from leaving the question to be decided by a general scramble or by French ambition was manifestly great. Especially great was, or naturally seemed, the danger of the union of the French and Spanish monarchies in the rapacious and domineering house of Bourbon, to which, by the marriage of Louis XIV. with a Spanish princess, the vast heritage would have gone had the claim not been barred by her renunciation. Experience, it might be said, showed that family connection by no means entailed political union. But in this case the weakness of Spain would be too likely to make her a vassal of France. The cretin being morally incapable of making a will, to leave the decision to him would have been to leave it to intriguing priests and women. Therefore when his death was near, William leading the way, a partition treaty had been made, dividing the Spanish heritage among the powers and assigning Spain itself, with the Indies, to the young Electoral Prince of Bavaria, who stood in the line of succession. This arrangement would perhaps have been allowed to take effect, and the peace of Europe might have been secured. But unfortunately the Electoral Prince died. A second partition treaty was then made, giving Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and the colonies to the Austrian Archduke Charles. Soon the flickering ray of life in the Spanish king expired, and it was then found that a will had been made by those who had him in their hands, and who were under French influence, naming Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis, his heir. Louis had promised on his honour, on the word and faith of a king, and had sworn upon the cross, the Holy Gospels, and the Mass-book, faithfully to observe the renunciation. But on receiving news of the bequest, he gave his plighted honour and his oath to the winds, and presented his grandson to his court as king of Spain. The English people, weary of war and laden with debt, might not have been willing to take arms again for the maintenance of the balance of power. They were more nearly touched by the aggressions of Louis in the Netherlands, where he was seizing Barrier fortresses and expelling Dutch garrisons in the name of his grandson, threatening thereby the commercial interests as well as the one sure ally of England. But Louis took another step which made war inevitable, and put his great enemy once more at the head of a united and enthusiastic nation. James II. died at St. Germains. The wisest counsellors of the 1701 French king dissuaded him from recognizing the son of James as king of England. Louis's own judgment agreed with theirs. But at his side was a priest-ridden woman. At her instigation, it seems, Louis recognized James's 1701 son, the pretended Prince of Wales, as king of England, offering to England an intolerable insult and virtually declaring war. Against the attempt to impose a king upon it the spirit of the nation once more rose, and an election gave a great majority to the Whigs, who were the party of war. An Abjuration oath renouncing the 1702 Pretender was imposed on the whole governing class. But William's ear could no longer hear the trumpet call. He was already sinking beneath disease and toil, when his horse, putting its foot into a mole-hole, hastened his end, 1702 and the conduct of the French war passed, with the leadership of Europe, into other hands. The Jacobites might show what they were by drinking to the mole. But the work of the hero had been done. England and Europe were free. CHAPTER IV storms. ANNE BORN 1665; SUCCEEDED 1702; DIED 1714 THE HE reign of Anne has been called the Augustan Age of England. There is a likeness. Both were ages of calm, self-complacency, and jubilant literature, after civil War there was during the reign of Anne, but it was far away, glorious, seen only in processions of thanksgiving for victory, felt at worst in the increase of taxation. Besides its literature in the persons of Pope, Addison, Swift, Steele, Defoe, the reign had its science in the person of Newton, its philosophy in that of Locke, its scholarship in that of Bentley. It had its architect in the builder of Blenheim, a palace in majesty whatever may be said of the style. Its statesmen were literary and patronized letters. It was an age stately, refined, picturesque in a formal way, so far as the higher class was concerned. But beneath the rather artificial brilliancy of the surface lay much that was far from brilliant : coarse excesses, savage duelling, nightly outrage of young rakes styled Mohocks on the streets, and among the common people barbarous habits, brutal sports, crime prevalent, ill-repressed by the police, and savagely punished. Queen Anne was virtuous, good-natured, well-meaning, dull, and weak, though obstinate when the fit was on her. As a Stuart, though not the heiress by divine right, she was accepted as half legitimate by the Jacobites. She touched for the evil; among others the boy Samuel Johnson, in whose case the miracle did not take place. She was at heart a Tory, or rather a high church-woman, her strongest sentiment being attachment to the Church of England, to whose clergy her accession was a new summer after the winter of Whig Revolution. Her piety restored to the church the First Fruits which Henry 1703 VIII. and afterwards Elizabeth had seized for the crown. There was joy in the cathedral closes. Anti-puritan maypoles went up by scores. Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion" was brought out, with its preface telling the queen, whose heart was open to such teaching, that the church was the great support of the throne, and that to hurt the church was next door to treason. Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, was a toper and a cypher. Their children did not live, and Jacobitism might suspend its conspiracies till her demise all the more willingly, as she was likely from family feeling to favour the succession of her Stuart brother. For the present, however, the high church queen was completely in thraldom to Marlborough's imperious wife, who called herself a Whig, but was simply for herself and Marlborough. They corresponded under the familiar names of "Mrs. Morley" and "Mrs. Freeman," but their friendship was the submission of the weak. Marlborough now finds the field of his ambition. As the head and the general of the Grand European Alliance against France he takes the place of William. He for the present is king. His prime minister is Godolphin, whose financial ability provides the sinews of war and the subsidies for hungry allies. VOL. II-9 1704 The House of Commons is still Tory and High Church, while in the House of Lords a Whig majority is led by Somers and Wharton, a Tory minority by Nottingham. Toryism in the House of Commons falls upon the non1702-conformists with an Occasional Conformity Bill. Nonconformists were in the habit of eluding the Corporation and Test Acts by taking the sacrament in an Anglican church as a qualification for office and then going back to the meeting house. High Church Tories did not object to the profanation of the sacrament, but they did object to letting the non-conformist thus slip his neck out of the yoke. The House of Commons passed a Bill punishing with deprivation and fine whoever after taking the sacrament for office should again attend a meeting house. The Lords threw out the Bill, Liberal bishops distinguishing themselves in opposition. The Commons then tried to force it through the Lords by tacking it to the land tax, but again for the time they were foiled. Tories, the Jacobite wing of the party especially, were at this time ready enough to loosen the fangs of the treason law. The prisoner had been allowed counsel; 1708 an Act was now passed allowing his witnesses to be sworn. Hitherto the witnesses for the crown only had been sworn, so that the evidence for the prisoner was disrated; an iniquitous absurdity for which only the legal casuist and idolater of the common law could find 1703 a reason. The overbearing temper of the newly enthroned Commons was shown in the case of the men of Aylesbury, which brought the House into sharp collision with the Lords. The returning officer at Aylesbury had arbitrarily refused the votes of some electors, one of whom |