CHAPTER I GEORGE I.: 1714-1727 Born 1660; married 1682, Sophia Dorothea of Brunswick. The Whig Ministers-Jacobite Rebellion of 1715-Foreign Policy-Stanhope and Sunderland-The South Sea Bubble-Walpole in Power-Wood's Halfpence. CONTRARY to all expectations, the proclamation of the new king passed off without disturbance. The sudden death of the queen seems to have Quiet paralysed the Jacobites, and it soon became clear that Accession. throughout the country the friends of the Hanoverian succession had an overwhelming majority. So quiet, indeed, was everything that George made no hurry to appear among his new subjects, and did not land in England till September 18. Till his arrival the government was carried on by the seven great officers of state, and eighteen 'Lords Justices,' to whom Addison acted as secretary. Among these were Shrewsbury, Somerset, Argyll, Nottingham, Cowper, Halifax, and Townshend; but the names of Marlborough, Somers, and Sunderland were omitted. Marlborough's exclusion was probably due to the offence which George had taken at the great captain's reticence on military affairs; that of the other two to a determination to keep at a distance the great party leaders; but whatever were his motives, Marlborough received ample compensation in the magnificent and spontaneous reception which was given him by his countrymen on his return from the continent, and neither Somers nor Sunderland suffered any abatement of influence. The new king had a few useful qualities; but he was not likely to make a popular sovereign, for his merits made little show, while his Character failings were easily seen. In appearance he was a small, of George. heavy-looking man, of kindly disposition and faithful to his friends. His intellectual capacity was second-rate, but he was diligent and business-like. As a soldier he had fought bravely at Landen and Steenkerke, and had for some time commanded an army on the Rhine, but though he had certainly discussed the march to Blenheim with Marlborough he had no pretensions to be a great commander; and in civil matters, though he had made a good elector of a second-rate German state, and was beloved by the Hanoverians, he was not the man to shine on a larger field. Moreover, he was fifty-four years of age, of fixed habits, knew no English and little French; naturally cared more for Hanover and the Hanoverians than for his new subjects; and, though honest himself, was surrounded by courtiers, both men and women, whose one wish was to make as much as they could out of a new field for corruption and intrigue. But when this has been said, the worst has been told; and George had one great merit, which, in the eyes of Englishmen, ought to outweigh all defects. He thoroughly trusted his ministers, and though he often wished to have his own way where the interests of Hanover were involved, he allowed them to do what they thought best in England. Such a king was exactly what England wanted; for under George's unostentatious rule, the system of party government, which we have seen growing up during the last two reigns, took root, and became a recognised principle of the English constitution. At the commencement of each of the last two reigns, the experiment of a mixed ministry had been tried, but with such ill success that both William and Marlborough had been compelled to have recourse to a homogeneous administration. Warned by their experience, George at once gave his confidence to the Whigs, and, avoiding the great party leaders, chose for his ministers a set of younger men, of which Townshend, Stanhope, and Walpole were the chief, along with Sunderland and Nottingham. Townshend. Lord Townshend, then aged thirty-eight, was the son of a Norfolk cavalier, and had married Walpole's sister. He was a man of rough exterior, but of excellent heart-feared by strangers, but beloved by those who knew him best; of upright character, energetic and assiduous in business; no orator, but always listened to with attention because he spoke to the point. So far his chief claim to distinction had been the negotiation of the Barrier Treaty. He was now made secretary of state in succession to Bolingbroke. His colleague Stanhope, aged forty-one, was both a statesman and a soldier, distinguished for bravery on many fields. He had taken a leading part in the impeachment of Sacheverell, but being cap- Stanhope. tured at Brihuega, and imprisoned till the peace, he had been absent from England at the fall of the Whig ministry. Since his return he had been deep in the councils of the Whigs, and in Marlborough's absence had been their most trusted military adviser. As a soldier he was beloved by his men, to whom it is related that he always said, 'Come on,' and not 'Go on.' In civil life Steele speaks of 'his plain dealing, generosity, and frankness, his natural and pleasing eloquence in assemblies, and his agreeable and winning behaviour in conversation.' Walpole (see p. 714) had distinguished himself as secretary at war, and his prosecution in 1712 had raised him to the front rank among the Whig leaders. Prosecution Leaders. Parliament sat for six months after Anne's death, and was then dissolved. At the general election the country reversed the verdict of 1710 and 1713 by sending back a large majority of Whigs. In consequence, the government felt itself strong enough to attempt, according to the practice of the time, to set on foot a prosecution of the late ministers. As soon as Parliament reassembled, a committee, of which Walpole was the chairman, was appointed to enquire into the guilt of the late ministers. Its report, drawn by Walpole, advised the of the Tory impeachment of Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond, on a general charge of having treacherously sacrificed British interests and British honour at the Treaty of Utrecht, and also of having intrigued to restore the Pretender. As soon as the decision was known, Bolingbroke escaped to the continent, whither he was eventually followed by Ormond, and Oxford alone remained to brave the storm. He was arrested, and sent to the Tower. The flight of Bolingbroke and Ormond was taken by parliament as equivalent to a confession of guilt, and they were at once attainted. With regard, however, to Oxford, the more his case was examined, the less likely did it appear that his conviction could be secured. His conduct in negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht had received the approval both of parliament and of the queen, while the evidence of his connection with the Pretender was to be found only at Versailles. Accordingly, a year later, the charge was reduced from treason to misdemeanour, and in 1718 the proceedings were allowed to drop, and the fallen minister was set at liberty. By the flight of Bolingbroke the Jacobites lost little, but that of Ormond was a great blow to their cause, as it had been hoped that he would put himself at the head of a western insurrection; but his natural hesitation-and possibly his military instinct that such an insurrection, unless backed by French troops or Highlanders, would be of no avail-deterred him from the attempt. The elections had passed over quietly, but during the spring and summer Jacobite riots occurred in many places, particularly in the Riots. Act. midland counties. At Oxford the cry of the mob was, 'James III. and no pretender!' In Staffordshire the Tory rabble pulled down the meeting-houses of the obnoxious nonconformists, with shouts of High church and Ormond for ever!' Such occurrences required prompt measures; and in order to strengthen the hands of the local authorities, Parliament passed the Riot Act, which is The Riot still in force. This provides that, if twelve or more persons unlawfully and riotously assemble against the peace, and do not disperse within one hour after being ordered to do so in the king's name by a justice of the peace or other lawful authority, they shall be guilty of felony; and if after such order any one is killed in resisting those who are charged to disperse them, no one shall be held guilty of his murder. The riots were only symptoms of the prevalence of a very dangerous feeling. There is no doubt that Jacobitism was very widespread; and short of Jacobitism, there was a strong suspicion of everyJacobitism. thing which savoured of Whiggism, a feeling which had been stimulated by the publication in 1708 of Lord Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion. For years it was the text-book in which the history of the seventeenth century was studied in every parsonage and country house, and its strong partisan colouring cast a glamour over the royalist cause which was most favourable to the interests of the Stuarts. Jacobitism was strongest in the west, where Sir William Wyndham had great influence, and in Lancashire, where the number of Roman Catholic families was very considerable. In Scotland, too, dissatisfaction with the Union, joined with the usual antagonism of many of the Highland clans to constituted authority, and especially to any government which was favoured by the Campbells, gave the Jacobites hopes of organising a successful rebellion. The best hope of the Jacobites lay in a simultaneous rising in England and Scotland, supported by the presence of the Pretender, in person at all events and, if possible, backed by a body of foreign troops. Of this Bolingbroke was well aware, but even his skill could not overcome the difficulties in his path. First, the flight of Ormond deprived them of their only military leader; then the dying condition of Louis XIV. paralysed the politics of the French court; then the British government arrested Wyndham, who was the life and soul of the western Jacobites; and, finally, the Pretender gave orders to the earl of Mar to begin an insurrection in Scotland, without waiting till England was ready to move. Accordingly, on August 1, Mar set out from London, and making his way by sea to Scotland, raised the Highland clans. In this he showed Rising. Forster's much address, and by the end of September was at the head of a far larger force than any Montrose had ever commanded. To cope with him the Mar's government despatched Argyll to the north. He found himself, however, far outnumbered, and had to content himself with encamping his scanty forces under the walls of Stirling. Fortunately for him, Mar showed at this crisis none of the qualities of a great commander, and instead of pushing on and overwhelming Argyll, he allowed himself to be detained at Perth. Meanwhile, Rising. Thomas Forster, member of parliament for Northumberland, assisted by the earl of Derwentwater, had collected a body of cavalry on the border, and had been joined by another party of horse raised by Lord Kenmure in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. To aid them, Mar despatched brigadier-general Mackintosh with a corps of Highlanders to Kelso, whence the whole body crossed the border, and made their way into Lancashire. They reached Preston early in November, and occupied the town with a badly armed force of some three thousand men. There they were attacked by General Wills with a small but efficient force; and Forster, who had been named commander-not for any military qualities, but solely because he was not a Roman Catholicshowed his incompetency by not even defending the bridge over the Ribble, and confined his exertions to barricading the main streets. There, Surrender however, his men fought well, and the first assault was at Preston. repulsed; but when General Carpenter joined Wills, Forster abandoned hope, and-much to the disgust of his officers and mensurrendered at discretion on November 13th On the very day of the surrender at Preston, Mar at length summoned courage to march against Argyll; and as he had 10,000 men to Argyll's Battle of 3300, no difficulty was expected. Argyll, however, marched Sheriffmuir. out to meet him, and drawing up his forces on the open ground of the Sheriffmuir, on the road to Dunblane, offered battle. The fight which followed was one of the most singular in history. Each commander fought on his own right, each carried all before him, and each, on hearing of the disaster to his left, returned to the field; but Argyll's men were the fewer and apparently the more exhausted, and, above all, had to be drawn up at the foot of a slope, while the rebels were on its summit. At this moment a vigorous charge would have carried the day; and Argyll was making the best dispositions for a desperate defence, when, for some unexplained reason, Mar gave the signal for retreat. It was then that one of the disgusted Highlanders gave voice to the well-known sentiment, 'Oh, for an hour of Dundee !' The battle of Sheriffmuir, though it was rather a defeat for Mar than |