We find Clarendon writing again a few days later: “The Elector has said to some person here that I have spoken very plain, and he can understand me, and indeed I have spoken plain language on all occasions. I hope that will not be found a fault in England.”[44]
Clarendon soon had reason to regret his speaking so “very plain,” for at the very hour when the English envoy was haranguing the Elector, Queen Anne was dead. The sword so long suspended had fallen at last. The Queen had frequently declared in the course of the last month that the perpetual contentions of her Ministers would cause her death. She had striven to end the bitter strife between Oxford and Bolingbroke by compelling the former to give up the Treasurer’s staff, which he did on Tuesday, July 27th. Thus Oxford had fallen; Bolingbroke had triumphed, but his triumph was not to last long. The same night a council was called at nine o’clock in the evening, over which the Queen presided; but the removal of Oxford seemed only to add fuel to the flames. The partisans of the displaced Minister and those of Bolingbroke, regardless of the presence of the Queen, her weakness, the consideration due to her as a woman, and the respect due to her office, violently raged at one another until two o’clock in the morning, and the scene was only closed by the tears and anguish of the Queen, who at last swooned and had to be carried out of the council chamber. Another council was called for the next day; the recriminations were as fierce as before, nothing was settled, and the council was again suspended by the alarming illness of the Queen.
A third council was summoned for the Friday. The Queen wept, and said, “I shall never survive it”. And so it proved, for when the hour appointed for the council drew nigh, the royal victim, worn out with sickness of mind and body, and dreading the strife, was seized with an apoplectic fit. She was carried to bed, and her state was soon seen to be hopeless. The news of the Queen’s illness got known to Bolingbroke and his friends first, probably through Lady Masham, and they hurried to the palace. Lady Masham burst in upon them from the royal chamber in the utmost disorder, crying: “Alas! my lords, we are undone, entirely ruined—the Queen is a dead woman; all the world cannot save her”. The suddenness of this blow stunned the Jacobites; they had been so eager to grasp at power that they had killed their best friend. All was confusion and distracted counsel. The Duke of Ormonde declared that if the Queen were conscious, and would name her brother her successor, he would answer for the soldiers. But the Queen was not conscious, and they hesitated to take a decisive step. Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was all for action, and then and there offered to go forth in full pontificals and proclaim King James at Charing Cross and the Royal Exchange. But the others resolved to temporise and call a formal council for the morrow to see what could be done. Meantime the Queen was sinking, and her only intelligible words were: “My brother! Oh! my poor brother, what will become of you?” There is no doubt that Bolingbroke, Ormonde and Atterbury, had they been given time, would have tried to obtain from the Queen the nomination of James as her successor, and have acted accordingly, but time was not given them. The favourable moment passed, and the Whigs, and those Tories who favoured the Hanoverian succession, were alert.
Before the assembled council could get to business next morning, the door opened, and the Dukes of Argyll and Somerset entered the room. These two great peers, representing the Whigs of Scotland and England respectively, announced that though they had not been summoned to the council, yet, on hearing of the Queen’s danger, they felt bound to hasten thither. While Bolingbroke and Ormonde sat silent, fearing mischief, afraid to bid the intruding peers to retire, the Duke of Shrewsbury rose and welcomed them, and asked them to take seats at the council table. It was then clear to the Jacobites that the presence of Argyll and Somerset was part of a concerted plan with Shrewsbury. The plan rapidly developed. On the motion of Somerset, seconded by Argyll, Shrewsbury was nominated Lord Treasurer, but he declined the office unless the Queen herself appointed him. The council then sought audience with the dying Queen. She was sinking fast, but she retained enough consciousness to give the white wand into the hands of Shrewsbury, and bade him, with the sweet voice which was her greatest charm, to “use it for the good of my people”. Then indeed the Jacobites knew that all was over, for Shrewsbury was a firm adherent of the House of Hanover. Bolingbroke and Ormonde withdrew in confusion, and the “best cause in the world,” as Atterbury said, “was lost for want of spirit”.
The Whig statesmen were not slow to follow up their advantage. They concentrated several regiments around and in London, they ordered the recall of troops from Ostend, they sent a fleet to sea, they obtained possession of all the ports, and did everything necessary to check a rising or an invasion in favour of James. Craggs was despatched to Hanover to tell the Elector that the Queen was dying, and the council determined to proclaim him King the moment the Queen’s breath was out of her body. They had not long to wait. The Queen died early next morning, August 1st, and on the same day the seals of the document drawn up by George appointing the Council of Regency were broken in the presence of the Hanoverian representative, Bothmar. Without delay the heralds proclaimed that “The high and mighty Prince, George, Elector of Brunswick and Lüneburg, is, by the death of Queen Anne of blessed memory, become our lawful and rightful liege lord, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith”. The people heard the proclamation without protest, and some even were found to cry, “God save King George”.
The moment the Queen died two more messengers were despatched to Hanover, one, a State messenger, to Lord Clarendon, the other, a special envoy, Lord Dorset, to do homage to the new King on behalf of the Lords of the Regency, and to attend him on his journey to England. Hanover was in a state of great excitement. Craggs had arrived on August 5th, bringing the news of the Queen’s serious illness. The messenger to Lord Clarendon arrived next day late at night, and found that the envoy was not at his lodgings, but supping with a charming lady. But the news brooked of no delay, and seeking out Clarendon, the messenger handed him his despatches, which ordered him to acquaint George with the death of the Queen. There could be no more unwelcome tidings for Lord Clarendon. “It is the only misfortune I had to fear in this world,” he exclaimed. Anne was his first cousin, and all his hopes were bound up with Bolingbroke and the Jacobite Tories, whose day, he shrewdly guessed, was now over. He forthwith called his coach, and late though the hour was, drove off to Herrenhausen, which he reached at two o’clock in the morning. George was asleep when Clarendon arrived, but the envoy dared to penetrate into his chamber, and, falling on his knees by the bedside, “acquainted his Majesty that so great a diadem was fallen to him,” and asked his commands. “He told me I had best stay till he goes, and then I was dismissed.”[45]
George’s curtness is explained by the fact that he had heard the great news already. Eager though Clarendon was, another had been before him. On August 1st Bothmar had despatched his secretary, Godike, in hot haste to Hanover, who had reached Herrenhausen earlier the same evening (August 5th). Still, Clarendon could claim the honour of being the first Englishman to bend the knee to King George. It availed him little in the future, for George never forgave him his “plain speaking,” and Clarendon, finding all avenues of public advancement closed to him, retired into private life.
Lord Dorset arrived at Hanover the next day, bringing the news of George the First’s proclamation and despatches from the Lords of the Regency informing the King that a fleet had been sent to escort him from Holland to England, where his loyal subjects were impatiently awaiting his arrival. Soon Hanover was thronged with English, all hastening to pay their homage to the risen sun of Hanover, and to breathe assurances of loyalty and devotion. George received them and their homage with stolid indifference. He showed no exultation at his accession to the mighty throne of England, and was careful not to commit himself by word or deed. His policy at this time was guided, not by anything that the Lords of the Regency might say or do, but by the secret despatches which his trusted agent, Bothmar, was forwarding him from England. Had Bothmar informed him that his proclamation was other than peaceable, or that rebellion was imminent, it is probable that George would never have quitted Hanover. But as he was apparently proclaimed with acclamation, there was no help for it but to go. “The late King, I am fully persuaded,” writes Dean Lockier soon after the death of George the First, “would never have stirred a step if there had been any strong opposition.”
George Augustus and Caroline had shown themselves eager to go to England, but when the great news came, they were careful to dissemble their eagerness, lest the King, mindful of their intrigues, should take it into his head to leave them behind at Hanover. Apparently he came to the conclusion that they would be less dangerous if he took them with him; so he commanded George Augustus to make ready to depart with him, and told Caroline to follow a month later with all her children except the eldest, Prince Frederick Louis. Leibniz hurried back from Vienna on hearing of Anne’s death, and prayed hard to go to England, but he was ordered to stay at Hanover and finish his history of the Brunswick princes. This was a bitter disappointment, and in vain Caroline pleaded for him. The King knew that she and the late Electress had employed him in their intrigues, and he was determined to leave so dangerous an adherent behind. Leibniz had sore reason to regret the loss of the Electress Sophia.
If his loyal subjects in England were impatient to receive him, the King was not equally impatient to make their acquaintance. He had a good deal to do at Hanover before leaving, and he refused to be hurried, however urgent English affairs might be. He conferred some parting favours on his beloved electorate, and vested its government in a council presided over by his brother, Ernest Augustus. George left Hanover with regret, comforting his bereaved subjects with assurances that he would come back as soon as he possibly could, and that he would always have their interest at heart. Both of these promises he kept—at the expense of England.