Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/193

.] number of land forces, to act along with the allies. They granted eight hundred and thirty-three thousand eight hundred and twenty-six pounds for their maintenance; three hundred and fifty thousand pounds for guards and garrisons; seventy thousand nine hundred and seventy-three pounds for ordnance; and fifty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-three pounds for subsidies to the allies, altogether one million three hundred and six thousand six hundred and forty-two pounds for the war alone, independent of the usual national expenses, and these soon required an increase. The news of the success of Vigo arriving, the queen and both houses went in procession to return thanks at St. Paul's, the duke of Ormonde was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland in place of Rochester, and Sir George Rooke was admitted a member of the privy council, though both these commanders were heaping the severest reproaches on each other, and demanding an inquiry. The lords took the side of the duke, the commons of Sir George, for the war betwixt the two houses was beginning to rage again as fiercely as in William's time. Vice-admiral Hopson was knighted and received a pension.

The queen demanded of the commons a farther provision for her husband, the prince of Denmark, in case of her decease. Howe moved that one hundred thousand pounds a year should be settled on the prince in case he should be the survivor. No opposition was offered to the amount, but strenuous opposition to a clause in the bill exempting the prince from the provision in the act of settlement, which prevented any foreigner, even though naturalised, holding any employments under the crown; but the court was bent on carrying this, and did so.

Having secured her husband, Anne then sent a message to the commons to inform them that she had created the earl of Marlborough a duke for his eminent services, and praying them to settle five thousand pounds a year on him to enable him to maintain his new dignity. This was so glaring a case of favoritism, that the commons, with all their loyalty, expressed their decided disapprobation. The single campaign which Marlborough had made, though attended with a certain success, certainly entitled him to no such elevation. It was the influence of the Marlboroughs over the queen which was drawing from her everything they pleased; but the commons held the purse, and they made a strong remonstrance against the grant, declaring that Marlborough was already well paid for his services by the profitable employments conferred on him and his family. They upbraided the memory of king William for his extravagance towards his favourites, thus again hitting the whigs. The outcry was so great that the Marlboroughs declined what they saw no means of getting—the grant, and the queen intimated that fact to the house; but she immediately offered her favourites two thousand pounds a year out of her privy purse, which, with affected magnanimity, they also declined, hoping yet to obtain, at some more favourable crisis, the parliamentary grant; and, after that really happened, they then claimed the queen's offer too.

But the opposition of the tories, whom Marlborough had been serving with all his influence in parliament, completely alienated him from that party, and he went over to the whigs. Lady Marlborough claims on her own account much merit for this conversion, both for herself and her husband. She says she had herself been long liberally inclined, and had been for some time endeavouring to raise the whigs in the queen's estimation. "I had no motive," she says, "of private interest to bias me towards the whigs. Everybody must see that, had I consulted that oracle about the choice of a party, it would certainly have directed me to go with the stream of my mistress's inclinations and prejudices. This would have been the surest way to secure my favour with her. Nor had I any particular obligations to the whigs that should bend me to their side rather than to the other. On the contrary, they had treated me very hardly, and I had reason tolook upon them as my personal enemies, at the same time that I saw the tories ready to compliment me and to pay me court."

But lady Marlborough, any more than her husband, was not one to be satisfied with empty compliments; she would have substantial benefits. These the tories had now refused, and resentment dictated the determination to secede from them, and to draw the queen from them, as they, in fact, succeeded in doing. What galled Marlborough as much as anything was that he had been in the house of lords strongly supporting one of the most liberal attempts of the tories, that of destroying the effect of the act of toleration. One of the very best things that the whigs had ever done was the establishment of this act. It had freed the dissenters from their persecutions and annoyances. They were still, it is true, excluded by the test and corporation acts from all offices under government or in corporations unless they could take the oath of the queen's supremacy, and the sacrament according to the ritual of the church of England; but now the tories would have this exclusion extended to all persons whatever, and have the severest penalties enacted for any breach of it. The queen and the tories regarded the church as entitled to confer all favours, and they were determined to give it a power by which all corporations and elections should be thrown into the hands of the government. For this purpose Mr. Bromley, Mr. Annesley, and Mr. St. John, who had been a dissenter himself, but had no religion at all, brought in what they called an "occasional conformity bill." They complained that dissenters and other disaffected persons took the necessary oaths, and often went again to the dissenting meetings; that this was a gross piece of hypocrisy, and left the church exposed to much danger from them. They proposed, therefore, to insist that all who had taken the sacrament and test for offices of trust, or for the magistracy of corporations, and afterwards went to any meeting of the dissenters, should forfeit their employments, pay a fine of one hundred pounds, and five pounds for every day that they continued to hold their office after having been at a dissenters' meeting, as well as be disabled from holding any other employment till after a year's conformity. The bill was carried in the tory commons by an overwhelming majority, but it was as strongly opposed in the lords, where the whigs were not disposed to pull down the greatest trophy of their legislation. The bishops generally voted against the bill, and Burnet was extremely active against it. None of these men saw the monstrosity of the test and corporation acts, which compelled all to take the sacrament, whether they opposed it in that form or not, and thus shut out the