The reign of Queen Anne
McCarthy, Justin, 1830-1912
^n«fW«-»gr»lll»lBILM. ^yy»nr»-4.Birgw»-»-g» ■>■»<! BUI a ■■»■■! BOUGMSfiOUMS €mul\ mvAvmxtu f itotg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME PROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henvs W. Sage 1891 A...4.'?..s^.:'7 n/Ah"^..] 5474 BOOKS BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY. A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880. 4 vols, demy 8vo. cloth, 12s. each ; also a Popular Edition, in 4 vols, crown 8vo. cloth, 6s. each ; and the Jubilee Edition (with an Appendix of Events to the End of 1886), 2 vols, large post 8vo. cloth, 7*. 6d. each, A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, from 1880 to THE Diamond Jubilee. Demy 8vo. cloth, izs. ; crown 8vo. cloth, 6s. A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. Crown 8vo. cloth, 6s. ; also a Popular Edition, post 8vo. cloth, 2s. 6d. A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES AND OF WILLIAM THE FOURTH. By Justin McCarthy and Justin Hontly McCarthy. 4 vols, demy 8vo. cloth, laf. each. THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 2 vols, demy 8vo. cloth] i2f. each. REMINISCENCES. With a Portrait. 2 vols, demy 8vo. doth, 24J. Crown 8vo. cloth, 3s. td. each ; post 8vo. illustrated boards, 2j. each ; cloth limp, 2J. ^d. each. DEAR LADY DISDAIN. LINLEY ROCHFORD. MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER. THE WATERDALE NEIGH- BOURS. A FAIR SAXON. MISS MISANTHROPE. DONNA QUIXOTE. THE COMET OF A SEASON MAID OF ATHENS. CAMIOLA: a Girl with a For- tune. THE DICTATOR. RED DIAMONDS. THE RIDDLE RING. Crown 8vo. cloth, 31. td. each. THE THREE DISGRACES, and other Stories. MONONIA: a Love Story of 'Forty-eight.' 'THE RIGHT HONOURABLE.' By Justin M^^Carthy and Mrs. Campbell Praed. Crown 8vo. cloth, 6j. London: CHATTO & WINDUS, in St. Martin's Lane, W.C. THE Reign of Queen Anne BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY AUTHOR OF 'A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES' ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1902 l^^l PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON TO MY DAUGHTER CHARLOTTE ELY MCCARTHY I DEDICATE THIS BOOK JUSTIN MCCARTHY Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087999912 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME CHAPTER PAGK I. THE WOMAN BOEN TO BE QUEEN .... 1 II. WHAT THE QUEEN CAME TO — AT HOME . . . 15 III. WHAT THE QUEEN CAME TO — ABEOAD ... 37 IV. THOSE ABOUND QUEEN ANNE 58 V. DISSENT AND DEFOE 78 VI. ON THE BOUGH EDGE OP BATTLE . . . . 96 VII. 'the campaign' — BLENHEIM 115 VIII. PETEEBOEOUGH IN SPAIN 144 IX. EVENTS AND PARTIES AT HOME . . . .164 X. THE UNION WITH SCOTLAND 188 XI. ' THE TEIVIAL BOUND — THE COMMON TASK ' . .211 XII. THE LONDON OP QUEEN ANNE 236 XIII. JONATHAN SWIFT 262 XIV. EAMILLIES AND ALMANZA 289 XV. THE PIEST PAELIAMENT OP THE UNION . . 309 XVI. SACHEVEEELL 332 XVII. ' HAELEY, THE NATION'S GEBAT SUPPOET ' . .360 XVin. THE TEIUMPH OP THE TOEIEB 382 XIX. WHAT THE WAE WAS COMING TO . . . .403 XX. JONATHAN SWIPT'S VIEWS 431 THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE CHAPTEE I THE WOMAK BOBN TO BE QUEEN One of the poets of the later Victorian literature, William Morris, has told in his melodious verse the story of the 'Man born to be King,' the idea of which is taken from that rich treasure house of fantasy, the ' Gesta Eomanorum.' The story, how- ever, is very different from that which begins under the heading of this first chapter — the story of the Woman born to be Queen. William Morris's hero becomes king in default of every hereditary claim to such a position and in despite of aU disadvantages, difficulties, and seeming impossibilities, just because Nature had endowed him with the special gifts which are sure to win for their owner a complete success. Queen Anne, on the contrary, was born to be a Queen, and under no other conditions could have had the slightest chance of becoming the ruler of a great monarchy. Anne was the last of the Stuart sovereigns. She was the second daughter of James vol.. I, B 2 THE KEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. i. the Second by his first wife, Anne Hyde, who was the daughter of Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, the famous lawyer, pohtician, and historian. The marriage between James and Anne Hyde was one of the sensations, and indeed, in a certain sense, one of the conventional scandals, of the time ; for public opinion was much shocked when it became known that a marriage, secretly contracted, had been carried out between the daughter of a man who, no matter what his capacity, was born a commoner, and James, the Duke of York as he then was, heir presumptive to the throne of England. Edward Hyde was known to have felt, or at all events to have feigned, great indignation when he found that his daughter had allowed the Duke of York to contract an alliance with one who was not a princess. Anne was born at Twickenham on February 6, 1664, and she came into the world at a time as full of threatening change and movement at home and abroad, politically, morally, and intellectually, as the history of England can picture. The child thus born was destined to a place in history which may well be described as unique. The mere mention of her name brings with it to the mind of everyone who has had any education, or even any opportunity of desultory reading, the idea of an age illustrious in war, in politics, in Hterature, and in art. It brings with it, too, the thought of an age which became a turning-point, not only in the history of England but jn the history of Europe. The old world of political 1664 THE AGE OF ANNE. 3 life seems to have closed for England and the world of modern politics to have begun with the reign of Queen Anne. ' Parliamentary government,' says Lord Macaulay, ' is government by talking,' and the true reign of debate as the overmastering power in parliamentary and political life estabhshed itself with the reign of Queen Anne. England never, perhaps, had so great a soldier as Marlborough. Except for the name of Wellington there is no name to be compared with his in the modern history of England. Enghsh poHtical history down to the latest days recalls the name of no parliamentary debater greater, on the whole, than Bolingbroke. The reign of Anne saw the most momentous struggle in which England was ever engaged on the Continent of Europe until we come to the days of the French Eevolution and the First Napoleon. The age of Queen Anne stands out, a distinct epoch in the history of the world. It takes rank with the age of Pericles in Greece, with the Augustan era in Eome, with the Elizabethan era in England. The mere mention of any one of these eras brings with it the thought of a peculiar success as great in the achievements of peace as in the achievements of war, as great in arts as in arms. But in such instances as those when we associate an era with one name we bear with us the natural and weU-sustained impression that the owner of the name had at least something to do with the greatness of the era. When we speak of the age of Queen Anne we cannot possibly associate the B 2 4 THE EEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. oh. i. greatness of the era with any genius of inspiration coming from the woman whose name it bears. Anne was born to a great era, just as she was born to a crown, and had no more to do personally with the making of its greatness than if she had been born in a garret to a life of commonplace obscurity. Even the worst faults of Elizabeth may be seen to have had some share in creating much of the picturesque greatness at least which belongs to the Elizabethan age. But even the best virtues of Anne had little or nothing to do with the inspiration or the promotion of the greatness which marks her reign. The writer has thought it not amiss to begin his survey of Queen Anne's life and reign by observa- tions which might naturally have seemed to belong rather to a closing review of the whole, because he is anxious to direct the reader's attention from the very outset to the curious contrast which the history of the reign presents between the extra- ordinary character of the age and the utterly com- monplace character of the woman whose name it bears. In more than one fairy legend we read of a princess over whom a magical spell has been cast, and who sleeps all her Ufe away in an aerial tower while wars are carried on in her name and conquests are added to her domain, and wonders of art and letters are accomplished in her capital, and all the world knows of these thrilling and marvellous doings except the poor princess herself who reigns but does not know it. The story of Queen Anne might, in a certain sense, seem to belong almost as completely to 1664 JAMES THE SECOND. 5 the world of enchantment. The sleeping princess in the magical tower had about as much to do with the great triumphs which were accomplished in every field during her reign, and in her name, as Queen Anne in the whole course of her mature life had to do directly and personally with the achievements of England abroad and at home. History has done stern justice to the rule and to the policy of James the Second, but it has not done justice to his motives or to his personal character. As to his rule and his policy there can hardly be a second opinion among responsible historians and impartial critics anywhere. But there seems a great deal to be said for the personal character and the public motives of the man, which most historians and critics, and popular opinion generally in our own days and earlier, have left altogether unsaid. The history of Europe hardly contains the name of any ruler who is so completely out of public favour. Eichard the Third has found his champions, but no such stroke of good luck has fallen to the fortune of James the Second. Charles the First has even still a select circle of devotees in England, and his has always been a picturesque figure which romance and the drama have loved to illustrate. Macaulay said with great truth that Vandyke's brush created for generations a hero whom the judgments of history could never dethrone. Some of the most uncompromising opponents of the Divine Eight theory are quite ready to recognise good qualities in Charles the Second, to see that he was a man of wit and 6 THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. i. culture with better education than that of most princes at his time and after, and with at least some generous instincts and enlightened purposes. But hardly anyone has a word to say in favour of James the Second. In Ireland, where so many brave men laid down their lives in defence of his cause, it has become an accepted legend that James was a positive coward, and that the Battle of the Boyne might have ended quite differently if James had had to sustain him one spark of the courage possessed by WilUam the Dutchman. Yet it is certain that James in his earlier days was highly praised for his courage by the great Turenne, under whom he served, and who may surely be regarded as competent to form an opinion on the merits of a soldier. There is a common impression in England that James was a man of no principles, although it is certain that at more than one crisis of his Ufe the Stuart cause might have had a fair chance of success if James could have been prevailed upon to change his religion, or even to announce that he had changed it. The fact probably is that James meets with universal condemnation because the principle which he advocated is either universally condemned or wholly out of fashion among Englishmen. In order to do anything like justice to the unfortunate James we must judge his personal character and his personal doings by the light of his own principles and not by the light of ours. It is not too much to say for him that he was a sincere martyr to the cause 1664 BIVINE EIGHT. 7 of Divine Eight. It is so hard for a reasonable Englishman of our day to get into his mind the possibility of any sane person sincerely believing in the right of a king to govern a people exactly according to his own liking, that he can only explain James's conduct by assuming that James was an utterly insincere and self-seeking personage. But aU that we read of James, even in the writings of those who most strongly condemn his policy, will give warrant for the conviction that he was an unqualified believer in the principle of Divine Eight, as Eichard Cobden was in the doctrine of Free Trade, or Father Mathew in the doctrine of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors. James was a fanatic in his way, and a fanatic whom evil fortune for himself and others had put in a position to do immense harm by the enforcement of his doctrine, but we may at least concede to him the merit of having been sincere in his fanaticism. There is absolutely nothing to be said in defence of James's system of rule unless it be said by those, if any there be at present among civilised men, who not only believe in the principle of Divine Eight, but also believe that a king thus called to the throne can never do wrong. It would hardly be possible to find in history the accredited records of any sovereign who governed when he had the chance with a more absolute disregard for all the principles and practices of constitutional hberty even as these were recog- nised in the England of his time. Then again in his private life he was quite as immoral as Charles the 8 THE EBIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. oh. i. Second, and many chapters of his personal history would seem as if they might have been suitably chronicled by Saint-Simon. Even his marriage — his first marriage, that is to say — was contracted under conditions which made it a sort of public scandal. James had large families of children, legitimate and illegitimate, but among the children born to him by both his wives very few attained to anything like maturity. After the death of his eldest daughter, Mary, who reigned with William the Third, Anne became heir to the English Crown. Of her father's character and temperament Anne seems to have in- herited little more than a strong inclination towards the doctrine of Divine Eight, especially when that right was illustrated in the claims of the House of Stuart. None of her father's worst qualities seems to have descended to her. If she had as little sense of humour as he had, and if she showed that she could sometimes be as silently obstinate as he habitually was, she had none of his moral corruptness, and, happily for the people over whom she came to rule, she had none of his self-conceit. It is necessary to enter a protest against the unqualified and un- conditional censure which history in general has pronounced upon James the Second, but the pro- test only refers to certain articles of the censure. James has often been set down as a coward, which he certainly was not, and he has been almost uni- versally accused of insincerity and of mere self- seeking, when he was positively acting in his wrong- headed narrow-minded way under the influence of 1683 QUEEN ANNE'S MARRIAGE. 9 what he firmly believed to be his Divine right to rule his people. Anne had not been fortunate in the husband whom fate and family convenience had imposed upon her. She was married in her twentieth year to Prince George of Denmark, brother of the reigning sovereign of that country, and Prince George was perhaps as characteristic a specimen of the good-for- nothing as any age or condition could have produced. He was not exactly a bad man, but nobody seemed to find anything to say in his praise. He had no opportunity of doing much harm during his lifetime and he kept himself for the most part conveniently in the background. Historical controversy has not troubled itself about him. It is said that he was the occasion of the one only joke ever made by his father- in-law James the Second. The story goes that when James in his hours of political danger was receiving successive announcements that this, that, or the other public man had gone over to the side of the invader William, Prince George always greeted the news with the words ' Est-il possible ? ' The hour came at last when George himself went over to the side of the invader, and then King James asked, with a smile, ' Has " Est-il possible " gone too ? ' Anne was brought up in the Protestant faith and always adhered to it. When the great crisis came she abandoned the cause of her father, which had indeed become already quite hopeless, and in 1689 the Crown of Great Britain was settled upon her in succession to William the Third, by 10 THE EEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE, ch. i. the Bill of Eights, as the Act making the decree was called. Anne had a large family of children, but aU except one died at "birth or in mere infancy, and even the one surviving child, the little Duke of Gloucester, looked upon the earth but for a few years. Therefore when William's wife, Mary, eldest sister of Anne, died and left her husband a childless widower, it became necessary to cast about for some new arrangement which might secure the succession in such a manner as to exclude the exiled Stuart claimants. Not often in history has this sort of quest been rendered necessary, and in thinking it over one is sometimes reminded oddly of the story based on some historical evidence that the rightful successor to a Byzantine throne was absolutely advertised for by public proclamation. In the instance of the Enghsh monarch the quest was rendered all the more embarrassing because there were so many relatives and connections of English royal families scattered all over the Continent of Europe. The object was to hit upon some order of succession which should seem to have a legitimate and reasonable claim to justify it and, at the same time, should shut out as strictly as possible any connection with the banished Stuarts. This end was at last accomplished by selecting the Electress Sophia of Hanover, who had on her mother's side some family connection with Charles the First, and who was the head of a German house which was not likely to have much sympathy with Charles the First's exiled and proscribed descendants. The 1702 DEATH OF KING WILLIAM. 11 Electress Sophia had a son George, and therefore if she should accept the arrangement there seemed good reason to count on continuity of succession. The Electress Sophia was not particularly anxious to assume the responsibilities imposed upon her, but she was a shrewd clever woman, and although at first she saw no reason why she should accept the offer, yet by the force of thinking the matter out she made up her mind that there was no reason why she should not accept it, and that it might on the whole bring many advantages to her family. The matter was therefore satisfactorily arranged by the Act of Settlement which was passed on March 12, 1701. Anne had not long to wait for her succession to the throne. William the Third was in very feeble health. His physical frame was thoroughly worn out by a life of what the Scotch balladist calls ' sturt and strife.' No one, how- ever, expected his immediate death, and indeed for some little time it had been thought that his health was improving. One evening in the end of February 1702, he rode out as he had lately been in the habit of doing to Hampton Court. On the way the King's horse stumbled over a molehill, and William was thrown to the ground and broke his coUar-bone. He never recovered from the effects of this accident, and he died at Kensington Palace on March 8, 1702, in the fifty-second year of his age — an early death, if estimated according to the ordinary rate of human life, but not too early for the accomplishment of a great revolution in the history of England. Anne was then the Queen of England. She had 12 THE EEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. oh. i. but lately entered her thirty-eighth year. Bishop Burnet teUs us that ' upon the King's death, the Privy Council came in a body to wait on the new Queen : she received them with a well-considered speech.' In this weU-considered speech 'she expressed great respect to the memory of the late King, in whose steps she intended to go, for preserving both Church and State, in opposition to the growing power of France, and for maintaining the succession in the Protestant line : she pronounced this, as she did aU her other speeches, with great weight and authority, and with a softness of voice, and sweetness in the pronunciation, that added much life to all she spoke.' The two Houses of Parliament met that same day and agreed to send addresses to her ' full of respect and duty,' as Burnet describes them. The Queen ' answered both very favourably, and she received all that came to her in so gracious a manner, that they went from her highly satisfied with her goodness, and her obliging deportment ; for she hearkened with attention to every thing that was said to her.' It does not even need the high authority of Bishop Burnet to make us well assured that the capacity to be, or seem to be, a good listener is an invaluable quality in a new sovereign. 'Two days after,' Burnet teUs us, ' she went to the parliament, which, to the great happiness of the nation, and to the advantage of her government, was now continued to sit, notwithstanding the King's demise, by the Act that was made five years before, upon the discovery of the assassination plot. In her speech she repeated , 1702 ANNE AS QUEEN. 13 but more copiously, what she bad said to the Council, upon her first accession to the throne. There were two passages in this speech that were thought not so weU considered ; she assured them her heart was " entirely English " ; this was looked on as a reflection on the late King : she also added, that th^y might "depend on her word." Both these expressions had been in her father's first speech, how little soever they were afterwards minded by him.' Bishop Burnet lays some stress on the fact that these two passages produced an unsatisfactory impression, and his remark would be worthy of citation if only that it illustrates a difficulty which beset Queen Anne from the very outset of her career. If anything she happened to say should remind the public of her father, the majority of people might be fiUed with the dread that she was likely to prove just such another sovereign as he had been ; and if her style of reply seemed obviously and purposely unlike his mode of speech, a certain number of other people would be sure to set her down as an ungrateful daughter who was only too anxious to stand aloof from any manner of association with her father who had died dethroned and exiled. If one were to compare the ruling capacity of Queen Anne with that of the sovereign whom she followed on the throne of England, it might seem as if an anti-chmax had come to pass not less strange and striking than that which was seen when the rule of Oliver CromweU was followed by the rule of Eichard Cromwell. The mere mention of the names, 14 THE EEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. i. however, is enough to illustrate the difference between the one succession and the other. The name of Eichard Cromwell means an ignoble blank in EngUsh history following immediately after the masterful and momentous domination of the great Protector. The reign of Queen Anne must be for ever memorable in the history of the English Constitution, of English letters, and of English arms, even although it came immediately after the reign of William the Third. 15 CHAPTEE II WHAT THE QUEEN CAME TO — AT HOME Now that Queen Anne has been solemnly enthroned as sovereign of Great Britain, and is receiving addresses of loyal congratulation from various cities and towns and corporate bodies of all kinds, it is well to take a rapid survey of the pohtical and social con- ditions presented for her study, if she had the capacity or the inclination to study them, by the England of that day. Anne, the last of the Stuart sovereigns, may fairly be described as the first of the constitutional sovereigns in these countries. William the Third had indeed laid the foundations of the constitutional system, by which we mean the pohtical system that depends avowedly on some sort of representative principle and is not merely the expression and realisation of the sovereign's will and pleasure. But William had not much time or opportunity to settle down into the sheltered condition of a constitutional ruler. He had had to fight in order to gain his throne, he had to fight in order to maintain it, he had to fight in order to secure for England that place among the States of Europe which he believed her entitled to assert, and it was still not by any means out of the question that he might have had to resist a counter- 16 THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. ii. revolution at home. He was a great statesman as well as a great soldier, he could read the signs of the times, and he saw clearly enough that the day of absolute monarchy was gone by for England. He saw, however, much more than that : he saw how the new Constitution was to be constructed and how it was to act in the future. He was like the inventor and the constructor of some new model of saihng ship who has got the vessel ready for sea and has even taken the command, but is for a time prevented by stress of weather from giving his experiment a fair trial and is cut off by death before the ship can make her first voyage. Parliament in the days of Queen Anne was more like the parliament which we know in our own times than any of its predecessors had ever been. The con- ditions under which WiUiam the Third had settled into the sovereign pQsition gave to the parliamentary chambers a power of control over the wiU of the sovereign which had not existed during any pre- vious reign. The king could no longer maintain his army except through supplies which were voted by parliament, and therefore the king was no longer able to put off the summoning of a parliament as long as it was his royal pleasure to act for himself, without taking the trouble to consult the parliamentary representatives. The relations between the sove- reign and his ministers had now, for the first time, taken the form in which they are familiar to the political life of our own generation. Up to the time of William the Third the institution which we now 1702 CONSTITUTIONAL GtOVEENMENT. 17 know as the Cabinet had not come into existence. At the present day it would be hard indeed to find any legislative authority estabhshing the existence and defining the functions which are as certain, as practical, and as essential to the working of our political constitution as any other part of our whole parliamentary system. In the days before WiUiam the Third the king consulted with such of his ministers as he thought fit, and left some of them out of the consultation altogether according as his humour directed him. The king entrusted any one of his ministers with such duties as he thought that minister most hkely to discharge in a manner satis- factory to the royal purposes. A favourite minister was often entrusted with negotiations or other business of the utmost importance concerning which his companions in office — for they could hardly be called his colleagues — were favoured with no information whatever. There was no collective responsibility involving all the ministers, even those who formed what may be called the inner circle of the king's advisers. There was, in point of fact, no recognised and official prime minister as we now understand the meaning of the title. The prime minister and the cabinet became established and recognised realities about that time in Enghsh history when Queen Anne was called to the throne. The policy of the State in home or foreign aflFairs could no longer be settled by the sovereign's own wiU and pleasure or by the decision of the sovereign VOL. I. c 18 THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. n. acting in consultation with this or that member of the ministry. There was a prime minister and there was a cabinet of ministers, every one of whom was entitled to be consulted on each great question coming up for decision, and every one of whom was understood to have his share in the responsibility which each decision brought with it. There was, therefore, a body of men having seats in one or the other House of Parliament, who were responsible for the defence and the maintenance of their policy in either assembly, who could be questioned as to their policy and attacked because of it, or censured because of it, if they failed to command support enough to sustain them, or failed to convince their habitual opponents that in this particular instance their policy was just. Parliamentary debate was, therefore, growing more and more to be one of the vital forces in the working of the constitutional system. Then, again, that which we are accustomed in more modern times to speak of as the power of the press had been endowed with something like a reasonable freedom of utterance during the reign of William the Third. It was no longer part of the re- cognised system of government to come down with sharp and sometimes savage punishments on any auda- cious offender who presumed to put into print some opinions of his own which seemed offensive or even un- timely to men in power. Of course there were severe laws in existence against newspaper criticism of per- sonages in high office for many generations after 1702 CEITICISM BY PAMPHLET 19 Queen Anne had passed away and down to a time not far remote from our own. But the legislation by virtue of which William the Third had been able to secure his place on the throne of England had distinctly conferred a degree of tolerance to printed comment and criticism which did not exist under the Stuart dynasty or in the days of the Commonwealth. During Queen Anne's reign, the political air may be said to have been thick with whole flights of pamphleteering criticism coming from all quarters and descending on every field of politics, letters, art, and social life. Most of these, although certainly not aU, were allowed to go un- punished. Much of the work of criticism which is done by the daily or weekly newspaper now, was done by the pamphlet in the time of Queen Anne. The most casual and cursory reader can observe the difference in all that concerned political and parliamentary debate between the reign of Queen Anne and that of James the Second. Queen Anne's reign seems in this part of its history at least like the opening of some new chapter in civilisation. The centre of public interest is no longer in the palace of the sovereign, but is within the precincts of parliament. The statesman who desires to maintain his place must now carry along with him the public opinion of the country, and can no longer sUence, by the mere threat of his prohibition, the voices of any critics who may feel audacious enough to disparage his policy or to question his motives. The place from which he can 2 20 THE EEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. ii. best command the attention of the public is his place in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, and if he has in him the genuine capacity for debate, he is only too glad to throw his whole energy and his whole soul into the splendid parliamentary battle. The power of eloquence is, in fact, resuming that place in the government of States which it had held in the days of Pericles and in the days of Julius Caesar, and had lost during the long ages when kings and soldiers managed the government of States amongst them. It is not too much to say that we can picture several of the leading figures of Queen Anne's Parliament in many of the great parliamentary debates of Queen Victoria's reign, just as we can imagine Sir Eoger de Coverley taking a turn in the Temple Gardens with Colonel Newcome. The awakening power of the English Parliament was accompanied by a corresponding activity on the part of the EngUsh Press. The press, however, as has been said already, made its activity felt more through the influence of the pamphlet than of the newspaper. We shall have occasion to notice how one of the greatest Englishmen of his time — in his own field of literature one of the greatest Englishmen of any time — Daniel Defoe, made himself a genuine popular power in the political and religious contro- versy of the day. We hear a good deal about Daniel Defoe in the commentary of Bishop Burnet on some of the great questions, the 'burning questions' as they would have been called at a later day, which were occupying the attention of parliament and came 1702 BISHOP BURNET. 21 under the special notice of the historian of the Ee- formation vsdth whom these pages have more to do as the author of ' The History of My Own Times.' The name of Bishop Burnet is almost as completely identified with the Ufe and politics of Queen Anne's reign as that of Daniel Defoe himself, or any other of the eminent writers whose literature helps to make up the glory of that reign in one way, as did the genius of Marlborough in another. Bishop Burnet was not a great man in the nobler sense, and perhaps we are not entitled to give him any higher position as a chronicler of the reigns of William the Third and Anne than that which BosweU holds in regard to Samuel Johnson. But just as we have to con- struct our Samuel Johnson with the help of the illumination shed by BosweU, so we are compelled in a great measure to form our ideas as to the men and the movements of the reign of William and of Anne under Bishop Burnet's guidance. Bishop Burnet's History has become a sort of classical authority, in a certain sense, with all readers who study the events and the persons belonging to the reigns of King William the Third and Queen Anne. The good Bishop called his book a ' History of My Own Times,' but the more modern editions of the book and the references to it by more modern writers almost invariably entitle it for some unexplained reason Burnet's 'History of His Own Times.' The book is undoubtedly a work of great historical value.^ Burnet's views are not always quite impartial, and even his statements of mere fact are occasionally 22 THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. ch. ii. inaccurate. The estimates he forms and the conclu- sions he draws are not always in keeping with the judgment which events unknown to Burnet, events which could not have been known in his time, have compelled later historians and readers to adopt. But the value of the book to any careful student of history is not much depreciated by Burnet's occasional mistakes as to fact or misconception as to character. The History has the inestimable advantage of being a history of the man's Own times, and even when we can clearly see that he was mistaken in this or that statement or opinion, it is nevertheless a matter of the greatest importance to the reader to know that such were the impressions formed and the opinions accepted by an observer who was living and moving among the scenes and the persons described in the work. When Bishop Burnet tells us casually that he conversed with King William on this or that event the day after it happened, or that he received directly from Queen Anne such opinions as she thought fit to give him on some question of importance at the time, we cannot help feeling that anything coming from such a man must have a distinct value quite apart from the narrator's own capacity to form an impartial historical judgment. No figure is more often made the mark of satire than the self-sufl&cient person who settles every question relating to the condition or the ways of any foreign country by the declaration that he has been there and ought to know. In private life, to this 1702 'THE HISTOEY OF MY OWN TIMES.' 23 day, we are apt to be put out by the dogmatic self-satisfaction of this authoritative personage, and we are for that reason often inclined to attach little importance to his testimony even where we have no positive evidence to discredit his statements. Perhaps one feels sometimes inclined to entertain a like sentiment towards the good Bishop Burnet when he invites us to believe that he understands the characters and the motives of aU the illustrious men and women whom he was in the habit of meeting. It is certain that in his own days he was the object of much sarcasm from the satirists and wits of the time, and that men like Pope and Swift were not slow to make it clear that they saw a very comic side to his character. StiU it is no less certain that Burnet continues to be regarded as an authority on the history of his own times, and that the clever things which Pope and Swift said about him are forgotten by the great majority of readers. Anyone who reads the book wiU easily see for himself the principal weaknesses of Bishop Burnet's nature and temperament, just as anybody can see for himself the principal weaknesses in the character of Mr. Pepys. 