everything for the present passed off quietly; the Civil List was voted
as in the preceding reign; and on the 18th of September the King and his
eldest son arrived in England. He was not a man to excite enthusiasm. An
unostentatious man, used to a Court where his will was law, but where
the manners were singularly primitive and plain, he was little suited to
the peculiar position of an English Parliamentary sovereign, from whom,
along with the possession of but little real power, much dignity and
some magnificence were required. Unable therefore to comprehend the
working of that constitution over which he had come to preside, and
without ability sufficient to carry on a policy of his own, he naturally
threw himself into the arms of that party to which he owed his Crown.
The great offices, several of which had been for the last month united
in the hands of Shrewsbury, were therefore distributed among the Whigs.
Townshend was put at the head of the Government, and with him were
Halifax, General Stanhope, Lord Cowper, Nottingham, and Lord Townshend's
brother-in-law, Sir Robert Walpole; while Sunderland was made
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and the Duke of Marlborough (though the King
had already shown his well-founded mistrust of him) reassumed the
offices of Commander-in-chief and Master of the Ordnance. His power,
however, was gone.
[Sidenote: Triumph of the Whigs.]
The establishment of the Hanoverian house had thus very much the
appearance of a triumph of a faction. There were no attempts at
conciliation, such as had been made after the Revolution, no efforts to
give a general and national character to the Government. The King came
forward as the head of the triumphant Whig party. This attitude
naturally at the time excited much ill-feeling, yet on the whole it was
wise. George was not the man to carry out a scheme of comprehensive
government which had already twice failed in the abler hands of William
and of Marlborough. The questions at issue were too vital to admit of
compromise, and the Whig party were wise in their view of the crisis. A
crushing victory was necessary to teach both their conscientious and
factious opponents a lesson,--the one must yield to the force of
circumstances, the other must discover that their only road to office
lay in concession to principles which they were too weak to shake.
Conscientious upholders of the Stuarts must be taught that their choice
lay between submission and the resignation of their claim to be regarded
as Englishmen; those who used the Stuarts as a road to power must be led
to see that they must henceforward limit their opposition to points of
minor importance, that the main principles of government were fixed for
ever.
[Sidenote: Riots in the country.]
But the conduct of the King and of the Whigs, though wise, was such as
to drive the Jacobites to extremities, and to render an appeal to arms
sooner or later almost certain. The irritation of the high Tories at
once showed itself. In January, as the six months had elapsed, the House
was dissolved, and on the meeting of the new House in March, it was
found, as was at that time usually the case, that the party in power
commanded a large majority. This however had not been secured without
serious riots. In Manchester and the midland counties the riots assumed
the form of an attack upon the dissenters, and were so serious as to
necessitate the passing of a Riot Act. By this Act, which is still in
force, it is enacted, that "If any twelve persons are unlawfully
assembled to the disturbance of the peace, and any justice of the peace,
sheriff, &c., shall think proper to command them by proclamation to
disperse, if they contemn his orders, and continue together for one hour
afterwards, such contempt shall be felony, without benefit of clergy."
[Sidenote: Impeachment of the late ministers. March.]
Having secured their majority, it became evident that the Whigs intended
to use their regained ascendancy to the uttermost. The Address, both in
the House of Lords and in the Commons, was obviously pointed against the
framers of the Peace of Utrecht, and before three weeks were over a
secret committee was appointed to consider that peace. Bolingbroke had
already fled and taken service with the Pretender. Ormond, who till this
time had remained in England, putting himself ostentatiously forward as
the leader of the Jacobite opposition, followed his example. Oxford
alone awaited his trial. The two fugitives were proceeded against by
bill of attainder. The impeachment of Oxford was after a while dropped;
in fact, it was difficult to substantiate the charge of treason against
him. It was not till long afterwards that any real proof existed of
treasonable correspondence with the Pretender; and it was scarcely
possible to twist the faults and weaknesses of the Peace, the desertion
of the Catalans, even the surrender, unasked, of Tournay, one of our
conquests, into crimes under the law of treason; nor was the doctrine of
the responsibility of ministers as yet sufficiently established to allow
the majority at once to answer Oxford's solemn declaration, that he had
acted distinctly upon the royal authority. It is true that the plea had
been overruled in the case of Danby; but even in the last reign the
Whigs had themselves sought shelter, after the battle of Almanza, behind
the royal authority, and it was not till more than twenty years of
regular party government had intervened that the doctrine was thoroughly
understood and adopted.
[Sidenote: Jacobite conspiracy.]
[Sidenote: Disaffection in Scotland.]
Meanwhile the aggressive policy of the Whigs was hurrying on an outbreak
of the conspiracy which the timely death of the late Queen had checked.
It was widespread. Ormond, until his flight, had been busily engaged in
organizing it in England, while Bolingbroke had taken it in hand in
France: for then, as always, it seems to have been accepted, that any
insurrection would be useless without material help from France. In many
parts of the country, particularly in the west, the feeling against the
Hanoverian succession was strong, and measures had been taken to secure
Bristol and Exeter, and other great western towns. In Scotland the
difficulty was rather to restrain than to urge forward the Jacobite
feeling. Many causes combined to create a widespread discontent in that
country. In the north the feeling of loyalty to an hereditary chief was
part of the national character, inwoven with the whole system of
clanship. The national pride was flattered by the thought of a Stuart, a
Scotchman, sitting upon the throne of England. Moreover, there was one
chief of predominant power whose interests had been always Whig, and
jealousy of the ascendancy of the clan Campbell, and of its head, the
Duke of Argyle, or Mac Callum More, on this, as on several other
occasions, tended to throw all rival clans into the arms of any party of
which he was the declared enemy. In the Lowlands other influences were
at work. The Presbyterians were not likely to forget the unsparing
cruelty of the later Stuarts, and now that they had the upper hand, the
tolerated Episcopalians met with no great courtesy at their hands; a
constant source of quarrel was thus opened, and the Episcopalians and
Catholics might be well expected to seek refuge from the intolerance of
their victorious rivals, and a restoration even of their former
superiority, in the establishment of the exiled dynasty. But more than
that, everything English was unpopular. Two great imaginary injuries
were rankling in the national mind. The nation had never forgiven King
William's treatment of the Darien Scheme, and were still smarting under
the supposed yoke which the Union had laid upon them. Whoever was King
of England was their natural enemy, so that, except in those places
where settled industry had already felt the advantage of the union with
England, there was great readiness to join in any enterprise which would
be injurious to her. There were therefore ready to join the cause of the
Stuarts in the north all the great clans except the Campbells, and in
the south the Episcopalians, and those nationalists who regarded as
righteous any act of antagonism to England.
[Sidenote: Failure of the Jacobite hopes of French assistance.]
But the movement, both in Scotland and in England, was held to depend on
the conduct of France, and it was probable that, under Bolingbroke's
able management, assistance would come from that country. The King was
indeed far different from the Louis of other days. Enslaved by the
religious influence of Madame de Maintenon, and surrounded by bitter
party disputes with regard to the legitimization of his bastards, his
energy was gone, while war and taxes and persecution had much depressed
the power of France. Still, irritated by the Whig assault upon his
friends in England, the champion as he believed himself of legitimacy,
and angry at the opposition raised by the English ministry to his new
fortifications at Mardyke, he had used his influence with Spain to
procure sums of money for the conspirators, had himself supplied arms,
and had allowed a small squadron to be equipped at Havre at the expense
of France. The flight of Ormond, the first blow to the conspiracy, was
followed, on the 1st of September, by the death of Louis. The Government
passed into the hands of the Regent Orleans, whose policy was of a
purely personal character, his chief aim being the exclusion of the
Spanish house from the succession should the young King die. To secure
his plans at home external peace was necessary. Personal friendship,
both for Stair the English ambassador, and for Stanhope the English
secretary, rendered him still more disinclined to break with England.
Hope from France was gone. Bolingbroke saw at once the course affairs
were taking, and despatched a messenger to tell the leaders of the
conspiracy that, as Scotland could not rise without England, and England
could not rise without France, and France had no intention of moving,
all thoughts of insurrection had better be dropped.
[Sidenote: Mar organizes the insurrection in Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Vigorous measures of the English Government.]
His prudent message came too late. The Pretender, weary of waiting, had
taken matters into his own hands, and a leader had already been
despatched to raise the northern counties of Scotland. This leader was
the Earl of Mar. At Anne's death Mar was Secretary for Scotland, a man
of no very great ability, but who, for his skill in trimming his sails
to the wind, had earned the nickname of "Bobbing John." He once more
tried to play his old game, but found himself mistrusted, and had to
give place to the Duke of Montrose. He now hurried to London, sought
favour at Court, took a wife from among the leaders of the Whig party,
and having thus thrown people off the scent, hurried back to Scotland to
organize the insurrection. His chief influence was in Aberdeenshire,
north of the Grampian hills; and there, early in September, he contrived
a meeting of the chief clans of the neighbourhood. He was joined by
Tullibardine, the heir of the Duke of Athol, who brought with him the
Murrays, and by the great clan of the Gordons, with Lord Panmure, from
the north of Perthshire, towards which county he at once began to
march. The Pretender could not refuse to support Mar's open movement on
his behalf. In October he hurried across France, evading an attempt of
Orleans to arrest him, and an attempt on the part of the English
ambassador to assassinate him. He reached St. Malo in safety. Thence an
expedition under Ormond was to have been thrown upon the English coast.
Twice Ormond was thwarted by the weather; his third attempt was too
late, the English fleet lay before the port. Had he succeeded in
landing, no better fortune would have awaited him; the English
Government had already heard of the gathering of the Highland clans, the
Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the more active Jacobites arrested;
such troops as were then in England, some 8000 in number, were hurried
to the west (for the Scotch outbreak was looked upon only as a feint);
some 6000 troops, due from Holland as a guarantee for the Protestant
succession, were demanded; fresh regiments were rapidly formed; and the
command in Scotland was given to Argyle, the natural opponent of the
Jacobite clans. The vigorous measures of the Government had in fact
already broken the neck of the conspiracy.
[Sidenote: Mar's success in the Highlands.]
[Sidenote: One detachment marches into England,]
[Sidenote: and is defeated at Preston. Nov. 13.]
But there was still real danger in the North, for Mar had an
overwhelming superiority of forces, and before the end of October he had
the complete command of Scotland as far as the Forth. Argyle, desirous
of confining the rebellion as much as possible to the north and east,
attempted to hold the line of that river. Mar, to whom immediate success
was everything, and who overrated the strength of his party in England,
was desirous of crossing the Border as soon as possible, in order to
rally the disaffected round him. He had now about 12,000 men with him,
but these were poorly armed, and even this poor equipment was due to no
care of Mar's, but to a gallant dash by the Master of Sinclair upon an
English ship lying in the Forth. With these troops he would probably
have been unable to have passed Argyle at Stirling, even if he had not
been prevented from moving by the expected arrival of the Pretender. It
was therefore determined that a detachment under Brigadier Mackintosh
should be thrown across the Firth, and marched direct for England, while
the main body should threaten and retain Argyle upon the upper river.
The movement was well executed, and 1500 men passed over at a broad part
of the estuary near North Berwick. They thence, after an ineffectual
march upon Edinburgh, proceeded unopposed directly south to Kelso, as
Argyle was kept from following them by Mar's movements. They were here
joined by some horse under Lord Kenmure, and by a few English horsemen
under Mr. Forster, with whom was Lord Derwentwater. One cause at least
of the insurrection is clearly pointed out by a proclamation which was
here issued, in which the chief stress was laid upon the foreign
domination imposed upon the nation by the late Union. Some difficulty
was found in persuading the Highlanders to cross the Border, and the
march was directed therefore in a more westerly direction, following
along the back of the Cheviots, and crossing into England near Longtown
in the direction of Carlisle. Even in spite of this concession to their
feelings, several hundreds of the Highlanders deserted, and the rest had
to be tempted forward by a promise of pay. From Carlisle they marched up
the valley of the Eden to Penrith, crossed the hills to Lancaster, where
they were well received by the many Catholic families in the
neighbourhood, and, foolishly leaving this strong place behind them,
pushed on for Preston on the Ribble. Since entering England, the
command-in-chief had devolved on Mr. Forster, and the insurgents knew
that they were being followed by General Carpenter with between 2,000
and 3,000 men. Forster--a very inefficient commander--directed his
attention only to the pursuing army, and discipline was much relaxed. On
the 11th of November, General Wills was marching upon Preston northward
from Wigan. To reach Preston he had to cross the Ribble by a bridge, and
then pass upward along a lane which is described by Cromwell, in 1648,
as "very deep and ill," and which it had cost him four hours to clear.
Wills met no opposition till he reached the town, where a gallant
defence was made behind barricades. The neglect of all proper
precautions is somewhat explained by the fact that Mr. Forster was
unable to attend a council of war held that morning, having been
compelled to take to his bed on account of "some damage" which he had
received "at a convivial entertainment." On the 13th, however, Carpenter
joined Wills, the town was completely surrounded, and the insurgents saw
the necessity of a surrender. Much dispute has arisen about the terms of
that surrender. It seems probable that Wills used ambiguous language,
understood by the insurgents to contain a promise of clemency--by
himself, as insisting upon an unconditional surrender. Colonel Oxburgh,
Mr. Forster's negotiator, declared upon the scaffold that the words used
were: "You cannot better entitle yourselves to that clemency than by
surrendering yourselves prisoners at discretion." 1500 rebels gave
themselves up, among them eight noblemen. As however a considerable
number of English Catholics had joined the Scotch since entering
Lancashire, a good many of the rebels must have made good their escape.
[Sidenote: Mar is defeated at Sheriffmuir.]
On the same 13th of November on which Generals Carpenter and Wills had
joined their forces the insurgent operations in the North had also come
to a disastrous conclusion. Mar had moved slowly south and west along
the great valley of Strathmore, which leads direct from Perth to
Stirling. He was approaching Dunblane when he heard that Argyle with
4000 regular troops was already occupying it. On a neighbouring eminence
called Sheriffmuir, a spur of the Ochil hills, the armies encountered.
The royalist left wing was unable to withstand the rush of the clansmen,
and immediately withdrew towards Stirling. The insurgents had held that
their own left wing was secured by some marshy ground, but Argyle
perceived that a light night-frost had rendered the morass passable. He
fell with his cavalry upon the left flank of the Highlanders, and drove
them from the field. The battle was thus equally balanced, the peculiar
curve of the ground rendered any general view of the action impossible,
and Mar, on his return from the pursuit of the right wing, finding his
own left destroyed, determined to retreat, leaving to Argyle the full
advantages of the victory.
[Sidenote: The Pretender appears, but flies before Argyle.]
The battle of Preston had proved the impossibility of relying upon any
formidable insurrection in England. As the royalist troops were
collected and armies strengthened, the chances of success became less
every day. Mar remained quiet at Perth, and Argyle and the English saw
that delay was wholly in their favour. But in January a new colour was
given to the affair by the arrival of the Pretender at Peterhead. He at
once assumed the style of royalty, issuing proclamations and appointing
a day for his coronation. The English ministry could not believe that so
bold a step would have been taken without promised support from France.
Immediate action became therefore necessary, and through villages burnt
by the Pretender's order, and deep snow which Mar believed impassable,
Argyle moved northwards, gradually threatening Perth. From the first
James had shown but little military spirit, and now, although the
clansmen offered to fight for him to the last, on the 30th of January
(1716) the army was withdrawn from Perth across the frozen Tay, and
marched along the coast to Montrose, whence James and Mar withdrew
secretly to France, deserting their followers, who, still retiring
northward, were wholly broken up as an army when Argyle reached Aberdeen
on the 8th of February. Like every man that ever bore the name of
Stuart, with fair abilities, James was selfish and self-seeking to the
last degree. Faithless to his friends, a slave to his sensual passions,
he was respectable only in a certain gift of personal bravery, in a sort
of grandeur of obstinacy, and in the tenacity with which he clung to his
religious creed and his hereditary rights.
[Sidenote: Punishment of the rebels.]
As is always the case on the defeat of a domestic treason, strong
pressure was brought to bear upon the ministers to induce them
to act leniently towards the prisoners. The seven noble
prisoners--Derwentwater, Kenmure, Nithsdale, Wintoun, Widdrington,
Carnwath and Nairn--were impeached by the House of Commons, all but Lord
Wintoun pleaded guilty, and sentence was pronounced. Then every means
was brought to bear upon the King--private petitions from the wives of
the accused noblemen, supported by the influence of all the ladies of
the Court; petitions of ladies to Parliament, and lastly, an address
from the majority of the Lords, urging him to reprieve if possible.
These efforts were so far successful that all were reprieved with the
exception of Derwentwater, Kenmure, and Nithsdale. The two first were
executed, the escape of the last was contrived by the skill of his wife,
who conveyed a woman's dress to her husband, in which he passed safely
out of his prison, personating a lady friend who had accompanied the
Countess on her visit, and who remained in his place. Three other
important prisoners, Mackintosh, Forster, and Lord Wintoun also made
good their escape, which seems to indicate either a strong sympathy on
the part of the gaolers, or perhaps a wish on the part of the Government
to avoid the necessity of more executions. Of the lesser prisoners, many
of the common men were executed or transported; officers who had been in
the King's service were summarily shot; but a very large proportion of
those captured in Scotland being brought for judgment to Carlisle, in
contravention, it was asserted, of the terms of the Union, were punished
lightly or released, for fear of exciting fresh national quarrels.
[Sidenote: The Septennial Act. April 26, 1716.]