CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

CAMEO CCLXXXI.

1714-1715.

TWO NEW REIGNS.

QUEEN ANNE's dead.' We can quite believe the proverb to have arisen in the days of wailing that ensued on the demise of the dull and gentle lady whom circumstances had brought to the throne.

Proclamation of George was made everywhere without obstruction; the Jacobites could not move without orders, and James Edward Stewart durst not move without the support of France. He was at Bar-le-duc, in Lorraine, but came as far as Plombières to facilitate interviews with the French authorities; but, in the exhaustion of the nation, he received no encouragement, and his mother, who came thither to meet him, dreaded any adventurous step, so that he only set forth a manifesto, declaring his claims and explaining to his English friends that he had been waiting for assistance from his sister, which had been prevented by her deplorable death.

George, on his side, showed no haste to mount the throne. He was fifty-four years of age, and averse from trouble, much attached to his native dukedom, and by no means desirous of the toils of governing a strange country. He had been married to his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of his uncle, Duke of Zelle, by a lefthanded marriage with a beautiful Frenchwoman, Eléonore d'Olbreuse. The arrangement seems to have been made to prevent difficulties as to the succession, and after she had borne him two children, George and Sophia, charges were made against her, apparently without cause, and she was shut up in the castle of Ahlden and never allowed to see her children again. Twenty-eight years were thus spent, and she died a little before her husband's accession. Both her children were married, Sophia to the heir of Prussia, George to Caroline of Anspach, a very handsome, brilliant, and clever woman. It was not a very satisfactory court. The immorality of France had infected most of the petty princes of Germany, who could resemble Louis XIV. in his vices if in nothing else; and even the ladies who were virtuous themselves expected nothing from their husbands. And indeed, there was a freethinking tone among the cleverer persons of the day, led by the society around the Regent Duke of Orleans, and in which Caroline participated.

It was nearly seven weeks after Anne's death, before George I. arrived in England on the 18th of September, 1714, accompanied by his son, and publicly entered London. Two ladies, Mademoiselle Schulenburg and Countess Platen, understood to be such as Madame de Montespan had been, came too. They were believed to be very avaricious, and when driving through London were mobbed. One of them, the best English scholar of the two, put out her head, and said: 'My good people, we are come for all your goods.'

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Aye, and for all our chattels too!' was the answer.

So little had George cared for his possible inheritance that he had never taken the trouble to learn English, but he understood the bias of parties enough to make all his cabinet of Whigs, Lord Halifax, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Cowper, Lord Chancellor; Shrewsbury, Lord Chamberlain; Marlborough, Commander-in-Chief; and Sir Robert Walpole, Paymaster of the Forces; but Marlborough was mortified by finding that almost all power as to commissions and promotions was taken out of his hands. When the writs were issued for the new parliament, a proclamation accompanied them, that the electors should show due regard to the Protestant succession, and so unlike were people then to what they are now, this was effectual in securing a considerable Whig majority.

Sir William Wyndham very reasonably attacked the proclamation in the House, calling it unprecedented, and dangerous to the wellbeing of parliaments, but as this came from a Tory, the Whigs shouted, "The Tower! the Tower!' till Walpole said: 'I am not for gratifying the desire that the honourable member shows for being sent to the Tower. It would make him of too much consequence.' However, it was known that there was an intention of impeaching the members of the recent Government for their Jacobite attempts, and Lord Bolingbroke fled from the storm, crossing to Calais in the disguise of a servant.

The Duke of Ormond and Lord Oxford, however, remained, and the former gave splendid entertainments at Richmond; the Secretary of State was John Erskine, Earl of Mar, who had vibrated between Whig and Tory till his popular nickname was Bobbing John, perhaps alluding to his deformity, for he was sometimes said to be as crooked. in mind as in body.

The Tory Government had made him the chief manager of Scottish affairs, and he addressed a letter of warm congratulation to King George; but he was not trusted, and was deprived of his office, whereupon in great wrath he threw himself into the arms of the Jacobites, and put himself into communication with the Chevalier de St. George.

John Campbell, Duke of Argyle, was made commander of the Scottish forces, and held levees in princely fashion.

After all the papers that could be collected respecting the Peace of VOL. 20.

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PART 120.

Utrecht or Jacobite correspondence had been seized, a committee was appointed to examine them, Walpole being their chairman. When their report was read in the House of Commons, there was great indignation, and Lord Bolingbroke was impeached for high treason, with little opposition. Then followed the impeachment of the Earl of Oxford, and, after some delay, that of Ormond, who fled to France. It is said that before he went, he visited Oxford and advised him to escape. On finding that the Earl would not do this, he said 'Farewell, Oxford without a head,' to which the reply was, 'Farewell, Duke without a duchy.' Ormond never returned, and died after thirty years of exile. Oxford was sent to the Tower, and the poet Prior was examined in hopes of eliciting evidence against him, but nothing available was found, though he remained for some time longer a prisoner. In the meantime the Jacobites began to be full of hope. It was known that George was not popular, and that Marlborough was neglected; and, indeed, he corresponded with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick, as if anxious to be well with both parties, and when Bolingbroke and Ormonde came over as banished men, their hopes rose high. Just before his death, Louis XIV. had actually given the Chevalier de St. George, as James Stewart was usually called, arms and stores enough to fill twelve ships which lay at Havre; but great changes had come over the French Court.

Poor little Louis XV., a fair delicate creature of five, had been proclaimed and produced in public, led by the Duchess of Ventadour, in purple velvet leading-strings, for the desolate child had no one near enough to him in rank to be seen touching his hand, and his steps were not yet secure.

The Duke of Orleans went in state to take the late king's will out of its hiding-place, but there was very little intention of acting upon it. It was already known that the endeavour had been to limit the power of the Duke of Orleans as much as possible, and to throw it into the hands of the Duke of Maine and a Council of Regency, and the general dislike and weariness of the old policy, the jealousy of the Duke of Maine, and the sense that this was contrary to the old habit of making the regent a king in power for the time being, all influenced the persons concerned. In like manner, Henri IV. and Louis XIII., who had no confidence in their queens, had tried to set bounds to their authority; but in both cases the will had been set aside, as Louis XIV. had well remembered when he warned Madame de Maintenon that his would be a dead letter.

It was carried to the parliament. Every one was present, but the will was read in a low rapid voice, and nobody affected to attend to the words of the man whose speech when alive, two days before, had been listened to almost like that of a god. Lord Stair, the English ambassador, was in a private seat; he had been assured by the Abbé Dubois, the chief confidant of the Duke of Orleans, that the Houses of Hanover and Orleans were bound to support one another.

When the will had been read, the Duke of Orleans said: 'No doubt the king did not understand the force of what he had been made to do' (with a meaning glance at the Duke of Maine), for he told me, during his last days, that I should find nothing that would not satisfy me.' Then he demanded that his regency should be declared full and absolute, with power to choose his own council. The Duke of Maine tried to speak: 'Monsieur, in your turn,' said Philippe of Orleans. And he went on to declare that the regency was impossible under such conditions.

There was a mournful silence, for every one knew why he had been thus fettered; and the Duke of Maine was able to speak of the late king's great confidence in him.

Strange,' said Orleans, 'that it should be in any but myself.'

A dispute began, in which the Duke of Maine's known high character was giving him the advantage, when it was broken up by his enemies persuading all to adjourn till after dinner. In the interval, they spent their time in persuading the peers and magistrates, and hinting to the timid that the duke had guards surrounding them, and that weapons were under the dresses of his friends. When the Assembly met again, no one durst utter the reasons why the poor old king had wished to put the child into other hands. The entire authority was then vested in the hands of the regent, and the Duke of Maine then said: 'Since I am despoiled of the authority conferred upon me by the codicil, I demand to be discharged of the guardianship of the king, and of the responsibility for his person, only preserving the superintendence of his education.'

'Very willingly, monsieur,' said the Duke of Orleans.

The Duke of St. Simon regarded this as the greatest triumph of his life by the humiliation of the legitimate princes. So narrow were men's views, that this was all they saw when giving up their country and its infant king to one of the worst and most unprincipled of men, and thus sealing the general ruin; while there is something remarkable in the tardy precautions of Louis XIV. for both having been frustrated through the effect of his own earlier vices.

In the Bourbon race, the type of Henri IV. has from time to time been reproduced-extreme good nature and fascination of manner, united to the most lax habits of self-indulgence. Our own Charles II. was a decided instance, and Philippe of Orleans was such another, and he had fallen upon times when there was even less of restraint than in the Court of the Restoration.

'I wish to be free to do good, and to have my hands tied for evil," he said, when in the name of the little king, who was carried to hold a bed of justice on the 12th of September, he appointed six councils, for foreign affairs, finance, conscience, war, naval affairs and interior affairs, to which one for commerce was added. It sounded well, but the members were chiefly his dissipated friends, or men who got in by bribing his confidants.

However, his kindness of heart led to a great release of prisoners, especially Jansenists. In the Bastille were persons who had been there so long that their very crime was forgotten. One Italian, who had been arrested thirty-five years before on his arrival at Paris, only begged to stay there, for he had no home, no relations, no resources! In fact, though the Bastille was the emblem of tyranny, the captives seem to have lived a fairly comfortable life, and to have enjoyed one another's society, and visits of friends. After this great gaol delivery, it was very little used.

The Regent wished to give some relief to the Protestants, but his counsellors prevented him, though their condition was much less wretched than before during his government. The Jansenists were no longer molested, indeed Cardinal de Noailles was put at the head of the ecclesiastical council of conscience, while Père Tellier was sent away with a pension of 6000 livres, though the will had appointed him confessor to the young Louis. Marshal Villars was very properly at the head of the War Department, the Count of Toulouse over the Naval, Marshal d'Huxelles had Foreign Affairs, the Duke d'Antin Domestic.

Orleans himself had no unkind feeling towards the boy, whose protector he knew himself to be, but he was too much steeped in dissipation to attend to the duties of his position more than he could help. The subpreceptor of his boyhood, the Abbé Dubois had been his great corrupter, ministering to his excesses from boyhood upwards, and thus acquiring great ascendency over him, and so over public affairs; it is hard to say who was the most shameless person in Europe, the Abbé Dubois, the Regent, or his widowed daughter, the Duchess of Berri.

'Woe to the land whose king is a child, and whose princes drink in the morning,' is a sacred saying often verified, and never more completely than in the days of the young Louis XV., when as Guizot says: 'the long agony of France was beginning.'

The little king was thus far in kindly hands. Madame de Ventadour loved him, and the Abbé de Fleury, his tutor, was a good and pious man; but there was no spirit of Fenélon to guide them, and instead of being taught his responsibilities, the shy boy was coaxed to show himself at the window by the call, Come, sire, look at these people, they are all your Majesty's.' He was a gentle, docile boy, with no signs of ability or of strength of will like his father, but more like his uncles, pleasant to his tutors, but with little substance or promise of spirit.

Outside his nursery, the Court was in a state unparalleled, except by that of heathen Emperors of old, with the one exception that there were no cruelties, except that the persecutions of the Huguenots still had their course; but that was in the south, beyond the ken of the good-natured Regent. Indulgence of all kinds, shared freely and shamefully by his daughter, the Duchess of Berri, scandalised all that