To try the prisoners confined in the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, Blackness, and other places in Scotland, a commission of Oyer and Terminer was appointed to sit at Carlisle in December, 1716. There were nearly seventy arraigned. Of twenty-nine who were brought to trial, twenty-five pled guilty. Brigadier Campbell of Ormundel, Tulloch of Tannachie, Stewart of Foss, and Stewart of Glenbuckie, entered a plea of not guilty. The two last having satisfied the solicitor-general of their innocence, he allowed a writ of noli prosequi to be entered in their behalf, and Campbell having escaped from the castle of Carlisle, Tulloch alone stood his trial, but he was acquitted. Sentence of death was passed upon the twenty-five who had admitted their guilt, and thirty-six were discharged for want of evidence; but the sentence of death was never put into execution. It was wise in the government to pacify the national disaffection by showing mercy.
Following up the same humane view, an act of grace was passed in 1717 by the king and both houses of parliament, granting a free and general pardon to all persons who had committed any treasonable offences, before the 6th of May of that year, with the exception of those who, having committed such offences, had gone beyond the seas, and who, before the said day, had returned into Great Britain or Ireland without his majesty’s license, or who should on or after the said day return into either of the kingdoms without such license. All persons of the name and clan of Macgregor were also excepted, as well as all such persons as should, on the 5th of May, 1717, remain attainted for high treason. But all such persons so attainted, unless specially named, and who had not escaped out of prison, were freely pardoned and discharged. Under this act the Earl of Carnwath, and Lords Widdrington and Nairne, were delivered from the Tower: seventeen persons confined in Newgate, the prisoners still remaining in the castles of Lancaster and Carlisle, and those in the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling, and other places in Scotland, including Lords Strathallan and Rollo, were likewise released.
While the Chevalier was preparing to embark for Scotland, the Earl of Stair, (the ambassador at the court of France,) had used every effort to prevent him. Duclos and others say that Stair not only applied to the Duke of Orleans, the regent, to have the Chevalier arrested, but that finding the regent insincere in his promises of compliance, he sent persons to assassinate the Chevalier on the road when crossing France to embark for Scotland. That Stair made such an application, and that he employed spies to watch the progress of the prince, are circumstances highly probable; but both Marshal Berwick and the Earl of Mar discredited the last part of the story, as they considered Stair incapable of ordering an action so atrocious as the assassination of the prince.[748]
On the return of the Chevalier, Stair, afraid that he and his partisans in France would intrigue with the court, presented a memorial to the regent in name of his Britannic majesty, in which, after notifying the flight of the Chevalier, and the dispersion of his forces, he requested the regent to compel the prince to quit France. He next insisted that such of the rebels as had retired to France should be ordered forthwith to depart from that country. The removal of the Jacobite exiles from the French court was all that the earl could at that time obtain from the regent. By an agreement, however, which was shortly thereafter entered into between France and England, mutually guaranteeing the succession to the crown of France, and the Hanover succession according to the provisions of the treaty of Utrecht, it was stipulated that the Pretender should be sent beyond the Alps, and should never be allowed to return again to France or Lorraine on any pretence whatever, and that none of the rebellious subjects of Great Britain should be allowed to reside in France.
After the suppression of the insurrection, the leading supporters of government in Scotland repaired to London to congratulate George I. on the success of his arms, and to obtain the rewards they expected. The Duke of Argyle, to whose exertions chiefly the king was indebted for his peaceable accession to the throne, and the extinction of the rebellion, was already so overloaded with favours that he could scarcely expect any addition to be made to them, and would probably have been contented with those he had obtained. The “squadron” party, however, which had been long endeavouring to ruin him, now made every exertion to get him disgraced; and being assisted by the Marlborough faction, and a party which espoused the interests of Cadogan, they succeeded with the king, who dismissed the duke and his brother, the Earl of Islay, from all their employments, which were conferred on others. General Carpenter, to whom the success at Preston was entirely ascribed, succeeded Argyle in the chief command of the forces in North Britain; and the Duke of Montrose was appointed Lord-Register of Scotland in the room of the Earl of Islay.
The aspect of affairs in the north of Europe requiring the king’s presence in his German dominions, an act was passed repealing the clause in the act for the further limitation of the crown, which restricted the sovereign from leaving his British dominions. He closed the session on the 26th of June, and embarked at Gravesend on the 7th of July for Holland, where he arrived on the 9th. He proceeded to Loo incognito, and thence set out for Pyrmont.
For reasons which need not be stated here, Alberoni, the Spanish prime minister, was eager that Great Britain should enter upon an alliance with his country, and in his appeal to George I. he was backed by the English minister at Madrid. George thus found himself placed in a singular but fortunate situation. Equally courted by France and Spain, he had only to choose between them, and to form that connexion which might be most conducive to uphold the Protestant succession and to maintain the peace of Europe, with which the internal peace of Great Britain and the safety of the reigning family were intimately connected. The alliance with France being considered as more likely to secure these advantages than a connexion with Spain, the English minister at Madrid was instructed by the cabinet at home to decline the offers of Spain. “His majesty,” said secretary Stanhope, in his letter to the minister, “is perfectly disposed to enter into a new treaty with the Catholic king, to renew and confirm the past; but the actual situation of affairs does not permit him to form other engagements, which, far from contributing to preserve the neutrality of Italy, would give rise to jealousies tending to disturb it.”[749]
This was followed by the agreement with France, to which allusion has been made, and in January, 1717, a triple alliance was entered into between England, France, and Holland, by which the contracting parties mutually guaranteed to one another the possession of all places respectively held by them. The treaty also contained a guaranty of the Protestant succession on the throne of England, as well as that of the Duke of Orleans to the crown of France.
Baffled in all his attempts to draw England into an alliance against the Emperor of Austria, Alberoni looked to the north, where he hoped to find allies in the persons of the King of Sweden and the Czar of Muscovy. Both Peter the Great and Charles XII. were highly incensed against the Elector of Hanover, the former for resisting the attempts of Russia to obtain a footing in the empire, the latter for having joined the confederacy formed against him during his captivity, and for having accepted from the King of Denmark the duchies of Bremen and Verden, Swedish possessions, which had been conquered by Denmark during the absence of Charles. Charles, to revenge himself, formed the design of restoring the Stuarts, and by his instructions, Goertz, his minister in England, began to cabal with the English Jacobites, to whom, in name of his master, he promised to grant assistance in any efforts they might make to rid themselves of the elector. It was whispered among the Scottish Jacobites, that “the king,” as they termed the Chevalier, had some hopes of prevailing on Charles to espouse his cause, but the first notice on which they could place any reliance was a letter from the Earl of Mar to one Captain Straiton, which he directed to be communicated to the Bishop of Edinburgh, Lord Balmerino, and Mr. Lockhart of Carnwath, and in which he suggested, that as there was a great scarcity in Sweden, the friends of the Chevalier should purchase and send 5,000 or 6,000 bolls of meal to that country. Their poverty, however, and the impracticability of collecting and sending such a large quantity of food out of the kingdom, without exciting the suspicions of the government, prevented the plan from being carried into execution.[750] Shortly thereafter, Straiton received another letter from Mar, in which, after stating that there was a design to attempt the restoration of the prince by the aid of a certain foreign sovereign, and that it would look strange if his friends at home did not put themselves in a condition to assist him, he suggested, that as the want of money had been hitherto a great impediment in the way of the Chevalier’s success, the persons to whom this and his first letter were to be communicated, should persuade their friends to have in readiness such money as they could procure, to be employed when the proper opportunity offered. Mr. Lockhart, who received a letter from the Chevalier at the same time, undertook the task of acquainting the Chevalier’s friends in Scotland with Mar’s wish, and obtained assurances from several persons of rank that they would attend to the prince’s request. Lord Eglinton in particular made an offer of 3,000 guineas.
The intrigues of Goertz, the Swedish minister, being discovered by the government, he was arrested and his papers seized at the desire of King George. This extraordinary proceeding, against which the foreign ministers resident at the British court remonstrated, roused the indignation of Charles to the highest pitch, and being now more determined than ever to carry his project into effect, he, at the instigation of Alberoni, reconciled himself to the Czar, who, in resentment of an offer made by King George to Charles to join against Russia, if the latter would ratify the cession of Bremen and Verden, agreed to unite his forces with those of Sweden and Spain for placing the Pretender on the throne of England. To strengthen the interest of the Chevalier in the north, Alberoni sent the Duke of Ormond into Russia to negotiate a marriage between the son of the Chevalier, and Anne the daughter of Peter, but this project did not take effect. The Chevalier himself, in the meantime, contracted a marriage with the Princess Clementina Sobieski, but she was arrested at Inspruck by order of the imperial government, when on her journey to meet her betrothed husband, and sent to a convent.