had passed off quietly there; that the lords justices of Ireland, the archbishop of Armagh, and Sir Constantine Phipps, who had been more than suspected of Jacobitism, had proclaimed the king on the 6th of August, and, to give evidence of their new zeal, had issued a proclamation for disarming papists and seizing their horses. The proclamation passed with the same quietness in Scotland, and no king, had he been born a native, in the quietest times, could have succeeded more smoothly. If any disturbance was to come from any quarter, it must be from France. There were reports that preparations were making there in favour of the pretender, and, what was suspicious, Matthew Prior, the resident there, gave no information of any kind in his dispatches, and wrote in cypher where Bothmar observed he might write with all openness. But Prior had been the confidential agent of Bolingbroke, and probably did not feel very much at ease under the new circumstances. There was another man of a more mercurial and enterprising character in Paris, lord Peterborough, who hastened over with assurances from Louis XIV., as fast as post-horses could carry him, that he desired to live in peace, and to observe the treaty. Louis confirmed this himself in a letter. In fact, the pretender, who on the news of Anne's death had gone from Lorraine to Paris to consult with his mother and friends regarding a prompt expedition to England, was ordered by De Torcy to return to Bar-le-duc, which he did. All intelligence from that quarter, therefore, tended to allay fears of commotion.
But in proportion to the absence of alarm from without, was the rush and bustle amongst the whig expectants for promotion. Though the king had not arrived, baron Bothmar was in full correspondence with him, keeping him au fait as to all the incidents of the government, and he was become the all-important medium of royal favour. He was beset daily by a swarm of candidates for offices and promotions. The churchmen were in eager pursuit of the vacant bishopric of Ely, and every place at court, in the courts of law, and the army had its throng of aspirants. Bothmar, amid these conflicting claims, recommended lord Halifax to be first lord of the treasury, assisted by Mr. Boyle and Mr. Walpole; that Orford, the formerly double-dealing Russell, should be first lord of the admiralty; that Marlborough, Sunderland, Stanhope, and Cadogan should have places, and that the duke of Shrewsbury should be allowed to retire. Sunderland made a bold push for the place of secretary of state; and the earl of Manchester, who had been ambassador at Venice, and secretary of state at home, desired the office of a lord of the king's bedchamber. Bishop Burnet also solicited the place of groom of the bed-chamber for his son. Bothmar recommended some of these, but advised the king as to the rest to confine himself to general promises, and to act as he saw best after he had been himself awhile in the country, and had obtained a clearer view of their respective merits.
Tories as well as whigs put in their claims. Lord Hertford, the eldest son of the duke of Somerset, sought the post of a lord-in-waiting either to the king or the prince George; the duke of Buckingham, who, as we have noted, had married the natural daughter of James II. by Catherine Sedley, solicited for his duchess the place of a lady of the bed-chamber; and the duke of Grafton, one of the grandsons of Charles II., whose mother had now married Sir Thomas Hanmer, also desired to be a lord of the bed-chamber, and Bothmar recommended him. "We are gaping and staring," wrote the tory Erasmus Lewis, a tool of the late ministry, "to see who is to rule us. The whigs think they shall engross all; we think we shall have our share."
The parliament, according to a provision of the act of regency, met on the very day of the queen's death, Sunday though it was. The tories endeavoured to obtain a little delay by moving, through secretary Bromley, that the house adjourn till Wednesday, as the speaker was in Wales; but this was defeated by Sir Richard Onslow, who declared that the country was in too critical a state, and moved and carried that the house should meet the next day. Three days were occupied in the administration of the oaths. On the 5th the lords justices went to the house of peers, and the chancellor, addressing the commons there, recommended that they should consult the honour of the crown by voting such branches of the revenue as had expired with the queen. He said that the regency forbore laying before them anything which did not require their immediate consideration, not having received his majesty's pleasure; but he exhorted them, with the greatest earnestness, to a perfect unanimity and a firm adhesion to the sovereign's interest, as the only means of preserving the present happy tranquillity.
Loyal addresses to the throne were carried unanimously in both houses, expressing that accommodating grief and pleasure which can so readily blend on such occasions. They expressed the liveliest grief for the death of Anne of blessed memory, and the liveliest pleasure at the accession of a monarch of such princely virtues and undoubted right to the crown. The next business was to settle the civil list. Anne had had seven hundred thousand pounds, and it was the opinion of the whigs that the same should be granted to the king, and that a new parliament should further provide for prince George and his family. As there was no queen, the electress having been dead some years, this would have been ample; but the tories, determined to make a bold stroke for the recovery of favour, or damage the whigs by putting them into the position of less liberality, voted for a million! The manœuvre was too palpable, and the whigs, without attempting to oppose this sum, went on and voted that which the late sovereign had had, namely, seven hundred thousand pounds.
Whilst the bill was in progress, Horace Walpole, the brother of Robert, moved that the sum of sixty-five thousand and twenty-two pounds arrears of pay due to the Hanoverian troops—which had been withheld ever since July, 1712, because they would not desert the allies at the base commands of the Oxford and Bolingbroke ministry—should be discharged. The demand for payment of these arrears had been repeatedly made by the whigs, but the tory government had continued to refuse it, and it had been rejected by a large majority only a few weeks before in the same house of commons. But now there was a Hanoverian sovereign on the throne, and the motion was no sooner made by Horace Walpole than it was seconded by the tory Sir William Wyndham, and carried without opposition. It was
