He entered upon that office amidst enormous obstacles. His enemies were unable to deny that his exertions to overcome the difficulties in his path were marked by financial ability, and by a large measure of temporary success. But as little can it be denied that the immediate triumph laid the groundwork of public troubles to come.
His own account of the situation of affairs, and of the methods taken to improve it, must, of course, be read with the due allowance. The pith of it lies in these sentences:—‘The army was in the field. There was no money in the Treasury. None of the remitters would contract again. The Bank had recently refused to lend the Lord Treasurer Godolphin a hundred thousand pounds. The Army and Navy Services were in debt nearly eleven millions. The Civil List owed £600,000. The annual deficit was, at least, a hundred and twenty-four thousand pounds. The new Commissioners of the Treasury, nevertheless, made provision, within a few days of their appointment, for paying the Army by the greatest remittance that was ever known. |Letter to the Queen, June 9, 1714. (Parl. Hist., vol. vii, App.)| When Parliament met, on the 27th of November, funds had been prepared for the service of the year, and a plan was submitted for easing the nation of nine millions of debt.’
Harley was scarcely warm in his new office before he made the acquaintance of Swift, then full of ambitious though vague schemes for the future, and very angry with the leaders of the Whig party for the coolness with which his proffers, both of counsel and of service, had lately been received.
At the time of his introduction to Harley, Swift’s immediate business in London consisted in soliciting from the Government a remission of first-fruits to the clergy of Ireland. His nominal colleagues in that trust were the Bishops of Ossory and Killaloe, but the whole weight of the negotiations rested upon Swift’s shoulders. His treatment of it soon displayed his parts. The Minister saw that he was both able and willing to render efficient political service. To the intercourse so begun we owe a life-like portraiture of Harley, under all his aspects, and in every mood of mind. Nor is the depicter himself anywhere seen under stronger light than in those passages of his journal which narrate, from day to day, the rise and fall of the Government founded on the unstable alliance between Harley and St. John.
Of their first interview Swift notes:—‘I was brought privately to Mr. Harley, who received me with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable.’ Of the second:—‘We were two hours alone.... He read a memorial I had drawn up, and put it into his pocket to show the Queen; told me the measures he would take, ... told me he must bring Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal kindness and esteem for me, that I am inclined half to believe what some friends have told me, that he would do everything to bring me over.’ |Journal to Stella; in Works, 2nd Edit., vol. ii, pp. 33; 37; 80.| When the promised interview with Secretary St. John comes to be diarized in its turn:—‘He told me,’ says Swift, ‘among other things, that Mr. Harley complained he could keep nothing from me, I had the way so much of getting into him.’ I knew that was a refinement.... It is hard to see these great men using me like one who was their betters, and the puppies with you in Ireland hardly regarding me.’ Not many weeks had passed before Swift’s pen was at work in defence of the measures of the Government with an energy, a practical and versatile ability, of which, up to that date, there had been scarcely an example, brilliant as was the roll of contemporary writers who had taken sides in the political strife. Swift’s defects, as well as his merits, armed him for his task.
Nor had he been long engaged upon it before he marked, very distinctly, the character both of the rewards to which he aspired, and of the personal independence which he was determined to maintain, in his own fashion.
One day, as he took his leave of Harley, after dining with him, the Minister placed in his hand a fifty pound note. He returned it angrily. And he met Harley’s next invitation by a refusal. Then comes this entry in his diary:—‘I was this morning early with Mr. Lewis, of the Secretary’s office, and saw a letter Mr. Harley had sent to him desiring to be reconciled; but I was deaf to all entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to him and let him know I expect further satisfaction. If we let these great Ministers pretend too much there will be no governing them. He promises to make me easy if I will but come and see him. But I will not, and he shall do it by message, or I will cast him off.’ |Journal to Stella, p. 169.| The desired concession was made, and in a day or two we find our journalist recording, characteristically enough, that he ‘sent Mr. Harley into the House to call the Secretary [St. John], to let him know I would not dine with him if he dined late.’ And then:—‘I have taken Mr. Harley into favour again.... I will cease to visit him after dinner, for he dines too late for my head.... |Ib., pp. 178; 182.| They call me nothing but “Jonathan,” and I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan as they found me, and that I never knew a Ministry do anything for those whom they make companions of their pleasures.’
Swift was one of the first bystanders who took note of the seeds of dissension which were already growing up between Harley and St. John, and who foresaw the coming parallel between the fate of the new Government and that of its predecessor. On the 4th of March, 1711, he wrote:—‘We must have a Peace, let it be a bad or a good one; though nobody dares talk of it. The nearer I look upon things the worse I like them. I believe the Confederacy will soon break to pieces, and our factions at home increase. The Ministry is upon a very narrow bottom, and stands like an isthmus between the Whigs on one side, and the violent Tories on the other. They are able seamen, but the tempest is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them.... |Ib., p. 196.| Your Duchess of Somerset, who now has the key, is a most insinuating woman, and I believe they [the Whigs] will endeavour to play the same game that has been played against them.’
The game was suddenly interrupted, though only for a while. An attempt to assassinate Harley gave him a renewed hold upon power and popularity. But its unexpected consequences embittered the jealousies which already menaced his administration with ruin.
Antoine de Guiscard was a French adventurer, whose private life had been marked by great profligacy. He had taken an obscure part in the insurrection of the Cevennes—rather as a recruiting agent than as a combatant. In that character he had met with encouragement to raise a refugee regiment in England. Hopes had also been held out to him that a British auxiliary contingent would be landed on the southern coast of France. In the course, however, of some preliminary inquiries into the position of the insurrectionists, it was found that such an invasion would have little chance of any useful result, and the project was abandoned. Meanwhile, a pension of £400 a year had been bestowed on the emissary.
But ere long it was discovered that Guiscard had profited by opportunities, afforded him in the course of the discussions about the proposed expedition, to make himself conversant with many particulars of military and naval affairs, and that it was his habit to send advices into France. Some of his letters were seized. Their writer was arrested on the 8th of March, 1711, and was taken, immediately, before a Committee of the Privy Council.
When examined as to his illicit intercourse with France he persisted in mere denials. At length, one of his letters was shown to him by Harley, and he was closely pressed as to his motives in writing it. He then addressed himself to Secretary St. John, and begged permission to speak with him apart. The Secretary answered, ‘You are here before the Council as a criminal. Whatever you may have to say must be said to all of us.’ The man persisted in refusing to reply to any further questions, unless his request was granted. Seeing that nothing more could then be obtained from him, the Lord President rose to ring the bell for a messenger, that the prisoner might be removed in custody.
At that moment the prisoner pulled a penknife from his pocket, turned towards Harley, near to whom he stood, and stabbed him in the breast. He repeated the stroke, and then rushed towards St. John. But between the prisoner and the Secretary there stood a small table, over which he stumbled. St. John drew his sword, and, with the words ‘The villain has killed Mr. Harley,’ struck at him, as did also the Duke of Ormond and the Duke of Newcastle. Lord Powlett cried out ‘Do not kill him.’ Presently the assassin was in the hands of several messengers, with whom, notwithstanding his wounds, he struggled so desperately that more than one of them received severe injuries. When at length overpowered, he said to Ormond, ‘My Lord, why do you not despatch me?’ ‘That,’ replied the Duke, ‘is not the work of gentlemen. ’Tis another man’s business.’
Harley’s wound was so severe that for several days there was a belief that it would prove mortal. It entailed a lingering illness.[36] Before his recovery, his assailant died in prison. The coroner’s inquest ascribed Guiscard’s death to bruises received from one of the messengers who strove to bind him, but Swift tells us that he died of the sword-wounds.
That keen observer had seen, long before this attempted assassination, the latent personal jealousies between Harley and St. John. |Harley becomes Lord High Treasurer.| He had recognised in those jealousies the gravest peril of Harley’s government. Guiscard’s crime had now made Harley the most popular man in the country, and it had doubled his favour with the Queen. On his recovery, he received the congratulations of the House of Commons, expressed with more than usual emphasis. |Journals of H. of Commons, 1711. 27 April.| By the Queen he was raised to the peerage (24 May, 1711) as Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. Five days afterwards (29 May) he was made Lord High Treasurer. |Council Register, Anne, vol. v, p. 249.| His elevation intensified the jealousy of St. John into something which already closely resembled hatred, although years were to elapse before the mask could be quite thrown aside. It is amusing to read the philosophical reflection with which the Secretary sent the news to Lord Ossory:—‘Our friend Mr. Harley is now Earl of Oxford and High Treasurer. This great advancement is what the labour he has gone through, the danger he has run, and the services he has performed, seem to deserve. |St. John to Lord Ossory; 1711, 12 June (Corresp. i, 148).| But he stands on slippery ground, and envy is always near the great to fling up their heels on the least trip which they make.’
The Earl of Oxford had not long obtained the Treasurer’s staff before he received some characteristic exhortations from the Jacobite section of his Tory supporters of the use which he ought to make of it. Atterbury came to him, on the part of some of the Treasurer’s ‘particular friends,’ to acquaint him how uneasy they were that he had neither dissolved the Parliament, nor removed from office nearly so many Whigs as those particular friends wished to see removed. ‘I know very well,’ replied the Earl, ‘the men from whom that message comes, and I am also very sensible of the difficulties I have to struggle with. If, in addition, I must communicate all my measures, it will be necessary for me to assure Her Majesty that I can no longer do her any service.’
These hot-headed politicians had already formed their famous ‘October Club.’ They were about a hundred and fifty in number, and for a few months their proceedings made a great noise. The Treasurer found means to deal with them in a more effectual fashion than that in which they had endeavoured to deal with the administration. ‘By silent, quiet steps, in a little time,’ says a writer who watched the process and aided it, ‘he so effectually separated these gentlemen, that in less than six months the name of “October Club” was forgotten in the world.... |De Foe, Secret History of the White Staff.| With so much address was this attempt overthrown, that he lost not the men, though he put them by their design.’
Those brief sentences indicate, I think, the fatality of the position in which Oxford now placed himself. He had ardently desired to gain the control of affairs, at a period of exceptional difficulty. And, at the best, his capacity and energies would have been barely equal to the task in times of exceptional ease. Some of the very qualities, both of mind and heart, which made him beloved by those who lived with him, weakened him as a statesman. He was surrounded by adepts in political intrigue, some of whom combined with an experience not less than his own, far greater powers of mind, an unbending will, and an utter unscrupulousness as to the use of means. He vainly flattered himself that he could beat these men at their own weapons. His temporary success laid a foundation for his eventual ruin.
To gain the aid of the Jacobite Tories in Parliament he held out hopes which it was never his intention to realise. He carried on an indirect correspondence with the Stuart Court in a way sufficiently adroit to induce that Court to instruct its adherents to support the negotiations for the Peace with France. He would commit himself to nothing until Peace was made. The conclusion of a Peace was the one measure on which he was firmly bent. He had contended that the true interests of Britain demanded the ending of an exhausting war many years before. And whatever the demerits and shortcomings of the Treaty of Utrecht, it had at least the merit of making the quiet succession of the House of Hanover possible.
In March, 1713, the French agent in England, the Abbé Gautier, wrote to the Marquis de Torcy an account of an interview he had obtained with the Lord Treasurer:—‘M. Vanderberg’ [i. e. Lord Oxford], he says, ‘sent for me, seven or eight days ago, to tell me something of importance. Indeed, he opened his mind to me, making me acquainted with his feelings towards Montgourlin [i. e. the Pretender], and the desire he had to do him service, as soon as the Peace shall be concluded.... It will not be difficult, because the Queen is of his opinion. But, in the mean time, it is essential that Montgourlin should make up his mind; that he should declare that it is not his intention to continue to reside where he now is. He must say, publicly, and especially before his family, that when the Peace is made he means to travel in Italy, in Switzerland, in Bavaria, even in Spain. |Gautier to De Torcy; 1713, March. [Printed in Edin. Review, from notes of Mackintosh.]| This is to be done, that it may be believed in England that his choice of a residence is not dictated by a mere desire to be near his relatives, and to be close at hand should measures have to be taken on an emergency.’
After the communication of this statement to the Pretender he made repeated attempts to enter into correspondence with Queen Anne. By Oxford these attempts were uniformly and effectually foiled.
To the insincerity of Oxford’s advances—such as they were—to the Jacobite emissaries, there can be no witness more competent, none more unexceptionable, than the Duke of Berwick. His testimony runs thus:—‘We wrote,’ he says, ‘to all the Jacobites to support the government; a step which had no small share in giving to the Court party so large a majority in the House of Commons that it carried everything its own way.... After the Peace, the Treasurer spoke with not a whit more of clearness or precision than before it.... |Mémoires du Maréchal Duc de Berwick (in Petitot’s Collection, tom. lxvi, pp. 219 seqq.)| He was merely keeping us in play; and it was very difficult to find a remedy. To have broken with him would have spoiled all; for he had the reins in his hand. He governed the Queen at his will.’ |Ib., pp. 224, 225.| In all his advances, adds the Duke, in another passage, ‘Oxford’s only motive had been to win over Jacobites to side with the Tories, and to get a sanction for the Peace.’
Whilst these intrigues were still in action, one, at least, of the Jacobite agents was clear-sighted enough to detect the secret of the Treasurer’s scheme. |Original in Nairne MSS., vol. 4. (Macpherson, Original Pagers, vol. ii, p. 269.)| A confidential agent of the Earl of Middleton, Secretary to the Pretender, wrote in February, 1712—‘[The Earl of Oxford] is entirely a friend to [the Elector of Hanover], notwithstanding the disobliging measures that spark has taken.... [Oxford’s] head is set on shewing that he is above resentment, and that he [the Elector] has been put into a wrong way.’
In matters of Church policy at home the Earl followed like indirect courses, and with the like result—a momentary success which prepared the way for final defeat.
No measure could possibly be more repugnant to Oxford’s declared convictions than the famous ‘Bill against Occasional Conformity,’ brought into the House of Lords by the Earl of Nottingham, at the close of the year 1711. It was part of a policy to which his very nature was antagonistic. But he was in vain entreated, by men who had been his life-long adherents, to oppose it. The passage of that Bill was the price, and, as it seems, the only price for which Nottingham and his band of followers would give their support to the foreign policy of the Government.
The growth of the internal dissensions in the administration kept pace with the growth of its external perils. Personal objects of the pettiest kind were made occasions of quarrel. In the summer of 1712, St. John, who had set his heart on the restoration in himself of that family Earldom of Bolingbroke which in the previous year had become extinct on the death of a distant relative, was made a Viscount. On the announcement of his creation he burst into open menaces of vengeance against the Treasurer, and renewed them with greater violence towards the close of the year, when he found himself excluded from another coveted dignity. An election of Knights of the Garter made, to use Lord Oxford’s own words about it, ‘a new disturbance which is too well remembered.’ Just as the breach with Bolingbroke had become plainly irreconcilable, the Treasurer found a new and equally bitter enemy in another old friend. He defeated a rapacious attempt made by Lady Masham on the Treasury. The first offence in that kind would never have been forgiven. But ere long it was repeated.
In both Houses of Parliament, Oxford’s veiled and vacillating policy was fast alienating men who had long supported him, and who to the last retained more confidence in him than in his brilliant rival. The crisis, however, was brought about, not by the increased strength of Parliamentary opposition, but by bed-chamber intrigues, such as those which he had himself stooped to employ six years before against Godolphin and Marlborough.
Meanwhile the Minister played into the hands of his opponents by exhibiting great irresolution. He dallied and procrastinated with urgent business. He relaxed in his attention to the Queen. At an unwary moment he even gave her personal offence, the results of which were none the less bitter for the absence of design. He showed more concern about comparatively distant perils than about those which were close at hand.
At the beginning of 1714 the best informed of the Jacobites had become fully convinced that Oxford was their enemy. They saw, to repeat the words of the Duke of Berwick, that he had been only keeping them in play. |Oxford’s correspondence with the Court of Hanover.| But at the Court of Hanover he was far from being regarded as an assured friend. Over-subtlety had been rewarded with almost universal distrust.
When in April of that year he sent to Hanover renewed protestations of fidelity, expressed in terms of unusual energy, they were looked upon by some of the Elector’s advisers as mere professions.[37] If now read side by side with contemporary documents, drawn up by secret emissaries of the Pretender, they acquire a stamp of sincerity which it is hard to doubt.
To Baron Wassenaer Duyvenworde Lord Oxford wrote thus:—‘I do in the most solemn manner assure you that, next to the Queen, I am entirely and unalterably devoted to the interests of His Electoral Highness of Hanover.... I am ready to give him all the proofs of my attachment to his interest, and to set in a true light the state of this country; for it will be very unfortunate for so great a Prince to be only Prince over a party, which can never last long in England.’ He then goes on to add that the one thing which would, under existing circumstances, imperil the Hanover succession is the sending into England of any member of that family without the Queen’s consent. Such an act would, in his judgment, ‘change the dispute to the Crown and the Successor, whereas now it is between the House of Hanover and the Popish Pretender.’
He repeated the advice in another and not less urgent letter, after the occurrence of the visit made to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt by the Hanoverian Resident, to ask for a writ of summons for the Duke of Cambridge. But he also advised Queen Anne to consent to the issue of such a writ. He was opposed by a majority of his colleagues, under the leadership of Bolingbroke, as well as by the persistent unwillingness of the Queen herself.
It is instructive to read the comments on the political situation in England at this moment, of a German diplomatist resident in London (as Minister from the Elector Palatine) who was devotedly attached to the Hanoverian succession.
‘Some people,’ wrote Baron von Steinghengs to Count
von der Schulenberg, on the 12th of May, ‘have been at
work for a whole year to deprive the Lord Treasurer of the
conduct of public affairs. I have been aware, almost from
the beginning, of the different channels which have been
made use of to carry this point. But I should never have
expected that they would fire the mine before the end of
this session, and I am much mistaken if the authors have
not reason one day to regret their over-haste. For I do
not know my man, if he does not cut out a good deal of
work for them, particularly if a certain intrigue which is on
the tapis succeeds. As for the rest, you may rely upon his
sentiments; and he never succeeded in persuading those
who doubted them more than by his declaration made in a
full House on the 16th of last month on the question of
danger to the Protestant succession, having in it given
much greater hold upon himself than there was any need
for, if he was not acting in good faith.... The party of
the Hanoverian Tories has visibly been strengthened by it.’
|Von Steinghengs to Count von der Schulenberg, May 1
12 1714 (in Kemble’s State Papers, p. 493).|
And to this the writer adds, in a postscript, ‘It is of
extreme importance both for the Whigs and for the
House of Hanover to take steps to keep him there, and to
engage him by some sort of political confidence to be
assured of his fortunes under that House.’ In another
letter to the same correspondent, Baron von Steinghengs
notes a fact which by many of our historians has been too
much neglected.
|Same to same, June 14 (Kemble, p. 507).|
‘To make the English Ministry,’ he wrote,
‘alone responsible ... for the exorbitant power which
the Peace of Utrecht has given to France is ... to
ignore entirely the incredible obstacles which the enemies
of that Ministry threw, both at home and abroad,
in the way of making the Peace such as it might have
been.’
But although ‘the mine was fired’ before the end of May, July had nearly ended before the effectual explosion came. |Oxford’s Dismissal and the Queen’s Death. 1714, July 27, August 1.| Bolingbroke’s triumph lasted exactly four days. ‘The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday. The Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this! And how does Fortune banter us!... I have lost all by the death of the Queen, but my spirit.’ Such were the words in which Bolingbroke announced to Swift his victory,—and its futility. In a few more days the spirit vanished, like the triumph. The victor was a fugitive.
Bolingbroke’s hatred to Oxford lasted to the close of his life. He survived his old comrade twenty-seven years. The final year of that long period brought no relenting thought, no spark of charitable feeling.
To the question ‘Did Lord Oxford, during his tenure of office, conspire to enthrone the Pretender?’ it ought always to have been a sufficient answer that there was, as yet, not a tittle of evidence of any such conspiracy on his part. That accusation had never any support beyond surmise and conjecture. Men who were in possession of every imaginable resource and appliance to back their search failed to adduce even a shadow of evidence in proof of the charge they would fain have fastened upon him. And in 1869 the matter still stands, in the main, where it stood in 1717.
After many examinations of the most secret correspondence of the Stuarts and their adherents, and after the publishing of extensive selections from it—made at intervals which spread over eighty years,—not a scrap of direct and valid testimony has been found to sustain the charge. Every passage, save one, which bears at all on Oxford’s intercourse with Jacobite emissaries, up to the year 1715, tends to show that what they asserted about his intentions on the Pretender’s behalf was built on wishes, hopes, and guesses—on anything rather than knowledge. Every passage, save one, tends to show that he was using the Jacobites for his own purposes, without the least idea of aiding theirs. Every passage, save one, is in entire harmony with the terms of that incompatible charge by means of which Bolingbroke justified to himself his life-long hostility, when writing the Letter to Sir William Wyndham. The significance of that charge, coming from such a source, can scarcely be exaggerated. ‘Oxford would not,’ wrote Bolingbroke, ‘or he could not, act with us, and he resolved that we should not act without him, as long as he could hinder it.... At the Queen’s death, he hoped ... to deliver us up, bound as it were, hand and foot, to our adversaries. On the foundation of this merit he flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened, at least, the rest of the party to him. |Bolingbroke, Letter to Sir W. Wyndham.| By his secret negotiations at Hanover, he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled to that Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty’s reign, have as much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the Queen.’
The solitary passage in the correspondence of the Jacobite agents which goes directly to the issue is the assertion made by Gautier, in a letter to De Torcy, that Oxford said to him, in December, 1713, ‘As long as I live, England shall not be governed by a German.’ In that notable statement lies the pith of a mass of letters which report the hopes, beliefs, conjectures, and imaginings, of their respective writers, as to what Lord Oxford would do for the Pretender,—whenever that prince could be brought to change, or, at least, to disguise his religion.
Oxford was present, as a Privy Councillor, at the proclamation of King George the First. |Oxford’s reception by George I.| It was noted by some of the bystanders that his demeanour was buoyant and joyous. When the King reached Greenwich, the Earl went thither with more than usual pomp and retinue. He was received with marked coldness, if not with open contempt.
There is little need, in a sketch of this kind, to tell, at length, the story of an impeachment which was stretched over two years, and had no result save that of breaking down, by two years of imprisonment, the health of the defeated statesman. Few and brief words on that head will suffice.
Out of twenty-two articles of impeachment, fourteen accuse the Earl of Oxford of betrayal of duty, either in the conduct of the negotiations for Peace, or in instructions given for handling the British Army—pending those negotiations—in such a way as to injure the common cause of the Allies, by promoting the conclusion of a treaty ‘on terms fatal to the interests of the Kingdom.’ |1715. June 24.| The fifteenth article charges him with inserting false statements in the Queen’s Speeches and Messages to Parliament; the sixteenth with improperly advising the Queen to make a creation of Peers. |State Trials, vol. xv, Coll. 1052, seqq.| Other articles allege misconduct in the management of an expedition to Canada; the appropriation of sums of ‘Secret Service Money’ to corrupt purposes; and treasonable intercourse with ‘Irish Papists.’
Whilst these charges were still in preparation the Venetian Resident in London wrote a despatch to his Senate in which we have an interesting glimpse, behind the curtain, at the process:—‘The Whigs,’ he says, ‘seek to annihilate the Tories utterly, and to place them under the yoke. They want to impeach even the Duke of Shrewsbury.’... After enlarging on nascent dissensions amongst the Whigs themselves, as to the lengths to which they might safely carry their party resentments, he proceeds to assert that the more cautious men among them ‘have now, when it is well nigh too late, become aware that the Tory party, recently dominant, was a mixed party. |Correspondence of Joseph Querini; from extracts by T. D. Hardy, in Report on Archives of Venice, pp. 98, 99.| Some were in favour of the Pretender; some for the House of Hanover. Had His Majesty made this distinction on his accession to the Crown he would have excluded the former, but not the latter. By favouring the Whigs alone, he lost all the others at once.’ In brief, George the First had made himself exactly what Oxford had warned him against becoming, the ‘King of a party.’
When the Earl at length appeared before his peers to answer to his impeachment, he began by denying ‘that at any time or place in the course of those negotiations,’ now incriminated, ‘he conferred unlawfully or without due authority with any emissaries of France.’ He affirmed that he neither promoted nor advised any private, separate, or unjustifiable negotiation, and that he himself had no knowledge ‘that any negotiation relating to Peace was carried on without communication to the Allies.’
On the specific charge that he had traitorously given up Tournay to France, his defence is twofold:—‘I used my best offices,’ he asserts, ‘to preserve that town and fortress to the States General. I believe that at this time they are continued to the States General as part of their barrier.’ And then he adds:—‘But I deny that for a Privy Councillor and Minister of State to advise the yielding of any town, fort, or territory, upon the conclusion of a Peace, is, or can be, High Treason by any law of this realm.’
On the whole matter of the Peace, he asserts that ‘its terms and preliminaries were communicated to Parliament. They were agreed on with the concurrence of Parliament. The Definitive Treaty was afterwards approved of by both Houses. Solemn thanks were rendered to God for it in all our churches and also in the churches of the United Provinces. Her Majesty received upon its conclusion the hearty and unfeigned thanks of her people from all parts of her dominions.’
It might well have been thought that even in those evil days it would be difficult to induce a Committee of partisans to report to the House of Commons that ‘large sums issued for the service of the war were received by the Earl of Oxford, and applied to his Lordship’s private use,’ without the possession of some plausible show of proof. There was not so much as a decent presumption, or colourable inference, to back the assertion. When the matter came to be probed, it appeared that a royal gift of £13,000 had been received by the Earl in what were known as ‘tin tallies,’ and that the sum had been a charge upon the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall.
Probably few politicians have owed quite so large a debt of gratitude to their enemies as that incurred by the Earl of Oxford. His ministry at home had been marked by weaknesses which went perilously near the edge of public calamity. The Peace which was its characteristic achievement abroad had brought with it many real blessings, but they were won at the cost of a large sacrifice of national pride, if not also by some sacrifice of national honour. The wild excesses of his adversaries now gave back to the obnoxious Minister the strength of his best days. |Oxford’s behaviour under trial.| When Pope wrote of him, ‘The utmost weight of ministerial power and popular hatred were almost worth bearing for the glory of so dauntless a conduct as he has shown under it,’ the praise came from a pen which is known to have been employed, now and again, to flatter the great. But it was no flatterer who wrote to Oxford himself—‘Your intrepid behaviour under this prosecution astonishes every one but me, who know you so well, and how little it is in the power of human actions or events to discompose you. I have seen your Lordship labouring under great difficulties and exposed to great dangers, and overcoming both, by the providence of God, and your own wisdom and courage.’ Those words came from one of the shrewdest and most acute observers of human character that have ever lived. They were written after a close and daily intimacy of four eventful years. Oxford, in his day of power, had disappointed Swift of some cherished hopes, which now could never be renewed. The praise of Swift must have been sincere. |Swift’s Correspondence, in Works, by Scott, vol. xvi, pp. 232, 233.| When such a writer, at such a time, goes on to add—‘You suffer for having preserved your country, and for having been the great instrument, under God, of his present Majesty’s peaceable accession to the throne;—this I know, and this your enemies know’—the most prepossessed reader cannot but feel that the absence from the two and twenty articles of impeachment of any charge of plotting against the Hanover succession is alike intelligible and significant.
When Oxford’s imprisonment could be no longer protracted without a trial, the two Houses of Parliament were unable to agree as to the mode of proceeding. It was obvious on all sides that the charge of ‘treason’ would fail. The Lords declared that on the articles imputing treason judgment must be given, before the articles imputing ‘other high crimes and misdemeanours’ could be entered upon. They declared that the attempt of the Commons to mix up the two was ‘a new and unjustifiable proceeding.’ |Lords’ Journals, vol. xx, p. 515, seqq. Commons’ Journals, vol. xviii.| The Commons refused to adduce evidence on the charge of treason, and to take the issue upon that.
On the first of July, 1717, the Earl was brought to the bar to hear from the Lord High Steward a declaration that ‘Robert, Earl of Oxford, is, by the unanimous vote of all the Lords present, acquitted of the articles of impeachment exhibited against him, by the House of Commons, for High Treason and other high crimes and misdemeanours, and that the said impeachment shall be and is hereby dismissed.’ Then the Steward said, ‘Lieutenant of the Tower, You are now to discharge your prisoner.’
On the third of July, the Earl resumed his seat as a peer of Parliament. On the fourth, the Commons resolved to address the King, beseeching him ‘to except Robert, Earl of Oxford, out of the Act of Grace which Your Majesty has been graciously pleased to promise from the throne, to the end the Commons may be at liberty to proceed against the said Earl in a parliamentary way.’ |Journals, vol. xviii, p. 617.| No such proceeding, of course, was taken or intended.
For several years to come Lord Oxford took part, from time to time, in the business of Parliament. He served often on Committees in these final years of his public life, just as he had done during his early years of apprenticeship in the Lower House. In the Lords, as in the Commons, he was listened to with especial deference on points of parliamentary law and privilege.
From time to time, also, the Jacobite agitators, both at home and abroad, made repeated appeals to him, direct or indirect, for countenance and help in their schemes. They had, it seems, a confident hope that the sufferings and the humiliation inflicted on him in the years 1715–1717 must have so entirely alienated him from the reigning House, as now, at all events, to have prepared him to be really their fellow-conspirator, on the first occurrence of a promising opportunity. |Alleged renewal of Correspondence with the Stuart Agents.| How far the Earl listened to such suggestions and persuasions is still, it will be seen, matter of great and curious uncertainty.[38]
Lord Oxford’s private life was not less chequered by rapid alternations of sunshine and of gloom than was his political career. In August, 1713, he gratified a cherished desire by the marriage of his son Edward, Lord Harley, with the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter and heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle (who died in 1711). With what Lord Harley had already derived under the Duke’s will, this marriage brought him an estate then worth sixteen thousand pounds a year, and destined to increase enormously in value. Three months afterwards the Earl lost a dearly loved daughter, the Marchioness of Caermarthen, who died at the age of twenty-eight. It was of her that Swift wrote to him—‘I have sat down to think of every amiable quality that could enter into the composition of a lady, and could not single out one which she did not possess in as high a perfection as human nature is capable of. But as to your Lordship’s own particular, as it is an unconceivable misfortune to have lost such a daughter, so it is a possession which few can boast of to have had such a daughter. I have often said to your Lordship that “I never knew any one by many degrees so happy in their domestics as you;” and I affirm that you are so still, though not by so many degrees.... |Swift to Oxford; 21 Nov., 1713. (Works, vol. xvi, pp. 78–80.)| You began to be too happy for a mortal; much more happy than is usual with the dispensations of Providence long to continue.’
Under the sorrows both of public and of private life it was his wont to find a part of his habitual consolations in the use, as well as in the increase, of his splendid library. |History of the Harleian Library.| He began the work of collection in youth, and to add to his treasures was one of the matters which, at intervals, occupied his latest thoughts.
Among the famous Englishmen whose manuscripts passed, either wholly or partially, into the Harleian Library are to be counted Sir Thomas Smith; John Fox, the martyrologist; John Stowe, the historian; Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and Archbishop Sancroft. Among famous foreigners, Augustus Lomenie de Brienne; Peter Séguier, Chancellor of France; and Gerard John Vossius. Perhaps the most extensive of the prior collections which it had absorbed, in mass, was the assemblage of manuscripts that had been gathered by Sir Symonds D’Ewes, whose acquisitions included a rich series of the materials of English history.
The inquiries which led to the purchase of the D’Ewes’ Collection were the occasion of making fully known to Robert Harley a model librarian in the person of Humphrey Wanley. |Humphrey Wanley; his Life, Letters, and Journal.| The latter portion of Wanley’s life was wholly devoted to the service of the Harleian Library, and his employment there was a felicity, both for him and for it. His journal of the incidents which occurred during the growth of the collection given to his care is the most curious document in its kind which is known to exist. That journal illustrates the literary history and the manners of the time, not less amusingly than it exhibits the personal character of its writer, and the fidelity with which he worked at his task in life.
Wanley was the son of a country parson, little known to fame, but possessing some tincture of learning, and was born at Coventry, on the 21st of March, 1673. In his youth he attracted the favourable notice of his father’s diocesan, William Lloyd, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (and afterwards of Worcester), by whom he was sent to Edmund Hall at Oxford. That hall he soon exchanged for University College, on the persuasion of Dr. Arthur Charlett, by whose influence he was afterwards made an Underkeeper of the Bodleian Library. He took no degree, but won some distinction, whilst at Oxford, by the services which he rendered to Dr. Mill in collating the text of the New Testament.
On leaving the University, Wanley went to London, where he became Secretary to the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. He translated Ostervald’s Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion; and compiled a valuable Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts preserved in the chief libraries of Great Britain. The last-named labour gave proof of much ability. It was a sample of the work for which its writer was best fitted.
As Speaker of the House of Commons, Harley took a considerable part in organizing the Cottonian Library, when it became a public institution under the Act of Parliament. Wanley proffered to the Speaker, on this occasion, some advice about the necessary arrangements; became well acquainted with Harley’s bookishness, and saw how eagerly he would welcome opportunities for the improvement of his own library, as well as of that newly acquired by the Public.