or commerce.

ordinary success, 200,0001. being subscribed by BOOK III. the merchants there in a very short time. But, 1698. to their great surprise, a stop was put to this business, by a memorial delivered to the senate by special warrant from his majesty, not only disowning the authority under which they acted, but threatening both senate and inhabitants with the king's utmost displeasure if they should countenance or join with them in any treaty of trade The parliament participating strongly in the feelings of the nation, voted immediately a petition to the king, in which, not content with "humbly entreating," they added that they did most assuredly EXPECT that his majesty would take such measures as might effectually vindicate the undoubted rights and privileges of the said company, and support the credit and interest thereof." The king being abroad, no answer could be returned previous to the termination of the session; which in the beginning of September was adjourned to the 25th of November: but the company found, to their great chagrin, that no sensible effect whatever was produced by it.

Ireland.

In this interval, the parliament of Ireland also Affairs of assembled at Dublin. The session passed with no memorable occurrence. Conformably to their instructions from England, the earl of Galway, and the other lords justices, recom

BOOK III. mended to parliament to desist from the prosc1698. cution of the woollen manufacture, and to en

Projects of the King of

courage the linen and hempen; the latter of which the commons, in their address, reply "that they shall heartily endeavour; and, with respect to the woollen trade, they tamely express their hope to find such a temperament, that the same may not be injurious to England." This temperament proved to be nothing more or less than a heavy duty on the exportation of woollens, which, with other subsequent discouragements, effectually crushed that beneficial and growing branch of commerce.

Pre

At the latter end of July, 1698, the king embarked for the continent, vesting the government of the kingdom as before, in a regency, of whom the earl of Marlborough was one. vious to his departure, he left sealed orders with the regents, conformably to which 16,000 troops were to be kept up, though, by a vote of the house of commons, the number was limited to 10,000. But the king gave as a reason, that no determinate number was mentioned in the act, and that the illness of the king of Spain, and the near prospect of his dissolution, made it advisable at the present crisis not farther to reduce the standing military force of the kingdom.

It was now the grand object of the king of England. England, after all the toils and dangers he had

undergone, by fixing the balance of power in BOOK II, Europe, to establish, and, if possible, perpetuate 1698. its tranquillity. The health of the king of Spain was such, that he could not be expected long to survive and upon whom the succession of that vast monarchy and its appendages should then devolve, became a matter of the most serious and anxious consideration. The emperor claimed the whole as his indubitable right, in the capacity of heir-general of the house of Austria, and nearest in blood of the male line descended from Philip and Joanna, king and queen of Spain: and by one of the articles of the league of Augsburg the maritime powers stood engaged to assist the emperor with all their forces, in the event of the king of Spain's demise, in taking possession of the same. The other great claimant was the king of France, in right of his wife Maria Teresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV., who had indeed, on her marriage, renounced all pretensions to the succession of Spain. But this renunciation was held by the majority of the Castilians to be null and void in itself, as contrary to the rights of nature, and to the fundamental laws of the Spanish monarchy, which maintained the lineal order of succession, without distinction of male or female. It is remarkable that Leopold himself derived his claim from a female stock. For Philip of Au stria, the common ancestor of the two branches

BOOK III. of that potent house, reigned in Spain only in 1698. right of his wife Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, in whom the kingdoms of Arragon and Castile were united.

At this period king William was much displeased with the emperor for his haughty and pertinacious refusal to concur in the late treaty. The lofty ideas cherished at the original formation of the league of Augsburg were now by time and experience extremely lowered. It was not to be imagined that the king of France would relinquish his claim without a valuable equivalent; and it could not but occur, on cool and impartial reflection, that the balance of Europe might be nearly as much endangered by transferring the undivided monarchy of Spain to the house of Austria, as to the house of Bourbon. Overtures The mind of the king of England being strongly the first impressed with these ideas, he received with Treaty of Partition. emotions of satisfaction the intelligence imparted

relative to

by the earl of Portland during his late embassy to Paris, that overtures had been made to him by M. Pomponne and M. de Torcy, on the part of the Most Christian king, for an eventual partition of the Spanish monarchy, with the professed and laudable intention of preventing the revival of those bloody and furious commotions which had been so recently and happily terminated, and to ensure to Europe the blessings of

1698.

a general and lasting peace. After a short in- BOOK III. terval the count de Tallard was dispatched to England in order to modify and arrange this project with the king of England in person. The negotiation was in the sequel transferred to Holland, and the plan finally agreed upon at Loo. The terms of this famous treaty were extremely unfavourable to the house of Austria, who were carefully excluded from all knowledge and participation in this transaction, and to whom the duchy of Milan only was allotted as an appanage for the archduke Charles, younger son of the emperor. "It will be a difficult and delicate business," says the king of England to the grand pensionary Heinsius,* "how to communicate this negotiation to the emperor, as it is known beforehand that he will never accede to it." The Sicilies, Sardinia, and all that Spain possessed to the north-eastward of the Pyrenees, comprehending the towns of Fontarabia and St. Sebastian, were to be annexed for ever to the monarchy of France. And Spain and the Indies with the Low Countries, were given to the electoral prince of Bavaria, an infant scarcely seven years of age, whose mother, the archduchess Maria Antonia, was descended from the emperor Leopold by his first empress, Margaret Teresa, youngest daughter of Philip IV.

*Hardwicke Papers.