A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Difficulties from the reform spirit in England.

But even Ireland was by no means the last of Lord North's troubles. The feeling against government by influence had been steadily on the increase. With characteristic selfishness, the mass of the people had sympathized with the war, which seemed to some rebellion against the natural supremacy of Englishmen, and which others saw clearly was a revolt against that commercial system which they regarded as the chief safeguard of their own interests. But want of success, increased taxation, and a diminution of trade, began to change the current of opinion, and men observed with jealousy the impossibility of carrying any measure against the influence of the Court. The King had completely triumphed, and by means of his friends, his pensioners, contractors, and sinecurists, could at all times command a large majority in Parliament. The Whigs, finding that influence which they had so long wielded thus transferred to other hands, began to see the enormity of such a system, and the great leaders of the party, whose territorial power was very great, put themselves at the head of a reform movement which soon became important. In the autumn of 1779 motions for economical reform were brought into the House of Lords. They were rejected; but in December the general feeling, and the determination of the Whigs to create an organization outside the House, were shown by a great meeting in York, attended by a large majority of the freeholders of the county. This influential meeting was followed by others of the same sort in many counties, and the organizers of the party went so far as to establish committees of correspondence on the model of the committees in America. Twenty-three counties and many large towns, in spite of the constant opposition of the Government, sent up petitions like the one agreed to in Yorkshire, demanding a reduction in exorbitant emoluments and the abolition of sinecures. Sir George Savile presented the Yorkshire petition on the 8th of February, and three days afterwards Burke introduced a great measure for economical reform of which he had already given notice. Lord North found it so impossible to oppose him, that the Bill passed almost unanimously into Committee. It there, however, encountered a most vigorous resistance, and was finally destroyed piecemeal. But the movement, once started, continued its course. Mr. Crewe introduced a Bill to deprive revenue officers of their votes, and Sir Philip Clerke another for the exclusion of contractors from the House. Outside the House the pressure became heavier and heavier, till at length, on the 6th of April, after a great meeting of the people of Westminster, where Fox had harangued, and which was thought sufficiently dangerous to demand the presence of troops, Dunning rose in the House, and after blaming the ministry for their underhand obstruction to Burke's Bill, produced the startling resolution, that "it is the opinion of this Committee that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." This resolution, with a very slight alteration, he was enabled to carry against Government by a majority of eighteen. It was followed by two other resolutions in the same direction, one declaring the right of the House to reform the Civil List, the other that the abuses complained of should be immediately redressed. Both were carried. But when the House again met, and he proceeded to more detailed motions, Dunning found that the corrupt body he addressed, though willing enough to affirm abstract resolutions, had no real liking for reform. His majorities rapidly diminished, and finally no action was taken upon the resolutions which he had carried.

The Lord George Gordon riots. June 1780.

Scarcely had the ministry managed to escape from Dunning's resolutions when a new danger came upon them. This time they did not stand alone. All parties in the House had to join to repel a common enemy. It has been mentioned that a measure of Sir George Savile's for the alleviation of the penal laws against Roman Catholics had been carried, and that the motion of introducing a similar measure for Scotland had caused much displeasure in that country. The feeling spread, and Protestant associations formed themselves throughout England, and fixed upon the crackbrained Lord George Gordon for their chief and representative. The agitation had been kept up during the last year, and now Lord George wanted a great demonstration and petition to be got up. He declined to present the petition unless accompanied by 20,000 followers, who were to meet in St. George's Fields, adorned with blue cockades. Instead of 20,000, some 60,000 men were present, and proceeded to march across London Bridge to the Parliament House. There, in Palace Yard, they held their position unmolested, while they attacked and ill used any obnoxious Peers, or broke into the lobby of the Lower House, and, with their excitement kept alive by addresses which Lord George delivered from the staircase above, demanded that their petition should be at once attended to. Lord George was brought to some reason by a threat of personal violence if he continued his foolish behaviour, and the military at length arriving, the immediate precincts of the Parliament House were cleared. But though foiled in their wish to intimidate the House, the mob were by no means satisfied, and the unaccountable and timorous delay on the part of the executive, whether ministry or magistrates, allowed the riot to reach such a height that it could be with difficulty controlled. That night the chapels of the Sardinian and Bavarian embassies were burnt, and after a day of comparative quiet, the mob, finding itself unopposed, proceeded to renewed acts of violence. For four days London was in its hands. The prisons were broken open, Catholic chapels burnt and sacked, the shops of Catholic tradesmen pillaged, and the houses of those who were known to be favourable to the Catholic claims either destroyed, as those of Lord Mansfield and Sir George Savile, or kept in a state of siege. Johnson tells us how he saw the mob, quietly and undisturbed, destroying the sessions house in the Old Bailey. Horace Walpole found Lord Hertford's house barricaded and the lord himself and his sons loading their muskets in expectation of an assault. On the 7th the tumult rose to its height. This was the fifth day of the riots. The town was so intimidated that blue flags and strips of blue were shown on most houses, and few came out without the blue cockade. The rioters had long since passed from under the control of their religious leaders, and were guided by leaders of their own. On this day more than one attack was made on the Bank, headed by a fellow mounted on a brewer's horse, with a harness of the chains of Newgate jingling about him. More chapels were sacked, more prisons opened. No less than thirty-six fires were blazing at once. The most fearful scene was in Holborn, where Mr. Langdale's distillery was broken open and set on fire. There, amid the flames fed by constant supplies of spirit, the wretched rioters flew upon the liquor, drinking the gin from pails, or lying grovelling and lapping it from the kennel; many died of actual drunkenness, many more perished helplessly in the flames. It was time that something should be done, yet the ministry and magistrates alike shrank from doing anything. There was a notion abroad that the military might not act till an hour after the Riot Act had been read by a magistrate, and courageous magistrates could not be found; nor was it forgotten that on previous occasions soldiers had been harshly treated by juries for over zeal. The emergency was one which well suited the dogged and courageous character of the King. On the 7th he summoned a Privy Council, and put to it the question whether the soldiers might be employed without the machinery of the Riot Act. None of the members of the Council would take the responsibility of recommending such a course, and the Council had almost separated without doing anything, when George called upon Wedderburn, who was present as legal assessor, to state the view of the common law. He unhesitatingly said that a soldier did not cease to be a citizen, and might, and should, interfere to prevent acts of felony. This was all the King required. There were 10,000 troops in London, and he now felt he might act energetically. Orders were sent to Lord Amherst, the commander-in-chief, to that effect, and that evening and during the night such vigorous measures were taken that the mob was at once crushed and the crisis over. The numbers killed and wounded by the military were not less than 500, and probably very many more, as many were carried off privately. Undoubtedly the King's decision on this occasion saved London. Of the prisoners some twenty-nine were executed. The Lord Mayor was tried and Trial of Lord George Gordon. convicted of criminal negligence. Lord George Gordon was arrested and foolishly tried for high treason. Wedderburn had meanwhile become Lord Chief Justice, and before him he was tried. The Judge's address was more like the pleading of an advocate than the charge of a judge, and people felt it so; the turn of feeling also had a little changed, and Lord George was acquitted. He died, a Jew, in 1793 of gaol distemper caught in Newgate, where he had been confined for libelling the Queen of France. When the House of Commons again assembled the gigantic Protestant petition was considered. It was met by five resolutions, the joint work of the political enemies Burke and North, which declared the continual approval of the Commons of the late Act of Toleration.

Gleams of success.

In the midst of these difficulties at home there had been some rays of comfort from the success of both fleet and army abroad. Early in the year Rodney had been placed in command of a fleet which was to act in the West Indies. On his way out he had Rodney's victory. instructions to relieve Gibraltar, which had been closely invested since the beginning of the war with Spain. While carrying out these orders he met the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent and gained over it a complete victory. Four line of battle-ships were taken, four destroyed, only four made their escape. Gibraltar was then relieved, and Minorca also, so that Rodney could write home that the English were masters of the Mediterranean. He thence proceeded on his way to the West Indies, where De Guichen, with the French and Spanish fleets, could not be brought to an engagement, and where for the time nothing was done. Though Rodney's successes and those of Admiral Digby in the Bay of Biscay were somewhat neutralized by the entire destruction of our West and East India fleets, ably planned and carried out by the Spaniards off the Azores, they raised the spirits of the Government, coupled as they were with cheering news from the army. Just as the Gordon riots were suppressed, information arrived that Charleston, the capital of South Carolina, had Capture of Charleston. fallen into our hands. On several occasions during the war the eyes of the commanders had been turned southward. The feeling of loyalty was less shaken there than in the more northern provinces, and it seemed desirable that the efforts of England should not be confined to one little spot along the whole of the enormous seaboard of America. Savannah in Georgia had already been taken, and in pursuance of a general plan for acting on a more extended basis, Clinton moved with the bulk of his army from New York and besieged Charleston. The siege was carried on with vigour and skill, and General Lincoln found himself obliged to surrender. Clinton set actively to work to reduce the Carolinas. Virginia, one of the centres of disaffection, would thus be between two fires, and something more tangible might be effected than had yet been The interest of the war passes to the South. done by the army at New York. In fact, the interest of the war was now transferred to the South, for though Washington and the main American army still lay about New York, its effect there was only to neutralize the English army opposed to it, while the active operations which led to the end of the war were carried on at Carolina and Virginia.

Before describing the final struggle, it will be well to see the difficulties under which the English laboured. The war had become a world-wide one. Not only had the two maritime powers France and Spain engaged in it, but it was plain that our old rivals the England alone against all Europe. Dutch were soon going to do so also. Before the end of the year an unusually strong instance of our determination to insist on the right of searching neutral ships, when a convoy was searched and captured under the guns of the convoying War with the Dutch. ships of war, had raised the anger of the Dutch to a high pitch. The capture of a vessel containing Mr. Laurens, late President of the American Congress, and proofs that he was engaged in making an alliance with the States of Holland, rendered it impossible to avoid a declaration of war, and Holland was added to our armed opponents. Nor was this all. The same odious rigour of search nearly brought all the nations of the North upon us. The Empress of Russia had suffered from it at the hands of the Spaniards. She therefore, acting probably at the instigation of the King of Prussia, Armed neutrality of the North. constituted herself the champion of neutral rights, and succeeded in uniting the nations of the North in an armed neutrality in support of the doctrine that neutral ships made neutral cargoes, and that nothing was contraband of war except what had been definitely made so by treaty. In other words, she claimed for neutrals the right of carrying the property of belligerents unmolested, a right which virtually told against the English only, whose main hope lay in keeping dominion of the sea and stopping the trade and supplies of its enemies. The Armed Neutrality also upheld the now generally received principle that a blockade to be respected must be efficient, that is, that there must be sufficient force before a blockaded port to prevent the entrance of trading vessels. The whole maritime power of Europe was thus arrayed against England, and yet it was only by keeping the upper hand at sea that she could hope to carry out successfully her attempts on land. It was impossible to pour large armies into America and to subdue a continent without some easily accessible base of operations. This base the sea afforded. It will be seen in the sequel that the loss of naval supremacy was the immediate cause of the disaster of Yorktown.

But as yet the arms of England continued to be successful. Clinton, leaving Cornwallis to command in the South, had hastened back from Carolina to New York, that he might be ready to oppose the French fleet, whose arrival had been threatened. In June the expected armament arrived, consisting of seven line of battle-ships and 6000 men under the Count de Rochambeau. The rapidity with which Rhode Island was at once occupied and placed in a state of defence thwarted the efforts of the English to regain it, but the British fleet was so much stronger than that of the enemy that a blockade was maintained around the seaboard of the province, which paralyzed all action on the part of the French for the rest of the year. This forced inactivity of Rochambeau gave rise to one of the best known episodes of the war. Washington left his headquarters to Arnold's treachery. meet the French general and concert measures for action if possible. His absence was used for the purpose of carrying out a piece of treachery which had long been hatching. General Arnold was in command at West Point on the Hudson, a position of great importance, as it prevented the occupation of the valley which affords direct communication between New York and Canada. Married to a royalist wife, with a feeling that his undoubted genius was not sufficiently valued, and smarting under a public reprimand for some dishonest practices into which he had been led by his poverty and love of ostentation, Arnold had for some time been in secret correspondence with Clinton, making arrangements for changing sides, and handing over to the English the important post of which he had charge. The correspondence had been carried on through Major André, a young and very promising officer, now Adjutant-General of Clinton's army. Washington's departure seemed to offer an opportunity for carrying out the plan. To complete the negotiation a personal interview was required, and Major André, with instructions from Clinton not to enter the lines of the enemy and to wear uniform, repaired to the neighbourhood of West Point. When day dawned the interview was not over, and André was induced to continue it in a house within the American lines. On leaving he was also imprudent enough to dress as a civilian. He had already passed the lines on his homeward journey, when he was accidentally met and stopped by some militiamen; he avowed himself an English officer, but presented a pass from Arnold; the pass was disregarded, he was searched, and papers found in his boot. Under these circumstances there were about him all the outward marks of a spy, and as such he was Trial and death of Major André. treated. Much to the anger of the English, Washington, refusing to hear any representations in his favour, brought him to trial before a court of American officers, by whom he was condemned. He even rejected the last prayer of the enthusiastic soldier, that he might be saved from a felon's death, and had him hanged, with all the usual attendant circumstances of disgrace—a piece of stern but perhaps necessary justice, and, in spite of the outcry raised at the time, apparently in strict accordance with the laws of war. Timely information of André's capture enabled Arnold to escape from his house, where Washington was momentarily expected, and to obtain shelter on board the English man-of-war which had conveyed André to the ill-fated meeting. Washington was surprised on reaching Arnold's house to find no host, but it was not till he had paid a visit to West Point, and found the commander absent there also, that he discovered the real state of the case.

Campaign in Carolina.

While things were thus at a standstill round New York, the war had been actively prosecuted in Carolina. Alarmed by the fall of Charleston, the Americans had sent General Gates to take the command there; they regarded him as their ablest general, and he figured in some degree as a rival to Washington. He found the English in possession of a line of country extending from Pedee river to Fort 96. The main body of the English, under the command of Lord Rawdon, lay in the neighbourhood of Camden, towards the centre of this line. Against this position Gates advanced; his march was a very difficult one; he had to make his way through a rough uncultivated country, where provisions were not to be obtained; for several days his troops had to subsist on the peaches which are there almost indigenous. He was able, in spite of these difficulties, to bring into the field a force numerically double that of the English, who were no more than 2000 strong. His troops, however, were unable to withstand the attack of a well-disciplined force. On the left and centre they at once threw down their arms and took to flight. The troops from Maryland and Delaware upon the right showed, it is true, more firmness, but the victory of the English was complete, and Lord Cornwallis, who had hurried up to assume the command, improved it to the utmost. Colonel Tarleton, an officer of indefatigable energy, pushed rapidly forward, and succeeded in surprising Colonel Sumter, a partisan officer, on the Catawba, and the whole army moved steadily forward to Charlotte, with the intention of invading North Carolina. A slight check sustained by a body of loyal militia, however, alarmed Cornwallis, and, together with the smallness of the number of troops at his command, induced him to postpone his forward movement till the following year. In the interval he and Lord Rawdon, his second in command, were guilty of acts of most impolitic severity. Such prisoners as could be proved to be deserters from the royal army, or to have once accepted the royal Government and to have subsequently joined Gates, were hanged. Some of the disaffected residents of Charleston were deported to Saint Augustin, while the property of others was sequestrated. Rawdon in fact went even further, and ventured to set a price on the head of every rebel. Such acts went far to alienate the people, and by weakening the security of the communications increased the difficulties of the following year, and tended to neutralize the effects of a very promising campaign.