Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  More importantly, in the following year the Whigs pushed through an Act of Union with Scotland. As we have seen, James I’s attempts to knit the two countries together a century previously had been thwarted by age-old prejudices between the two peoples, and some real concerns about incompatible legal systems. Cromwell had united the two nations from 1654 to 1660, but few people on either side of the Tweed wanted to repeat that shot-gun marriage. The Revolution of 1688–9 did nothing to heal Scotland’s longstanding disunity, while drawing it into the orbit of European-wide conflict. King William’s war disrupted Scottish trade, especially with France. Worse, the English Navigation Acts continued to treat the Scots as if they were the Dutch or the French. No Scottish merchant could trade with the English colonies but in an English ship and through an English port. When the Company of Scotland tried to set up its own trading colony in 1698, at Darién on the isthmus of Panama, Spanish and English hostility was so intense that it failed, with the loss of some 2,000 lives and perhaps a quarter of Scotland’s monetary capital. This took place in the middle of five disastrous harvests, leading to a real subsistence crisis, between 1695 and 1699. During this period, famine and emigration reduced the population between 5 and 15 percent. To some, it appeared that the English were trying to starve their northern neighbors out of existence.

  Queen Anne’s accession did nothing to ease these resentments. In 1703, the Scottish Parliament passed a series of anti-English laws. The Act Annent Peace and War decreed that, after Anne’s death, all foreign policy decisions from London would have to be approved by a Scottish parliament. The Wine Act and Wool Act allowed for Scottish trade with France even during hostilities. Finally, and most alarmingly to the English, the Act of Security stated that in the event of Anne’s death, a Scottish parliament would elect her successor in Scotland. The implied threat was that they would choose the Pretender, Prince James. This meant that, even if the English Acts of Settlement and Regency worked south of the border and the Whigs secured the accession of a Hanoverian in England at Anne’s death, the Scottish Act of Security might install his Catholic, pro-French Stuart cousin north of it. This would revive the “Auld Alliance” between Scotland and France, give the latter a foothold on the British mainland, and threaten the Revolution Settlement and the gains of Blenheim.

  Once the Whigs achieved power in London, they pursued the only clear solution to this dilemma: a union of England and Scotland. This was easier said than done, given English prejudice toward the Scots, Scottish resentment toward the English, Scotland’s disunity, and the understandable reluctance of its people to lose their national identity and be absorbed by their wealthy neighbor to the south. In the end, that wealth won the day, on two counts. First, the Whigs offered the economic advantages of being let into the English trading system. Henceforward, the English and Scots would trade as part of one British nation, open to all the wealth of the new British Empire. This message worked on Scottish MPs, merchants, and landowners who depended on the cattle trade with their rich neighbors to the south. English wealth assisted in a second, more direct, way: bribery. Scotland itself was to receive “the Equivalent,” a one-time payment of £398,085. More quietly, many individual Scots peers and MPs happily took bribes in return for voting their nation and its parliament out of existence; as one English minister crowed: “We bought them.”15 Still, the Scots did win some real concessions. In the new London-based Parliament of Great Britain, Scotland would be represented by 16 peers, elected from among the total Scottish peerage, and 45 MPs. This was proportionally somewhat lower than Scotland’s population compared with that of England (few, other than the Levellers [see chapter 8], even considered proportional representation before the late eighteenth century). But it was much higher than the Scottish contribution to the war merited as against that of England. Scottish landowners were required to pay only one-fortieth of the Land Tax; their proportion of the Excise was 1:36, yet there was one Scottish MP to every 11.4 from England and Wales. Furthermore, the northern kingdom would retain Scottish law and, of course, the privileged status of the Presbyterian Kirk. The Act of Union, creating the state of Great Britain, was passed in the spring of 1707; the first Parliament of Great Britain met that autumn.

  Despite the concessions noted above, many Scotsmen, particularly Tories, were unhappy with the union. England and its capital would dominate the new state of Great Britain politically, socially, and culturally, often treating the Scots as if they were second-class citizens. But most historians would nevertheless argue that the union was good for Scotland. Economically, it laid the groundwork for a gradual upsurge of prosperity in the eighteenth century. That led, in turn, to a cultural flowering, largely based in the big cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, which is sometimes called the Scottish Enlightenment. It is difficult to see how this could have happened in an independent and economically isolated Scotland under the control of the Catholic branch of the Stuarts. For England and the Whigs, the Union’s major advantage was that it made more certain the Hanoverian succession.

  The Act of Union was the high-water mark of Whig success under Queen Anne. As the reign wore on, the Whigs, and their Junto leaders in particular, became increasingly unpopular with Anne and with the country at large. This was due, in part, to their overconfidence and ambition, in part to a shift in the country’s mood on some of the major issues which separated the two parties. First among these was the war and its related issue, money. In the beginning, Marlborough’s succession of victories over the French had been greeted with universal approbation, the queen and court processing through the streets of London to St. Paul’s Cathedral for elaborate services of national thanksgiving. But after a while, the queen and her subjects began to wonder why no victory seemed to be decisive; why the French were never brought to the negotiating table. After the battle of Malplaquet in 1709, which saw the loss of nearly 35,000 men on both sides, she is supposed to have remarked: “When will this bloodshed ever cease?”16

  In fact, toward the end of the decade, nature gave the Whigs a chance to make peace. The harsh winter of 1708–9 resulted in a terrible harvest, reducing the French peasants who paid the bulk of Louis’s taxes to near starvation. The Sun King’s funds ran dry. He was actually forced to melt down the silver furniture at Versailles. Finally, in March 1709, he opened negotiations for peace. It is a measure of his desperation that his diplomats came to the peace conference in the Netherlands willing to concede Spain, Italy, the Indies, fortress towns on the Dutch border, and the Protestant succession. But this was not enough for the Whig diplomats. They made further, incredible demands: not only that Louis’s grandson give up his claim to the Spanish throne, but that, if Anjou refused, Louis himself should forcibly remove him from Madrid with French troops. To this the French king replied that if he was required to make war, he would rather do so against the British than his own children. The peace talks collapsed. At this point the Tories began to charge, and many English men and women began to believe, that Marlborough, Godolphin, and the Whigs were intentionally prolonging the war to keep themselves in power and to get rich off the sale of army commissions, government contracts, lotteries, and the funds. Thus, old country fears of standing armies and resentment of high taxes combined with prejudice against the rise of new men. These charges were probably unfair. Rather than consciously seeking to prolong a profitable war, the Whigs were more likely blinded by their longstanding fears of France and Catholicism. They failed to realize that the Sun King was effectively finished. They had been so afraid of him for so long that they fought on past the point of reasonableness.

  The second issue upon which the Whigs misjudged the mood of the country was religion. Remember that most English men and women were Anglicans, and somewhat distrustful of occasionally conforming Dissenters. In 1710, the Whig government decided to prosecute a prominent Anglican clergyman named Henry Sacheverell (ca. 1674–1724) on a charge of seditious libel. Sacheverell was a High Church Tory rabble-rouser who had preached on November 5, 1709
– the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot and William’s landing at Torbay – in favor of passive obedience and non-resistance. The sermon, The Perils of False Brethren in Church and State, was an implicit attack on the Revolution of 1688–9 and, by extension, the whole course of English history over the last 20 years. Sacheverell went on to decry the Marlborough–Godolphin ministry, Whigs, Low Church Anglicans, and occasionally conforming Dissenters as “double-dealing, practical atheists” and “bloodsuckers that had brought our kingdom and government into a consumption.”17 The sermon was printed, reaching 100,000 copies and sparking a partisan religious debate that reached 600 titles on the subject within a year. Sacheverell’s words were stupid ones to say in public; but to prosecute their author for saying them was even more stupid. In December, the Whig government launched a parliamentary show trial of Sacheverell. The government thought that it was defending “Revolution Principles”; but many Anglican Tories saw the trial not as a referendum on the Revolution but as Whig persecution of a poor Church of England clergyman. When the indictment was announced on March 1, 1710, ordinary Londoners rioted (plate 25). They took out their frustrations by tearing down Dissenting meeting houses, many of which had been built and frequented by the new monied men. Clearly, in religion as well as war, the Whigs were pushing their luck.

  Plate 25 Fighting in a coffee-house after the trial of Dr. Sacheverell. © British Museum.

  Finally, the Whigs managed to offend the queen on the issue of sovereignty. Anne had turned to the Whigs as her allies in fighting the war. But she had never really warmed to them, in part because they did not treat her with the traditional reverence for monarchy. As will be recalled, she had sought to govern by appointing the best men of both parties. But the Junto had other ideas. Knowing full well that the queen needed their expertise and parliamentary support to fight the war, they demanded a clean sweep of Tory officeholders. Anne resisted “the five tyrannizing lords,” as she called them, for years, continuing to employ moderate Tories like Harley as one of her secretaries of state. In February 1708, after it became clear that Anne and Harley might try to construct a government without the Junto, Marlborough, Godolphin, and the Whig leaders forced the secretary’s dismissal by threatening their own mass resignation. This deprived the queen of the one minister who had counterbalanced Junto ambitions. Later that year Anne’s beloved husband, Prince George, died, and with him some of Anne’s stomach for the fight. By late 1709 every Junto lord but Montagu (now Halifax) held office, and there were few or no Tories left in government. The queen seemed a pawn in Whig hands, forced to put up with a ministry she did not like, a war she no longer supported, and attacks on the Church she loved.

  The Queen’s Revenge, 1710

  In fact, as the year 1710 dawned, it became clear that Anne had had enough. She began to consult secretly with Harley through the hands of a number of her court attendants, most notably a woman of the Bedchamber named Abigail Masham (1670?–1734). Masham’s duties were those of a lady’s maid, necessitating close personal attendance on the sovereign. Because of Anne’s poor health, Masham was at her side constantly as a virtual nurse. Fortunately for Harley, her sympathies were Tory and she was more than willing to be a go-between.

  In the meantime, Anne had grown estranged from her Whig favorites, the Churchills. Her friendship with the duchess had soured because of Sarah’s constant pushing of the Whig point of view. Her friendship with the duke had taken a turn for the worse when, in the previous year, she had refused his request to be made captain-general for life. Blaming these reversals on Masham’s influence, in January 1710 the Whigs considered moving for a parliamentary address to the queen demanding Abigail’s removal from court. To Anne, this was the ultimate act of lèse-majesté, for it took out of her hands the right to appoint her closest and most personal servants. In order to stop this move, she canvassed peers and MPs of all political persuasions, sometimes “with tears in her eyes.”18 During similar meetings in March, she took the opportunity to indicate that while she agreed with Sacheverell’s guilt, she did not want to see him punished harshly. Clearly, Anne was attempting to undermine her own ministry. The monarchy still had enough prestige that many peers and MPs, including some Whigs, did the queen’s bidding on both issues: the address to dismiss Masham was never moved and Sacheverell was convicted, but punished lightly.

  These victories gave Anne courage. In April she began to sack Whigs, starting with her lord chamberlain, a Junto ally named Henry Grey, marquess of Kent (1671–1740). In June she attacked the Junto directly, removing Sunderland as secretary of state. In August she dismissed Godolphin as lord treasurer. He was succeeded by a Treasury Commission whose most influential member would be Robert Harley. From this point Harley was, in effect, the queen’s principal minister, though he would not receive the staff as lord treasurer and the title earl of Oxford until the following May. Harley is often seen as a Tory but this does not mean that he intended a Tory ministry. Throughout the summer of 1710 he worked hard to undermine the Junto while keeping moderate Whigs in the ministry: after all, the queen did not want to exchange a Whig ministry for a Tory one but to restore the balance between the two. But party loyalties were too strong. Few Whigs would work with Harley and he had no hope of presiding successfully over the current Whig-dominated Parliament. And so, in September 1710, the queen dissolved Parliament. The resulting election was a referendum on the war and Whig fiscal and religious policy. The Tories, running on a platform of peace with France, low taxes, and the defense of the Church of England, won the majority of seats in a landslide. The brief Whig ascendancy under Anne was over.

  The Treaty of Utrecht, 1710–13

  Queen Anne, Robert Harley, and their supporters had gone to the country with, first and foremost, a promise of peace. Even before his appointment, Harley had begun secret negotiations with the French. The Whig minority in the new Parliament opposed the peace every step of the way, charging that any treaty that allowed the duke of Anjou to remain on the Spanish throne would be a sellout after so many victories and so much blood and treasure expended. It would also betray Britain’s allies, since none of them would want to agree to the ensuing treaty. Partly because of Whig resistance and the intrigues of the Allies, the peace took two and a half years to negotiate. It was won only after much shady dealing on both sides. For example, in December 1711, the Whigs betrayed one of their guiding principles by promising the dissident Tory Daniel Finch, earl of Nottingham (1647–1730), that they would vote for a bill against occasional conformity if he would persuade other Tory peers to oppose the peace. Anne countered by creating 12 pro-peace Tory peers to outvote the Whigs. Many contemporaries thought this an unseemly stretching of her prerogative. Even more unseemly was the queen’s treatment of Marlborough and the Allies. She dismissed the former in December 1711 after it became clear that his military aggressiveness threatened the peace negotiations. Then she issued “restraining orders” to his replacement, Ormond, so as not to embarrass Louis. Now it was the turn of the Allies to feel that the British were not doing their part, that “perfidious Albion” was selling them out to the French.

  On the surface, the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 does, indeed, appear to be a sellout. For starters, Britain agreed to Anjou’s ascent to the Spanish throne as Felipe V. This was qualified only by a provision stipulating that the French and Spanish crowns could never be united in one holder. The Allies received territory, but not so much as Marlborough’s and Eugene’s victories would seem to have promised. The Dutch were awarded a series of forts on their southern border to form a barrier against France. According to the later Treaty of Rastadt (1714), the Holy Roman emperor received significant Spanish territory in Italy as well as what had once been the Spanish Netherlands, thus forming a further buffer between the French and the Dutch. Savoy claimed Sicily. As for the British, at Utrecht they acquired Gibraltar and Minorca in the Mediterranean; Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson’s Bay in Canada; St. Kitts in the Caribbean (see map 14); and the Asi
ento, an agreement which guaranteed British slave traders the exclusive right to sell human beings to the Spanish Empire for 30 years as well as other trading rights with the Spanish colonies. Finally, the French promised to recognize the Hanoverian succession and withdraw support for the Pretender. The Whigs thought these acquisitions small potatoes after the earth-shaking victories at Blenheim and elsewhere. They thought Louis’s promises to recognize the Hanoverian succession, withdraw support from the Pretender, and refrain from uniting the French and Spanish crowns worthless, for he had broken similar promises before. In the next reign they would revenge themselves on Oxford and other Tory peace negotiators by impeaching them in the House of Lords.

  They should not have done so, for Utrecht was, in fact, a master stroke of British diplomacy. It demonstrated clear-eyed realism about the European situation as it was; and prescience about what it would be in the future. First, the Spanish settlement could not have been otherwise after the Allied defeats at Almanza and Brihuega. The Spanish people wanted “Felipe V.” Moreover, the Allied candidate for the Spanish throne, “Carlos III,” the Archduke Charles, had become the Holy Roman emperor in April 1711 upon the death of his brother. To endow him with the Spanish Empire would be to replace an over-mighty French Bourbon state with an over-mighty Austrian Habsburg one. In any case, Oxford realized what the Whigs did not: that it did not matter who sat on the throne of Spain. France was too weak, economically and militarily, after two decades of war either to unite the two crowns or to profit much from their unity. Nor could the Bourbons do much for the Jacobite cause. French power was broken, whether the treaty said so or not.