History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

At Oxford, where the clergy have long been in the ascendant, they made such efforts to instill their principles as to call down the indignation of the elder Pitt, who, in a speech in Parliament in 1754, denounced that university, which he said had for many years ‘been raising a succession of treason—there never was such a seminary!'’Walpole's Mem. of George II. vol. i. p. 413. Compare the Bedford Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 594, 595, with Harris's Life of Hardwicke, vol. ii. p. 383; and on the temper of the clergy generally after the death of Anne, Parl. Hist. vol. vii. pp. 541, 542; Bowles's Life of Ken, vol. ii. pp. 188, 189; Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. i. pp. 370, 426.

The immediate consequence of this was very remarkable. For the government and the dissenters, being both opposed by the church, naturally combined together: the dissenters using all their influence against the Pretender, and the government protecting them against ecclesiastical prosecutions. See evidence of this in Doddridge's Correspond. and Diary, vol. i. p. 30, vol. ii. p. 321, vol. iii. pp. 110, 125, vol. iv. pp. 428, 436, 437; Hutton's Life of Himself, pp. 159, 160; Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. pp. 11, 393, vol. xxix. pp. 1434, 1463; Memoirs of Priestley, vol. ii. p. 506; Life of Wakefield, vol. i. p. 220.

[790] ‘The year 1762 forms an era in the history of the two factions, since it witnessed the destruction of that monopoly of honours and emoluments which the Whigs had held for forty-five years.’ Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. ii. p. 406. Compare Albemarle's Memoirs of Rockingham, vol. ii. p. 92. Lord Bolingbroke clearly foresaw what would happen in consequence of the accession of George I. Immediately after the death of Anne, he wrote to the Bishop of Rochester: ‘But the grief of my soul is this, I see plainly that the Tory party is gone.’ Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. ii. p. 651.

[791] Grosley, who visited England only five years after the accession of George III., mentions the great effect produced upon the English when they heard the king pronounce their language without ‘a foreign accent.’ Grosley's Tour to London, vol. ii. p. 106. It is well known that the king, in his first speech, boasted of being a Briton; but what is, perhaps, less generally known is, that the honour was on the side of the country: ‘What a lustre,’ said the House of Lords in their address to him,—‘what a lustre does it cast upon the name of Briton when you, sir, are pleased to esteem it amongst your glories!’ Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 986.

[792] Parl. Hist. vol. xxix. p. 955; Walpole's Mem. of George III. vol. i. pp. 4, 110.

[793] The accession of George III. is generally fixed on as the period when English Jacobinism became extinct. See Butler's Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 92. At the first court held by the new king, it was observed, says Horace Walpole, that ‘the Earl of Litchfield, Sir Walter Bagot, and the principal Jacobites went to court.’ Walpole's Mem. of George III. vol. i. p. 14. Only three years earlier the Jacobites had been active; and in 1757, Rigby writes to the Duke of Bedford: ‘Fox's election at Windsor is very doubtful. There is a Jacobite subscription of 5,000l. raised against him, with Sir James Dashwood's name at the head of it.’ Bedford Correspond. vol. ii. p. 261.

[794] Charles Stuart was so stupidly ignorant, that at the age of twenty-five he could hardly write, and was altogether unable to spell. Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iii. pp. 165, 166, and appendix, p. ix. After the death of his father, in 1766, this abject creature, who called himself king of England, went to Rome, and took to drinking. Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 351–353. In 1779, Swinburne saw him at Florence, where he used to appear every night at the opera, perfectly drunk. Swinburne's Courts of Europe, vol. i. pp. 253–255; and in 1787, only the year before he died, he continued the same degrading practice. See a letter from Sir J. E. Smith, written from Naples in March 1787, in Smith's Correspond. vol. i. p. 208. Another letter, written as early as 1761 (Grenville Papers, vol. i. p. 366), describes ‘the young Pretender always drunk.’

[795] On the connexion between the decline of the Stuart interest and the increased power of the crown under George III., compare Thoughts on the Present Discontents, in Burke's Works, vol. i. pp. 127, 128, with Watson's Life of Himself, vol. i. p. 136; and for an intimation that this result was expected, see Grosley's London, vol. ii. p. 252.

[796] Campbell's Chancellors, vol. v. p. 245: ‘The divine indefeasible right of kings became the favourite theme—in total forgetfulness of its incompatibility with the parliamentary title of the reigning monarch.’ Horace Walpole (Mem. of George III. vol. i. p. 16) says, that in 1760 ‘prerogative became a fashionable word.’

[797] The respect George III. always displayed for church-ceremonies formed of itself a marked contrast with the indifference of his immediate predecessors; and the change was gratefully noticed. Compare Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. v. pp. 54, 55, with the extract from Archbishop Secker, in Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. i. p. 440. For other evidence of the admiration both parties felt and openly expressed for each other, see an address from the bishop and clergy of St. Asaph (Parr's Works, vol. vii. p. 352), and a letter from the king to Pitt (Russell's Memorials of Fox, vol. iii. p. 251), which should be compared with Priestley's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 137, 138.