"To make a pair of jolly fellows,
The son and father, join to tell us
How sons may safely disobey,
And fathers never should say nay;
By which wise conduct they grow friends
At last—and so the story ends."
In January, 1714, Steele brought out The Crisis, a widely read pamphlet which set forth the facts relating to the Hanoverian Succession, and among the replies was Swift's The Public Spirit of the Whigs. Steele defended himself in the last number of the Englishman, and next day Parliament met, and Steele spoke in support of the motion that Sir Thomas Hanmer should be Speaker. Complaint was soon made that his writings were seditious, and, in spite of the aid of Walpole, Stanhope, Addison, and others, a motion for his expulsion was carried by the Tory House, on March 18, after several debates. In the meantime, the Whig House of Lords had taken measures against the printer and publisher of Swift's Public Spirit of the Whigs, and had insisted upon a reward being offered for the discovery of the author.
About this time Steele produced short-lived periodicals called The Lover and The Reader, and several political pamphlets. Although £3,000 had been given him by some unknown friends, he was involved in money difficulties, and the house in Bloomsbury Square was given up. But with the end of July came the serious illness of Queen Anne, who died on August 1st. The hopes of Bolingbroke and others were thrown to the ground, and George I. was peacefully proclaimed king. Bothmar at once acquainted his royal master with Steele's services, and soon after the king's arrival in England Steele was made Deputy-Lieutenant for the County of Middlesex, Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, a Justice of the Peace, and Supervisor of the Theatre Royal. He found time to publish, in October, an important pamphlet, Mr. Steele's Apology for Himself and his Writings, and The Ladies' Library, a compilation which he had revised, and which contained an admirable Dedication to his wife, concluding thus: "But I offend; and forget that what I say to you is to appear in public. You are so great a lover of home, that I know it will be irksome to you to go into the world even in an applause. I will end this without so much as mentioning your little flock, or your own amiable figure at the head of it. That I think them preferable to all other children, I know is the effect of passion and instinct. That I believe you to be the best of wives, I know proceeds from experience and reason."
VIII.
Until the death of the Queen, William Collier, M.P., who held a licence to act, in conjunction with Wilks, Cibber, Doggett, and Booth, had received a pension from those actors of £700 a year. At the accession of King George, as the pension could not be wholly got rid of, the four actors, as Colley Cibber tells us in his Apology, "imagined the merit of a Whig might now have as good a chance of getting into it, as that of a Tory had for being continued in it: having no obligations, therefore, to Collier, who had made the last penny of them, they applied themselves" to Steele, who had many pretensions to favour at Court. "We knew, too, the obligations the stage had to his writings; there being scarce a comedian of merit, in our whole company, whom his Tatlers had not made better by his public recommendation of them. And many days had our House been particularly filled by the influence and credit of his pen.... We therefore begged him to use his interest for the renewal of our licence, and that he would do us the honour of getting our names to stand with his, in the same Commission. This, we told him, would put it still further into his power of supporting the stage in that reputation to which his Lucubrations had already so much contributed; and that therefore we thought no man had better pretences to partake of its success." Steele was, of course, delighted at the offer. "It surprised him into an acknowledgment, that people, who are shy of obligations, are cautious of confessing. His spirits took such a lively turn upon it, that had we been all his own sons, no unexpected act of filial duty could have more endeared us to him." A new licence, upon the first mention of it, was obtained by Steele of the King, through the Duke of Marlborough, "the hero of his heart," who was now again Captain-General. According to a memorandum of Steele's he received a message from the King, "to know whether I was in earnest in desiring the Playhouse or that others thought of it for me. If I liked it I should have it as an earnest of His future favour."
The prosperity of the early part of the season of 1714-5 was checked by a renewal of the licence to the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields and by the desertion to that house of seven or eight actors. The other managers of Drury Lane Theatre found it necessary to point out to Steele that he stood in the same position as Collier, and that his pension of £700 was liable to the same conditions as Collier's, namely, that it was to be paid only so long as there was but one company allowed to act, and that if a second company were set up, the pension was to be changed from a fixed payment to an equal share of the profits. To this Steele at once agreed. "While we were offering to proceed," says Cibber, "Sir Richard stopped us short by assuring us, that as he came among us by our own invitation, he should always think himself obliged to come into any measures for our ease and service; that to be a burden to our industry would be more disagreeable to him than it could be to us, and as he had always taken a delight in his endeavours for our prosperity, he should be still ready, on our own terms, to continue them." Every one who knew Steele in his prosperity, Cibber remarks, "knew that this was his manner of dealing with his friends in business." Steele, however, told Cibber and the others that he was advised to get their licence during pleasure enlarged into a more durable authority, and with this object he proposed that he should obtain a Patent for himself, for his life and three years after, which he would then assign over to them. To this the managers were only too glad to agree, for, among other benefits, it would free them from too great a dependency upon the Lord Chamberlain, or the officers under him, who, not having "the hearts of noblemen," often showed that insolence of office to which narrow minds are liable. Steele accordingly applied for a Patent, and his request was complied with on January 19, 1715. A week earlier he had received a gift of £500 from the King.
On the 20th of January, Steele left London for Boroughbridge, a place for which he was to be elected Member of Parliament on the 2nd of the following month. The Patent was only received on the 19th of January, and, therefore, as Cibber says, "We were forced that very night to draw up in a hurry (till our counsel might more advisably perfect it) his assignment to us of equal shares in the Patent, with farther conditions of partnership.... This assignment (which I had myself the hasty penning of) was so worded, that it gave Sir Richard as equal a title to our property as it had given us to his authority in the Patent. But Sir Richard, notwithstanding, when he returned to town, took no advantage of the mistake." Cibber adds that Steele's equity and honour proved as advantageous to himself as to them, for instead of £700, his income from the theatre, by his accepting a share instead of the fixed pension, was about £1,000 a year.
Steele was knighted, in company with two other Deputy-Lieutenants, in April, and in May he celebrated the King's birthday by a grand entertainment in the great room at York Buildings. This room he called the "Censorium," and it was intended for select assemblies of two hundred persons, "leaders in politeness, wit, and learning." The undertaking appears to have been successful, and it was carried on for some time.
The Englishman was revived in July, with the object of making good the accusations which had been levelled long before against Oxford, Bolingbroke, and other members of the late Government. Steele appears to have asked for £1,000 a year before undertaking this work,[7] and from the fact that he continued the paper after threatening to drop it when the third number had been published, it would seem that he was paid at least £500 by Walpole. Soon afterwards he applied, but without success, for the vacant Mastership of the Charterhouse. Of Steele's various publications in 1715-6 it is impossible to speak here; it will be enough to notice that Addison's comedy, The Drummer, was published by Steele on March 21, 1716, with a preface in which he said that the play had for some years been in the hands of the author, who had been persuaded by him to allow of its representation on the stage. In June he was appointed one of the thirteen Commissioners who were to deal with the estates forfeited by noblemen and gentlemen, chiefly Scottish, who had taken up arms on the side of the Pretender during the late rising. The salary was £1,000 a year.
Money difficulties made it necessary, in July, 1716, for Steele to mortgage his interest in the theatre to an Edward Minshull, M.P., who had on previous occasions lent him money. In January, 1717, further money was raised upon Steele's share of the scenery, clothes, and profits. This led to much trouble, and ultimately to a Chancery action, in 1722, which is described in the Appendix. In that same year, Minshull, who was a gambler, was found guilty of fraud, but he succeeded in escaping to Holland.