The Project Gutenberg eBook, A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4), by Justin McCarthy

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Title: A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4)

Author: Justin McCarthy

Release Date: November 13, 2007 [eBook #23469]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES, VOLUME I (OF 4)***

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Transcriber's note:

Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section.

In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a header consisting of the page number, the volume title, and the chapter number. The odd-numbered page header consisted of the year with which the page deals, a subject phrase, and the page number. In this set of e-books, the odd-page year and subject phrase have been converted to sidenotes, usually positioned between the first two paragraphs of the even-odd page pair. If such positioning was not possible for a given sidenote, it was positioned where it seemed most logical.

In the original book set, consisting of four volumes, the master index was in Volume 4. In this set of e-books, the index has been duplicated into each of the other volumes, with its first page re-numbered as necessary, and an Index item added to each volume's Table of Contents.

A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES

by

JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.

Author of "A History of Our Own Times" Etc.

In Four Volumes

VOL. I.

New York Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square 1901

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

CHAP. PAGE

I. "MORE, ALAS! THAN THE QUEEN'S LIFE!" . . . . . . . 1 II. PARTIES AND LEADERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 III. "LOST FOR WANT OF SPIRIT" . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 IV. THE KING COMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 V. WHAT THE KING CAME TO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 VI. OXFORD'S HALL; BOLINGBKOKE'S FLIGHT . . . . . . . 91 VII. THE WHITE COCKADE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 VIII. AFTER THE REBELLION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 IX. "MALICE DOMESTIC.—FOREIGN LEVY" . . . . . . . . . 158 X. HOME AFFAIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 XI. "THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 XII. AFTER THE STORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 XIII. THE BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY . . . . . . . . . . . 211 XIV. WALPOLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE . . . . . . . . 224 XV. THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 XVI. THE OPPOSITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 XVII. "OSNABRUCK! OSNABRUCK!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 XVIII. GEORGE THE SECOND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 XIX. "THE PATRIOTS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 XX. A VICTORY FOR THE PATRIOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

{1}

A HISTORY

OF

THE FOUR GEORGES.

CHAPTER I.

"MORE, ALAS! THAN THE QUEEN'S LIFE!"

"The Queen is pretty well," Swift wrote to Lord Peterborough on May 18, 1714, "at present, but the least disorder she has puts all in alarm." Swift goes on to tell his correspondent that "when it is over we act as if she were immortal; neither is it possible to persuade people to make any preparations against an evil day." Yet on the condition of Queen Anne's health depended to all appearance the continuance of peace in England. While Anne was sinking down to death, rival claimants were planning to seize the throne; rival statesmen and rival parties were plotting, intriguing, sending emissaries, moving troops, organizing armies, for a great struggle. Queen Anne had reigned for little more than twelve years. She succeeded William the Third on March 8, 1702, and at the time when Swift wrote the words we have quoted, her reign was drawing rapidly to a close.

Anne was not a woman of great capacity or of elevated moral tone. She was moral indeed in the narrow and more limited sense which the word has lately come to have among us. She always observed decorum and propriety herself; she always discouraged vice in others; but she had no idea of political morality or of high {2} political purpose, and she had allowed herself to be made the instrument of one faction or another, according as one old woman or the other prevailed over her passing mood. While she was governed by the Duchess of Marlborough, the Duke of Marlborough and his party had the ascendant. When Mrs. Masham succeeded in establishing herself as chief favorite, the Duke of Marlborough and his followers went down. Burnet, in his "History of My Own Times," says of Queen Anne, that she "is easy of access, and hears everything very gently; but opens herself to so few, and is so cold and general in her answers, that people soon find that the chief application is to be made to her ministers and favorites, who, in their turns, have an entire credit and full power with her. She has laid down the splendor of a court too much, and eats privately; so that, except on Sundays, and a few hours twice or thrice a week, at night, in the drawing-room, she appears so little that her court is, as it were, abandoned." Although Anne lived during the Augustan Age of English literature, she had no literary capacity or taste. Kneller's portrait of the Queen gives her a face rather agreeable and intelligent than otherwise—a round, full face, with ruddy complexion and dark-brown hair. A courtly biographer, commenting on this portrait, takes occasion to observe that Anne "was so universally beloved that her death was more sincerely lamented than that of perhaps any other monarch who ever sat on the throne of these realms." A curious comment on that affection and devotion of the English people to Queen Anne is supplied by the fact which Lord Stanhope mentions, that "the funds rose considerably on the first tidings of her danger, and fell again on a report of her recovery."

[Sidenote: 1714—Fighting for the Crown]

England watched with the greatest anxiety the latest days of Queen Anne's life; not out of any deep concern for the Queen herself, but simply because of the knowledge that with her death must come a crisis and might come a revolution. Who was to snatch the crown as it fell from Queen Anne's dying head? Over at Herrenhausen, in {3} Hanover, was one claimant to the throne; flitting between Lorraine and St. Germains was another. Here, at home, in the Queen's very council-chamber, round the Queen's dying bed, were the English heads of the rival parties caballing against each other, some of