Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/390

375 English declaration appeared on the 17th of December, and the French on the 9th of January,  1719.

The Spanish affairs gave a handle to the opposition in parliament, which had met on the 11th of November. The addresses in both houses were opposed. In the lords the earl of Strafford led the attack; in the commons, Walpole; but they were boldly answered by lord Stanhope in the lords, who declared that it was high time to check the growth of Spanish ambition and protect our trade, and that he was willing to stake his head on the support of Byng's proceedings. Walpole, in the commons, was zealously backed by Shippen and Wyndham, and as ably replied to by Mr. Craggs; and in both houses the addresses were carried, in the lords by a majority of eighty-three against fifty, and in the commons by two hundred and sixteen against one hundred and fifty-five. On the declaration of war there was a still larger majority in the commons, and Byng was loudly applauded.

In this session Stanhope and his colleagues endeavoured to undo the arbitrary measures of 1711 and 1714, the Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Bill. Stanhope would have made a strenuous effort to abolish not only these laws, but the Test Act itself; but Sunderland, though equally liberal, was more prudent, and showed that, to attempt too much was to ruin all; and when they came to introduce their greatly modified measure — that of annulling only some of the less prominent clauses of the Test Act under the name of a bill for strengthening the protestant interest — they found so much opposition that Sunderland's discernment was fully justified. Not only the two archbishops and some of the bishops opposed the measure, but the great whigs, the duke of Devonshire and earl Cowper. Cowper, though he expressed himself willing to abolish the Schism Bill, stood stoutly for the Test and Corporation Acts as the very bulwarks of our constitution in church and state; whilst the earl of Isla declared even this moderate measure a violation of the union with Scotland. On the other hand, the bishops Hoadley, Willis, Gibson, and Kennett, supported the bill, which, however, was not carried without considerable mutilation; and had Stanhope introduced such a measure as he proposed, including even considerable relief to catholics, the whole would have been lost.

Parliament was prorogued on the 18th of April, and the king soon after set out for his German dominions, taking Stanhope along with him, and his mistress, the duchess of Kendal. In appointing the regency to administer affairs in the king's absence, the prince of Wales was entirely passed over, to his great indignation; nor were he and the princess allowed to hold levées, that duty being assigned to the young princesses, to the great scandal of the public, aud further exposure of the discord raging in the royal family. Even during the session the ministers had brought in a bill to "settle and limit the peerage in such a manner that the number of English peers should not be enlarged beyond six of the present number, which, upon failure of male issue, might be supplied by now creations; that, instead of the sixteen elective peers of Scotland, twenty-five should be made hereditary on the part of that kingdom; and that this number, upon failure of heirs male, should be supplied from the other members of the Scotch peerage." Both the king and ministers flattered themselves that they should carry this bill, and thus fetter the prince of Wales when he came to the throne. Tke king was desirous to do this out of sheer jealousy and hatred of his own son, and the ministers, Sunderland in particular, out of dread of his vengeance in that case; for, if he created a dozen peers at a time, as Anne had done, he could easily swamp the whigs and put the present ministers in peril of impeachment. But though the whigs had been clamorous against the act of Anne, some of them now, Cowper and Townshend at their head, as vehemently denounced this measure as a gross infringement of the royal prerogative. The debate became very bitter, and many friendships were broken up by it, amongst others that of Addison and Steele, who took different sides; but the bill was finally dropped.

Scarcely had parliament ceased to sit, and the king was gone to spend the summer months in Germany, when the vigilance of the ministry was demanded to ward off a fresh invasion. Alberoni, defeated in his schemes on France, and his hopes of the invasion of England by Charles XII. crushed by that monarch's death, determined now to make a grand effort to support the pretender himself. For this purpose, he invited him to Spain, and at the same time began the equipment of a formidable fleet to carry over a Spanish force, under the command of the duke of Ormonde, to the shores of Britain. The pretender was not intended to accompany the expedition, but to be in readiness to follow on the first news of its successful landing. James joyfully accepted the invitation of Alberoni. He set out from Rome; but, to avoid being intercepted by the imperialists, who were in strong force in Italy, and who were supported by a powerful fleet of the English in the Mediterranean, he pretended to set out on a journey northward in company with the earls of Mar and Perth. A most treacherous act on the part of the Austrians, perpetrated at the request of the English, had satisfied him that neither of those powers would be scrupulous in the means of getting him into the power of England. He had of late contracted a marriage with the princess Clementina, the daughter of John Sobiesky, the late king of Poland. His party was delighted at the prospect of a continuance of the Stuart line, and the English government as much chagrined. Whilst on her way, therefore, to join her betrothed husband in Italy, the princess was arrested, at the instance of the king of England, and kept confined at Innspruck. This was an act disgraceful to the English king, and much more disgraceful to the emperor of Germany as perpetrated towards the daughter of that noble Pole who had rescued Vienna from the Turks. Thus warned, instead of really accompanying the two Scotch earls, James stole away to the little port of Nettuno, where he embarked, and after touching at Cagliari, arrived safe at Rosas in the commencement of March. Meantime, Mar and Perth were arrested by the Austrian authorities at Voghera, proving too truly the just fears of the pretender, who was supposed to be concealed in their train. They were conveyed in great triumph to the castle of Milan, the news was spread on all sides that James was captured, and lord Stair announced it in high glee from Paris to ministers in London; and it was some time before the truth was discovered.

James, whilst supposed to be a prisoner, was entering