[1697-1699 A.D.]

brated John Somers, who had been for some time lord-keeper, and made him chancellor. Admiral Russell was created earl of Orford, and Lord Sunderland was now made lord chamberlain.

THE PEACE OF RYSWICK (1697 A.D.)

The war had languished of late, and in the course of this year it was terminated by the Peace of Ryswick (September 20th). Louis gave up all his late conquests except Strasburg, and he acknowledged William as king of England. James published manifestos in assertion of his rights; but they were unheeded. It appears that Louis had proposed to William to have the crown settled on the prince of Wales after his death, and that the latter, who had no great affection for the princess Anne, consented to it. But the princess had a sure ally in the bigotry of her father and his queen. The idea of their son being reared a Protestant, and in such case he must be, filled them both with horror, and they rejected the proposal without hesitation.

PARLIAMENT FORCES THE REDUCTION OF THE ARMY (1697 A.D.)

The peace was on the whole an honourable one, considering that all the advantages of the war had been on the side of France; it was also absolutely necessary from the exhausted state of the English finances. But William knew that it was likely to be little more than a truce, and in his speech to the parliament (December 2nd) he gave it as his opinion, "that for the present England cannot be safe without a land force." The necessity however of reduction and economy was strongly felt, the war having caused a debt of seventeen millions, and a dread of standing armies as the instruments of despotism pervaded the minds of most people, not considering that in the Mutiny Bill and the necessity of annual votes of supply, they had abundant security against those dangers. It was therefore voted that all the troops raised since 1680 should be disbanded, and it was finally resolved (on the 18th) that ten thousand men should be the force for the ensuing year. To gild the pill for the monarch, and prove that they were not wanting in gratitude and affection to him, they voted that a sum of 700,000l. should be granted him "for life" for the support of the civil list. The king however neglected the former vote, and when he was next going to Holland, he left sealed orders with the regency to keep up a force of sixteen thousand men.

During the king's absence (1698) a new parliament was elected. The members were mostly men of revolution principles, attached to the government, but not very courteous to the king.. When on his return from the Continent the parliament met, he hinted in the speech from the throne (December 9th) his opinion of the necessity of a large land force. But the commons, irritated at his neglect of the vote of their predecessors on this point, forthwith resolved that it should not exceed seven thousand men, and these to be his majesty's natural-born subjects. As this last clause went to deprive him of his Dutch guards, to which he was so much attached, and of the brave regiments of French Protestants, the insult coupled with ingratitude (as he deemed it) sank deep into his mind. He seriously resolved to abandon the government and retire to Holland, and he had actually written the speech which he intended to make on that occasion, when he was diverted from his purpose. He therefore gave his assent to the bill (February 1st, 1699). Ere however he dismissed his guards, he made a final appeal to the good feelings of the commons. He sent them (March 18th) a message in his own hand

[1700 A.D.]

writing, to say that all the necessary preparations were now made, and that he would send them away immediately, "unless, out of consideration to him, the house be disposed to find a way for continuing them longer in his service which his majesty would take very kindly." But the commons were inexorable, and the guards departed. "It was a moving sight," says the whig Oldmixon," "to behold them marching from St. James' park through London streets, taking a long farewell of the friends they left in England with kisses and tears in their eyes; many of

them having English wives and children following them into a land strange to them, after their husbands and fathers had spent so many years in the service of that country out of which they were now driven." There was only one regiment of these guards, which makes the barbarity the greater. We feel it impossible to approve of this conduct of the commons; though it was termed national feeling it showed more of party spirit. They should have recollected, that had it not been for these troops, who won the battle of the Boyne, they would probably have no power over them or any other troops. "The foreign troops," says Hallam,d "had claims which a grateful and generous people should not have forgotten; they were many of them the chivalry of Protestantism, the Huguenot gentlemen, who had lost all but their swords in a cause which we deemed our own; they were the men who had terrified James from Whitehall, and brought about a deliverance, which, to speak plainly, we had neither sense nor courage to achieve for ourselves, or which at least we could never have achieved without enduring the convulsive throes of anarchy."

JOHN SOMERS
(1652-1716)

In the following session (1700) the commons proceeded a step further in making the king feel their power. The lands of those who had fought on the side of James in Ireland, exceeding a million of acres, were forfeited, and, in a legal sense, were at the disposal of the crown; yet still in all equity they should be applied to the public service. But William, who was of a generous temper, and who never could divest himself of the idea that as king he was entitled to all the prerogative exercised by his predecessors, had granted away the far greater part of them, chiefly to his mistress, Mrs. Villiers, now countess of Orkney, to the insatiable Portland, to Ginkel earl of Athlone, to Sidney Lord Romney, and to another Dutch favourite, Keppel, who had been page, then private secretary to the king, and who now had eclipsed Portland in his

[1700 A.D.] favour, and had been created earl of Albemarle. Still he had only exercised a lawful prerogative, and the commons were not justified in the Act of Resumption which they passed, and still less in "tacking," as it was termed, its provisions to a money bill in order to prevent the lords from altering them. "This most reprehensible device," observes Hallam,d "though not an unnatural consequence of their pretended right to an exclusive concern in money bills, had been employed in a former instance in this reign (February, 1692). They were again successful on this occasion; the lords receded from their amendments and passed the bill at the king's desire, who perceived that the fury of the commons was tending to a terrible convulsion. But the precedent was infinitely dangerous to their legislative power. If the commons, after some more attempts of the same nature, desisted from so unjust an encroachment, it must be attributed to that which has been the great preservative of the equilibrium in the English government - the public voice of a reflecting people, averse to manifest innovation, and soon offended by the intemperance of factions."

The king was tolerant in his own temper, and he was pledged to the emperor and his Catholic allies to indulge his Catholic subjects. But the commons now, on the resort of priests to England and their usual imprudence, brought in a terrific bill to check the growth of popery. By this act any one informing against a priest exercising his functions was to receive £100 reward. and the priest to be imprisoned for life; every person professing the popish religion must, after attaining the age of eighteen, take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribe the declaration against transubstantiation and the worship of saints, or become incapable of inheriting or purchasing lands, and during his life his next of kin being a Protestant was to enjoy them. The lords and the king gave no opposition to the will of the commons; but the spirit of liberty and equity rendered the barbarous enactment of no effect, and no properties were lost by it.

FALL OF THE WHIG JUNTO; A TORY MINISTRY IN POWER

The earl of Sunderland, foreseeing the coming storm, had already resigned his office of chamberlain, much against the wishes of the king. Lord Orford, fearing the commons, followed his example; the duke of Leeds was dismissed from his post of president of the council. But the tories had persuaded the favourites Albemarle, and Villiers Lord Jersey, that it would be for the king's advantage to employ them instead of the whigs. The king himself seems to have thought that course necessary, and in compliance with the wishes of the tories, he consented to take the great seal from Lord Somers, the leader of the whig party. William wished him to resign it of his own accord, but this Somers declined doing, as it might appear to be the result of fear or guilt. The earl of Jersey was then sent (April 7th) to demand it; he delivered it up and it was committed to Sir Nathan Wright. The duke of Shrewsbury immediately resigned.

When the king returned from the Continent this year, he modelled the ministry to the content of the tories. Godolphin was set again over the treasury, Lord Grey of Werk, now earl of Tankerville, was made privy seal, and Rochester lord-lieutenant of Ireland; and to diminish the power of the whigs in the commons, their leader in that house, Charles Montague, was raised to the peerage under the title of baron of Halifax, Sarville, marquis of Halifax,

[As Gardiner notes, this established the principle that a minister unsatisfactory to the house of commons must resign.]

[1701 A.D.]

having died without heirs. The ministers having advised a dissolution, a new parliament was summoned, and met (February 10th, 1701).

The two great measures which were now to occupy the attention of the parliament were the succession and the partition treaty.

Of all the children that the princess Anne had borne, only one had survived. This was William Duke of Gloucester, born in 1689. When this young prince had attained his ninth year, the king assigned him a peculiar establishment, and appointed the earl of Marlborough to be his governor, and Bishop Burnet his preceptor. But the prince having over-exerted himself on his birth day (July 24th, 1700), took a fever of which he died. The next heir to the crown was the duchess of Savoy, daughter of Henrietta, youngest child of Charles I, but her religion excluding her, the nearest Protestant to the throne was Sophia, dowager-electress of Hanover, daughter of the queen of Bohemia, the sister of that monarch. In the speech from the throne, the subject was pressed on the attention of parliament, and no time was lost in preparing a bill for the purpose.

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT AND THE TREATIES OF PARTITION (1701 A.D.)

The Act of Settlement which was now passed, limited the succession of the crown to the princess Sophia, and the heirs of her body being Protestants. It further provided, that no foreigner should hold any place of trust, civil or military, or take any grant from the crown; that the nation should not be obliged to engage in war for the defence of any dominions not belonging to the crown of England; that the sovereign should join in communion with the Church of England, and not go out of the country without the consent of parliament; that no pardon should be pleadable to an impeachment; that no person holding an office or pension under the crown should be capable of sitting in the house of commons; that judges' commissions should be made quamdiu se bene gesserint, and their salaries be ascertained; that all business properly belonging to the privy council should be transacted there, and all the resolutions be signed by the councillors present, etc.

The regard for liberty shown in this important bill certainly does honour to the tories. Some of the articles seemed no doubt to reflect on the king, but recent experience had shown their necessity, and future experience proved their utility. There was, however, one fatal omission in the bill; the foreign prince coming to the throne should have been required to surrender his former dominions.

The affair of the treaty of partition was much more intricate. Charles II of Spain was childless; the emperor, the elector of Bavaria, and the king of France had all married daughters of Spain. Louis' queen, it is true, had at her marriage solemnly renounced her right of succession, but the ambition of Louis, it was well known, would not be held in by so slender a cord; and if he could add the Spanish dominions to his own, his power, it was feared, would be irresistible. In 1698, William having seen, from the temper of parliament,

[The Act of Settlement was the seal of our constitutional laws, the complement of the Revolution itself and the Bill of Rights, the last great statute which restrains the power of the crown, and manifests, in any conspicuous degree, a jealousy of parliament in behalf of its own and the subject's privileges. The battle had been fought and gained; the Statute Book, as it becomes more voluminous, is less interesting in the history of our constitution; the voice of petition, complaint, or remonstrance is seldom to be traced in the journals; the crown in return desists altogether, not merely from the threatening or objurgatory tone of the Stuarts, but from that dissatisfaction sometimes apparent in the language of William; and the vessel seems riding in smooth water, moved by other impulses, and liable perhaps to other dangers, than those of the ocean-wave and the tempest.-HALLAM,d]

[1701 A.D.] how little chance there was of prevailing on the English nation to engage in a war, resolved if he could not avert the evil entirely to diminish it as much as possible. Louis too was, or pretended to be, satisfied to be secured in a part rather than have to fight for the whole. Accordingly, when William returned to Holland that year, a secret treaty was concluded between the kings of England and France, and the states of Holland, for partitioning the Spanish dominions, by which the dauphin was to have Naples and all the other Italian dominions of the crown of Spain, except the duchy of Milan, which was to go

to the emperor's second son, Charles. The dauphin was also to have the province of Guipuzcoa, in the north of Spain; but the crown of Spain, with all its other dominions, was to go to the electoral prince of Bavaria.

The death of this young prince having frustrated this arrangement, a new one was concluded (March 15th, 1700). By this the archduke Charles was to have Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands, while the dauphin should have Guipuzcoa and all the Italian dominions, but Milan was to be exchanged for Lorraine. The object proposed by William and the states was, to preserve the balance of power as much as possible; but it was certainly a bold step thus to parcel out the Spanish monarchy without the consent of the crown or people of Spain. Accordingly, the pride of the Spanish nation. was roused, and through the arts of the French ambassador and his party, the king, when on his death-bed (November 1st), was induced to make a will leaving all his dominions to Philip the second son of the dauphin. Louis, after an affected hesitation, allowed his grandson to accept the splendid bequest. He then used all his arts to obtain the acquiescence of the king

COSTUME ABOUT 1700 A.D.

of England and the states, but finding them unavailing, he had recourse to stronger measures. By what was called the Barrier Treaty, Namur, Antwerp, and some other places in the Netherlands, were garrisoned by Dutch troops; and by a secret and rapid march, the French in one night surprised and captured all these garrisons, which amounted to twelve thousand men. The states, to free their soldiers, and urged by the clamour of a large faction at home, and the terror of the French arms now at their doors, acknowledged Philip, and King William found it necessary to follow their example (April 17th, 1701).

It is asserted that Louis scattered his gold with no sparing hand among the members of the English parliament, in order to avert the danger of a war. Be this as it may, his game was played effectually in that assembly. The peers (March 21st) presented an address condemnatory of "that fatal treaty" of partition, and the commons, after a furious debate, in which Mr. Howe, a zealous jacobite, termed it a "felonious treaty," made a still stronger address, and then proceeded to impeach the earls of Portland and Orford, and the lords Somers and Halifax, for their share in it. Disputes, however, arising between the two houses, the commons refused to go on with the impeach