When Sir Thomas Roe set out for Constantinople he was charged with commissions to search for antiquities on Buckingham’s behalf, as well as on Lord Arundel’s. He was himself a novice in such inquiries. He had to encounter excessive difficulties from the jealousy, and sometimes the dishonesty, of the Turkish and other agents whom he was obliged to employ. Most of them were stubborn in their belief that a search for old marbles did but mask the pursuit of buried treasure of greater currency. And to difficulties of this sort was added a standing fear that every service rendered to the Earl Marshal might be esteemed an offence to the powerful favourite at Whitehall.
To an urgent letter which he had received from Arundel just as he was embarking, Sir Thomas replied, from Constantinople, in January, 1622. ‘I moved our Consul, Richard Milward, at Scio, whom I found prepared and ready,’ he reports. ‘We conferred about “the Maid of Smirna” which he cannot yet obteyne, without an especiall command [from the Porte]. I brought with mee from Messina the Bishop of Andre, one of the islands of the Arches, a man of good learning and great experience in these parts. Hee assured mee that the search after old and good authors was utterly vaine.... The last French ambassador had the last gleanings. Only of some few he gave mee notice as of an old Tertullian, and a piece of Chrisostome ... which may be procured to be copied, but not the originall.... Concerning antiquities in marbles, there are many in divers parts, but especially at Delphos, unesteemed here, and, I doubt not, easy to be procured for the charge of digging and fetching, which must be purposely undertaken. It is supposed that many statues are buried to secure them from the envy of the Turks, and that, leave obteyned, [they] would come to light, which I will endeavour as soon as I am warm here.’ After mentioning that he had already procured some coins, he adds, with amusing naïveté, ‘I have also a stone, taken out of the old pallace of Priam in Troy, cutt in horned shape, but because I neither can tell of what it is, nor hath it any other bewty but only the antiquity and truth of being a peece of that ruined and famous building, I will not presume to send it you. |Sir T. Roe to Lord Arundel, 27 Jan., 1621 [O. S.]; Negotiations, p. 16.| Yet I have delivered it to the same messenger, that your Lordship may see it and throw it away.’
Two years afterwards the ambassador has to tell Lord Arundel a mingled story of failure and success: ‘The command you required for the Greeke to be sent into Morea I have sollicitted [of] two viziers, one after the other, butt they both rejected mee and gave answere, that it was no tyme to graunt such priviledges. Neare to the port they have not so great doubt and therefore I have prevailed with another, and [have] sent Mr. Markham, assisted with a letter from the Caplen Bassa, whose jurisdiction extends to all the islands and sea-ports.... On Asia side, about Troy, Zizicum, and all the way to Aleppo, are innumerable pillars, statues, and tombstones of marble, with inscriptions in Greeke. |Ibid., 10 May, 1623, Negotiations, p. 154.| These may be fetcht at charge, and secrettly; butt yf wee ask leave it cannot be obteyned; therefore Mr. Markham will use discretion rather then power, and so the Turks will bring them for their proffitt.’
Roe’s report encouraged Lord Arundel to send an agent, named Petty, on a special exploring mission into various parts of the Ottoman Empire. The agent thus selected was eminently fitted for his task, and showed himself to be a man of untiring industry. Very soon after Petty’s arrival at Constantinople, Sir Thomas Roe wrote to the Duke of Buckingham an account of his successful researches, and he prefaced it with an acknowledgement that ‘by conference with Mr. Petty, sent hither by my Lord of Arundell, I have somewhat bettered my sckill in such figures. We have searched all this cyttye,’ he proceeds to say, ‘and found nothing but upon one gate, called anciently Porta Aurea, built by Constantine, bewtifyed with two mighty pillars, and upon the sides and over it, twelve tables of fine marble cutt into historyes,—some of a very great relevo, sett into the wall with small pillars as supporters. Most of the figures are equall; some above the life some less. |Roe to the Duke of Buckingham, 11 May, 1625, Negotiations, pp. 386–7.| They are—in my eye—extremely decayed, but Mr. Petty doth so prayse them, as that he hath not seene much better in the great and costly collections of Italye.... The fower to which I have most affection ... are both brave and sweete.... The relevo so high that they are almost statues, and doe but seeme to sticke to the ground.’
In October of the same year Sir Thomas sent an elaborate account to the Earl of Arundel of the progress made by Petty, and of his own exertions to provide him with every possible facility. |The proposed partition of ancient marbles between Arundel and Buckingham.| He told the Earl of the difficulty of his own position towards the Duke of Buckingham, and besought him to admit of an arrangement by which the product of the joint exertions of ambassador and agent should be divided between the competitors. Petty, he reports, ‘hath visited Pergamo, Samos, Ephesus, and some other places, where he hath made your Lordship great provisions.... I have given him forceable commands, and letters of recommendation from the Patriarch. I have bene free and open to him in whatsoever I knewe, and so I will continue for your Lordship’s command. But your Lordship knowing that I have received the like from the Duke of Buckingham, and engaged my word to doe him service hee might judge it want of witt, or will, or creditt, if Mr. Petty, who could doe nothing but by mee, should take all things before or from mee. Therefore to avoid all emulation, and that I might stand clear before two so great and honourable patrons, I thought I had made agreement with him for all our advantages. Therefore we resolved to take down those sixe mentioned relevos on Porta Aurea, and I proceeded so far as I offered 600 dollars for four of them, to bee divided between his Grace and your Lordship by lotts. And if your Lordship liked not the price, Mr. Petty had his choice to forsake them. But now, I perceave, he hath entitled your Lordship to them all by some right that, if I could gett them, it were an injury to divide them.... But I am sorry wee strive for the shadowe. Your Lordship may beleeve an honest man, and your servant, I have tried the bassa,—the capteyne of the Castle,—the overseer of the Grand Signor’s works,—the soldiours that make that watch,—and none of them dare meddle. They [the sculptures] stand between two mighty pillars of marble, on other tables of marble supported with less pillars, uppon the cheife port of the Citty, the entrance by the Castle called “The Seaven Towres,” which was never opened since the Greeke Emperour lost it, but a counterscarfe and another wall built before it.... There is butt one way left in the world, which I will practice.... |Roe to Arundel, 30 Oct, 1625; Negotiations, pp. 444–446.| If I gett them not, I will pronounce [that] no man, no ambassadour, shall ever bee able to doe it;—except, also, the Grand Signor, for want, will sell the Castle.’
Just before the date of this letter Petty had suffered shipwreck on the coast of Asia, when returning from Samos. Together with his papers and personal baggage, he lost the fruits of long and successful researches. But his inexhaustible energies enabled him to recover what, to the men about him, seemed to have hopelessly perished. He found means to raise the buried marbles from the wreck. |Ibid., 7 April, 1626, p. 495.| ‘There was never man,’ wrote Sir Thomas Roe, with the frank admiration of a congenial spirit, ‘so fitted to an employment; that encounters all accidents with so unwearied patience; eates with Greekes on their worst dayes; lyes with fishermen on plancks, at the best; is all thinges to all men, that he may obteyne his ends, which are your Lordship’s service.’
To Dr. Goade, one of the chaplains of Archbishop Abbot, Sir Thomas Roe continued the narrative of Petty’s zealous researches, and of the success which attended them. ‘By my means,’ he wrote, ‘Mr. Petty had admittance into the best library known of Greece, where are loades of old manuscripts, and hee used so fine arte, with the helpe of some of my servants, that hee conveyed away twenty two. I thought I should have had my share, but hee was for himselfe. Hee is a good chooser; saw all, or most, and tooke, I thincke, those that were and wilbe of greate esteeme. Hee speaketh sparingly of such a bootye, but could not conteyne sometyme to discover with joy his treasure.... I meant to have a review of that librarye, but hee gave it such a blow under my trust that, since, it hath been locked up under two keys, whereof one kept by the townsmen that have interest or oversight of the monastery, so that I could do no good.... |Ib., p. 500.| My hope is to deale with the Patriarch, and not to trust to myselfe, and to chances.’
In November, 1626, Sir Thomas further informed the Duke of Buckingham that ‘Mr. Petty hath raked together two hundred peices [of sculpture], all broken, or few [of them] entyre.... Hee had this advantage, that hee went himselfe into all the islands, and tooke all he saw, and is now gon to Athens.’ |Ib., p. 570; comp. pp. 619; 647; 692, and 764.| In subsequent letters and despatches the diplomatist returns often to this unofficial branch of his duties, and makes it very apparent that Petty’s zeal had, for a time, spoiled the market of the agents who followed in his track.
Lord Arundel was not less ably served by the factors and representatives whom he employed in Italy, in Germany, and in the Netherlands. But the story is far too long to be told in detail. |MSS. at Norfolk House; printed, in Tierney’s Arundel, p. 489.| Their success in collecting choice pictures and other works of art was so conspicuous that when one of them had an interview with Rubens at Antwerp, to give a commission from Lord Arundel, the great painter—himself, it will be remembered, an eminent collector also—said to him: ‘I regard the Earl in the light of an evangelist to the world of art, and as the great supporter of our profession.’ In these artistic commissions and researches William Trumbull, Edward Norgate, Sir John Borough, and Sir Isaac Wake, especially distinguished themselves. Their correspondence with Lord Arundel is spread over a long series of years, and it abounds with curious illustrations of ‘the world of art,’ as it lived and moved in the earlier part of the seventeenth century.
Among those entire collections which the Earl purchased in bulk, two are more particularly notable—the museum, namely, of Daniel Nice, and the library of the family of Pirckheimer of Nuremberg.
Nice’s Museum was especially rich in medals and gems. |Evelyn to Pepys; Diary and Corresp., vol. iii, p. 300.| If Evelyn’s information about the circumstances of that acquisition was accurate, it cost the Earl the sum—enormous, at that date—of ten thousand pounds. I cannot, however, but suspect that into that statement some error of figures has crept.
The acquisition of the Pirckheimer Library was made by the Earl himself, during his diplomatic mission into Germany on the affairs of the Palatinate. In this collection some of the choicest of the Arundelian MSS. which now enrich the British Museum were comprised. Its foundation had been laid more than a hundred and thirty years before the date of the Earl’s purchase. But part of the library of the first founder had passed into the possession of the City of Nuremberg. The collection which Lord Arundel acquired was rich both in classical manuscripts and in the materials of mediæval history.
The liberality with which these varied treasures, as they successively arrived in London, were made accessible to scholars was in harmony with the open-handedness by means of which they had been amassed. For a few years Arundel House was itself an anticipatory ‘British Museum.’ Then came the civil war. But the injury which the Arundel collections sustained from the insecurity and commotions of a turbulent time is very insignificant, in comparison with that sustained, after the Restoration, through the ignorance and the indolence of an unworthy inheritor.
The immediate heir and successor of Earl Thomas survived his father less than six years. He died at Arundel House in April, 1652, leaving several sons, of whom the two eldest, Thomas and Henry, became successively Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk. The first of these was restored to the dukedom in 1660. But the whole of his life, after attaining manhood, was passed in Italy and under the heavy affliction of impaired mental faculties, following upon an attack of brain-fever which had seized him at Padua, in 1645. He never recovered, but died in the city in which the disease had stricken him, lingering until the year 1677. It was in consequence of this calamity that the inheritance of a large portion of the Arundelian collections, and also the possession of Arundel House in London, passed from Earl Henry-Frederick to his second son, Henry.
We learn from many passages both in the Diary and in the Letters of John Evelyn that, under the new owner, Arundel House and its contents were so neglected as, at times, to lie at the mercy of a crowd of rapacious parasites. In one place he speaks of the mansion as being infested by ‘painters, panders, and misses.’ In another he describes the library as suffering by repeated depredations. He remonstrated with the owner, and at length obtained from him a gift of the library for the newly-founded Royal Society, and a gift of part of the marbles for the University of Oxford. In his Diary he thus narrates the circumstances under which these benefactions were made:—
Having mentioned that on the destruction of the meeting-place of the Royal Society, its members ‘were invited by Mr. Howard to sit at Arundel House in the Strand,’ he proceeds to say that Mr. Howard, ‘at my instigation, likewise bestowed on the Society that noble library which his grandfather especially, and his ancestors, had collected. This gentleman had so little inclination to books that it was the preservation of them from embezzlement.’ |Evelyn, Diary, &c., vol. ii, p. 20.| Elsewhere he says that not a few books had actually been lost before, by his interference, the bulk of the collection was thus saved. The gift to the Royal Society was made at the close of the year 1666.
In September of the following year this entry occurs in the same Diary:—‘[I went] to London, on the 19th, with Mr. Henry Howard of Norfolk, of whom I obtained the gift of his Arundelian Marbles,—those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greek and Latin, gathered with so much cost and industry from Greece by his illustrious grandfather the magnificent Earl of Arundel.... When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected, and scattered up and down about the garden and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired them, I procured him to bestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleased to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all those stones, urns, altars, &c., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them, that were not statues. This I did, and getting them removed and piled together, with those which were encrusted in the garden-walls, I sent immediately letters to the Vice-Chancellor of what I had procured.’ |Ib., p. 29. (edit. 1850.)| On the 8th of October he records a visit from the President of Trinity, ‘to thank me, in the name of the Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, and to receive my directions what was to be done to show their gratitude to Mr. Howard.’
Ten months later, Evelyn records that he was called to London to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke, he says, ‘having, at my sole request, bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books and remove them.... Many of these books had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk; and the late magnificent Earl of Arundel bought a noble library in Germany which is in this collection. |Ib., pp. 122, 123.| I should not, for the honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these, had I not seen how negligent he was of them; suffering the priests and everybody to carry away and dispose of what they pleased, so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.’
A curious narrative communicated, almost a century afterwards, to the Society of Antiquaries, by James Theobald, proves that in this respect the gallery of antiquities—notwithstanding the noble benefaction to Oxford—was even more unfortunate than the library of books. At the time when these gifts were obtained for Oxford and for the Royal Society, another extensive portion of the original collections had already passed into the possession of William Howard, Viscount Stafford, and had been removed to Stafford House. Lord Stafford was a younger son of the collector, and appears to have received the choice artistic treasures which long adorned his town residence by the gift of his mother. |Dispersion of part of the Arundel Marbles.| According to Evelyn, Lady Arundel also ‘scattered and squandered away innumerable other rarities, ... whilst my Lord was in Italy.’ But in this instance he appears to speak by hearsay, rather than from personal knowledge. Tierney, the able and painstaking historian of the family, asserts that its records contain no proof whatever of the justice of the charge. |History of Arundel, p. 509.| And he traces the origin of Evelyn’s statement to a passage in one of the letters of Francis Junius, in which it is said of Lady Arundel that she ‘carried over a vast treasure of rarities, and convaighed them away out of England.’ Even to Junius, notwithstanding his connection with the family, the charge may have come but as a rumour.
Be that as it may, the subsequent dispersion of many treasures of art which the Earl had collected with such unwearied pains and lavish expenditure is unquestionable.
Lord Henry Howard, it has been shown, excepted the ‘statues’ from his gift to the University. They remained at Arundel House, but so little care was bestowed upon their preservation that when the same owner afterwards obtained an Act of Parliament empowering him to build streets on part of the site of Arundel House and Gardens, many of these statues were broken by the throwing upon or near them of heaps of rubbish from the excavations made, in the years 1678 and 1679, for the new buildings. These broken statues and fragments retained beauty enough to attract from time to time the admiration of educated eyes when such eyes chanced to fall upon them. Those which long adorned the seat of the Earls of Pomfret, at Easton Neston, in Oxfordshire, were purchased by Sir William Fermor, and were given to the University of Oxford by one of his descendants. Others which are, or were, at Fawley Court, near Henley, were purchased by Mr. Freeman. Others, again, were bought by Edmund Waller, the poet, for the decoration of Beaconsfield.
Still more strange was the fate which befell certain other marbles which Lord Henry (by that time Duke of Norfolk) caused to be removed from Arundel House to a piece of waste ground belonging to the manor of Kennington. These the owner seems to have regarded as little better than lumber. It is therefore the less surprising that his servants took so little care of them as to suffer them to be buried, in their turn, beneath rubbish which had been brought to Kennington from St. Paul’s, during the rebuilding of that cathedral. By-and-bye, precious marbles, excavated amidst so many difficulties arising from Turkish barbarism in Asia Minor, had to be re-excavated in England. Many years after their second burial, some rumour of the circumstance came to the knowledge of the Earl of Burlington, and by his efforts and care something was recovered. But the researches then made were, in some way, interrupted. They were afterwards resumed by Lord Petre. |Narrative by Theobald; printed in Anecdotes of Howard Family, pp. 101–120.| ‘After six days’ of excavation and search, says an eye-witness, ‘just as the workmen were going to give over, they fell upon something which gave them hopes. Upon further opening the ground they discovered six statues, ... some of a colossal size, the drapery of which was thought to be exceeding fine.’ These went eventually to Worksop.
Some Arundelian marbles were, it is said, converted into rollers for bowling-greens. The fragments of others lie in or beneath the foundations of the houses in Norfolk Street and the streets adjacent.
The Stafford-House portion of the collections—which included pictures, drawings, vases, medals, and many miscellaneous antiquities of great curiosity—was sold by auction in 1720. At the prices of that day the sale produced no less a sum than £8852.
The Arundelian cabinet of cameos and intaglios, now so famous under the name of ‘The Marlborough Gems,’ was offered to the Trustees of the British Museum for sale, at an early period in the history of the institution. The price asked by the then possessor, the Duchess Dowager of Norfolk, was £10,000. But at that time the funds of the nascent institution were inadequate to the purchase.
It affords conspicuous proof of the marvellous success which had attended Lord Arundel’s researches to find that the remnants, so to speak, of his collections retain an almost inestimable value, after so many losses and loppings. They are virtually priceless, even if we leave out of view all that is now private property.
When the Arundelian MSS. were transferred, in the years 1831 and 1832, to the British Museum, their money value—for the purposes of the exchange as between the Royal Society and the Museum Trustees—was estimated (according to the historian of the Royal Society) at the sum of £3559. |Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. ii, pp. 448, 449.| This sum was given by the Trustees, partly in money, and partly in printed books of which the Museum possessed two or more than two copies. The whole of the money received by the Royal Society was expended by its Council in the purchase of other printed books. So that both Libraries were benefited by the exchange.
It may deserve remark that a somewhat similar transfer had been contemplated and discussed during the lifetime of the original donor. The project, at that period, was to make an exchange between the Royal Society and the University of Oxford. The University induced Evelyn to recommend Lord Henry Howard to sanction an exchange of such MSS. ‘as concern the civil law, theology, and other scholastic learning, for mathematical, philosophical, and such other books as may prove most useful to the design and institution of the Society.’ |Evelyn to Howard; 14 March, 1669.| But at that time, after much conference, it was otherwise determined.
The heraldical and genealogical books belonging to the original Arundel Library were given, at the date of the first transfer of the bulk of the collection to the Royal Society, to the Heralds’ College. They still form an important part of the College Library, and they include valuable materials for the history of the family of Howard.
‘Whether this man ever had any determined view besides that of raising his family is, I believe, a problematical question in the world. My opinion is that he never had any other.... Oxford fled from Court covered with shame, the object of the derision of the Whigs and of the indignation of the Tories.’—Bolingbroke, Letter to Sir W. Wyndham.
The Harley Family.—Parliamentary and Official Career of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.—The Party Conflicts under Queen Anne.—Robert Harley and Jonathan Swift.—Harley and the Court of the Stuarts.—Did Harley conspire to restore the Pretender?—History of the Harleian Library.—The Life and Correspondence of Humphrey Wanley.
Robert Harley was the eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, of Brampton Bryan, in Herefordshire, by his second wife, Abigail, daughter of Nathaniel Stephens, of Essington, in Gloucestershire. He was born at his father’s town-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, in the year 1661.
The Harleys had been a family of considerable note in Herefordshire during several centuries. Many generations of them had sat in the House of Commons, sometimes for boroughs, but not infrequently for their county. Sir Edward sided with the Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars. He was, however, one of those moderate statesmen who, in the words of a once-celebrated clerical adherent and martyr of their party, Christopher Love, judged it ‘an ill way to cure the body politic, by cutting off the political head.’ In due time he also became one of those ‘secluded members’ of the Long Parliament who published the ‘Remonstrance’ of 1656, and who were then as strenuous—though far less successful—in opposing what they deemed to be the tyranny of the Protector, as they had formerly been in opposing the tyranny of the King. Sir Edward Harley promoted the restoration of Charles the Second, and sat in all the Parliaments of that reign. He distinguished himself as a defender of liberty of conscience in unpropitious times; and he won, in a high degree, the respect of men who sat beside him in the House of Commons, but were rarely counted with him upon a division.
The first public act of Robert Harley of which a record has been kept is his appearance with his father, in 1688, at the head of an armed band of tenantry and retainers, assembled in Herefordshire to support the cause of the Prince of Orange, when the news had come of the Prince’s arrival in Torbay.
In the first Parliament of William and Mary Robert Harley sat for Tregony. To the second he was returned by the burgesses of New Radnor. The first reported words of his which appear in the debates were spoken in the course of a discussion upon the heads of a ‘Bill of Indemnity.’ ‘I think,’ said he on this occasion, ‘that the King in his message has led us. He shews us how to proceed for satisfaction of justice. There is a crime [of which] God says, He will not pardon it. |Grey’s Debates, vol. ix, p. 247.| ’Tis the shedding of innocent blood. A gentleman said that the West was “a shambles.” What made that shambles? It began in law. It was a common discourse among the Ministers that “the King cannot have justice.”’ The debate on the Bill of Indemnity of 1690 may be looked upon as, in some sort, the foreshadowing of a long spell of political conflict, in which Robert Harley was to take a conspicuous share. Twenty seven years afterwards the strife of parties was to enter on a new stage. Some of the men who acted as the political Mentors of the new member of 1689–90 were to live long enough to clamour for his execution as a traitor, and, on their failure to produce any adequate proof that he was guilty, were to console themselves by insisting on his exclusion from the ‘Act of Grace’ of 1717.
Harley won his earliest distinctions in political life by assiduous, patient, and even drudging labour on questions of finance. |MS. Harl. 7524, f. 139, seqq.| During six years, at least, he worked zealously as one of the ‘Commissioners for stating the Public Accounts of the Kingdom.’ In parliamentary debates on the public establishments and expenditure he took a considerable share. As a speaker he had no brilliancy. His usual tone and manner, we are told, were somewhat listless and drawling. But occasionally he would speak with a certain pith and incisiveness. |Grey’s Debates, vol. x, p. 268.| Thus, in November, 1692, in a discussion on naval affairs, he said—‘We have had a glorious victory at sea. But although we have had the honour, the enemy has had the profit. They take our merchant ships.’ Again, in the following year, when supporting the Bill for more frequent Parliaments, he spoke thus:—‘A standing Parliament can never be a true representative. Men are much altered after they have been here some time. They are no longer the same men that were sent up to us.’
Of the truth of that saying, in one of its senses, Harley became himself a salient instance. Bred a Whig, and during his early years acting commonly with the Whigs, his party ties were gradually relaxed. By temper and mental constitution he was always inclined to moderate measures. As the party waxed fiercer and fiercer, and as its policy came to be more and more obviously the weapon of its hatreds, Harley soon lay open to the reproach of being a trimmer. The growing breach became evident enough in the course of the debates on the treason of Sir John Fenwick, in November, 1696. |His Speech on the attainder of Fenwick.| He then argued, with force and earnestness, that atrocity in a crime is no justification or excuse for violence and unscrupulousness in a prosecutor. Some of his applications of that sound doctrine are very questionable. But it is to his honour that he preached moderation with consistency. He did not bend it to the exigencies of the party he was approaching, any more than to those of the party from which he was gradually withdrawing himself.
Meanwhile he had signalised his powers in another way. By long study he had acquired a considerable knowledge of parliamentary law and precedent. He had taken his full share in the work of committees. In February, 1701, he was proposed for the Speakership, in opposition to Sir Thomas Littleton. He had a large body of supporters, nor were they found exclusively in the Tory ranks. The King sent for Littleton, and told him that he thought it would be for the public service that he should give way to the choice of Mr. Harley in his stead. But the election was carried by a majority of only four votes. ‘It is a great encouragement to his party,’ wrote Townshend to Walpole, who was then in the country, ‘and no small mortification to the Whigs.’ Harley retained the Speakership until the third session of the first Parliament of Queen Anne.
Whatever may have been the ‘mortification of the Whigs’ at his elevation, it is certain that at this time Harley laboured zealously for the establishment of the Protestant succession to the throne. |Harley and the Act of Succession.| |1701. March.| In the preparation, facilitating, and passing of that measure he took so influential a part that, afterwards, he was able to say, in the face of his opponents, when they were most numerous and most embittered, ‘I had the largest hand in settling the succession of the House of Hanover.’ The assertion met with no denial.
It is evident, too, that the qualities for which he was already reviled by extreme partisans on both sides were—in their measure—real qualifications, both for the office of Speaker and for the special task of that day. The party leaders who were then most eagerly followed were men bent on crushing their adversaries as well as conquering them. It was inevitable that by such men Harley’s moderation towards opponents should be regarded as more cajolery. And of that unhappy quality he was destined, at a later day, to acquire but too much.
On the 27th of April, 1704, Mr. Speaker Harley was sworn of the Privy Council. On the 18th of May he received the seals as one of the Principal Secretaries of State. |Privy Council Register, Anne, vol. ii, p. 102.| He had scarcely entered on the duties of his office before he was busied with precautionary measures in Scotland against an anticipated Jacobite insurrection, as well as with a large share of the foreign correspondence. But just at that busy time he found means to begin—though he could not then complete—an act of charity which is memorable both on the recipient’s account and on the score of some well-known political consequences which eventually grew thereout.
At the time when Harley became a member of the Godolphin administration Daniel De Foe lay in Newgate, under a conviction for seditious libel, committed in the publication of his famous tract, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. |Harley’s protection of De Foe, 1704.| The new Secretary sent a confidential person to the prison with instructions to visit De Foe, and to ask him, in the Minister’s name, ‘What can I do for you?’ De Foe’s characteristic reply must be given in his own words:—‘In return for this kind and generous message I immediately took pen and ink, and writ the story of the blind man in the Gospel, ... to whom our blessed Lord put the question, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” who—as if he had made it strange that such a question should be asked, or as if he had said, “Lord, dost thou see that I am blind, and yet ask me what thou shalt do for me?”—my answer is plain in my misery, “Lord that I may receive my sight.” I needed not to make the application.’
De Foe then adds:—‘From this time, as I learned afterwards, this noble person made it his business to have my case represented to Her Majesty, and methods taken for my deliverance.’ But the bigots who had caused a malicious prosecution succeeded in delaying the successful issue of the Secretary’s efforts during four months. With Harley the sufferer had had no previous acquaintance. The one designation under which he ever afterwards spoke of him was ‘my first benefactor.’ And the gratitude was lifelong.
In part, Harley owed his new office to the personal credit which he had won with the Queen during his Speakership; and in part, also, to the friendship of Marlborough. On receiving the news of his appointment the Duke wrote to him, from the Camp:—‘I am sensible of the advantage I shall reap by it, in having so good a friend near Her Majesty’s person to present in the truest light my faithful endeavours for her service.’ |Marlborough to Harley; 13 June, 1704.| But their intercourse, if it ever attained to true cordiality at all, was cordial for a very short time. Brief confidence was followed by long distrust. Harley strove to strengthen himself by the use of channels of Court influence which were utterly inimical to the Marlborough connection. His efforts to make himself independent of that connection did not, however, lessen the prodigality of his assurances of friendship and fidelity.
His political position thus became that of a man who was exposed to the attacks of many bitter enemies among the statesmen with whom he had begun his career, without being able to rely upon any hearty support from those with whom he now shared the conduct of affairs. He might count, indeed, on assailants from the ranks both of the extreme Whigs and the extreme Tories, whilst from most of his own colleagues of the intermediate party he would have to meet the greater danger of a lukewarm defence. In such a position the attack was not likely to be long waited for.
Easiness of nature, and a tendency to alternate fits of close application with fits of indolence, always characterised him. And those qualities had an incidental consequence which opened to his opponents a tempting opportunity. Harley was habitually less careful of official papers than it behoved a Secretary of State to be.[34] He was also at all times prone to place a premature and undue confidence in his dependants. In 1707, William Gregg, one of the clerks in his office, abused his confidence by secretly copying some letters of the highest importance and by selling the copies to the Court of France.
The treachery was discovered by the Secretary himself, and such steps were taken to lessen the mischief as the case admitted. Much excitement naturally followed upon the publicity of the crime. The least scrupulous of Harley’s enemies conceived a hope that the traitor who had served the public enemy for a bribe might also be tempted to ruin his master for another and greater bribe. Means were found to convey to Gregg strong assurances of a certain escape, and of a wealthy exile, if he would but declare that he had copied the despatches, and forwarded the transcripts, by the Secretary’s direction. Pending the attempt, they circulated throughout the country a report that such a declaration had actually been made, and that the Secretary was to be impeached. But the clerk, instead of betraying his master, exposed his temptors. |Appendix to Gregg’s Trial, &c., in State Trials, vol. xii, pp. 694 seqq.| His first emphatic declaration of Harley’s innocence was repeated immediately before his death in these words:—‘As I shall answer it before the judgment seat of Christ, the gentleman aforesaid [i. e. Harley] was not privy to my writing to France, neither directly nor indirectly.’
Harley himself, and also his nearest friends, were wont to speak of this affair as one that had brought his life into real peril. It is certain that the incident and its consequences helped materially to make his continuance in office impossible. But he struggled hard.
Meanwhile, the dissensions in the Ministry were daily increasing. |Dismissed from Office. Feb., 1708.| They became so bitter as to lead to personal altercations at the Council Board, even when the Queen herself was present. On one such occasion (February, 1708) Godolphin and Marlborough went together to the Queen a little before the hour at which a Cabinet Council had been summoned. They told her they must quit her service, since they saw that she was resolved not to part with Harley. ‘She seemed,’ says Bishop Burnet, ‘not much concerned at the Lord Godolphin’s offering to lay down; and it was believed to be a part of Harley’s new scheme to remove him. But she was much touched with the Duke of Marlborough’s offering to quit, and studied, with some soft expressions, to divert him from that resolution; but he was firm; and she did not yield to them.’ |Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. v, pp. 343, 344 (edit. 1823).| So they both went away, without attending the Council, ‘to the wonder of the whole Court.’
When the Council met, it became part of Harley’s duty as Secretary to deliver to the Queen a memorial relating to the conduct of the war. The Duke of Somerset rose, as the Secretary was about to read it, and with the words ‘If Your Majesty suffers that fellow’ (pointing to Harley) ‘to treat affairs of the war without the General’s advice, I cannot serve you,’ abruptly left the Council. |Swift to Archbishop King, 12 Feb. 1708. Comp. Burnet, as above.| ‘The rest,’ according to Burnet, ‘looked so cold and sullen that the Cabinet Council was soon at an end.’
Whilst a result which—for the time—had thus become so plainly inevitable, remained still doubtful, Harley had imposed on himself the humiliating task of assuring the Duke of Marlborough of the honesty of his former professions of attachment. |Harley’s dismissal from the Secretaryship. Feb., 1708.| ‘I have never writ anything to you,’ said he, ‘but what I really thought and intended.’ And then he went on to say:—‘I have for near two years seen the storm coming upon me, and now I find I am to be sacrificed to sly insinuations and groundless jealousies.’ These words were written in September, 1707. On the 10th of February in the following year, Marlborough had, at length, the satisfaction of writing from St. James’ to a foreign correspondent:—‘Mr. Secretary Harley has this afternoon given up the seals of office to the Queen. Between ourselves he richly deserves what has befallen him.’[35] |Marlborough to Count Wratislaw, 10 Feb., 1708.| Among the two or three friends who went out with Harley was Henry St. John.
For the next two years and a half, Harley’s principal occupation was to prepare the way for a return, in kind, of the defeat thus inflicted upon him. |The intrigue against the Godolphin Ministry. 1708–1710.| Some of the steps by which he achieved his end are among the most familiar portions of our political history. But from the necessities of the case it has been, and probably it must continue to be, one of those portions in which the basis of truth can scarcely, by any researches that are now possible, be separated from the large admixture of falsehood built thereon by party animosities.
His own correspondence shows that strong hopes of success in the effort were entertained within eight months of his dismissal. It shows also that the channel employed, unsuccessfully, in 1708, was that which became an effectual one in 1710.
Early in October, Harley received from the Court an unsigned letter in which these passages occur:—‘The Queen stands her ground and refuses to enter into any capitulation with the [Whig Lords]. She has not hitherto consented to offer or hear of any terms. The Lord T[reasure]r desired she might allow him to treat with ’em, and the Duke of S[omerse]t was employed to persuade her, but she was inflexible. The Lord Treasurer offered to resign the Staff, but she would neither take the Staff nor advice from him, and he went to Newmarket without getting any powers or leave to treat.... |Harley Corresp. in MS. Harl. 7526, f. 237.| Your friend cannot answer for the event.... I will add no more but that your friend thinks your being here is very necessary, and that Her Majesty ... would be the better of assistance and good advice.’
It was not, however, until the 8th of August, 1710, that the Godolphin Ministry was dismissed. Two days afterwards, Harley was made Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Treasury being put into commission.