STUDIED under the famous Dr. Birch, who boasted of the number of statesmen he had educated; showed great promise. In 1688 he raised a troop of horse for the service of William of Orange, whom he joined, but who showed him no particular favour. Harley sat in Parliament, but waited for office till 1704, when Queen Anne gave him a seat in the Council, and made him Secretary of State. He was much opposed to Godolphin and Marlborough, and made common cause with the Queen’s new favourite, Mrs. Masham, to overthrow the power of the Whigs.
The Ministers insisted on his dismissal, but the Queen stood by him as long as she could. When Harley was compelled to resign, the Queen said to him: ‘You see the unfortunate condition of monarchs,—they are obliged to give up their friends to please their enemies;’ but so good was Anne’s opinion of Harley, that she constantly consulted him on public affairs, even when out of office.
On the downfall of the Whig Administration, he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Treasurer.
He was much censured, even by his own party, for some of his financial measures, by which however he enriched the royal coffers. In March 1711 an event happened which made a great noise, and rendered Harley the hero of the day. A French adventurer called Bourlie, or the Marquis de Guiscard, was a shifty individual, who acted first as a spy of England against France, and then of France against England, being in the pay of both. His intrigues were discovered, and he was brought before the Privy Council. Believing that Harley had been instrumental in his detection, he resolved to be revenged. While waiting his turn for examination, he found means to secrete about his person a penknife which was lying on the table, among some papers. No sooner was he brought forward, than he rushed in a fury upon Harley and stabbed him several times, the Minister falling senseless on the ground, covered with blood. A scene of confusion ensued, and the Duke of Buckingham, drawing his sword, wounded the assassin, who was conveyed to Newgate, where he died in a few days, either from the effect of the sword-thrusts or by his own hand.
The event seemed to have revived Harley’s popularity; both Houses presented an address to the Queen, assuring her that Harley’s loyalty had brought this attack upon him, etc. etc., and when he reappeared in the House, a brilliant reception awaited him, and a Bill was passed making an attempt on the life of a Privy Councillor a felony, which deprived the offender of benefit of clergy. In the same year, Robert Harley, being then Lord High Treasurer, was created Baron Wigmore, and Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, and next year he received the Garter, and became Prime Minister of England.
Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke at first worked together to withstand the power of the opposition, and to bring about the pacification of Europe, and the Peace of Utrecht added to the popularity of the ministerial party; but dissensions arose between Bolingbroke and the Premier, and recriminations and fresh intrigues, in which Mrs. Masham was implicated, all of which belongs to England’s political history.
Oxford was deprived of all his offices, and accused of plotting in favour of the Pretender. The Queen died, and in 1715 he was sent to the Tower, on an accusation of high treason. He was imprisoned for two years, and on his release gave himself up to the enjoyment of art and literature. He formed a magnificent library, which cost him a fortune, not only from the splendour of the works themselves, but on account of their sumptuous binding. His collection of MSS., called after him the Harleian MSS., which was afterwards greatly increased by his son, is now one of the glories of the British Museum, purchased by the Government after the second Lord Oxford’s death.
Few men have been more eulogised on the one hand and reviled on the other, but he has been unanimously described as a kind patron of men of letters.
It was Harley who brought into operation the measure known to posterity as ‘The South Sea Bubble,’ which entailed ruin on numbers, and in spite of much opposition he established State lotteries.