ministers had been reduced to the most ruinous expedients to maintain
the war, and the whole people were suffering terribly. To crown their
misery, the winter of 1708 was of extraordinary severity and duration.
The corn crops were frozen in the ground, the very apple trees perished
with cold. Famine threatened to destroy what the war had spared. Louis
became very anxious to treat; and as for some years it had been supposed
that the Dutch were inclined to accept a separate pacification, it was
to them that Louis addressed himself. The war party was however for the
present in the ascendant, and Heinsius, who, as Grand Pensionary of
Holland, exercised a predominant influence in the Council of the Dutch,
let it be clearly understood that the Republic would treat only in
conjunction with the allies, and that the allied demands would be very
high. Louis however despatched an ambassador to see what terms could be
made, but he met with a cold reception. The Government in England,
especially the Whig members of it, were indignant at the threatened
invasion of Scotland in the previous year, and induced the Parliament to
vote that the Queen's title and the Protestant succession, the dismissal
of the Pretender from France, and the demolition of the fortifications
of Dunkirk, should be necessary elements in any treaty: while the Dutch
claimed a line of ten fortresses on the Flemish frontier (including some
still in the possession of France), and the restoration of Strasburg and
Luxemburg. Nor, in exchange for these high demands, was any specific
promise of peace given. Such was the position of the French Government,
that even these terms were taken into consideration, and Torcy the
French minister offered, though he could get no proper passport, to go
himself privately and see what could be done to ameliorate them. He
found the allies determined to demand at least the resignation of the
whole Spanish succession, together with the restoration of Newfoundland
to England. This demand put Louis in a difficult position. It was no
longer, he declared, in his power to surrender Spain, for his grandson
King Philip had a will of his own, and, although he might have been
induced to resign Spain for an Italian kingdom, did not choose to become
altogether crownless. Louis now reaped the fruits of his former bad
faith as a negotiator. The allies, believing that this excuse was
fictitious, and alleged merely to gain time, drew up their demands in
accordance with the preliminaries, and would promise in exchange for the
great concessions demanded from Louis only two months' truce. If in that
time Philip could not be induced to resign Spain, the French King was to
pledge himself to join with the allies to expel him by force of arms.
When Torcy returned with these terrible terms, a Council was held at
Versailles, and amidst tears of indignation at the ignominious
propositions, it was determined that, in spite of the necessity of the
moment, it was impossible to accept them. Louis declared, if he had to
fight, he would rather fight against his enemies than against his own
children. And now at length, humbled by reverses, he threw himself on
the patriotism of his people; a stirring proclamation was circulated
through the provinces; the King set the example of patriotism by turning
his plate and costly works of art into money; the whole nation was
touched by his humility, and the war began again with renewed vigour.
The allies had indeed pressed their demands beyond what was either
generous or politic.
[Sidenote: Battle of Malplaquet.]
Villars, the only great French marshal as yet undefeated, was intrusted
with the duty of checking the victorious advance of Eugene and
Marlborough. His name, and the newly roused patriotism of the country,
raised the spirits of the army, though they were in want of many of the
necessaries of life. Villars, determined to act upon the defensive, saw
Tournay fall without moving. Thence the conquerors advanced to Mons, the
capital of Hainault. It seemed necessary, if possible, to prevent the
siege of this town. The rapidity of the movements of the allies
prevented Villars from attaining that object, but the investment was
scarcely formed when he crossed the Scheldt at Valenciennes, and
appeared with his army in the immediate neighbourhood. The corner of the
country between the Haine river on the north, and the Trouille on the
east, in which Mons stands, is crossed by a barrier of high ground,
rendered more difficult by large woods and forests. To approach Mons
from the south and west this ridge has to be crossed, and the only
convenient passage is by the _Trouée_, or open gap, between the woods of
Lanière towards the east, and Taisnière towards the west. Between these
woods the high land falls by several ravines into the plain of Mons. On
the crown of the ridge is the heath and village of Malplaquet.
Marlborough and Eugene, supposing that the object of Villars would be to
pass through this gap and attempt to raise the siege of Mons, brought
their army to the foot of the ascending ravines. But Villars, under whom
Boufflers, though his senior in rank, was serving as a volunteer,
feeling certain that at all events a battle would be fought, determined
to adopt a defensive position, and during the night and day after his
arrival at Malplaquet strongly fortified the flanking woods and the
crown of the hill. Marlborough was anxious to attack before the
fortifications were complete, but Eugene thought it necessary to await
the arrival of troops coming from the siege of Tournay. A day was thus
lost, and time allowed to render the fortifications much stronger. The
battle, which began upon the 11th of September, was the most bloody and
hardly contested of the war. In their first assaults the allies were
repeatedly driven back, but the pressure upon the wood of Taisnière was
so strong, especially when it was outflanked and threatened from the
extreme right of the allies under Withers, that Villars had to weaken
his centre to hold his ground. Marlborough perceived the weakness and
took advantage of it. The entrenchments in the centre of the line were
broken through and captured, and thus the position forced. Villars had
been severely wounded, and the command had devolved upon Boufflers, who
brought off the French army in perfect order, and the fruit of the
hard-earned victory was nothing but the field of battle. The English
encamped the following night upon the French position, having lost in
their disastrous victory 20,000 men. Mons fell, but the campaign had
then to be closed.
[Illustration: Battle of Malplaquet. Sep. 11th, 1709.]
[Sidenote: Summary of political parties from 1702.]
Thus far it has been possible to follow without interruption the general
course of the war, but from this time forward the state of politics in
England exercised so decided an influence upon it, upon the negotiations
which were to bring it to a close, and upon the position and conduct of
Marlborough, that it becomes necessary to turn back and trace the
history of parties since the Queen's accession. Speaking quite
generally, that history consists in the gradual substitution of a Whig
for a Tory Government. Rochester and the extreme high Tories were
disinclined to a great offensive war, and consequently directly opposed
to Marlborough. The Duke, not wishing to break with any great section of
English politicians, attempted, as William had done, to govern by means
of the moderate men of both parties. But there was a second question
which, even after the dismissal of the Tories who disliked the war,
prevented the completion of his plan. The Tories were desirous that
stringent measures should be taken to support the exclusive authority of
the English Church, and in this point were strongly supported by the
feelings of the Queen. The Whigs, on whom Marlborough was induced for
the purposes of the war more and more to rely, were on the other hand
inclined towards more liberal measures. It was upon this point that the
second secession of the Tories took place, leaving Marlborough entirely
in the hands of the Whigs, and in a certain degree in opposition to the
Queen. It was the Whig determination when triumphant to suppress the
expression of High Church feeling that produced the complete overthrow
of Marlborough's ministry. At the same time, as in the former reign,
disputes between the Houses continued, especially when a Tory majority
in the Lower House came into collision with the constant Whig majority
in the House of Lords.
[Sidenote: Tory Parliament. Oct. 1702.]
[Sidenote: Dismissal of Rochester. 1703.]
Already, before the Parliament called by the late King had been
dissolved, Rochester and the extreme high Tories had shown their
disinclination to the war, and had besides given proof of a more
exclusive party spirit than suited the views of Marlborough, to whom, as
to William, the affairs of Europe and the conduct of the war were all in
all, and who had no taste for party conflict. As was to be expected from
the character of the ministry, a strong Tory majority was returned in
October to the first Parliament of the Queen's reign. But Rochester's
views were not shared by the whole of his party; indeed, the strength of
party feeling tended for the time to give Marlborough the support of the
Tories. In their eagerness to throw blame upon the late King, they could
not refrain from contrasting him with the Duke. Marlborough had by this
time begun his successful career by capturing the towns of the Meuse,
and the Commons proceeded to congratulate the Queen, saying, "The
wonderful progress of your Majesty's armies under the conduct of
Marlborough have singularly retrieved the ancient honour of the English
nation." The word _retrieved_, intended to imply censure on the late
King, was, in spite of the opposition of the Whigs, carried by a large
majority. For the present then, if merely out of opposition to William,
the Tories as a whole seemed pledged to support Marlborough, liberal
grants were made, and shortly after the close of the session, the
Government, resting upon the general feeling in its favour, felt itself
strong enough to get rid of Rochester. Displeased at receiving no more
important office than that of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, he left his
government there, and remained in England. He thus afforded an
opportunity to his enemies to order him to return to his duties. On his
refusing to do so, the command was repeated in a more peremptory manner,
and in his anger he sent in his resignation, which was accepted.
[Sidenote: Occasional Conformity Bill thrown out.]
Before this, however, the question of Church government had been raised
in the House, and the storm it excited had caused a somewhat hasty
prorogation. It had been the habit of dissenting members of corporations
so far to do violence to their conscience as to receive the Sacrament
according to the law of the Church of England upon their appointment to
municipal offices. Having thus duly qualified themselves, they had
continued to hold office, but had gone back to their old forms of
worship. This habit, known as occasional conformity, was viewed with
great jealousy by the Tories. In the first session of the Parliament a
bill was brought in to render occasional conformity illegal, and to
inflict heavy fines upon those who held office on such terms. The chief
supporter of the measure was Henry St. John, afterwards so well known as
Lord Bolingbroke. The Bill passed the House of Commons, but its
amendment by the House of Lords produced such violent altercations, that
the Queen found it necessary to put an end to the session. It was during
this session that the Commissioners for the Union with Scotland first
held their sittings. The progress of the negotiations which produced the
Union in 1706 will be given subsequently.
The Parliament reassembled in November 1703, a month rendered remarkable
by the greatest storm ever known in England; it is calculated that no
less than 8000 lives were lost in it, while 800 houses and 400 windmills
were reduced to ruins. The devastation caused among the forests in the
country may be estimated by the fact that Defoe, travelling through
Kent, counted 17,000 uprooted timber trees, and then desisted from
reckoning them from weariness.
[Sidenote: The Methuen Treaty.]
[Sidenote: Occasional Conformity Bill again thrown out.]
[Sidenote: Disputes on the Aylesbury election.]
The session was again the scene of a great contest between the Houses.
The war was still well supported, and the grants were upon a very
liberal scale, rendered necessary by the additional troops required for
Portugal and Spain, since Portugal had joined the Great Alliance, first
under a treaty with Austria, and subsequently under the well-known
Methuen Treaty with England. This treaty, regarded as a triumph of
diplomacy, was completed by Mr. Methuen, the English minister at Lisbon,
at the close of 1703. It was in exact accordance with the commercial
views of the time, and contained but two articles. By the first English
woollen manufactures were admitted into Portugal, by the second it was
arranged that the duty on Portuguese wines should always be less by
one-third than that on the wines of France. It was supposed that this
would not only secure the friendship of Portugal, but would also bring
much gold and silver, of which the Peninsula was the great emporium,
into England, an object regarded as of the first importance under the
mercantile system. It was when the Bill against occasional conformity,
which had been dropped in the preceding session, was reintroduced that
the contest began. The ministers who had been eager the preceding year
that the Bill should be carried, had, since the resignation of Rochester
and the opposition offered by his friends, grown less eager in their
Tory views. In spite of their very lukewarm support, the Bill again
passed the House of Commons by a large majority. But again it met with
great opposition from the Lords, and was finally thrown out by a
majority of eleven. As no amendments had been proposed, there was no
room for angry conferences between the Houses. But an opportunity for
quarrel was found in questions arising from the Aylesbury election. The
returning officers for that borough had been notoriously guilty of
tampering with the returns in favour of their own friends. At the last
election the vote of Matthew Ashby had been rejected. He brought an
action against the returning officer, and a verdict was found in his
favour. The case was removed into the higher court, and three of the
four judges of the Queen's Bench decided that all decisions with regard
to votes rested entirely with the House of Commons. Upon this Ashby
brought his case by a writ of error before the House of Lords, where the
decision of the Queen's Bench was set aside, and the case finally
settled in favour of Ashby. On this the Commons engaged in the quarrel,
and declared that Ashby, by appealing to the law, was guilty of a breach
of privilege. The Lords replied, declaring that the right of voting,
like any other right, might be maintained by an action at the common
law. There for the present the quarrel was left. It seems tolerably
clear that on this point the Lords were in the right, but the newly won
position of the House of Commons inspired its members with most
overweening views of their own importance. In February of this year
(1704) the Queen celebrated her birthday by surrendering her claim to
the first-fruits of ecclesiastical benefices, which were hereafter to be
employed for the benefit of the Church, and which have since been
administered under the well-known name of Queen Anne's Bounty.
[Sidenote: Dismissal of Nottingham, Jersey and Seymour. May, 1704.]
[Sidenote: Replaced by moderate Tories.]
It was with the knowledge and co-operation of Marlborough--though he had
himself taken the opportunity afforded by the prorogation to go abroad
to fight the great battle of Blenheim--that his friends in the ministry
succeeded in relieving themselves of the rest of the extreme Tories. For
the removal of Rochester in the previous year had by no means cleared
the Government of the party opposed to the active prosecution of the
war. His views were accepted and supported by Nottingham and Jersey in
the Upper House, by Hedges and Seymour in the House of Commons.
Nottingham, true to his principles, had thrown every obstacle in his
power in the way of a plan which had come before the Council for
utilizing for the general purposes of the war the insurrection of the
Cevennes. Thwarted in his opposition, after the close of the session, he
haughtily demanded of the Queen the immediate dismissal of all the Whigs
in the Government, threatening in case of refusal to retire. The Queen,
who loved the Tories, would probably have wished to retain him, but she
was irritated at the tone of his demand. Her irritation was fostered by
Godolphin and the Duchess of Marlborough, and she brought herself to
dismiss both Nottingham and his followers, Jersey and Seymour. The
ministry had to be reconstructed. But Marlborough and Godolphin were by
no means disposed to put themselves into the hands of the Whigs; they
therefore called to office another section of the Tories not adverse to
the war. Harley, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was made Secretary
of State, Mansell replaced Seymour, the Earl of Kent, a moderate Whig,
succeeded Jersey, while the Secretary of War, an unimportant person,
made room for St. John.
[Sidenote: Parliament. Oct. 29, 1704.]
These changes did not improve the position of the ministers, as the Tory
Party had still a strong majority in the House of Commons. Marlborough's
own popularity with the House was shaken, and in the autumn session of
1704, the prevailing feeling showed itself in the form given to the vote
of thanks with which the Commons met the victory at Blenheim; this was
so expressed as to place on a level with the great general who had saved
the Empire the Tory Admiral Rooke, who had fought an indecisive battle
in the Mediterranean, for which many men thought he deserved rather
blame than praise, for though almost as strong as the enemy, he had
withdrawn from the battle without effecting anything. The Tory temper of
the House was again shown by the increased passion with which the
Occasional Conformity Bill was introduced and supported. A considerable
number of the most vehement Tories were eager to adopt their old method,
and to tack it to a Bill for the Land Tax. The Government, and that
section of the Tories who followed the newly-appointed ministers, were
sufficiently strong to defeat this movement, and the Bill met its usual
fate in the House of Lords. As in the preceding session, unable to
quarrel with the House of Lords for exercising their undoubted right,
the Commons found means of attacking them by renewing the question of
the Aylesbury election. Resting upon the decision of the House of Lords,
other inhabitants of Aylesbury had sued the returning officers. The
House of Commons had committed them to Newgate. The Queen's Bench had
refused to interfere; the prisoners demanded a writ of error. The
Commons addressed the Queen against the writ, and put the prisoners into
the custody of their own serjeant-at-arms. The heat of the dispute
rendered a prorogation necessary (March 14).
[Sidenote: Gradual introduction of Whig ministers.]
[Sidenote: Marlborough's composite ministry. 1707.]
But the conduct of the Tory majority had tended still further to incline
the ministry towards the Whigs. Rooke was superseded as
commander-in-chief of the fleet, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, a Whig, put in
his place, and as the three years of the Parliament were now run out,
the Government influence was exercised at the elections against all
those who had voted for tacking the Occasional Conformity Bill. Even
stronger signs were visible of the intention of the Government to form a
junction with the Whigs; the ministers began an intrigue with the Junto,
promising before long to give the Great Seal to William Cowper (a
promise which was shortly after fulfilled), and admitted the Duke of
Newcastle to the ministry as Privy Seal in the place of the Tory Duke of
Buckingham. Nor was it the Government only which was changing its views.
The nation at large, thoroughly interested in the war and disgusted at
the conduct of the Tories, returned at the new elections a large
majority of Whigs. The growing influence of the Whigs was supplemented
by a family tie which connected Marlborough with that party; as
Godolphin, whose son had married one of his daughters, formed a link
with the Tories, so Sunderland, who had married another, connected him
with the Whigs. It seemed as though a bargain advantageous to both sides
might be struck between the Duke and the Whig party. The accession of
Sunderland to the ministry would on the one side strengthen
Marlborough's personal position, and render it more possible for him to
carry on his plan of government without parties; while, on the other, it
would secure to the Whigs a means of at once influencing the character
of the administration. It was determined therefore that Sunderland
should enter the ministry, and as there was then no vacant office, he
was employed at once as extraordinary ambassador to Vienna, and in the
course of the following year (1706) was raised to the office of
Secretary of State. His appointment, and the gradual inclination of the
Government to the Whigs, was followed, at the beginning of the year
1707, by the creation of several Whig Peers, and by a final breach with
the High Tories, when the names of Buckingham, Nottingham, and Rochester
were struck from the list of the Privy Council. Marlborough seemed now
to have gained his object. The administration was a thoroughly
composite one. On the one side were a number of Whigs led by Lord
Sunderland, on the other a section of more moderate Tories headed by
Harley and St. John.
[Sidenote: Harley, seeing its weakness,]
[Sidenote: intrigues against Marlborough.]
But Marlborough underrated the difficulty of managing a coalition. In
his necessary absence abroad this difficult operation was in the hands
of Godolphin, always a timid minister, without any real political
convictions, and ill qualified for a great party struggle. And such a
party struggle was now inevitable. All the ministers were indeed at
present willing to uphold the war. On other points their views were
diametrically opposed, and both sections were anxious for a more
complete admission to power of their own friends. It was the personal
influence of the Churchills alone which could support so strange a
conjunction. That influence depended upon the favour of the Crown, which
by its indirect power of influencing Parliament was practically rather
strengthened than weakened by the Revolution. If that favour could be
withdrawn the ill-assorted ministry must inevitably fall. This truth was
clear to Harley, a man of intriguing character and the leader of the
Tory section of the Cabinet. He perceived that it might be possible to
rise upon the fall of the Churchills, and saw how their power might be
undermined. The Queen was a devoted High Church woman; Marlborough and
his friends, especially since his growing predilection for the Whigs,
were avowedly careless, if they were not Low Church; Harley, on the
other hand, had a great reputation for religion and orthodoxy. Again and
again patronage had been bestowed on what the Queen considered
Latitudinarian principles. Displeased and hurt, she was yet too timid to
stand alone, Harley supplied her with the support she wanted. His
cousin, Mrs. Abigail Hill, who was a cousin and protégée also of the
Duchess of Marlborough, ingratiated herself with the Queen; she was
appointed bedchamber woman, and married with the Queen's influence,
without the knowledge of the Duchess of Marlborough, to Mr. Masham, a
member of Prince George's household. Her quiet, even temper formed a
happy contrast to the termagant violence of the Duchess, and Harley
succeeded in making her his instrument. He roused in the Queen a dread
of the subversion of the Church, and she found courage to make several
Bishops without consulting her ministers.
[Sidenote: Failure of the composite ministry.]
[Sidenote: Harley and his colleagues resign. Feb. 11, 1708.]