1696-1699

THE SPANISH SUCCESSION

667

and to support the succession of the Princess Anne in the event of his death. The form of this association was circulated in the country, and signed by thousands.

6. The Peace of Ryswick. 1697.--Since the taking of Namur there had been no more fighting. In 1697 a general peace was signed at Ryswick. Louis gave up all the conquests which he had made in the war, and acknowledged William as king. William had, for the first time, the satisfaction of bringing to a close a war from which his great antagonist had gained no advantage. France was impoverished and England was prosperous. As Louis had said, the last gold piece had won (see p. 659). William returned thanks for the peace in the new St. Paul's built by Sir Christopher Wren in place of the old cathedral destroyed in the great fire (see p. 592).

7. Reduction of the Army. 1698-1699.-Scarcely was the war at an end when a controversy broke out between William and the House of Commons. William knew that the larger the armed force which England could maintain, the more chance there was that Louis would keep the peace which he had been forced to sign. The Commons, on the other hand, were anxious to diminish the expenditure, and were specially jealous of the existence of a large standing army which might be used, as it had been used by Cromwell, to establish an absolute government. Many Whigs deserted the ministers and joined the Tories on this point. In January 1698, the army was reduced to 10,000 men. In December it was reduced to 7,000. In March 1699, William was compelled to dismiss his Dutch guards. His irritation was so great that it was with the greatest difficulty that he was held back from abdicating the throne.

8. Signature and Failure of the First Partition Treaty. 1698-1699. In the meanwhile, William was engaged in a delicate negotiation. It was well known that, whenever Charles II. of Spain died, Louis XIV. would claim the Spanish monarchy for one of his own family in right of his wife, Charles's eldest sister, Maria Theresa, whilst the Emperor Leopold would also claim it for himself or for one of his sons in the right of his mother, Maria, the aunt of Charles, on the ground that she was the only one amongst the sisters and aunts of Charles II. who had not renounced the succession. His own first wife Margaret Theresa, and Louis's wife Maria Theresa, who were both sisters of the King of Spain, as well as Louis's mother Anne, had all, on their respective marriages, abandoned their claims. It was unlikely that either France or

Austria would submit without compulsion to see the territories of its rival increased so largely; and in 1698, William, hoping to avert a war, signed a secret Partition Treaty with Louis. According to this treaty the bulk of the Spanish monarchy was to be assigned

1698-1699 THE MINISTERS AND THE HOUSE

669

to a young man whose own territories were too small to give umbrage either to France or to Austria if he added to them those of the Spanish monarchy. This young man was the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the grandson of Leopold by his first wife, Charles's sister Margaret Theresa,' whilst small portions of the territory under the Spanish Crown were to be allotted respectively to Louis's eldest son, the Dauphin, and to the Archduke Charles, the younger of Leopold's two sons by a second wife. Unfortunately, the death of the Electoral Prince in February 1699 overset this arrangement and enormously increased the difficulty of satisfying both France and Austria, especially as it was just at this time that Parliament reduced William's army to 7,000 men (see p. 667), thus leading Louis to suppose that he might defy England with impunity.

9. Break-up of the Whig Junto. 1699. In home affairs, too, William was in considerable difficulty. When he had brought together the Whig Junto, he had done so because he found it convenient, not because he thought of binding himself never to keep ministers in office unless they were supported by a majority in the House of Commons. The modern doctrine that for ministers to remain in office after a serious defeat in the House of Commons is injurious both to themselves and to the public service had not yet been heard of, and this lesson, like so many others, had to be learned by experience. Again and again in the debates on the reduction of the army the ministers had been outvoted. The House also found fault with the administration of the Admiralty by Russell, who in 1697 had been created Earl of Orford, and appointed a

1 Genealogy of the claimants of the Spanish monarchy (the names of the claimants are in capitals, and the names of princesses who had renounced their claims in italics) :—

Philip III., king of Spain,
1598-1621
I

Louis XIII., = Anne king of France,

Philip IV., king of Spain,
1621-1665

Maria Ferdinand III., Emperor, 1635-1658

1610-1643

Louis XIV.. Maria Charles II., king Margaret Theresa Leopold I., Eleanor of Neuburg king of France, Theresa

of Spain,
1665-1700

Emperor, 1658-1705

commission, in defiance of the ministers, to take into consideration certain extensive grants of forfeited estates in Ireland which had been made by William to his favourites. Though William failed to perceive the impossibility of governing satisfactorily with ministers who had against them a joint majority composed of Tories and discontented Whigs, those who were personally affected by its attacks readily perceived the danger into which they were running. In the course of 1699 Orford and Montague resigned their offices. William fell back upon his original system of combining Whigs and Tories. The Whigs, however, still preponderated, especially as Somers, the wisest statesman of the day, remained Lord Chancellor.

10. The Irish Grants and the Fall of Somers. 1700.-After the reduction of Ireland large tracts of land had fallen to the Crown, and William had made grants out of them to persons whom he favoured, especially to persons of foreign origin. Amongst these were brave foreign soldiers like Ginkell and Ruvigny (see p. 656), now Earls of Athlone and Galway, as well as mere personal favourites, such as Elizabeth Villiers, who had, many years before, been William's mistress. In 1700, however, the Commons proposed to annul all William's Irish grants. Besides this the House proposed to grant away some of the estates to favourites of their own, and declared land forfeited which in law had never been forfeited at all. As the Lords resisted the latter parts of this scheme, the Commons invented a plan for coercing them. They tacked their bill, about Irish forfeitures to their grant of supplies for the year; that is to say, made it part of the bill by which the supplies were given to the Crown. As the peers were not allowed to alter a money bill, they must accept or reject the whole, including the provisions made by the Commons about the Irish forfeitures. William foresaw that, in the heated temper of the Commons, they would throw the whole government into confusion rather than give way, and at his instance the Lords succumbed. The victory of the Commons brought into evidence their power of beating down the resistance both of the king and of the House of Lords, but it was a victory marred by the intemperateness of their conduct, and by the injustice of some of the provisions for which they contended. Fierce attacks had also been made in the House of Commons on Somers, and William ordered Somers to resign. The principle that ministers with whom the House of Commons is dissatisfied cannot remain in office was thus established.

II. The Darien Expedition. 1698-1700.-It was not in Eng

1698-1700 AN AGREEMENT WITH LOUIS XIV.

671

land only that William met with resistance. The commerce of Scotland was small, and Scotchmen were excluded from all share in the English trading companies. Paterson, who had been the originator of the Bank of England, urged his countrymen to settle in Darien, as the Isthmus of Panama was then called, where, placed as they would be between two oceans, they would, as he told them, have the trade of the world in their hands. Forgetting not only that Darien was claimed by Spain, but that its climate was exceedingly unhealthy, Scotchmen of all ranks joined eagerly in a company which was to acquire this valuable position. In 1698 and 1699 two expeditions sailed to take possession of the isthmus. By the spring of 1700 most of those who had set out with the highest hopes had perished of disease, whilst the few who remained alive had been expelled by the Spaniards. All Scotland threw the blame of the disaster on William, because he had not embroiled England in war with Spain to defend these unauthorised intruders on her domain.

12. The Second Partition Treaty. 1700.--In the spring of 1700, whilst the weakness and unpopularity of William were being published to the world, he concluded a second partition treaty with Louis. The Archduke Charles was to be king of Spain, of the Spanish Netherlands, and of all the Spanish colonies; France was to have Guipuscoa, on the Spanish shore of the Bay of Biscay, and all the Spanish possessions in Italy, though Louis declared his intention of abandoning the Duchy of Milan to the Duke of Lorraine in exchange for Lorraine. The proposal of this Treaty came from Louis, who certainly had very little idea of carrying it into effect, whilst the Emperor, who would gain much by it for his son, the Archduke Charles, refused his consent, perhaps thinking that it was of little importance to him to place his son on the throne of Spain, if Italy, which lay so much nearer to his own hereditary dominions, was to be abandoned to the French.

13. Deaths of the Duke of Gloucester and of the King of Spain. 1700.--Two deaths, which occurred in 1700, affected the politics of England and Europe for some time to come. Anne had had several children, all of whom died young, the last of them, the Duke of Gloucester, dying on July 29 in this year. The question

of the succession to the throne after Anne's death was thus thrown

open. Charles II. of Spain died on November I. Louis had long been intriguing for his inheritance, and his intrigues had been successful. Charles, before he died, left by will the whole of his dominions to Louis's grandson, Philip, hereafter to be known as Philip V., king