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1723.

day, the 18th of June, the Bishop was embarked on CHAP. board a man-of-war, without any of the tumults which the Ministers feared on that occasion; and conveyed to Calais. As he went on shore he was told that Lord Bolingbroke, having received the King's pardon, was just arrived at the same place, on his return to England. " Then I am "exchanged!" said Atterbury with a smile. Surely," exclaims their friend at Twickenham, 'this nation is afraid of being over-run with too "much politeness, and cannot regain one great genius but at the expense of another!"*

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The pardon which Bolingbroke now obtained had been for a long time pending. When he was dismissed by the Pretender, in 1716, and renounced that party for ever, he found, as he says, Lord Stair instructed, from England, to treat with him. A negotiation was accordingly opened, Bolingbroke declaring that he would never reveal any secret, nor betray any friend; but that he was ready, in future, to serve his King and country with zeal and affection; and that he never did any thing by halves. It was then that Bolingbroke took the measure of writing a private letter to Sir William Wyndham, pointing out the weakness of the Pretender's character, and the

theological writers! See this story and some decisive evidence against it quoted in the Encyclop. Brit. art. ATTERBURY. It seems quite out of place in " Pope's Character by Lord Chester"field;" and was, I have no doubt, a fabrication surreptitiously inserted.

* Pope to Swift, 1723.

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1723.

*

CHAP. small hopes of his cause, and urging his friend to turn his thoughts elsewhere; which letter Bolingbroke sent, unsealed, to the Postmaster-General, to be laid before the Government, and to be forwarded or not, as they thought proper. In thus acting Bolingbroke did no injury to his friend, who was already more than suspected of Jacobite principles, and who was not at all legally endangered by receiving such advice, while the adviser served himself by this decided and acceptable token of his new-born zeal for the House of Hanover.

It was certain, as Lord Stair truly observed, that there was no man who could do so much injury to the Jacobite cause. The Ministers, therefore, were anxious to secure himt, and he had a zealous advocate in the Duchess of Kendal, to whom his purse was full of irresistible arguments. The animosity of the Whig party in general was, however, at that time, so strong as to form an almost insuperable bar to his return; and a rumour of it, in 1719, was artfully turned by Walpole into a political weapon. In his pamphlet on the Peerage Bill, speaking of Lord Oxford, he remarks, with indignation, that "his rival in guilt and power even now presumes to expect an act of

This letter is dated Sept. 13. 1716; and printed in Coxe's Walpole, vol. ii. p. 308., together with one from Townshend to Stanhope on the subject. The original was duly forwarded to Wyndham.

See his letter to Lord Stanhope, November 9. 1717. Appendix, vol. i., and the Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii. p. 558.

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1723.

"the legislature to indemnify him, and qualify CHAP. his villany!" With such formidable opposition it seemed useless to propose so unpopular a measure; but when Walpole succeeded Stanhope and Sunderland in office, he quietly slid into this as into most of their other measures; and in May, 1723, the pardon of Bolingbroke passed the Great Seal.

This pardon, however, was only so far as the King could grant it; it secured the person of Bolingbroke, and enabled him to visit England; but it required an act of parliament to restore his forfeited estates, and his seat in the House of Peers. To obtain such an act immediately became Bolingbroke's first and most anxious object; and a large sum which he had gained in the Mississippi speculations, afforded him fresh means to convince the Duchess of Kendal of the justice of his claims. His second object, during all this time, was to persuade his friends that he was nearly indifferent to his restoration, and quite happy in exile and in literary leisure. While his life was full of nothing but intrigue, his private letters are full of nothing but philosophy. "Some

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superfluous twigs are every day cut, and, as they "lessen in number, the bough which bears the

golden fruit of friendship shoots, swells, and "spreads.".... "Those insects, of various hues, "which used to hum and buzz about me while I "stood in the sunshine, have disappeared since I

XII.

CHAP." lived in the shade."* Great but ill-regulated genius! Cicero could not write better, -Clodius could not act worse!

1723.

When the fallen minister arrived in England, he found that the King had already sailed for Germany, attended by Lords Townshend and Carteret, and the Duchess of Kendal, and was not expected to return for some time; in fact, his Majesty extended his absence to six months, and his journey to Berlin, on a visit to his son-in-law, the King of Prussia. † Bolingbroke, therefore, could only write letters of thanks to the King, to the Duchess, and to Townshend, entreating, at the same time, their further favour; but he availed himself of his stay in England to renew his political connections, especially with his tried friends, Sir William Wyndham and Lord Harcourt. The former still stood at the head of the Tories in the House of Commons; the latter, who had filled the office of Chancellor in the last years of Anne, was by no means as steady in his public course. Even at that time Swift had called him "trimming Harcourt ‡; but now he had entirely left his party, and risen so high in ministerial favour, as to be created a Viscount, gratified with a

Letters to Swift, 1721, 1723.

+ Of the King's journey, Swift writes with much humour, "The next packet will bring us word of the King and Bishop of "Rochester leaving England. A good journey to the one, and "a speedy return to the other, is an honest Whig wish!" (To Mr. Cope, June 1. 1723.) The King's visit to Berlin is described in the Mém. de Bareith, vol. i. pp. 84-87.

Swift's Works, vol. x. p. 398.

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pension, and appointed one of the Lords Justices CHA P. at the King's departure. Thus it had been in Harcourt's power greatly to promote the pardon of 1723. his friend, in May last, and he deserved gratitude, both in the true sense of that word, and in that which Bolingbroke gives it, where he says, in one of his letters, that "what we call gratitude is ge'nerally expectation."*

Bolingbroke also waited on Walpole, and, alluding to Harcourt's accession, told him that Wyndham, Lord Bathurst, and Lord Gower, were beginning to be disgusted with a fruitless opposition. They had, he said, been for some time in communication with Lord Carteret; but now thought themselves deceived by him, and might probably be brought into the measures of the Court, and intò a support of Townshend and Walpole. Nothing could have been more advantageous to the country than such a junction: it would have healed many wounds of faction, and broken one great lever of the Jacobites; but it might also have endangered the supremacy of Walpole, and given a strong claim to Bolingbroke. Walpole, therefore, with whom his own power was always the paramount consideration, received these overtures most coldly and ungraciously, and met them with a positive refusal ; adding, that as Bolingbroke's restoration depended on a Whig parliament, he ought, in prudence, to shun any fresh

* To Sir William Wyndham, January 5. 1736.