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which had been brought against the naval administration. The king spoke to Rooke, who declared that Orford had been misinformed. "I have a great respect for my lord, and, and on proper occasions, I have not failed to express it in public. There have certainly been abuses at the Admiralty which I am unable to defend. When those abuses have been the subject of debate in the House of Commons, I have sat silent; but, whenever any personal attack has been made on my lord, I have done him the best service that I could.” William was satisfied, and thought that Orford should have been satisfied too. But that haughty and perverse nature could be content with nothing but absolute dominion. He tendered his resignation, and could not be induced to retract it. He said that he could be of no use. It would be easy to supply his place, and his successors should have his best wishes. He then retired to the country, where, as was reported and may easily be believed, he vented his ill humor in furious invectives against the king. The Treasurership of the Navy was given to the Speaker Littleton. The Earl of Bridgewater, a nobleman of very fair character and of some experience in business, became First Lord of the Admiralty.

Other changes were made at the same time. There had, during some time, been really no lord president of the Council. Leeds, indeed, was still called lord president, and, as such, took precedence of dukes of older creation; but he had not performed any of the duties of his office since the prosecution instituted against him by the Commons in 1695 had been suddenly stopped by an event which made the evidence of his guilt at once legally defective and morally complete. It seems strange that a statesman of eminent ability, who had been twice prime minister, should have wished to hold, by so ignominious a tenure, a place which can have had no attraction for him but the salary. To that salary, however, Leeds had clung, year after year, and he now relinquished it with a bad grace. He was succeeded by Pembroke; and the privy seal which Pembroke laid lown was put into the hands of a peer of recent creation, Viscount Lonsdale. Lonsdale had been distinguished in the House of Commons as Sir John Lowther, and had held high office, but had quitted public life in weariness and disgust, and had passed several years in retirement at his hereditary seat in Cumberland. He had planted forests round

his house, and had employed Verrio to decorate the interior with gorgeous frescoes which represented the gods at their banquet of ambrosia. Very reluctantly, and only in compliance with the earnest and almost angry importunity of the king, Lonsdale consented to leave his magnificent retreat, and again to encounter the vexations of public life.

Trumball resigned the Secretaryship of State; and the seals which he had held were given to Jersey, who was succeeded at Paris by the Earl of Manchester.

It is to be remarked that the new Privy Seal and the new Secretary of State were moderate Tories. The king had probably hoped that, by calling them to his councils, he should conciliate the opposition. But the device proved unsuccessful; and soon it appeared that the old practice of filling the chief offices of state with men taken from various parties, and hostile to one another, or, at least, unconnected with one another, was altogether unsuited to the new state of affairs; and that, since the Commons had become possessed of supreme power, the only way to prevent them from abusing that power with boundless folly and violence was to intrust the government to a ministry which enjoyed their confidence.

While William was making these changes in the great offices of state, a change in which he took a still deeper interest was taking place in his own household. He had la

bored in vain during many months to keep the peace between Portland and Albemarle. Albemarle, indeed, was all courtesy, good-humor, and submission; but Portland would not be conciliated. Even to foreign ministers he railed at his rival and complained of his master. The whole court was divided between the competitors, but divided very unequally. The majority took the side of Albemarle, whose manners were popular, and whose power was evidently growing. Portland's few adherents were persons who, like him, had already made their fortunes, and who did not, therefore, think it worth their while to transfer their homage to a new patron. One of these persons tried to enlist Prior in Portland's faction, but with very little success. "Excuse me," said the poet, "if I follow your example and my lord's. My lord is a model to us all, and you have imitated him to good purpose. He retires with half a million. You have large grants, a lucrative employment in Holland, a fine house. I have nothing of the kind. A

court is like those fashionable churches into which we have looked at Paris. Those who have received the benediction are instantly away to the Opera-house or the wood of Boulogne. Those who have not received the benediction are pressing and elbowing each other to get near the altar. You and my lord have got your blessing, and are quite right to take yourselves off with it. I have not been blessed, and must fight my way up as well as I can." Prior's wit was his

own, but his worldly wisdom was common to him with multitudes; and the crowd of those who wanted to be lords of the bedchamber, rangers of parks, and lieutenants of counties, neglected Portland, and tried to ingratiate themselves with Albemarle.

By one person, however, Portland was still assiduously courted, and that person was the king. Nothing was omitted which could soothe an irritated mind. Sometimes William argued, expostulated, and implored for two hours together. But he found the comrade of his youth an altered man, unreasonable, obstinate, and disrespectful even before the public eye. The Prussian minister, an observant and impartial witness, declared that his hair had more than once stood on end to see the rude discourtesy with which the servant repelled the gracious advances of the master. Over and over William invited his old friend to take the long accustomed seat in his royal coach, that seat which Prince George himself had never been permitted to invade, and the invitation was over and over declined in a way which would have been thought uncivil even between equals. A sovereign could not, without a culpable sacrifice of his personal dignity, persist longer in such a contest. Portland was permitted to withdraw from the palace. To Heinsius, as to a common friend, William announced this separation in a letter which shows how deeply his feelings had been wounded. "I cannot tell you what I have suffered. I have done on my side everything that I could do to satisfy him; but it was decreed that a blind jealousy should make him regardless of everything that ought to have been dear to him." To Portland himself the king wrote in language still more touching. "I hope that you will oblige me in one thing. Keep your key of office. shall not consider you as bound to any attendance, but I beg you to let me see you as often as possible. That will be a great mitigation of the distress which you have caused

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me; for, after all that has passed, I cannot help loving you tenderly."

Thus Portland retired to enjoy at his ease immense es tates scattered over half the shires of England, and a hoard of ready money, such, it was said, as no other private man in Europe possessed. His fortune still continued to grow; for though, after the fashion of his countrymen, he laid out large sums on the interior decoration of his houses, on his gardens, and on his aviaries, his other expenses were regulated with strict frugality. His repose was, however, during some years not uninterrupted. He had been trusted with such grave secrets, and employed in such high missions, that his assistance was still frequently necessary to the government; and that assistance was given, not, as formerly, with the ardor of a devoted friend, but with the exactness of a conscientious servant. He still continued to receive letters from William; letters no longer, indeed, overflowing with kindness, but always indicative of perfect confidence and

esteem.

The chief subject of those letters was the question which had been for a time settled in the previous autumn at Loo, and which had been reopened in the spring by the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

As soon as that event was known at Paris, Lewis directed Tallard to sound William as to a new treaty. The first thought which occurred to William was that it might be possible to put the Elector of Bavaria in his son's place. But this suggestion was coldly received at Versailles, and not without reason. If, indeed, the young Francis Joseph had lived to succeed Charles, and had then died a minor without issue, the case would have been very different. Then the elector would have been actually administering the government of the Spanish monarchy, and supported by France, England, and the United Provinces, might, without much difficulty, have continued to rule as king the empire which he had begun to rule as regent. He would have had also, not indeed a right, but something which to the vulgar would have looked like a right, to be his son's heir. Now he was altogether unconnected with Spain. No more reason could be given for selecting him to be the Catholic king than for selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Something was said about Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and something about the King

of Portugal, but to both there were insurmountable objections. It seemed, therefore, that the only choice was between a French prince and an Austrian prince; and William learned, with agreeable surprise, that Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the younger archduke to be King of Spain and the Indies. It was intimated at the same time that the house of Bourbon would expect, in return for so great a concession to the rival house of Hapsburg, greater advantages than had been thought sufficient when the dauphin consented to waive his claims in favor of a candidate whose elevation would cause no jealousies. What Lewis demanded, in addition to the portion formerly assigned to France, was the Milanese. With the Milanese he

proposed to buy Lorraine from its duke. To the Duke of Lorraine this arrangement would have been beneficial, and to the people of Lorraine more beneficial still. They were, and had long been, in a singularly unhappy situation. Lewis domineered over them as if they had been his subjects, and troubled himself as little about their happiness as if they had been his enemies. Since he exercised as absolute a power over them as over the Normans and Burgundians, it was desirable that he should have as great an interest in their welfare as in the welfare of the Normans and Burgundians.

On the basis proposed by France, William was willing to negotiate; and when, in June, 1699, he left Kensington to pass the summer at Loo, the terms of the treaty known as the Second Treaty of Partition were very nearly adjusted. The great object now was to obtain the consent of the emperor. That consent, it should seem, ought to have been readily and even eagerly given. Had it been given, it might perhaps have saved Christendom from a war of eleven years. But the policy of Austria was, at that time, strangely dilatory and irresolute. It was in vain that William and Heinsius represented the importance of every hour. "The emperor's ministers go on dawdling," so the king wrote to Heinsius, "not because there is any difficulty about the matter, not because they mean to reject the terms, but solely because they are people who can make up their minds to nothing." While the negotiation at Vienna was thus drawn out into endless length, evil tidings came from Madrid.

Spain and her king had long been sunk so low that it

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