VIII

The watershed 1718–21

LESSONS LEARNT

The three crises of 1715–18 had beneficial, if at times unexpected, repercussions in Britain and resulted in that measure of stability which enabled George I and Stanhope to play so significant a role in European affairs after 1718. The Fifteen rebellion showed that the Hanoverian dynasty, even if it was not generally popular, was there to stay, since it was much preferred to the unrest and anarchy implicit in James Edward Stuart's claim to the crown. George I's amnesty,* which went back to the date of his accession, helped reconcile the English Tories to the house of Hanover and made possible a distinction between the still numerous Tories and the relatively few firm Jacobites. All along George and his successive ministries had cause to be grateful to the sixteen Scottish representative lords sitting in Britain's upper chamber and the forty-five Scottish members of the lower house; and the king's leniency towards the Scottish Jacobites who had taken up arms, coupled with their disillusionment at the resources of James III, pacified the Scots in general for three decades. For Scotland the Hanoverian dynasty was in one sense peculiarly fitted to make the union work: a dynasty alien to both countries, if disliked by both, was yet looked upon as more likely to be fair to both.¹

The aftermath of the Fifteen produced an important constitutional change, the Septennial Act. It was passed for the convenience of a ministry which did not want to risk the election due in 1718: the country was considered too excitable to produce a Whig majority. But there was much truth in the ministry's argument that the triennial parliaments of the post-1689 years had proved disruptive and expensive. The benefit of holding elections, with their time-consuming if essential settling of contested results, at longer intervals was immediately appreciated; and constitutional historians are now agreed that the Septennial Act contributed to greater political stability² and to the growth of the influence of the House of Commons: since its members, far outnumbering those of the upper house, gained greatly in experience and self-assurance with the longer time-span of each parliament.3 In retrospect the decision of Townshend and Walpole to go into opposition has also been reckoned a blessing. Between 1717 and 1720 the dissident Whigs, so it is now argued, helped to establish the modern concept of His Majesty's loyal opposition. The Tories could not do this since they – in spite of the amnesty – were tainted with potential Jacobitism, while the Walpolian Whigs could not be suspected of fundamental disloyalty to the Hanoverian dynasty.⁴ George I, naturally enough, did not regard the dissident Whigs in this light, although he was well aware of their commitment to the house of Hanover. Since his son's opposition became politically significant only after the Walpolian Whigs had begun collaborating with the prince, George looked on them as disloyal to himself and his ministry. The prince of Wales had too few followers in the Lords and Commons to wreak havoc with government policies. But with skilled politicians of the Townshend-Walpole stamp in the prince's party, the heir to the throne provided a focus which the opposition to George I's ministry needed and used as long as it proved convenient for their purposes.

This was nothing new. It followed, rather than established, a tradition which had operated in parliament whenever there was an adult heir residing in the country. Those who had opposed William III and his policies had rallied round princess Anne. Nor did the process stop when George II succeeded his father: in his turn he was faced with the intractable problem of the opposition to his ministries using and being made use of by Frederick, prince of Wales.⁵ The alternative government implied in the modern concept of His Majesty's loyal opposition was, however, largely missing during George I's reign. Robert Walpole opposed the king and his ministry in order to demonstrate his political power in the House of Commons and force George to restore him to office and the inner cabinet. If this could be achieved, he was quite willing to force the prince of Wales to become reconciled, at least superficially, to his father. He did so by April 1720, but he did not come back with an alternative government, that of ‘the opposition’, being content for himself and a few others to share power with George's ministry-in-being. But while Walpole always knew where he was going, Townshend and George I learnt valuable lessons between 1717 and 1720. Townshend was basically more indifferent to office than Walpole and far prouder.* We have seen that he was the real wrecker of the ministry in 1717 when he proved determined not to work with Sunderland, whom he no longer trusted. His bluff defence of the British point of view in Baltic issues is very attractive. It should be remembered, however, that it was not on a foreign policy issue that he resigned, but on a trial of strength concerning the composition of George's ministry. Opposition taught him, first, that he liked office better than he had assumed and, second, that he must take George's prejudices and principles into account. When he came back, first as lord president of the council and then (after Stanhope's death) as secretary of state for the north, he was a wilier creature than before though still less flexible and Europe-minded than Stanhope.

George I learnt from both Townshend and Walpole, and modified his attitude accordingly. Townshend's delineation of a specifically British point of view helped the king to a greater understanding of and respect for British susceptibilities; and Walpole, by the demonstration of his power in the House of Commons, taught George that what he needed was not so much ‘managers’ in parliament (as in William III's and Anne's reigns) as a ‘mediator’ between himself and the Commons in the shape of a minister who had the confidence both of the lower house and of the king.

George's behaviour during the crises of 1715–18 deserves a more balanced judgment than it is usually given. He steered a wise, moderate course in 1715–16 and gained a more stable position not only at home but abroad: as he had weathered the rebellion he was clearly a European ally to be valued. After his momentary panic in Hanover in the early autumn of 1716 he tried hard, in cooperation with Stanhope and his Hanoverian advisers, to show men he liked and respected that they ought not to resign for reasons of pride and personal pique. He did not mind admitting his own mistakes and showed maturity and sense in being willing to apologize to Townshend for suspicions wrongly entertained. When he failed, he had recourse to tougher tactics which – once they paid off – were replaced by genuine cooperation which lasted for the rest of his life. In 1720 Townshend and Walpole had to come back on the king's terms, but when the reconciliation (which George – contrary to standard accounts – used both his British and Hanoverian advisers to bring about)6 had taken place, the king put past differences behind him and his working relationship with both was exceptionally harmonious. When the quarrel with his son had to come into the open – mainly because ministerial and family problems fused – the king behaved with as much moderation and kindness as the situation permitted. Faced with the fact that the princess of Wales immediately and unexpectedly left her children to go with her husband, he agreed that the countess of Schaumburg-Lippe (who wished to end the Verwirrung – the confusion – in the royal family) should visit Caroline in her new home every evening to give her news of the three daughters and the baby boy. When the infant was taken ill, he was sent in the countess's care to Kensington Palace, which provided neutral ground where both parents could see him. The countess, who looked after the child for four weeks, day and night, notes that the prince and princess suffered much during his illness and at his death and that the king was herzlich betrübt. Long before the official reconciliation the princess was allowed to come to St James's ‘every night’ to see her daughters while George, whose interest and pleasure in the granddaughters was strong, kept discreetly out of sight.7

The king turned down the wild and vindictive schemes of men like Sunderland who suggested that the prince should be transported on a British man-of-war to the plantations overseas as punishment for his revolt. Letters embodying such advice were found by George II and queen Caroline in 1727, when they went through the late king's papers. In 1735 Caroline showed two of the letters, or read extracts from them,* to lord Hervey, and our knowledge of them derives from his memoirs.⁸ Why George I preserved these letters is a matter for conjecture. It is possible that he wished to justify himself posthumously to his son, the only person who had the right to examine the papers in the closet upon the king's death. I would suggest that this is likely because of the difficulty George experienced in achieving a genuine reconciliation with his son in 1720. Matters gradually improved after that date. The pleasure of the young couple's court at the restoration of ‘unison’ had its effect on the prince and princess. The king shared their joy at the birth of another son in 1721, christened William – in itself a sign of reconciliation if we recall the trouble over naming George William. Though the three elder daughters remained in the king's care at St James's, George took the sting out of this by permitting his son and daughter-in-law to bring up William and Mary and Louisa (born in 1723 and 1724) at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge. For their part, the prince and princess honoured the baptism of Trudchen's first son and consented to the inclusion of August among his names. The severe illnesses of the duchess of Kendal in 1724 and of the princess Amalie in 1726, as well as the loss of Trudchen† in the same year, also contributed to the retying of family bonds. There is evidence, both in 1725 and in 1727, that George was much moved at parting from the prince and princess and their children before leaving for Hanover.⁹

But in 1720 it had not been easy. His son's rebellion had awakened bitter memories in George of the Hanoverian Prinzenstreit when he had been a powerless spectator. It is curious that the words he directed to Georg August – ‘c'est le Monde renversé quand le Fils veut prescrire au Père quel Pouvoir il doit luy donner’ – should be so reminiscent of those which his father had written to Friedrich August in 1685. The similarity of outlook, fashioned by the prevailing idea of the responsibility of rulers to the dynasty, may be a sufficient explanation for this; but it is possible that George had read Ernst August's letter either in draft or in copy, or had seen the original when Gustchen's belongings were sent back to Hanover. In any case George added a sentence specifically slanted to the English experience : ‘Je voudrais savoir quel Droit vous avez de faire des Messages à la Chambre contre mon Intention’.10* What George seems to have longed for at the time of their reconciliation was a word of affection, a blotting out of the past troubles which – as we have seen – he had tried to minimize for as long as possible. But Georg August – though secretly pleased to have his disgrace ended – was determined to be correct but distant when he came to the closet on 23 April to make his submission to his father. Our only account of this private interview derives from what the prince of Wales told his wife. It is clear that the king was moved and could speak only in broken sentences, and the only phrase Georg August caught (or wanted to catch) was the accusatory Votre conduite, votre conduite, repeated several times. They made no real contact and the next day – the day of the formal reconciliation between the king and the dissident Whigs – it was noticed that George and his son avoided speaking to each other when they met in public.¹¹ George became convinced that his son had been dragged unwillingly to St James's by Townshend and Walpole, and this rankled. To his daughter, the queen of Prussia, he could not forbear pointing out how much more honourable it would have been if Georg August had sought a reconciliation of his own free will.¹²

The element of self-righteousness in this letter – the only one of his letters to Sophia Dorothea to show this trait – is not uncharacteristic of George when he had been given years to ponder over what seemed to him an unnecessary wrong done him, one which had wasted energies needed elsewhere. We meet it also in his gruff private comment on Townshend and Walpole in 1720. When the two, with the other dissident Whigs of former cabinet rank, waited on the king on 24 April, they received a brief but pleasant speech of welcome in answer to the address of their nominal leader, Devonshire – George expressing his genuine pleasure at the restored harmony. But to Mary, countess Cowper, who paid him a compliment on the improved state of affairs, he (as we have noted in another context) grumbled, ‘What did they go away for? It was their own Faults’.

EUROPEAN PEACE PLANS

Between 1717 and 1720 lay years of great endeavour and great success for George in the field of European politics, the main concern of rulers and ministers in the early modern period. What is so striking about the achievements is the range of vision involved in the peace plan for the south and the peace plan for the north. Only the first was brought to full fruition along lines laid down by George I and his advisers in cooperation with Philippe d'Orléans and his chief minister, Dubois. Though the northern settlement was only partially realized (mainly because of the temporary incapacity of British and French governments during the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi crash), it demonstrates a breadth of European concern which successfully counteracted exclusively German aspirations. On the evidence hitherto available it has been difficult, not to say impossible, to estimate George I's share in these achievements. It has therefore been assumed, even by scholars of the period, that England's contributions to the important experiments in solving European problems, by a system of interlocking guarantees embodying mutual gains and mutual concessions, owe everything to Stanhope and nothing to George; while for Hanoverian policies Bernstorff has been reckoned to ‘rule’ George rather than the other way round.

Luckily, access to the Görtz and Bernstorff archives has produced new material which permits an evaluation of George I's participation in the formulation of British and Hanoverian foreign policies for the crucial years 1717 to 1720. The king can now be seen to have been at the very centre of decision-making in foreign policy during these years, at times carrying on important negotiations virtually single-handed. The documentation for these years is so detailed as to render it unlikely that his role in the foreign policy field was a lesser one at any other time in his reign. Paradoxically, we owe most of this documentation to the fact that George was not able to leave England during the summer and autumn either in 1717 or in 1718. If he had been on the continent in either year, his foreign policy would have been conducted through conferences, thus leaving little, if any, proof of his personal intervention and control. The geographical position of Hanover in Europe made for ease of communication and speedy posts. Emissaries could come and go more secretly than in England, and the men – whether Hanoverian or British – with whom the king wished to discuss issues were on the spot.

Like all historical material which has survived, there is an element of chance involved. If Bernstorff's correspondence with the Saxon field marshal and minister Jakob Heinrich Graf von Flemming had not been preserved more fully than any other in the Bernstorff archives after 1705, we should know much less of George's methods in foreign policy negotiations than will be shown below; but it was the very fact that George and Bernstorff were in England in 1717 which made it necessary for Flemming, acting on behalf of his master Augustus of Saxony-Poland, to put in writing his request of 27 September (NS) that a Hanoverian emissary be sent to Dresden for confidential talks, since it was impossible to reveal his master's thoughts to the English resident in Saxony who was ‘purement anglois’.13 If George and Bernstorff had been in Hanover in 1717 it would have been easy enough for Flemming to send a discreet person there; nor would it have been necessary to continue the correspondence into 1718 if the king had been able to stay in his electorate for part of that year. As far as the Schulenburg correspondence with Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz is concerned, we also owe something to the accident of history in that Görtz proved so avid a treasurer of his papers and that the papers themselves escaped destruction and are now deposited in the Darmstadt archives; but, again, if George had not stayed in England through all of 1717 and 1718 there would have been no need for Schulenburg to report the comings of emissaries like Fabrice and Dubois and the discussions which took place during their visits: Görtz himself would have been at the centre of affairs in Hanover where, if the royal visits had materialized as planned, the negotiations would have been conducted. As things turned out, the Schulenburg correspondence now confirms and amplifies the Fabrice memoirs¹⁴ on the subject of George's northern policies in 1717 and 1718. Fabrice wrote later and often without giving specific dates (though he based his narrative on journals, letters and notes); Schulenburg wrote contemporaneously with Fabrice's two visits (between August 1717 and February 1718) to George I. Furthermore, he reported royal reactions and intentions which were not fully communicated to Fabrice; and he kept Görtz up to date with the king's thinking on Great Northern War issues also during February–June 1718 when Fabrice was absent on a mission to Sweden.* Similarly Schulenburg enriches and expands, as far as George I's attitudes and decisions are concerned, what we know of Dubois' two stays in England, one in 1717, and the other in 1717–18, from the French statesman's reports to the regent and from other sources.¹⁵

George I's negotiations on northern and southern problems intertwined once he had concluded the British alliance with France in October 1716. At times one area provided a crisis which drove the other temporarily into the background; but throughout the rest of the regent's lifetime (he died in 1723) collaboration with France remained a linch-pin of George's policy and the alliance remained important even after that date. Naturally the cooperation presented some difficulties, particularly in its early stages. The regent found several of his advisers opposed to the alliance with Britain, and Stanhope's faux pas in the House of Commons on 9 April 1717 hampered the progress of the peace plan for the south for months.16 For his part, George was suspicious of French efforts to include Prussia in the Triple Alliance between the Maritime Powers and France: Friedrich Wilhelm had taken Russia's part rather than Hanover's in the tense situation created by the abandonment of the 1716 invasion plan.¹⁷ But during the first half of 1717 George I received several proofs of the regent's willingness to help him in northern affairs, while unforeseen events in the second half of the year (in particular Philip V's invasion of Sardinia) eased the problems which both he and the regent faced in promoting the peace plan for the south.

It is not strange that the affairs of the north should have been uppermost in the minds of George I and his ministers in the first half of 1717. Most of the Russian troops were still in Mecklenburg, and the tsar's prolonged sojourn in the west, first in Amsterdam from December 1716 till March 1717, then in France from May till July 1717, then once more back in the Dutch Republic, created uneasiness : what was he up to? The exploitation by George and his ministry of the Gyllenborg plot had to some extent misfired. The Dutch proved unwilling to impose a prohibition of trade with Sweden to match that agreed to by the British parliament, and frustrated all British attempts to get access to the papers of Charles XII's adviser Georg Heinrich von Görtz which – it was hoped in Whitehall – would provide clearer proof than the Gyllenborg papers of Swedish support for the Jacobites. Görtz and his secretary were put in provisional Dutch custody, ‘on account of the friendship and treaties of the Republic with George I’, but their papers were left undisturbed. Moreover, the supervision of Görtz was lax enough to permit him to carry on negotiations with Russian, Saxon and Prussian statesmen and diplomats even before his release (without previous consultation with Britain) on 2 August 1717.¹⁸ And though the Republic – fearing an Anglo-Swedish war – decided not to send a convoy to the Baltic during the 1717 season, Swedish iron shipped by Dutch merchantmen or bought by Dutch middlemen in Königsberg was resold, at a profit, to British manufacturers who could not do without this raw material.19

Clearly Sweden would not be brought to its knees by the combined Anglo-Dutch economic pressure which George had hoped for in 1717. Nor did Charles XII take the expected aggressive anti-British stance, and parliamentary criticism of the Baltic policy of George and his ministry grew rather than diminished. The Swedish king behaved sensibly, having no desire to find himself at war with Britain. He did not publicly protest, as the London diplomatic corps had predicted,²⁰ that the arrest of Gyllenborg was a breach of international law, but disavowed – through the good offices of the regent of France – both Gyllenborg and Görtz. At the same time he threw his diplomatic net widely to initiate peace negotiations with as many members of the anti-Swedish coalition as possible.²¹ Already in his Turkey years Charles XII had laid down the main lines of a policy of simultaneous negotiations with his enemies to see which could be bought off against temporary sacrifice of territory; he would even accept total sacrifice of land in return for watertight arrangements whereby Sweden obtained military, naval and financial help to fight the rest of the coalition.²² Not only Georg Heinrich von Görtz, but a fair number of Swedish, Polish and German officials and officers had been engaged in promoting this policy since Charles's return to his own dominions. The tension and discord among his enemies after the abandonment of the Scania project in 1716 naturally eased the task of Swedish diplomacy.²³

The peace feelers did not exclude George I in his electoral capacity. Indeed, for Charles XII George I – because of his British naval and financial resources – became as vital a target in the peace offensive as tsar Peter of Russia: Denmark-Norway, Prussia, and Saxony-Poland were now far less powerful than the two giants of the coalition. For contact with George, Charles used two routes of approach. The first was via Georg Heinrich's kinsman, Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz, who was friendly with the former Swedish governor of Bremen and Verden, count Mauritz Vellingk,²⁴ and in touch with Conrad Ranck, a Swedish officer in Hessian service who had become influential as the go-between in Friedrich of Hesse's successful negotiations for the hand of Charles XII's sister, Ulrika Eleonora.²⁵ The second route, which became the more important one because of George's fear that Ranck might pass information to the tsar, was built round the contacts of the elder Fabrice with Mauritz Vellingk. Here the young Friedrich Ernst von Fabrice became the principal messenger and, at a later date, chief negotiator. He was persona grata with Charles XII, having been part of the royal entourage in Turkey from June 1710 onwards in his capacity as a Holstein-Gottorp diplomat. In that capacity he also had an entrée to Georg Heinrich von Görtz and was thus doubly useful to George I in the race for a northern peace.26

Fabrice's first visit to George I took place in late August (the 23rd or the 24th August seems the most likely date of his arrival, to judge from the Schulenburg correspondence) at Hampton Court. After a brief meeting with Bernstorff and Bothmer in the late afternoon, his audience with the king was fixed for 11 o'clock at night – ‘in the little gallery’ so that they might be alone and undisturbed. There the two walked up and down for two hours, Fabrice informing George of the Swedish offers of peace and George giving him instructions how to test these offers more closely. Fabrice managed to stall the curiosity of La Kielmansegg, whom he met accidentally while waiting to see George I; but to the embarrassment of Bernstorff – who hoped to hide the tension within the royal family – he insisted on seeing the prince of Wales the next morning to tell him the purpose of his visit. He allowed himself a day or two in London, disguised in a black wig, to see the sights (including St James's) and to pursue an amorous adventure or two, before hurrying back to Hanover.²⁷ Some six weeks elapsed while couriers passed between Germany, Sweden and England to press Charles XII beyond his offer of alienation of Bremen and Verden for a limited period only (twenty to twenty-five years at the most) in return for a military – preferably naval – and financial commitment to work against Sweden's enemies.

These terms (transmitted by Fabrice during his August visit) were unacceptable to George for a variety of reasons. His own position to some extent eased once tsar Peter had begun in July the evacuation of his troops from Mecklenburg, thanks mainly to French diplomatic pressure.²⁸ This was the second service* which Philippe d'Orléans rendered George, achieved by his promising the tsar not to renew France's subsidy treaty of 1715 with Sweden when it expired in April 1718. Its termination was already implied in the Stanhope-Dubois agreement of 1716, but the regent skilfully used it during the tsar's visit to Paris and also gained Russian acceptance of French mediation in the Great Northern War.²⁹ At the same time, unbeknown to either George or Peter, the regent softened the blow to Charles XII by paying outstanding arrears of subsidies and promising Sweden support in keeping a foothold in the Empire.³⁰

With less fear of a Russian invasion of Hanover from Mecklenburg, George did not worry excessively at his own failure to achieve a reconciliation with the tsar. He had sent admiral Norris, well liked by Peter, to negotiate with the tsar on his return to the Republic from France. It was soon made clear that the cost of regaining Russian friendship was prohibitive: the British fleet could not possibly be put at the tsar's disposal for an invasion of Sweden from Finland.31 Yet the Jacobite influence in Peter's entourage was making itself felt, and – until the death of Charles XII in late 1718 – there was always a danger that the separate Russo-Swedish peace for which the Jacobites worked might bring with it joint action against George as elector and as king.³² George had to calculate carefully. Dare he run the risk of letting the tsar win the race for peace with Sweden? Fabrice, on his return to England in October 1717, gave hopes of the outright cession of part of Bremen and Verden; and correspondence carried on between Fabrice and Georg Heinrich von Görtz during Fabrice's second, and longer, stay in England brought further encouragement. Bernstorff was never as eager for peace with Sweden, which he regarded as precipitate, as were Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz and the two Fabrices. George's decision, after long discussions alone with Fabrice, was to steer a middle course.³³ This was based on his own long experience of diplomatic negotiations and of his close study of the present situation. He did not believe, given Charles XII's Protestant stance and his disavowal of the Gyllenborg-Görtz deal with the Jacobites in 1716,* that the Swedish king would openly support the Pretender. Nor, in view of the tough terms which Charles asked of Hanover, did he reckon it likely that Sweden would make sacrifices in the East Baltic sufficient to satisfy the tsar. He tended therefore to discount rumours of an imminent Russo-Swedish peace with its dangers of a James Edward Stuart invasion better sustained than that of 1715–16. He agreed, however, to send Friedrich Ernst von Fabrice to Sweden early in 1718 to pursue the Hanoverian peace negotiations. This mission was unofficial: if the young man succeeded he could be properly accredited; if the Swedes continued their dilatory game his visit could be presented as a private one.³⁴

Nor did George neglect any other opening that might help him to counteract Russian initiatives. He eagerly responded to an overture by Augustus II's Saxon minister Flemming who, in a letter to Bernstorff of 27 September (NS) 1717, suggested that his master was anxious to concert measures with George I for a northern peace and would like to have a Hanoverian diplomat sent to Dresden for confidential talks. The negotiations which ensued, though unproductive until after George I had achieved his own treaty with Sweden as elector and king, form an episode well worth studying. First, they demonstrate the tight control which George exercised over foreign policy decisions. Bernstorff did not act on Flemming's proposal that he (Bernstorff) should send an emissary of his own choice, but handed Flemming's letter to the king, who decided to send one of his ‘Brunswick secretaries’ secretly to Dresden with assurances that Flemming could confide by word of mouth or by dictation whatever he wanted to convey in the sure knowledge that whatever he said or wrote would become known to George I only.35 Secondly, they display Bernstorff's great diplomatic gifts in keeping the negotiations going after the Saxon minister had learnt (through his own intelligence network) of George's direct and undivulged negotiations with Sweden. His letters are masterpieces of tact and subtle mollification.³⁶ Finally, they give proof of the devious skill with which king and minister made use of British ‘excuses’ to further George's Hanoverian policies: a Saxon request that the directorship of the Lower Saxon circle of the Empire should be open to Catholic as well as to Protestant rulers was refused on the grounds that a directoire interevangelicos would make George suspect and odieux with all Protestants, ‘pour ne point parler des interpretations sinistres qu'on donneroit en Angleterre à une pareille conduite’.³⁷ The lesson of 1701, when the house of Hanover had been accused of insufficient regard for the Protestant cause, had been taken, but it now served to exclude the electoral prince of Saxony – who had embraced Catholicism in the hope of succeeding his father in Poland – from influence in north German affairs.

The element of risk in George's northern policy was fully realized. If the king were wrong in his calculations and the tsar did make peace with Sweden, Schulenburg mused, the court would be ‘bien embarrasés’.³⁸ But, as events showed, George's instinct had been right in predicting time-consuming difficulties in the Russo-Swedish negotiations, while his military experience had made him deduce (correctly) that Charles XII was using his diplomatic negotiations – which were seriously intended – to give Sweden time to recover sufficient military power to negotiate from strength. Northern negotiations therefore languished and were for a considerable time overshadowed by those of the south.

*    *    *

George I, Stanhope and the Hanoverian ministers had been extremely quick in communicating to all interested parties the main outlines of the southern peace plan conceived in Hanover during the late summer and early autumn of 1716. It had, as we have seen, been mooted during Dubois' visit and was built round an intimation from Victor Amadeus of Savoy to Stanhope in February 1716 that he might, in the interests of peace and to gain the friendship of Charles VI, be willing to exchange Sicily for Sardinia. The king of Sicily (Victor Amadeus's title after the peace of Utrecht) was not safe in his possession of that island or in his royal title until the emperor – so powerful in Italy after the settlements of 1713–14 – had guaranteed both: given Charles VI's attachment to the Spanish concept of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily), he was not likely to do so. Without a navy, Charles VI could not attack Victor Amadeus in Sicily, but with his army he could invade the king of Sicily's main territories, built round Savoy-Piedmont in the north of Italy, and thus force him to sacrifice the island. It would therefore be in Victor Amadeus's interests to exchange Sicily for the less prosperous Sardinia, provided he kept the prestigious royal title, against an Austrian guarantee for all his territories, and if possible some expansion into the duchy of Milan.39

Stanhope's genius in expanding a settlement of this limited issue into a plan for completing the unfinished business of the 1713–14 settlements – a peace between Charles VI and Philip V of Spain who were still technically at war – is undoubted. His own experience in the Iberian peninsula and his acquaintance with Charles VI (when he had been Carlos III of Spain) was invaluable. The Hanoverian tradition of pacification by exchanges and equivalents, and George's desire to cooperate with the emperor for the sake of both the Imperial ideal and Hanoverian objectives, provided the second half of the equation. It is significant that, though Dubois' visit to Hanover in 1716 had been kept as secret as possible, the emperor had been informed by George I's German advisers and had been invited to send a diplomat in Charles VI's confidence to Hanover to coincide with the Frenchman's stay. It is typical of the slowness with which Hofburg diplomacy operated that only in late November, after news of the Anglo-French agreement of 6 October had leaked out and Dubois had long since left for France, did the emperor send Christoph Freiherr von Pentenrriedter to Hanover on a secret mission. Charles VI's advisers attacked the Anglo-French treaty, which they claimed prejudiced Charles VI's rights to the Spanish crown, ‘whatever George I might say’; and Bernstorff and Bothmer were blamed for not having prevented it. Yet Pentenrriedter's visit enabled Stanhope to sound him on a large-scale southern peace plan based on mutual advantages and mutual concessions.⁴⁰ Charles VI would gain by obtaining Spanish renunciation of the Italian territory which Philip V had lost de facto by 1713; Philip, it was argued, would feel safer once Charles VI had given up his claim to the Spanish crown, though it was realized that something more positive would have to be added as an incentive, namely Anglo-French support for the claims which don Carlos, Philip's son by his second wife, Elisabeth Farnese, had from his mother's side to the successions of Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany; the regent would benefit from a renewed renunciation by Philip V of the French crown; George I in his electoral capacity would, it was expected, gain Imperial goodwill and thus facilitate the investitures of Bremen and Verden (and even Hadeln); while Britain would obtain a European-wide guarantee for its Mediterranean gains of the War of the Spanish Succession.41

The plan was influenced by Pufendorf's ideas of international relations: that peace, not war, was the natural state of man and that the use of reason could devise schemes to ensure settlements of problems without recourse to war. The concept, conveyed not only in Pufendorf's philosophical works but also in his widely read Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe (written in 1682, published in German in 1693, with an English translation in 1699 and a French one in 1703), that statecraft consisted in analyzing, recognizing and reconciling the various interests of the European states, had made a great impression on a generation weary of the many and long conflicts of Louis XIV's reign. We have already noted the Palatinate interest in Pufendorf's work (in 1661 he had been called to fill the first European chair of international law established at Heidelberg) and the dedication to George of one of his works in its German translation.⁴² It is significant that Stanhope had a copy of the History at Chevening though we cannot pinpoint the date when he acquired the volume (as we can from a surviving library acquisition list for An Account of Sweden and An Account of Denmark, both of which he bought in 1718).⁴³

It is even more interesting to note that both George and Stanhope envisaged, as discussion of the peace plan for the south progressed, the sacrifice of Gibraltar to salve Spanish pride. In their opinion Minorca, with its excellent harbour Port Mahon, would be sufficient safeguard for British Mediterranean interests. Stanhope's local knowledge – he had conquered Port Mahon and was the architect of the treaty with ‘Carlos III’ which had first secured Minorca – lent weight to this decision and suggests that the restitution of Gibraltar was acceptable, taking an impartial view of the European situation at that time. In the event, British parliamentary opposition made it impossible to implement promises made by Stanhope and the regent on George I's behalf in 1718 and 1719. The bulldog tenacity with which parliament stuck to what had been gained came as a surprise to Stanhope and to George, since the interpretation of the Gibraltar clause in the Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1713 had led to tiresome difficulties, and the cost of the garrison was deemed excessive if the usefulness of the Rock (when compared to Minorca) was taken into account. The king and his chief British minister were only relieved from the obligation to carry out what amounted to firm verbal promises by the fact that a brief war broke out between Spain and Britain during the negotiations, nullifying all peace-time commitments and enabling suitable hedging (on the lines ‘provided parliament agrees’) when talks reverted to the topic after this war in 1720. Even so, it would seem that George and Stanhope did not give up hopes of persuading parliament to hand over Gibraltar to Spain. The draft treaty which Stanhope sent in July 1720 to Whitehall from Hanover, and which was endorsed by George and Sunderland, suggested that the city and fortress of Gibraltar should be restored without a specific equivalent as soon as all former treaties between Spain and Britain had been renewed; and the written promise by George I to Philip V of 12 June 1721 – the one Philip kept in his bed in a locked box to which he had the only key – was couched positively although it did contain the safeguards on which the rest of the inner cabinet had insisted:

I do no longer balance to assure Your Majesty of my Readiness to satisfy you with regard to your Demand touching the Restitution of Gibraltar, promising you to make use of the first favourable Opportunity to regulate this article with the Consent of my Parliament.44

Townshend was thus being disingenuous (to say the least) when he suggested in 1725 to William Stanhope, George's ambassador in Madrid, that the offers the late earl Stanhope had made in relation to Gibraltar ‘were done absolutely without the King's orders’; his correspondence with Newcastle shows that he was well aware of the written promise quoted above and ordered a search for it so that it might be copied to refresh the king's memory. To Newcastle, his fellow secretary, he was in any case more open as to his own views. Since Philip V, at the instigation of his queen, had signed an alliance (1725) with the emperor without informing Britain of his intentions,

We must take this opportunity (which their own Madness and Indiscretion has put into our hands) of getting rid of this Affair [the Gibraltar issue], and of silencing them [Philip and his queen], their Heirs and Successors for ever upon this head.⁴⁵

Had a solution along the Stanhope-George line been possible, Anglo-Spanish relations might not have deteriorated to the extent they did during the eighteenth century. This hypothesis is incapable of proof, but it is undeniable that Britain had obtained good commercial treaties with Spain in 1715 and 1716, rectifying omissions and clarifying points in the 1713 treaty, and that further concessions to Britain had been given during the early stages of the negotiations for the Quadruple Alliance as the peace plan for the south was often* called in contemporary diplomatic parlance.⁴⁶

During Stanhope and Sunderland's stay at The Hague in December 1716, Dubois had been further consulted on the actual details of the peace plan, while raadpensionaris Heinsius and the Spanish ambassador, Beretti Landi, were informed in general terms that George was eager to effect a reconciliation of Spain and Austria by obtaining mutual concessions from Philip V and Charles VI. The Dutch leaders were delighted – nothing could more decisively remove the spectre of war in Europe. The reaction from Spain was in principle favourable. Philip V, while professing himself ‘wholly indifferent as to the accommodation with the Emperor who can not attack him in Spain and is much inferior in his Sea forces’, expressed willingness to refer his differences with Charles VI to the arbitration of George I and the Republic, ‘provided a just balance be thereby settled’.⁴⁷

Here we meet another phrase, much used by the statesmen of the period, including George, Stanhope, and Bernstorff, based on a concept they all shared and which they all tried to achieve whether they called it the just balance or the equilibrium of Europe. But the look of the balance varied according to the point of view of the observer. From Madrid the emperor seemed too powerful in Italy, a view which was shared by many princes and statesmen on the peninsula, including Giulio Alberoni, the Parma-born adviser of Philip V who had become influential in Spain after Philip's marriage to Elisabeth Farnese.⁴⁸ It was, however, late May 1717 before Spain's answer quoted above reached George I; and the five-months gap between invitation and response owed a good deal to Philip's desire to put himself in a position to negotiate from strength. He regarded the loss of Spain's Italian possessions as a blot on his gloire and was determined, once the emperor had become involved in war with Turkey,† to redress the Mediterranean balance with the help of the naval forces he had so speedily built up after 1713.⁴⁹ Alberoni, though he restrained his master to some extent, hoped for British connivance at an attack on Sardinia (to be used as a bargaining counter in future negotiations) and had for that reason obtained trade concessions for Britain, on the principle that one good service deserves another. Since a state of war still existed between Philip V and Charles VI it could technically be argued that Spain was not the aggressor if the Spanish fleet attacked one or other of the territories held by the Austrians in Italy and the Mediterranean. If Philip acted without provocation, however, Spain could be held responsible for disturbing the neutrality of Italy which several powers, including Britain, had guaranteed. The Spanish king had therefore to await a favourable moment. When the Austrians obliged by their unwarranted arrest in Milan of the new Spanish grand inquisitor, Molinez, on his way from Rome to Spain, Alberoni gave Philip the go-ahead. Charles VI could now be accused of having broken the neutrality of Italy while Spanish action could be represented as a just reprisal.50 A strong Spanish fleet collected at Barcelona and, as soon as Alberoni had obtained the cardinal's hat he had long coveted, proceeded to the conquest of Sardinia.

The flare-up between Spain and Austria caught Europe, and George, by surprise. British diplomacy had been taken in by Alberoni's friendly and apparently pacific intentions and when George, secretly, so as not to offend the emperor by making too much out of the incident, offered Philip V his mediation in the matter of Molinez' arrest,⁵¹ he did not expect any warlike action. There was slight unease at Spanish fleet concentration in Barcelona harbour; but inquiries only elicited the answer that it was intended against the infidel, a reasonable explanation in view of the Austro-Venetian struggle with the Ottomans.⁵² This war had engaged George I's interest ever since Charles VI had entered the field on the side of the republic of Venice. News ‘from Hungary’ was eagerly discussed at the king's supper table with Hanoverian officers and courtiers; a plan of Belgrade and the siege journal of one of Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz's sons were closely studied.⁵³ The successful Spanish landing on Sardinia in the late summer of 1717 (22 August NS) came as a bolt from the blue: how would the emperor fare, preoccupied as he was on his eastern frontier?

Schulenburg once spoke of George I's ‘lucky star’ and expressed his strong belief in it.⁵⁴ This time it was certainly in evidence, for hot on the heels of Spanish aggression came the news of the fall of Belgrade (known at Hampton Court on 3 Sept. NS). This glorious success, Schulenburg reported to Görtz, will help our master ‘on all sides’.⁵⁵ It was supposed to render Philip V more sensible of the need for negotiations, while the Spanish attack would impress on the emperor his need for British naval support in the Mediterranean and thus make him more amenable to a mixture of pressure and promises. Invitations were immediately sent to France, Austria and Spain for consultations in England on the details of the peace plan for the south. Philip refused to send a representative, but this proved a blessing in disguise as, on the one hand, it avoided an Austro-Spanish confrontation under George I's auspices and, on the other, it left George and Stanhope much freer in working out compromises between Dubois, representing the regent, and Pentenrriedter who negotiated on behalf of Charles VI. There was no desire to keep Spain outside the negotiations, however, and Stanhope's cousin, William Stanhope, was sent to Madrid to keep in close touch with Alberoni. Dubois arrived promptly, before the end of September (NS), but it was more than a month before Pentenrriedter joined them. Even to achieve this much, George had to ‘bribe’ Charles VI by settling the Austrian claim to arrears of British subsidies from the War of the Spanish Succession.56

The interim period gave Dubois an opportunity to make closer contact with George I, since he was given rooms first at Hampton Court and then in a house next to the one the king occupied at Newmarket when he attended the races in the early autumn. The fact that, for a good part of the time, Stanhope was ill ‘of a fever’ (that vague seventeenth- and eighteenth-century term which might indicate anything from a virus infection to nervous exhaustion, and which we now know to have been caused by the strain of the House of Commons session) also helped to widen the circle in which Dubois moved. He knew how to entertain with culinary delicacies and amused George with anecdotes of the tsar's stay in France. But he also took the opportunity of impressing on the king, on Melusine and on Schulenburg, the need not to weight the peace plan too heavily in the emperor's favour as this would make the regent's position at home untenable: whatever strain there might be between Philip V and Philippe d'Orléans, French opinion would always favour Bourbon Spain against the Austrian Habsburgs.⁵⁷ It may be that the idea of Britain's sacrificing Gibraltar – as compensation for Philip V's having to renounce all the former Spanish territories in Italy – was first mooted at this time, though rumours of such a cession did not become current until January 1718 and the offer was not made till Stanhope's mission to Madrid between 12 and 26 August 1718. That it derived from the French side is highly probable since the regent kept coming back to it again and again, long after George had been forced to hedge the offer with demands for an equivalent, Spanish Florida being mentioned as ‘particularly suitable’.⁵⁸

With Pentenrriedter's arrival and Stanhope's recovery, negotiations for ‘the plan’ began in earnest. The objective, ‘to find an equitable basis for perpetual peace between his Imperial Majesty and his Catholic Majesty and between his Imperial Majesty and the King of Sicily’, was clear enough; but the road to success was not easy.⁵⁹ The gap between Imperial and French demands was great and the British ministers had to act as mediators, dealing with the two emissaries separately until a reasonable amount of common ground had been established. The more extravagant claims on behalf of Charles VI – that the British fleet should conquer Majorca for Austria, or that Mexico and other Spanish territories overseas should be given him in return for his renunciation of the Spanish crown – were easily brushed aside. Yet his consent to make a ‘perpetual renunciation’ of the Spanish crown could only be bought at a high price: the duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany specified for don Carlos to inherit would be made Imperial fiefs; and Philip V's demand (put by Dubois) that Spanish garrisons should be admitted into the duchies on the signature of the peace plan was scaled down to neutral garrisons without a specific time set for their entry. That these concessions cut close to the Spanish bone was fully realized. Stanhope confessed to Stair (who represented George I in Paris) on 17 February (OS) 1718 that Charles VI was gaining, ‘without striking a stroke’, three fiefs, ‘one of which is unquestionably a fief of the Crown of Spain and as such guaranteed to that Crown by us in a secret article of the Treaty of Utrecht; and the other is as undoubtedly a fee of the see of Rome’.60 Spain naturally took great offence at the prospect of don Carlos taking an oath of fealty to the emperor and this, as well as the loose wording of the garrison clause, created problems which outlived the signature of the peace plan by all parties. The concessions were not, however, proof of excessive British or Hanoverian subservience to the emperor, as Dubois at times suspected,⁶¹ but of British pragmatism. Stanhope argued that as long as the vital principles of the plan were accepted, minor adjustments could be left to the passing of time and the cooling of tempers;⁶² and the regent was assured that if ‘the emperor should endeavour to exceed his bounds, he would find Britain and the princes of the North of Germany ready to oppose him in conjunction with France’.⁶³

The navy was the trump card of George and Stanhope in their efforts to gain Charles VI's consent to the peace plan. Both realized that the emperor could not be brought to sign without a firm assurance of a British naval presence in the Mediterranean for the 1718 season to protect him against further Spanish attacks; after all, Philip V's troops were in full control of Sardinia. But both were determined that such help would not be given until Charles VI had signed the detailed plan now worked out Its main points were as follows:

(i)Sardinia to be exchanged for the far more desirable Sicily.

(ii)Charles to renounce, unequivocally, the Spanish crown.

(iii)Philip to renounce reconquest of Spain's former possessions in Italy.

(iv)Don Carlos's rights to the Farnese succession (Parma and Piacenza) and the Medici succession (Tuscany) to be recognized and secured by neutral garrisons (Swiss or British were contemplated) on condition that the duchies be treated as Imperial fiefs.

(v)The guarantees implicit in the peace plan to be worded in such a way that Philip's renunciation of the French crown would be upheld and George's electoral possessions of Bremen and Verden safeguarded.

(vi)Problems arising from the settlement to be dealt with at congresses called for the specific purpose of solving them.

In form the peace plan, in its first stage, was envisaged as a Quadruple Alliance by the admission of the Dutch Republic once the emperor had accepted the plan; while secret articles, committing the signatories to use force, if necessary, to bring Philip to accept, formed an integral part of it. In the event the Dutch never signed, or more correctly, when they were ready to sign George and Stanhope were no longer willing to pay the price of Dutch accession.64 The name was, however, justified when in November 1718 – after the emperor's formal signature of August – Victor Amadeus joined. A brief limited war with Spain fought by the British navy and the French army could not be avoided, but in February 1720 Philip V acceded to the Quadruple Alliance and the peace plan of the south was realized.

SUCCESS IN THE SOUTH

The amount of work involved had been formidable, for the ministers and diplomats of George I as well as for those of the regent of France. The main burden of drafting had fallen to Stanhope, helped by younger men, Craggs and Carteret, who benefited greatly from being exposed to problems that were both complex and important. Sunderland, though technically in charge of one of the foreign policy departments, left matters largely to Stanhope.⁶⁵ The German ministers, Bernstorff and Bothmer (and, at times at least, Robethon), took part in all crucial meetings. Luke Schaub, the Swiss-born diplomat in British service, sat in on all meetings, according to Stanhope's own evidence, so that he might familiarize himself with every detail and be able to handle the Hofburg's questions when he arrived in Vienna with the draft of the peace plan.66

That George kept control, discussed all aspects of the plan, and followed day-to-day developments is clear from a variety of surviving documentation: from his correspondence with his Frère et Cousin Philippe d'Orléans now in the Chevening papers,⁶⁷ from the memoirs of Bothmer for 1718,⁶⁸ and – most consistently – from the long run of Schulenburg letters. He waited eagerly for the return of Dubois from his November-December 1717 visit to France to persuade the regent to accept the ‘Imperial fief and neutral garrison’ compromise; he worried about the outcome of the parliamentary debates on supply for the vital Mediterranean squadron for 1718. Furthermore, he refrained from fixing a date for a visit to Hanover: unless Stanhope returned with satisfactory answers from his missions to France and Spain (late June–late September), George would have to stay at his post in London.⁶⁹

All had gone well so far. The House of Commons voted the necessary supply, much to the court's relief, in spite of Walpole's warnings that the despatch of a fleet to the Mediterranean might bring war with Spain.⁷⁰ The element of Spanish aggression in Europe in 1717 was exploited by the government, as well as indignation at Philip V's attempts to limit British encroachments on Spain's monopoly of trade with its colonial empire in America.⁷¹ There was, however, no desire on George and Stanhope's parts to use the squadron offensively unless absolutely necessary. The secretary of state counted Britain's favourable commercial treaties with Spain of 1715 and 1716 among his proudest achievements;⁷² and the king was by temperament and experience inclined to achieve his objectives with the least possible expenditure of armed force. Prince Eugène's taunt that George I was trying to obtain Bremen and Verden ‘on the cheap’ was not undeserved. The diplomatic and naval measures planned by king and minister bear the stamp of George's Baltic tactics of 1715 and 1716. Byng, who sailed in June with a fleet of fine ships, had firm orders to protect Naples and the emperor's other territories in Italy, and also Victor Amadeus's Sicily – the secret linch-pin of the peace plan – with the official excuse that if the Spaniards should ‘endeavour to make themselves masters of the kingdom of Sicily [it] must be with a design to invade the kingdom of Naples’. These orders (of 26 May OS 1718) were not communicated to Charles VI. Indeed, in order to make him convert his April acceptance in principle of the peace plan into a binding signature, George led the emperor and his diplomats to believe that orders for active protection of his Italian territories would be authorized only after the Hofburg's formal accession to the Quadruple Alliance. Once Charles VI had complied, Pentenrriedter signing for him in London on 7 August, Byng received fresh orders (communicated to Vienna) to defend Austrian Italy against Spain: a successful diplomatic gambit in a good cause.73

A mixture of promises and threats, in the form of hints that George's Mediterranean squadron might side with Spain if Charles VI did not speed up his decision, was effective with the Imperial court, but proved unsuccessful in Spain. Byng had been told to send, as soon as he touched a Spanish port, a copy of his May instructions to William Stanhope for transmission to Philip V in the hope that their perusal would put a stop to new aggressive Spanish measures. By the time they reached the Spanish court, however, the die had been cast; and it does not seem likely that they would have been effective, however early Philip had known of George's intentions. News of the fitting out of the British squadron had caused the Spaniards to speed up their own naval preparations and on 18 June a sizable fleet sailed from Barcelona for a 1718 campaign which Philip hoped would be as successful as that of 1717. The Spanish king would have preferred to attack Naples, but was persuaded by Alberoni that it would be more sensible to invade Sicily: there was a chance that Britain might look upon this as less objectionable than an assault on Naples. Alberoni further argued that possession of Sicily could be used – with Sardinia – to achieve a modification of the peace plan in Spain's favour. What was stipulated for don Carlos would benefit the royal family in its private capacity but not Philip V as ruler of Spain, and it was Philip's Spanish prestige that mattered most. The answer returned to William Stanhope was therefore brief and uncompromising: le Chevalier Byng peut executer les ordres qu'il a du Roy son Maitre.⁷⁴ The visit of Stanhope to Madrid in August made little or no impression. His argument that Spain ought to be grateful that don Carlos's duchies had been made Imperial (rather than Austrian Habsburg) fiefs fell on deaf ears: the legal protection implied against Austrian interference in the duchies seemed minute against the humiliation of a son of Spain's swearing fealty to the emperor. The offer of the restitution of Gibraltar, which he was authorized to make on George's behalf, was reckoned insufficient by a court jubilant at the news of the successful invasion of Sicily. Gibraltar would be welcome, but there must be something for Spain in Italy as well: what about Sicily?

Unknown to Stanhope and Alberoni, that issue had already been decided before the British secretary of state – still optimistic that Alberoni had the power and the willingness to knock some sense into Philip V and get him to sign the peace plan – left Madrid.⁷⁵ On 11 August (NS) Byng's squadron had fought a battle with the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro which ended with the near-destruction of the symbol of Spain's regeneration after its late seventeenth-century military and naval weakness. The new fleet had splendid well-built ships, but its officers were less experienced than the British, and the element of surprise, with advantage of wind and station, had favoured the attacker. The news, when it reached Stanhope on his way to Paris once more, cannot have caused surprise; after all, he had himself helped to frame Byng's original orders. His next task was to help Dubois calm the regent and concert Anglo-French measures if Philip should declare war on George I, or if further action would be necessary before Philip V could be brought to accept the peace plan.

The debate which ensued over the justification or otherwise of the battle of Cape Passaro* does not concern us here, nor does the detailed – and oft told – story of the stages whereby Philip was brought to dismiss Alberoni in December 1719 and sign the Quadruple Alliance in January 1720. The war which Britain and France had declared on Spain on 28 December 1718 played its part since the British occupied Vigo, and blockaded Spanish-held Sardinia and Sicily; while the French armies which marched into north-western Spain in April 1719 and Catalonia in October 1719 made easy progress in areas unprepared for invasion. But the war was not pushed with great vigour as this would have been against the basic ideas of the peace plan. The most effective weapon was a diplomatic threat: a binding Anglo-French agreement entered into with Charles VI in October 1719 that unless Philip V joined the Quadruple Alliance within three months don Carlos would forfeit his expectations in Italy and the signatories proceed to nominate alternative princes for the Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany successions.⁷⁶

Some general points can, however, usefully be made. First, the element of ruthlessness which can be seen in the treatment of Spain can also be noted – though without resource to force – in the treatment of Victor Amadeus of Savoy and of the Dutch Republic. The king of Sicily had blotted his copybook as far as George and Stanhope were concerned by withdrawing his offer of Sicily for Charles VI and playing off one side against the other in the hope of making further gains. He made enough of a nuisance of himself to earn the epithet at George's court of Arche-Machiavall de la Siècle;⁷⁷ and when he joined the Quadruple Alliance in November 1718 he received no advantage, beyond the guarantee of his territories, from the exchange of his title to the kingdom of Sicily for that of Sardinia.⁷⁸ The Dutch also felt hard done by. George I and Stanhope wanted to bring them into the peace plan partly because of their desire to put European-wide moral pressure on Philip V, but also because of an axiom of British foreign policy which forbade the risk of involvement in war unless the Dutch Republic, the main trade rival, should be similarly committed. But as secrecy was difficult to maintain in the United Provinces it was thought best to postpone negotiations with Dutch statesmen on the details of the Quadruple Alliance till agreement had been reached between the three main signatories; and the secret articles of the Quadruple Alliance became known to the Dutch only through a leak. The result was Anglo-Dutch distrust. Various concessions and promises were made to gain Dutch accession, but the Republic – bent on avoiding involvement in war – proceeded deviously enough to be accused of trickery.79 Robethon's exasperated ‘The behaviour of the Dutch towards his Majesty is perfidious and detestable’ was not wholly unmerited; and for their part Dutch statesmen thought it grossly unfair and even treacherous that George I, when they (in December 1719) agreed to sign the alliance with its secret articles, refused to accept their signature to avoid complying with promises made at an earlier date.⁸⁰

Secondly, it should be noted that George's willingness to be ruthless was part of the reason for the successful conclusion of the peace plan for the south, as was the trust he had established between the British and French governments. A previous experiment in solving a European problem (that of the Spanish succession) without recourse to large-scale war, the so-called partition treaties entered into by Louis XIV and the Maritime Powers in 1698 and 1700, had failed because of a lack of trust and because of William III's unwillingness to be ruthless with the emperor.⁸¹ The ruthlessness towards Spain was in any case more apparent than real, given the need to procure a peace between Charles VI and Philip V without upsetting the balance of power established by the 1713–14 settlements. From Philip's point of view the emperor had the best of the bargain, and the setback to the Spanish navy by the British attack was galling in the extreme. Yet it must be admitted that to let Philip reconquer Spain's former Italian territories would have rendered the pacification of the Mediterranean scene more difficult, if not impossible.

Finally, there was another sense in which the statesmen and rulers of the day had learnt from the mistakes of the past and from the lively discussion about war and peace since the closing years of the War of the Spanish Succession.⁸² The greatest care was taken to make the peace plan foolproof, though with the possibility of future modifications as long as the main principles were not infringed. That is why it endured. Whatever adjustments had to be made after 1720 were effected within the framework that Italian territories ruled by sons of Philip V's second marriage should never be united to Spain: the duchies would remain secundogenitures even if fate decreed (as it did in 1762) that one of Philip's descendants by Elisabeth Farnese should succeed to the crown of Spain. The laying-down in the treaty of the Quadruple Alliance that problems arising out of the peace plan should be settled at congresses of the contracting parties also represented an advance on earlier projects: what had been no more than pious phraseology was now turned into a binding commitment on present and future signatories. It had, as we shall see, beneficial effects on European diplomacy for the rest of George I's reign and was not without influence on the theory of international relations. George's share in this decisive and successful innovation is shown not only by the documentary evidence already mentioned, but by the very fact that while Stanhope was abroad for three months on peace plan business in 1718 the king remained at home, at the centre of control, working with Graggs at Hampton Court to send out orders, including those to Stanhope. During Stanhope's absence important letters to Craggs, those marked secret, were written in French, showing that they were intended for George's perusal. More than conventional flattery is therefore implied in Schulenburg's comment that the establishment of the Tranquilité du cote de Midy, which had been nearly despaired of before Stanhope and George got to work, added un grand Lustre à la Gloire du Roy notre Maitre.83

PARTIAL SUCCESS IN THE NORTH

The years 1718 and 1719 were also crucial in northern affairs.* Naval expenditure in the south in 1718 automatically entailed a diminution in ships available for the Baltic; as early as April of that year it was realized that at most ten ships would be available for the north. To leave Norris free to cooperate with the Danes, a bargain was struck with the Dutch whereby they agreed to convoy British merchantmen as well as their own to the East Baltic ports against a promise to partake in the advantages George expected to gain at the peacemaking for British trade in Sweden.⁸⁴ This promise was, naturally enough in view of the trade rivalry between the two Maritime Powers, reluctantly given and, as naturally, greatly treasured. The Dutch took care to include it among their conditions for accession to the Quadruple Alliance, and though it passed muster at a time when Dutch accession seemed highly desirable, George and Stanhope – since the Republic's binding consent came so late in the day – preferred, as we have seen, to drop the question of Dutch participation rather than remain bound to fulfil this promise. Dutch statesmen and the merchant oligarchy of the Republic were incensed: after all, they had kept the bargain made for the Baltic in 1718. But the English counter-argument, that George had in the meantime been at the expense not only of a war with Spain but also of equipping a fleet for the north in 1719 – a year when the Dutch sent not a single warship to the Baltic – had considerable force. It was also a fact that George, as elector, had made his peace with Sweden (a treaty which comprised commercial advantages for his British subjects) before the Republic pronounced itself ready to sign the Quadruple Alliance.85

Before this peace of Stockholm of 1719 had been achieved, as the first step in the peace plan for the north, much had happened. As early as February 1718 Fabrice had been sent to Sweden, as suggested by Georg Heinrich von Görtz, so that conferences at Lund (then Charles XII's headquarters) should counterbalance those agreed with the Russians at Lövö in the Åland islands. He was well received and took part in the family reunion of the Swedish king and his close relatives at Kristinehamn between 21 March and 3 April. A Hanoverian accredited diplomat, Schrader, joined him on Charles XII's return to Lund in case agreement should be reached. But it soon became clear that Charles XII was not willing to commit himself either to George or to tsar Peter until he had seen the outcome of the campaign which he planned for the late summer of 1718. That military offensive envisaged an initial attack on Norway, with a later invasion of Denmark and a move thence into Germany, aiming at Hanover in the first place. If it was even partially successful the Swedish king had hopes that Russia would content itself with Ingria, and Hanover with only a small part of Bremen and Verdens In the meantime, diplomatic negotiations with George and with Peter were diligently pursued, and sincerely meant, to test where the greater advantage for Sweden lay. George, however, was suspicious enough to recall Fabrice in June 1718, confident enough to let Charles XII know that he would not resume the Lund talk. ‘as long as Herr von Görtz* continued his Aland conferences’, and prudent enough to leave Schrader in Sweden.

Developments certainly favoured George.⁸⁶ The Quadruple Alliance was regarded as being in business as soon as Charles VI's acceptance in principle became known in Europe; and the British-mediated peace of Passarowitz (21 July NS 1718) between the emperor and the Turks – very much in favour of the former – further strengthened the king's position. Tsar Peter became worried enough to reinsure with George I, dropping – at least temporarily – his Jacobite contacts and showing greater caution in his negotiations with Alberoni for a 1719 invasion of Britain to promote James Edward Stuart's cause.87 George, for his part, speedily responded to the Russian overtures by announcing a joint mission of Norris and James Jefferyes to the tsar, though he also continued his negotiations with Augustus II of Saxony-Poland and the emperor to curb Russia if the dreaded Russo-Swedish cooperation should materialize in 1719.⁸⁸

In spreading his net wide, George was not unique. Emissaries arrived in Sweden in 1718 from Prussia, Saxony, from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and from Augustus' rival for the Polish crown, James Sobieski. This increased Charles XII's confidence that if he could achieve peace with one of his major enemies, the rest would fall into line along the snowball-effect pattern which Louis XIV's separate peace with England had produced between 1711 and 1714.⁸⁹ But given the westward direction of the Swedish initial thrust into Norway – and especially the strong detachment which was sent in early September 1718 into the Trondheim district – George was in a dangerous position.⁹⁰ From Trondheim Scotland could be threatened, and if Charles XII's main army (which began its move into southern Norway in late October) could be successfully transferred to Denmark in the spring of 1719, Hanover would be within reach of the Swedes.⁹¹

Yet George's luck held. Charles XII's death put a stop to the wider plans and brought the retreat of Swedish forces from Trondheim. Ironically, Charles had no real business at the siege of Frederiksten fortress (near Frederikshald), where he was hit and killed instantly at night on 11 December NS when visiting the soldiers of his new army in the trenches: he had postponed his own offensive across the river Glommen for a few days while waiting for Georg Heinrich von Görtz to arrive with the latest offers from the Russians.⁹² Charles XII's successor, his sister Ulrika Eleonora, while continuing the Åland Island negotiations, was in part predisposed, and in part persuaded by her husband, Friedrich of Hesse, to seek peace with George I. George's real power had been amply demonstrated* and with his help the Russians might be forced to disgorge at least some of their conquests in the East Baltic. Friedrich, the eldest son of the landgrave of Hesse (and thus heir to the land-gravate), was German enough in his thinking not to mind Swedish sacrifices in the Empire; and the rivalry for the Swedish succession between his wife and her nephew, the young duke of Holstein-Gottorp,* made him eager rather than reluctant to gain peace with Denmark-Norway at the expense of the duke.

Here was George and Stanhope's opportunity. At the first hint from Ulrika Eleonora in the spring of 1719 that George's mediation would be welcome, Charles Whitworth – a diplomat experienced from Russian and Prussian missions – was sent to Berlin to wean Friedrich Wilhelm I from his alliance with the tsar; and young Carteret, German-speaking and with a good knowledge of continental – and especially Imperial – affairs, went to Stockholm. No difficulty was expected with Frederik IV of Denmark-Norway: he and George had worked well together and the Danish king had more or less abandoned cooperation with Russia.⁹³ George's visit to Hanover in the summer and autumn of 1719 greatly facilitated the peace negotiations. The first objective was treaties with Sweden on behalf of Hanover, Denmark-Norway and Prussia which would isolate Russia. The second stage would be to negotiate with the emperor, Augustus of Saxony-Poland, and as many powers as possible, including France, to bring Russia to accept a peace with Sweden which left that state with a decent footing in the East Baltic, and preferably in control of both Riga and Reval. This built in part on the anti-Russian, and anti-Prussian, negotiations which Bernstorff had begun in the summer of 1718 with Augustus and Charles VI, culminating in a Hanoverian alliance with these rulers in January 1719.⁹⁴

There was no desire, except in Sweden, to see tsar Peter excluded from the Baltic. Rather the plan envisaged partitions which would accord with a balance of power in the north: Sweden to recover Finland, Livonia and as much of Estonia as possible, and Russia to keep Karelia, Ingria and part of Estonia. In this way Sweden would lose her monopoly of trade with the East Baltic ports, while Russia would be sufficiently circumscribed not to pose a danger to Poland, Prussia and the Empire.⁹⁵

The first stage of the northern peace plan went well. Carteret was authorized to promise Ulrika Eleonora British naval help against the tsar and, since the Russian galley-fleet was already beginning to ravage the Swedish coasts, he speedily achieved agreement that Bremen and Verden should be ceded to Hanover against a money compensation, and that Sweden's 1700 treaty with Britain should be renewed ‘in the light of present conditions’, a wording which hinted at the desired commercial concessions. Some influential Swedes were reluctant to sacrifice the Elbe duchies. Others were inclined, in the Charles XII tradition, to demand a detailed clarification of the ‘every possible’ British help against Russia. Carteret, however, was able to follow his instructions and not tie George down at this stage, since Russian landings close to Stockholm created near-panic in the Swedish capital. Conventions were therefore signed and ratified with both Hanover and Britain before the end of July on Carteret's terms. He was too intelligent not to realize why he had made such speedy progress. ‘Our success’, he reported, ‘is chiefly owing to the Czar, he at the gates of Stockholm has reasoned best for us’.96 There was no conscious desire to cheat Sweden of the promised help, but Britain's naval resources were stretched in 1719: by the Mediterranean blockade, by the sending of detachments to the West Indies, and by the need to keep ships at home in case Alberoni should support a fresh invasion of Britain after the fiasco of that of March 1719.*

A definite deceit was, however, practised on the Swedes concerning Hanover's support for Prussian gains from Sweden. This is partly explained by George's great difficulty in detaching Friedrich Wilhelm from his Russian alliance. From the Prussian point of view Russia was close and powerful; and George's prevarications in 1715 had not been forgotten. The Prussian king's vacillation, and his insistence that Augustus of Saxony-Poland must not be brought into the peace plan for the north till he had given up his claim to Polish sovereignty over East Prussia, made for greater delays than Bernstorff's opposition to the alliance with Prussia, though there were reasons why Stanhope, in attendance on George in Hanover, and Craggs, his confidant in Whitehall, should emphasize, and even exaggerate, Bernstorff's obstinacy and selfish concern for his ‘three villages’.⁹⁷ It remains true, however, that Bernstorff's distrust of Prussia was real. Prussia was so close a neighbour to Hanover in both the east and the west, that Bernstorff – in a vision which proved prophetic, if at long range – predicted its conquest of the whole of north Germany. He was therefore reluctant to see the Prussians move further into Pomerania,† even if they kept to the far side of the Peene river. He and Vienna were at one in suggesting that if Prussia were to obtain Pomerania, Friedrich Wilhelm ought to give up those western territories – Magdeburg, Halberstadt and Minden – which it had been granted in 1648 as compensation for the award of Pomerania to Sweden.⁹⁸ It was left to George to override Bernstorff and those Hanoverians who sided with him since the peace plan for the north demanded an isolation of Russia as complete as possible if it were to succeed. With renewed British and French support for Friedrich Wilhelm's obtaining Pomerania, including Stettin, up to the Peene river, other matters were easily adjusted and the Prussian king showed his gratitude by giving up his claim to suzerainty over the ‘Bernstorff villages’.

The problem remained, however, how to induce Sweden to accept the sacrifice of Stettin and the part of Pomerania guaranteed to Friedrich Wilhelm by two treaties signed between Hanover and Prussia and Hanover and Britain on 12 August 1719. Stanhope's solution was to antedate the treaties to 4 August so that George I's commitment, both as king and elector, could be presented in Stockholm as having been made before the arrival of Carteret's news of the Swedish conventions. This ‘sharp practice’ (to use Stanhope's biographer's term) was not in itself harmful to the Swedes; but the threats to deny them naval help against Russia until they agreed to the land cessions to Prussia demonstrated their utter dependence on Britain as well as the determination and bluntness of the George-Stanhope team. On 29 August a new Anglo-Swedish convention was signed accepting the loss of Bremen, Verden and Stettin with Pomerania east of the Peene river, against British armed help and subsidies to cope with Sweden's remaining enemies and George I's good offices in the final peace negotiations. The French ambassador to Sweden associated the regent with this convention. With the subsidies which France put at Sweden's disposal and the presence of admiral Norris in Swedish waters, the Russian threat was contained for the moment. Treaties were next worked out in detail. That between Sweden and Hanover was signed on 20 November 1719, those between Britain and Sweden and Prussia and Sweden early in 1720. A convention, ending the state of hostilities between Sweden and Augustus of Saxony-Poland, was also signed at this time.99

French diplomacy had helped Sweden to retain a foothold in north Germany. Bernstorff's ideas had run on the lines of Sweden's total withdrawal from the Empire, and George and Stanhope had not challenged this as their peace plan for the north envisaged Sweden regaining the major part of her East Baltic provinces. Both bowed, however, to French pressure; and when peace between Sweden and Denmark was negotiated (signed on 3 July 1720) Frederik IV, receiving an Anglo-French guarantee for the Holstein-Gottorp territories he had occupied in Sleswig, returned Pomerania west of the Peene river, with Wismar, Rügen and Stralsund to the Swedes. A money compensation to the Danish king was paid by Ulrika Eleonora from Anglo-French subsidies, and Sweden gave up its exemption from Danish Sound dues as its price for the restoration of the land lost.

To force Russia into the peace plan proved, however, impossible. In 1719 Norris's fleet had been too weak for him to act offensively in concert with the Swedes. In 1720, when he was sent to the Baltic as early as April, the tsar prudently avoided battle. Reconnaissance off the strongly defended ports of the East Baltic convinced the British admiral and his Swedish counterpart that they ought not to risk attacks from the sea unsupported by land armies. Plans discussed at George's court for such attacks (from Livonia and Finland) on the Russian positions to compel tsar Peter to negotiate did not materialize. This was in part due to conflicts within the Empire. There had long been disputes between Charles VI and the Protestant princes of Germany over religious matters and the close cooperation between Hanover and Prussia caused uneasiness at Vienna.100 More significant was the temporary weakening of George and Stanhope's position by the South Sea bubble bursting during the late summer of 1720 while the court was in Germany. Bernstorff's correspondence shows how closely the ups and downs of the stock market were followed in Hanover. As panic gripped London the demand for George's return grew loud enough to raise the spectre of revolution.¹⁰¹

At the same time France was paralyzed by the unrest connected with the crash of Law's system (the Mississippi bubble) in combination with the outbreak of the plague in Marseilles which necessitated the major part of the French army being used as a cordon sanitaire to prevent the plague reaching Paris and the north.¹⁰² It was clearly not the time to think of forceful action against Russia, and in October 1720 Sweden was told that she would have to make the best terms she could on her own with Russia: the tsar had ignored George I's offers of mediation and Britain was in no position, at the moment, to exert pressure on him.¹⁰³

Circumstances therefore, rather than bad faith, prevented George and Stanhope from realizing in full the peace plan of the north. There was not time enough, given Sweden's plight, to achieve all that had been hoped for. Indeed, two such large-scale commitments, nearly contemporaneous, as the peace plans for the south and north would seem to have been beyond the resources even of Britain and the George-Stanhope team unless circumstances had been far more favourable than they were in the crowded and confused year 1720 to 1721. The peace plan for the south had required three years of intense negotiations and two naval squadrons to the Mediterranean to bring it to fruition. For the northern plan, stage two – that of forcing Russia, as Spain had been forced, to make concessions – was never given a chance to develop. One might be tempted to blame George I's caution – reflected in Norris's lack of dash in the Baltic in 1719 and 1720 – for the failure of stage two. But George had always been cautious, not willing to act until success was within reasonable grasp. He was a realist, and by the autumn of 1720 he faced the fact that stage two could not be accomplished and had to be abandoned.

For George's contemporaries – apart from the Swedes, who by the peace of Nystad of August 1721 had to give Kexholm, Karelia and all their former East Baltic provinces to tsar Peter – the success of stage one was a matter of strong acclaim whereas the non-fulfilment of stage two counted for less. George was hailed as the man who had brought to a close the long northern war on terms which served Hanover and Britain* well and which fitted the balance of power principle in that Sweden retained a foothold in the Empire, while Denmark had to be satisfied with far less than she had expected when Frederik IV forged the anti-Swedish coalition of 1699–1700. The pacification of the north, even at the cost of Swedish losses to Russia, was greeted with relief everywhere, even in Sweden: countries could now turn to peaceful pursuits and the Baltic would be free for the commerce of all nations. After twenty-one years of war, that seemed a real watershed. In historical perspective, however, it must be admitted that the combination of George's Hanoverian needs and his fortuitous accession to the British throne in 1714 had contributed greatly to that strengthening of the Russian position which removed stage two of the peace plan for the north from the realms of the possible.

SHIFTS OF EMPHASIS

The work on the peace plan for the north, stage one and stage two, brought a shift in George I's relationship to his British and Hanoverian ministers decisive for the second half of his reign as king. Already in the spring of 1718 Schulenburg had noted that the English ministers liked to keep Bernstorff and Bothmer outside ‘secret matters’; the German ministers retaliated to some extent by ‘seeking refuge’ with Melusine and by keeping Empire matters in their own hands.¹⁰⁴ Thus Stanhope was not fully informed of the anti-Prussian and anti-Russian stance of the alliance signed by George as elector on 5 January (NS) 1719 with Charles VI and Augustus of Saxony-Poland. The treaty had beneficial effects in loosening Friedrich Wilhelm's attachment to and dependence on tsar Peter and thus facilitating the withdrawal of Russian troops from Mecklenburg; but it left distrust in Whitehall at Bernstorff's independence. The differences should not be exaggerated; British and Hanoverian ministers cooperated, as we have seen, in the peace plan for the south and reached agreement on the peace plan for the north. George did, however, increasingly take a wider view than Bernstorff of European affairs. It was natural for Stanhope and Sunderland – both of whom accompanied George I to Hanover in 1719 – to exaggerate their victory over Bernstorff;105 but a change undeniably made itself felt in George's calculations between 1718 and 1720. The emperor and the quest for the investitures of Bremen and Verden seemed less important: ‘we shall’, the king-elector wrote on one occasion, ‘be able to maintain our possession of those duchies whether the emperor grants the investitures or not.’¹⁰⁶ The French alliance had become a cornerstone of George's policy in the south as in the north; the emperor, it was argued by his British ministers, had sufficient need of Britain's support to learn to live with that fact.¹⁰⁷ And if Bernstorff's ‘disgrace’ was less complete than is usually asserted, there is proof that the German ministers after 1719 felt that their advice was less sought than formerly. Bothmer, in a letter to Bernstorff in 1724, complains that he and his London colleagues are not even consulted by the king on German [i.e. Empire] affairs.¹⁰⁸ The explanation lies in the fact that George had come by stages to find the specifically German outlook restrictive. He had been transformed from an elector of Hanover into a king of Great Britain who, though his keenest pleasure was still found in the scenes, sounds and scents of his electorate, neither could nor would look at European affairs except as seen from Great Britain. The change was unmistakable to those of his entourage who still felt more German than British.

The large measure of success for the peace plans had important repercussions also in British circles. Before George set out for Hanover in 1719 the prince of Wales, to judge from hints in the Schulenburg correspondence, had made certain moves to obtain the regency, but had been disappointed since the king chose to revive the system of lord justices, as in the interim period between the death of Anne and the arrival of George in 1714.¹⁰⁹ No doubt this was a salutary lesson. It followed closely upon the Stanhope ministry's success in the 1718–19 session in removing at least some of the disabilities on the religious dissenters in spite of the opposition of the prince, Townshend and Walpole. Argyll and his brother, who with their Scottish background sympathized with the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, had helped the ministry and were rewarded, Argyll being made lord steward of the king's household in February 1719. That he accepted gave food for thought both to the prince and to the Walpolian Whigs. Sunderland's appointment – so long desired – as groom of the stole to George was another indication of the growing influence of the British ministers and a pointer to what honours the faithful could expect.

The score was to some extent evened in December 1719 when Walpole, in the most brilliant speech of his career, defeated the peerage bill introduced by the Stanhope-Sunderland ministry. This bill aimed at limiting the English peerage to the current number of families: once six more new peers had been created, a new title could be bestowed only when a vacancy occurred through the extinction of a title. At the same time it was intended that the sixteen Scotch representative peers should be replaced by twenty-five hereditary peers. The peerage bill – first attempted in 1718 but withdrawn before it reached the House of Commons – was a form of reinsurance against the ministry's losing power on George I's death. The king's ill-health in 1718, which so worried the Hanoverian courtiers, seems to have been noticed by his British ministers as well; and Sunderland in particular hoped to clip Georg August's wings in the event of a speedy succession. If the new king could not reward his followers, he might feel obliged to continue his father's ministers in office; at the very least he would be prevented from swamping the House of Lords with new creations to force through impeachment proceedings against Sunderland and his colleagues. George is depicted in English historiography as being heart and soul for the peerage bill, either because he wanted to revenge himself on his son or because he wished to make the nobility more exclusive. In reality he seems to have embraced the bill reluctantly, as the price he had to pay to keep his ministry content and to further the ‘Whig’ proposals for toleration and university reform which were meant to entice the Commons into acceptance of the peerage bill. Schulenburg certainly regarded himself as bold, and George as forgiving, when the king did not take umbrage at his confession that he – if he had been of the English nobility – would have voted in favour of not cheapening aristocratic privileges by spreading them too widely.110 Neither were George's Hanoverian ministers in London in favour of the peerage bill, since they realized that it would limit the king's power; and Bernstorff and Bothmer were accused by Sunderland and his supporters of having worked secretly against the bill. The bill initially brought the prince and princess of Wales to near panic, but they soon resolved to do all in their power to bring about its downfall.¹¹¹ The reintroduction of the bill in the 1719–20 session was widely interpreted as an anti-German move since the ‘closed ranks’ would make the ministry independent not only of the prince of Wales but of George I's non-British advisers, and possibly – so it was rumoured – of the king himself: a closed aristocracy would be able to give laws to the king and his son, and ‘even to remove him [the king] when they shall think proper’.112

The ministry's defeat naturally raised Walpole's standing with the court; but unless Townshend and Walpole had been sufficiently impressed with the peacemakings of 1719–20 – north and south – they might not have been tempted back. After all, in 1718 George had twice approached Walpole secretly; once through a confidant of Melusine's, the second time through a general (unnamed in the source of our information) who can confidently be identified as major-general von Hammerstein since there was no other general so much in George's confidence, and it is known from the Schulenburg letters that Hammerstein and Walpole were well acquainted.¹¹³ We sorely miss Schulenburg's account of the 1720 reconciliation, but he had died suddenly in January of that year.¹¹⁴ From Bothmer and Bernstorff's correspondence we find that they are congratulated on helping to heal the breach in the Whig ranks, but – since their correspondents are Germans – the emphasis naturally tends to be on their services towards restoring the unity within the royal family.¹¹⁵ Professor Plumb's theory that Walpole and Townshend, by publicizing a letter addressed to the Imperial vice-chancellor, purporting to be by Bernstorff, managed to scare Stanhope and Sunderland sufficiently to make them willing to share power is intriguing and plausible: Walpole and Townshend, so runs the argument, gave notice of their willingness to outbid Sunderland and Stanhope by obtaining huge sums from parliament which would permit George to buy territories in Germany, ‘which would enable him to hold the balance between the Northern Powers better than by sending a fleet yearly to the Baltic which gives umbrage to the people’.¹¹⁶ While the letter does not read as if written by Bernstorff, the Hanoverian minister may well have acquiesced in any ruse to reunite the king and the prince of Wales, especially in view of his close friendship with the Cowpers.¹¹⁷ Another hypothesis, that the reconciliation was dictated by a joint interest of the divided courts and the ‘split’ Whigs in the burgeoning South Sea bubble – promoted in late 1719 and early 1720 – is less convincing: no valid reason is given why the ministers in power should be willing to readmit Walpole and Townshend at a time when great financial benefits were expected, nor why Walpole and Townshend should feel compelled to reconcile Georg August, the governor of the South Sea Company until the election of 1718 (when the king replaced him), with his father.¹¹⁸ In my judgment, the fact that early in 1720 the balance of power was relatively even as between the Whigs in and out of office promoted that reconciliation of the two courts which by now both desired. Walpole had shown that he could baulk Sunderland's most cherished measure; Stanhope had demonstrated that his foreign policy solutions worked. Money was certainly hinted at during the negotiations which brought Walpole and Townshend back. If returned to office, it was understood that they would both facilitate paying off the accumulated debt of the civil list, now standing at £600,000.

George was his cautious self. Services to the king would have to come before rewards. On 23 April, as recounted above, the prince of Wales made his submission. The next day the Walpolian Whigs did the same. On 4 May a cleverly worded address in George's name suggested that the debts of the civil list might be paid, without the British people being burdened by ‘any new aid or supply’, if the House of Commons would permit George to issue letters patent to two insurance companies willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of insuring ships and merchandise. Care was taken to add that the king had received many petitions from merchants stressing the benefit they would derive from the insurance companies.119 Walpole skilfully steered the bill for paying off the civil list debt in this manner through the House. On 11 June he was made paymaster-general with the promise that he should move to the treasury at the first suitable opportunity. Townshend was made lord president of the council in place of the duke of Kingston, who – with Argyll – was sacrificed to satisfy the prince of Wales's desire for revenge on those who had either deserted him or criticized him.

The ‘harmony and unity’ of George I's 1720 ministry may have been more apparent than real; but all members had learnt that a king's party, in the sense in which George interpreted it, was necessary for keeping the king's confidence. At the same time George had passed an important milestone in his reign; his British ministers, both those in office between 1718 and 1720 and those who ‘came into the king's measures’ in 1720, had convinced him that they would no longer tolerate Hanoverians as the king's advisers in any matter that touched on British interests. With peace restored in the north and Hanoverian objectives thus secured, it was natural that George's role as king of Great Britain should begin to count more than his position as elector of Hanover. The second stage of his reign had commenced, the one in which it became natural for him to read memoranda written in English and even put his comments on them in the language of his kingdom.

* The few exceptions to the amnesty included Strafford and Harcourt.

* He resigned a second time and for good in 1730 when he came into conflict with Robert Walpole.

* The extracts copied by him run as follows: (i) ‘It is true that he [the prince of Wales] is your son, but the Son of God himself was sacrificed for the good of mankind.’; (ii) ‘He [the prince of Wales] must be carried off and my Lord Berkeley will take him on board and carry him to any part of the world Your Majesty will order him, whence he would never be heard of more.’ Hervey is often an unreliable witness, but in this case there is corroborative evidence from Schulenburg that Sunderland advocated stern measures.

† She had suffered from tuberculosis since 1723, and had in vain been treated by the famous Dr Brunner.

* Equally significant is Georg August's remark to his father's emissaries that it was the right of ‘every subject in England to chuse who should be Godfathers to their Children’ (Chevening MSS 84/10).

* After his return he remained in England and before the end of the year he entered George I's service as his Hanoverian Kammerherr. From then on, he never left the king's side.

* The first was the regent's successful mediation in the Gyllenborg-Görtz affair which saved face for George at a difficult moment.

* Charles XII, apart from the disavowal, had returned the money which Görtz obtained from the Jacobites, choosing to regard it as a short-term loan: see my Charles XII, pp.416–17, 438.

* But not exclusively, it was also labelled the peace plan, the accommodement, or simply ‘the plan’.

† In 1716 Charles VI intervened in the war which had broken out in 1714 between Turkey and the republic of Venice.

* Byng maintained, for form's sake, that the Spaniards had started the action; the Spaniards complained bitterly of the ‘barbaric behaviour of Britain’ in attacking their fleet when the two countries were at peace.

* George had less freedom of action here than in the South since tsar Peter in a personal letter of 5 January 1718 categorically refused the king's appeals for a congress to settle northern problems: the tsar would not enter into any negotiation ‘dans un Congrès Publique’ (copy in Bernstorff Archive: AG 62).

* The Russian emissaries had arrived at Lövö in January 1718, but negotiations were not opened till Georg Heinrich von Görtz joined them in May.

* In 1717 Byng who, in the absence of a Dutch squadron, convoyed the British merchantmen on his own to the East Baltic, had yet managed by his very presence to drive Swedish privateers – very active both before his arrival and after his departure – into port. In 1718 when Norris's force was perfectly free to cooperate with the Danes, thanks to the Dutch escorting the merchantmen of both nations on their own, Charles XII was obliged to plan his invasion of southern Norway for a time when the British fleet could be expected to have left northern waters: see my Charles XII, pp. 463 ff.

* Karl Fredrik (b. 1700), son of Charles XII's elder sister Hedvig Sofie (d.1708) and Friedrich IV, duke of Holstein-Gottorp (d. 1702).

* James Edward Stuart had moved from Rome to Spain; and on 28 March 1719, a Spanish squadron, under Ormonde's command, set out to invade George I's dominions, only to be scattered by a great storm in the Bay of Biscay. The ships not lost returned to Spain; but two frigates with 300 Spaniards on board evaded the British squadron lying in wait for the invasion fleet and made a landfall on the island of Lewis. A ship with Jacobites from France also arrived in Scotland. After the defeat of Glenshiel the Spaniards surrendered and the 1,000 highlanders who had joined them ‘melted away’.

† At the peace of Fontainebleau (1679), Brandenburg had received a strip of Swedish Pomerania as its gain from the Dutch War.

* The only concession Sweden received was the return of Finland and the right to import a given annual quantity of corn from Livonia, its former granary.