WRECK OF SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL'S FLEET. (See p. [577].)

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Sir Cloudesley Shovel, leaving a squadron with Sir Thomas Dilkes in the Mediterranean, sailed for England, and on the night of the 22nd of October, 1707, closed his career in a sudden and melancholy manner. By some miscalculation his vessels got amongst the rocks of Scilly. His own ship struck on a rock about eight o'clock at night, and went down, drowning him and every soul on board. Three other vessels shared the same fate, only the captain and twenty-four men of one of them escaping. Sir Cloudesley Shovel had risen from a humble origin in Suffolk, had raised himself to the head of the maritime service of his country by his bravery, skill, and integrity. His body, when cast ashore, was stripped by the wreckers and buried in the sand, but was afterwards discovered and interred in Westminster Abbey.

Meanwhile disaffection was rife in Scotland, where there had been for some time a very zealous emissary of the Court of St. Germains, one Colonel Hooke. Colonel Hooke transmitted to Chamillard, the Minister of Louis XIV., flaming accounts of this state of things in Scotland, and represented that never was there so auspicious an opportunity of introducing the king of England (the Pretender) again to his ancient throne of Scotland—a circumstance than which nothing could be more advantageous to France. A civil war created in Great Britain must completely prevent the English from longer impeding the affairs of Louis on the Continent. All the power of England would be needed at home; and on the Elder Pretender succeeding in establishing himself on the throne of the United Kingdom, France would be for ever relieved from the harassing antagonism of England—the only real obstacle to the amplest completion of all France's plans for Continental dominion. These accounts were very highly coloured, as from most quarters, particularly from the Duke of Hamilton, Hooke only met with discouragement. From others, however, Hooke received more encouragement. He obtained a memorial to Louis XIV., signed by the Lord High Constable the Earl of Errol, by the Lords Stormont, Panmure, Kinnaird, and Drummond, and by some men of smaller note. The leading men did not sign. They were not willing to endanger their necks without some nearer prospect of invasion. Hooke, indeed, pretended that the lords who did sign, signed as proxies for many others, such as the Earls of Caithness, Eglintoun, Aberdeen, and Buchan, Lord Saltoun, and others. With this memorial Hooke went back to St. Germains, and what the document wanted in weight he made up by verbal assurances of the impatience of all Scotland for the arrival of the king. But the truth appears to be that France expected a stronger demonstration on the part of Scotland, and Scotland on the part of France, and so the adventure hung fire. It was not till the following year that sufficient spirit could be aroused to send out an armament, and not till upwards of twenty of the Jacobite lords and gentlemen, including the Duke of Hamilton, in spite of all his caution, had been arrested.

The first Parliament of Great Britain met on the 23rd of October, 1707. The queen, in her speech, endeavoured to make the best of the last unfortunate summer's military operations. The retreat of the Imperialist troops on the Rhine was freely admitted, but it was considered an encouraging circumstance that the command there was now in the hands of the Elector of Hanover, and it was announced that measures were taken for strengthening the forces in that quarter. Little could be said of the proceedings in the Netherlands, and less of those in Spain, including the fatal battle of Almanza; but the most was made of the attack upon, and the bombardment of, Toulon. But the speech promised renewed vigour in every quarter, and called for augmented supplies. The deficiencies of military and naval action—for we had also suffered a considerable defeat at sea from the celebrated French Admiral, Du Guai Trouin, off the Lizard Point, in which two ships of the line were taken and a third was blown up—an endeavour was made to cover by allusions to the happy event of the Union. The Commons, in their Address, seized on this point of congratulation, and declared it a "mark of the Divine goodness that her Majesty had been made the glorious instrument of this happy Union, which would so strengthen the kingdom as to make it a terror to all its enemies." The Lords joined with the Commons in an affectionate Address to her Majesty, declaring that the only means of obtaining an honourable peace was the entire recovery of Spain. To support these assurances by deeds the Commons voted the enormous sum of six millions for the supplies.

Meanwhile the influence of the Marlboroughs at Court was on the wane, and that partly through their own shortsightedness. The Duchess of Marlborough had introduced into the palace, when she was Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the Robes, and more queen than the queen herself, a poor relation of her own, one Abigail Hill. Abigail, from whose position as a bedchamber woman, and from whose singular rise and fortunes all women of low degree and intriguing character have derived the name of Abigails, being placed so near the queen, soon caught her eye, took her fancy, and speedily became prime favourite. Harley, the Tory Minister, being also her cousin, as was the Duchess of Marlborough, with equal tact discovered her to be a useful tool for him. The Duchess of Marlborough, trusting to her long absolute sway over the mind of Queen Anne, begun when she was a princess; to the firm establishment of the Whig faction in power, her own work, because the Tories had opposed the five thousand pounds a year which the queen, at the instigation of the duchess, demanded for Marlborough before he had even won the battle of Blenheim; and finally, relying on the great services which Marlborough had now rendered, had become intolerable in her tyranny over the queen. The Marlboroughs all this time were making use, not only of their position to enjoy power, but to scrape up money with an insatiable and unblushing avarice. The time was now approaching, however, for the queen's liberation from the heavy yoke of Sarah Marlborough. The duchess, in the midst of power and pride, had still for some time felt the ground mysteriously gliding from under her feet.

She found that Abigail Hill was, in reality, no longer Abigail Hill; that she had for a whole year been privately married to Mr. Masham, Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Denmark; and that the queen herself had honoured this secret marriage by her presence at Dr. Arbuthnot's lodgings, at which time Anne, the duchess now remembered, had called for a round sum from the privy purse. In short, the duchess herself tells us that in less than a week after the inquiries she discovered that her cousin "was become an absolute favourite."

At this crisis an unlucky incident for the cunning Harley occurred. He had in his office one William Gregg, a clerk, who was detected in a treasonable correspondence with Chamillard the French Minister. He was arrested and thrown into the Old Bailey. The Whigs hoped to be able to implicate Harley himself in this secret correspondence. There had just been an attempt to get Lord Godolphin dismissed from his office, and he, the Duke of Marlborough, Sunderland, and their party, now seized eagerly on this chance to expel Harley and his acute coadjutor, St. John, from the Cabinet. Seven lords, including these, and all Whigs, were deputed to examine Gregg in prison, and are said to have laboured hard to induce Gregg to accuse Harley; but they were disappointed. Gregg remained firm, was tried, condemned, and hanged. Alexander Valiere, John Bara, and Claude Baude, the secretary of the ambassador to the Duke of Savoy, with that Minister's consent, were also imprisoned on the charge of carrying Gregg's correspondence to the governor and commissioners of Calais and Boulogne. On the scaffold Gregg was said to have delivered a paper to the ordinary, clearing Harley altogether; but this was not produced till Harley was once more in the ascendant. The lords deputed to examine Gregg and the smugglers Bara and Valiere, declared that Gregg had informed them that Harley had employed these men to carry correspondence, and that all the papers in the office of Harley lay about so openly that any one might read them. Both these assertions, and the paper said to have been left by Gregg, had much that is doubtful about them. The one statement proceeded from the Whigs, evidently to destroy Harley; the Gregg paper, on the other hand, not being produced till Harley was out of danger, was quite as evidently the work of Harley to clear his character. The charges, however, were sufficient to drive Harley and St. John from office for the time. When the Council next met, the Duke of Somerset rose, and pointing to Harley said rudely to the queen that if she suffered that fellow to treat of affairs in the absence of Marlborough and Godolphin, he could not serve her. Marlborough and Godolphin continued to absent themselves from the Council, and the queen was compelled to dismiss Harley. With him went out St. John, the Secretary of War; and Mr. Robert Walpole, a young man whose name was destined to fill a large space of history under the Georges, was put into his place.

Whilst things were on this footing, the nation was alarmed by an attempt at invasion. Louis XIV. had at length been persuaded that a diversion in Scotland would have a very advantageous effect by preventing England from sending so many troops and supplies against him to the Continent. Early in February, therefore, an emissary was sent over to Scotland in the person of Charles Fleming, brother of the Earl of Wigtown. He was to see the leading Jacobites, and assure them that their king was coming; and that as soon as the French fleet appeared in sight they were to proclaim the king everywhere, raise the country, seize arms, and open up again their previous communications with persons within the different forts and garrisons—thus proving that they had tampered with the troops and garrisons of Scotland, and that, as asserted by different historians, the regular troops in that country, about two thousand five hundred, were not to be trusted by the English. They were also to seize the equivalent money, which was still lying in the Castle of Edinburgh. On the earliest intimation of these designs, the suspected Scottish nobles, including the Duke of Hamilton and twenty-one others, lords or gentlemen, were secured. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; the Pretender and his abettors were declared traitors; and all Popish recusants were ordered to remove ten miles from the cities of London and Westminster. The alarm was not an empty one. The Pretender, who had now assumed the name of the Chevalier de St. George, was furnished with a fleet and army, which assembled at Dunkirk. The fleet, under the command of Admiral Forbin, consisted of five ships of the line and twenty frigates. It was to carry over five thousand troops, under the command of General de Gace, afterwards known as Marshal de Matignon. Before the expedition, however, could sail, the Chevalier was taken ill of the measles, and the postponement of the expedition ruined its chances. A powerful fleet under the command of Admiral Sir George Byng, with squadrons under Sir John Leake and Lord Dursley, was sent to blockade the port of Dunkirk, and prevent the sailing of the French expedition. The French were astonished at the appearance of so large a fleet, imagining that Leake had gone to Lisbon with his squadron; and Count de Forbin represented to the French Court the improbability of their being able to sail. A storm, however, drove the English ships from their station. The French fleet then ventured out on the 17th of March, but was soon driven back by the same tempest. On the 19th, however, it again put out, and made for the coast of Scotland. But Sir George Byng had stretched his ships along the whole coast, to the very Firth of Forth; and on the French squadron approaching the Forth, it perceived the English ships there before it, and stood off again. Byng gave chase and took the Salisbury, a ship of the line, having on board old Lord Griffin, two sons of Lord Middleton, a French lieutenant-general, various other French and Irish officers, and five companies of French soldiers. In the night Forbin altered his course, and thus in the morning was out of the reach of the English. The Chevalier was impatient that Forbin should proceed to Inverness, and there land him and the troops; but the wind was so violent and dead against them that Forbin contended that they would all be lost if they continued the attempt, and the Chevalier, having entered the Firth of Forth, reluctantly returned to Dunkirk.