George I Read online

  Worse was to come. The gleeful Whigs took full advantage of their power to dismantle the High Church legislation enacted by the previous ministry. The mirror image of the Jacobite smear applied to the Tories was the allegation voiced by High Church Tories that there was not ‘a single Whig who is not a professed deist and enemy to all religion, a Latitudinarian, or notoriously opposed to the Church of England’, as the arch-Jacobite Bishop Francis Atterbury put it in a pamphlet of 1714.4 That was equally untrue. If every Nonconformist, deist or free-thinker was almost certain not to be Tory (the unbelieving Bolingbroke being the exception that proved the rule), the great majority of Whigs were Anglican Christians. Where they differed was in their attitude to religious pluralism. That had been demonstrated by the case of Dr Henry Sacheverell, put on trial in 1710 for preaching a High Church sermon that sailed very close to a Jacobite wind. His creed of passive obedience, non-resistance, no toleration of non-Anglicans, closure of dissenting academies, an end to occasional conformity (the practice of taking Communion according to the Anglican rite once a year just to qualify for office) and any form of accommodation with Nonconformists, was hugely popular. His virtual acquittal (the sentence was a mere suspension from office for three years) was greeted with wild acclamation by both Tory grandees and plebeians, but it turned out to be the high-water mark of his brand of churchmanship. The Acts against occasional conformity and dissenting schools passed in the summer of 1714 were due to come into effect on the very day that Queen Anne died. At his very first Privy Council meeting, the new king made a programmatic statement in favour of toleration and religious pluralism by announcing that he wanted both Acts repealed.5 Although that was not accomplished until January 1719, in the interim they had been a dead letter. George would also have liked to see the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which confined public office to Anglicans, but not enough support could be mustered to get it through Parliament. Even so, the new reign marked a turning point in the religious history of England and it was one for which George could claim some credit. If Queen Anne had lived longer – and she was only forty-nine when she died – things might have been very different. Shortly after her death, a delegation of Nonconformists led by the famous Independent minister Thomas Bradbury went to court to present their congratulations to the new sovereign. There they bumped into Bolingbroke, who took one look at their sombre black gowns and asked them derisively whether they were going to a funeral. ‘Yes, My Lord,’ cried Bradbury exultantly, ‘it is the funeral of the Schism Act, and the resurrection of liberty!’6

  George was Supreme Head of the Church of England and he made his powers of patronage count. One of Queen Anne’s last ecclesiastical appointments was to appoint the Jacobite Francis Atterbury Bishop of Rochester (although she did it through gritted teeth); one of George’s first was to make the vigorous Whig polemicist Benjamin Hoadly Bishop of Bangor. When the Low Church Whig Edmund Gibson became Bishop of London in 1723, the way was clear to complete the remodelling of the English episcopate, for nine sees fell vacant in that year and in each case the royal choice followed his recommendation.7 The other side of the coin was the fate of Atterbury, on whose advice the Schism Bill against dissenting academies had been introduced in 1714. In 1722 he very foolishly allowed himself to be drawn into a harebrained Jacobite plot involving, as usual, the incorrigible Duke of Ormonde.8 Charged with high treason and sent to the Tower, he was allowed to escape with his life but was sent across the Channel into permanent banishment. In G. V. Bennett’s assessment, this ‘was a turning-point in British politics and a decisive blow to the Tory cause’. Even the Pretender – by now safely removed to Rome – had to concede that there was no support in England for his cause (except perhaps on some Oxford high tables).9 Henry Sacheverell died in 1724 and was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s, Holborn, next to the grave of Sally Salisbury, the most famous prostitute of her day, a coincidence which inspired the epitaph: ‘A fit companion for a High Church priest / He non-resistance taught, and she profest.’10

  Arguments about the apostolic succession or the Eucharist threw only a light veil over political issues. It seems reasonable to conclude that the Prince of Wales’s support for the bishops opposing the repeal of the Occasional Conformity or Schism Acts was motivated more by a desire to annoy his father than by any concern for religious truth. Also to the fore in opposing any concessions to Nonconformists was the arch-Whig Sir Robert Walpole, who ‘bore harder against the Court than any Tory durst attempt to do’.11 The reason for this hypocrisy was obvious to all – Walpole was out of office and was trying to make such a nuisance of himself that he would have be taken in again. His fluctuating relationship with George illustrated how both men had to undergo a prolonged political education before achieving a stable and mutually beneficial rapport.

  When George arrived in England he was lucky to find a new generation of able politicians willing to do his business. The old guard of Whigs conveniently died off – the Marquis of Wharton and the Earl of Halifax in the spring of 1715 and Lord Somers a year later. They made room for four men of exceptional talent and ambition – the Earl of Sunderland (aged thirty-nine), James Stanhope (forty-two), Viscount Townshend (forty) and Robert Walpole (thirty-eight). Politicians being what they were – and are – Westminster proved to be not big enough for all four of them. Once the Tories had been seen off to the shires, or at least the back benches, the Whig leaders naturally conspired against each other. Initially, the dominant figure was Townshend, whom George made Secretary of State for the Northern Department. His brother-in-law Walpole was assigned only the junior, if highly lucrative, office of Paymaster General. As he was Marlborough’s son-in-law, Sunderland had expected a plum but was given a prickly pear in the shape of the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland and at once deployed his impressive conspiratorial skills to achieve a promotion. His chance came when George went off to Hanover in the summer of 1716, accompanied by Stanhope, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department. Pleading the need to restore his health, Sunderland set off to take the waters at Aachen but soon moved further north-east to Hanover. As we have seen, he then persuaded George that the Prince and Princess of Wales were usurping his regal position by building an alternative centre of power and he also implicated Townshend and Walpole, who were back in London and ignorant of what was going on at Hanover.

  There was actually some substance to the rift that now opened up between the two ministers in London and the two at Hanover. As we shall see in the next chapter, George, Sunderland and Stanhope were eager to sign the triple alliance with the French and Dutch that they had negotiated in secret with the Duke of Orléans’s envoy, Dubois. Townshend and Walpole were opposed, concluding, not without reason, that the Hanoverian tail was being allowed to wag the British dog.12 George was not used to being obstructed by his servants and did not like it. Limited the British monarchy may have been, but the king still exercised considerable powers, notably the right to appoint his ministers and control the armed forces. Given his Hanoverian and military background, it was not surprising that George liked to command and dealt swiftly with overt disobedience. So in December 1716 Townshend was demoted to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland (the Siberia of English politicians) and finally dismissed altogether in April 1717. Walpole joined him in opposition.

  The two friends had fatally underestimated Sunderland, unaware that he had won over both the king and Stanhope. As so often in politics, it was proximity to power that had proved decisive. So from the spring of 1717 George was served by a ministry led by Sunderland as Secretary of State and Stanhope as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. As the latter’s expertise lay mainly in foreign affairs, after a year the two men exchanged offices. Stanhope was always George’s favourite minister, thanks to his military background, cosmopolitan experience, good knowledge of French and compliant personality.13 His reward was to be made a baron and viscount in 1717 and an earl less than a year later. His sudden death from a stroke in February
1721 affected George deeply: ‘His Majesty was so sensibly touch’d that he could not eat his supper, and retired for two hours into his Closet to lament the loss of such an able statesman and Faithfull Counsellor and so loyal a subject.’ Stanhope was given a grand funeral with full military honours, attended by the king and the Prince of Wales, the hearse escorted by ‘200 Horse-Grenadiers, 200 Life Guards, 2 battalions of Foot Guards, all officers being in cypress mourning, scarfs and hatbands’.14

  During the last few months of his life, Stanhope’s political authority had been diluted by the need to readmit Townshend and Walpole to government. He and Sunderland had been forced to make this concession by three interwoven considerations. The first was the friction caused by the presence of Hanoverian ministers in London. As George continued to rule a large and important state of the Holy Roman Empire, it was natural that he should bring and retain officials to deal with its affairs. They were assigned two offices, which became known as the ‘German Chancery’, in St James’s Palace. Of the four important enough to acquire political significance, the least prominent was Johann Philipp von Hattorf, who was responsible for the day-to-day running of the office and specialized in military affairs.15 Next came the shadowy but influential figure of Jean de Robethon, a Huguenot who left France in 1685 and had served William III and then Georg Wilhelm of Celle, before becoming Georg Ludwig’s private secretary in 1705.16 Once he reached London in 1714, he used his proximity to the new king to support the Whigs, especially Stanhope and Sunderland, and to make money from influencing appointments.17

  A more public figure was Hans Kaspar Count von Bothmer, a long-serving Hanoverian diplomat who was in London when Queen Anne died and played an important part in expediting the change of dynasty.18 He stayed on in London, his ready access to the new king encouraging suspicions that British foreign policy was being run by Germans.19 Also in the firing line was Baron Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, George’s senior Hanoverian minister. A more assertive figure than his other colleagues, he had given an early indication of his taste for adventure with a high-risk liaison with the wife of his prince and first employer, the Duke of Mecklenburg.20 In one more cheering illustration of the pluralism allowed by the territorial fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire, he had not only escaped punishment but had been able to move a few miles west and join Guelph service. There he served first Georg Wilhelm of Celle and then Georg Ludwig of Hanover, becoming his first minister in 1709. Although the influence of this ‘Hanoverian Junto’ was of course talked up by Tories and opposition Whigs, there was enough substance in the charge to elevate it beyond rumour. It was suspected, for example, that Bernstorff’s attitude to Prussia was soured by a dispute over feudal rights on one of his estates.21

  The influence of these Hanoverians was naturally greatest during the early part of the reign. Apart from one brief visit back in 1680, George had no experience and little knowledge of England. Robethon and Bothmer had both. But as their master gained in confidence, came to know and trust at least some of his English ministers, and perhaps even began to see himself as representing British interests, the Junto’s dominance waned. On the other side, the English ministers themselves began to resent the Hanoverians’ intervention in matters that did not concern them. As we have seen, Townshend and Walpole resigned rather than submit. Sunderland and Stanhope soldiered on but eventually they too revolted. Matters came to a head in July 1719 over the Prussian alliance. When George opted for it, he also opted for Stanhope over Bernstorff. ‘We have at last got a complete victory over the old man’, crowed the former about the latter in July.22 He was right. This was an important moment in George’s reign. When he told his Hanoverian ministers that they were not even to speak to him about English matters, he was also announcing that he was now first and foremost King of England. Bernstorff went back to Hanover with him in 1720 and did not return. Bothmer stayed on in London, living in a house that was later to be called ‘10 Downing Street’ until his death in 1732, despite the ‘the ruinous Condition of the Premises’ about which he repeatedly complained.23 Always less assertive than Bernstorff, he now heeded his master’s command and confined himself to strictly Hanoverian business.

  A common desire to cut the Hanoverians down to size paved the way for a rapprochement between the two Whig factions. It was helped along by Sunderland and Stanhope’s failure to get through Parliament a legislative programme which included the emasculation of the Test and Corporation Acts, relief for Roman Catholics, reform of the universities, repeal of the Septennial Act and, most importantly, the peerage bill.24 The last-named would have fixed the membership of the House of Lords and allowed new creations only if a peer died without heirs. Leading the opposition in the House of Commons was Walpole, whose fabled eloquence inflicted on the government a crushing defeat. In one authoritative assessment, it was the best speech he ever made, which is saying a great deal. Even an opponent had to concede that it ‘had as much of natural eloquence and of genius in it as had been heard by any of the audience within those walls’.25 Once again, the independent country members had shown that royal support for ministers was not always enough to win a majority for the government. George, Stanhope and Sunderland needed no further proof that Walpole had to be brought back in.

  Walpole was prepared to accept a subordinate post – the Paymaster Generalship, his old cash cow – and so was Townshend, who was to become Lord President of the Council, but they did insist that George should bring to an end the feud with his heir. As it happened, Walpole was just the man to orchestrate a reconciliation, for he had fostered good relations with the two influential ladies on either side. The first was George’s mistress Melusine von der Schulenburg, recently elevated to be Duchess of Kendal. Walpole told Lord Cowper that ‘her Interest did Everything; that she was, in effect as much Queen of England as ever any was; that he did Everything by her’. That comment was recorded by Cowper’s wife, whose diary provides a detailed account of the intense negotiations between representatives of the warring parties in April 1720.26 As she and her husband were part of the Wales’s intimate circle, it is a particularly valuable source. Although physically unimpressive, Walpole knew how to ingratiate himself with women. An even more important ally was the Princess of Wales, whom ‘Walpole has engrossed and monopolised … to a Degree of making her deaf to Everything that did not come from him’, or so Lady Cowper claimed.27 With two such headstrong and obstinate men involved, the intermediary’s task was not an easy one. It was not until 23 April, coincidentally St George’s Day, that the two Georges made up. That both did so with truculent ill grace did not matter. When Lady Cowper went to St James’s Palace at five in the afternoon, she found ‘the Square full of Coaches; the Rooms full of Company; Everything gay and laughing; Nothing but kissing and wishing of Joy’. Out on the streets, there was ‘Hallooing and all Marks of Joy which could be shown by the Multitude’.28

  Almost everyone benefited. The prince and princess could return to court and see their children again. The king had the accumulated civil list debt of £600,000 paid off and could enjoy a return to parliamentary tranquillity. Walpole and Townshend could clamber back on board the gravy train, albeit to the restaurant car rather than the driver’s cab. The greatest losers, apart from a number of placemen dismissed to make room for opposition Whigs coming in from the cold, were the Hanoverian ministers, who had been kept completely in the dark. When Stanhope rather spitefully broke the news to Bernstorff and Bothmer at court ‘in his shrill Scream’, they were thunderstruck. Bothmer ‘could not bear the Insult, nor the being given up by his old master, and burst into Tears’.29 Another casualty was the profligate court George had maintained to outshine his son. Probably breathing a sigh of relief, George reverted to his earlier pattern of behaviour. The ‘Drawing Rooms’ could not be dropped, but the lavish dining, music, dancing and theatricals were scaled back.30 He now urged foreign governments to send ministers rather than full ambassadors, to avoid the elaborate ceremonial which reception of the latte
r involved.31

  Walpole rejoined the government in June 1720, just in time to save George from the fallout from ‘the most dramatic financial storm in eighteenth-century England’.32 This was the ‘South Sea Bubble’. The story began in 1711 when the South Sea Company was created as a Tory rival to the Whig Bank of England, with the specific objective of exchanging £9,000,000 of the National Debt for company stock. Although assigned the right to trade with Spanish America acquired at the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, commerce took second place to financial dealing. On 7 April 1720, or in other words a couple of weeks before the rapprochement just related, royal assent was given to an Act of Parliament allowing the company to increase its capital by £30,000,000. This was believed to be sufficient to complete the conversion of the National Debt. The result was a sequence of events that began as a comedy, quickly degenerated into farce and ended as tragedy, as Peter Dickson put it.33 In the process, a colossal amount of money was made and even more money was lost. £100 of stock had risen to £320 by mid April, £700 by June before reaching a peak of £1,050 before falling back to £950 in July, £800 in August, £300 by the end of September and £200 by the end of October.34 The nimble minority made a fortune, the great majority lost their shirts.