VII

Three crises

GEORGE I'S IMAGE

George did not impress his new subjects by looks or majestic behaviour. He was on the short side (de taille mediocre) but had largely kept the figure of his youth, described in 1684 by a French diplomat as fine et aisée,1 by vigorous exercise on horseback and by daily walks long enough to tire his entourage. His hands were strikingly fine, the fingers exceptionally long. His blue eyes, the rather hard Hanoverian ‘china-blue’, were arresting, though by his fifties pouches had developed beneath them. His mouth was well shaped and his chin was dimpled. The dominating feature was the long and pointed Ernst-August nose (not thick or heavy, as is often assumed)² which showed up well in profile, as can be seen in medals and in the interesting portrait in profile by Kneller in the possession of the Kielmansegg family. (A copy of this, ‘from the studio of Kneller’, is in the National Portrait Gallery.) The truest impression of George's looks during the early years of his reign as king is derived from this portrait in combination with a statue in Roman dress by the Flemish sculptor, Delvaux, from 1717. This statue is huge, made for the Rolls House. It was rediscovered as recently as 1954 and is now placed in the corridor leading to the Public Record Office Museum. The figure and face are slightly idealized as befits a heroic statue; but the features known from literary descriptions are clearly recognizable, and the fact that George does not wear a wig here establishes an immediate rapport with the modern viewer who can see the shape of his head.* The Kneller portrait, which one might be tempted to label a sketch or a study but for the fact that Sophia Charlotte had it put in the magnificently carved frame in which it is still found, tells us a good deal more of the person. It is livelier than the official portraits of the king, and catches the somewhat ironic smile that fits his personality in middle age. It conveys determination and ambition, but also maturity and tolerance.

Some of the official portraits, and even copies of them, are well painted and give a sympathetic likeness. In Britain the Cholmondeley Kneller conveys George's watchful, shrewd intelligence as well as displaying his nicely turned ankles and the beautiful hands. More intimate, in spite of its royal appurtenances, is a huge portrait of George now in the Osnabrück Rathaus, the countenance open and trusting. Since this painting is on loan from the Bar family, two members of which served the Prinzessin von Ahlden in the highest posts at her private court after 1694, it is possible that it derives from the collection of Sophia Dorothea: we have literary evidence that this contained portraits of George as king of Great Britain. But usually, when pictured in his state or coronation robes, George seems disinclined to reveal anything of his persona; a memory of woodenness remains on the retina even if one realizes that this is produced by the sitter's unwillingness or inability to lower his guard. In the many equestrian portraits, as can be seen in the fine example in the Gorhambury collection, the very pose suits George better; and the riding-habit, simple in cut however grand in material, looks as if it has a body beneath it and not a dummy. None of the later portraits hides that slackening of the cheeks and jaw in his fifties in which George took after his mother. In Sophia's case this did not (however much she deplored the ravages of time when she looked into her mirror) mar the liveliness of paintings done of her from late middle-age onwards; in George's it contributes to a certain dullness of expression.

Relatively few portraits of George before 1714 have come down to us; but there is a striking continuity between the portrait of the young George, now in the Herrenhausen museum, and the last portrait, now in the Queen's collection, painted between 1725 and 1727 by La Fontaine, the son of a Huguenot refugee settled in Hanover, who came to London at George's request to paint him and other members of his family (including the two sons of die schöne Gertrud). The basic shyness is there, also the kindness: the child is clearly father to the man even if the man has aged. Incidentally, this portrait makes identification of an anonymous painting in the Royal collection of an elderly, very plump, gentleman as ‘George I’ very doubtful indeed.3

The many engravings, both before and after 1714, are less illuminating for the personality, though they are interesting for their contemporary propaganda value and richly illustrate the symbolism of the age. We find the handsome George, as hero from his early wars; we find the Retter des Reiches of the War of the Spanish Succession; we find him in his office as arch-treasurer of the Empire; we find him in Garter robes, and with all the attributes of power, the electoral cap, the baton of the commander, the crown, orb and sceptre of the monarch. Some are very fine indeed; others almost primitive. The falsification attendant on the engraver's using part of an older frame or even part of other figures is in evidence: I have seen engravings where the coat of arms is not George's, where his head has been put on to a body that ill fits it, and even one where he wears incongruous beribboned boots of extreme elegance only to find the self-same boots on the slim legs of an early Stuart monarch. Few of the engravings tell us much about George as a person; but at times we see, presumably for propaganda purposes, the firmness and determination in political affairs which we know from other evidence that he possessed.

Since he wears a wig (usually dark brown) in all the portraits which have survived, we are indebted to Sophia's information about the colour of his hair. It was fair in infancy and early childhood but turned Palatinate dark before 1676. The illegitimate son he then fathered was thought to be so like him, including ‘black hair’, that there could be no doubt of paternity. George's skin, sunburnt and windswept from campaigns, had by then become so dark that, in his mother's words, he ‘could have passed for a Spaniard’,4 and this weatherbeaten skin colour remained – if somewhat toned down – because of his liking for fresh air and exercise.

The literary descriptions of people who observed him, but did not know him well, in 1714 and the years immediately after that date reinforced the impression of woodenness in public, a mask which betrayed lady Mary Wortley Montagu into thinking him a blockhead also in intelligence. Her assessment has largely been accepted by British historians without independent evidence; the easily accessible printed memoirs and letters of this period, while invaluable for giving us the feel of the past, are full of traps for the unwary and more important for the development of myths where third persons are concerned than for historical insight.⁵ But even lady Mary, who did not know George well, gives instances of his ready wit; and lady Cowper – with more opportunities for close observation – conveys the flavour of his verbal pleasantries at court, tinged, if they were not mere compliments, by the ironic turn of phrase so reminiscent of his mother. George, like most men and many women of the age, appreciated a bawdy joke and the double entendre. There are examples of the first in his correspondence with the Hanoverian statesman von Ilten as early as the 1680s. His light touch in the latter category is epitomized in his remark (repeated by Schulenburg) to a certain courtier who in 1717 presented his wife to the king while his conversation ran exclusively on the praise of Irish horses. It was to the effect that if the courtier ‘connoissoit aussi bien en cheveaux qu'en femmes il ne pourroit manquer d'etre bien monté.’6

What those outside the inner circle at court saw, however, was the dutiful mask without much animation. George was not a glamorous figure. His accession had been received with jubilation in some quarters, especially by the dissenters who were hopeful that he would end the persecution they had suffered under the last ministry of queen Anne. It is said that when dissenting ministers presented themselves in their sober black to George on his arrival he – or one of his Hanoverian entourage – asked why they were in mourning. They answered that the object of burial was the Schism Act which would not now be enforced and that they rejoiced that it was George who came to bury it.⁷ The very impact of majesty, the awe which the mythology surrounding the sovereign imposed even in the age of the Early Enlightenment,⁸ explains the cheers which greeted George on his arrival in London in 1714. In reality the people at large reserved their judgment. Times had changed since the Restoration period when Charles II entertained on a scale large enough to embrace all the educated and socially privileged orders of society, while the mob was enthralled by ceremonial and by court scandal. George visited British magnates more or less as a private individual, and he attended public performances of theatres, operas and concerts rather than making the court a focus of such entertainments. His greatest claim to European fame, his military career, was not one that appealed to a war-weary country; and George – intent on accepting the peacemakings of 1713–14, if only to give him a free hand in the Great Northern War – was not the man to reminisce. Some of the pamphlets written to glorify the Hanoverian succession did refer to George's services in the wars against the Turks and Louis XIV,⁹ but Jacobite pamphlets easily managed to take the shine off his achievements by denigrating them and fathering Mercy's defeat at Rumersheim on him: the ‘Sultan’ (a transparent synonym for George) had met with a reverse which impaired his gloire forever.¹⁰ While it remained true that George had contributed to the planning of the 1704 campaign and that the behaviour of his Hanoverian contingent at Blenheim had evoked Marlborough's praise, the British were in general too insular to wish to assess the share of foreign troops – Dutch, German, Danes – in glories they reckoned specifically their own even though their British national regiments had formed but a minor part of the whole. George's share, and that of the Hanoverians, thus made no proper impact, especially as the elector's services had never been on the spectacular scale of Marlborough's and Eugène's.

THE JACOBITE ‘FIFTEEN’

Conversely, as soon as George's first ministry began to use the overwhelming victory it had won in the elections of March 1715 to punish Tories at the national and local level, the image of young James Edward Stuart was shown to possess magnetic qualities. He was untried and therefore unspotted. He was good-looking and reputedly brave (he had fought with the French after the failure of the invasion attempt of 1708). The glamour of tradition was his, from the convivial toast ‘To the [English-born] King across the waters’ to the strong allegiance which many Scots felt for him as the lawful king of Scotland. With the Whigs weeding out Tory justices of the peace, mayors and members of corporations, putting their own men into even minor posts, and advertising their intention to be revenged by the impeachment processes which they began against Oxford, Bolingbroke, Ormonde and Strafford, the image of an alternative king began to take substance. Contacts were made with Saint-Germain, where James's mother still resided, and with Lorraine where James himself lived, and raised hopes of success for invasion plans which had been formulated but which had not till then seemed feasible. James's reliance on open support from Louis XIV had collapsed during 1714 and early 1715. That monarch, anxious to be seen to keep the treaty of Utrecht, had yet expressed his willingness to give underhand help if James could obtain an important ally. Charles XII of Sweden, besieged in Stralsund after his dramatic return from Turkey in October 1714, was approached by both Louis and the Jacobites: if James could gain the Protestant sister of Charles XII as a bride – so reckoned the Jacobites – his chances of general acceptance in Britain would be increased; if Charles XII would use his Swedish army (not negligible even if luck seemed to have deserted him since 1709) to take revenge on George I at war with Sweden in his capacity as elector of Hanover – so calculated Louis – then James would get the military support by trained troops which he needed to wrest George's kingdom from him.11

Both hypotheses proved unfounded. Charles had no intention of making George I, in his capacity as king of Great Britain, a belligerent in the Great Northern War and buttressed his refusal to help ‘James III’ by the promise he had given the late queen Anne in 1712 never to give sustenance to the Jacobites; as for the marriage, it was out of the question that a Lutheran Swedish princess, the heir to the Swedish crown as long as Charles had no heirs of his own body, should marry a Catholic. Louis XIV drew the right conclusions from these various interchanges and in his turn forbade James Fitzjames, duke of Berwick (James III's half-brother on the wrong side of the blanket and a marshal of France), to put his military skill at the disposal of the Jacobites. The most Louis would do was to recommend his grandson, Philip V of Spain, to give or lend James money from the treasure expected from Spanish America, and to connive himself at James's collecting some hired ships and arms which his followers had been able to buy in French ports.12 Such limited activity suited French policy. There was as yet no certainty whether George I and the Whigs wished to overturn the Utrecht settlement; at a time of a rumoured grande liaison between the British, the Dutch and the Emperor, it would be in Louis' interest to foment unrest in Britain.

George's British ministers had not been aware of inviting a Jacobite invasion. Their concern had been with muzzling their important opponents in parliament and with keeping promises made to local supporters during the elections. They were pleased rather than otherwise at Bolingbroke's flight in April 1715: it could be interpreted as proof of his guilt and would smear others by implication. Yet it was their impeachment proceedings which fanned the flames of unrest and brought many who would not have contemplated open rebellion to adopt that very course: the Whigs showed that they meant to carry into action their threat to punish men who had by their ‘secret practices’ encouraged the Pretender in the late queen's reign. Others, while not sympathizing with the rebels, resented Whig implacability and doubted whether treason or even high crimes and misdemeanours could be proved.¹³ The weapons of revenge, forged mainly by Robert Walpole smarting under the memory of his own imprisonment in the Tower,¹⁴ seemed to be turning against George I's ministry.

Bolingbroke's acceptance of the post as James III's secretary of state rebounded on the Whigs in the sense that it brought James the services of a highly intelligent and gifted man, far better informed on the English situation than the Jacobite exiles of longer standing, and one, moreover, with a high reputation in England. From mid-July, when certain news of the Pretender's invasion plans was received from lord Stair (the British ambassador in Paris who had a good intelligence network), Bolingbroke appeared to be more of a liability abroad than at home, and preparations to repel the coming attack were begun in earnest.¹⁵

Ormonde's flight in August 1715 was due to a loss of nerve and proved an unmixed blessing for the Whigs. Since March he had committed himself to support the Pretender's cause and had planned risings in the south and west of England and in Wales, all areas where he had great influence. His precipitate departure (under fear of arrest) robbed the English Jacobites of a leader and made James III too dependent on a Scottish rising. The slowness of communications with Scotland added to the difficulties of the conspirators. John, earl of Mar, the leader of the Scottish Jacobites, found himself unable to comply with orders from Ormonde in France to postpone his revolt so that it could be synchronized with an October attempt of Ormonde's to bring Devon into rebellion while James landed elsewhere on the southern shores of England: on 6/17 September Mar raised the Jacobite standard in Scotland. Nor was Ormonde successful in persuading James to issue the kind of popular appeal which Ormonde – fresh from Britain – was sure would bring the masses out and rouse them from their ‘desponding submission to Hanover’; his, like Bolingbroke's, advice was either ignored or accepted too late. Ormonde's own efforts to rouse Devon (the first in October, the second in December) brought no response. When James, having given up the idea of invading England, joined Mar in Scotland in December the chances of success were so minimal that he set sail for France again in February 1716 to save his supporters from annihilation.

The danger of the Jacobite rebellion was, however, greater than this brief summary may indicate.16 That Ormonde remained loyal to James for the rest of his life and that Oxford, from the Tower and when freed, favoured the Jacobites and worked for them is not surprising; but that Marlborough and Shrewsbury in the crisis of 1715–16 reinsured by helping the Pretender with money is an indication of the severity of the crisis.¹⁷

So is George I's decision to apply, after Ormonde's flight, to the States General for the 6,000 troops available under the treaty of Barrier and Succession. He did so reluctantly since, quite apart from the expense involved, it permitted Dutch statesmen to exert unwelcome pressure on negotiations in progress. Ever since George's accession a ‘barrier treaty’* between the Maritime Powers and Charles VI had been sought so that the Anglo-Dutch condominium of the Southern Netherlands could be terminated and the emperor permitted to take possession of the now Austrian Netherlands on conditions which satisfied all parties. George, mindful of his need for Imperial support for his northern policy, had hitherto put a brake on Dutch demands. Now he was forced to put more of his weight on the Republic's side than intended, first, to obtain Dutch consent to bring the British regiments occupying Ostend and Nieuwport in the condominium area back to England and, then, to hurry the despatch of the 6,000 Dutch troops. He offered payment for these troops (though it could be argued that the Republic ought to bear the cost of them) from their day of embarkation till the day they set foot once more on Dutch soil, a generous offer beyond the terms of the 1713 treaty – in sharp contrast to the haggling which he himself had suffered from the Maritime Powers in 1701–02 over pay for his electoral troops. Further expenditure was incurred by the purchase of 10,000 muskets and bayonets from the arsenal of the province of Holland. The Dutch were willing enough to supply the 6,000 troops; the epithet of ‘Saviour’ of Britain was balm after the London vilification of the Republic during queen Anne's last ministry.18 But they took care not to let the troops sail till 16 November, the day after the barrier treaty had been signed; and though this treaty fell far short of their hopes, its terms were much better than those they would have had to accept but for George's need of their regiments to suppress the Jacobite rebellion.¹⁹ Before the end of the month the Dutch soldiers were on the march north. The very presence of so large a body of well-trained troops helped to quell the risings, though the Dutch were not involved in any major battle.

George and his ministers had in the meantime been active at home. A suspension of the Habeas Corpus act was decreed for a period of six months; known Jacobites were arrested and Roman Catholics suspected of disloyalty had their arms and horses impounded; the standing army was doubled and garrisons put into towns judged to be Jacobite in sympathy (Oxford and Bath were two of these); a strong squadron under admiral Byng was sent to control the Channel and intercept the Pretender; and Argyll — a member of the prince of Wales' household as a reward for his pro-Hanoverian stance before 1714 – was sent to Scotland with a small force to cope with Mar until the arrival of the Dutch. The Jacobite thrust expected in the south was inhibited by the government's measures (as shown by Ormonde's disappointments in October and December); but in the north-east of England a sizable number rallied round Thomas Forster, a county member of the House of Commons, and the Jacobite lords Derwentwater and Widdrington. Though they failed to take Newcastle by surprise, they were joined by lowlanders under the Scottish lords Kenmuir, Nithsdale, Carnwath and Wintoun and a detachment of highlanders sent by Mar. Failing to make any impact in the lowlands, this force – counting nearly 5,000 – marched to the north-west in the hope of capturing Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire for James III and, if possible, to secure the port of Liverpool and link up with the Welsh Jacobites. On 13 November it was attacked at Preston in Lancashire and defeated by a much smaller but more disciplined army under two experienced generals (Wills and Carpenter) sent north by Stanhope: 1,600 rebel privates were taken prisoner as were seven English and Scottish lords; the rest dispersed.

On that very day Mar, whose plans to take Edinburgh had miscarried, fought the battle of Sheriffmuir with some 10,000 men against Argyll and his 3,300 regular troops. The outcome was indecisive, but could be reckoned a government victory since Mar withdrew to Perth and there, inactive, awaited the arrival of James III. His original force had grown from 1,300 to 10,000 and he had hopes – if James III arrived with arms and money – of eventual success. But James came too late and with too little cash and too few weapons, since by that time (22 December) Argyll had been reinforced by the 6,000 Dutch troops. Argyll, influenced by sympathy for his countrymen and by his conviction that if left alone they would ‘melt away’, did not take the offensive. This created some suspicion of him in the British ministry and Cadogan, who had returned to England from the continent after signing the barrier treaty of 15 November 1715, was only too eager to show his paces. In February Stanhope sent him north to replace Argyll as commander-in-chief. On his arrival Cadogan found that the Pretender, Mar, and his brother James Keith, had left Scotland for France. All that was left was for him to hunt down remnants of Mar's forces, who (as Argyll had prophesied) were rapidly making their way home, either to live and fight another day or to forget all about the Fifteen. Relieved, George cancelled his secret request to the Dutch pensionary to keep another 3,000 troops in readiness if reinforcements were needed.20

James III had not made a favourable impression on the Scots. His advertised coronation – set for 23 January in the palace of Scone – had not taken place. He had failed to animate his followers: ‘if he was disappointed in us, we were tenfold more so in him’. George and his ministry proved magnanimous in victory. For this George must take most of the credit. He proved a moderating influence on those, notably Robert Walpole, who wished to take revenge. Cadogan, for his part, permitted many Scottish prisoners to escape from jail; and some who had been taken at Preston, including Forster, managed to flee from English imprisonment. Eventually, of the rank and file from Preston and the Scottish skirmishes, 700 were brought to trial and sentenced to be indentured as servants on West Indian plantations. The seven lords captured at Preston were sentenced to death, but only two, Kenmuir and Derwentwater (the only English noblemen of their number), were executed, two – Nithsdale and Wintoun – escaped and Carnwath, Nairne and Widdrington were released under the Act of Grace passed in 1717. Given the standards of the time, such clemency* has been pronounced ‘unprecedented and certainly wise and politic’.²¹ Walpole had worked hard to ensure that all seven should go to the block and carried the House of Commons, though with a small majority (seven only); the House of Lords, from class solidarity and unease that seven should suffer the death sentence when so many had been guilty of rebellion, urged leniency and petitioned the king ‘to show mercy [to] such as he judged might deserve it’. This enabled George to defy the Whig interpretation of that clause of the Act of Settlement which laid down ‘That no pardon under the Great Seal of England be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons of England’: he upheld the death sentence for three (one of whom was Nithsdale) and respited the rest.

The price he had to pay to the Whigs was the dismissal of Nottingham as lord privy seal and loss of places for his relatives. Shrewsbury had already resigned.²² The sacrifice of those who, like Nottingham and Shrewsbury, had been a thorn in the flesh of the Whigs ever since the new king's accession limited George's freedom of action; but it was a necessary concession if he wished to keep the confidence of those of his ministers who had been most active in defeating the rebellion.

In London, where Jacobite agitation had started as soon as Oxford had been committed to the Tower, George also urged leniency. On 23 April 1715, the anniversary of queen Anne's coronation – which was also St George's day – crowds marched the streets shouting ‘God bless the queen’ and ‘High Church’. By 28 May, George's birthday, the cry of ‘High Church and Ormonde’ had become the slogan of the Jacobites who cut the bellropes of at least one church to prevent the customary tribute of ringing, and spent the evening breaking windows illuminated in the king's honour. These and similar incidents George wished to ignore, explaining to his somewhat agitated Hanoverian entourage that punishment would only serve to aggravate popular unrest.²³ Mar's raising of the standard for James III had, however, repercussions in London, where – from November 1715 onwards – sporadic gang-fights between ‘Jacks’ and ‘loyalists’ took place, particularly on anniversaries into which a political connotation could be read: the birthday of George, prince of Wales, for ‘Jack’ attacks; the accession anniversaries of Charles II, James II and queen Anne for ‘Jack’ celebrations which developed into raids on inns and ale-houses regarded as loyalist strongholds. These were allowed to run their course for a time, even where 500 ‘Jacks’ were involved; but eventually law-abiding citizens tired of the looting and burning and general terrorizing which became a feature of these occasions and demanded action by the authorities. After an attack on Read's Mug-house off Fleet Street in July 1716, five ‘Jacks’ were arrested, sentenced to death and hanged. The Jacobite agitation in London then came to an abrupt stop, but it should be noted that this was long after the rebellion in the north had been defeated.24 The consequences of the Fifteen were many and important. It strengthened, as we have seen, the hold of the Whigs in the ministry. It also turned George I's thoughts towards the will he composed in February 1716, which had as one of its purposes to rob the Jacobite Stuarts of the claim that the Hanoverian succession would remain forever ‘foreign’ and unacceptable because of the dynastic union with the electorate. If this dynastic union would be known to have a terminus as soon as George died and his will was published (and even earlier if he obtained the consent of the emperor and of the British parliament), James Edward Stuart and his descendants* would be less likely to foment civil wars which George judged ‘ruinous’ for the country.²⁵ More immediately, the restraint shown first by Louis XIV and then by the regent of France (for the child-king Louis XV), Philippe d'Orléans, son of George's cousin Liselotte von der Pfalz, impressed George and influenced his foreign policy. Like his British ministers, George resented the way in which the French were trying to circumvent the Utrecht clause which bade them destroy the harbour of Dunkirk by building canals and fortifying Mardyk close by. Whatever their sophisticated arguments to explain away what they were doing, he insisted, they were in reality replacing a round port with an oblong one.²⁶ But he was impressed by the fact that the regent, who had promised before Louis XIV's death that he would not give succour to the Pretender, had kept his word when in a position of power. If George now spurned his proferred hand, might not the regent be tempted to embrace James III's cause in the future? The French denial of support for the Pretender in 1715–16 thus made it possible, and even imperative, for George to show willingness to negotiate on the Mardyk issue and others – such as the removal of James Edward Stuart from France.†

EUROPEAN ISSUES 1716–17

Confidence in French good will, and the need for negotiations with France, had been urged on George by his Dutch allies ever since the death of Louis XIV. The Republic had indeed been courted by Louis XIV from the moment the States General had signed their peace with France in 1713, but Dutch statesmen and especially the raadpensionaris Heinsius had thought it best to take no decisive step until George I's accession and politic to avoid putting pressure on him until the barrier treaty between the Maritime Powers and the emperor had been signed. Ideally the Dutch would have liked to follow up a French suggestion for a guarantee of the neutrality of the Southern Netherlands to be signed by France, the Maritime Powers and the emperor; but finding that Charles VI would never agree to this they concentrated on what came to be known as the simul-et-semel policy, which implied that the Maritime Powers and France should sign a treaty of mutual guarantee of rights and possessions at the same time that the Maritime Powers signed a similar treaty with the emperor. Dutch efforts, motivated by the need of the Republic to avoid involvement in European warfare, thus concentrated on having the treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt confirmed within the context of a post-Anne and post-Louis XIV world. The death of a sovereign traditionally demanded a renewal of treaties for guarantees to remain valid. If the simul-et-semel policy succeeded, the French regent would be made to guarantee the Protestant Succession and Charles VI would be forced to repeat his promise not to disturb the status quo in Italy.

Dutch labours bore some fruit in bringing George and the regent closer together between the end of March and the beginning of May 1716 when a Dutch ambassador on a special mission, Arent baron van Wassenaer, sieur de Duyvenvoorde, mediated in London – by carrying messages from one side to the other – between the French envoy Iberville and the British ministers, principally Townshend. By pressing Townshend to discuss the issue with George I, Duyvenvoorde elicited British terms for an alliance between the Maritime Powers and France: the alliance must be defensive, guaranteeing the French and the Protestant successions alike and the possessions of all three contracting parties according to the treaties of Utrecht; the Pretender must move ‘beyond the Alps’; French and British commissioners must be appointed to supervise the destruction of the Mardyk canals and fortifications lest the new port should replace the now unfortified Dunkirk as a possible haven for naval and privateering action against Britain. That the Dutch eagerly continued their negotiations with the regent on the basis of these demands, while paying too little attention to the British ministers' warning that George I wanted the alliance with the emperor signed before that with France, concerns us less here than an argument against the French alliance which Townshend put to Duyvenvoorde at an early stage of their conversations. A large standing army, the secretary postulated, would be necessary for years to checkmate the Pretender and his followers. If George concluded with France, the opposition in parliament could successfully argue that this army was no longer necessary: thus the alliance with the regent would turn out to be disadvantageous for the British government.27

Here we have a clue to one of the several misunderstandings which accumulated between Townshend and Walpole on the one hand and George, supported by Stanhope and Sunderland, on the other, during the king's absence from Britain from late July 1716 to mid-January 1717. The two ministers who stayed at home were suspected of dragging their feet in the matter of the French alliance which – once the treaty with the emperor had been signed on 5 June – became, for a variety of reasons, urgent for George as king and elector. Stanhope, travelling with the king and handling the details of the negotiations with the regent's representative, the abbé Dubois, both at The Hague and in Hanover, moved at the same pace as George. Townshend and Walpole lagged behind and every delay, accidental or not, in procuring the necessary full powers in correct form for the Anglo-French treaty (signed by Stanhope and Dubois on 9 October in Hanover, but not formally at The Hague by Dubois and Cadogan till 28 November), was interpreted by George as wilful opposition to himself and excessive deference either to the Townshend-Walpole concept of parliamentary management or to the Dutch Republic, or both. George, impatient to complete his alliance system, was determined to deny the Dutch any real influence on his negotiations. It was not the time-consuming task of getting resolutions passed by the various provinces of the Republic which worried him. Experience had taught that when Dutch statesmen wished to act speedily (as in the case of the troops provided for Britain to fight the ‘Fifteen’) they found ways and means to do so. But they had clearly shown that their objective – the maintenance of the status quo of the peace settlements of 1713–14 – was one which would hamper George's freedom of action in achieving formulations desirable for his policies as elector. Townshend, Robert Walpole and his brother Horatio (Townshend's under-secretary) were anxious to keep as much in step with the Dutch Republic as possible. Their overriding motive was to ensure that the Republic shared Britain's treaty commitments lest the Dutch should benefit from trading as a neutral in any war in which Britain became involved. But they also valued Anglo-Dutch friendship as part of the ‘Old System’, that of the Grand Alliances of the wars against Louis XIV after 1688 when the Maritime Powers and the emperor had worked in close cooperation.

The restoration of the Old System, and especially the healing of that breach with the emperor which had occurred in 1712 when Leibniz in Vienna had turned out propaganda pamphlets against the Tory ministry on Charles VI's behalf (as virulent as Swift's on the conduct of the Dutch and Britain's other allies),28 had been a joint objective of George, his British and his Hanoverian ministers throughout the first half of 1716. The first step was easy. An Anglo-Dutch treaty was signed in London on 6/17 February 1716. In form it was a simple renewal of alliances, which re-guaranteed the Protestant Succession and the territorial terms of the Utrecht settlement. The second step planned by the British ministers, that of inducing the emperor to accede to this alliance, proved impossible. It suited neither Charles VI's pride nor his ambitions in Italy where he resented having been robbed, as he put it, of Sicily and made to accept Sardinia in its place. More importantly, it did not suit George and his Hanoverian ministers, who were keen to leave the emperor some loophole for achieving his Italian objectives provided he looked kindly on Hanoverian goals of expansion in the Empire. A formal Imperial investiture for Hanover of the newly occupied Swedish provinces of Bremen and Verden was the ultimate aim, but even approval of the elector's participation in the Great Northern War would be welcome as a first earnest of the investiture to come.

Here we can discern another knot in the tangle which led to the crisis of 1716–17 between the king and the Townshend-Walpole group. Townshend was as anxious as the Dutch to avoid entanglements in Italy and the draft project which he and the other British ministers in January 1716 presented to count Otto Christoph von Volkra, Charles VI's special ambassador to London, left out the ominous Prétensions et Titres for which the emperor had desired a guarantee. The Republic's persistence in its simul-et-semel policy, however, gave the king and the Hanoverians a chance to take control. Both sets of ministers agreed that they could not wait for the Dutch and that a separate Anglo-Imperial alliance must be concluded before George left on his proposed summer visit to Hanover. The king pushed matters himself. On 30 May he ordered Townshend to approach Volkra; by 2 June agreement had been reached and on 5 June the treaty was signed on terms which were more favourable to Charles VI than to George I. It is significant that, though the treaty was one entered into by George solely in his capacity as king of Great Britain, Bernstorff and Bothmer, as well as Townshend, Stanhope and Marlborough had formed the team which negotiated with Volkra and Hoffmann; and also that the British ministers had reluctantly included in clause 2 a guarantee of the emperor's Honor, Dignitas et Jura as well as of his actual possessions. From the Hanoverian point of view this left scope for future support of Charles VI's Italian ambitions if he in return would further George's Hanoverian objectives. Townshend chose to look upon the treaty as foolproof against entanglements in Italy since the guarantee of the emperor's ‘honour, dignities and rights’ had been embedded in the very clause which emphasized the defensive character of the agreement. His interpretation, freely voiced, could be seen to work against George's intentions as elector.29 He thus became a less valuable secretary than Stanhope, who proved more dynamic, not hidebound, in his attitude to his master's foreign policy problems. As early as September 1716 Stanhope discussed with George and his Hanoverian ministers ways and means whereby a settlement of the Italian problems pleasing to the emperor could be achieved without provoking a European war: the main lines of what became known as the peace plan for the south were now sketched in. But the chief reason for the undermining of Townshend and Walpole's position was the rapid, and unexpected, developments in Baltic affairs during the summer and autumn of 1716. The speed of changing events was such that they caught the British ministers at home, beset with their own problems, unawares and increasingly incapable of following the king's reaction to these events. And George, whose Hanoverian policies had prospered greatly in the 1715 campaign, thanks to the ‘British navy’ trump card he held, was unprepared for the dilemmas of the 1716 campaign and became – like his German ministers – distinctly rattled.

Before his accession to the English throne, George had taken secret but decisive steps which sooner or later would bring him into conflict with Sweden. Charles XII's defeat at Poltava in the summer of 1709 and his subsequent, initially unintentional, stay in Turkey until the autumn of 1714, meant that Sweden's German provinces would be parcelled out. Though Hanover had been a firm ally of Sweden since the 1680s, there was – as we have seen – an older tradition of expansion at the expense of Sweden. It would have been against the most fundamental principle of Brunswick policy to let Denmark collect the duchies of Bremen and Verden as its share of the Swedish spoils: Danish control of the Elbe duchies would put a stranglehold on the electorate. For as long as possible George played a waiting game, balancing between the pro-Swedish party led by Görtz and the expansionist party, led by Bernstorff. He offered the Swedish council, in need of money to fit out the ships and equip the troops which Charles XII demanded, a sizable loan if he were permitted to occupy Bremen and Verden for a period of twenty-five years. The council was tempted but from Turkey Charles XII vetoed the plan: twenty-five years carried a danger of permanent cession. From this time onwards the anti-Swedish party in Hanover gained the upper hand and George might well have taken earlier positive action if the major part of his forces had not been committed to the War of the Spanish Succession. All he could do in 1712 when Frederik IV of Denmark occupied the duchy of Bremen was to move Hanoverian troops into the smaller duchy of Verden under an amicable agreement with the Swedish commander on the spot by which the elector signed a written promise to withdraw his forces as soon as the Danes evacuted Bremen. In 1713, during the congress of Brunswick called by the emperor in an attempt to mediate between Charles XII and his enemies, George (without the knowledge of the pro-Swedish party in Hanover) formulated his terms for entry into the anti-Swedish coalition: the occupation of Bremen and Verden by his troops, and guarantees that both duchies should become Hanoverian possessions at the peacemakings, before his own declaration of war against Sweden. George could hardly have expected compliance with his high demands; at this stage it was sufficient to state his price.30

The elector's promotion to king of Great Britain – celebrated with a fine medal showing the feet of the Saxon horse firmly planted in Hanover and its forelegs reaching to southern England – shifted the balance in George's favour. The Northern allies* badly wanted British naval help, directly or indirectly. George's son-in-law, Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, who had committed himself in June 1714 to Sweden's enemies by a treaty with tsar Peter, acted as a willing go-between. Already in November 1714 he and George agreed to collaborate in a share-out of Sweden's provinces in the Empire which would suit them and serve the Imperial ‘German mission’ which urged the expulsion from Germany of the victors of 1648: France in the south-west and Sweden in the north. Between April and October 1715 a series of separate treaties, Prusso-Hanoverian, Dano-Hanoverian, Prusso-Danish and Russo-Hanoverian, was made. The vital one for George was that of 2 May between himself as elector and Frederik IV whereby he agreed that Denmark should be permitted to absorb the duke of Holstein-Gottorp's lands in Sleswig in return for (a) Bremen being handed over to Hanover on payment of 300,000 Taler and (b) a guarantee for Hanover's possession of Bremen and Verden in perpetuum. His own declaration of war against Sweden was to follow within a fortnight of his troops being permitted into Bremen. George further bound himself to contribute Hanoverian troops to the siege of Wismar, and to pay Denmark stipulated subsidies (fixed at 50,000 Taler a quarter) for one year from May 1716 if the war against Sweden had not then come to an end. The other treaties ensured that Denmark's share of Sweden's German possessions was shifted east to Pomerania, with Stralsund and Rügen, up to the river Peene; that Prussia's part would be Pomerania beyond the Peene river; that tsar Peter would be permitted to keep his conquests of the Swedish East Baltic provinces (though some allies made specific guarantees of Karelia, Ingria, Estonia and Livonia while others, among them George, omitted a guarantee for Livonia). All the contracting parties guaranteed Bremen and Verden to Hanover.31

The very foundation of the arrangements made with George as elector was not formally embodied in any of the above treaties, but there is ample proof in the diplomatic documents of the period that George pledged his ‘royal word’ that the British navy should assist the conquest of Pomerania during the 1715 season. It was also understood that George would continue to contrive British naval help every year until Sweden was forced to comply with the terms of the treaties he had signed as elector. There has been much discussion about whether George kept his pledge. Some historians have claimed that he trampled roughshod over the British constitution to gain objectives that were solely Hanoverian; others that the British navy undertook its Baltic cruises to serve only British aims and was never used for electoral purposes, George being content to trick his allies with glib promises.³² In recent years all the relevant archives have been studied by Scandinavian, German, Russian, American and British scholars and the sum of their researches shows that George's behaviour was neither as black nor as white as in the respective simplistic views.³³ There was a large area of overlapping British-Hanoverian interests. The use of convoys to escort British merchantmen to the Russian-held ports of the East Baltic was essential in view of Britain's need for naval stores and after Charles XII's privateering ordinance of February 1715. Nor were the squadrons larger – as has sometimes been suggested – than were needed for convoying purposes.³⁴ Furthermore, most of George's British ministers held that British men-of-war in the Baltic would deter Sweden from making common cause with the Pretender. We now know that Charles XII never committed himself to give James Edward Stuart either military or naval support, but he was not above letting George believe that he might do so: a secondary objective of his invasions of Norway (in 1716 and 1718), though directed against Frederik IV of Denmark-Norway, was to tie down British warships to the defence of Scotland so that fewer might be sent to the Baltic.³⁵ It should also be taken into account that George, when he came to make his peace with Sweden as elector, took care to obtain commercial advantages for his British subjects.

On the other hand, it is clear that George used the British navy to further specific Hanoverian purposes and that his British ministers connived at his cooperation with his electoral allies. One of their main concerns was that the Dutch – who also sent men-of-war to protect their Baltic convoys – should do so in concert with the British or at least be thought to do so, both as a screen against criticism by parliament and to ensure that the Dutch did not steal a commercial march on the British. To achieve this goal (never perfectly accomplished between 1715 and 1719) British ministers, not excluding Townshend in 1715 and 1716, prevaricated, indulged in double talk and, on occasions, lied. They also gave promises which they and George later broke. In 1718, for instance, Stanhope promised in return for the Dutch commander's convoying the merchant ships of both nations to the East Baltic – thus leaving admiral Norris free to support the Danes with all his men-of-war – that the Republic would share all trade advantages which George might procure for Britain at the final peacemakings with Sweden. When the time came the Dutch were left out in the cold, king and minister justifying themselves by Dutch ‘selfishness’ and ‘unreasonableness’ in past and present affairs in the Baltic as elsewhere in Europe.36

If the British ministers of George I experienced most difficulties in bringing the Dutch into line, George himself had great trouble in making his electoral allies grasp his delicate position. The most critical year for George was 1715, when Charles XII was besieged in Stralsund by Danes, Prussians and Saxons and when the services of the British fleet were vital to prevent, in cooperation with the Danish fleet, Pomerania being reinforced and supplied from Sweden.

We promise the King of Prussia, [George wrote in that year] that the said squadron [i.e., the British ships sent to the Baltic] shall in every way second operations in Pomerania against Sweden, and hope his Prussian Majesty will believe Our word, that there will be no want in the fulfilling of this promise. But we could not give a written engagement, since the providing of the squadron pertains to us as King, and if We gave a written engagement we could not use our German Ministers, but We should have to give it by the hands of Our English ministers. ³⁷

This quotation, though well known, gives a clue to the solution adopted and also explains why historians who consult only British sources tend to assume that exclusively British interests were served. British commanders were given two sets of orders: one written which could bear scrutiny, one verbal which either amplified the sense in which such seemingly innocuous words and phrases as ‘reprisals’ and ‘chase the Swedes back to their ports that the British merchantmen may not be attacked’ could be interpreted to fulfil the king's ‘other purposes’; or they were referred to further instructions which would follow from the king. These were usually given by George's Hanoverian diplomats in Copenhagen by word of mouth, or transmitted in writing by one of George's Hanoverian ministers or via a British minister or diplomat prepared to work fully with George as elector.

Space does not permit (and I have in any case dealt with this elsewhere)* a detailed reconstruction of the ways in which in 1715 first the whole squadron under admiral Norris – without neglecting the interests of the merchantmen he convoyed – and then the eight men-of-war which he was ordered to detach on his own departure to join the Danish fleet under a ‘discreet officer, not of flag-rank’, contributed to the success of the anti-Swedish coalition. The role of the eight ships under captain Hopson during late September and October was crucial for the conquest of Rügen. Suffice it to say that Frederik IV, who was in no mood to relinquish his hold on Bremen unless the British naval help had been substantial, handed over that duchy to Hanover on 4/15 October. George, as elector, declared war on Sweden on that very day, and on 2 November the first Hanoverian contingent joined the Danes and the Prussians in their siege of Wismar.

The war, however, would have to be continued. George and his Hanoverian ministers had hoped that impetuous action by Charles XII would have led to a naval battle in which the British could participate as defenders of their convoy; but the Swedish king, having no wish to add to his enemies, had given orders that this was to be avoided. Moreover, the Swedish fleet which came too late to relieve Stralsund continued to Wismar where it landed men, food and ammunition, and Charles XII himself escaped from Stralsund in December to take command of the peninsular Swedish war effort in person. For the 1716 campaign the northern allies therefore planned an invasion of Scania, meant to force Charles XII to sue for peace on their terms. Frederik IV and tsar Peter were willing to provide the necessary cavalry and infantry, some transports were hired from Prussia, and George promised to let the British navy act in such a way that the naval superiority necessary for success should be achieved.³⁸

Townshend, who had given George no reason for complaint by his conduct during the 1715 campaign, did not obstruct the early stages of that of 1716. The fact that Charles XII had invaded Norway in February 1716 and maintained himself there till late summer caused speculation whether he might send help to James Edward Stuart in Scotland, either from Gothenburg or from west Norway if he penetrated that far. Townshend, embarrassed by his contretemps with the Dutch in 1715, left the negotiations with Danish and Russian missions sent to London in the spring of 1716 to George's Hanoverian ministers; but he connived at Norris's leaving before the end of May, more than a month before the Dutch squadron, and supported the invasion of Scania once it became clear Charles XII would not capitulate. His real concern was, however, with the re-establishment of peace and with the balance of power; he wished that the Anglo-Dutch squadrons could be used to enforce a settlement that did not leave Russia too powerful.39 The tsar held all Sweden's east Baltic provinces with Narva, Reval and Riga – ports important to British trade. He had acted highhandedly towards Danzig, a free city whose independence ranked high among British priorities. He controlled Courland more or less directly* and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the extent that Augustus of Saxony-Poland had been reduced to a powerless puppet. In April 1716 he had married his niece, Katarine Ivanovna, to duke Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and put Russian troops at the duke's disposal in his long-standing struggle with the Mecklenburg nobility.⁴⁰

It was therefore somewhat ironic that George's distrust of Townshend was caused by the secretary's refusal to share the violent anti-Russian feeling aroused in the king and his Hanoverian ministers at the tsar's abandonment on 19 September of the Scania plan and his proposal (in official expectation that the project might be revived for the 1717 season) that his army should winter in the duchy of Mecklenburg. This was too close to Hanover for comfort. Much has been made of the fact that Bernstorff, and other noblemen in electoral service, possessed estates in Mecklenburg which had suffered from the billeting of Russian soldiers while the Scania invasion forces gathered. Yet tsar Peter had specifically promised to exempt these estates from the 1716–17 winter quartering. Undoubtedly the military support which Russia was giving duke Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg created conflict, but greater issues were at stake. The tsar wished to make Mecklenburg a client state and planned to by-pass the Sound by cutting a canal from the Baltic to the North Sea which would permit direct Russian trade with the west of Europe. Such plans cut across Hanoverian hopes of developing Bremen and Verden for the electorate's benefit. There was also a more general concern lest the tsar should use his great military power to gain a permanent footing in the Empire. The very fact that he had refused to carry out the Scania descent bred suspicion. From the tsar's point of view the postponement made some sense. Charles XII's maintaining himself so long in Norway had tied down a good part of the Danish navy which did not join the allied fleet (including Norris's squadron) till 8 August.* The season was far advanced and tsar Peter's reconnaisance of the well-fortified Swedish coast convinced him that the odds were in Charles XII's favour. Norris, directed from Hanover, tried hard to get the invasion moving. When this proved impossible, George and his Hanoverian ministers toyed with the idea of keeping Norris in the Baltic for the winter and more or less forcing the tsar (with Danish help) to quarter his troops ‘beyond the Vistula’.⁴¹ Stanhope and Sunderland do not seem to have dissuaded George from this risky venture, which collapsed, however, when the Danes decided not to break with the tsar in the hope of cooperation in 1717. Stanhope contented himself with reporting to Townshend that the central motive of George's foreign policy was his desire to ‘divert the Tsar from attempts which would immediately throw all Germany into a flame’.⁴² It was left to Townshend, and Robert Walpole, to protest. On 4 October (NS) the former wrote to Stanhope

My chief design is to beg you not to consent to Sir John Norris staying any longer than the first of November in the Baltic, nor to the king's engaging openly in the affair about the Tsar. This Northern war has been managed so stupidly, that it will be our ruin—would it not therefore be right for the king to think immediately how to make peace with Sweden even tho' he shou'd be obliged to make some sacrifice in obtaining it.

Here was the rub. Whether Stanhope showed the letter to the king or whether he, or Sunderland, only passed on Townshend's sentiments in general, George took umbrage that his British secretary should advise him to sacrifice the Hanoverian gains achieved in 1715.⁴³

Hanover's falling out with tsar Peter made the conclusion of the French alliance a more urgent matter for George: he needed France's guarantees for Bremen and Verden now that the Russian underwriting had become doubtful. Again circumstances – or rather the combination of circumstances – worked in Townshend's disfavour. He had gone along with the decision that the Dutch should be denied a share in setting the terms for the French alliance and had even sent Horatio Walpole ostensible instructions (at variance with the real ones) to show ‘in confidence’ to Dutch statesmen in order to hide that very decision.⁴⁴ He had been kept informed of the Stanhope-Dubois negotiations at The Hague at the end of July and had approved them. He was also correct in his argument that the procedural difficulties which Dubois made in October-November emanated more from the French statesman than from Whitehall. With Stanhope's signature of 6 October on the document safe in his pocket, it was in Dubois' interest to wait for the Republic to sign* and thus spare France the charge of having betrayed the Dutch.⁴⁵ In the meantime, however, Stanhope acquired a hold on the Anglo-French negotiations and on George's gratitude. The secretary for the south, not as irascible as Townshend, was more interested in politics on a Europe-wide scale, had great skill in negotiations and was fertile in expedients leading to worthwhile compromises. He enjoyed his sparring with the subtle Dubois. The Frenchman, knowing that Stanhope (with whom he was acquainted) would accompany George to Hanover, spun a story to explain his own presence at The Hague just as Stanhope and Bernstorff passed through the town: he had been ordered by his doctor to take the waters at Valenciennes and had been tempted to Leiden by an important book sale. He would like the pleasure of calling on Stanhope. Having fixed their interview for 8 o'clock in the morning of 29 July, Stanhope took pleasure in being blunt and came straight to the point: ‘Vous et mois ferions plus en une heur qu'il ne s'en ferait en six mois dans des conferences’. Advantages must accrue to both Great Britain and Hanover. Dubois expressed his conviction that the problems of the Pretender and Mardyk were easy of solution and hinted broadly that expedients could be found whereby France would guarantee Bremen and Verden to George. It was agreed that Dubois should, after consultation with the regent in Paris, travel secretly to Hanover so as not to cause George embarrassment with the emperor. By 19 August Dubois was lodged in Stanhope's own apartments.

Both men have left reports (fuller in Dubois' case) of their negotiations. Each prides himself on clever ploys; Stanhope on having made Dubois drunk and loquacious, Dubois on his pretence of being taken suddenly ill so that he might listen from a bed in an adjoining room, through a door left slightly ajar, to Stanhope's conversation with George's Hanoverian ministers. Comparison between the two accounts shows that neither took in the other and that both had their wits about them at all times. On the whole, Stanhope got the better bargain. The Pretender was to go ‘beyond the Alps’;† the Mardyk details would be settled in London (on Dubois' assurance that all would be made easy); Louis XIV's alliance with Sweden (of April 1715) would be sacrificed; and the French guarantee of the Protestant succession would be so worded that George's possessions as elector, including Bremen and Verden, would be comprised within it. The French counterdemand, that all the peace treaties signed at Utrecht should be guaranteed in full, could not be conceded since these had included Victor Amadeus's possession of Sicily. George and the Hanoverians did not want to be robbed of the loophole for a resettlement of Italian issues which they had created by the phrase Honor, Dignitas et Jura in the Anglo-Imperial treaty of 1716. An expedient, suggested by Stanhope, solved the problem. Not the full treaties, but only those clauses which dealt with the possessions of the Maritime Powers and France and with the French and British successions, would be guaranteed. The loophole which permitted changes in Italy was not closed, while the regent achieved his main personal objective, the promise of military support if Philip V of Spain should go back on his renunciation of his rights to inherit the French crown. Philippe d'Orléans was a conscientious, loyal regent and a fond uncle to Louis XV; but he was ambitious enough for his own branch of the royal family to wish to make sure – if Louis XV did not leave heirs of his own body – of the place in the French succession which the peace of Utrecht had settled on him and his descendants.

At midnight on 24 August Dubois and Stanhope signed the alliance preliminaries. They were immediately sent to Whitehall by express messenger with certain queries designed to test the opinion of the lords of the council, and especially Townshend, as to whether a formal signature without the Dutch would not be preferable to risking discussion of sensitive issues which might cause delays and, possibly, undo the Anglo-French agreement. Townshend's response was negative, partly because he did not see the need for any great hurry, partly because he had a policy of his own for the north that he wished to further. He authorized Horatio Walpole to make the terms of the preliminaries known in general to the Dutch; but Horatio Walpole, on his own responsibility and without instructions, went further and presented the terms as ‘conditional upon Dutch consent’. The ensuing misunderstandings and the prospect of further delays caused intense irritation in Hanover. Townshend was clearly out of touch with the situation as George saw it, and the moment reports were received that the French diplomat in London, Iberville, had consented (with amazing rapidity, it was thought) to measures which in the opinion of British naval experts would effectively prevent Mardyk from serving as a port for men-of-war and privateers, George acted. On 9 October he ordered Stanhope to sign with Dubois, and Townshend's dismissal as secretary of state for the north was a foregone conclusion.46

THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS

It was not the ‘Dutch business’, nor the French alliance (which Townshend wanted), which brought George to this decision and to the ministerial crisis which followed, but a divergence of views on the balance of power in the north which came into the full light of day only in the crucial months of August and September 1716. In the spring and early summer Townshend had voiced his concern lest a successful invasion of Scania should upset the balance of power. He had found little comfort in the Hanoverian argument that Russian preponderance would prove transient: the tsarevich, he was reminded, was ‘a Muscovite’ and in the next reign Russia would turn its back on Europe. What the secretary for the north wanted, and what seemed feasible once the tsar had backed out of the 1716 invasion of Sweden, was for the Maritime Powers and the emperor to agree on peace terms which would re-establish a balance between Sweden and Russia and then force all belligerents in the Great Northern War to accept them: parliament, he argued as late at 16 October (OS) 1716, would be willing to bear Britain's share of the costs involved in this.47 To George such advice, and Townshend's harping on the glory which would come to him as king of Great Britain if he mediated peace in the north, was at this time irrelevant and unrealistic. The emperor was at war with the Turks; the Dutch Republic was unwilling to take risks; while for the electorate of Hanover, Bremen and Verden were at stake and a Russian invasion from Mecklenburg was a distinct possibility unless George could obtain a binding agreement with France. The differing attitudes of the king and Townshend, which led to George's decision to remove him from his secretaryship,* where he could not but be concerned with foreign policy problems, led to a conflict which became political and even constitutional: a struggle by the king for his right to fill the ministerial posts as he thought best.

The struggle was not trivial and not – as is so often assumed – based merely on personal rivalries. It was natural for Townshend and Robert Walpole to feel that they had been betrayed by Hanoverian enemies, by Stanhope and Sunderland cooperating with these enemies, and by ill-wishers in England who pictured them as subservient to the prince of Wales and thus ‘unfaithful’ to the absent king. It is easy to see why historians have stressed the personal aspect since Townshend's and Walpole's printed letters⁴⁸ – casting about to find where they had offended – are full of such conjectures and of explanations for minor things that had gone wrong between them and the king, e.g., the delay in payment for German troops (those of Saxe-Gotha and of Münster) bespoke before the Fifteen rebellion had been defeated, their advice that George should not seek to draw private benefit from the sale of land in St Christopher, and their reputed wooing of the prince of Wales during his father's absence. But for those conversant with the unprinted documents of the period, there are significant clues even in these letters to the real issues. Furthermore the Schulenburg correspondence with Görtz from 12 February (NS) 1717 onwards enables us to follow and throws new light on the way the conflict developed and spread from day to day once George had returned to London.

George liked and respected Townshend and he was aware, like many of his Hanoverian ministers and courtiers, of the sterling worth of Robert Walpole. Walpole's reputation as a manager of the House of Commons was already well known, while Stanhope – ‘on his own admission’, Schulenburg assures us – knew that this was not his own forte.49 Moreover, Walpole had also been a good administrator as chancellor of the exchequer and first commissioner of the treasury since October 1715. It was in the king's interest to keep all three men in his ministry. Stanhope had shown himself a secretary of state after George's own heart: frank and independent in speech, but understanding of George's dual responsibilities as elector and king. He was already at work, stimulated by his talks with Dubois, on a peace plan for the south to reconcile the emperor and Spain, and his general conversations with George's Hanoverian ministers, including Görtz, looked forward to a time when a peace plan for the north could be constructed.⁵⁰

Once the Anglo-French agreement had resolved the immediate problem, everybody's efforts – bar, possibly, Sunderland's – were directed towards the preservation of the ministry. George, essentially fair-minded and just, accepted Horatio Walpole's explanations during his visit to Hanover in late October of the several misunderstandings connected with the French alliance and the various domestic issues, and apologized for any unjust suspicions he may have held of Townshend's behaviour.⁵¹ Yet there was clearly an element of rivalry between Stanhope and Sunderland on the one hand and Townshend and Robert Walpole on the other. Sunderland had not forgiven the brothers-in-law* for his own relegation to the lord lieutenancy of Ireland, and the suggestion that this would be a fitting post for Townshend, leaving him in the cabinet but without a right to interfere in foreign policy, may well have derived from him. But Stanhope, though naturally pleased at his growing independence from Townshend, differed from him also in his concept of a minister's duty to the king. There is no specific proof that his military past determined or even influenced this, but I consider this likely: it certainly made it easier for him to grasp George's problems in the Great Northern War. Conversely, the British ministers' feeling of betrayal at Stanhope's lack of total support is explicable. The dignified and moving letter which Robert Walpole wrote to Stanhope when the Irish post was suggested for Townshend, his pleading with his old friend to put things right and play fair with his colleagues at home, makes an immediate impact even today and channels the reader's sympathy to the home team. Stanhope's defence is lame in comparison, but he makes his point – valid at the time – that ministers, having given their advice, should not put themselves above the king. If Townshend should refuse Ireland, he argued, this would be tantamount to a demand that he be ‘viceroy over father, son and their three kingdoms’. As for the dues of friendship, Stanhope wrote, ‘I think more is not required from a man in behalf of his friend than in behalf of himself: I can't tell the king I won't serve him unless …’52

George journeyed back to England eager and determined to work for reconciliation and harmony within the council and the cabinet. He had sent messages to that effect via Horatio Walpole when he permitted him to leave the Republic and return to London so that he would not have to break his word by signing the French alliance without the States General. Dutch statesmen, informed by Townshend of the crisis, took the opportunity during the king's brief stay in the Republic to stress the European importance of British tempers being calmed; and from The Hague on 16 January (NS) George let Robert Walpole know – via Stanhope – that if Townshend would pay him the ‘mark of duty and obedience’ of accepting the lord lieutenancy for half a year or more, the king would at the end of that period give him a post more commensurate with his own wishes.⁵³ On his arrival at St James's, George called Townshend and Stanhope together in the closet and spoke to them fortement for an hour and a half; and Townshend, on being explicitly assured that he need not go to Ireland while lord lieutenant, kissed hands on the appointment. It says something of the strength of the ties of friendship which still bound the two secretaries, and also of George's powers of persuasion, that Townshend forced himself to swallow his pride and accept Stanhope in his own place as premier secretary. To make Townshend and Walpole forgive Sunderland proved harder, and George's success, won by threats as well as appeals to the urgency of the king's business, proved more apparent than real. He let Stanhope administer the threat in its crudest form, with Cadogan present as a witness: Townshend and Walpole were told that unless they reached an accommodation with the lord privy seal within three days, Sunderland would be given the secretaryship for the north while Stanhope would be put at the head of the treasury. George, though he hid the iron fist in a velvet glove, spoke to Townshend along similar lines and gave all his ministers his ‘ordre du Roy’ to work together without animosity and cabals.54 Bernstorff and Bothmer did their best to promote reconciliation. The former spoke in favour of Townshend, the latter gave a dinner to celebrate the promise of Townshend and Walpole to cooperate with Sunderland. But court gossip had it that there were dangers ahead. Schulenburg told Görtz that Sunderland was ‘hated’ by the two brothers-in-law and that, though they had agreed to work with him, they were determined to show their distrust of him by neither visiting him nor receiving his visits. That Sunderland found an excuse to absent himself from the dinner which Stanhope in his turn gave on 23 February to celebrate the re-established harmony was also taken as a bad omen. By 2/13 March the council divided into two ‘partis assez echauffés’ against one another, unable to agree on the drafting of the king's speech for the opening of parliament, bickering at this and every following council meeting.⁵⁵ ‘What one lot of ministers proposes the other opposes,’ became an established pattern; but it is significant that Sunderland, not Stanhope, was reckoned head of the group opposed to Townshend and Walpole.⁵⁶ At court, men speculated on what parti would win the tussle for the king's confidence, while George – still hoping to keep both united in a king's party – tried throughout March and early April to ride the storm by consultations in the closet with individual ministers and by avoiding any comment outside the closet that might seem to favour either group.⁵⁷ At the supper table his talk was of indifferent matters, of stories from the French court culled from Liselotte's letters to the princess of Wales, and he continued to show himself to be in the ‘meilleure humeur du monde’. Schulenburg was reduced to reporting the small change of court scandal: we learn of the plight of the poor lady-in-waiting in the circle round the princess of Wales during a drawing room reception, glued to her place by etiquette, who had to urinate where she stood – a puddle ‘the size of a table to seat ten’ threatened to lap the shoes of the princess and transfixed the eyes of the courtiers present.⁵⁸

Judging by straws in the wind, such as the amount of time ministers spent with George in the closet, Schulenburg expected that Townshend and Walpole would win. He knew for a fact that Townshend was fully re-established in the king's confidence and prophesied that if only he would show ‘un peu de menagement’ for Sunderland's party, he would restore his position as George's most influential British minister. But if Townshend was too demanding, if – as rumoured – he wanted to force Sunderland to quit the ministry, then Schulenburg was convinced he would lose: the king would not be dictated to. Schulenburg does not seem to have known Townshend well, but he met Walpole during this period (at a dinner given by general Hammerstein) and followed proceedings in parliament closely. He had a great admiration for Robert Walpole's handling of the House of Commons and was well aware of the fact that the name of the firm was Townshend and Walpole: if Townshend decided to go, or was dismissed, Walpole would resign.59

It was at this delicate stage, the last week in March and the first week of April according to the New Style, that the interference of the prince of Wales in politics, independent of his father and in part in open opposition to him, aggravated the situation. The prince had been somewhat restive before his father's departure from Hanover. He knew of the talks that had taken place between George I and his British ministers on how the government was to be carried out during the king's absence and felt humiliated that his father did not trust him with full powers. It would indeed have been strange if George had done so. What the king visualized was the kind of arrangement which operated for Hanover when he himself was in England: minor matters to be settled in London, everything else to be referred to himself. The prince was to preside over cabinet meetings, but he had no control over important appointments, and could not create peers. The dislike of his son which is usually read into this arrangement does not stand up to examination: George's letter of instructions for the prince is affectionate in tone and sensible in approach. The word regent is used (the prince's official title being the age-old ‘guardian and lieutenant of the realm’); all imaginable regard is promised for his recommendations to posts and places and for his advice in general; assurances are given that the king is perfectly persuaded that he might without the least risk confide to his son the full and entire exercise of the powers he has reserved for himself, but for the sake of precedence it has been necessary to set an example lest in the future great inconveniences to our posterity should follow.* The king was well aware of the need to train Georg August for his future role; he could not but benefit from discussions with Townshend and Walpole and from presiding at cabinet meetings. The prince was specifically given the right of appointment of officers in the army up to a certain rank. He had powers of suspension for all officers and governors of towns, places and fortresses in Great Britain, Ireland and the plantations on complaints of misconduct. He could issue pardons in all cases but those of high treason, and even here he was empowered to grant respites. He was also permitted to authorize payments for secret service and bounty money and to open a parliamentary session if this should be judged necessary, though not to sign any public act without the king's approbation and express consent. All in all, a sensible arrangement, reminiscent of George's introduction to business at a similar age.

On one point, however, the prince of Wales had cause for resentment: just before his departure for Hanover, the king forced the dismissal of Argyll as the prince's groom of the stole. Argyll had lost favour with the ministry after his dilatory campaign in Scotland and it was natural that Cadogan, and not Argyll, should be made (in all but name) commander-in-chief when Marlborough's first stroke (November 1716) proved serious enough to make him incapable of exercising his duties. Argyll's annoyance at being passed over was such that George I's ministers took alarm. They would in any case have preferred to keep the king in England for the summer and autumn of 1716 and had pleaded long and insistently that he forego his visit to Hanover, ‘for the time being’. They had, however, robbed themselves of compulsive powers since that clause in the Act of Settlement which laid down that the ruler needed parliament's permission to leave his royal dominions had – in the emotional atmosphere of the Fifteen – been repealed to please George and show the nation's gratitude for his share in the speedy victory over the Jacobites. Unless Argyll was dismissed, Townshend and Walpole argued, he might intrigue against them, backed by the prince, once the king was in his electorate. George therefore had to take responsibility for Argyll's dismissal and, via Bernstorff, he resorted to threats to quieten the prince's protests at losing a servant to whom he was devoted. The thing could not be undone, the prince was told: unless he acquiesced, the king would call Ernst August to England to act as guardian of the realm. This threat brought Georg August to heel; he pronounced himself ‘resolved to sacrifice everything to please and live well with the king’.60

Superficially things went better during George's absence than Townshend and Walpole had expected. They met with ‘civil reception’ from the prince of Wales who showed himself keen to discuss business with them. For their part, they went out of their way to be polite to Argyll (who remained at Hampton Court throughout the summer in spite of his dismissal) and his brother Islay. The suspicions of a compact among the four which this caused in Sunderland's mind were unjustified.* On the contrary, Townshend and Walpole remained alert and reported to Hanover signs which pointed to a plan (behind which they saw Argyll) for the prince ‘to keep up an interest of his own in Parliament independent of the King's’. They continued to hope, however, that it would prove possible ‘to bring the Prince into other and better measures’.61

Unfortunately, by the time George returned it was too late. The prince and his wife had set their course and nothing would make them alter it by a single degree. The break in the royal family was postponed until December 1717 because George I strained every nerve to bring home to the young couple the serious effects that disunity would have on public business. He tried appeals and appeasement, was concerned to gain time and avoided threats. Policy issues of importance to George were at stake. He had promised his first privy council and a large deputation of non-conformist ministers in the autumn of 1714 that he would repeal two statutes of the reign of queen Anne: (i) the Tory amendment of 1711 to the Occasional Conformity Act, which forced dissenters to take the sacrament more than once a year, according to the rites of the Church of England, if they wished to hold office or a commission in the army or navy, and (ii) the Schism Act passed in 1714 which in theory if not in practice impaired their freedom to teach in schools and dissenting academies. Since the Fifteen had absorbed the government's energies, action on these two matters had been postponed until the king's return from Hanover. It soon became known, however, that the prince of Wales would side with those bishops who opposed freeing the dissenters from their disabilities in the hope of ingratiating himself – it was assumed – with the Anglicans.⁶² The prince again tried to show that he was more British in sentiment than his father when, in January 1717, the Swedish envoy Gyllenborg was arrested, his papers seized, and extracts of his correspondence published to demonstrate the Jacobite contacts of himself and Charles XII's financial and diplomatic adviser, Georg Heinrich Freiherr von Görtz (a kinsman of George's Hanoverian minister Friedrich Wilhelm). George certainly hoped to make capital out of the ‘Gyllenborg plot’: parliament was to be asked for a large money supply as well as for a total prohibition of British trade with Sweden. By contrast, Georg August, wishing ‘to make himself agreeable to the Nation’, let it be known that he ‘thought little of Bremen and Verden’.⁶³

The prince's opposition to his father was at first clandestine. He absented himself from parliament while encouraging his supporters in both Houses to vote against the ministry. His absence, however, was generally interpreted as a sign of a rift between father and son. Most damaging was his staying away from cabinet meetings, since this brought dissension into the very heart of the government.64 The princess of Wales was known to dislike Townshend, and this probably explains George I's choice of Stanhope for his emissary to the princess late in February 1717. The secretary appealed to her on the king's behalf to use her influence with her husband to make him return to cabinet and parliament. Stanhope lost his temper as the interview proceeded. He reminded the princess that her husband was a subject of George I, ‘just as much as I myself’, and that for his part – though he had been one of those who helped to settle £100,000 a year directly on the prince – he would not scruple to bring about a change by act of parliament to make this income dependent on the king's grace. The princess remained cool and teased him mercilessly: would he perhaps add his father-in-law's great diamond* to the new act to tempt the prince?⁶⁵

Stanhope's hot temper was also in evidence in the critical debates in parliament on 8 and 9 April 1717 when supply was asked so that George I could concert measures with foreign princes and states to prevent future Swedish designs on Britain. Townshend now clearly worked against the king in the Lords, and Walpole – though he personally voted with the court – chose not to exercise his full influence over the Commons. Whether the brothers-in-law did so because Townshend had decided to show George I the amount of power they could wield is uncertain, but it seems likely. Their behaviour caused the king nerve-racking days, especially as the prince's men in Lords and Commons failed to support the maison. On the first day of the debate Stanhope, in the heat of the moment, used expressions that the Commons deemed menacing. He apologized, but was plainly told by the country members (the Gentilhommes Campagnards of Schulenburg's letters) that it was no good his trying to force them to pay up: if he used such methods, he showed that he did not need a parliament and they might as well stay at home. During the debate George's Hanoverian ministers were accused of using subterfuges to push their German war against Sweden with British money to conserve Bremen and Verden, which were of no importance to Britain. The court was grateful that Stanhope on 8 April scraped home with fifteen votes – including that of Robert Walpole himself – but it was realized that Walpole had secretly encouraged his followers to defy the crown and that the prince of Wales had done likewise. The Tories, Schulenburg reported, gloated as if over a military victory since fifty-three Whigs had voted with them against the court. George immediately sent Bernstorff to his son to express his surprise at the behaviour of his Gens. Georg August was evasive. He informed Bernstorff that he had given orders that his household and clients should either vote with the court or leave the respective chambers, and he therefore denied that he had ‘acted against the king’.66

QUARREL IN THE ROYAL FAMILY

The next day, 9 April, the position worsened. The prince of Wales's men abstained as a body. Townshend and Walpole were clearly not bothering to pull their weight, for in spite of Walpole's vote for George I's government, le party du Roy in a single day saw its majority diminished by eleven, plummeting from fifteen to a mere four. Stanhope has often been blamed for this, but an indiscretion of his, though much publicized, had repercussions abroad rather than at home. In an attempt to show that George's friendship was valued in Europe, he stressed in his speech that the regent of France had defied ‘his own Council and the [French] Nation’ to enter into an alliance with Great Britain – a remark not likely to be relished by Philippe d'Orléans since it gave his opponents a chance to criticize him and his adviser Dubois. The domestic situation, however, was worrying since Bernstorff's visit to the prince of Wales could be seen not to have achieved its objective. ‘Voilà une rupture ouverte entre Père et le Fils, et une grande division parmy les Whigs du Parlement’, Schulenburg commented. Townshend would clearly have to go. His defiance in having voted against the passing of the Mutiny bill – the very foundation of the king's annual permission to keep a standing army – could not be condoned; but Schulenburg still hoped that Walpole might remain and that George, anxious to introduce a general amnesty for Jacobites involved in the rebellion, might get this measure through, weather the session and then ‘lie low till next winter’. While still in the process of writing his long report to Görtz of the happenings of the past two days, Schulenburg heard that Townshend would be dismissed from the lord lieutenancy that very evening and before he finished his letter he had been informed that Walpole's resignation would come on the morrow: ‘Voila ce Parlement perdu pour le Roy’.

If this summing-up was unduly pessimistic, the months until parliament rose on 15 July proved difficult and unpleasant. The king did his best not to antagonize Townshend and Walpole needlessly. He thanked the former, in writing and by word of mouth, for his past services and told the latter in a separate interview in the closet that he would like to keep him in office as long as he would bien servir. Walpole, as expected, returned the answer that he could not work with ceux qui etoient en place and resigned.⁶⁷ So did Orford of the admiralty; Methuen, Stanhope's successor as secretary for the south; Pulteney, the secretary-at-war since the accession; and – as soon as he returned to town – the lord steward, the duke of Devonshire, who now became the nominal leader of a group variously referred to by later historians as the dissident Whigs or the Walpolian Whigs. The members of this group often acted with the Tories against the government, but the most dangerous support for the rebels, from the point of view of the court, derived from the group's collaboration with the prince of Wales. The names of the above-named members of the group (bar that of Pulteney) figure in the right-hand column of a list drawn up by Schulenburg for Görtz's guidance, headed Le Prince, The left-hand column, that of Le Roi, names the dukes of Kingston (made lord privy seal in 1718), Kent (lord steward 1716–19), Roxburghe (secretary of state for Scotland since December 1716), Sunderland, nominated as secretary of state for the north while remaining lord president of the council, Marlborough, and Stanhope, now first commissioner of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer.68 Every one of the group, apart from Stanhope, had some influence over votes in the Commons, and it is significant that Bolton's successor as lord chamberlain, the duke of Newcastle, had great powers of patronage and knew how to use them skilfully. All the same the king's party was weak in the Commons and the ministry was short of able men. The important post of secretary of state for the south was filled by Joseph Addison, a fine writer but a man without administrative experience in high office.

In the hope of avoiding conflict, king and ministry accepted a cut in the army, and agreed that the bills to grant social justice to the dissenters, a measure of toleration for Roman Catholics and Jews, and reform of the universities would have to be postponed till easier times. Even so, George had to hear harsh words reported from the Commons. Heneage Finch, a member for Surrey, had shouted that it was a shame that Britain should be governed by ‘a Mecklenburg squire’; Pulteney – though he later apologized to George for having been carried away in the heat of the debate – cried out that the present king would never love Britain.⁶⁹ Walpole, anxious to demonstrate – as his biographer has shown – both his worth and his nuisance value, would let through only those bills which he considered essential. The general amnesty bill was passed; the consolidation of the national debt and the establishment of the sinking fund, which Walpole himself had planned in the summer of 1717, got through when Stanhope introduced this measure; supply was voted, much to the court's relief, there having been concern lest Walpole would make it impossible for George to carry out his foreign policy objectives.70 But for the rest Walpole opposed for the sake of opposition even measures of which he had wholeheartedly approved when in office; the Septennial bill was criticized and the impeachment process against Oxford – on which Walpole had been keener than anyone else – halted.⁷¹ Accusations of malversation of funds, of corruption, and every other charge that could be thought of, came hot and fast against those in office, skilfully presented by men who had inside knowledge. The king was not spared, Pulteney hinting broadly that he could tell many a tale of German objectives being put first and German ministers listened to where British should have had the first say. Stanhope bore the brunt of the session and found it intolerable. He was well aware of his lack of skill in managing the Commons and told the king (as we now know, thanks to the Schulenburg letters) before parliament was prorogued that he must either be permitted to go to the House of Lords or resign. George and Sunderland did their best to persuade him to soldier on for just one more session; but when he pleaded on health grounds for cette Grace, the king gave in and created him viscount Mahon and later earl Stanhope.

Stanhope's elevation raised the problem of the management of the Commons for the next session. Hugh Boscawen, comptroller of the household, with whom George got on well – he had been a member of the king's entourage for Hanover in 1716 – had long experience as an M.P. and was now approached. He was offered an annual pension of £4,000 if he would lead the government in the Commons but declined on the grounds that no ministerial post which would give him weight and credit to grapple with Walpole went with the offer. In private he told Schulenburg that the situation in the Commons was worse than the ministers had let the king know: he clearly had no stomach for the task George wished him to take on.⁷²

In the circumstances king and ministry felt bound to reach an understanding with at least some of their opponents and, when this failed, decided to undermine them as best they could. Contact was made with Bolingbroke in France to forestall any attempt by Walpole to recruit this brilliant Tory for his own group. Politicians and courtiers as yet uncommitted were assiduously cultivated. The greatest coup would be to win back the prince of Wales. In late March Stanhope had taken tea with princess Caroline in the hope of using her as a go-between, and from April onwards regular negotiations were carried on via Bernstorff and Bothmer who were at times called in by the prince and princess and at other times sent to the young couple by the king. The problem was that George had very little to offer. When the prince complained of the ‘shocking things’ Sunderland had said about him, the secretary offered to write a submissive letter apologizing if he had in any way offended the prince, but he could not, as un honnête homme, confess himself a liar when he knew himself innocent. In this George supported him. Conversely, any suggestion that the prince should sacrifice ‘some of his friends’ was regarded by Georg August as a capitulation to the king which he refused out of hand. Melusine found herself unable to help. The princess was, as always, gracious and pleasant to her but proved unwilling to influence her husband in the direction George wanted. The prince, though he seems to have been on quite good terms with La Schulenburg and showed her ‘every respect’ even after his father's death, chose at this time to keep his distance.73

Unable to achieve a speedy accommodement with the prince, George had to sacrifice his plan to go to Hanover for the summer and autumn. This, quite apart from the king's personal disappointment, meant that European negotiations, and especially those concerning the Northern War, which could more easily have been pursued on the continent, would have to be carried out by emissaries, public and clandestine, coming to Britain. The decision was now taken to make the king's summer stay at Hampton Court splendid beyond anything that had so far been his custom. This would enable him to advertise his support for his ministry and show his determination to govern. He also hoped to turn waverers into supporters of ‘the king's party’. Throughout the more than three months at Hampton Court there was a regular weekly ‘cabinet-day’, Thursday, and this day as well as Sunday was a public day when the king kept open table for guests he wished to flatter and influence, usually for some dozen to twenty, but at times for thirty, forty and even fifty.⁷⁴ The king was generous with his time as well as his money. Though busy with negotiations which he in part handled alone – even without the help of Bernstorff – he dined with his British gentlemen-in-waiting every day, walked in the gardens with them and with visitors, arranged for morning levées and special ‘ladies’ days', and attended evening receptions at which he mingled and talked freely to his guests. In short, he behaved royally to the delight of his subjects. There was music, plays, billiards and card games. The celebrations on 2 August, for the anniversary of his accession, formed the climax of the entertainments. After chapel there was a reception in the Raphael cartoon gallery, which was packed, and in the evening the king led the princess of Wales to the pavilion at the end of the terrace for dancing and to the card tables. On non-public days George was freer to follow his ordinary routine of work and to take his suppers with Melusine and Hanoverian courtiers. Alexander Pope once espied the king in Hampton Court gardens with no other company than his vice-chamberlain and with the evening birdsong the only music.75

The Devonshire Whig group stayed away. There had been great fear at court that the prince and princess of Wales would do the same, and there was corresponding relief when they arrived at Hampton Court.

The princess was in the king's company more than the prince; she walked in the gardens with George while the prince tended to avoid his father. Georg August did not take part in the one shoot that George organized at the end of August but went out with his own people. It was realized that he no longer contemplated reconciliation, his friends having flattered him that his party could topple George's ministry when parliament reconvened in November. This, at least, was what court and ministry believed; and George's British advisers now counselled sterner measures since ‘la voye de douceur’, which the king had hitherto pursued, had not had the desired effect. Sunderland in particular was for seeing what threats might do, and the idea of turning the prince out of the royal palaces was mooted.⁷⁶ The king, however, wished to postpone a confrontation for as long as possible. The princess of Wales was expecting a child in the late autumn and the whole royal family hoped for a boy, to make up for the disappointment of the stillborn son in November 1716. It was noticed, however, that the king behaved to Georg August in a way which denoted displeasure – the kind of half-measure which may explain why, when king, George II remembered his father as a weak character.⁷⁷

Early in September, though it was kept secret even from the British ministers, George's Hanoverian courtiers had a sharp fright. The king had been active, busy and cheerful throughout the summer. He had taken the cure with bottled Eger water (from Richmond) to make up for missing the opportunity of German spa treatment and joked that if only his British ministers would follow his example they would feel more optimistic about the outcome of the present crisis. But, without confiding in others, he suffered from time to time from haemorrhoids (as did George II when older); and late in August symptoms developed which seemed to indicate an anal fistula. Louis XIV's operation for this complaint in 1686 was still remembered and its dangers appreciated. George was wary of doctors both for himself and for his family. Though Schulenburg wrote to Görtz of the grand peur of the few in the know, and of their prayers that God would preserve the king, a good deal of planning and subterfuge was needed before the Hanoverian courtiers nerved themselves to authorize Mehemet to recommend a medical examination. Fortunately examination and tests established that there was no fistula* and George resumed his activities though he refrained from hunting for a while.⁷⁸ In his enforced tranquillity he took the opportunity to visit country estates not too far from Hampton Court; he admired, for instance, the magnificent furniture at lord Orkney's house near Windsor and dined with Newcastle at Claremont. In October, after the princess of Wales had returned to town, he visited Newmarket for the racing season where he also displayed lavish hospitality. He went out of his way to be affable to the many politicians and courtiers who congregated there, though he turned his back on Townshend and Robert Walpole.⁷⁹ This was part of a deliberate policy of letting them know that he disapproved of their politics and to give warning that the only way they could hope to get back – during his lifetime – was for them to ‘come into his measures’.⁸⁰

*    *    *

The conflict which broke out in the royal family after the birth to the prince and princess of Wales of a son, bien fait and apparently healthy† on 20 October, was therefore to some extent in the air and even engineered by king and ministry, determined to break the link between the prince of Wales and the real leaders of the opposition in parliament, Townshend and Walpole, who – it was rumoured at court – had boasted that they would be able to prevent the king sending a fleet to the Baltic for the 1718 season.⁸¹ It was natural that the opposition should rally round the heir to the throne; but if this heir would no longer be permitted to concert policies directed against George I's interests – if he were, for instance, exiled from the royal palaces and thus shown to be in disgrace – might not Walpole, and possibly Townshend too, be forced to reconsider their attitudes? The ministry was keener than the king to find an excuse for the quarrel to come into the open. When the name of the new grandchild was being discussed George, without consulting his British ministers, deferred to his daughter-in-law's wish that ‘William’ should be chosen rather than ‘George’; while the ministers insisted that since the king was one of the godfathers the name must be George. As a compromise the king decided on George William and sent the duke of Newcastle, the lord chamberlain, with a message to this effect. The duke was also involved in the next stage of the quarrel which arose over whether the duke should be one of the child's godfathers. The prince and princess wanted the child's grand-uncle, Ernst August, created duke of York in 1716, as godfather – a bachelor who might take an interest in the boy and possibly make him his heir. The British ministers stressed that it was customary in England for the lord chamberlain to be one of the godfathers; and the princess's compromise suggestion, that Newcastle should act at the ceremony as proxy for Ernst August, found no favour. Caroline next requested a postponement of the baptism, presumably in the hope of finding a way out; but there was now no one close to George willing to work for peace. The Hanoverian ministers agreed that it was necessary to go to extremes with a prince of Wales qui ne garde plus aucune mesure de respect pour le Roy; and the Hanoverian courtiers, never easy about George's health after the fistula scare, urged a quick decision and a short parliamentary session so that the king could depart for Hanover in the spring of 1718 to take the cure.82

It seems clear, therefore, that policy considerations brought about the third and final stage of events, and that deliberate use was made of the Newcastle incident at the christening ceremony.* The Schulenburg letters amplify our knowledge of this third stage. After the christening, which took place in the evening of 28 November, the prince of Wales, in accordance with etiquette, escorted his father some steps outside the room. When he returned, the prince took the lord chamberlain aside and accused him of having acted ‘en cette affaire en malhonnête homme’. He used other ‘strong, injurious expressions’, among which may well have been the legendary ‘I'll find you’, interpreted as ‘I'll fight you’. The next morning George I sent a deputation to his son to ascertain, first, whether he had made an offensive slur on Newcastle's honour and, second, whether he wanted to fight a duel with the lord chamberlain. The deputation consisted of the dukes of Roxburghe, Kent and Kingston. The prince agreed that he had spoken the words complained of, but denied that he wished to challenge Newcastle to a duel, the distance in rank between himself and the duke making this unthinkable. From the report of this deputation in the Chevening Papers, and from a further meeting with the prince of Cowper, Kingston and Kent acting on George's behalf (reported by Schulenburg), it is clear that the prince was enraged that the king had not given him the liberty of choosing the godparents for his own son. He felt it necessary to remind the duke of Newcastle, a mere subject, that he had shown a lack of respect to himself in agreeing to stand godfather against his, the prince's, will; he could very well have made some excuse to avoid doing so. The prince expressed his respect for his father and was clearly surprised at the way in which the quarrel had escalated. When the king told him on 2 December to leave St James's, he refused to obey until George had given him the command in his own writing. The king for his part had expected the princess to stay, at least for the time being, since he had commanded the prince to leave his children in the royal care, and was disagreeably surprised on being told that Caroline had left with her husband.83 She was given access to the three princesses and the baby prince, all of whom were left in the care of the countess zu Schaumburg-Lippe. But the king took umbrage when the prince, without asking permission and without calling on himself, visited the children. He forbade him to do so in future without giving due notice.⁸⁴ Georg August appealed to the law to have his children returned to his care, but the decision went against him: the royal grandchildren, according to English law, belonged to the crown and the prince would therefore have to leave their education in George I's hands.⁸⁵

The prince and princess of Wales found temporary refuge in a rented house in Leicester Square where they later bought Leicester House, which became their permanent home until George I's death.⁸⁶ The expulsion caused heartbreak for Caroline and created problems for families, Hanoverian and British, who wished to be loyal to both the king and the young couple once George let it be known that he did not wish to receive those who frequented the prince's court. Particularly hard hit were Caroline's ladies-in-waiting, lady Cowper and Mrs Clayton, who for the sake of their husbands' careers had, officially, to follow the king's ruling. Subterfuges were, however, employed to keep in contact, including letters by safe hands and meetings at masked balls.⁸⁷ Sympathy for the prince and princess, especially because they had been forced to leave their children at St James's, was general in London since nearly everyone was unaware of the steps the king had taken to permit Caroline clandestine access. William Cowper resigned his post as lord chancellor in 1718, supposedly over the issue of the royal grandchildren being left in the king's care; but from Cowper's own papers (and those of his wife) it would seem that private affairs, added to a dislike of the king's and Stanhope's religious tolerance policy, caused his resignation. George, who valued Cowper highly, attempted during a long talk in the closet to make him change his mind. When he refused, the king rewarded his past services with an earldom, while Bernstorff, Bothmer, Stanhope, Sunderland and Cadogan gave a dinner in his honour to show that they bore him no ill will.⁸⁸

The strain of the family quarrel told on George I. His health began to give serious cause for concern. He felt the shame and sorrow of the public quarrel with his son and daughter-in-law, and was at this time also saddened by the grief of his half-sister for her husband who had died in November 1717. The ordinary business, the important foreign policy negotiations in which he was involved, interested and absorbed him and was therefore not burdensome; but the ‘solicitations’ – the clamouring for office – of his ministers for themselves and their relatives and clients bothered him at this time. He did not feel physically ill, or at least he never mentioned any one symptom which would give the courtiers a clue to what was wrong, but they argued that ‘l'abondance des affaires fâcheuses’ had undermined his health to the extent that they regarded a visit to Hanover essential for 1718, the earlier in the spring the better. To Schulenburg the king seemed ‘quite altered’, and there is some pictorial evidence of a suffering face, arresting in its unhappiness, from Kneller's hand, from this period.89

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Politically the catharsis of November-December 1717 strengthened the king's party and the king's hand in dealing with his ministry. The prince did not, as generally expected, speak against the Mutiny bill but walked out of the chamber of the House of Lords before the vote was taken. This lost him sympathy with those Tories who had contemplated making him their leader now that George I's amnesty had reconciled them to the Hanoverian succession. When Townshend and Walpole left the government, the Tories had hoped that George I would turn to them but, as his ministry remained exclusively Whig under Stanhope and Sunderland, they had next pinned their hopes on the prince of Wales.⁹⁰ To the court, however, the prince's restraint seemed a good omen, and it was also assumed that Townshend and Walpole had been rendered plus sage by the showdown between father and son.⁹¹ Plans were therefore laid to bring at least some of the dissident Whigs and/or the prince's men back into the king's party. Secret soundings were taken with Walpole, Argyll, Devonshire and others. Results were not achieved until 1719 and 1720; yet already in the early spring of 1718 there was a general feeling within the ministry that the expulsion of the prince of Wales from St James's had, by forcing him into the open, weakened his position.⁹² In this they were justified. Georg August's court made a sorry and dull impression and could in no way compete with that which George I kept up whether at St James's, Kensington or Hampton Court until the reconciliation of the royal family in 1720. Only after that date did Leicester House begin to shine, the king being happy to escape expense and the fatigue of being contantly on show.

By March-April 1718 George I felt strong enough to get his own way in reshaping the ministry. He wanted Stanhope back in the secretaryship for the north and a more experienced administrator than Addison in that of the south. James Craggs, secretary-at-war since April 1717, was easily slotted into Addison's post. Though Stanhope was only too glad to leave the treasury and return officially to where he belonged, at the heart of foreign affairs, Sunderland put a price on his move. He wished to obtain a post he much coveted, that of the king's groom of the stole, in return for giving up the secretaryship. George would not hear of it, and in the end, though ‘avec bien de la peine’, Sunderland was persuaded to take one of the places* Stanhope vacated, that of first commissioner of the treasury. His rumoured expectation, about this time, of marrying a niece of la Schulenburg also came to naught.⁹³

While Sunderland, a man of higher rank than Stanhope, was the undoubted leader of the group opposing Townshend and Walpole in the cabinet in 1717, it would be misleading to think of him (as is usually done) as the one and only head of the new ministry. Intelligent and witty though he was, he was not in personal favour with George; nor did he stand sufficiently high in the king's respect since – as Bothmer put it – he did ‘not excel in foreign affairs’.⁹⁴ From the purely domestic British point of view Sunderland was clearly of greater importance than Stanhope. He carried more weight in parliament, controlled the greater share of patronage (subject to George's approval), and had stronger political ambitions: the peerage bill, for instance, is unthinkable without Sunderland's intense concern to secure himself against future revenge by the prince of Wales. But as far as the king was concerned, Stanhope was undoubtedly his most important and influential minister from April 1717 (and arguably from October 1716) till his death in February 1721. And during the years the ‘Stanhope ministry’ lasted, cooperation between king and minister influenced the political scene of Europe so significantly that they form a watershed in British as in European history.

* It is possible that this work became the model for the face and figure of the several equestrian statues of George. Of these, at least two are extant: one in the grounds of Stowe School; the other (originally set up in Dublin and now rescued from a junk-yard) put in position in front of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham.

* That is, a treaty which allowed the Southern Netherlands to be used as a barrier against France by Dutch garrisons, at Austrian expense, in strategic fortresses.

* Note also George's decision that income from the forfeited Jacobite estates, up to a sum of £20,000, be allocated to provide schools in the Highlands; the rest to be used to reduce the public debt of Britain (Treasury Books, vol. XXX, I).

* James married in 1719 and his son Charles (the young Pretender) was born in 1720.

† The duke of Lorraine having refused him refuge on his return from Scotland, James stayed at various places in France while negotiating for asylum elsewhere.

* Frederik IV of Denmark–Norway, Augustus of Saxony–Poland and tsar Peter of Russia.

* See my Charles XII of Sweden (1968), pp. 403–06.

* In 1710 his niece Anna Ivanovna had married the duke of Courland; she became a widow early in 1711 and from then onwards Peter governed through her.

* Norris remained with the coalition fleet throughout the season, though detaching some British men-of-war to help the Dutch commander convoy the combined Anglo-Dutch merchant fleets to and from the East Baltic ports.

* By some minor concessions to the Republic, Dubois was able to obtain Dutch accession to a Triple Alliance on 4 January 1717; once this had been signed Dubois, Châteauneuf and Cadogan burnt the Anglo-French treaty of 28 November which they had succeeded in keeping secret: see my Diplomatic Relations, pp. 132–43.

† In 1717 he left Avignon, the papal enclave in France, for Rome.

* This was done on 12 December (OS) 1716; Stanhope replaced him in the northern department.

* Townshend had married Dorothy Walpole in 1713.

* The italicized portions of this paragraph are direct quotes from the king's letter to his ‘Dearest Son’ dated 5 July (OS) 1716 from St James's; translated from the French and printed by William Coxe, Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, vol. I (1816 ed.) 282–84.

* Sunderland is said to have made much of this supposed compact when he arrived in Hanover in September 1716, but even if this were so, I am not convinced that it had any great effect on George. It is certain, however, that Sunderland's suspicions – which he hinted at in a letter to Townshend of 11 November 1716 – caused bad blood between himself and the secretary.

* Thomas Pitt, known as ‘Diamond Pitt’, had returned from the East Indies with a fabulous diamond which eventually found its way into the collection of the regent of France.

* The examination revealed ‘un morceau de chair en emponge qui s'etoit formé en dehors autour des hemeroides et faisoit couler tant de matière; it was opened (by purging) and it was then ascertained that there was no fistula.

† The autopsy in February 1718 showed that he had been bora with the growth (a polyp) in the heart which caused his death.

* In the standard accounts the issue is depicted as a crisis originating in Newcastle's nervous reaction when verbally attacked by the prince.

* The other, that of chancellor of the exchequer, was given to Aislabie.