Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/406

392 and with a clear eye to his own interest; but he had been as strenuously vindicated from the charge, and on the whole the vigour and boldness with which he encountered the storm and quelled it, deserve the highest praise, and may well cover a certain amount of self-interest, from which few ministers are free.

This difficult business being arranged, parliament was prorogued, the king, in his parting speech, telling the country that he had taken measures to relieve the sufferers by the South Sea scheme, and to punish the guilty; but the nation did not close its eyes to the fact that this punishment did not reach the king's German mistresses, nor others of the court who had been amongst the most flagrantly culpable of all.

On the 16th of June of this year died at Windsor Lodge, by his seventy-second year, the great warrior of this age — the duke of Marlborough. Having been attacked with paralysis in 1716, he had lived for six years in a state of retirement. He died enormously rich, and was honoured by a very splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey, though his remains were, after a time, removed thence to the palace of Blenheim, and laid in a grand mausoleum there. His duchess survived him two-and-twenty years. The character of Marlborough has been sufficiently traced in the preceding pages. If he was remarkable for many meanneses as it regarded money and political double dealing, he was still more remarkable for his military talents, no English general since our Henries and Edwards having spread over the world so widely and proudly the martial glory of England.

The discontents occasioned by the South Sea scheme and its issue, had caused the Jacobites to conceive fresh hopes of success, and their spirits were still more elevated by the birth of a son to the pretender. This child, named Charles Edward Louis Casimir, destined to be the hero of 1745, but never the king of England, was born at Rome at the end of the year 1720. Bishop Atterbury declared it to be the most acceptable news which could reach the ears of a good Englishman. Lord Oxford had been consulted as to the number and dignity of the persons who should be invited to be witnesses on the occasion; and the Jacobites were actually led to believe that a star appeared in the heavens at the happy moment of the birth of this prince without a kingdom. The pretender and his titular queen of England were assured by lord Lansdowne that there were great rejoicings on Lord Mayor's day, for that dignitary being named Stuart, the people took the occasion to express their real predisposition, and cried amain, "A Stuart! a Stuart! High Church and Stuart!"

To increase the supposed Stuart tendency amongst the populace, every opportunity was used to ridicule the ugliness of the king's German mistresses, and the king's own awkwardness. "Mist's Journal," of May 21, 1721, declared that this country was governed by trulls, and not only so, but by very ugly old trulls. For this the publisher was fined and imprisoned by the commons, but the journal was continued under the name of "Fogg's Journal." The ungainly persons and habits of the English monarch and his favourites were placed in strong contrast with the assumed beauties, graces, and elegancies of the Stuart nominal king and queen, and heir-apparent.

The business of this faction was conducted in England by a junto or council, amongst the chief members of which were the earls of Arran and Orrery, lords North and Gower, and the bishop of Rochester. Lord Oxford had been invited to put himself at the head of this council of five, but everything of a decided nature was out of his character. He continued to correspond with the leaders of the faction, but he declined putting himself too forward. In fact, his habitual irresolution was now doubled by advancing infirmities, and he died two years afterwards. Though several of the junto were men of parliamentary, and North of military experience, Atterbury was the undoubted head of it. He was possessed of a fine person, a commanding eloquence, and great learning, but his ambition was directed to political rather than to ecclesiastical life. He had always been a busy champion of high church, and with all his sense and intelligence, he had that constitution of mind which prevented him perceiving what might have been thought most patent to any reflecting protestant Englishman, that the king and family which he would have introduced would be the certain ruin of the church of which he was a prelate, and of the constitution which gave security not only to his religion but to his civil rights and enjoyments. It was a strange sight to see a man, made what he was by protestantism and its church, continually plotting to bring in a man sworn to popery, and who would accept the British throne only with popery.

Little favourable as the temper of England was to ths return of such a prince, the continent now offered scarcely a chance of foreign support. So long as France and Spain were at war with England, there wore strong motives for their assisting an expedition to disturb it, and to drive out a protestant government. But now that both France and Spain were at peace with Britain, what prospect will there of any aid? Still this blind faction could not perceive this, and was as busy as ever plotting to obtain an armament from one of these countries, headed by the duke of Ormonde. That nobleman was intriguing for this in Spain, and general Dillon, an Irishman, who had taken service in France after the capitulation of Limerick, was the agent there. On this side Atterbury encouraged the insane hope of seizing the Tower, the Bank, the Exchequer, and other places where money was deposited, and proclaiming the pretender simultaneously in various parts of the kingdom. The period of confusion created by the South Sea agitation was first pitched on, then that of the general election, which had taken place in March; and finally, it was deferred till the king should have gone to Hanover, according to his custom, in the summer.

In preparation for this movement, James, the pretender, was to sail secretly to Spain, in readiness to cross to England; and he had already quitted his house in Rome, and removed to a villa, the more unobserved to steal away at the appointed moment. Ormonde, also, had left Madrid, and gone to a country seat half way to Bilboa, when the secret of the impending expedition was suddenly revealed by the French government to that of England. The conspirators had been mad enough to apply to the regent for five thousand troops, trusting that, notwithstanding his peaceful relations with this country, he would secretly enjoy creating