It is instructive to read the comments on the political situation in England at this moment, of a German diplomatist resident in London (as Minister from the Elector Palatine) who was devotedly attached to the Hanoverian succession.
‘Some people,’ wrote Baron von Steinghengs to Count von der Schulenberg, on the 12th of May, ‘have been at work for a whole year to deprive the Lord Treasurer of the conduct of public affairs. I have been aware, almost from the beginning, of the different channels which have been made use of to carry this point. But I should never have expected that they would fire the mine before the end of this session, and I am much mistaken if the authors have not reason one day to regret their over-haste. For I do not know my man, if he does not cut out a good deal of work for them, particularly if a certain intrigue which is on the tapis succeeds. As for the rest, you may rely upon his sentiments; and he never succeeded in persuading those who doubted them more than by his declaration made in a full House on the 16th of last month on the question of danger to the Protestant succession, having in it given much greater hold upon himself than there was any need for, if he was not acting in good faith.... The party of the Hanoverian Tories has visibly been strengthened by it.’ |Von Steinghengs to Count von der Schulenberg, May 1
12 1714 (in Kemble’s State Papers, p. 493).| And to this the writer adds, in a postscript, ‘It is of extreme importance both for the Whigs and for the House of Hanover to take steps to keep him there, and to engage him by some sort of political confidence to be assured of his fortunes under that House.’ In another letter to the same correspondent, Baron von Steinghengs notes a fact which by many of our historians has been too much neglected. |Same to same, June 14 (Kemble, p. 507).| ‘To make the English Ministry,’ he wrote, ‘alone responsible ... for the exorbitant power which the Peace of Utrecht has given to France is ... to ignore entirely the incredible obstacles which the enemies of that Ministry threw, both at home and abroad, in the way of making the Peace such as it might have been.’
But although ‘the mine was fired’ before the end of May, July had nearly ended before the effectual explosion came. |Oxford’s Dismissal and the Queen’s Death. 1714, July 27, August 1.| Bolingbroke’s triumph lasted exactly four days. ‘The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday. The Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this! And how does Fortune banter us!... I have lost all by the death of the Queen, but my spirit.’ Such were the words in which Bolingbroke announced to Swift his victory,—and its futility. In a few more days the spirit vanished, like the triumph. The victor was a fugitive.
Bolingbroke’s hatred to Oxford lasted to the close of his life. He survived his old comrade twenty-seven years. The final year of that long period brought no relenting thought, no spark of charitable feeling.
Did Oxford conspire to bring back the Pretender?
To the question ‘Did Lord Oxford, during his tenure of office, conspire to enthrone the Pretender?’ it ought always to have been a sufficient answer that there was, as yet, not a tittle of evidence of any such conspiracy on his part. That accusation had never any support beyond surmise and conjecture. Men who were in possession of every imaginable resource and appliance to back their search failed to adduce even a shadow of evidence in proof of the charge they would fain have fastened upon him. And in 1869 the matter still stands, in the main, where it stood in 1717.
After many examinations of the most secret correspondence of the Stuarts and their adherents, and after the publishing of extensive selections from it—made at intervals which spread over eighty years,—not a scrap of direct and valid testimony has been found to sustain the charge. Every passage, save one, which bears at all on Oxford’s intercourse with Jacobite emissaries, up to the year 1715, tends to show that what they asserted about his intentions on the Pretender’s behalf was built on wishes, hopes, and guesses—on anything rather than knowledge. Every passage, save one, tends to show that he was using the Jacobites for his own purposes, without the least idea of aiding theirs. Every passage, save one, is in entire harmony with the terms of that incompatible charge by means of which Bolingbroke justified to himself his life-long hostility, when writing the Letter to Sir William Wyndham. The significance of that charge, coming from such a source, can scarcely be exaggerated. ‘Oxford would not,’ wrote Bolingbroke, ‘or he could not, act with us, and he resolved that we should not act without him, as long as he could hinder it.... At the Queen’s death, he hoped ... to deliver us up, bound as it were, hand and foot, to our adversaries. On the foundation of this merit he flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened, at least, the rest of the party to him. |Bolingbroke, Letter to Sir W. Wyndham.| By his secret negotiations at Hanover, he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled to that Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty’s reign, have as much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the Queen.’
Gautier to De Torcy; 14 December, 1713. [Printed in Edinb. Review, from the Notes of Sir James Mackintosh, in vol. lxii, pp. 18, seqq.]
The solitary passage in the correspondence of the Jacobite agents which goes directly to the issue is the assertion made by Gautier, in a letter to De Torcy, that Oxford said to him, in December, 1713, ‘As long as I live, England shall not be governed by a German.’ In that notable statement lies the pith of a mass of letters which report the hopes, beliefs, conjectures, and imaginings, of their respective writers, as to what Lord Oxford would do for the Pretender,—whenever that prince could be brought to change, or, at least, to disguise his religion.
Oxford was present, as a Privy Councillor, at the proclamation of King George the First. |Oxford’s reception by George I.| It was noted by some of the bystanders that his demeanour was buoyant and joyous. When the King reached Greenwich, the Earl went thither with more than usual pomp and retinue. He was received with marked coldness, if not with open contempt.