Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark.

According to the provisions of the "Act of Settlement," the English crown passed, on the death of William III., to his sister-in-law, the Princess Anne, the second daughter of James II. The new sovereign was a worthy, pious woman, of simple domestic tastes, without a spark of intelligence or ambition. She was by far the most insignificant personage who had ever yet sat upon the throne of England. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, was a fit match for her; he was reckoned the most harmless and the most stupid man within the four seas. "I have tried him drunk," said the shrewd Charles II., "and I have tried him sober, and there is nothing in him." He was the best of husbands, and always acted as his wife's humble attendant and admirer. He and his good-natured, placid, lymphatic spouse might possibly have managed a farm; it seemed almost ludicrous to see them set to manage three kingdoms.

The worthy Anne was inevitably doomed to fall under the dominion of some mind stronger than her own. It was notorious to every one that for the last twenty years she had been managed and governed by her chief lady-in-waiting, Sarah, Lady Churchill, the wife of the intriguing general who had betrayed James II. in 1688, and William III. in 1692. They had been friends and companions from their girlhood, and the imperious Sarah had always had the mastery over the yielding Anne. The princess saw with her favourite's eyes, and spoke with her favourite's words. Any faint symptoms of independence on her part were promptly crushed by the hectoring tongue of Lady Churchill, who had acquired such an ascendency over her mistress that she permitted herself the strangest licence, and cowed and deafened her by her angry and voluble reproaches. It is only fair to say that she exercised almost as great a tyranny over her own husband. The suave and shifty general looked upon his wife with doting admiration, and yielded a respectful obedience to her caprices.

It is a curious testimony to the survival of the personal power of the sovereign in England, that Anne's predilection for the two Churchills changed the face of domestic politics on her accession. During William's life, they had been eyed with distrust; now they became the most important personages in the realm. The queen dismissed most of the Whig ministers who had been in power when her brother-in-law died, and filled their places with Tories, or rather with friends and adherents of Churchill, who, though he called himself a Tory, was in reality a pure self-seeker who cared nothing for either party. The chief minister was Lord Godolphin, whose son had married Churchill's daughter, as shifty a politician as any of his contemporaries. He had long maintained a fruitless intrigue with the exiled Stuarts, but, when he came into power, dropped his correspondence with St. Germains, and ultimately became a Whig.

It was fortunate for England that Churchill and Godolphin were as clever as they were selfish. Though personally they were mere greedy adventurers, yet their policy was the best that could have been found. Churchill's military ambition made him anxious to proceed with the war which William III. had begun. The complete mastery over the queen which his wife possessed, made him firmly resolved to keep Anne on the throne at all costs. Hence there was no change either in the foreign or domestic policy of England: the new ministry were as much committed to maintaining the Protestant succession and the French war as their predecessors, though almost every individual among them had at one time or another held treasonable communications with James II.

The great alliance, therefore, which William III. had done his best to organize, was completed by the Godolphin cabinet, England, Holland, Austria, and most of the smaller states of the Empire bound themselves to frustrate the union of France and Spain, and to secure the inheritance of Charles II. for his namesake, the Austrian archduke. Portugal and Savoy joined the alliance ere the year was out.

On the other side, Lewis XIV. had the support of Spain: for the first time for two centuries the Spaniards and French were found fighting side by side. Only a small minority of the people of the Peninsula refused to accept Philip of Anjou as their rightful sovereign, and adhered to the archduke; this minority consisted of the Catalans, the inhabitants of the sea-coast of North-Eastern Spain, who had an old grievance against their kings for depriving them of certain local rights and privileges. By reason of the Spanish alliance, Lewis started on the war in complete military possession of two most important frontier regions, the Milanese in Italy, and the whole of the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) in the North. He had also a strong position in Germany, owing to the fact that he had secured the alliance of those powerful princes, the Elector of Bavaria and the Prince-archbishop of Cologne, two brothers of the house of Wittelsbach who had an old family grudge against the Emperor.

War had been declared by England and her allies in 1702, but it was not till 1703 that important operations began. They were waged simultaneously on four separate theatres—the Spanish Netherlands, South Germany, North Italy, and Spain. It appeared at first as if Lewis XIV. was to be the aggressor; from his points of vantage in Alsace, Milan, Bavaria, and the Spanish Netherlands, he seemed about to push forward against Holland and Austria. But he had now to cope with two generals such as no French army had ever faced—the Emperor's great captain, Prince EugÉne of Savoy; and the wary Churchill, now, by Queen Anne's favour, commander-in-chief of the English and the Dutch armies.

The first campaign was indecisive, the only considerable advantage secured by either side being that Churchill rendered a French invasion of Holland impossible, by capturing the north-eastern fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands, Venloo and Ruremonde, and by overrunning the electorate of Cologne and the bishopric of LiÈge. On his return to England, he was given the title by which he is best known, that of Duke of Marlborough.

Hitherto Churchill had shown himself an able general, but no one had taken the true measure of his abilities, or recognized the fact that he was by far the greatest military man that England had ever known. But now the ignominious political antecedents of Queen Anne's favourite were about to be hidden from view by the laurels that he was to win. John Churchill, when once he had intrigued his way to power, showed that he was well fitted to hold it. As a soldier he was the founder of a new school of scientific strategy: on the battle-field he was alert and vigorous, but he was greater in the operations that precede a battle. He had an unrivalled talent for careful and scientific combinations, by which he would deceive and circumvent an enemy, so as to attack him when least expected and at the greatest advantage. Where generals of an older school would run headlong into a fight and win with heavy loss, he would outflank or outmarch his enemy, and hustle him out of his positions with little or no bloodshed. On one occasion—as we shall see—he drove an army of 60,000 French before him and seized half the duchy of Brabant, without losing more than 80 men. Yet when hard blows were necessary he never shrank from the most formidable problems, and would lead his troops into the hottest fire with a cool-headed courage that won every man's admiration.

Great as were Marlborough's talents as a general, he was almost as notable as a diplomatist and administrator. He had all the gifts of a statesman: suave, affable, patient, and plausible, he was the one personage who could keep together the ill-assorted allies who had combined to attack Lewis XIV. The Dutch, the Austrians, and the small princes of the Empire had such divergent interests that it was a hard task to get them to work together. That they were kept from quarrelling and induced to combine their efforts was entirely Churchill's work. The organization of the allied army was in itself no mean problem; the English troops in it formed only a quarter or a third of the whole, and to manage the great body of Dutch, Prussians, Hanoverians, and Danes, who formed the bulk of the host, required infinite tact and discretion. Yet under Marlborough this motley array never marched save to victory, and never failed from lukewarmness or disunion.

When we recollect all Churchill's intellectual greatness, we are more than ever shocked with his moral failings. Not only was he an intriguer to the backbone, but he was grossly and indecently fond of money: he levied contributions on all the public funds that passed through his hands, was open to presents from every quarter, and did not shrink from gross favouritism where his interests moved him.

The first great campaign in which Marlborough showed his full powers was that of 1704. When it opened, his army lay on the Meuse and Lower Rhine, holding back the French from Holland. But meanwhile Lewis XIV. had pushed forward another army into South Germany to join the Bavarians, and their united forces held the valley of the Upper Danube, and seriously threatened Austria. Seeing that the sphere of decisive action lay in Bavaria, and not on the Meuse, Marlborough resolved to transfer himself to the point of danger by a rapid march across Germany. After with great difficulty persuading the Dutch to allow him to move their army eastward, he executed a series of skilful feints which led the French to imagine that he was about to invade Alsace. But having thoroughly misled them as to his intentions, he struck across Wurtemburg by forced marches, and appeared in the valley of the Danube. By storming the great fortified camp of the Bavarians on the Schellenberg, he placed himself between the enemy and Austria, and rendered any further advance towards Vienna impossible to them. When joined by a small Austrian army under EugÉne of Savoy, he found himself strong enough to fight the whole force of the French and Bavarians.

Accordingly he marched to attack them, and found them 56,000 strong, arrayed in a good position behind a marshy stream called the Nebel, which falls into the Danube near the village of Blenheim. Formidable though their line appeared, Marlborough thought that it might be broken. He sent Prince EugÉne with 20,000 men to keep employed the enemy's left wing, where the Bavarians lay. He himself with 32,000 assailed the French marshals Marsin and Tallard, who formed the hostile centre and right. On the two flanks the Anglo-Austrian army was brought to a standstill opposite the fortified villages of Blenheim and Oberglau, and could advance no further. But between them Marlborough himself found a weak point, just where the French and Bavarian armies joined. He made his men wade through the marshy stream, and then directed a series of furious cavalry charges against the hostile centre. After a stout resistance it broke, and the French and Bavarians were thrust apart. The Elector and his men got off without much hurt, for Prince EugÉne's force had been too much cut up early in the day to be able to pursue them. But the enemy's right wing fared very differently: Marlborough's victorious cavalry rolled it up and drove it southward into the Danube. The French had no choice but to drown or to surrender. Tallard was captured on the river-bank. Eleven thousand men laid down their arms in Blenheim village when they saw that their retreat was cut off; 15,000 more were drowned, slain, or wounded, and not half the Franco-Bavarian army succeeded in escaping (August 13, 1704).

This crushing blow saved Austria. The whole of Bavaria fell into Marlborough's hands, the French retired behind the Rhine, and for the future Germany was quite safe from the assaults of King Lewis. The duke then transferred himself back to the Dutch frontier so rapidly that the French had no time to do any mischief before his return. Next spring he was again on the Meuse, and threatening the Spanish Netherlands on their eastern flank.

It was not in Bavaria alone that the English arms fared well in the year 1704. A fleet under Admiral Rooke and a small army had been sent to Spain, to help the Catalan malcontents, who were ready to rise in the name of the Archduke Charles. They were foiled before Barcelona, but on their return took by surprise the almost impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, a stronghold which has remained in English hands ever since. The possession of this place, "the Key of the Mediterranean," has proved invaluable in every subsequent war, enabling England to watch, and often to hinder, every attempt to bring into co-operation the eastern and the western fleets of France and Spain. Cadiz cannot communicate with Cartagena, or Toulon with Brest, without being observed from Gibraltar, and a strong English fleet based on that port can practically close the entrance of the Mediterranean.

In 1705 Marlborough had intended to attack France by the valley of the Moselle, but owing to the feeble help given by the Austrians—Prince EugÉne had been sent off to Italy—he was compelled to try a less adventurous scheme in the Spanish Netherlands. The armies of King Lewis, now under Marshal Villeroi, had ranged themselves in a long line from Antwerp to Namur, covering every assailable point with elaborate fortified lines. By a system of skilful feints and countermarches, Marlborough broke through the lines with the loss of only 80 men, and got possession of the plain of Brabant. He would have fought a pitched battle on the field of Waterloo, but for the reluctance of the Dutch Government, who wished to withdraw their troops at the critical moment, and prevented the campaign from being decisive.

The next spring, however, brought Marlborough his reward. When he threatened the great fortress of Namur, Marshal Villeroi concentrated all the French troops in the Netherlands, and posted himself on the heights of Ramillies to cover the city. Marlborough's generalship was never better displayed than in the battle which ensued. Threatening the French left wing, he induced Villeroi to concentrate the stronger half of his army on that point. Then suddenly changing his order of attack, he flung himself on the extreme French right, and had taken Ramillies and stormed the heights behind it before Villeroi could hurry back his troops to the point of real danger. Each French brigade as it arrived was swept away by the advancing allies, and Villeroi lost his baggage and guns and half his army. The consequences of the fight were even more striking: Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and all Flanders and Hainault fell into Marlborough's hands. In the whole of the Spanish Netherlands, Lewis XIV. now held nothing but the two fortresses of Mons and Namur. The French frontier was laid open on a front of more than 200 miles.

While the arms of France were faring so badly in the North, they were equally unsuccessful in the South. On September 6th of the same year, Prince EugÉne and the Duke of Savoy routed the French army of Italy in front of Turin; in consequence of this battle the generals of Lewis were obliged to evacuate the Milanese and Piedmont, and to retire behind the Alps. At the same time a second assault of the allies on Spain met with signal good fortune. The Catalans had risen in favour of the Archduke Charles, Barcelona had been stormed in 1705 by an Anglo-Austrian force under the Prince of Hesse, [49] and all Eastern Spain submitted. In 1706 an English force, reinforced by Portuguese, marched up to Madrid and seized it. It seemed that Philip V. would ere long be forced to leave Spain, and retire beyond the Pyrenees. The spirits of Lewis XIV. were so much dashed by this series of reverses that he, for the first time in his life, humbled himself to sue for peace from the allies—offering to waive his grandson's rights to Spain, Belgium, and the Indies, if he were allowed to keep the Spanish dominions in Italy—Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia.

The allies were unwise enough to reject these terms; Holland and the German states would have accepted them, but the Emperor was set on gaining the Milanese, and Marlborough, who loved the war for the wealth and glory that it brought him, persuaded the English Government to refuse to treat. This obstinate determination to push matters to extremity met with a well-deserved retribution. The fortune of war in 1707 commenced to turn against the allies. In Spain their army lost Madrid, and was almost annihilated at the battle of Almanza by the French and Spaniards. In consequence they lost all their foothold in the peninsula except Catalonia and Gibraltar. About the same time EugÉne of Savoy and the Austrians crossed the Alps and invaded Provence, but were beaten out of France after a disastrous failure before Toulon. Marlborough himself won no new successes in the Netherlands; the Austrians gave him little help, and his attention was distracted from Flanders by the enterprises of Charles XII. of Sweden. That brilliant and headstrong monarch, an old ally of France, had just invaded Germany from the rear, pursuing a quarrel with the Elector of Saxony. In great fear lest he might interfere in the war and join the French, Marlborough hastened to the far east, visited Charles at his camp in Saxony, and flattered and cajoled him into retiring. The Swede marched off into Poland, and Marlborough was able to return to Flanders with a quiet mind; but he had lost the best months of the campaigning season in his excursion to meet Charles.

In the next year his old fortune returned to him. Lewis XIV., encouraged by the events of 1707, had raised a great army for the invasion of Flanders. It was headed by his eldest grandson and heir, Lewis, Duke of Burgundy, who was to be advised by Marshal VendÔme, the best officer in the French service. They crossed the Lys into Flanders and captured Ghent, but Marlborough soon concentrated his forces and fell upon them at Oudenarde. The French army was mismanaged. Burgundy was obstinate, and VendÔme brutal and overbearing; they gave contradictory orders to the troops, and were caught in disorder by Marlborough's sudden advance. In a long running fight on the heights above Oudenarde, the French right wing was surrounded and cut to pieces; the remainder of the host fled back into France (July 11, 1708). They were soon pursued; the Austrian army came up under Prince EugÉne to help the English, and the allies crossed the frontier and laid siege to the great fortress of Lille, the northern bulwark of France. It fell, after a long siege, on December 9, 1708, when Marshal Boufflers and 15,000 men laid down their arms before the allied generals.

Lewis was now brought very low, lower even than in 1706. Once more he asked the allies for terms of peace. This time they were even harsher in their reply than at the previous negotiations. They demanded not only that he should surrender his grandson's claims to any part of the Spanish inheritance, but that he should guarantee to send an army into Spain to evict King Philip, if the latter refused to evacuate the realm which he had been ruling for the last six years. Lewis was also bidden to surrender Strasburg and some of the fortresses of French Flanders.

Though his armies were starving, and his exchequer drained dry, the King of France could not stoop to the humiliation of declaring war on his grandson. "If I must needs fight," he is reported to have said, "I would rather fight my enemies than my own children." So, protesting that the continuance of the war was no fault of his, he sent his plate to the mint, sold his costly furniture and pictures, and made a desperate appeal to the French nation to maintain the integrity of its frontiers and its national pride. By a supreme effort nearly 100,000 men, under Marshal Villars, were collected and ranged along the borders of Flanders.

With this army Marlborough had to deal in the next year. He was proceeding with the siege of the fortress of Mons, when Villars came up to hinder him, and took post on the heath of Malplaquet. The French position was very strong, covered on both flanks with thick woods, and defended with entrenchments and heavy batteries. Nevertheless Marlborough attacked, and met with his usual success, though on this occasion his victory was very dearly bought. His left wing, headed by the headstrong young Prince of Orange, made a rash and desperate assault on the French lines before the rest of the army had begun to advance, and was beaten back with fearful loss. But the duke broke through the centre of Villars' entrenchments by bringing up his reserves, and won the field, though he lost more men than the French, who had fought under cover all day. In consequence of this victory Mons fell, and the allies advanced into France, and began to besiege the fortresses of French Flanders and Artois. Their progress seemed to slacken among these thickly set strongholds, and the once rapid advance of Marlborough grew slow. This was more in consequence of the internal politics of England than of any falling off in the great general's capacity. The duke had ceased to command the obedience of the English ministry, and his friends had just been turned out of office.

From 1702 to 1710 Marlborough's connection, Godolphin, remained the chief minister. He had kept himself in power by utilizing the jealousies of Whig and Tory, and allying himself alternately to either party. Till 1706 Godolphin had posed as a Tory himself, but finding that the majority of the Tory party were lukewarm in supporting the war, and pressed for an early peace with France, he resolved to break with them. Accordingly he dismissed most of his old colleagues, and took into partnership Marlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, who, though the heir of the time-serving favourite of James II., was a violent Whig. It was the Godolphin-Sunderland ministry which rejected the French proposals for peace in 1708, when the most favourable terms might have been secured. But to subserve Marlborough's ambition and the fanatical hatred of the Whigs for Lewis XIV., the war was continued.

The only important event of domestic politics which occurred in this part of Anne's reign was the work of the Godolphin-Sunderland ministry. This was the celebrated "Union with Scotland" in 1707, which permanently united the crowns and parliaments of the two halves of Britain. The separation of the two kingdoms had many disadvantages, both commercial and political, and William III. had wished to unify them. But old local patriotism had frustrated the scheme hitherto, and the unfortunate Darien Scheme [50] had caused much bitter feeling in William's later years. Early in Anne's reign this took the ominous shape of an attempt to change the law of succession to the throne in Scotland, so that there appeared a grave danger of the separation of the two crowns at the queen's death. Fearing this, Godolphin's ministry made a resolute attempt to bring about a permanent union of the two crowns. An act to that effect was ultimately carried through the Scottish Parliament, but with the greatest difficulty. National pride, the fear lest England might endeavour to Anglicize the Kirk, the dislike of the citizens of Edinburgh to see their city lose its status as a capital, the secret hopes of the Jacobites to win the Scottish crown for James the Pretender, worked on one side. On the other the arguments used were the political and commercial convenience of the change, and the absolute necessity for making sure of the Protestant succession. When the English Government gave pledges for the security of the Kirk, and for the perpetuation of the Scottish law courts and universities, the majority yielded, and the bill passed (1707). For the future Scotland was represented in the United Parliament of Great Britain by 45 members of the Commons and 16 representative peers. The arms of England and Scotland were blended in the royal shield, and in the new British flag, the "Union Jack," the white saltire of St. Andrew and the red cross of St. George were combined.

It was many years, however, before the Scots came to acquiesce cordially in the Union, and the Jacobite party did their best to keep up the old national grudge, and to persuade Scotland that she had suffered by the change. But the allegation was proved so false by the course of events, that the outcry against the Union gradually died away. Scotland has since supplied a much larger proportion of the leaders of Britain alike in politics, war, literature, and philosophy, than her scanty population seemed to promise.

The domination of the Whigs was not to last much longer. They fell into disfavour for two reasons: the first was that the people had begun to realize the fact that the costly and bloody struggle with France ought to end, now that Lewis was humbled and ready to surrender all claims to domination in Europe. The second was that the Whigs had contrived to offend the religious sentiments of that great majority of the nation which clung to the Church of England and resented any action that seemed to put a slight upon her.

The Tories set to work to preach to the people that the war only continued because Marlborough profited by it, and because the Emperor and the Dutch wished to impose over-heavy terms on the French. This was on the whole quite true, and it was dinned into the ears of the nation by countless Tory speeches and pamphlets, of which the best-known is Dean Swift's cogent and caustic "Conduct of the Allies" (1711).

But a more active part in the fall of the Whig ministry was played by the Church question. High Churchmen had always suspected the Whigs of lukewarm orthodoxy, because of the attempts which were made by them from time to time to secure toleration for Dissenters. This, the best and wisest part of the Whig programme, brought them much enmity. They were already looked upon askance by many Churchmen, when they contrived to bring a storm about their ears by an attempt to suppress the liberty of the pulpit. Dr. Sacheverell, a Tory divine, had preached two violent political sermons, "On the Peril of False Brethren in Church and State." They were stupid and bombastic utterances, in which he compared Godolphin to Jeroboam, and called him "Volpone, the Old Fox." The minister was foolish enough to take this stuff seriously: he arrested Sacheverell, and announced his intention of impeaching him for sedition before the House of Lords. He carried out his purpose; the doctor was tried, and condemned by the Whig majority among the peers to suspension from his clerical function for three years, while his sermons were burnt by the common hangman. This decision produced riots and demonstrations over the whole country; the Whigs were denounced as violators of the freedom of the Church and as the secret allies of schism. The windy Sacheverell became the party hero of the day, and made a triumphal progress through the midlands. The agitation was still in full blast, when it was suddenly announced that the queen had dismissed her ministers, and charged Harley, the chief of the Tory party, to form a new cabinet.

Queen Anne's decisive and unexpected action was mainly due to personal causes. The domestic tyranny which the Duchess of Marlborough had exercised over her for so many years, had at last reached the point at which it became unbearable. The duchess had grown harsher and ruder with advancing years, and treated her royal friend with such gross impertinence that even the placid Anne became resentful. She gradually transferred her friendship to a new favourite, Mrs. Masham, one of her ladies in waiting, and a cousin of the Tory leader Harley. Provoked by some final explosions of the jealous wrath of the duchess, the queen sought the secret advice of Harley, and suddenly dismissed her from her offices, and bade her leave the court. After a scene of undignified recrimination with her mistress, the disgraced favourite was forced to retire: on her departure she completely wrecked, in a fit of anger, the rooms which she had so long occupied in St. James's Palace (1710).

Godolphin and Sunderland were dismissed from power immediately after the disgrace of the duchess, and Harley and the Tories were at once installed in office. They left Marlborough in command in the Netherlands for a time, but began at once to open negotiations for peace with France. This was an honest attempt to carry out the Tory programme, but it was made in an underhand way, for the Dutch and Austrians were kept entirely in the dark, and received no news of the step that England was taking.

Meanwhile Marlborough fought his last campaign in France; Marshal Villars had endeavoured to stop him by a long system of entrenchments and redoubts stretching from Hesdin to Bouchain. But Marlborough always laughed at such fortifications: he deceived Villars by his skilful feints, and easily burst through the vaunted lines, which the Frenchman had called his ne plus ultra. He took Bouchain, and was preparing to advance into Picardy, when he suddenly received the information that he was dismissed from his post and recalled to England. Harley had found the French ready to treat, and was resolved to stop the war. He gave the Duke of Ormonde, a Tory peer, the command of the English army, with the secret instructions that he was not to advance, or help the Austrians in any way (1711).

Marlborough returned to England to protest, but found himself involved in serious troubles when he landed. The Tories had laid a trap for him, which his own avarice had prepared. He was accused of gross peculations committed while in command in Flanders. It was proved that he had taken presents to the amount of more than £60,000 from the contractors who supplied his army with food and stores. He had also received from the Emperor Joseph a douceur of 2-1/2 per cent. on all the subsidies which the English ministry had paid to Austria. More than £150,000 had gone into his pocket on this account alone. The discovery of these instances of greed blasted the duke's character; it was to no purpose that he pleaded that the money was a free gift, and that such transactions were customary in foreign services. He found himself looked upon askance by all parties, even by his old friends the Whigs, and retired to the continent.

In 1712, Harley, who had now been created Earl of Oxford, brought his negotiations with France to a close. They resulted in the celebrated treaty of Utrecht. By this agreement England recognized Philip V. as King of Spain and the Indies, stipulating that Austria and Holland were to be compensated out of the Spanish dominions in Italy and the Netherlands. France ceded to England Newfoundland, Acadia—since known as Nova Scotia—and the waste lands round Hudson's Bay. Spain also gave up Gibraltar and the important island of Minorca. Both France and Spain signed commercial treaties giving favourable conditions for English merchants. Even the long-closed monopoly of Spanish trade in South America was surrendered by the Asiento, an agreement which gave England certain rights of trade with those parts, especially the disgraceful but profitable privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves. Spain and France also recognized the Protestant succession in England, and agreed not to aid "the Pretender," as the young son of James II. was now called.

The minor allies of England also obtained advantages by the treaty of Utrecht. Holland was given a favourable commercial treaty and a line of strong towns in the Spanish Netherlands known as the "Barrier fortresses," because they lay along the frontier of France. They included Namur, Tournay, Ypres, and six or seven other places. The Duke of Savoy received Sicily and the title of king; the Elector of Brandenburg took Spanish Guelders—a district on the Meuse—and was recognized as King of Prussia. But Austria, our most powerful ally, does not appear in the agreement. The Emperor wished to continue the war, and refused to come into the general pacification.

The treaty of Utrecht was on the whole profitable to England, though it is certain that better terms could have been extorted from Lewis XIV. and Philip V., both of whom were in the last stage of exhaustion and despair. But in signing it England committed a grave breach of faith with Austria, who wished to continue the war. The English army, under Ormonde, was actually withdrawn in the middle of the campaign of 1712, so that the Austrian troops were left unsupported in France, and severely handled by the enemy. Harley's reason for refusing to stand by his allies was that Joseph I. had lately died, and had been succeeded by his brother, the Archduke Charles, who had so long claimed the Spanish throne. It seemed to the Tory ministry just as unwise to allow the house of Hapsburg to appropriate the bulk of the Spanish dominions as to allow them to fall into the hands of Lewis XIV. Accordingly, they refused to listen to the Emperor's plans for bringing further pressure on the enemy and for demanding harder terms. Left to himself, Charles VI. fared ill in the war, and was forced to sign the treaty of Rastadt in 1714. This agreement—a kind of supplement to the treaty of Utrecht—gave to the Austrians Naples, Sardinia, the Milanese, and most of the Spanish Netherlands; but a small part of the last-named country fell to Holland and Prussia, who, as we have already mentioned, acquired respectively the "Barrier fortresses" and the duchy of Guelders.

The peace of Utrecht had been signed early in 1713, and the Tory party could now settle down to administer England after their own ideas, undisturbed by alarms of war from without; but all other subjects of political importance were now thrown into the background by the question of the succession to the crown. The queen's health was manifestly beginning to fail, and it was evident that ere many years the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, would come into operation, and Sophia of Hanover be called to the English throne. But there were many persons within the Tory party who viewed the approaching accession of this aged German lady with dislike, and wished, if it were but possible, to put the son of James II. on the throne. The exiled prince was now a young man of twenty-five, slow, apathetic, and deeply religious in his own narrow way. He was not the stuff of which successful pretenders are made, and played his cards very ill.

Nevertheless, there was for a time a considerable possibility that James III. might sit on the throne of England. It was generally felt that to exclude Anne's brother from the succession, in favour of her distant cousin, was hard. The large section of the Tory party who still clung to the old belief in the divine right of kings, were not comfortable in their consciences when they thought of the exclusion of the rightful heir. Another section, who had no principles, but a strong regard for their own interests, looked with dismay on the prospect of a Hanoverian succession, because they knew that the Electress Sophia and her son, the Elector George Lewis, were closely allied with the Whigs, and would certainly put them in office when the queen died.

If James Stuart had been willing to change his religion, or even to make a pretence of doing so, the Tory party would have accepted him as king, and his sister would have presented him to the people as her legitimate heir; but the Pretender was rigidly pious with the narrowest Romanist orthodoxy. He would not make the least concession on the religious point to his secret friends on this side of the water, when they besought him to hold out some prospect of his conversion. This honesty cost him his chance of recovering England.

When the Tories ascertained that James would never become a member of the Church of England, the party became divided. Harley, the prime minister, and the bulk of his followers would not lend themselves to a scheme for delivering England over to a Romanist. They continued to correspond with the Pretender, but refused to take any active steps in his cause, and let matters stand still. But there was another section of the party which was not so scrupulous, and was prepared to plunge into any treasonable plot, if only it could make sure of keeping the Whigs out of office. These men were led by Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, one of the two Secretaries of State. St. John was a clever, plausible man, a ready writer and a brilliant speaker, but utterly unscrupulous, and filled with a devouring ambition. Though in secret a free-thinker, he pretended to be the most extreme of High Churchmen, and led the more bigoted and violent wing of the Tory party. St. John was set on becoming the ruler of England, and saw his way to the post if he could place James III. on the throne. His cautious colleague Harley stood in his way, so he set himself to expel him from office, by playing on the foibles of the queen and the High Churchmen. With this end he brought in the "Schism Act," a persecuting measure recalling the old legislation of Charles II. It proposed to prohibit Dissenters from keeping or teaching in schools, so as to force all Nonconformists under the instruction of the Church. Harley would not give this bigoted measure his support, and so lost the confidence of half his own party, and, moreover, the favour of the queen, who was persuaded by St. John to give her patronage to the bill.

In consequence Harley was dismissed from office, the Schism Act was passed, and Bolingbroke became the queen's chief minister. He set to work to prepare for a Jacobite restoration, filling all posts in the state with partisans of the exiled prince. So able and determined was he, that the Whigs took alarm, and began to make preparation to defend the Protestant succession. They put themselves into communication with George of Hanover, whose aged mother the electress was just dead, and swore to secure him the throne, even at the cost of civil war.

But the new ministry had only been in power a few days, when Queen Anne was stricken with a mortal sickness. Bolingbroke had not reckoned on this chance, and was caught but half prepared. He saw that unless he acted, and acted promptly, the law of the land must take its course, and the Elector George become King of England. But action was difficult; the army was Whig at heart, and even the majority of the Tories were not prepared to draw the sword to place a Romanist on the throne. While Bolingbroke hesitated, his enemies struck their blow.

As the English Constitution then stood, the Cabinet system was but half developed. The modern idea that the queen's advisers should be a small homogeneous body of men of the same party, meeting together under the presidency of the prime minister, was only just coming into being. It was still a moot point whether, during the sovereign's illness or at his or her death, the executive power lay in the hands of the whole Privy Council or of the members of it alone who were actually ministers and members of the Cabinet. The supporters of the Protestant succession took advantage of this doubt. While the queen lay speechless and dying, three dukes, Shrewsbury, a "Hanoverian Tory," and Argyle and Somerset, two Whigs, presented themselves at the meeting of the Cabinet and claimed a seat in the assembly as privy councillors. Bolingbroke did not dare to exclude them, and thereby lost his chance of carrying out a coup d'État. For the dukes called in all the other privy councillors, a majority of whom were Whigs or moderate Tories, and took the conduct of affairs out of the prime minister's hands. The queen died that night (August 1, 1714), and the Privy Council at once proclaimed the elector under the name of George I. Bolingbroke retired in wrath, muttering that if he had been granted six weeks for preparation, he would have given England a different king.

THE STUARTS.
(Chart 1)

For this success the volatile and unscrupulous Earl of Peterborough claimed all the credit. But his account of his doings in Spain is a mere romance, and he was in truth a hindrance rather than an aid to the allies.