Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/228

214 assuring them that a party there was ready to propose it; but that she had caused the said person to be acquainted that she judged the message to come from such as were enemies to her family; that she would never hearken to such a proposal but when it came from the queen herself; and that she had discouraged the attempt so much that it was believed nothing more would be said on it.

The displaced faction, however, led on by Haversham, Rochester, Buckingham, and the earl of Nottingham, pushed on the question, regardless of all warning and all decency. Buckingham went such a length, that he put the case of the queen falling into a state of dotage, and being thus the complete tool of others—meaning the Marlboroughs—and therefore justified their endeavours to secure the protestant succession by having it already in the country. He argued that, had Charles of Austria been in Spain at the time of the late king's death, he need not now be fighting for his proper inheritance. The tories thought that they had now placed the whigs on the horns of a dilemma; that they must either offend the house of Hanover and the popular feeling of the country by opposing the motion, or must lose the favour of the queen by conceding this specious measure; for Anne would have resented above everything the least idea of seeing her successors waiting for her throne in England, and courted by whichever party was in opposition.

But the whigs had weighed all the dangers of the dilemma, and were prepared with special remedies for them. So far did they profess themselves from wishing to weaken the certainty of the protestant succession, that, without adopting the very dubious measure recommended, they proposed to appoint a regency to hold the government in case of the death of her present majesty, for the successor, till he or she should arrive in this country. By this adroit measure, the queen was spared the annoyance of seeing her successor converted into a rival, and yet the prospects of this succession were strengthened. Accordingly, a bill was brought in, appointing the seven persons who should at the time possess the offices of archbishop of Canterbury, lord chancellor or lord keeper, lord treasurer, lord president, lord privy seal, lord high admiral, and lord chief justice of the Queen's Bench, as a regency, who should proclaim the next successor throughout the kingdom, and join with a certain number of persons, named also regents by the successor, in three lists, to be sealed up and deposited with the archbishop of Canterbury, the lord keeper, and the minister residentiary at Hanover. These regents were to conduct the administration, and the last parliament, even though dissolved, should reassemble and continue to sit for six months after the decease of her majesty; and this bill, notwithstanding the opposition of the tories, was carried though both houses.

To prevent any unpleasant feeling at Hanover, the whigs immediately passed another bill, naturalising not only the princess Sophia, but all her descendants, wheresoever or whensoever born, and they sent over to Hanover the earl of Halifax, furnished with letters from lord Somers, Cowper, and other leading whigs, but, above all, from the duke of Marlborough, and conveying to the prince George the order of the garter from the queen. By these measures the whigs completely turned the stratagems of the tories against them; rendered their attempts to damage them a perfect triumph, not only retaining the warm favour of the queen, but establishing an alliance with the house of Hanover, which, with few interruptions, continued to the commencement of the reign of George III.

To leave the tories not an inch of ground to stand on, the earl of Halifax moved that a day might be fixed for inquiring into this alleged danger of the church. The 6th of December was named, and the most vehemently contested debate of the session took place. Rochester declared that the church was in danger, because presbyterianism without toleration was established in Scotland; because the protestant successor was not resident in England; and because the occasional conformity bill had been rejected. He declared the protest made in the queen's speech against the church being in danger gave him no more assurance than had the law in Charles II.'s time against calling the king a papist, when he was in reality a papist. The earl of Halifax, in reply, reminded Rochester of his far more passive character to the danger of the church under James II., when he, moreover, sate in the high commission court, which was endeavouring to destroy the independence of the church altogether. He ridiculed the plea of any danger to the church from Scotland, considering how much the power of England had of late years increased, and that Scotland and England were about to become one. As to the danger from the absence of the protestant heir, that, he said, was a danger of eight days' standing, for that no one, till the late motion of the tories for calling to England the protestant heir, dreamed of any danger from the absence of the princess Sophia; and that, finally, the occasional conformity act, so far from its giving any strength to the church, had it been carried, it would have done it essential injury. Compton, the old bishop of London, who in his earlier days had taken arms, and had conducted the princess Anne down to Nottingham at the head of a troop when she was in opposition to her father, now complained of sermons being preached inculcating the doctrine of resistance, and of the difficulty he found of punishing a refractory person in his diocese. He particularly alluded to a sermon of this kind preached by Mr. Hoadly, lecturer of St. Mildred's, in London, who was afterwards bishop of Winchester. Burnet declared that the bishop of London was the last man who ought to have complained of that sermon, reminding his lordship of his own former practice of the very doctrine in the princess Anne's case. He contended that the church was every day taking stronger hold on the pubUc by its endeavours to root out profligacy and irreligion. He mentioned the society established in London and other cities for the suppression of vice; the co-operation for the propagation of the gospel, which had done much for the church by distributing great numbers of books on practical divinity, by erecting libraries in country parishes, by sending many able divines to the foreign plantations, and by founding schools for the education of children in Christian knowledge, though very little had been contributed to these ends by those who now appeared so wonderfully zealous for the church.

The archbishop of York expressed much apprehension of danger from dissenters, and especially from the number of seminaries they had set up, and prayed that the judges might be consulted as to putting the laws in force against