Complete triumph of the Whigs—Attempts made to bring Lord Sunderland into the Cabinet—Scheme for insuring the Hanoverian succession—The Queen’s resentment at that measure.—1705.
The gradual removal of the Tory party from the offices of state followed the brilliant successes of the Duke’s arms. The privy seal was taken from the Duke of Buckingham; and the Duchess also prevailed on the Queen to remove from his office Sir Nathan Wright, Lord Chancellor, a man who was obnoxious to all parties, and of “no use to the Crown.” The celebrated Lord Cowper, distinguished for his abilities and integrity, was appointed his successor.
Lord Somers, “seeing,” says Cunningham, “that the Whigs were now united to the court, and fearing lest the principles of our ancestors should be subverted,” retired from all public employments; yet still his powerful mind swayed one of a less solid character. Lord Sunderland, an able, but violent, and unpopular man, who would listen to no arguments but to those of Somers, being in the prime of life, and a man of great vigilance and activity,[[55]] was considered by the more determined Whigs, and by the Duchess of Marlborough in particular, as qualified to play a leading part in the royal councils. His opinions were no less objectionable to the nation in general than to the Queen in particular; and she long resisted the persuasions of her favourite, as well as of the ministry, now wholly Whig, to appoint this nobleman one of her secretaries of state in the room of Sir Charles Hedges. The point was yet undecided, when a measure was adopted by the Tory faction, which drove her Majesty to the resolution of throwing herself entirely into the hands of the Whigs.
After the bill against occasional conformity had repeatedly failed, a new scheme was, as it were in desperation, suggested. The parliament, which met in 1705, proved to be chiefly composed of Whigs, or of those moderate and skilful politicians, to whom it was convenient to appear to belong to that party. It was now that a plan was formed for inviting into England the Princess Sophia, Electress Dowager of Hanover, on whom the succession of the crown had been already settled.
Different motives have been ascribed for the origin of this proceeding. The Queen’s private feelings were vehemently opposed to such a measure. Nothing could offend her more than any great degree of respect offered to her successor; and her good wishes were with sufficient reason supposed really to centre in another quarter. The kindly-tempered Anne had never forgotten that she had involuntarily injured her brother. The Hanoverian succession could not, therefore, be secured with any hope of pleasing her; and it was supposed rather to be a snare to her ministry, who, if they promoted it, would incur for ever the royal displeasure. The Duchess of Marlborough, observing in which direction her mistress’s affections lay, nevertheless had repeatedly urged her to invite over the Electress, or, at any rate, the young Prince of Hanover, afterwards George the First, in order that he might live in this country as her son; but to this proposal her Majesty never would listen for an instant.[[56]]
The party who brought this measure into parliament, headed by Lord Rochester and Lord Nottingham, neither expected, nor even wished, it was said, to carry their motion, but either to embroil the Whigs with the Queen, or to draw the enmity of the bulk of the nation upon that party for opposing the scheme; for the Electress, although a Lutheran, was regarded as the protectress of the Protestant church; and the safety of the church was at that time dearer to the populace of England than any other political consideration whatsoever.
The stratagem, for such it must be considered, failed entirely. It did more, it raised the Whigs to a height, which, but for the infatuation of their enemies, they would never, during the reign of Anne, have attained. Notwithstanding that, in voting against the invitation to the Electress, they departed from their principles, the Whigs, upon the plea that the measure was “neither safe nor reasonable,” contrived to keep their credit with the nation. They were split, nevertheless, into factions, upon this delicate subject; but those who were termed “Court Whigs” were zealous in their opposition to the proposed invitation.[[57]]
“I know, indeed,” says the Duchess, “that my Lord Godolphin, and other great men, were much reflected upon by some well-disposed persons, for not laying hold of this opportunity, which the Tories put into their hands, of more effectually securing the succession to the crown in the House of Hanover. But those of the Whigs whose anger against the minister was raised on this account, little knew how impracticable the project of invitation was, and that the attempt would have only served to make the Queen discard her ministry, to the ruin of the common cause of these kingdoms, and of all Europe. I had often tried her Majesty upon this subject; and when I found that she would not hear of the immediate successor coming over, had pressed her that she would at least invite hither the young Prince of Hanover, who was not to be her immediate successor, and that she would let him live here as her son; but her Majesty would listen to no proposal of this kind in any shape whatever.”
The Queen, upon this occasion, gave the first indications of anything like a real reconciliation to the Whig party.[[58]] Those in the houses of parliament, and there were many, who were zealously attached to the Pretender, and abjured him only in order better to serve him,[[59]] were infinitely less obnoxious to her than the politicians who dared to propose planting her extolled successor perpetually before her eyes. Stronger minds than that which Anne possessed would have shrunk from such a trial of temper. She was childless, and no longer young; and perhaps the determination manifested by this proposal to ruin the hopes of her nephew aggravated her resentment. Her self-love was deeply wounded. For though she was not, even then, as the Duchess expressed it, inwardly converted to the Whigs, neither by all that her favourite had been able to say, nor even “by the mad conduct of the tacking Tories,” to repeat language which must be readily appropriated by those who know the Duchess’s style,—yet their conduct in the invitation occasioned a change in her sentiments, which an insult from one whom she had formerly regarded with kindly prepossessions completed.
“She had been present,” says the Duchess, “at the debates in the House of Lords upon that subject, and had heard the Duke of Buckingham treat her with great disrespect, urging, as an argument for inviting over the Princess Sophia, that the Queen might live till she did not know what she did, and be like a child in the hands of others; and a great deal to the same effect. Such rude treatment from the Tories, and the zeal and success of the Whigs in opposing a motion so extremely disagreeable to her, occasioned her to write to me in the following terms.”