For the first time since the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne, the Government had respite from Jacobite intrigues. The Treaty of Seville (1729) and the second Treaty of Vienna (1731) established friendly relations between the English Government and all the European powers, so that none of them, not even Roman Catholic countries like Spain and Austria, could any longer lend outward support to James. Moreover the Jacobite party lost, almost at the same time, all their greatest men. Lord Mar died at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Duke of Wharton, who, while pretending loyalty to his master, had been negotiating for a return to England, died in Spain in comparative poverty, and so closed his career of splendid infamy. Bishop Atterbury, the ablest of all, had fallen out of favour with James, chiefly because of his wish to bring up the young Prince Charles Edward in the faith of the Church of England. When James saw the folly of alienating him it was too late. Atterbury died a few weeks after he had sent to James a copy of his vindication of the charges brought against him by Lord Inverness, and the Jacobite cause lost its wisest friend.
James was so unpopular in England at this time, even among his own supporters, that societies were formed to discuss the propriety of transferring their allegiance to his son, Prince Charles Edward, and reports were persistently circulated that the young Prince was to be taken from his father’s guardianship and brought up in the religion of the Church of England. This plan was at first supported by Bolingbroke, who did his utmost to bring it about, and it gained so much credence that in 1733 Sir Archer Croft declared in the House of Commons that “The Pretender was the more to be feared because they did not know but that he was then breeding his son a Protestant”.[56] Had this been true it would have been the severest possible blow for the Hanoverian family. It would have done away with their reason for occupying the throne, and though they could not have been expected to abdicate of their own free will, yet the personal unpopularity of the King after the Queen’s death was so great that the rising of ’45 would probably have had a different ending. But it was not true, for in matters of religion James was as great a bigot as his father, and Atterbury’s death put an end to all such plans.
The Duchess of Buckingham often went to Paris to have conferences with Atterbury on this question, and the Bishop used his influence with her to prevent the Duke of Berwick from giving a Roman Catholic tutor to her son, the young duke. The duchess pretended that her interviews with Atterbury were wholly connected with her son’s education, but Walpole knew that was only a pretext to hide her Jacobite intrigues. The duchess had a great position in England as head of the Jacobite ladies; she was in fact a sort of Jacobite Duchess of Marlborough, and a rival of that illustrious dowager, whom in arrogance and pride she strongly resembled. Like her she possessed enormous wealth, and Buckingham House vied in magnificence with Marlborough House across the park. Both the duchesses disliked and despised the Hanoverian family, though from different reasons, and both masked their dislike, and occasionally did the King and Queen the honour, as they considered it, of attending their drawing-rooms. The two duchesses were on friendly terms, but occasionally had their differences. The Duchess of Buckingham lost her son, and his remains were brought from Rome to be interred in Westminster Abbey with great pomp. She sent to her neighbour across the park, the Duchess Sarah, to ask the loan of the funeral car which had borne the body of the great Duke of Marlborough to St. Paul’s. Sarah spurned this request with contumely: “It carried my Lord Marlborough,” she sent word to say, “and it shall never be used for any meaner mortal.” “I have consulted the undertaker,” wrote back the other duchess, “and he tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds.”
The Duchess of Buckingham made frequent journeys to Paris and Rome to intrigue in favour of the Stuarts, of whom she considered herself one; she paid visits to Cardinal Fleury at Versailles, but according to a contemporary[57] she got nothing from the cardinal but compliments and civil excuses, and was laughed at both in Paris and Rome for her pompous manner of travelling, in which she affected the state of a princess of the blood royal. On her visits to Paris she always made a pilgrimage to the church in which the unburied body of James the Second lay, and prayed and wept over it. Horace Walpole says, with a characteristic touch of malice, that despite this outward show of grief she allowed the royal pall to rot itself threadbare through her parsimony. It is more likely that sentiment prevented her from having it repaired. To Sir Robert Walpole, who knew all her intrigues almost before she embarked upon them, and who treated her as a person of no importance, she made extraordinary overtures to induce him to join with her in effecting the restoration of the Stuarts. She knew that Walpole was very fond of his daughter by Maria Skerrett, and she hinted to him that it might be possible to wed her to Prince Charles Edward if he would embrace the Stuart cause. She asked him if he remembered what Lord Clarendon’s reward had been for helping to restore the royal family; Sir Robert affected not to understand, and she said: “Was he not allowed to match his daughter to the Duke of York?” Walpole smiled and changed the subject. The King had not the same patience with the Duchess of Buckingham’s eccentricities as his Prime Minister, and would probably have taken some action against her had not Caroline counselled the wiser policy of ignoring her Grace’s quixotic proceedings; but on one occasion the duchess was really frightened lest the King should discover her little plots. She had quitted England without having obtained the requisite permission, and she wrote to Walpole from Boulogne: “I know there is a usual form, as I take it only to be esteemed, of any peer’s asking permission of the King (or Queen in the present circumstance) to go out of the kingdom, but even that ceremony I thought reached not to women, whose being in and out of their country seemed never to be of the least consequence”. In the same letter she alludes to her intrigues, and speaks of them as “nonsensical stories” not worthy of credence. Walpole took her letter to the Queen, who was then Regent, and they laughed over it together, but they let “Princess” Buckingham, as they called her, alone.
THE PRINCESS CLEMENTINA (CONSORT OF PRINCE JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART).
From the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery
While the Stuarts were losing ground Caroline was working hard and incessantly to make the Hanoverian family acceptable to the English nation. By birth a foreign princess, one who did not arrive upon these shores until well into middle life, she could not boast that she was “entirely English” like Queen Anne, but it is remarkable, considering the great and obvious disadvantages under which she laboured, how well she succeeded in impressing her personality upon the English people. She was careful to express herself in public in warm admiration of the laws, customs and constitution of this country; she often declared that England owed everything to its liberties. Yet sometimes when the King abused England, as he invariably did after a visit to Hanover, speaking of the English people as “king-killers” and “republicans,” and grumbling at their riches as well as their rights, she would fall into his vein, and rail against the limited powers of the Crown, which rendered the King “a puppet of sovereignty” and a servant of Parliament. It is probable that she chafed against the limitations to the power of the Sovereign, for she was a woman who loved to rule; but in theory she was all for liberty and tolerance. But whatever her predilections, she clearly understood, and acquiesced in, the only possible terms by which the Hanoverian family were allowed to reign in England. As she could not increase the limited power of the Crown in political matters, she determined to increase its unlimited influence in other directions, and to this end she encouraged everything which helped to promote the well-being and prosperity of the people, especially those movements which had a national origin. This was especially the case with home industries. For example, we read:—
“On Saturday last a considerable body of dealers in bone-lace from the counties of Bucks, Northampton and Bedford, waited upon her Majesty with a petition on behalf of their manufacture, and carried with them a parcel of lace to show the perfection they had brought it to, and when her Majesty showed her royal intention to encourage the British manufacturer by receiving them very graciously, and bought a considerable quantity of lace for the use of the Royal Family, and several ladies followed her example, the said dealers in lace had the honour to kiss her Majesty’s hand.”[58] And again: “On Wednesday last some of the Trustees for Georgia and Sir Thomas Loombe waited upon her Majesty with the Georgia silk, which is to be wove into a piece for her Majesty’s wear, from a beautiful pattern which her Majesty chose, and she, in a most gracious manner, expressed satisfaction at the British Colonies having produced so fine a silk.”[59]
She was quick to encourage English inventions and enterprise. For instance: “On Monday Mr. Clay, the inventor of the machine watches in the Strand, had the honour of exhibiting to her Majesty at Kensington his surprising musical clock, which gave uncommon satisfaction to all the Royal Family present, at which time her Majesty, to encourage so great an artist, was pleased to order fifty guineas to be expended for numbers in the intended raffle, by which we hear Mr. Clay intends to dispose of this said beautiful and most complete piece of machinery.”[60] And again: “On Tuesday a most beautiful hat, curiously made of feathers in imitation of a fine Brussels lace, was shown to her Majesty, who, for the encouragement of ingenuity, being the first of the kind ever made in England, was so good as to purchase it, and afterwards presented it to the Princess of Wales.”[61]