his own power was much less than he had expected. He could not speak English, and all communications between himself and his ministers were carried on in bad Latin. He therefore set the example, which all subsequent sovereigns have followed, of abstaining from attending Cabinet meetings, where the discussion took place in a language unintelligible to him. This abstention had important constitutional results. The Cabinet, which for some time had been growing independent of the sovereign, became still more independent, especially as George knew no more of English ways than he knew of the English language, and was obliged to take most of the advice of his ministers on trust. He could not think of replacing them by Tories, because he had been led to look upon all Tories as Jacobites.

2. The Whigs and the Nation. 1714. The Whigs, however, needed the support of Parliament more than the support of the king. The great landowners who directed their policy were wealthy and intelligent, and therefore unpopular amongst the country gentry and the country clergy. They aimed at establishing a sort of aristocratic republic with a king nominally at its head, in which fair play should be given to the Dissenters, and the trading classes encouraged. Yet they were clear-sighted enough to perceive that it was impossible to govern without the support of the House of Commons; and it was with the support of the House of Commons that the Tories in the last four years of Anne's reign had maintained themselves in power by appealing to the prejudices of the country gentry and the country clergy. The Whig tenure of power was, therefore, not likely to last long unless they could find some means of crushing opponents who had been, and might easily be again, more popular than themselves.

3. The Whigs and Parliament. 1715. For the moment, indeed, the Whigs had the advantage. In 1715 a new Parliament was chosen, and many Tories who were, after all, not really Jacobites voted for Whig candidates in alarm lest their own leaders should bring back the Pretender, whom they distrusted as a Roman Catholic. The Whigs, therefore, had a majority in the House of Commons, whilst they had already recovered the majority in the House of Lords which they had temporarily lost by the recent creation of the Tory peers (see p. 695). In order to make their success permanent by getting rid of the leaders of the party opposed to them, the Whigs prepared to impeach Oxford Bolingbroke, and Ormond as traitors, on the ground of the secret agreements which they had made with the French during the

1715-1716

THE OLD PRETENDER

705 negotiation of the Treaty of Utrecht. Oxford, with his usual coolness, stayed to face the attack, and got off with two years' imprisonment. Bolingbroke and Ormond fled to France, where Bolingbroke entered the service of the Pretender as Secretary of State, Acts of attainder were passed against both. These high-handed proceedings of the Whigs nearly defeated their object. The German king had by this time become unpopular, and Jacobitism increased amongst the Tories, most of whom had submitted to him at his first coming. In all parts of England and Scotland large numbers made ready for a rising against his government. Bolingbroke urged Louis XIV. to support them. Louis, however, died without having given his consent, and the Jacobites of Great Britain had to dispense with foreign aid.

4. Mar's Rising. 1715-1716.—Under these circumstances Bolingbroke urged delay, but the Pretender headstrong and incompetent-ordered the Earl of Mar, his chief supporter in Scotland, to rise against the Government. On September 3 Mar took the field, and, on October 7, a gentleman of Northumberland, named Forster, declared for the Pretender in the north of England. The Whig ministers, unpopular as they were, had the advantage in their position as the actual rulers of the country, and, now that the Tory leaders had been got rid of, they had the advantage in ability. Argyle commanded for the Government in Scotland, and on November 13 he fought a drawn battle with Mar on Sheriffmuir. Though half of each army defeated half of the other, Mar-who throughout the whole campaign showed himself singularly incompetent allowed Argyle to secure the advantages of a victory. Forster, though supported by men of influence on both sides of the border-Lord Derwentwater from England and Lords Nithsdale and Kenmure from Scotland-showed himself as incompetent as Mar, and surrendered at Preston on the same day as that on which the battle was fought on Sheriffmuir. On December 2 the Pretender himself landed at Peterhead, and on January 6, 1716, he entered Dundee. He was, however, so dull and unenterprising that his very followers despised him, some even asking whether he could really speak. By this time the Government, having suppressed all attempts at resistance in England, was preparing to send a powerful army into Scotland, and the Pretender prudently took shipping for France, where he soon dismissed Bolingbroke, whose advice was too good to be to his taste. Derwentwater and Kenmure were beheaded on Tower Hill. Nithsdale escaped through the address of his wife, who visited him in prison, and sent him out dressed

女

in her clothes. Thirty-eight persons of lower rank were put to death, and the estates of many others were forfeited.

5. The Septennial Act. 1716.-Successful as the Whigs had been in the field, they did not venture to face the elections to a new Parliament, which, in accordance with the Triennial Act (see p. 661), must be held in the beginning of 1718. Accordingly they passed a Septennial Act, by which the existing Parliament prolonged its own duration for four years longer than was allowed by the law as it stood at the time when the House of Commons was chosen. This proceeding strained to the uttermost the doctrine that a British Parliament-unlike Parliaments in countries like the

A Coach of the early part of the eighteenth century: from an engraving by Kip. present United States, in which a written constitution exists-can make any law it pleases, even if it effects the greatest changes in the institutions of the State. Hitherto the king had acted as a restraint upon Parliament by exercising his right of refusing the Royal Assent to Bills. This prerogative, however, which had been exercised for the last time by Anne in 1707, now dropped out of use, and Parliament thereby became supreme as far as other branches of the Government were concerned. The question of its relations to the constituencies assumed new importance ; and in 1716 at least the Whigs were of opinion that the duration of Parliament should be lengthened in order to make the House of Commons more independent of them. They were afraid lest the supremacy which

1716

PEACE AND WAR

707

had been wrested from the Crown should pass into the hands of an ignorant, ill-informed multitude. Yet they were unable--even if they had been willing-to make the House of Commons a permanent oligarchy. As the duration of Parliament could not be indefinitely prolonged without provoking violent opposition, the Whigs had only gained a respite during which they would have to do their best to make themselves more acceptable to the nation than they were when the Septennial Act was passed.

6. England and France. 1716. One of the chief causes of the fall of the Whigs in Anne's reign had been their advocacy of war: now, however, they stood forward as the advocates of peace. In effecting this change of front they were helped by the disappearance of those of their leaders who had been foremost in the struggle with France. Somers, Halifax, and Wharton died before the end of 1716, and, though Marlborough still lived, he was incapacitated by disease from acting in public. Still more helpful to the Whig party was a change which had taken place in France. The King of France was now a sickly child, Louis XV., the great-grandson of Louis XIV. If he died (as most people expected him to do), there would be two competitors for the throne of France-the one, his uncle, Philip V. of Spain, the grandson of Louis XIV. (who was, indeed, his nearest male relation, but who, upon becoming king of Spain, had renounced all claim to the French throne), and the other, the duke of Orleans, who was now Regent of France,' and was the nearest male relation of Louis XV. after Philip V. As it was believed that, in the event of the young king's death, Philip V. would assert his claim in spite of his renunciation, it was to the interest of the Duke of Orleans to be on friendly terms with

England; whilst it was equally to the interest of England to exclude Philip V. from the French throne, in order to prevent that union between France and Spain which the Whigs had striven to prevent in the late war. It therefore became possible for the Whigs to pursue their aim-the separation between France and Spainby that peaceful understanding with the French Government which had gained popularity for the Tories in the time of Anne. On

*

November 28, 1716, an agreement was arrived at by which the
Regent promised his support to the Hanoverian succession in
England, whilst England promised to support the exclusion of
Philip V. from the throne of France. A few weeks later the
Dutch gave their assent to this arrangement, and a triple alliance
was thus formed against Philip and the Pretender.

7. The Whig Schism. 1716-1717.-Though the Whig minis