belongs to the English commander, the eccentric Lord Peterborough, whose brilliant conceptions were too often thrown away by his ignorance of that art in which Marlborough excelled, the art of courteously overlooking the defects of others. The importance of Barcelona arose from its being the chief place in Catalonia, a province which clung to its local independence, and which vigorously espoused the cause of Charles, simply because Philip ruled in Castile. Soon afterwards Valencia was overrun by the allies. In other parts of Europe there were no military events of note. In the course of 1705 the Emperor Leopold I. died, and his son Joseph (the elder brother of the Archduke Charles) succeeded him in the empire as well as in his hereditary dominions.

9. A Whig Parliament. 1705-1706.-At home the High Tories raised the cry of "The Church in danger"; but a Whig majority was returned to Parliament, and Marlborough and Godolphin entered into friendly communications with the Whig leaders. One of the results of the understanding arrived at was a compromise on that article in the Act of Settlement which would, after the accession of the House of Hanover, have excluded ministers as well as other placemen from the House of Commons (see p. 673). It was arranged in 1706 that the holding of a pension or of an office created after October 25, 1705, should disqualify, whilst all other offices should be compatible with a seat, provided that the holder, at the time of his appointment, presented himself for a fresh election.

10. The Campaign of 1706 in the Netherlands and in Italy. 1706.-In May, 1706, Marlborough won a second great victory at Ramillies, and before long, except that they continued to hold a few isolated fortresses, the French were swept out of the Spanish Netherlands as they had been swept out of Germany in 1704. In September, Eugene came to the succour of the Duke of Savoy, defeated the French who were besieging Turin, and drove their armies out of Italy.

11. Campaign of 1706 in Spain. 1706.-In Spain `the success of the allies was less unmixed. Barcelona indeed beat off a French besieging army, and the old Huguenot refugee Ruvigny, now known as the Earl of Galway (see p. 670), marched from Portugal and occupied Madrid in June; but the Portuguese under his command left him in order to plunder, and, before the end of July, he learnt that the French commander, the Duke of Berwick (the illegitimate son of James II. by Marlborough's sister, Arabella Churchill), had received ample reinforcements. As all the country

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round was hostile, Galway had nothing for it but to leave Madrid. In August he was joined by the Archduke Charles and Peterborough, though the latter soon afterwards betook himself to Italy on diplomatic service. When Peterborough afterwards returned to Spain, all authority had slipped out of his hands. Galway, unable to maintain himself in Castile, retreated to Valencia. Whilst he had been in the interior, Aragon had declared for Charles, and Alicante had been captured by an English fleet.

12. The Union with Scotland.

1702-1707.-Far more important to England than all that was taking place in Spain was the conclusion of the Union with Scotland. In 1702 Commissioners had met to discuss its terms. The Scots had naturally been anxious for freedom of trade and equality of commercial privileges. As the English were unwilling to

grant this, the Scottish Parliament, in 1703, retorted by an Act of Security, providing that the successor to the Scottish crown, after the queen's death, should not be the same person as the successor to the crown of England. In 1704, in consequence of the defiant attitude of Scotland, the queen was forced to give the royal assent to the Act of Security. What the Scots virtually meant by it was, that England must make her choice either to accept Scotland as an equal partner with full equality of benefits and rights, or must have her as an alienated neighbour with a national sovereign of her own, capable of renewing that ancient league with France which had cost England so dear in earlier times. England retaliated with an enactment that Scotchmen, coming to England, should no longer enjoy the privileges to which they were entitled by the decision of the Judges in the case of the Postnati (see p. 483), until the Scottish Parliament had settled the succession in the same way that it was settled in England. Godolphin and his fellow-ministers were, however, too wise to prolong this war of threats. They gave way on free trade and commercial equality, and in 1707 the union of the two nations and the two Parliaments was finally accepted on both sides Forty-five members of the House of Commons

were to be chosen by Scottish constituencies, and the Scottish peers were to elect sixteen of their own number to sit in the House of Lords. Scotland maintained her own Church, her own law, and the control of her own fortresses. She remained a nation in heart, voluntarily merging her legislative authority in that of the neighbouring nation.

13. The Irish Penal Laws. It would have been well both for England and Ireland if the Irish race had been capable of enforcing its claims even to a just and lenient treatment by its masters. Unfortunately the Irish population, beaten in war and deprived of its natural leaders by the emigration of its most vigorous soldiers, was subjected to the Parliament of the British Protestant colony. In spite of the terms made at Limerick (see p. 657), the Parliament at Dublin, after excluding Catholics from its benches, passed laws of which the result was to make wellnigh intolerable the position of the professors of the religion of at least three-fourths of the inhabitants of Ireland. Catholic landowners were impoverished by an enforced partition of their lands amongst their sons, and by the enactment that if a single son turned Protestant the whole of the inheritance was to pass to him. Catholic children, upon the death of their fathers, were entrusted to Protestant guardians, who were directed to bring them up as Protestants. A Catholic priest who converted a Protestant to his faith was to be imprisoned, and one who celebrated a marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant was to be hanged. Oaths were imposed on the priests which no conscientious Catholic could take, and each priest who refused the oath was to be banished, and, if he returned to Ireland, was to forfeit his life. Any persons refusing to give evidence which might lead to the detection of such priests were liable to imprisonment or fine. In addition to these and other similar enactments, the Irishman who was true to his religion had to bear the daily scorn and contumely of men of English or Scottish descent and religion, who looked upon him as a being of an inferior race, and scarcely deigned to admit him even to their presence.

14. Irish Commerce Crushed. Though the Parliament in Dublin was allowed to deal thus with the lives and property of those whom its members would have scorned to speak of as their fellowcountrymen, it had to purchase the support of England by submitting to that English commercial monopoly against which the Scots had successfully rebelled. In the reign of Charles II. landowners in Ireland-for the most part Protestant landowners

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exported cattle to England until the English Parliament absolutely killed this trade by prohibiting the reception at any English port of cattle, sheep, and swine, beef, pork, and mutton, and even of butter and cheese imported from Ireland, lest they should compete with the produce of the English landowner. Debarred from this source of prosperity Ireland made steady progress in woollen manufactures till, in 1699, the English Parliament forbade the export of woollen goods from Ireland to any country except to England, where they were practically barred out by prohibitive duties, lest their sale should injure the profits of English manufacturers. The ruling race in Ireland was too dependent on the English Parliament to be capable of resisting these enactments.

15. Gradual Formation of a Whig Ministry. 1705 1708.In England power passed gradually into the hands of Whig ministers. In 1705 the Whig Cowper became Lord Chancellor. In 1706 the Earl of Sunderland,' Marlborough's son-in-law, became Secretary of State. The queen was strongly averse to Sunderland's promotion, as she looked on the Whigs as enemies of the Church, and Sunderland was the most acrimonious of the Whigs. Moreover, Anne was growing weary of the arrogant temper of the Duchess of Marlborough, and had begun to transfer her confidence to Harley's cousin, Abigail Hill, who became Mrs. Masham in 1707, a soft-spoken, unpretentious woman, whose companionship was calm and soothing. There was, however, a grave political question at issue as well as a personal one. The Whigs, finding the Tories lukewarm about the war and harsh towards the Dissenters, insisted on the appointment of a compact ministry consisting of Whigs alone. The queen, on the other hand, upheld the doctrine that the choice of ministers depended on herself, and that it was desirable to unite moderate men of both parties in her service. Harley supported her in this view, and, being detected by his colleagues in intriguing against them with the help of Mrs. Masham, was, together with St. John, turned out of office in February, 1708. By the end of that year the ministry became completely Whig. Marlborough and Godolphin declared themselves to be Whigs, Somers became President of the Council, Wharton Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

16. Progress of Cabinet Government. 1708. In one respect the Whig ministry completed in 1708 resembles that which served William III. under the name of the Whig Junto in 1695. Both were formed of men of one political opinion: both owed their 1 Son of the minister of Charles II. and James II.

influence to the necessity of unity of action in time of war. There was, however, one great difference between the two ministries. The Whig ministry of William III. was formed by the sovereign for his own purposes; whereas the Whig ministry of Anne was

formed in defiance of the sovereign. The idea of government by a Cabinet resting on a party majority in Parliament, and forcing its will on the sovereign, originated with the Tory ministers who forced themselves on William III. towards the end of his reign, but it first took definite shape in the Whig ministry of the reign of Anne.