secure the support of a body of ministers who would avoid irritating anyone, and would thus help him in his military designs. An attempt made by the High Tories in the Commons to force the Lords to accept the Occasional Conformity Bill, by tacking it (see p. 670) to a Bill for a land tax, was defeated with the help of Harley and St. John.

7. The Campaign of Blenheim. 1704. The campaign of 1704 was likely to be a critical one. The French and Bavarians intended to push on to Vienna and to compel the Emperor to separate himself from his allies. Marlborough, perceiving that if the French were allowed to carry their project into execution they would become the masters of Europe, anticipated them by marching to the Upper Danube, carrying with him the Dutch army in spite of the reluctance of the Dutch Government. Having effected a junction with the Austrian commander Prince Eugene, and with Louis of Baden who was at the head of the forces of other German states, the combined armies stormed the Schellenberg, a hill over Donauwörth, and then devastated Bavaria. A French army under Marshal Tallard hastened to the aid of the Elector of Bavaria. Marlborough and Eugene, between whom no jealousies ever arose, turned round, and utterly defeated Tallard at Blenheim. It was Marlborough's genius which had foreseen the surprising results of a victory on the Danube. His success marks the end of a period of French military superiority in Europe. The French had won every battle in which they had been engaged since 1643, when they defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi. It was, however, something more than prestige which was lost by France. The whole of the territory of the Duke of Bavaria, the most important German ally of Louis, was at the mercy of the allies, and before the end of the year scarcely a vestige of French authority was left in Germany. Marlborough received a grant of the manor of Woodstock, on which the huge and ungraceful pile which bears the name of Blenheim was built for him at the public expense.

8. Operations in Spain. 1704-1705.—In 1704 the Archduke Charles, assuming the name of Charles III. of Spain, landed at Lisbon. The Spaniards regarded him as a foreign intruder, whilst they cherished Philip V. as if he had been their native king. The first foothold which Charles acquired in Spain was at Gibraltar, which surrendered in August to the English admiral, Sir George Rooke. In 1705 the French and Spaniards tried in vain to retake the fortress. The most important success of the allies in 1705 was the capture of Barcelona—an achievement of which the chief merit

belongs to the English commander, the eccentric Lord Peterborough, whose brilliant conceptions were too often thrown away by his ignorance of that art in which Marlborough excelled, the art of courteously overlooking the defects of others. The importance of Barcelona arose from its being the chief place in Catalonia, a province which clung to its local independence, and which vigorously espoused the cause of Charles, simply because Philip ruled in Castile. Soon afterwards Valencia was overrun by the allies. In other parts of Europe there were no military events of note. In the course of 1705 the Emperor Leopold I. died, and his son Joseph (the elder brother of the Archduke Charles) succeeded him in the empire as well as in his hereditary dominions.

9. A Whig Parliament. 1705-1706.-At home the High Tories raised the cry of "The Church in danger"; but a Whig majority was returned to Parliament, and Marlborough and Godolphin entered into friendly communications with the Whig leaders. One of the results of the understanding arrived at was a compromise on that article in the Act of Settlement which would, after the accession of the House of Hanover, have excluded ministers as well as other placemen from the House of Commons (see p. 673). It was arranged in 1706 that the holding of a pension or of an office created after October 25, 1705, should disqualify, whilst all other offices should be compatible with a seat, provided that the holder, at the time of his appointment, presented himself for a fresh election.

10. The Campaign of 1706 in the Netherlands and in Italy. 1706.-In May, 1706, Marlborough won a second great victory at Ramillies, and before long, except that they continued to hold a few isolated fortresses, the French were swept out of the Spanish Netherlands as they had been swept out of Germany in 1704. In September, Eugene came to the succour of the Duke of Savoy, defeated the French who were besieging Turin, and drove their armies out of Italy.

II. Campaign of 1706 in Spain. 1706.-In Spain the success of the allies was less unmixed. Barcelona indeed beat off a French besieging army, and the old Huguenot refugee Ruvigny, now known as the Earl of Galway (see p. 670), marched from Portugal and occupied Madrid in June; but the Portuguese under his command left him in order to plunder, and, before the end of July, he learnt that the French commander, the Duke of Berwick (the illegitimate son of James II. by Marlborough's sister, Arabella Churchill), had received ample reinforcements As all the country

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round was hostile, Galway had nothing for it but to leave Madrid. In August he was joined by the Archduke Charles and Peterborough, though the latter soon afterwards betook himself to Italy on diplomatic service. When Peterborough afterwards returned to Spain, all authority had slipped out of his hands. Galway, unable to maintain himself in Castile, retreated to Valencia. Whilst he had been in the interior, Aragon had declared for Charles, and Alicante had been captured by an English fleet.

12. The Union with Scotland. 1702-1707.-Far more important to England than all that was taking place in Spain was the conclusion of the Union with Scotland. In 1702 Commissioners had met to discuss its terms. The Scots had naturally been anxious for freedom of trade and equality of commercial privileges. As the English were unwilling to

Royal Arms as borne by Anne.

grant this, the Scottish Parliament, in 1703, retorted by an Act of Security, providing that the successor to the Scottish crown, after the queen's death, should not be the same person as the successor to the crown of England. In 1704, in consequence of the defiant attitude of Scotland, the queen was forced to give the royal assent to the Act of Security. What the Scots virtually meant by it was, that England must make her choice either to accept Scotland as an equal partner with full equality of benefits and rights, or must have her as an alienated neighbour with a national sovereign of her own, capable of renewing that ancient league with France which had cost England so dear in earlier times. England retaliated with an enactment that Scotchmen, coming to England, should no longer enjoy the privileges to which they were entitled by the decision of the Judges in the case of the Postnati (see p. 483), until the Scottish Parliament had settled the succession in the same way that it was settled in England. Godolphin and his fellow-ministers were, however, too wise to prolong this war of threats. They gave way on free trade and commercial equality, and in 1767 the union of the two nations and the two Parliaments was finally accepted on both sides. Forty-five members of the House of Commons

were to be chosen by Scottish constituencies, and the Scottish peers were to elect sixteen of their own number to sit in the House of Lords. Scotland maintained her own Church, her own law, and the control of her own fortresses. She remained a nation in heart, voluntarily merging her legislative authority in that of the neighbouring nation.

13. The Irish Penal Laws. It would have been well both for England and Ireland if the Irish race had been capable of enforcing its claims even to a just and lenient treatment by its masters. Unfortunately the Irish population, beaten in war and deprived of its natural leaders by the emigration of its most vigorous soldiers, was subjected to the Parliament of the British Protestant colony. In spite of the terms made at Limerick (see p. 657), the Parliament at Dublin, after excluding Catholics from its benches, passed laws of which the result was to make wellnigh intolerable the position of the professors of the religion of at least three-fourths of the inhabitants of Ireland. Catholic landowners were impoverished by an enforced partition of their lands amongst their sons, and by the enactment that if a single son turned Protestant the whole of the inheritance was to pass to him. Catholic children, upon the death of their fathers, were entrusted to Protestant guardians, who were directed to bring them up as Protestants. A Catholic priest who converted a Protestant to his faith was to be imprisoned, and one who celebrated a marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant was to be hanged. Oaths were imposed on the priests which no conscientious Catholic could take, and each priest who refused the oath was to be banished, and, if he returned to Ireland, was to forfeit his life. Any persons refusing to give evidence which might lead to the detection of such priests were liable to imprisonment or fine. In addition to these and other similar enactments, the Irishman who was true to his religion had to bear the daily scorn and contumely of men of English or Scottish descent and religion, who looked upon him as a being of an inferior race, and scarcely deigned to admit him even to their presence.

14. Irish Commerce Crushed.—Though the Parliament in Dublin was allowed to deal thus with the lives and property of those whom its members would have scorned to speak of as their fellowcountrymen, it had to purchase the support of England by submitting to that English commercial monopoly against which the Scots had successfully rebelled. In the reign of Charles II. landowners in Ireland-for the most part Protestant landowners-