A.D. 1695-1697.

TREATY OF RYSWICK.

561

of Commons; and such members as were absent were required to sign it by the 16th of March, or to notify their refusal. The association was adopted, with very little alteration, by the House of Lords; and of the whole Parliament, only 15 peers and 92 commoners refused to put their names to it. Shortly afterward an act was passed to make the signing of the association imperative on all holders of civil or military employments.

Five of the conspirators, namely, Charnock, King, Keys, Sir John Friend, and Sir Wm. Perkins, were condemned and executed. On the execution of the two latter the celebrated Jeremy Collier, the nonjuring divine, appeared on the scaffold, and publicly absolved them. The trial of Sir John Fenwick, who had been captured at New Romney while endeavoring to escape to France, did not come on till the autumn. While he lay in Newgate he sought to procure a pardon by turning evidence, and accused the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earls of Bath and Marlborough, Lord Godolphin, and Admiral Russell of corresponding and intriguing with King James. But, though this information is now known to be true, William refused to listen to it. As only one witness could be produced against Fenwick, while the law required two in cases of high treason, Admiral Russell brought in a bill of attainder against him, which was passed after considerable opposition. Fenwick was beheaded on Tower Hill on January 28, 1697.

$ 15. During the campaign of 1696 the French remained on the defensive; nor did any thing of importance take place at sea. All parties were looking forward to a peace; and on the 9th of May a conference was opened between the belligerent powers, under the mediation of the King of Sweden, at Ryswick, a yillage between Delft and the Hague. William had, as usual, gone over to Holland. All that he desired was to fix a barrier to the French power in Flanders, and to procure from Louis the acknowledgment of his title to the English throne; but the negotiations were protracted by the Emperor of Germany and the King of Spain, who were desirous of continuing the war. William, therefore, while the hostile armies lay opposed to each other near Brussels, caused a separate negotiation to be opened in July between the Earl of Portland on his part, and Marshal Boufflers on that of Louis.

The taking of Carthagena, in America, by a French squadron, and the capture of Barcelona by a French army, inclined the Spaniards to come to terms with Louis, and the PEACE OF RYSWICK was signed on September 10, 1697. Louis resigned several of his conquests, and recognized William as King of England. The peace of Ryswick seems to have been necessary in consequence

of the defection of the Duke of Savoy, and of the bad state of public credit in England; but William foresaw that it could be no more than a sort of armistice, and a fresh struggle must soon take place on the subject of the Spanish succession.

§ 16. The Parliament, which met soon after the peace of Ryswick, voted that the army should be reduced to 7000 men, and were with difficulty persuaded to increase it to 10,000; but, at the same time, they granted the king the large sum of £700,000 for the civil list. William was exceedingly annoyed at the vote for reducing the army; and before he repaired to Holland in the spring (1698) he ventured to leave sealed orders that the army should be raised to 16,000 men, which the ministers unconstitutionally obeyed: During his residence in Holland he negotiated a treaty respecting the Spanish succession. Charles II. of Spain was now supposed to be at the point of death; and, as he had no heirs within the kingdom, the question of his succession threatened to disturb the peace of Europe. Philip IV. of Spain had left three children one son, Charles II., and two daughters-the elder, Maria Theresa, married to Louis XIV. of France, and the younger, Margaret Theresa, married to the Emperor Leopold I. Maria Theresa had renounced her pretensions to the Spanish succession on her marriage with the King of France. The younger sister, Margaret Theresa, had made no such renunciation on her marriage with Leopold; but their only child, a daughter, who was married to Maximilian Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, was also obliged, before her marriage, to abandon all claims to the Spanish throne. But both France and Bavaria maintained that these princesses had no power to renounce the claims of their posterity; Louis XVI. therefore demanded the Spanish throne for his son the dauphin, and the Elector of Bavaria for his son the electoral prince. A third claimant was the Emperor Leopold, who, by a second marriage, had two sons, Joseph, King of the Romans, and the Archduke Charles. Leopold claimed the succession for his son Charles on the ground that he was a lineal descendant of Philip III; but Louis XIV. could make also the same claim for his son, since both Louis and Leopold had married granddaughters of Philip III.*

William would have been content to modify the claim of France by conceding to her part of the Spanish dominions; and Louis was, or pretended to be, better satisfied with this partial inheritance than to have to fight for the whole. The first treaty for the partition of Spain was accordingly negotiated in the summer at Loo, and was signed on the 1st of October; according to which, *The genealogical table on the opposite page exhibits the relationship of the different claimants.

on the death of Charles II., the dauphin was to be put in possession of Naples and Sicily, the ports on the Tuscan shore, and the marquisate of Final in Italy; while on the Spanish frontier he was to have all the territory on the French side of the Pyrences, and of the mountains of Navarre, Alava, and Biscay. The son of the Elector of Bavaria was to inherit Spain, the Netherlands, and the Indies; and Milan was to be assigned to the Archduke Charles, second son of the emperor. It was intended to keep this treaty a profound secret from the King of Spain, but it came to his ears and naturally roused his indignation; and, anxious to preserve the integrity of the empire, he drew up a will appointing the Electoral Prince of Bavaria his universal heir, according to the previous disposition of Philip IV. But Charles unexpectedly recovered, and the treaty was defeated by the demise of the electoral prince at Brussels, 8th of February, 1699.

§ 17. The new Parliament, which assembled in December, 1698, exhibited strong symptoms of discontent; insisted on the reduction of the army to 7000 men, and also voted that these should be natives of the British dominions. This involved the dismissal of the Dutch guards, the severest mortification which William had ever experienced. On this occasion he even condescended to send a message to the Commons by Lord Ranelagh, entreating them as a personal favor that his guards might be retained; and when they refused to comply he burst into a violent passion, and threatened to abandon the kingdom, a threat which he seriously thought of carrying into execution. All the debates of the Commons continued to be violent and hostile to the king. In the last session they had appointed commissioners to inquire into the grants of forfeited estates in Ireland; and the report being now brought in, it appeared that no fewer than 3921 persons had been outlawed in that country since February, 1689, and that more than 1,060,000 acres of land had been declared forfeited, the annual rent of which was computed at £211,623. It also appeared that large grants of these lands had been made to foreigners, as Keppel,* Bentinck, Ginkell, and Ruvigny, who had also obtained peerages in one of the two kingdoms. But perhaps the most obnoxious grant of all was that of King James's private estates, containing 95,000 acres, and valued at £25,995 per annum, to William's mistress, Elizabeth Villiers, now Countess of Orkney. The Commons resolved unanimously that all these forfeitures should be applied to the public use; and they even added that the grants which had been made of them were a reflection upon the king's honor. To secure the

Keppel was created Earl of Albemarle in 1696, and was the ancestor of the present earl. Bentinck was created Earl of Portland, as already related (see p. 547); Ginkell, Earl of Athlone, and Ruvigny, Earl of Galway.

A.D. 1697-1700.

DEATH OF THE KING OF SPAIN.

565

king's assent, the bill for the resumption of forfeitures was tacked to the bill of supply. Several amendments were proposed and carried in the Lords, and some angry conferences ensued between the two houses. The Commons threatened to impeach the Earls of Portland and Albemarle, and resolved to address the king that no foreigners, except Prince George of Denmark, should be admitted to the royal councils. William began to be alarmed, and sent a private message to his friends in the Lords to withdraw their opposition. The bill having passed in its original state, the king came to the House and gave his assent to it, and then suddenly prorogued the Parliament without any speech.

§ 18. The rapid decline of the King of Spain's health hastened the conclusion of a second treaty of partition, which was signed at London on the 21st of February, and at the Hague on the 14th of March, 1700. William had spent great part of the preceding summer and autumn at Loo in negotiating it, as he and the States were desirous of bringing the emperor into their views; but in October Leopold formally rejected any partition whatever. By this new treaty the share formerly allotted to the electoral prince was to be transferred to the Archduke Charles, and Milan was to be added to the dauphin's portion. To prevent the union of the imperial crown with that of Spain, it was provided that the King of the Romans should not succeed to the Spanish kingdom in case of the archduke's death; and a like provision was made with regard to the King of France and the dauphin.

The long-expected death of Charles II. of Spain, which followed on the 1st of November, soon discovered how fruitless had been all the pains bestowed on the partition treaties. The pride of the Spanish nation was naturally wounded by the treaty, and Charles especially was grievously offended by it. The French embassador availed himself of this feeling to persuade Charles to make another will, in favor of Philip, Duke of Anjou, the second son of the dauphin; nor did Louis hesitate to accept this magnificent bequest to his grandson. In case of his refusal, the Spanish throne was to be tendered to the Archduke Charles. William found it prudent to acquiesce in the new arrangement, and ultimately acknowledged the title of the Duke of Anjou.

$ 19. In the last year or two there had been several changes in the ministry, and the king seemed to be ever approximating more closely toward the Tory party, but trimmed between both with a dexterity which rendered it difficult to say to which he most inclined. In this year the Earl of Rochester, the leader of the Tories and High-Church party, was appointed to the lord lieutenancy of Ireland. The institution of a cabinet council-that is, a select body of ministers with whom the king exclusively