Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  The socioeconomic significance of the financial revolution was that it created new forms of wealth and made investors, in particular Whig financiers and government contractors who supplied the war, very wealthy, very fast. In fact, it seemed to give birth to a new class of men, labeled “monied men” by contemporaries, who made their wealth not from the land or even from the sale of goods but from the exploitation of credit. That is, they seemed to make money out of money (their loans), or paper (government bonds, lottery tickets, and bills of exchange), or out of thin air (credit itself). These new men now played so important a role in government finance that they often served on government commissions, their advice sought by government officials. They thus acquired influence, not only on fiscal policy but on foreign and domestic policy as well. Below their level, even the moderately prosperous with a little cash with which to play sunk it into government annuities: 10,000 people invested in the national debt by 1709, 30,000 by 1719. Gradually, the financial revolution created a speculative market in annuities and stocks which tempted large segments of the population to quick wealth – or quick loss.

  This whole business – the vast government bureaucracy necessary to fight the war, the burgeoning national debt which paid for it, the novel and complex system of finance which serviced the debt, the heavy taxes on land which secured the debt, and the growing wealth of non-landed men, financiers, contractors, government officials, and soldiers who profited from it all – jolted contemporaries, Tory landowners in particular. Years later, during the next war against the French, Jonathan Swift would write:

  Let any man observe the equipages in this town; he shall find the greater number of those who make a figure to be a species of men quite different from any that were ever known before the Revolution, consisting either of generals or colonels, or of such whose whole fortunes lie in funds and stocks: so that power, which according to the old maxim was used to follow land, is now gone over to money.

  Swift’s point is that the wars, and the financial revolution and government bureaucracy invented to fight them, threatened the traditional hierarchy based on birth and land. Landowners grew poor because they were paying the Land Tax; while military men (who made huge profits from subcontracts for uniforms, weaponry, and food), government officials (whose jobs depended on the war), manufacturers (who supplied the uniforms, weapons, and food), and “monied men” (who invested in government loans, funds, and lotteries) became wealthy. Anyone could rise. Nor did it bode well that the average English man or woman found the new financial instruments complicated if not impenetrable:

  through the contrivance and cunning of stock-jobbers [brokers], there has been brought in such a complication of knavery and cozenage, such a mystery of iniquity, and such an unintelligible jargon of terms to involve it in, as were never known in any other age or country of the world.6

  Anyone who, in modern times, has struggled to understand the workings of junk bonds, derivatives, subprimes, or the Dow Jones index can probably sympathize. Even worse, in Swift’s eyes, was the deliberate contracting of massive debt, to be paid off who knew when? All of this helps to explain the country’s apparently curious reaction to the Treaty of Ryswick, a Tory resurgence.

  The Tory Resurgence, 1697–1701

  The Treaty of Ryswick was a remarkable achievement. Yet Louis XIV’s concessions seemed to many Britons to be very small return for all the blood and treasure expended in the enterprise. The British taxpayer felt hard put upon and resented the king’s plans to maintain his standing army as a check on Louis, despite the peace. Country politicians, mainly Tories, were able to exploit these sentiments. Their leader was an ambitious young MP named Robert Harley (1661–1724), whose father had been a Roundhead, a country MP, and an Exclusionist Whig before migrating along with Robert himself and numerous other landowning Whigs to the Tory party in the 1690s. Under the younger Harley’s guidance, the Tories began to evolve into a true country party: suspicious of big government, modern finance, foreign entanglements (particularly with the Dutch), standing armies, and war. They claimed, with some justification, to represent the national mood. This, along with Junto overconfidence and disunity, explains why Tories and anti-administration Whigs gained seats in the parliamentary elections of 1698. Parliament was now so necessary to pay government expenses that the king had no choice but to appoint ministers with whom its majority could work. (Here is another sign that the wartime expansion of royal government was actually another milestone on the road to parliamentary sovereignty.) William, who was losing confidence in his Junto ministers anyway, began to name Tories in their place. Over the next three years Parliament would vote to cut the Land Tax in half; reduce the army to 7,000 men; send home the king’s Dutch guards; rescind his grants of Irish lands to favorites; and impeach the leading former Whig ministers for their conduct of the peace negotiations.

  Parliament’s most notable initiative, however, was the Act of Settlement of 1701. This legislation became necessary when Princess Anne’s last surviving child – and therefore the last Protestant grandchild of James II – William, duke of Gloucester (1689–1700), died the previous year. Both Tories and Whigs were desperately aware of the fact that, apart from Anne, the only remaining Stuart claimant to the throne was young Prince James, the Catholic son of James II. Even Jacobite Tories, who would otherwise have welcomed the younger James, were afraid of his Catholicism and the hostile popular reaction should he be designated heir apparent. And so, facing political realities, the Tory-leaning Parliament passed a law which stated that, failing the birth of further heirs from the widowed William and the aging Anne, the Crown would pass at the survivor’s death to their nearest Protestant relatives, the descendants of James I’s youngest daughter Elizabeth. These were Sophia, electress of the German State of Hanover (1630–1714), and, if she should predecease Anne, her son, Georg Ludwig (1660–1727). In taking this step, Parliament again abandoned the notion of a sacrosanct hereditary succession, for there were dozens of Catholic relatives with better claims than the Hanoverians. The Tories went along with this, but not without adding some provisos, intended as a rebuke to William, limiting the power of a foreign-born king. The Act specified that the king could not take England to war to defend European holdings or leave the British Isles without parliamentary permission, as William had done. Henceforward, no foreigner – not even a naturalized one – could hold government office or receive Crown lands, as his favorites, Portland and Albemarle, had done. The Act of Settlement also made it illegal for salaried government officials to serve in Parliament after Anne’s death. The idea was to eliminate the power of the Crown and its ministers to influence parliamentary votes by bribing MPs with offices, as once Danby and now the Junto were accused of doing. What is perhaps most remarkable about this piece of legislation is that it came from the party that had once been the home of Danby and his court partisans!

  The Spanish and English Successions, 1700–2

  In fact, the Tory triumph was short-lived, for so was the peace signed at Ryswick. It was shattered by a series of royal deaths between 1700 and 1702. First, at the end of October 1700, Carlos II, the sickly and mentally defective Habsburg ruler of Spain, finally died, heirless. It will be recalled that Louis XIV and William III had worked out a Partition Treaty to divide the Spanish empire among several competitors, thus preventing its annexation to France. Unfortunately, no one had consulted Carlos. That autumn, he may have been near death and barely competent, but he was in no doubt that he alone had the right to dispose of his empire, which he had no wish to see divided. His will therefore decreed that the whole entity was to be offered, first, to a grandson of Louis XIV, Philippe, duke of Anjou (1683–1746), who had to agree to renounce the throne of France. Should Anjou refuse, then the Spanish crown was to go to the second son of the Holy Roman emperor, Charles, archduke of Austria (1685–1740), who was to make the same promise about his father’s imperial throne.

  Imagine Louis’s dilemma. Here, on a silver platter, was the pri
ze for which he had so long been striving – to unite French military power with Spanish imperial wealth. The stipulation that his grandson should never be king of France was, in Louis’s eyes, a mere formality; something could undoubtedly be worked out. But if Louis accepted, he would break his Partition Treaty with William and, possibly, provoke a second war with the one enemy he had never beaten, the British. Imagine the scene at Versailles on November 6 when, after deliberating with his ministers and marshals, Louis emerged from the council chamber with Anjou at his side, proclaiming “Gentlemen, you see here the King of Spain.… Such was the will of Heaven; I have fulfilled it with joy.” Louis had decided to gamble. At the proclamation of “His Most Catholic Majesty, Felipe V, King of Spain and its Empire,” the Spanish ambassador to Versailles is said to have fallen to his knees, remarking about the mountain border that separated France and Spain: “The Pyrenees have been leveled!”7

  Louis’s gamble seemed to pay off at first. While William wanted to renew the war, his Tory Parliament did not. After all, most of their constituents viewed this development as having no obvious significance for the British Isles, especially if Anjou abided by the terms of the will and renounced the French throne. But Anjoudid not renounce his ancestors’ throne. Instead, early in 1701, Louis persuaded the French courts to rule that Carlos’s will could not affect the French succession. Worse, he also marched into some key fortress towns in the Spanish Netherlands, on the Dutch border. Finally, in a deliberately – and stupidly – provocative move, he announced an embargo against English trade with both France and Spain. Louis XIV was acting as if he already ruled both countries and those actions were already detrimental to British commerce. This offended even the Tories, who understood well the significance of trade. In June, the Tory Parliament agreed to vote large sums for war and support any alliances that William might make to secure the “liberties of Europe.”

  War became inevitable in the wake of the next royal death. In September 1701 poor old James II, now living with a small retinue at the château of St. Germain near Paris, died. On his deathbed, he asked Louis, as a last favor, to recognize his son, Prince James, as the rightful king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Once again, the French monarch faced a dilemma. On the one hand, recognition of Prince James would surely mean war with Britain, as it would repudiate the recognition of William made at Ryswick. On the other hand, how could he refuse the dying request of his old friend? Once again, Louis consulted with his ministers and marshals. Once again, he announced his decision to the court, this time assembled in James’s sickroom at St. Germain: “I come to tell Your Majesty that … I will be to your son what I have been to you, and will acknowledge him as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.”8 Once again, Louis took the gamble, proclaiming the adolescent prince as James III (of England and Ireland) and VIII (of Scotland). Once again, the assembled courtiers, this time Jacobite exiles, fell to their knees. But no one made any sanguine predictions about draining the English Channel.

  As Louis anticipated, this decision did, indeed, mean war – but not with William of Orange. Almost immediately, William ordered British diplomatic representatives to reassemble the Grand Alliance and Crown ministers to begin to plan for war. Then, after an autumn and winter of feverish activity, he sought some rest and relaxation. In February 1702, while hunting in Richmond Park, the king’s horse stumbled over a molehill and fell, throwing him. For years afterwards, Jacobites would secretly toast “the little gentleman in black velvet” – the mole that built the molehill that tripped the horse that threw the royal rider. William suffered a cracked collar-bone, which soon became infected. William III died on March 8, 1702. But the Grand Alliance he fashioned would live on.

  Anne and the Rage of Party

  The woman who succeeded William III was acclaimed with rapturous cheering, bells, and bonfires at her accession – but she has not always received a good press since. Queen Anne (1702–14), the youngest surviving Protestant daughter of James II and the last Stuart to sit on the British thrones, was 37 years old at the beginning of her reign. But a series of 17 pregnancies, none of which had resulted in a surviving child, as well as poor eating habits and the vagaries of contemporary medical care had left her prematurely aged (see plate 23). She had always been a bit plain and she was, by 1702, seriously overweight, nearly lame from gout, and in poor health generally. She was also quiet, shy, and of average intelligence. In short, Queen Anne had none of the star quality of Elizabeth I or even Mary II. But, in its place, Anne had many positive attributes missing from her Stuart predecessors, including a strong fund of common sense, a dedication to the job of being queen, a respect for the post-revolutionary English constitution, an unshakeable attachment to the Church of England, and an instinctive love for and sense of responsibility to her people, which they reciprocated. Happily married to Prince George, she could not be a “Virgin Queen” to them; instead she embraced the image of their “nursing Mother.” During her reign, the promise of the commercial and financial revolutions, the Grand Alliance, and William’s military buildup would pay off in a series of crushing victories over the French, and ultimate triumph in the War of the Spanish Succession. At her death, Britain was poised to become the wealthiest and most powerful state in Europe.

  Plate 23 Queen Anne, by Edmund Lilly. By kind permission of His Grace, the Duke of Marlborough.

  For years, most historians believed that these victories were won in spite of Anne’s dull personality, or because she was dominated by more intelligent friends and favorites. It is true that during her long apprenticeship as a young princess she had relied heavily, almost slavishly, on her friend and confidante Sarah Churchill, countess (later duchess) of Marlborough (1660–1744). As queen, Anne made Sarah her groom of the stole, keeper of the Privy Purse, and mistress of the Robes, three of the most lucrative and powerful court posts. These offices brought the countess into close daily contact with the queen, while giving her the power to regulate such contact with other courtiers and politicians. Given Anne’s shyness and supposed lack of intelligence, contemporaries assumed that the countess advised her, among other things, to employ Sarah’s husband, the earl (later duke) of Marlborough, as captain-general during the war, and the Churchills’ friend Sidney, Lord (later earl of) Godolphin (1645–1712), as lord treasurer of England. Many years after Anne’s death, Sarah wrote her Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (1742) in which she portrayed the queen as weak and easily manipulated and herself as the real power behind Anne’s throne. But it is now recognized that Anne chose her advisers as much for their ability as her friendship with them: Marlborough proved to be the reigning military and diplomatic genius of his day and Godolphin one of its greatest administrative and financial minds. To this team, Anne later added Robert Harley, its most able politician, to supervise her business in the House of Commons. In other words, Queen Anne may not have been a skillful administrator herself, but she knew how to delegate power wisely. That skill, combined with the other attributes already mentioned, would render her not only the most popular and successful of the Stuarts but, arguably, the most successful ruler portrayed in this book.

  Queen Anne needed every one of these qualities because, empowered by the post-revolutionary constitution, each political party was determined to force her to employ its members, and only its members, in office. As this implies, by 1702 the Whig and Tory parties had matured into effective and cohesive organizations. Virtually every parliamentary politician aligned sooner or later with one or the other and there is plenty of evidence from division lists (of how members of parliament voted on particular issues) that crossing party lines to vote with the other side rarely occurred. Indeed, the “rage of party” permeated polite society even beyond the walls of the two houses. There were Whig newspapers and periodicals (The Flying Post and The Observator) and Tory newspapers and periodicals (The Post Boy and The Examiner); Whig clubs and coffee-houses (the Kit-Cat and White’s) and Tory clubs and coffee-houses (The Societ
y of Brothers and Ozinda’s); Whig toasts (“to the Immortal Memory of King William”) and Tory, even Jacobite, toasts (“To the King [across the water],” said over one’s water glass to indicate King James across the Channel); even different sides of the face upon which to wear paper patches (artificial beauty marks) for ladies of Whig or Tory sympathies! In the countryside Whig and Tory aristocrats competed against each other for seats on the lieutenancy and magistracy, while in the boroughs Whig and Tory oligarchs fought for control of the corporation, of local religious life, and of poor relief. In short, party conflict colored almost every aspect of public, professional, and even recreational life in post-revolutionary England.