bloodshed which cast a martial glory over her reign; and her humanity was abused by a party to rob the country and Europe of all its hard-won advantages in the moment when they should have been secured for all ages. She was equally averse to blood spilled on the scaffold, and no great political execution took place in her reign. Like her sister, Mary, and unlike her father, grandfather, and great-grand-father, she preferred the love of her subjects to the destruction of their privileges; and it ought never to be forgotten that she secured the comfort of numbers of the families of poor clergymen to every future generation by her "bounty," and conferred on the nation at large one of the greatest political blessings which it ever acquired—perhaps the most solid cause of its now wondrous prosperity—the union with Scotland.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.
State of Parties in England—George I. proclaimed—Electoral Prince created Prince of Wales—King arrives in England—Tories excluded from Favour Pretenders Manifesto—New Parliament—Bolingbroke retires to France—Sir William Wyndham reprimanded by the Speaker Admiral Norris sent to the Baltic—Resolution to impeach Oxford, Ormonde, and Strafford—Oxford sent to the Tower—The King announces to Parliament the Commencement of a Rebellion—Ormonde and Bolingbroke attainted—Death of Louis XIV.—The Earl of Mar erects the Pretender's Standard in Scotland—Members of the Commons arrested Pretender proclaimed in the North of England by the Earl of Derwentwater and Mr. Foster—Mackintosh joins the English Insurgents—They surrender at Preston—Battle of Dunblaine—Pretender in Scotland—Returns to France—The Rebel Lords tried—Lords Derwentwater and Kenmair beheaded—Trials of other Rebels—Septennial Act—Duke of Argyll disgraced—Triple Alliance betwixt England, France, and Holland—Count Gyllenborg, Swedish Minister in London, arrested—Oxford Riots—The Commons pass the South Sea Act, the Bank Act, and General Fund Act—Trial of the Earl of Oxford—Proceedings in Convocation respecting Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor.
The calculations of no political party had ever been more completely falsified than that of the Jacobites and their congeners the tories on the death of the queen. They had relied on the fact that the house of Hanover was regarded with dislike as successors to the throne of England by all the catholic powers of Europe, on account of their protestantism, and many of the protestant powers from jealousy; and calculated that, whilst France would be disposed to support the claims of the pretender, there were no continental countries which would support those of Hanover, except Holland and the new kingdom of Prussia, neither of which created them much alarm. Prussia was but a minor power, not capable of furnishing much aid to a contest in England. Holland had been too much exhausted by a long war to be willing to engage in another, except for a cause which vitally concerned itself. In England, the tories being in power, and Bolingbroke earnest in the cause of the pretender, the duke of Ormonde at the head of the army, there appeared to the minds of the Jacobites nothing to fear but the too early demise of the queen, which might find their plans yet unmatured. To this they, in fact, attributed their failure; but we may very confidently assert that, even had Anne lived as long as they desired her, there was one element omitted in their calculations which would have overthrown all their attempts—the invincible antipathy to popery in the heart of the nation, which the steadfast temper of the pretender showed must inevitably come back with him to renew all the old struggles. The event of the queen's death discovered, too, the comparative weakness of the tory faction, the strength and activity of the whigs. The king showing no haste to arrive, gave ample opportunity to the Jacobites—had they been in any degree prepared, as they ought to have been, after so many years, for this great crisis—to introduce the pretender and rally round his standard. But whilst George I. lingered, no Stuart appeared; and the whigs had taken such careful and energetic precautions, that without him every attempt must only have brought destruction on the movers. The measures of Shrewsbury were complete. The way by sea was secured for the protestant king, though he showed no haste in coming; and the regency act provided for the security of every department of government at home.
Before the proclamation of the new king the council had met, and, according to the regency act, and an instrument signed by the king and produced by Herr Kreyenberg, the Hanoverian resident, nominated the persons who were to act till the king's arrival. They consisted of the seven great officers of state and a number of the peers. The whole was found to include eighteen of the principal noblemen, nearly all of the whig party, as the dukes of Shrewsbury, Somerset, and Argyll; the lords Cowper, Halifax, and Townshend. It was noticed, however, that neither Marlborough, Sunderland, nor Somers was of the number; nor ought this to have excited any surprise, when it was recollected that the list was drawn out in 1705, though only signed just before the queen's death. These noblemen belonged to that junto under whose thraldom Anne had so long groaned. The omission, however, greatly incensed Marlborough and Sunderland. Marlborough landed at Dover on the day of the queen's death, where he was received with the warmest acclamations and tokens of the highest popularity. He was met on his approach to London by a procession of two hundred gentlemen, headed by Sir Charles Coxe, member for Southwark. As he drew nearer this procession was joined by a long train of carriages. It was like a triumph; and Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister, wrote home that it was as if he had gained another battle at Hochstet; that he would be of great service in case the pretender should make any attempt, but that he was displeased that he was not in the regency, or that any man except the king should be higher in the country than he. He went straight to the house of lords to take the oaths to the king; but at Temple Bar his carriage broke down, to the great delight of the people, because it compelled him to come out and enter another, by which they got a good view of him. Having taken the oaths, he retired into the country till the arrival of the king, disgusted at his not being in the regency.
The lords justices having met, appointed Joseph Addison, afterwards so celebrated as a writer, and even now very popular, as their secretary, and ordered all dispatches addressed to Bolingbroke to be brought to him. This was an intimation that Bolingbroke would be dismissed; and that proud minister, instead of giving orders, was obliged to receive them, and to wait at the door of the council-chamber with his bags and papers. As the lords justices were apprehending that there might be some disturbances in Ireland, they were about to send over Sunderland as lord lieutenant, and general Stanhope as commander-in-chief; but they were speedily relieved of their fears by the intelligence that all
