Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 3 of 3

by Henry Hallam

[325] The pamphlets on Harley's side, and probably written under his inspection, for at least the first year after his elevation to power, such as one entitled "Faults on both Sides," ascribed to Richard Harley, his relation (Somers Tracts, xii. 678); "Spectator's Address to the Whigs on Occasion of the stabbing Mr. Harley," or the "Secret History of the October Club," 1711 (I believe by De Foe), seem to have for their object to reconcile as many of the whigs as possible to his administration, and to display his aversion to the violent tories. There can be no doubt that his first project was to have excluded the more acrimonious whigs, such as Wharton and Sunderland, as well as the Duke of Marlborough and his wife, and coalesced with Cowper and Somers, both of whom were also in favour with the queen. But the steadiness of the whig party, and their resentment of his duplicity, forced him into the opposite quarters, though he never lost sight of his schemes for reconciliation.

The dissembling nature of this unfortunate statesman rendered his designs suspected. The whigs, at least in 1713, in their correspondence with the court of Hanover, speak of him as entirely in the jacobite interest. Macpherson, ii. 472, 509. Cunningham, who is not on the whole unfavourable to Harley, says, that "men of all parties agreed in concluding that his designs were in the Pretender's favour. And it is certain that he affected to have it thought so."—P. 303. Lockhart also bears witness to the reliance placed on him by the jacobites, and argues with some plausibility (p. 377) that the Duke of Hamilton's appointment as ambassador to France, in 1712, must have been designed to further their object; though he believed that the death of that nobleman, in a duel with Lord Mohun, just as he was setting out for Paris, put a stop to the scheme, and "questions if it was ever heartily re-assumed by Lord Oxford."—"This I know, that his lordship regretting to a friend of mine the duke's death, next day after it happened, told him that it disordered all their schemes, seeing Great Britain did not afford a person capable to discharge the trust which was committed to his grace, which sure was somewhat very extraordinary; and what other than the king's restoration could there be of so very great importance, or require such dexterity in managing, is not easy to imagine. And indeed it is more than probable that before his lordship could pitch upon one he might depend on in such weighty matters, the discord and division which happened betwixt him and the other ministers of state diverted or suspended his design of serving the king." Lockhart's Commentaries, p. 410. But there is more reason to doubt whether this design to serve the king ever existed.

[326] If we may trust to a book printed in 1717, with the title, "Minutes of Monsieur Mesnager's Negotiations with the Court of England towards the Close of the last Reign, written by himself," that agent of the French cabinet entered into an arrangement with Bolingbroke in March 1712, about the Pretender. It was agreed that Louis should ostensibly abandon him, but should not be obliged, in case of the queen's death, not to use endeavours for his restoration. Lady Masham was wholly for this; but owned "the rage and irreconcilable aversion of the greatest part of the common people to her (the queen's) brother was grown to a height." But I must confess that, although Macpherson has extracted the above passage, and a more judicious writer, Somerville, quotes the book freely as genuine (Hist. of Anne, p. 581, etc.), I found in reading it what seemed to me the strongest grounds of suspicion. It is printed in England, without a word of preface to explain how such important secrets came to be divulged, or by what means the book came before the world; the correct information as to English customs and persons frequently betrays a native pen; the truth it contains, as to jacobite intrigues, might have transpired from other sources, and in the main was pretty well suspected, as the Report of the Secret Committee on the Impeachments in 1715 shows; so that, upon the whole, I cannot but reckon it a forgery in order to injure the tory leaders.

But however this may be, we find Bolingbroke in correspondence with the Stuart agents in the later part of 1712. Macpherson, 366. And his own correspondence with Lord Strafford shows his dread and dislike of Hanover (Bol. Corr. ii. 487 et alibi). The Duke of Buckingham wrote to St. Germains in July that year, with strong expressions of his attachment to the cause, and pressing the necessity of the prince's conversion to the protestant religion. Macpherson, 327. Ormond is mentioned in the Duke of Berwick's letters as in correspondence with him; and Lockhart says there was no reason to make the least question of his affection to the king, whose friends were consequently well pleased at his appointment to succeed Marlborough in the command of the army, and thought it portended some good designs in favour of him. Id. 376.

Of Ormond's sincerity in this cause there can indeed be little doubt; but there is almost as much reason to suspect that of Bolingbroke as of Oxford; except that, having more rashness and less principle, he was better fitted for so dangerous a counter-revolution. But in reality he had a perfect contempt for the Stuart and tory notions of government, and would doubtless have served the house of Hanover with more pleasure, if his prospects in that quarter had been more favourable. It appears that in the session of 1714, when he had become lord of the ascendant, he disappointed the zealous royalists by his delays as much as his more cautious rival had done before. Lockhart, 470. This writer repeatedly asserts that a majority of the House of Commons, both in the parliament of 1710 and that of 1713, wanted only the least encouragement from the court to have brought about the repeal of the act of settlement. But I think this very doubtful; and I am quite convinced that the nation would not have acquiesced in it. Lockhart is sanguine, and ignorant of England.

It must be admitted that part of the cabinet were steady to the protestant succession. Lord Dartmouth, Lord Powlett, Lord Trevor, and the Bishop of London were certainly so; nor can there be any reasonable doubt, as I conceive, of the Duke of Shrewsbury. On the other side, besides Ormond, Harcourt, and Bolingbroke, were the Duke of Buckingham, Sir William Wyndham, and probably Mr. Bromley.

[327] It is said that the Duke of Leeds, who was now in the Stuart interest, had sounded her in 1711, but with no success in discovering her intention. Macpherson, 212. The Duke of Buckingham pretended, in the above-mentioned letter to St. Germains, June 1712, that he had often pressed the queen on the subject of her brother's restoration, but could get no other answer than, "you see he does not make the least step to oblige me;" or, "he may thank himself for it: he knows I always loved him better than the other." Id. 328. This alludes to the Pretender's pertinacity, as the writer thought it, in adhering to his religion; and it may be very questionable, whether he had ever such conversation with the queen at all. But, if he had, it does not lead to the supposition, that under all circumstances she meditated his restoration. If the book under the name of Mesnager is genuine, which I much doubt, Mrs. Masham had never been able to elicit anything decisive of her majesty's inclinations; nor do any of the Stuart correspondents in Macpherson pretend to know her intentions with certainty. The following passage in Lockhart seems rather more to the purpose: On his coming to parliament in 1710, with a "high monarchical address," which he had procured from the county of Edinburgh, "the queen told me, though I had almost always opposed her measures, she did not doubt of my affection to her person, and hoped I would not concur in the design against Mrs. Masham, or for bringing over the Prince of Hanover. At first I was somewhat surprised, but recovering myself, I assured her I should never be accessary to the imposing any hardship or affront upon her; and as for the Prince of Hanover, her majesty might judge from the address I had read, that I should not be acceptable to my constituents if I gave my consent for bringing over any of that family, either now or at any time hereafter. At that she smiled, and I withdrew; and then she said to the duke (Hamilton), she believed I was an honest man and a fair dealer, and the duke replied, he could assure her I liked her majesty and all her father's bairns."—P. 317. It appears in subsequent parts of this book, that Lockhart and his friends were confident of the queen's inclinations in the last year of her life, though not of her resolution.

The truth seems to be, that Anne was very dissembling, as Swift repeatedly says in his private letters, and as feeble and timid persons in high station generally are; that she hated the house of Hanover, and in some measure feared them; but that she had no regard for the Pretender (for it is really absurd to talk like Somerville of natural affection under all the circumstances), and feared him a great deal more than the other; that she had, however, some scruples about his right, which were counterbalanced by her attachment to the church of England; consequently, that she was wavering among opposite impulses, but with a predominating timidity which would have probably kept her from any change.

[328] The Duchess of Gordon, in June 1711, sent a silver medal to the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh, with a head on one side, and the inscription, "Cujus est"; on the other, the British isles, with the word "Reddite." The dean of faculty, Dundas of Arniston, presented this medal; and there seems reason to believe that a majority of the advocates voted for its reception. Somerville, p. 452. Bolingbroke, in writing on the subject to a friend, it must be owned, speaks of the proceeding with due disapprobation. Bolingbroke Correspondence, i. 343. No measures, however, were taken to mark the court's displeasure.

"Nothing is more certain," says Bolingbroke in his letter to Sir William Wyndham, perhaps the finest of his writings, "than this truth, that there was at that time no formed design in the party, whatever views some particular men might have, against his majesty's accession to the throne."—P. 22. This is in effect to confess a great deal; and in other parts of the same letter, he makes admissions of the same kind: though he says that he and other tories had determined, before the queen's death, to have no connection with the Pretender, on account of his religious bigotry. P. 111.