was signed: and the only considerable thing which he brought about
afterwards was the marriage I have mentioned above; and by it an
accession of riches and honour to a family whose estate was very mean,
and whose illustration before this time I never met with anywhere, but in
the vain discourses which he used to hold over claret. If he kept his
word with any of the parties above-mentioned, it must be supposed that he
did so with the Whigs; for as to us, we saw nothing after the peace but
increase of mortification and nearer approaches to ruin. Not a step was
made towards completing the settlement of Europe, which the treaties of
Utrecht and Radstadt left imperfect; towards fortifying and establishing
the Tory party; towards securing those who had been the principal actors
in this administration against future events. We had proceeded in a
confidence that these things should immediately follow the conclusion of
the peace: he had never, I dare swear, entertained a thought concerning
them. As soon as the last hand was given to the fortune of his family,
he abandoned his mistress, his friends, and his party, who had borne him
so many years on their shoulders: and I was present when this want of
faith was reproached him in the plainest and strongest terms by one of
the honestest men in Britain, and before some of the most considerable
Tories. Even his impudence failed him on this occasion: he did not so
much as attempt an excuse.
He could not keep his word which he had given the Pretender and his
adherents, because he had formed no party to support him in such a
design. He was sure of having the Whigs against him if he made the
attempt, and he was not sure of having the Tories for him.
In this state of confusion and distress, to which he had reduced himself
and us, you remember the part he acted. He was the spy of the Whigs, and
voted with us in the morning against those very questions which he had
penned the night before with Walpole and others. He kept his post on
terms which no man but he would have held it on, neither submitting to
the Queen, nor complying with his friends. He would not, or he could
not, act with us; and he resolved that we should not act without him as
long as he could hinder it. The Queen’s health was very precarious, and
at her death he hoped by these means to deliver us up, bound as it were
hand and foot, to our adversaries. On the foundation of this merit he
flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened at
least the rest of the party to him. By his secret negotiations at
Hanover, he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled to that
Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty’s reign, have as
much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the Queen. He was weak
enough to boast of this, and to promise his good offices voluntarily to
several: for no man was weak enough to think them worth being solicited.
In a word, you must have heard that he answered to Lord Dartmouth and to
Mr. Bromley, that one should keep the Privy Seal, and the other the seals
of Secretary; and that Lord Cowper makes no scruple of telling how he
came to offer him the seals of Chancellor. When the King arrived, he
went to Greenwich with an affectation of pomp and of favour. Against his
suspicious character, he was once in his life the bubble of his
credulity; and this delusion betrayed him into a punishment more severe
in my sense than all which has happened to him since, or than perpetual
exile; he was affronted in the manner in which he was presented to the
King. The meanest subject would have been received with goodness, the
most obnoxious with an air of indifference; but he was received with the
most distinguishing contempt. This treatment he had in the face of the
nation. The King began his reign, in this instance, with punishing the
ingratitude, the perfidy, the insolence, which had been shown to his
predecessor. Oxford fled from Court covered with shame, the object of
the derision of the Whigs and of the indignation of the Tories.
The Queen might, if she had pleased, have saved herself from all those
mortifications she met with during the last months of her reign, and her
servants and the Tory party from those misfortunes which they endured
during the same time; perhaps from those which they have fallen into
since her death. When she found that the peace, from the conclusion of
which she expected ease and quiet, brought still greater trouble upon
her; when she saw the weakness of her Government, and the confusion of
her affairs increase every day; when she saw her First Minister
bewildered and unable to extricate himself or her; in fine, when the
negligence of his public conduct, and the sauciness of his private
behaviour had rendered him insupportable to her, and she took the
resolution of laying him aside, there was a strength still remaining
sufficient to have supported her Government, to have fulfilled in great
part the expectations of the Tories, and to have constituted both them
and the Ministers in such a situation as would have left them little to
apprehend. Some designs were, indeed, on foot which might have produced
very great disorders: Oxford’s conduct had given much occasion to them,
and with the terror of them he endeavoured to intimidate the Queen. But
expedients were not hard to be found by which those designs might have
been nipped in the bud, or else by which the persons who promoted them
might have been induced to lay them aside. But that fatal irresolution
inherent to the Stuart race hung upon her. She felt too much inward
resentment to be able to conceal his disgrace from him; yet, after he had
made this discovery, she continued to trust all her power in his hands.
No people ever were in such a condition as ours continued to be from the
autumn of 1713 to the summer following. The Queen’s health sank every
day. The attack which she had in the winter at Windsor served as a
warning both to those who wished, and to those who feared her death, to
expect it. The party which opposed the court had been continually
gaining strength by the weakness of our administration: and at this time
their numbers were vastly increased, and their spirit was raised by the
near prospect of the succession taking place. We were not at liberty to
exert the strength we had. We saw our danger, and many of us saw the
true means of avoiding it; but whilst the magic wand was in the same
hands, this knowledge served only to increase our uneasiness; and,
whether we would or no, we were forced with our eyes open to walk on
towards the precipice. Every moment we became less able, if the Queen
lived, to support her Government; if she died, to secure ourselves. One
side was united in a common view, and acted upon a uniform plan: the
other had really none at all. We knew that we were out of favour at the
Court of Hanover, that we were represented there as Jacobites, and that
the Elector, his present Majesty, had been rendered publicly a party to
that opposition, in spite of which we made the peace: and yet we neither
had taken, nor could take in our present circumstances, any measures to
be better or worse there. Thus we languished till the 27th of July,
1714, when the Queen dismissed the Treasurer. On the Friday following,
she fell into an apoplexy, and died on Sunday the 1st of August.
You do me, I daresay, the justice to believe that whilst this state of
things lasted I saw very well, how little mention soever I might make of
it at the time, that no man in the Ministry, or in the party, was so much
exposed as myself. I could expect no quarter from the Whigs, for I had
deserved none. There were persons amongst them for whom I had great
esteem and friendship; yet neither with these, nor with any others, had I
preserved a secret correspondence, which might be of use to me in the day
of distress: and besides the general character of my party, I knew that
particular prejudices were entertained against me at Hanover. The Whigs
wanted nothing but an opportunity of attacking the peace, and it could
hardly be imagined that they would stop there. In which case I knew that
they could have hold on no man so much as myself: the instructions, the
orders, the memorials had been drawn by me; the correspondence relating
to it in France, and everywhere else, had been carried on by me; in a
word, my hand appeared to almost every paper which had been writ in the
whole course of the negotiation. To all these considerations I added
that of the weight of personal resentment, which I had created against
myself at home and abroad: in part unavoidably, by the share I was
obliged to take in these affairs; and in part, if you will,
unnecessarily, by the warmth of my temper, and by some unguarded
expressions, for which I have no excuse to make but that which Tacitus
makes for his father-in-law, Julius Agricola: “honestius putabam
offendere, quam odisse.”
Having this prospect of being distinguished from the rest of my party, in
the common calamity, by severer treatment, I might have justified myself,
by reason and by great authorities too, if I had made early provision, at
least to be safe when I should be no longer useful. How I could have
secured this point I do not think fit to explain: but certain it is that
I made no one step towards it. I resolved not to abandon my party by
turning Whig, or, which is worse a great deal, whimsical; nor to treat
separately from it. I resolved to keep myself at liberty to act on a
Tory bottom. If the Queen disgraced Oxford and continued to live
afterwards, I knew we should have time and means to provide for our
future safety: if the Queen died, and left us in the same unfortunate
circumstances, I expected to suffer for and with the Tories; and I was
prepared for it.
The thunder had long grumbled in the air; and yet when the bolt fell,
most of our party appeared as much surprised as if they had had no reason
to expect it. There was a perfect calm and universal submission through
the whole kingdom. The Chevalier, indeed, set out as if his design had
been to gain the coast and to embark for Great Britain; and the Court of
France made a merit to themselves of stopping him and obliging him to
return. But this, to my certain knowledge, was a farce acted by concert,
to keep up an opinion of his character, when all opinion of his cause
seemed to be at an end. He owned this concert to me at Bar, on the
occasion of my telling him that he would have found no party ready to
receive him, and that the enterprise would have been to the last degree
extravagant. He was at this time far from having any encouragement: no
party numerous enough to make the least disturbance was formed in his
favour. On the King’s arrival the storm arose. The menaces of the
Whigs, backed by some very rash declarations, by little circumstances of
humour which frequently offend more than real injuries, and by the entire
change of all the persons in employment, blew up the coals.
At first many of the Tories had been made to entertain some faint hopes
that they would be permitted to live in quiet. I have been assured that
the King left Hanover in that resolution. Happy had it been for him and
for us if he had continued in it; if the moderation of his temper had not
been overborne by the violence of party, and his and the national
interest sacrificed to the passions of a few. Others there were among
the Tories who had flattered themselves with much greater expectations
than these, and who had depended, not on such imaginary favour and
dangerous advancement as was offered them afterwards, but on real credit
and substantial power under the new government. Such impressions on the
minds of men had rendered the two Houses of Parliament, which were then
sitting, as good courtiers to King George as ever they had been to Queen
Anne. But all these hopes being at once and with violence extinguished,
despair succeeded in their room.
Our party began soon to act like men delivered over to their passions,
and unguided by any other principle; not like men fired by a just
resentment and a reasonable ambition to a bold undertaking. They treated
the Government like men who were resolved not to live under it: and yet
they took no one measure to support themselves against it. They
expressed, without reserve or circumspection, an eagerness to join in any
attempt against the Establishment which they had received and confirmed,
and which many of them had courted but a few weeks before; and yet in the
midst of all this bravery, when the election of the new Parliament came
on, some of these very men acted with the coolness of those who are much
better disposed to compound than to take arms.
The body of the Tories being in this temper, it is not to be wondered at
if they heated one another, and began apace to turn their eyes towards
the Pretender; and if those few who had already engaged with him, applied
themselves to improve the conjuncture, and endeavoured to list a party
for him.
I went, about a month after the Queen’s death, as soon as the Seals were
taken from me, into the country; and whilst I continued there, I felt the
general disposition to Jacobitism increase daily among people of all
ranks; amongst several who had been constantly distinguished by their
aversion to that cause. But at my return to London in the month of
February or March, 1715, a few weeks before I left England, I began for
the first time in my whole life to perceive these general dispositions
ripen into resolutions, and to observe some regular workings among many
of our principal friends, which denoted a scheme of this kind. These
workings, indeed, were very faint; for the persons concerned in carrying
them on did not think it safe to speak too plainly to men who were, in
truth, ill disposed to the Government because they neither found their
account at present under it nor had been managed with art enough to leave
them hopes of finding it hereafter, but who at the same time had not the
least affection for the Pretender’s person, nor any principle favourable
to his interest.
This was the state of things when the new Parliament which his Majesty
had called assembled. A great majority of the elections had gone in
favour of the Whigs; to which the want of concert among the Tories had
contributed as much as the vigour of that party and the influence of the
new Government. The Whigs came to the opening of this Parliament full of
as much violence as could possess men who expected to make their court,
to confirm themselves in power, and to gratify their resentments by the
same measures. I have heard that it was a dispute among the Ministers
how far this spirit should be indulged; and that the King was determined,
or confirmed in a determination, to consent to the prosecutions, and to
give the reins to the party, by the representations that were made to him
that great difficulties would arise in the conduct of the Session if the
Court should appear inclined to check this spirit, and by Mr. W—’s
undertaking to carry all the business successfully through the House of
Commons if they were at liberty. Such has often been the unhappy fate of
our Princes: a real necessity sometimes, and sometimes a seeming one, has
forced them to compound with a part of the nation at the expense of the
whole; and the success of their business for one year has been purchased
at the price of public disorder for many.
The conjuncture I am speaking of affords a memorable instance of this
truth. If milder measures had been pursued, certain it is that the
Tories had never universally embraced Jacobitism. The violence of the
Whigs forced them into the arms of the Pretender. The Court and the
party seemed to vie with one another which should go the greatest lengths
in severity: and the Ministers, whose true interest it must at all times
be to calm the minds of men, and who ought never to set the examples of
extraordinary inquiries or extraordinary accusations, were upon this
occasion the tribunes of the people.
The Council of Regency which began to sit as soon as the Queen died,
acted like a council of the Holy Office. Whoever looked on the face of
the nation saw everything quiet; not one of those symptoms appearing
which must have shown themselves more or less at that moment if in
reality there had been any measures taken during the former reign to
defeat the Protestant succession. His Majesty ascended the throne with
as little contradiction and as little trouble as ever a son succeeded a
father in the possession of a private patrimony. But he who had the
opportunity, which I had till my dismission, of seeing a great part of
what passed in that Council, would have thought that there had been an
opposition actually formed, that the new Establishment was attacked
openly from without and betrayed from within.
The same disposition continued after the King’s arrival. This political
Inquisition went on with all the eagerness imaginable in seizing of
papers, in ransacking the Queen’s closet, and examining even her private
letters. The Whigs had clamoured loudly, and affirmed in the face of the
world that the nation had been sold to France, to Spain, to the
Pretender; and whilst they endeavoured in vain, by very singular methods,
to find some colour to justify what they had advanced without proof, they
put themselves under an absolute necessity of grounding the most solemn
prosecution on things whereof they might indeed have proof, but which
would never pass for crimes before any judges but such as were parties at
the same time.
In the King’s first Speech from the Throne all the inflaming hints were
given, and all the methods of violence were chalked out to the two
Houses. The first steps in both were perfectly answerable; and, to the
shame of the peerage be it spoken, I saw at that time several lords
concur to condemn in one general vote all that they had approved of in a
former Parliament by many particular resolutions. Among several bloody
resolutions proposed and agitated at this time, the resolution of
impeaching me of high treason was taken; and I took that of leaving
England, not in a panic terror improved by the artifices of the Duke of
Marlborough (whom I knew even at that time too well to act by his advice
or information in any case), but on such grounds as the proceedings which
soon followed sufficiently justified, and as I have never repented
building upon. Those who blamed it in the first heat were soon after
obliged to change their language; for what other resolution could I take?
The method of prosecution designed against me would have put me
immediately out of condition to act for myself, or to serve those who
were less exposed than me, but who were, however, in danger. On the
other hand, how few were there on whose assistance I could depend, or to
whom I would, even in those circumstances, be obliged? The ferment in
the nation was wrought up to a considerable height; but there was at that
time no reason to expect that it could influence the proceedings in
Parliament in favour of those who should be accused. Left to its own
movement, it was much more proper to quicken than slacken the
prosecutions; and who was there to guide its motions? The Tories who had
been true to one another to the last were a handful, and no great vigour
could be expected from them. The Whimsicals, disappointed of the figure
which they hoped to make, began, indeed, to join their old friends. One
of the principal amongst them was so very good as to confess to me that
if the Court had called the servants of the late Queen to account, and
had stopped there, he must have considered himself as a judge, and have
acted according to his conscience on what should have appeared to him;
but that war had been declared to the whole Tory party, and that now the
state of things was altered. This discourse needed no commentary, and
proved to me that I had never erred in the judgment I made of this set of
men. Could I then resolve to be obliged to them, or to suffer with
Oxford? As much as I still was heated by the disputes in which I had
been all my life engaged against the Whigs, I would sooner have chose to
owe my security to their indulgence than to the assistance of the
Whimsicals; but I thought banishment, with all her train of evils,
preferable to either. I abhorred Oxford to that degree that I could not
bear to be joined with him in any case. Nothing, perhaps, contributed so
much to determine me as this sentiment. A sense of honour would not have
permitted me to distinguish between his case and mine own; and it was
worse than death to lie under the necessity of making them the same, and
of taking measures in concert with him.
I am now come to the time at which I left England, and have finished the
first part of that deduction of facts which I proposed to lay before you.
I am hopeful that you will not think it altogether tedious or
unnecessary; for although very little of what I have said can be new to
you, yet this summary account will enable you with greater ease to recall
to your memory the passages of those four years wherewith all that I am
going to relate to you has an immediate and necessary connection.
In what has been said I am far from making my own panegyric. I had not
in those days so much merit as was ascribed to me, nor since that time
have I had so little as the same persons allowed me. I committed,
without dispute, many faults, and a greater man than I can pretend to be,
constituted in the same circumstances, would not have kept clear of all;
but with respect to the Tories I committed none. I carried the point of
party honour to the height, and specified everything to my attachment to
them during this period of time. Let us now examine whether I have done
so during the rest.
When I arrived in France, about the end of March, 1715, the affairs of
England were represented to me in another light than I had seen them in
when I looked upon them with my own eyes very few weeks before. I found
the persons who were detached to speak with me prepared to think that I
came over to negotiate for the Pretender; and when they perceived that I
was more ignorant than they imagined, I was assured by them that there
would be suddenly a universal rising in England and Scotland. The
leaders were named to me, their engagements specified, and many
gentlemen, yourself among others, were reckoned upon for particular
services, though I was certain you had never been treated with; from
whence I concluded, and the event has justified my opinion, that these
assurances had been given on the general characters of men by such of our
friends as had embarked sooner and gone farther than the rest.
This management surprised me extremely. In the answers I made I
endeavoured to set the mistake right, to show that things were far from
the point of maturity imagined, that the Chevalier had yet no party for
him, and that nothing could form one but the extreme violence which the
Whigs threatened to exercise. Great endeavours were used to engage me in
this affair, and to prevail on me to answer the letter of invitation sent
me from Bar. I alleged, as it was true, that I had no commission from
any person in England, and that the friends I left behind me were the
only persons who could determine me, if any could, to take such a step.
As to the last proposition, I absolutely refused it.
In the uncertainty of what would happen—whether the prosecutions would be
pushed, which was most probable, in the manner intended against me, and
against others, for all of whom, except the Earl of Oxford, I had as much
concern as for myself; or whether the Whigs would relent, drop some, and
soften the fate of others—I resolved to conduct myself so as to create no
appearance which might be strained into a pretence for hard usage, and
which might be retorted on my friends when they debated for me, or when
they defended themselves. I saw the Earl of Stair; I promised him that I
would enter into no Jacobite engagements, and I kept my word with him. I
wrote a letter to Mr. Secretary Stanhope which might take off any
imputation of neglect of the Government, and I retired into Dauphine to
remove the objection of residence near the Court of France.
This retreat from Paris was censured in England, and styled a desertion
of my friends and of their cause, with what foundation let any reasonable
man determine. Had I engaged with the Pretender before the party acted
for him, or required of me that I should do so, I had taken the air of
being his man; whereas I looked on myself as theirs. I had gone about to
bring them into his measures; whereas I never intended, even since that
time, to do anything more than to make him as far as possible act
conformably to their views.