Fall of Marlborough and the Whigs: Treaty of Utrecht

At this juncture a change of party control in England saved France. The English were tired of the war. As long as the question of the Spanish succession threatened to endanger the commerce of England, they were willing to fight ; but by 1710 that danger had been averted, and consequently their interest waned. Marlborough, who had gone into the war a Tory, found it expedient to attach himself to the party of the Whigs, who had proved to be his chief allies. By 1708 the ministry had become wholly Whig, greatly to the dissatisfaction of Queen Anne, who was beginning to tire of the influence of the Marlboroughs. In 1710 her opportunity came. The Whigs, by prosecuting Dr. Sacheverell for a Tory sermon, aroused indignation in the country and became exceedingly unpopular. Thereupon the queen dismissed the Whigs, restored the Tories to power, and after depriving the duchess of Marlborough of all her offices, showed her entire independence by recalling Marlborough himself from the command (1712).

Marlborough's fall meant the end of the war. The Tories hurried the peace negotiations, and in 1713 the treaty of Utrecht was signed. England rather basely neglected the interests of her allies and gained the greatest advantages from the treaty. Philip V was recognized as king of Spain, and the Indies were confirmed as Spanish possessions. To place barriers in the way of further French aggrandizement, Holland was given control of the fortresses on her frontier, Prussia received territory on the Rhine, and Savoy an extension of land in northwestern Italy. From Spain, England received Minorca and Gibraltar in the Mediterranean; from France, Nova Scotia, all claims to Hudson Bay territory, a portion of St. Kitts, and Newfoundland, though the French in resigning all territorial claims in Newfoundland retained the right to catch fish and to dry them on certain portions of the coast. Spain granted to the South Sea Company the right, known as the assiento, or exclusive contract, of importing a certain number of slaves to the Spanish colonies in South America for thirty years, and allowed the company to send one ship annually with English goods to trade at the Spanish fairs in South America. Thus the commercial activity of England was widely extended.

Union with Scotland

While England, by the treaty of Utrecht, was gaining important commercial advantages and extending her empire abroad, she was also consolidating her kingdom at home. Cromwell had given representation in the English parliament to both the Scots and the Irish ; but the Restoration had separated the three kingdoms, granting each a parliament of its own, though keeping them all under a common king, the king of England. Since that time Scotland and Ireland had been governed by commissioners appointed by the king, and in many ways had been treated as foreign countries. The acts of navigation had forbidden the English colonies to trade with them, except through England, and Scottish merchants and manufacturers had suffered greatly from this restriction of their market. The Darien expedition of 1698, designed to open new markets to the Scots by colonizing the Isthmus of Darien, proved a bad failure, and showed the Scots how impossible it would be for then to build up a trade except by union with England. The English, on their side, were afraid lest, on the death of Queen Anne, Scotland should break away from England entirely and form an independent kingdom. This fear was increased in I704, when the Scottish parliament, refusing to accept the terms of the Act of Settlement, threatened to select a different successor from the one named by England. Consequently, after a year's deliberation, union was agreed upon.

The famous Act of Union was adopted in 1707. It roused, among the independent Scots, an intense opposition that time only could eradicate, but in the end was to be the making of the Scottish nation and kingdom. By this act' the two kingdoms became one state, with one parliament, one debt, one system of taxation, one body of commercial and trading privileges, and one flag, the Union Jack. Only in church and law and justice did differences exist. Scotland retained Presbyterianism as the state religion, and administered law and justice in her own way. Thenceforward England was known as Great Britain.

Position of Ireland

Ireland remained, as before, a dependency under a Protestant parliament, excluded from the trade advantages possessed by Great Britain and Scotland. The Irish were forbidden to raise tobacco, a heavy tax was placed on their wool, and their manufacture of linen was discouraged. For the sake of Scotland and the colonies, Ireland was deliberately prevented from developing her natural resources. Furnished by nature with few sources of wealth, the Irish saw themselves checked at every point by the political and economic jealousy of their wealthy neighbor.

The Hanoverian Succession

The shifting of party politics had brought the Tories into office in 1710, and this position they retained until 1714, under such leaders as St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke), Harley (Earl of Oxford), the duke of Ormond, and others. In that year the sickness of Queen Anne brought up the question of the succession. According to the Act of Settlement, the heir. to the throne was the aged Sophia, electress of Hanover; but by her death, in 1714, the title passed to her son George, a phlegmatic and uninteresting German, fifty-four years old. That he had a claim to the British throne at all was in itself an extraordinary fact. He was not the nearest heir, nor was he an elected king. The people had not chosen him, and, had they been asked, would probably have rejected him. The Act of Settlement had been passed by the House of Commons in a moment of intense excitement, the members fearing that Louis XIV would recognize the son of James II as heir to the English throne, as he did, in fact, three months later. The more men thought about the arrangement, the less they liked it, and from 1702 to 1714 it steadily lost favor. Little wonder, therefore, that after the danger from France had been removed, the opposition to a Hanoverian succession began to increase.

Taking advantage of this situation, the Tory leader, Bolingbroke, a brilliant orator but erratic statesman, began a campaign for the restoration of the Stuarts. But his efforts were checked by the honorable refusal of James III, the Pretender, to change his religion from Roman Catholic to Anglican. This decision divided the Tories, many of whom were unwilling to see a Roman Catholic on the throne. Therefore, when on August 1, 1714, Queen Anne died very unexpectedly, the Whig friends of the Hanoverians were able to declare George king. On September 18 he landed in England, and the reign of the house of Hanover began.

Discomfiture of the Tories: Mar's Uprising

The succession of George I was a victory for the Whigs. In the mind of the new king, the Tories were Jacobites, and with them he would have nothing to do. He selected his first ministers, Townsend, Stanhope, and Walpole, from among the Whigs, not because the Whigs were the stronger party; they were probably weaker in numbers than the Tories, but because they were his supporters and could command a majority in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Whigs, thus restored to power, impeached Bolingbroke, Oxford, and Ormond. They imprisoned Oxford for two years and passed an act of attainder against Ormond and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom fled to France. These extreme measures, which savored of persecution, led to many Jacobite riots in 1715; and, in order to strengthen the authorities, parliament passed the Riot Act, a measure of which little good can be said, though it is in force today.

More serious than the Jacobite riots in England was the Jacobite movement in Scotland, known as Mar's Uprising. A general insurrection in England and Scotland had been planned by Bolingbroke; but unfortunately for the success of the undertaking, the Pretender, headstrong and impatient, ordered the earl of Mar to act in Scotland before the English Jacobites were ready. Mar was defeated at Sheriffmuir (November 13, 1715); his colleague, Forster, was defeated at Preston; and, though James himself went to Scotland to encourage his supporters, the whole movement proved a failure. Mar and the Pretender escaped to France, but eight of their followers were beheaded.

For five years the Jacobites continued their agitation, relying chiefly on foreign aid. After the death of Louis XIV (1715), France refused to help them; but in 1719 Cardinal Alberoni of Spain, in an effort to restore that kingdom to her place among the powers, took up the cause of the Stuarts and invaded Scotland. His expedition was entirely without success.