were moved to high hopes, and one felt impelled to versify a dialogue between Foley and a royal intermediary: If the King to my Bank and me will be hearty, And (I conceive) we can stop the ambition of France.1 But, whatever his possible relation to the King, in a Committee of the Whole House on the 10th December Harley, 'by a great majority',2 carried a proposal to reduce the forces back to their level at the end of 1680; a Whig attempt, the next day, to recommit was beaten by 185 to 148. On the 8th January 1698, encouraged by Sunderland's fall, ministers made a surprise effort to reopen the question; after eight hours' debate, in which many independent Whigs turned against them, they were beaten by twenty-four votes-the net result being that the army was to be reduced to approximately 10,000 men. Apart from this outstanding question, the Whig party majority in the Commons still held good. The attempt of the Sunderland group to ruin their leaders had roused a fighting spirit, which was carefully nursed throughout the session by meetings at the Whig Rose Club,3 and they were magnificently led by Montague. He and Wharton determined to carry war into the enemy's country, and to make the return of Sunderland and his creatures impossible. One of them, the wealthy banker Duncombe, now owner of Buckingham's Helmsley, was struck down in January on a charge of fraud; if Henry Guy continued his under part', threatened Montague, he might be' still blasted and sent after Duncombe'. Wharton must be secretary, Portland must be superseded as the minister' by the younger royal favourite Albemarle, ‘a fair lady' (Mrs. Villiers) was ready to assist. Shrewsbury's return was essential; if he wished it, they would put up with Sunderland, but it must be only in a subordinate rôle and on specific conditions, such as a secretary's place for Wharton. Were this settled', Montague wrote to Shrewsbury,' the agreement should be that we would have but one common interest, the same friends and the same enemies', and the King's displeasure should be 1 In the hand of Anthony Hammond: Bodl. Rawlinson MSS. D. 174. Carte MSS. 130, f. 274. 3 Vernon Corr. ii. 258; Portland, iii. 595. promptly shown to all' who have been, underhand, fostered and nursed up to supplant us'.1 In this campaign, pressed on with the greater energy since in a few months the current Parliament must lapse under the Triennial Act, the Whig extremists committed two capital blunders. In their resolution to crush the enemy, they went too far and offended the moderates. Granted that Duncombe's prosecution was justified, a bill of pains and penalties to confiscate two-thirds of his property was an outrage. It was, like Fenwick's attainder, ex post facto, it was ridiculously disproportionate to the crime, and it usurped for a small party majority the judicial function. It was a new and unwholesome precedent, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should on the eve of a general election hold out prospects of reducing taxes by legislative confiscation. It was small wonder that the Lords, though only by a single vote, threw out the bill. Nor, in the affair of the East India Company, were the Whig leaders any better advised. Distracted between the new monopoly given to the old Company in 1693 and Parliament's decision of 1694, that all English subjects had a right of trading to the East, our Indian trade had fallen into a condition of anarchy. It was, indeed, one of those occasions when rapid contradictions in our Imperial policy create an imbroglio from which there can be no really equitable exit. But equity was not the object of the Junto. Instead of using the opportunity to fuse the old and new interests, Montague now proposed to set up a new Company in return for a loan of two million pounds at 8 per cent., gave the old Company three years' notice to wind up its affairs, and sent up the scheme to the Lords in the shape of a Money Bill. Even Whig partisans 2 thought too much rigour had been shown, and it passed the Lords only by seventeen votes-in the list of protesting peers being the name of Godolphin. Besides this injudicious factiousness, the Whig managers made another and, in their permanent interests, a much graver mistake. William III was not a man who could be driven, as later they managed for a season to drive Queen Anne, and of Montague to Shrewsbury, 1/11 Feb. 1698 (Coxe). this men who knew him better had long warned them. Shrewsbury expressly told Montague that the one thing necessary was to avoid impressing the King with the idea that they would have no truck with Sunderland (which is a loss he will esteem irreparable '), or the doing of anything to confirm the belief that the Whigs have a natural sourness that makes them not to be lived with'. They disdained such moderation, and in a conference with the King at Newmarket in April, in which Shrewsbury was induced to take a hand, they refused to modify their ultimatum that Wharton, and no other, should be Secretary. William's anger was marked by a refusal to discuss further ministerial arrangements before he left England in July, and by his absence from the country, in a time of peace, till December; until then he refused to meet the new Parliament. He had, moreover, already been trying to get Lowther, now Lord Lonsdale, back to his service, had brought Marlborough into the Cabinet in June, and was prepared to break with the Whigs, if there was any hope of an alternative Ministry.1 Of this possibility the general election of July and August 1698 gave a further inkling. By Somers's own confession the people were tired out with taxes', and showed a strange spirit', Vernon naïvely said, 'of distinguishing between the Court and country party'.2 Wharton's candidates failed in nearly every case, even in part in his own highly preserved Buckinghamshire. The two ministers Montague and Vernon had a tight contest before getting in at Westminster; in the City, though three Whigs were elected, the fourth member was Sir John Fleet, chairman of the much-attacked old East India Company. Seymour regained his old seat at Exeter, and brought in with him an advanced and bitter Tory in Bartholomew Shower. The New Country Party' 3 drove everywhere a hot campaign against courtiers, taxes, placemen, and standing armies. Though many new men were elected, the general impression was strong that the Whigs had suffered a check, and that the new Commons would need very delicate handling. 1 Shrewsbury to Montague, 22 Jan./1 Feb.; Somers to Shrewsbury, 25 Oct./4 Nov. (Coxe); Vernon to Shrewsbury, 21 June (Vernon Corr.); Portland to Lonsdale, Dec. 1697-April 1698 (Lonsdale papers). • Somers to the King, 28 Aug. (Ralph); Vernon to Shrewsbury, 2 Aug. (V. C.). So called in a Whig election placard (Portland, viii. 54). XII WILLIAM III AND ROBERT HARLEY, 1698-1702 At the beginning of the period which was to restore the Tories to office a certain coolness is visible in their ranks, and the main reason seems to have been that Foley and Harley had not yet wholly severed their old Whiggish connexions. During the elections they had shown themselves ready to come to a friendly understanding with the Whigs as to the representation of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, and both were intimate with Vernon, the new Secretary of State; Foley, in particular, had backed the Court in matters of supply, had repudiated the idea of tacking the army bill, and had done his best to protect Shrewsbury. Now, as the natural doom of moderation under a party system, he was unsupported by most Tories for re-election as Speaker.1 The facts in this matter, characteristic of the Tory Coalition's middle phase, are obscure enough, but may probably be interpreted as follows. By October two candidates for the Speaker's chair were in the field-Sir Thomas Littleton, a commissioner of the Treasury, who in the last session had done the Court yeoman service, and that eminent ex-Speaker, Edward Seymour. In November a pamphlet of extreme violence attacked both of them, specially stigmatizing Seymour as an old prostitute of the exploded Pension Parliament of Charles II's reign '-the periods of whose life 'may be marked out by the bargains he has made'. In the moderate circles, which this pamphlet voiced, men spoke naturally both of Foley and of Harley as candidates, but the person on whom the majority of the party pitched was John Granville, one of their best lieutenants, but by his connexions certainly nearer than they to average Tory feeling. But Seymour, who was at the moment curiously friendly with Montague, seems from some jealousy or resent1 Coxe, Shrewsbury, 539 et seq.; V. C. ii. 118, 152, 221. ment to have queered the pitch, and it is not surprising that Littleton's nomination was carried by 242 to 135.1 But such disunion, though it delayed a Tory administration, could not postpone the break-up of the Junto. In the first week of December the King at last accepted Shrewsbury's resignation, and Montague, even before this and without his colleagues' knowledge, had taken a step which was generally interpreted as sounding the retreat. Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law and enemy, and Buckingham's friend, had at last been parted by death from his comfortable sinecure as Auditor of the Exchequer, and now it was promptly transferred by Montague, with the consent of his easy Treasury subordinates, to his brother Christopher, obviously to be kept warm for a more illustrious refugee. Nor did Littleton's election mean, as the King had hoped, any plain sailing in the Commons. The feeling against a standing army was much too strong to be tampered with, and the measures taken to evade the past year's vote for disbandment had roused legitimate indignation. Instead of 10,000 only, the number of troops still retained on the English establishment was in fact half as much again, and even now the Court hoped to secure 10,000, in addition to the Dutch guards. They were quickly undeceived. On the 17th December the Commons agreed that the forces in England should consist of native-born subjects only, not to exceed 7,000 in numberthe third reading finally passing on the 19th January 1699 by the triumphant figure of 221 to 154. Harley was throughout the leader; Musgrave, Pakington, and Harcourt supported him, and despite Montague's best exertions solid Whigs like Hartington and Onslow joined hands with the Opposition. All William's pathetic efforts to keep his Guards, even his threat to leave this ungrateful country for good, were useless, and the last address of the Commons was in effect a reproach, that he had violated his original Declaration of 1688, which had promised to send away all foreign forces. This offensive allusion passed the Commons on the 20th March by six votes. 1 Edward to Sir E. Harley, 29 Oct.; Price to Beaufort, 26 Nov. (Bodl. Carte MSS. 130); Aglionby to Prior, 5 Dec. (Bath papers, iii); Somers to Shrewsbury, 15 Dec. (Coxe); 'Considerations upon the choice of a Speaker' (State Tracts); Cowper papers [Report XII], ii. 380. |