Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/385

A.D.1718.] England, France, and Austria. He was preparing a great armament, and building and fitting out ships, to the astonishment of all Europe. Lord Stanhope thought it necessary to make a personal visit to Spain, to see whether he could not bring the cardinal to more reasonable views; and in order to liberate himself for this mission, various changes were made in the ministry. Stanhope had resigned the office of foreign secretary of state, and taken that of first lord of the treasury; but he had lived so much abroad, and had been engaged in diplomacy so much in the courts of Paris, Vienna, and the Hague, besides having fought in Spain, that the princes and ministers of those courts still continued to apply to him rather than to Sunderland, who now occupied the post of foreign minister. This could neither be agreeable to Sunderland, a very proud man, nor advantageous to the business of the country. Stanhope, therefore, resumed the foreign department, and Sunderland went to the treasury. The chancellorship of the exchequer, which Stanhope also held, was conferred on Aislabie. Addison, who was the home secretary, now resigned. Justly illustrious as a writer, Addison had never shone as a statesman. He now accepted a retiring pension of one thousand five hundred pounds a-year, and died fifteen months afterwards at Holland House. There can, therefore, be no doubt but that his failing health had rendered his discharge of his ministerial duties increasingly inefficient. James Craggs, a ready speaker, and a man of business, took his place. The whig cabinet also at this time lost the services of lord Cowper, who was opposed to the views of his colleagues on some important questions, and he resigned in some degree of dudgeon, though he was soothed by an earl's patent, Stanhope also receiving the same promotion. Lord Parker, chief justice of the King's Bench, afterwards earl of Macclesfield, succeeded to the woolsack. At this period, too, died the earl of Shrewsbury, who could not, however, be said to be any real loss to his party. Though greatly esteemed as a man, and sought after by his successive sovereigns from William III. to George I., with a singular faith in his great talents and probity, he had always exhibited a hesitating and timid disposition, which made him as persevering to retreat from office as it was forced upon him.

Government was, amongst its other changes, also released at this juncture from the perpetual nuisance of convocation. The constant quarrels of the clergy in convocation were so scandalous that the whole nation was ashamed of them. Through the reign of queen Anne these had grown to a most intolerable height; and on the accession of the present king the lower house of convocation had plunged with so much acrimony into what was called the Bangorian controversy—that is, into a dispute with Dr. Hoadley, bishop of Bangor, who had, in a sermon before the king, declared that the kingdom of Christ was a spiritual and not a temporal kingdom, thus, as it was asserted by the clergy, laying the axe to the royal supremacy—that, to put an end to this incessant squabbling, the government suddenly prorogued the convocation, and it has never since been called together by the sovereign. In our time it has again begun to meet, as it were by sufferance, but has no real authority.

These arrangements having been completed, Stanhope determined to make his journey to Spain, to endeavour in person to remove, if possible, the storm gathering there. He had used every exertion by means of correspondence, and of an ambassador, colonel Stanhope, in co-operation with Nancré, the French envoy, for that end. The endeavours of the ambassadors were fruitless, and the language of Alberoni to himself was most insolent. The inflated Italian denounced the peace of Utrecht as the work of the devil, and the endeavours to effect an alliance betwixt the different powers of Europe a hirco-cerf—goat-stag. He said, proudly, "The arm of the Lord was not shortened," and he went on with his preparations for a military and naval force with a vigour which amazed all parties who knew the wretched condition of Spain. He had now accumulated twenty-nine ships of war, with transports for thirty-five thousand veteran soldiers, a hundred pieces of battering cannon, forty mortars, and immense supplies of ammunition and provisions. A Spanish historian declared that so formidable an armament had not been sent forth by any former Spanish monarch, not even by the emperors Charles V. or Philip II.

The command of the fleet was given to Don Antonio Castañeta, who had originally been a ship-builder, and that of the army to the marquis de Lede, a Fleming, deformed in person, but of great military experience. This grand armament was now equipping in the harbour of Cadiz, but its destination no one had yet been able to penetrate; for Alberoni, though a very vain man, had that rare quality in association with vanity, a profound power of reticence, and no one except the ex-Jesuit Patiño was in his confidence.

These preparations on the part of Spain were in one particular favourable to the king of England—they rendered the emperor much more conceding. The English envoy at that court—rather singularly a Swiss of the canton of Berne—the general de St. Saphorin, had found Staremberg, the emperor's minister, very high, and disinclined to listen to the proposals of the king of England regarding Bremen and Verden; but the news of the Spanish armament, and still more of its having sailed from Cadiz to Barcelona, produced a wonderful change. The imperial court not only consented to the demands of England, but accepted its mediation with the Turks, by which a considerable force was liberated for the service in Italy. The emperor acceded to the alliance proposed betwixt England, France, and Germany in order to compel Spain to terms, and which afterwards, when joined by the Dutch, was called the Quadruple Alliance. In France, however, all obstacles to this treaty were not yet overcome. There was a strong party, headed by the marshal d'Huxelles, chief of the council for foreign affairs, which strongly opposed this plan of coercing the grandson of Louis XIV. To overcome these obstacles, Stanhope went over to Paris, and had several conferences with king Philip; and, supported by lord Stair and Nancrẽ, all difficulties were removed, and the alliance was signed in the succeeding August.

By this treaty Parma and Tuscany were ceded in reversion to the infant Don Carlos; Sicily was to be made over to the emperor, and in exchange for it Sardinia was to be given to Victor Amadeus of Savoy. As Sardinia was an island of so much less extent and value than Sicily, the succession to the crown of Spain was guaranteed to the house of Savoy in case of Philip of Spain having no issue. Three months were allowed for the king of Spain and the duke of