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314 returning to Hanover to justify himself. At the same time lord Strafford was instructed to write from the Hague, blaming the conduct of Schutz in applying for the writ in the manner he did, as disrespectful to the queen; for, though-strictly legal for an absent peer to make such application, the etiquette was that he should defer it till he could do it personally. Strafford ridiculed the idea of any movement being afoot in favour of the pretender, and observed that, as to sending him out of the duke of Lorraine's territory, it was not practicable, because the French king maintained that he had fulfilled the treaty, Lorraine not being any part of France. On the other hand, there were striking signs that the cause of Hanover was in the ascendant. Men who watched the course of events decided accordingly. Marlborough, who so lately had been making court to the pretender, now wrote from Antwerp, urging the house of Hanover to send over the prince without delay to England; that the state of the queen's health made prompt action necessary; and that the presence of the prince in London would secure the succession without risk, without expense, and without war, and was the likeliest measure of inducing France to abandon her design of assisting the pretender. Lord Townshend announced that many tories were coming over, in expectation that the prince was about to arrive, and that not only the lord treasurer, but both parties would be obliged to pay court to him. Many other whigs wrote in the same tone, and amongst them the archbishop of York sent the warmest expressions of attachment. As if some intimations of the archbishop's correspondence had got wind, the queen sent for him a few days after he had sent off his letter, and made the strongest protestations of her attachment to the protestant succession, both from conscience and affection for the church. But Kreyenburg, the Hanoverian secretary, who had remained after the departure of Schutz, informed his court that the archbishop was by no means convinced, seeing much around him to the contrary.

The real fact was, that exertions equally strenuous were all this time being made on the part of the pretender. As the state of Anne's health became more and more precarious, both parties increased their efforts to secure their ground, and there was a most active and incessant struggle going on round the throne to enable the head of either party to step into it the moment it became vacant. It was considered essential for the claimant to be on the spot, and, therefore, every means was used to induce the queen to admit the pretender as well as a member of the electoral house to court. Yes, it was seriously agitated to obtain her consent to the coming over of the pretender. It was a scheme of the duke of Berwick, which he communicated to Oxford through the abbé Gualtier, that the queen should be induced to consent to do her brother justice; that he should go to St. James's, and that on the understanding that he consented to allow liberty of the subject and of religion, the queen should pass such acts as were necessary for the public security on these heads, and then should suddenly introduce him in full parliament, saying, "My lords and gentlemen, here is the true prince, ready to promise you himself religiously to keep all I have engaged for him, and to swear to the observance of it. I require you, therefore, instantly to repeal all the acts passed against him, and acknowledge him immediately as my heir and your future sovereign, that he may owe you some good will for your concurrence with me in that which your conscience, your duty, and your honour should already have prompted you to."

"An unexpected step of this sort," argued the brave but romantic Berwick, "would have so astonished the factious and delighted the well-affected, that there would not certainly have been the least opposition. There is no reason to doubt but that everything would have been immediately executed agreeably to the queen's command; for no person would have doubted but that the queen had taken her measures in anxious obedience; so that on one hand the fear of punishment, and on the other the hope of taking advantage of a new change, would have determined the parliament immediately to restore all things to their natural order, according to the fundamental laws of the kingdom."

It is certain that a bold scheme of this kind, combined with all the other necessary arrangements, would have greatly startled the whig party, and might for a time have been successful. If the pretender had had a powerful armament ready in the ports of France; if the Highlands had been well prepared to make a descent on England, and the Jacobites and tories duly instructed to surround and support the pretender on his thus revealing himself in the very midst of London and of parliament, sanctioned by the queen, the consequences might have been extraordinary. But, had all these matters been perfectly arranged, there were a thousand chances against their being matured before their full detection took place. The whigs were a party powerful and alert; the highlands had been tested; the duke of Breadalbane had been sent down to Scotland, and it was spread through the hills that the pretender would be there before the end of May; and one Mackintosh, of Borlum, had been sent over from Bar-le-duc with a great number of commissions from the pretender. But it does not appear that these things had produced much sensation in the highlands. It would have been necessary for the chevalier to have gone thither in person to call forth the necessary enthusiasm of the Gaels, and that would not agree with his sudden appearance in London. Had he really made this startling appearance there, though this apparition might have paralysed the whigs for a moment, it would not have required long to enable them to recover themselves and prepare for resistance, at the same time that the Hanoverian tories would have been sure to join with them. A short civil war could have been the only result, ending in one more expulsion of the Stuart, in whose assurances of freedom and religious toleration the nation at large had no faith.

But there was another circumstance taken for granted in such a scheme which would never have been realised — the consent of the queen. Anne, like most other sovereigns, abhorred the idea of a successor. She never liked the contemplation of the occupation of her throne after death, much less did she relish the presence of a competitor during her lifetime. In her days of disease and weakness she had enough to do to manage her ministry, much less to encounter a prospect of divided authority either from Hanover or St. Germains. She would not admit a single member of the electoral house to her metropolis, much less one who must be regarded by his own party as the rightful king, and she as the usurper.