Book I, THE COL LECTOR OF Senate in which we have an interesting glimpse, behind the curtain, at the process:- -The Whigs,' he says, 'seek to annihilate the Tories utterly, and to place them under LEIAN MSS. the yoke. They want to impeach even the Duke of SHREWSAfter enlarging on nascent dissensions Correspondence of Joseph Querini; from extracts by T. D. Hardy, in BURY.' When the Earl at length appeared before his peers to answer to his impeachment, he began by denying that at any time or place in the course of those negotiations,' now incriminated, he conferred unlawfully or without due authority with any emissaries of France.' He affirmed that he neither promoted nor advised any private, separate, or unjustifiable negotiation, and that he himself had no knowledge that any negotiation relating to Peace was carried on without communication to the Allies.' On the specific charge that he had traitorously given up Tournay to France, his defence is twofold:-'I used my best offices,' he asserts, to preserve that town and fortress to the States General. I believe that at this time they are continued to the States General as part of their barrier.' And then he adds - But I deny that for a Privy Councillor and Minister of State to advise the yielding of any town, fort, or territory, upon the conclusion of a Peace, is, or Book I, can be, High Treason by any law of this realm.' On the whole matter of the Peace, he asserts that its terms and preliminaries were communicated to Parliament. They were agreed on with the concurrence of Parliament. The Definitive Treaty was afterwards approved of by both Houses. Solemn thanks were rendered to God for it in all our churches and also in the churches of the United Provinces. Her Majesty received upon its conclusion the hearty and unfeigned thanks of her people from all parts of her dominions.' Chap. V. THE COL LECTOR OF THE HAR LEIAN MSS. vol. xv. Journals, 9 June, 1715. It might well have been thought that even in those evil State Trials, days it would be difficult to induce a Committee of partisans to report to the House of Commons that large sums Commons' issued for the service of the war were received by the Earl of OXFORD, and applied to his Lordship's private use,' without the possession of some plausible show of proof. There was not so much as a decent presumption, or colourable inference, to back the assertion. When the matter came to be probed, it appeared that a royal gift of £13,000 had been received by the Earl in what were known as 'tin allies,' and that the sum had been a charge upon the evenues of the Duchy of Cornwall. Probably few politicians have owed quite so large a debt of gratitude to their enemies as that incurred by the Earl of OXFORD. His ministry at home had been marked by weakesses which went perilously near the edge of public calaity. The Peace which was its characteristic achievement broad had brought with it many real blessings, but they were won at the cost of a large sacrifice of national pride, not also by some sacrifice of national honour. The wild xcesses of his adversaries now gave back to the obnoxious Book I, Chap. V. THE COL LECTOR OF THE HAR Minister the strength of his best days. When POPE wrote of him, The utmost weight of ministerial power and popu lar hatred were almost worth bearing for the glory of so LEIAN MSS. dauntless a conduct as he has shown under it,' the praise OXFORD'S UNDER TRIAL. came from a pen which is known to have been employed, now and again, to flatter the great. But it was no flatterer who wrote to OXFORD himself—'Your intrepid behaviour under this prosecution astonishes every one but me, who know you so well, and how little it is in the power of human actions or events to discompose you. I have seen your Lordship labouring under great difficulties and exposed to great dangers, and overcoming both, by the providence of God, and your own wisdom and courage.' Those words came from one of the shrewdest and most acute observers of human character that have ever lived. They were written after a close and daily intimacy of four eventful years. OXFORD, in his day of power, had disappointed SWIFT of some cherished hopes, which now could never be renewed. The praise of SWIFT must have been sincere. When such a writer, at such a time, goes on to add—' You suffer for having preserved your country, and for having been the great instrument, under God, of his present Majesty's peaceable accession to the throne;-this I know, and this your enemies know the most prepossessed reader cannot but feel that the absence from the two and twenty pp. 232, 233. articles of impeachment of any charge of plotting against the Hanover succession is alike intelligible and significant. Swift's Correspondence, in Works, by Scott, vol. xvi, THE TRIAL. 1717, July. When Oxford's imprisonment could be no longer protracted without a trial, the two Houses of Parliament were unable to agree as to the mode of proceeding. It was obvious on all sides that the charge of treason' would fail. The Lords declared that on the articles imputing BOOK I, Chap. V. LECTOR OF THE HAR- Lords' Journals, vol. xx, p. 515, seqq. Commons Journals, treason judgment must be given, before the articles imputing other high crimes and misdemeanours' could be entered upon. They declared that the attempt of the Commons to mix up the two was 'a new and unjustifiable proceeding.' The Commons refused to adduce evidence on he charge of treason, and to take the issue that. upon On the first of July, 1717, the Earl was brought to the bar to hear from the Lord High Steward a declaration that Robert, Earl of OxFORD, is, by the unanimous vote of all the Lords present, acquitted of the articles of impeachment exhibited against him, by the House of Commons, for High State Trials, Treason and other high crimes and misdemeanours, and that seqq. the said impeachment shall be and is hereby dismissed.' Then the Steward said, 'Lieutenant of the Tower, You are how to discharge your prisoner.' vol. xvii. OXFORD'S RETURN TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS. On the third of July, the Earl resumed his seat as a peer of Parliament. On the fourth, the Commons resolved to ddress the King, beseeching him to except Robert, 1717, Earl of OXFORD, out of the Act of Grace which Your July. lajesty has been graciously pleased to promise from the hrone, to the end the Commons may be at liberty to pro- Journals, eed against the said Earl in a parliamentary way.' No p. 617. uch proceeding, of course, was taken or intended. For several years to come Lord OXFORD took part, from me to time, in the business of Parliament. He served 'ten on Committees in these final years of his public life, st as he had done during his early years of apprenticeship the Lower House. In the Lords, as in the Commons, › was listened to with especial deference on points of parimentary law and privilege. From time to time, also, the Jacobite agitators, both at ›me and abroad, made repeated appeals to him, direct or BOOK I, LECTOR OF THE HAR ALLEGED indirect, for countenance and help in their schemes. They had, it seems, a confident hope that the sufferings and the humiliation inflicted on him in the years 1715-1717 must LEIAN MSS. have so entirely alienated him from the reigning House, as now, at all events, to have prepared him to be really their fellow-conspirator, on the first occurrence of a promising opportunity. How far the Earl listened to such suggestions and persuasions is still, it will be seen, matter of great and curious uncertainty.* RENEWAL OF CORRE SPONDENCE WITH THE STUART AGENTS. DOMESTIC LIFE OF Lord OXFORD's private life was not less chequered by rapid alternations of sunshine and of gloom than was his political career. In August, 1713, he gratified a cherished desire by the marriage of his son Edward, Lord HARLEY, with the Lady Henrietta CAVENDISH HOLLES, daughter and heiress of John, Duke of NEWCASTLE (who died in 1711). With what Lord HARLEY had already derived under the Duke's will, this marriage brought him an estate then worth sixteen thousand pounds a year, and destined to increase enormously in value. Three months afterwards the Earl lost a dearly loved daughter, the Marchioness of CAERMARTHEN, who died at the age of twenty-eight. It was of her that SWIFT wrote to him- I have sat down to think of every amiable quality that could enter into the composition of a lady, and could not single out one which she did not possess in as high a perfection as human nature is capable of. But as to your Lordship's own particular, as it is an unconceivable misfortune to have lost such a daughter, so it is a possession which few can boast of to * The chief passages in the Stuart Correspondence upon which a confident assertion has been based of his ultimate complicity in the Jacobite conspiracies are given, textually, in a note at the end of this chapter. |
