety .

The American colon ies traded peaceably with their

metropol is , and gave no trouble . France was

crushed,Spain was contented ; the Holy Roman

Empire , neither holy Roman nor imperial , had

received a new lease of its harmless, tolerant,

unaggress ive existence . At home there was no

U 2

292 QUEEN ANNE

surplus population,no chron ic want of emp loyment,

no poverty that could not be rel ieved . Competition

had hardly set in . Although the land laws were

bad,and the crimina l law was worse , the squire

joined his tenants in sport , and jur ies gave a kind

of informal protection against the worst barbarities

of the statute-book . Judges who would have fainted

at the thought of abol ish ing capital pun ishment for

felony took care that it should not always be carr ied

out,and in the absence of counsel for the prisoners

were often the best check upon the prosecution .

Wool was woven and coal was dug by prim it ive

methods , but under healthy conditions . I f there

was not much cricket or footbal l , there was abund

ance of fish ing,hunting

,shooting , and coursing ,

without undue preservation of fish or of game .

The low standard of publ ic morals,the excessive

gal lantry of the fashionable c lass , did not affect the

private l ives and conduct of humble folk . I f the

spirit of enterprise was defect ive,a sp iri t of satis

faction was pretty general ly diffused . The great

cause of material misery , the pressure of populat ion

upon means of subsistence , had not begun to work .

There were vast tracts of open space,even near

London , which nobody cared to occupy , and where

even highwaymen were seldom disturbed . High

waymen were the terror of the rich,or at least of

the wel l-to-do . The common people heeded them

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2 94 QUEEN ANNE

i nvestigation,and resolve themselves into a

‘

strange

case of mistaken identity . He used h is influence

with successive monarchs on behalf of h is own

commun ity,whether i n England or i n America,

and of complete toleration for al l sects , Cathol ics

included . He was no more a democrat than Isaac

Watts . The Quakers , though they did not acknow

ledge titles, or any disti nctions of social rank , were

averse from pol itical as from other quarrels,and

determined to l ive peaceably with al l men . Among

Queen Anne’s statesmen the one professed repub

l ican was the Earl of Sunderland , son-in- law of

the first,and father of the second, Duke of

Mar lborough . Sunderland affected to cal l h imself

Charles Spencer , and expressed a hope that he

should survive the peerage . The Queen was

shocked . Those who knew him better smiled ; for

in an age of intrigue there were few such astute

intriguers,and he passed his whole l ife in courts .

Whigs!

were indeed even less democratic than Tories,

and more remote from the people . I t was their

design to govern in the name of the sovereign , and

because they had also the capacity,they succeeded .

Circumstances favoured them . A second, or even

a long- l ived Will iam of Orange would have been

fatal to their plans . A Queen of less than average

abi l ity with a perfect nonentity for her husband,

was the precise combination they required . Their

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 295

temporary fai lure i n 1 7 10 was due to their own

mismanagement , and to the Duchess of Marl

borough ’s temper . I n 1 7 1 4 the stars i n their

courses fought against Oxford and Bol ingbroke .

Even Wharton might have seen the finger of

Providence i n the sudden death of Queen Anne .

The qu iet and almost uhdiSputed succession of

George the First has been cal led the greatest miracle

in Engl ish history . There is no miraculous element

in it . What might have happened at the General

E lection of 1 7 14 i f a democratic suffrage ha’d

prevai led must always be doubtful . Happily for

the Whigs and for the Protestant cause , trade was

prosperous , and the mercanti le commun ity bel ieved

that their business would be threatened by a dis

puted succession . The Whigs had seized power

while Anne was dying,and in power they were left .

How l ittle they could trust even such constituent

bodies as then existed the Septenn ial Act of 1 7 16

is enough to prove . They had no bel ief in the

people . They bel ieved in a rul ing aristocracy , in

themselves . They were not unwil l ing that th is

privileged Class should from time to t ime be

recru ited from new men,such as Somers , Cowper,

and Walpole . Their hab it of marrying untitled

he iresses prevented them from becoming a caste ,

and they had a genu ine zeal for personal freedom .

But the idea of the people govern ing themselves,

296 QUEEN ANNE

through their representatives,or at all, was to them

not even a dream . I t was Utopian ism or, i n plai n

Engl ish,midsummer madness . The principles of

1 688 were to Engl ishmen then what the pri nciples

of 1 789 are to Frenchmen now . As there are French

Roya‘l ists now,so there were Engl ish , and sti l l

more Scottish,Jacob ites then . But the bulk of the

upper and middle classes,the vocal part of the

nation,were loyal to the Act of Settlement as the

sequel of the B il l of R ights .

The hopes of the Jacobites, revived by the death

of W i l l iam,were destroyed by the death of Anne .

They cou ld no longer rely upon France, and I reland

outs ide the Engl ish Pale was pol itical ly dead .

Exclusion of Catho l ics from al l power in the State

was sure to be strength ened rather than weakened

by any rising on behalf of the Pretender . The

Union with Scotland was denational izing the Low

lands , and the Highlands were the one dangerous

part of Anne ’s three kingdoms . To be a Jacobite in

Great Britain under the first two Hanoverian Kings

was to risk not mere ly pol itical position , but also

l ife and estate . fIm peachm ent was sti l l a regular

constitutional process, conviction involved for

feitur e , at least in Engl and, and capita l pun ishment

for treason was i nfl icted without scruple . There

was no possibi l ity of a British Sovereign The

choice lay between a German and a Frenchman ; a

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298 QUEEN ANNE

pr iated by Hanover, wasa good point for Jacob ites .

But it was under a Stuart Prince who reigned by

right divine that the Dutch cannon were heard in

Fleet Street as Dutch ships sai led up the Thames .

The wife of Lord Chance l lor Cowper, who

abol ished the scandalous habit of taking annual

presents from the counse l practising before h im,has

left in her Diary a striking description of the country

between Hampton Court and London . Lady

Cowper, an extremely clever, and a h ighly accom

plished woman , wrote her journal at the beginn ing

of George the First’s re ign , when she was waitingupon the future Queen Carol ine, then Princess of

Wales . Although the date of the fol lowing entry is

the a8th of October, 1 7 16 , it may be fairly appl ied

to the England which Queen Anne left,the England

of Unc le Toby and Corporal Trim . At that

autumnal season the Prince ’s Court left their subur

ban , then their rural , retreat for their town house in

Leicester Fields . “ The day ,” says Lady Cowper,

“ was wonderful ly fine and nothing in the world

could be pleasanter than the Passage ,” made in a

barge,“ nor give one a better idea of the R iches

and Happiness of th is Kingdom .

” Although

courtiers seldom see the less agreeable part of l ife,

Lady Cowper’s observation is confirmed fr om other

sources , and trustworthy evidence paints th is period

as one of the brightest in our annals . The two

SOCIETY AND MANNERS299

chief drawbacks were the highwaymen and the

beggars . Even Lady Cowper speaks of footpads,

pads as they were then famil iarly cal led,in Bed

ford Row, and refers to her security at Kensington

when soldiers were camping in Hyde Park,as “ one

might come from London any time of the N ight

without Danger .!

The age of Anne, great in pol itics, in l iterature ,and in war, was not very fru itfu l in scientific dis

cover ies. The looms which made its excel lent

broadcloth were worked by hand . Coal was

brought from mines by men and horses . A

mechan ical method of raising water had been de

vised at the close of the seventeenth century by

Thomas Savery , the i nventor of paddle-wheels .

But it was not altogether successful , unti l in 1698

Savery took into partnership an ingen ious black

smith from Dartmouth cal led Thomas Newcomen .

Newcom en’s pumping-engine , which remained in

use for the greater part of the eighteenth century,

was equivalent in power to five horses and a half .

From a depth of a hundred and fifty-s ix feet it could

raise fifty gallons of water in a minute . Humble

as such an achievement must seem now, i t had much

publ ic uti l ity then . Newcomen’s was a kind of

atmospheric steam-engine , which obtained its motive

forCe by exhausting the air from a cyl inder that had

been provided with a piston . Savery’s steam

300 QUEEN ANNE

engine scarcely deserves to be cal led an anticipation

of Watt’s . But according to Mr Ashton ’s Social

L ife in the Reign of Qu een Ann e it was as ingeni

ous as it was simple . Two boilers with furnaces

supp l ied the steam . This was admitted alternately

by means of a handle worked by man or boy , i nto

one of two ell iptical receivers , where it condensed,

formed a vacuum and the water rushed in and fi l led

its p lace . When ful l the appl ication of steam

ejected it from the receiver,and forced it up the pipe,

and so de novo.

’ This was an ingen ious device,

no doubt , but it cannot be cal led a simple appl ica

tion of the propel l ing power of steam .

Travel l ing in Queen Anne ’s reign was difli cult,uncomfortable , and even dangerous . The danger,

as has been said , was from highway robbery , which

flourished almost unchecked . Roads were bad,and

a trave l ler from London to Bath , about the year

1 7 1 0 , describes the last part of the road , after

Chippenham , as more perilous than the Alps . The

time was two days, and the fare sixteen sh il l ings .

Stage coaches ran to most towns,and trafli c was

conducted by packho-rscs, waggons, or canals .

There were plenty of post-houses , and postmasters

were bound by thei r l icense to provide horses at a

fixed tariff, with guides, for riding or driving . I n

London there were at this time eight hundred

hackney carriages , the fare being fixed at eighteen

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302 QUEEN ANNE

criminals . Women as wel l as men were flogged .

Hanging meant slow strangulat ion . I f a man

accused of any crime refused to plead, he was l iable

to a l ingering death of torture and starvation,known

as the peine for te et du r e. On the other hand, the

most minutely techn ical flaw in the indictment was

enough to defeat the ends of j ustice , and benefit of

clergy was a defence for any one who could read,

unless he had been convicted before . Nobody

thought of the criminal law as a reforming agency .

Pun ish-ment was mere vengeance,though the fear

of the gal lows was not found to deter the criminal

classes from coin ing , or sheep-stea l i ng, or highway

robbery . I ndeed war, and duels, and assassination ,

and smal lpox , and courts of j ustice seem to have

famil iarized people ’s minds with the idea of death

unti l they became cal lous,and almost indifferent .

I nsan ity excited so l ittle compassion that lunatics

were used l ike wild beasts , and Bedlam was one of

the sights of London , with the l ions at the Tower .

One of the many excuses for intoxicat ion was the

badness of the water . Wells were often contam in

ated by cesspools or graveyards, even in London ,

where the New River Company suppl ied to those

who could pay for it the on ly safe form of Adam ’s

ale . Ale i tself was good enough , though strong ,

and labouring men drank l ittle else . Tea, which

came from China,was the luxury of the rich , and

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 36 3

chocolate found much favour with women of fashion,

who also took snuff as freely as the ir modern successors smoke cigarettes . Pipes

,the only method

of smoking then practised, were common in al l

classes of society, and for the well-to-do there was

abundance of excel lent wine from France,Spain

,

Portugal , or I taly . Bol ingbroke was especial ly

fond of Florence wine,” probably Chianti or

Montepulciano . Fuel , l ike food , was cheap and

plentiful , England being sti l l overgrown with

timber . Coal , however, which came to London by

sea from Northumberland, and from Scotland , was

dear on account of carriage . The mixture of damp

from the river with the smoke of coal from chimneys

had not begun to poison the atmosphere of the

cap ital .

The social position of the clergy at the commence

ment of the eighteenth century has been the subject

of much dispute . Mr . Gladstone vehemently pro

tested,and ingen iously argued, ,

that Macaulay had

decried and underrated it as it was in the reign of

Wil l iam the Third . Macaulay may have been on

this,as on some other occasions, too rhetorical .

His own eloquence, though usually supported by

profound knowledge,was apt to carry him away .

But most of the available evidence shows that he

was substantial ly right,and it was not in Anne

’

s

power,much as she would have l iked, to effect a

304 QUEEN ANNE

change . She was herself excessively conventional ,a great stickler for the observance of rank and

etiquette . She considered Matthew Prior social ly

unfit to represent her at Paris . When Bol ingbroke

approached her in a Ramil l ies,or bob wig , i nstead

of the ful l-bottomed peruke , she said,“ I suppose

his lordship wil l soon be coming to Court in h is

n ight-cap .

” I t i s true that the high places in the

Church of England, with al l the precedence they

involve , have a lways been open to men of plebeian

origin , though they have often been bestowed upon

otherwise unqual ified cadets of ennob led houses .

But between bishops and inferior clergy the distance

in the eighteenth centu ry was immeasurable . Be

fore Anne came to the throne Til lotson , a man of

real eminence , had been succeeded as Archbishop

of Canterbury by Tenison , formerly B ishop of L in

coln , a Low Churchman and a Whig, too warm a

friend of the Hanoverian Succession to please the

Queen . She preferred Archbishop Sharp of York ,

whom she appointed a Commissioner for the Scot

tish Un ion , and B ishop Compton of London , who

had confirmed her . Compton was an active pol i

ticlan,an ardent Protestant, and a very able man .

His colleagues were not distinguished, with the

exception of Burnet, B ishop of Sal isbury , the

historian,Sprat , Bishop of Rochester, j oint author

of the Rehearsal, and Atterbury , a Jacobite pol i t ician

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306 QUEEN ANNE

have much more wit and learn ing than myself,and

who was bred up with me at the Un ivers ity upon

the same footing of a Li beral Education,treated in

such an ignomin ious manner,and sunk beneath

those of his own rank , by reason of that Character,

which ought to bring him honour I t is difficu lt to

account for this sentiment at a time when the

pol i tical influence of the Church was almost un

bounded . A partial explanat ion may perhaps be

found in the current idea of a gentleman as a man

who fought duels, which a clergyman obviously

could not do . Addison knew what he was writing

about, and it seems useless to support him by a host

of minor authorities . One great name wil l suffi ce .

Swift, when he was in London , l ived with states

men , authors, and fine ladies, not with clergymen .

But he felt and resented every sl ight to h is cloth .

W hen he was at Windsor in 1 7 1 1 , and the object

of emulous attentions from the society of the Court,

he wrote to Stel la,“ I never dined with the chaplains

ti l l to-day ; but my friend Gastr ell , and the Dean

of Rochester (Pratt) had often invited me, and I

happened to be disengaged : i t is the worst pro

v ided tab le at Court . W e ate on pewter : every

chaplain,when he is

’

made a dean , gives a p iece of

plate,and so they have got a l ittle, some of it very

old . One who was made Dean of Peterborough (a

smal l deanery) said he would give no plate ; he was

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 307

on ly Dean of Pewterborough .

” Swift elsewhere

contrasts the triumph of asp iring mediocrity with

the neglect of modest gen ius . Such comparisons

have been made, and such morals have been drawn,

in other call ings and at other times . I f Swift,who

was doubtless thinking of h imself,had gone to the

Bar , h is advancement would probably have been

m ore rap id, and would certain ly have been less

exposed to cr iticism . There was not much spiritual

fervour i n the Church of Anne,and the drinking

habits of the period were not confined to the laity .

The level of the se rmon , always written , was not

high , and the best sermons of the day have been not

i l l described as essays from the Spectator without

the Addison ian elegance . Rel igious l ife was more

active among the Dissenters , who had the stimu lus

of persecution . Edmund Calamy, a Presbyterian ,

and Matthew Henry, who was a lawyer before he

becam e a Nonconformist min ister, enjoyed a just

reputation as devout and learned theologians .

Dan iel Burgess, whose chapel was destroyed by the

mob at the t ime of Sacheverel l ’s impeachment, had

something of Hugh Latimer ’s popular eloquence

and racy wit . Buried in the ponderous tomes,

which contain the verse and prose of Isaac W atts,

i s a quaint example of the hopes and the disappoint

ment insp ired by the accession of Anne, and by her

surrender to Toryism . I n the year which fol lowed! 2

36 8 QUEEN ANNE

the . battle of B lenheim , Watts addressed to the

Queen a congratulatory Ode, i n which , with refer

ence to the Old Pretender, then young, her Majesty

is loyal ly assured that

The vengeance of thy rod, with general joyShall scourge rebellion and th e r ival boy .

”

Sixteen years later, in 1 72 1 , Watts republ ished

th is Ode,!

appending to it, however, a Pal inode or

recantation .

“ George , not Anne,” he explained ,

“ was the name of promise . The latter part of

Anne ’s reign was by no means attended with the

accomp l ishment of those glorious hopes which we

had conceived .

”

Twas George diffused a v ital ray,And gave the dying nations day :

H is influence soothes th e Russian bear ,Calms r ising wars

,and heals the air .

”

The doctor is sti l l sanguine , and cheerfulness is

its own reward . Very slowly, and at very long

intervals, did'

the Nonconform istsobtain freedom and

justice from hostile Tories and lukewarm Whigs .

For the free churches the last four years of Queen

Anne were the darkest hour before the dawn .

At Wil l iam ’s death , even more than at James’s

fl ight, the fate of England trembled in the balance .

His profound designs for securing the cause of Pro

testantism were cut short by the l i ttle gentleman

in black ,” and Anne was qu ite incapable of under

standing them , or carrying them on . No one fore

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3 1 9‘QUEEN ANNE

To sum up the reign of Anne was distinguished

by splendid mil itary achievements , by great materialprosperity, by supreme excellence in l iterature , and

by the ausp icious un ion of E ngland with Scotland .

Of scientific discovery there was l ittle , and of social

reform there was less . Triennial Parl iaments, and

a disputed succession , were inj urious to pol itical

stabi l ity . A-n Erastian Church reared its mitred head

against heresy rather than against v ice, and thought

more of excluding Dissenters from power than of

promoting Christian ity among the people . Tories

upheld the establ ishment, and Whigs became cham

pions of Nonconformity, for their own factious and

selfish ends . While pol itic ians struggled for place,the mass of the people were forgotten . Those

Engl ishmen who adhered to the ancient faith,and

acknowledged the authority of Rome , were shut out

from publ ic l ife, and could only further the interests

of their rel igion by rebel l ion or by intrigue . The

bulk of the nation , absorbed in making money and

enjoying l ife , were ready to accept any form of

Government which gave them tranqu i l l ity and order .

England was self-supporting, th inly peopled, im

perfectly cultivated, yielding an ample profit to the

makers of Engl ish cloth , the diggers of Engl ish

coal , and the ti l lers of E ngl ish soi l . Except wine

and tobacco , the former a luxury of the rich , scarcely

anything in general use came from abroad, for tea ,

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 3 1 1

coffee, and chocolate had a l imited vogue . The

England of Anne was scarcely more conscious than

the England of El izabeth that this island would

become the centre of an Empire bounded only by

the l imits of the world . El izabethan seamanship ,with al l its dazzl ing intrep idity , is a record of per

sonal adventure , and the navy of Queen Anne,

desp ite the almost accidenta l capture of Gibraltar,

did l ittle to be compared with the achievements of

her army . Although the freedom and independence

of England were directly threatened by the preten

sions of Louis , Engl ishmen did not readily under

stand why they should go on fighting for the balance

of power . The oldest of those British colon ies

which stil l retain their al legiance dates from the

Treaty of Utrecht . But l ittle was thought of New

foundland at the time , and Bol ingbroke very

natural ly laid more stress upon the retention of Gib

r altar , as a sign of Bri tish ascendency in the pol it ics

of Europe . The American colon ies notwithstand

i ng,Queen Anne ’s M in isters did not look beyond

the sphere of European diplomacy . Even I reland

was to them a foreign , conquered na tion , and the

Highlands of Scotland l ittle better than a den of

thieves.I f the Jacobites looked to France ,

‘

the eyes

of W h igs, and of Hanoverian Tories , were bent upon

the Empire and upon Hol land . Charles the Second

and his brother had not succeeded in destroying the

QUEEN ANNE

monarchical sentiment , the spiritof personal loyalty ,

in the minds of Engl ishmen who bel ieved that the

Revolut ion of 1 688 was the smal ler of two evils .

How much the story of the warming-pan , and the

general credit which it received, had to do W ith the

Act of Settlement and the Hanoverian dynasty , we

cannot tel l . George the First was accepted as a

King in fact by many who regarded James Stuart

as King in law . Even now , when nobody argues

in favour of d ivine right , the direct descent of the

Sovereign from James the Fi rst is a ci rcumstance

of immense practical value . George was not a mere

stranger l ike Wil l iam . Anne was not a stranger

at a l l . The Jacobites could urge nothing but her

sex against her claim , and her sex appealed to the

chivalry of her subjects . Marlborough wou ld never

have p-rostrated himsel f before a man as he did

before her . William the Third had to depend eu

t irely upon his own courage , clemency , and state

craft . Anne was a Stuart, and her person was

sacred . She showed sympathy with her people by

attending Parl iament, subscrib ing to the Church,

touching for the King’s Evi l . She set an example

of conj ugal fidel ity and private decorum . She was

generous without being extravagant , and virtuous

without being Puritan ical . She owned racehorses,and her husband was a regular attendant at New

market . Her prejudice against Dissenterswas not

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3x4 QUEEN ANNE

minds . Their Sovereign was thoroughly Engl ish ,

though her Scott ish origin was not forgotten north

of the Tweed . She did not intrigue w ith foreign

powers,and her people never had to pay her debts .

Her domestic sorrows , especial ly the l ittle Duke of

Gloucester’s death , appealed to the hearts of her

future subjects before her reign began . I n her sub

sequent quarrel with the Duchess of Marlborough

she had the sympathetic support of al l who disl iked

tyranny and ingratitude . When she refused to

make the Duke Captain General for l ife , her conduct

appealed to the national hatred of a mil itary dictator

ship ..When she dismissed Godolph i n and the

Whigs , she was at least rebel l ing against tutelage ,and behaving l ike a Queen . Her dign ified answer

to the rude request of Parl iament that she should

marry again touched the heart of every wife and

mother who respected herself . The pettiness of

court l ife, which abounded in the Court of Anne , was

unknown to the pub l ic . They knew,and l iked to

know , that the Queen disapp roved of Bol ingbroke ,and would not make Swift a b ishop . Even her

unreason ing patronage of Sacheverel l,brawler and

misch ief-maker as he was , could be made to look

l ike hatred of persecution ; and for the Sch ism Act ,which certainly was persecution

,her Majesty ’s

M in isters, together with Parl iament itsel f, were

responsible . Her obstinate refusal to see the

SOCIETY AND MANNERS 3 1 5

E lectress , or the Elector , or the E lectoral Prince , her

statutory heirs , was just one of those human weak

nesses which common folk appreciate and under

sta nd . Anne has not found many enthusiastic

admirers besides M iss Strickland . But she has a

usefu l , and even an honourable , place in history

she bridged a gulf , and suppl ied a want . Her reign

of splendour abroad, and peace at home , smoothed

the path of constitutional progress through that

loyal passion for our temperate kings which our

great poet described .

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