Читать книгу History of England (1688-1815) - E. M. Wrong - Страница 6

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Anne sat more firmly on the throne than William. She owed this not to her brain, but to her sex, family and tastes. She was a devout Anglican and the last Protestant Stuart; most Jacobites saw in her a plausible imitation of a legitimist monarch, and since the alternative was a boy whose claims could wait, they lay quiet. Unlike William, Anne had no international aims, to her England was an end, not a means, and it dimly felt the difference. In politics she was incapable of a judgment that did not turn on her liking or distaste for the sponsor of a cause, so she left foreign policy, which could not be determined in this way, to her ministers and kept Church patronage for her particular sphere. She was stupid, obstinate, lavish with confidence once given and reluctant to recall it, but never a complete tool of her favourites—the Duchess of Marlborough at the beginning, Mrs. Masham at the end of her reign. Her prejudices frequently coincided with the nation's and increased her popularity. She had three chief aims, to be Queen, to favour the Church's right wing, to give her husband, Prince George of Denmark, offices he was incompetent to fill. More troublesome to her ministers than Anne's wifely devotion was her refusal, like Elizabeth's, to contemplate her successor; she would have no Hanoverian visit England nor any Jacobite mention her half-brother's claims.

The reign saw a succession of victories such as England had never known, the formation of Great Britain, and a rising party warfare that reached its climax just before Anne's death. The nation was Tory at heart, though for a time the Whigs prevailed through their discipline and whole-hearted support of the war. Behind the Tories stood the rank and file of the clergy, with enormous though often latent power, increasingly vocal, intolerant, and hating a Presbyterian even more than a Roman Catholic. The Whigs drew support from the power of money, for a time from moderate Tories, also from the slow and un-remarked tendency of the time, which gradually undermined the extreme Tory position. With free printing, men of letters became a power no Government could neglect; Addison and Steele wrote for the Whigs, Swift for the Tories, Defoe on behalf of moderation. Party coloured everything, the coffee-houses, literary and dining clubs, commissions in the forces, theology. But despite its fury a softening of manners had begun, fallen ministers went less in fear of their lives than before, and the ablest controversialists found sarcasm a better weapon than mere abuse.

On William's death Marlborough became generalissimo and virtual Prime Minister. He and Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer, began one of the most effective partnerships of history. They put the war above party triumph, and drew support first from the Tories, their own party, who gained a majority in the election of 1702, then from the moderates of either side, finally from the Whigs alone. Marlborough saw to diplomacy and strategy, Godolphin to finance and control of Parliament. Their partnership lasted for eight years, in which Scotland was brought into Union and Bourbon ascendancy over Europe permanently destroyed.

France seemed a more dangerous enemy than in the last war. Then her only foreign help came from Turkey, now she had the Spanish dominions and Bavaria in alliance, with Hungary ready to flare into revolt behind the Emperor. Flanders, where William and Luxembourg had manœuvred indecisively, was in her hands. But her position was weaker than appeared. Spain was little more helpful as an ally than dangerous as an enemy, vulnerable and as much a drain as a support. England's military tradition, begun by the Ironsides, had revived under William, and her troops were no longer the undisciplined recruits of 1689. Marlborough and Eugene stood far above their opponents: Marlborough's chance had come late, for he was fifty-two—Napoleon's age at death—but he had a triumphant genius for war, where he was a Shakespeare opposed by mediocrity. Besides commanding the chief allied army he set the main lines of naval strategy.

His designs were to clear Flanders and make Holland secure, to use naval pressure on south France, and, with Austria and Savoy furnishing the army, to encompass and destroy Toulon. The first he achieved himself; Rooke's capture of Gibraltar in 1704 and Stanhope's of Minorca in 1708 made the second possible, but the third depended on allies who failed at the critical moments. Marlborough agreed with the Whigs, that England was in the war as a principal, and must seek a joint victory. When Holland and Austria began to weaken under the strain, England increased her own effort, and was able to do this because after 1704 her fleets rode the sea unchallenged. But the heavier burden stimulated Tory opposition, present from the beginning, and was only made endurable by constant victory. The Tories held more and more forcibly that England should confine herself to naval and colonial war, leaving land campaigns to Continental states. They feared that growth of the army might menace the nation's freedom.

In 1702 Marlborough took Liège, and twice would have wrecked a French army but that the Dutch vetoed a battle. Next year, though Marlborough won the valley of the Meuse, things went badly. Austria had to evacuate Italy, Vienna was threatened by a Franco-Bavarian attack. English dissensions were growing, the extreme Tories, under Rochester, Nottingham and Seymour, wished to limit war liability, to expel all Whigs from county lieutenancies and commissions of the peace, and to drive Dissenters from public life. Many of these took the sacramental test but regularly attended their own chapels; high Churchmen thought impious this natural result of turning a sacrament into a civil qualification, and pressed a Bill to fine and eject any official who went to a Nonconformist service. "Occasional Conformity" had been a cry in the election of 1702, and to destroy it remained a fixed point in Tory policy through the reign. But to pass the Bill would dry up dissenting subscriptions to Government loans and paralyse the army, so Marlborough connived at its defeat in the Lords, and turned for support to Harley and the moderate Tories. In the spring of 1704 they replaced the extremists in the Ministry.

That year was the most critical of the war, and the most successful. Marlborough's design was to lead his army to Bavaria and save Austria, while Rooke's fleet contained the French forces in Savoy, Catalonia and Sicily, and threatened Toulon. This proved impossible, but Rooke turned to a scheme first planned by Cromwell, and took the obsolete fortress of Gibraltar; to keep an easy conquest he fought an indecisive naval action off Malaga. Meanwhile Marlborough's own campaign, secretly prepared for months, moved perfectly. The Dutch agreed that he might go to the Moselle, from there he struck up the Rhine, marched two hundred and fifty miles to the Danube, and reached it with his army in perfect condition. He destroyed the Bavarian forces at Donauwörth in June, in August, and with Eugene's help, the French at Blenheim. By October he was back on the Rhine, Austria safe, Bavaria forced to make peace, the French plans of conquest shattered.

Blenheim beat the Tories as well as Louis. It made the war popular, but they again obstinately attacked Occasional Conformity, and to force the measure through the Lords an extremist section tried to make it part of a money Bill. This split the party and failed. An election in 1705 returned a Whig majority, despite the cry, raised by the clergy, of "the Church in danger." Anne thought this cry a reflection on her orthodoxy, and became less reluctant to see Whigs in power; during the next two years they were admitted to office piecemeal.

A coalition Ministry of moderates had now to face a problem important as the war though less dramatic: the future of Scotland. The Revolution had given the Scottish Parliament powers it had never known, while by establishing Presbyterianism it had broken the close connection between religion and politics on which for over a century Scottish history had pivoted. The clans gradually ceased active resistance, the dominant Lowlands turned part of their attention from politico-theological dispute to material prosperity. Scotland was an independent nation, sharing a joint king with England; but she had no colonies, no fleet, little commerce; where her interests clashed with England's they were ignored. William never visited her, and his neglect had allowed Stair in 1692 to plan and execute the massacre of Glencoe. Scotland tried oversea expansion, and in 1698 launched an expedition to colonise the isthmus of Panama. This meant war with Spain, England's ally: before Spanish arms and tropical fever the colony failed. England kept her colonial and Indian trade to herself, and Scotland, who had been ready to consider full union, lay almost bankrupt and impotent but for one weapon. The House of Hanover had been promised the English, but not the Scottish, throne. If her Parliament set up a different monarch after Anne's death, England would again have a northern enemy, border war would revive, France might rebuild her traditional alliance with Scotland, and English Jacobites find there a refuge and base for revolt.

In 1704 the Scottish Parliament forced royal assent to the Act of Security, which left the succession in its own hands. England retaliated with the Aliens Act, a suggestion of union and a threat of trade war if Scotland had not accepted the Hanover line by the end of 1705. Reasonable men in both countries saw that the union of crowns was inadequate, there must be political amalgamation or a full breach. The problem was soluble because Whigs dominated either Parliament: commissioners were appointed who quickly drafted a treaty. By it Scotland gained her chief desire, access to English markets, also forty-five members in the united House of Commons, and guarantees that her laws and Kirk should continue. Jacobites and Covenanters opposed union, the first because it made a restoration improbable, the second because it tied Scotland to an episcopal nation. But they could not unite, and in 1706 the Bill passed the Scottish Parliament. The chief opposition in England came from Church hatred of Presbyterianism, which at the moment was out of favour. On May 1, 1707, the Union came into force.

This, the greatest piece of statesmanship of the reign, was popular in neither country. Scottish nationalism was waxing and resented the loss of its political shell. Much support given to the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 sprang from the feeling that under a Stuart Scotland might regain her separate status. English dislike was more material in origin. There were fewer than a million Scots, poorer than as many Englishmen; they offered no new market, but competed in trade hitherto jealously guarded. England furnished careers to many Scots, Scotland almost none to Englishmen, and dislike of the clannish northerners reached a high pitch in London during the next sixty years. The forty-five members from the first voted in a block for whatever Government held power: they gained rewards in office and preserved Scottish interests by doing so, but their action disturbed the party balance and made them unpopular with every Opposition. Gradually the Union gained moral strength. Scottish agriculture, shipping, manufacture, developed under the spur of new markets, and nationalism found for itself non-political channels. The proudest Englishmen came to see in the Union a triumph for their system of government, and long wars showed that the nation was stronger than before.

While Union was making, war continued victorious. In 1705 Marlborough returned to the Meuse and was again robbed of success by the Dutch commissioners' veto. Next year he won Ramillies, and Flanders from Ostend to Antwerp fell into his hands. 1707 was a year of disappointment, for a plan of invading France simultaneously from north and south failed through Dutch opposition, Austrian concentration on Naples, and French success near the Rhine. In Spain, where a joint force was operating, the tide turned against the allies and the Austrian claimant lost all but Catalonia, which had solidly declared for him and against French Philip. Incomplete victory helped to open a split in the Ministry that ended in Whig triumph and in one-party cabinets, though these ran counter to the preferences of Anne and of most moderates. Both parties were factious, neither could be trusted to put the country's obvious interests above its own immediate success. But party could not be ignored; coalition ministries replaced open struggle by closet intrigue, nor did they bring the full sense of responsibility needed for parliamentary government.

The Whigs thought their support of the war justified a larger share of office, while Harley with his personal following worked secretly against them and Godolphin. Early in 1708 the breach came to a head; Marlborough, still indispensable, stuck by Godolphin, and Harley with his followers, St. John and Harcourt, was forced to resign. Apparently it was a victory for "the great twin brethren," actually for the Whigs, now their only support. The Queen accepted a Government that she disliked, almost solidly Whig and buttressed by an election held in the reaction after a Jacobite attempt to invade Scotland.

Marlborough was ill, but he was victorious at Oudenarde, marched into France and took Lille. No French army could stand against the wizard of victory, and Louis made ample peace offers. He would abandon his grandson in Spain, cede fortresses to Emperor and Dutch, expel the Pretender, renounce any claim to Newfoundland. The original demands of the allies were fully met, but Austria and the Whigs wanted more: France must disarm and with her own troops help to put Austrian Charles on the Spanish throne. Louis refused conditions that would leave him helpless and called on France for a last effort. In August, 1709, Marlborough won a murderous battle at Malplaquet and took Mons; he hoped that another campaign would lay France prostrate.

He was tired of politics, uneasy in his dependence on the Whigs, and Mrs. Masham had replaced his duchess in Anne's affections. He asked to be made Captain-General for life so as to be above fluctuations. This annoyed Anne and stirred Tory cries that here was a would-be Cromwell. The Ministry followed his blunder by one of its own. The clergy were in growing revolt against a Government that had guaranteed Presbyterianism in Scotland, welcomed foreign Nonconformists to England, and prolonged a costly war. Non-resistance, which implicitly condemned the Revolution, was being cried higher each year. At the end of 1709 Sacheverell, a noisy parson with small grasp of Christianity and an itch for the public eye, preached and printed an offensive sermon. The Commons voted it a libel, the Cabinet decided to give its author the dignity of impeachment.

On a long view the decision may have been wise, for it gave the Whig party a chance to record its principles, to justify the Revolution, and to define the right of resistance to Government. But though Sacheverell was condemned to three years' silence, the storm his trial raised brought down the Ministry sooner than was inevitable. There broke out the first of those ebullitions of mob fervour that came at intervals through the century, when the populace went mad for an unworthy martyr or against a fancied oppression. One reason for these furies was that, feeling themselves vaguely aggrieved and powerless to control Parliament, even by the ultimate threat of adverse vote, the people at intervals seized the nearest catch-word and raged against the Government: now it was "Church and Dr. Sacheverell," later the name of Walpole's Excise or "Wilkes and Liberty."

Shrewsbury reappeared in politics after years of retirement and joined Harley, Anne finally broke with the Duchess of Marlborough. Sunderland, Godolphin, Somers, were got rid of between April and September, 1710; Marlborough was still indispensable and there were hopes of winning him. An election, like the others of the reign in that it did not bring but confirmed ministerial changes, left the Whigs hopelessly inferior.

The Tory party was now firm in the saddle, to remain there for four stormy years. Its numerical strength came from Church prejudice, popular dislike of taxation, instinctive conservatism; its weakness from indiscipline and division. Extremists made a large part of it, but could produce no leadership nor read the political barometer; they were ready to follow any one who offered them strong courses. The leaders of the party, with one or two exceptions, were quondam Whigs or, moderates, men who used, but did not like a party system. Its platform had two main planks; Church and King, and the King should be legitimist. These cries held together under Anne, but when the choice had to be Hanoverian Anglican or Catholic Stuart, they broke asunder, and the party was rent into Whimsicals and Jacobites.

Harley was the admitted head of the Government. He was a moderate, adroit in managing Court or Parliament, where he had thrice been Speaker, a lover of books, tolerant and an ex-Whig. His weaknesses were drink, unnecessary secrecy, and indecision. Defoe's defence of him states his view of a Ministry's proper tactics, "their business was to preserve themselves in the Administration where they were," not to follow a definite policy. St. John, first Harley's lieutenant, then his rival, had a far different temper. He was thirty-two and the best debater in Parliament, a dissipated free-thinker of great ability, the Alcibiades of English history. Bold measures attracted him, for he had none of that reasoned moderation that was to become during the next century the hall-mark of English statesmanship. He was, indeed, more Latin than British in his views, and certain to quarrel with his leader's inertia.

The first task and greatest achievement of the Ministry was peace. They invited France to make overtures, in violation of the alliance which forebade separate negotiations; a necessary step if the war were to end, for at no time would all the allies agree that their aims had been won. In April, 1711, Archduke Charles became ruler of Austria; there was no reason for Britain to insist that he should have Spain also, and so replace a Bourbon by a Hapsburg danger. Despite peace negotiations war continued: an ill-found expedition tried to capture Canada and failed; Marlborough won his last success by penetrating the French lines, though outnumbered, and taking a fortress in sight of the enemy.

Peace preliminaries were signed in September, 1711. When Parliament met in December the Whigs attacked heavily on the ground that no Bourbon must rule Spain. They gained a majority in the Lords by allying with Nottingham, and offering to carry, against their principles, his Bill against Occasional Conformity. The Ministry replied by dismissing Marlborough, accusing him of peculation, and by creating twelve Tory peers; a precedent for the threatened creations of 1832 and 1911.

The peace conference began at Utrecht in January, 1712, and continued with adjournments for over a year; military operations were not stopped by its meeting. Ormond, the British General, was ordered by St. John not to fight, nor to let his allies know that he would not fight, though the French had already been informed. The British contingent therefore deserted the allies, who in consequence suffered a reverse. France spun out negotiations till the spring of 1713, when peace was made by all save the Empire. Britain received Acadia and Hudson Bay from the French, from Spain, through her abandonment of Austria's claim to the kingdom, Gibraltar, Minorca, the right to supply slaves and a limited commerce to Spanish America. A trade treaty with France, that would have given Britain a new market, was rejected in Parliament by an alliance of Whig and Tory protectionists. The Peace of Utrecht became at once a prime article of party faith, condemned by all Whigs, but it was a reasonable peace, long overdue, and marred by two points only. The first was the desertion of the allies in the field without notice, the second the abandonment of Catalonia to Philip's vengeance. But the Catalans were a minority for whose independence Britain could not fight indefinitely, and she secured them some paper guarantees. Their would-be king, Charles of Austria, deserted them as completely as did Britain.

The domestic measures of the Government were more partisan than its foreign policy. A high landed property qualification for English members of Parliament was imposed in 1711; it lasted till 1858, but was soon found evadable. Occasional Conformity was forbidden, newspapers burdened with a stamp tax. In two particulars the terms of the Scottish Union were somewhat infringed: by restoring private patronage in the Kirk and by imposing a tax on malt. Scotland in consequence demanded separation, and the Whigs from party zeal supported the destruction of their own achievement. Finally, in 1714, the Schism Act gave promise that Nonconformists would soon again be persecuted. They had access neither to public schools nor to universities, so had built an educational system of their own which the Act tried to destroy: it forbade any one to teach without episcopal licence. From closing schools to closing chapels was a short step, but Anne died before it could be taken.

A breach in the Government had opened soon after its formation. All looked to Harley—Earl of Oxford from May, 1711—Whigs and centre Tories for moderation, extremists for measures that would crush Whiggery and Nonconformity together. He satisfied neither and tried to wed irreconcilables. St. John might have been a moderate had he been supreme, but moderation would not help to oust Oxford, the Lord Treasurer, so he turned to the Tory right wing, left leaderless by Rochester's death in 1711. He had none of their narrow religious faith, little of their affection for the Stuarts, but they were his handiest weapon. Vanity led him to blunder: he asked for an earldom so as to be Harley's equal, instead of relying on his power in the Commons, and he was aggrieved at becoming only Viscount Bolingbroke. He considered the peace to be his work, though in fact it was mainly Oxford's; he won Lady Masham to his side, and fought his leader in Council and Court. For long each was too strong to be driven out, too weak to expel the other.

A Ministry paralysed by their dispute and opposed by a disciplined minority had to face what was then always critical, now trebly so, the impending death of the monarch. A Tory Parliament had in 1701 made Sophia the heiress of Anne, but since then legitimism had grown, and Jacobites had gained strength by abandoning rebellion for politics. Despite the Act of Settlement the question, Sophia or James Edward, seemed open, and in 1713 it replaced the peace as the chief issue, a change which hampered the Government and favoured the Whigs. They were united for Hanover, and had the law on their side. They hoped for nothing from Anne save her death, so did not mind raising the subject to her most distasteful, her successor. The Ministry dared not take measures on either side, for that would annoy the Queen and break the party. Oxford was no Jacobite, but his hesitation and reluctance to make the extreme Tories still more hostile than they were, stopped his boldly outbidding the Whigs at Hanover, while Bolingbroke's associates and actions belied any overtures he could make there. Both he and Oxford were deep in intrigues with the Pretender's court, though they had emissaries at Hanover as well.

Had the Pretender turned Protestant, most Tories might have declared for him, but he steadily refused to simulate conversion, and the Church party could not unite for a papist. So it drifted, paralysed by the hardening division between Jacobite and Whimsical (or Hanoverian) Tories, as well as by the disputes of its leaders. An election of 1713 strengthened the Whigs but left them still a minority. At the end of that year the crisis leapt suddenly nearer, for Anne fell ill, and though she recovered, her death seemed a question of months.

Bolingbroke redoubled his attacks on Oxford, and in May, 1714, launched the Schism Bill to win all Tories from their notoriously tolerant leader, who had himself been bred at a Nonconformist academy. It passed, Parliament was prorogued, and the struggle shifted to the Council, where at last Anne turned against Oxford. He was dismissed on July 27. But Bolingbroke's victory was a Dead Sea apple, for the Queen sank into lethargy and died early on Sunday, August 1.

Later he claimed that, given six weeks of unquestioned power instead of three days (for he lost control even before Anne's death), he would have altered history. His plan, it seems, was not unconditional restoration: he cared much less for James Edward than for the Tory party. He would have manned all posts with Tories on whose obedience he could rely, so that he could swing the nation by a word. A free-thinker himself, he never understood the Pretender's religious scruples, and might have baited conversion with a crown. If he chose Hanover, he would do so on his own terms, exacting a pledge from George, heir since Sophia's death in May, 1714, that he would keep the Tory party in office. He might know that a promise would not bind that prince for long, and yet count on his own charm to win the new King in a few months to a party he at first must regard as his enemy. Even given weeks or months Bolingbroke would probably have failed, for the Tories were too undisciplined to hold the succession in abeyance till their terms were met. The army would have followed Marlborough, an unconditional Hanoverian, the Whigs would have risen in support of the law. Their plans were more complete than Bolingbroke's; on the day Anne died they proclaimed George, and not a sword was drawn against him. The struggle had raised fears high, turned many Tories Jacobite, branded the whole party as enemies of the new dynasty. Now it fell into permanent ruin, for when under George III. a new Tory party again became important, it had neither the creed nor the personnel of the old.