Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/304

290 Sunderland and lady Railton, resigned their places of ladies of the bedchamber.

But, notwithstanding Marlborough's proofs that his appropriations were according to long-established custom, the commons admitted no such plea. They voted that the two and a half per cent. deducted by him from the pay of the foreign troops was public money, and that he ought to account for it. They threatened to institute proceedings for its recovery through the law officers of the crown, and they expelled Cardonel, the duke's secretary, from the house for his receipt of the fees mentioned in the contracts. They had the satisfaction, also, of punishing Robert Walpole, one of Marlborough's most stanch defenders, for taking five hundred guineas, and a note for five hundred more, on the signing of a contract for forage for her majesty's troops quartered in Scotland when secretary of war. The deed deserved punishment, but it was one which all secretaries perpetrated equally with Walpole, as he showed, and which would never have been noticed had Walpole yielded to the tory entreaties and carried his great abilities to their side. They, however, voted the fact a high breach of trust, and of notorious corruption, and ordered his expulsion from the house and his committal to the Tower. The borough of Lynn, which Walpole represented, immediately re-elected him; but the commons pronounced him incapable of sitting in that parliament, and declared the election void. Many of the members of the house added that expulsion and imprisonment were wholly inadequate punishments; that he ought to be hanged; but Walpole was destined to escape hanging for long years of more flagrant corruption in the coming days of his own power, when he more truly deserved it.

The houses of parliament reassembled on the 17th of January, and the queen sent a message stating that she was not able to attend in person, not having recovered sufficiently from her attack of the gout. She announced that the plenipotentiaries were now assembled at Utrecht, and were already engaged in endeavouring to procure just satisfaction to all the allies according to their several treaties, and especially with relation to Spain and the Indies. This was a delusion, for, by our treaty with the emperor, we had engaged to secure Spain and the Indies for his son; and it was now, notwithstanding the assurance in her message regarding them, fully determined to give them up to Philip. There was a strong protest in the message against the evil declarations that there had been an intention to make a separate peace, though nothing was more notorious than that the ministers were resolved, if the allies did not come to their terms, to go on without them. The message did not end without recommending one of the ever favourite measures of the tories—a restriction of the liberty of the press.

Much alarm was expressed at the great license taken in publishing false and scandalous libels, though the ministers had in their employ some of the most vindictive and unscrupulous writers, and, above all, Jonathan Swift, who was working hard, by the most virulent abuse of the whigs, for a bishopric. Unfortunately, the malice of Swift, one of the most bitter and cold-blooded men that ever lived, was so exuberant that he scattered his venomous witticisms without sufficient foresight, and some of his arrows rebounded upon himself when he least expected it. The tories at this time were bent on getting the duke and duchess of Somerset out of favour. It was well known that both of them were strongly opposed to the peace, and the preference shown to the duke after the debate in the lords on that question made the ministers dread an attempt to patch up a party with the Somers division of the whigs. The duke, however, resigned his post of master of the horse, but the duchess retained her place as mistress of the robes; and the whole rancour of the ministry was now turned upon her. Swift was employed to make her ridiculous. The duchess, being the heiress of the house of Percy, had been the victim of two marriages of convenance before she married the duke. She was married at about eleven years of age to lord Ogle, the son of the duke of Newcastle. Ogle died when she was only thirteen, and she was wearing widow's weeds at Charles II.'s court at that infantile age, the monarch calling her la triste héritière. She was again married to a man of immense wealth, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat. Being seen by a German fortune-hunter, count Köningsmark, this adventurer shot Thynne in his carriage in the Haymarket. Being a widow again at little more than fourteen, she was married to the duke of Somerset. These particulars afforded subjects for Swift's envenomed pen; and, endeavouring to make the duchess guilty of having been accessory to her husband's assassination, he wrote the following lines and handed them about, showing them to the favourite, Mrs. Masham, not forgetting the red hair of the duchess. The verses are called "A Windsor Prophecy," and equally libelled the earl of Nottingham and the duke of Marlborough, saying—

Mrs. Masham, of course, was complimented under the name "the Hill."

These verses fell into the duchess's hands, who hoarded them up, and made use of them in due time, to the calumniator's signal damage. But whilst Swift was thus scattering his filthy venom on the highest names at the command of his masters, the tory ministers, those ministers were anxious to muzzle all reply. The lords, having the addition of twelve span-new peers, made a zealous reply to this appeal, and the commons went still farther. They declared that they would do their utmost to punish the licentiousness of the press, which was so daring and impious that it neither spared God, religion, nor her majesty's government.

The high church party next proceeded to repeal such acts as restrained the exercise of that church in Scotland. An act was passed to prevent all interference with the exercise of the episcopal worship in that country; another to restore the rights of patronage to the noblemen and other land-holders, which had been reserved to the church at the revolution; and they repealed an act against all baptisms and