Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/379

A.D.1717.] that he would content himself with the salary and lawful perquisites of his office; and though he had quitted a better place, he would not quarter himself on any one else to make it up; that he had no brothers or other relations to provide for, and that upon his first entering into the treasury he had made a standing order against the late practice of granting reversions of places."

Every word of this harangue was a hard hit at Walpole, who, however, justified himself by declaring that he had done much which he had done in granting reversions of places, to defeat the boundless rapacity of some of the king's German ministers, but especially of Robethon, whom he characterized as "a mean fellow, of what nation he knew not, who was eager to dispose of places."

The new administration took measures to render themselves popular. They advised the king to go down to the house on the 6th of May, and propose a reduction of the army to the extent of ten thousand men, as well as an act of grace to include many persons concerned in the late rebellion. Walpole and his friends, on the contrary, did all in their power to embarrass the government. Lord Oxford was not included in the act of indemnity, and it was resolved now by his friends to have his trial brought on. Before this was effected, however, a violent attack was made on lord Cadogan. As ambassador at the Hague, he had superintended the embarkation of the Dutch troops sent to aid in putting down the rebellion. He was now charged with having committed gross peculations on that occasion. Shippen led the way in this attack, but Walpole and Pulteney pursued their former colleague with the greatest rancour, and Walpole declaimed against him so furiously that, after a speech of nearly two hours in length, he was compelled to stop by a sudden bleeding at the nose. Stanhope, Craggs, Lechmere, and others defended him; but such was the combination of enemies against him, or rather, against the ministers, that the motion was only negatived by a majority of ten.

Lord Oxford's case was brought at length to a termination also in his favour. His friends having complained of the hardship of keeping him without a hearing for nearly two years, the 24th of June was appointed for the trial to take place in Westminster Hall. The commons again met in committee to complete the evidence against him; but it was now found that Walpole, who was the chairman, and who had formerly pursued the inquiry with all eagerness, had suddenly cooled, and seldom came near the committee; and they therefore appointed a new one. In fact, he and Townshend, out of opposition, were doing that secretly which they could not do openly without loss of character—they were exerting themselves in favour of their old antagonist, and they soon hit on a scheme for bringing him off without any trial at all.

Accordingly, the peers assembled in the due form of trial in Westminster Hall on the appointed day. The king, the royal family, and the whole of the foreign ministers had attended to witness the proceedings. Oxford was brought from the Tower and placed at the bar, the executioner at his side with the axe, according to ancient custom. The articles of impeachment were read, and then the answer of the earl. Hampden opened the charge against him, and Sir Joseph Jekyll rose to support it, when the earl of Harcourt interposed, and stated that he had a motion to make. The peers, therefore, adjourned to their own house, where lord Harcourt observed that the impeachment ran to such a length that to go through the whole of the articles would draw out the trial to a prodigious time; that a peer was entitled on charges for misdemeanour only to sit at the bar, to have his liberty, and privilege of appearing in his place in parliament; but, mixed up as these charges of misdemeanour were with those of high treason, the earl would be deprived of these privileges through the whole course of the trial. He moved, therefore, that these charges should be separated, and that the two articles for high treason should be brought forward first; for, if the earl was condemned on these, he would forfeit both life and estate, and there would be an end of the matter. This motion was warmly resisted by Sunderland, Coningsby, Cadogan, and others, who were well aware that there was no evidence to convict Oxford of treason, but it was carried by a majority of eighty-eight against fifty-six.

But the result foreseen by the opposition took place when the resolution was reported to the commons. They immediately determined that it was an infringement of their privileges, and declined compliance with it. This was what Walpole and the then partisans, secret or open, of lord Oxford, had foreseen. They had a great model for their plan in the proceedings of the lords on the trial of lord Somers in 1701, when the commons, taking exception to the lords refusing a joint committee, declined to attend the trial whereupon the lords, seizing on the fact of the commons not having appeared to prefer their charges on due notice, declared Somers acquitted, from lack of any charge against him, and the impeachment dismissed; and not only so but the lords made use of the same stratagem to acquit the earls of Halifax, of Portland, of Orford, and finally the duke of Leeds, which had been hanging over him for six years. The opposition, well instructed by these precedents, proceeded precisely in the same manner, and with the same result. The commons refusing to attend in Westminster Hall on the day fixed, the lords returned to their own house, and passed a resolution declaring the earl of Oxford acquitted, an announcement received by the people with acclamation. The commons then demanded that Oxford should be excepted from the act of grace; but, notwithstanding, he was released from the Tower, and the commons never renewed the impeachment. Yet nothing is more certain than that Oxford richly deserved impeachment, for not only had he tampered greatly with the Jacobites, even during his confinement in the Tower, as Sir James Mackintosh discovered in the Stuart papers; he had, so late as September, 1716, written to the pretender, and that at the very time he was preparing his expedition, giving his advice as to the best mode of proceeding.

The session was closed very popularly with the act of grace. By it a whole crowd of political prisoners were liberated by their long confinement. The lords Carnwath, Widdrington, and Nairn came out of the Tower; seventeen gentlemen lying under sentence of death in Newgate, and twenty-six in Carlisle Castle, were liberated, and many others from the Fleet, the Marshalsea, and from the custody of messengers. About two hundred of the prisoners taken