[316] A bill was attempted in 1704 to recruit the army by a forced conscription of men from each parish, but laid aside as unconstitutional. Boyer's Reign of Queen Anne, p. 123. It was tried again in 1707 with like success. P. 319. But it was resolved instead to bring in a bill for raising a sufficient number of troops out of such persons as have no lawful calling or employment. Stat. 4 Anne, c. 10; Parl. Hist. 335. The parish officers were thus enabled to press men for the land service; a method hardly more unconstitutional than the former, and liable to enormous abuses. The act was temporary, but renewed several times during the war. It was afterwards revived in 1757 (30 Geo. 2, c. 8), but never, I believe, on any later occasion.
[317] Every contemporary writer bears testimony to the exhaustion of France, rendered still more deplorable by the unfavourable season of 1709, which produced a famine. Madame de Maintenon's letters to the Princess des Ursins are full of the public misery, which she did not soften, out of some vain hope that her inflexible correspondent might relent at length, and prevail on the King and Queen of Spain to abandon their throne.
[318] It is evident from Macpherson's Papers, that all hopes of a restoration in the reign of Anne were given up in England. They soon revived, however, as to Scotland, and grew stronger about the time of the union.
[319] The Rehearsal is not written in such a manner as to gain over many proselytes. The scheme of fighting against liberty with her own arms had not yet come into vogue; or rather Leslie was too mere a bigot to practise it. He is wholly for arbitrary power; but the commons stuff of his journal is high-church notions of all descriptions. This could not win many in the reign of Anne.
[320] Macpherson, i. 608. If Carte's anecdotes are true, which is very doubtful, Godolphin, after he was turned out, declared his concern at not having restored the king; that he thought Harley would do it, but by French assistance, which he did not intend; that the tories had always distressed him, and his administration had passed in a struggle with the whig junto. Id. 170. Somerville says, he was assured that Carte was reckoned credulous and ill-informed by the jacobites. P. 273. It seems indeed, by some passages in Macpherson's Papers, that the Stuart agents either kept up an intercourse with Godolphin, or pretended to do so. Vol. ii. 2 et post. But it is evident that they had no confidence in him.
It must be observed, however, that Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on Burnet, repeatedly intimates that Godolphin's secret object in his ministry was the restoration of the house of Stuart, and that with this view he suffered the act of security in Scotland to pass, which raised such a clamour that he was forced to close with the whigs in order to save himself. It is said also by a very good authority, Lord Hardwicke (note on Burnet, Oxf. edit. v. 352) that there was something not easy to be accounted for in the conduct of the ministry, preceding the attempt on Scotland in 1708; giving us to understand in the subsequent part of the note that Godolphin was suspected of connivance with it. And this is confirmed by Ker of Kersland, who directly charges the treasurer with extreme remissness, if not something worse. Memoirs, i. 54. See also Lockhart's Commentaries (in Lockhart Papers, i. 308). Yet it seems almost impossible to suspect Godolphin of such treachery, not only towards the protestant succession, but his mistress herself.
[321] Macpherson, ii. 74 et post; Hooke's Negotiations; Lockhart's Commentaries; Ker of Kersland's Memoirs, 45; Burnet; Cunningham; Somerville.
[322] Burnet, 502.
[323] Macpherson, ii. 158, 228, 283, and see Somerville, 272.
[324] Memoirs of Berwick, 1778 (English translation). And compare Lockhart's Commentaries, p. 368; Macpherson, sub. ann. 1712 and 1713, passim.