February 12th, 1700, says, 'To-morrow is the great day when we expect that my lord chancellor will be fallen upon: though God knows what crime he is guilty of, but that of being a very great man, and a wise and upright judge.' It is related, that some time afterwards, the king declared, at dinner, in the presence of several peers, respecting Kidd's affair, that if, by the law of England, he could be a witness, he could, of his own knowledge, justify the lords concerned in all they had done in that business.'

These vexatious proceedings in the house of commons, though they failed in their immediate object, filled the mind of the king with irritation and disgust. He renewed his impatient threat of quitting the government of a nation whom he charged with the deepest ingratitude; and though diverted from this purpose, which he never perhaps seriously entertained, he was readily induced to listen to the interested advise of the tory leaders, who promised, if intrusted with the conduct of government, to extricate him from the labyrinth in which he was involved. Artfully affecting to disparage and disbelieve the late charges against the lord chancellor in the house of commons, they represented to the king that his unpopularity in that house was alone of such fatal detriment to the public service, that it was absolutely necessary to remove him from the government. This suggestion was reported to Lord Somers by the king himself, who at the same time intimated to him that he was inclined to concur in the necessity of his giving up the great seal. Lord Somers assured the king, that he was perfectly willing to resign it, and anxious to retire from public business; but that he was so firmly convinced that those who had advised his removal had done so to serve themselves and not the government, that he was resolved, with his majesty's permission, to keep the seal in defiance of their malice; that he feared them not, and was ready to endure patiently all the trials they might put upon him, with the hope of being serviceable to his majesty. He repeated, that if his majesty would adhere to his friends, they would be true to him, and that in a new parliament he had no doubt that he should be able to carry whatever points he had in view for the public welfare.' The king shook his head doubtfully, and said It must be so.'

The parliament was prorogued on the 11th of April, 1700: and very soon afterwards, the king, wearied with the perpetual broils of faction, determined at all events to try the experiment of an accommodation with the tories, and inconsiderately and selfishly consented to dismiss the lord chancellor from his office. At the time when this resolution was formed, Lord Somers was confined to his house by a severe attack of illness; and on his first appearance at court after his recovery, the king informed him, that he was now convinced that it was necessary for his service that he should resign the seal, but wished him to make the resignation himself, in order that it might appear to be his own act. The chancellor declined to make a voluntary surrender of the great seal, as such a course might be supposed to indicate a fear of his enemies, or a consciousness of misconduct in his office; upon which Lord Jersey, the secretary of state, was sent to him on the 17th of April, 1700, with an express warrant, and Lord Somers delivered the seal to him without hesitation. 'Thus, says Bishop Burnet*, the Lord Somers was discharged from his great office, which he had held seven years, with a high repu tation for capacity, integrity, and diligence. He was in all respects the greatest man I had ever known in that post: his being thus removed was much censured by all but those who had proeured it. Our princes used not to dismiss ministers who served them well, unless they were pressed to it by a house of commons that refused to give money till they were laid aside. But here a minister, who was always vindicated by a great majority in the house of commons when he was charged there, and who had served both with fidelity and success, and was indeed censured for nothing so much as for his being too compliant with the king's humour and notions, or at least for being too soft or too feeble in representing his errors to him, was removed without a shadow of complaint against him. It is said that, shortly before his death, the king declared that his unjust conduct towards Lord Somers at this time was the circumstance in his past life which he reflected upon with the greatest uneasiness. Much difficulty was experienced in finding a successor : the uncertainty of the duration of the

Burnet's Own Times, vol, ii. p. 242.

new administration, together with a reluctance to succeed so great a man in an office of so much responsibility, deterred persons of rank and eminence in the profession from aspiring to the ephemeral dignity of the seal. The office was successively offered to Lord Chief Justice Holt, and Sir Thomas Trevor, the attorney-general, who both declined to receive it; the great seal was then placed for a short time in commission, and was ultimately bestowed upon Sir Nathan Wright, one of the king's serjeants, a man but very indifferently qualified for the office to which he was preferred.

On his return from Holland in October, 1700, the king completed his arrangements for the tory administration; and the new ministers, judging that their interest would be strengthened upon a re-election, immediately dissolved the parliament. The new parliament assembled on the 10th of February, 1701; and it immediately appeared, upon occasion of the election of a speaker, that the expectations formed by the ministry, of a great predominance of the tory interest, were verified. Early in the session of parliament, the celebrated Partition Treaties gave occasion to much angry debate in both houses, but especially in the commons. Although Lord Somers's conduct with respect to these treaties seems not to have been entirely irreproachable, it became the subject of much misrepresentation; and he was assailed with a virulence of invective and abuse, quite disproportionate to his imputed error. It appears that in the spring of 1698, before the king's departure for Holland, a proposal was made to him by the agent of the French government, for a treaty to arrange the partition of some of the territories belonging to the crown of Spain, upon the expected death of Charles II. This partition was to be made in certain defined proportions between the electoral Prince of Bavaria, the Dauphin of France, and the Archduke Charles, the second son of the emperor. The king entertained these proposals favourably, and the negotiation proceeded almost entirely between the French agent and his majesty, and without the formal interference of ministers*. In August

The mode in which this negotiation was personally conducted between the king, the Earl of Portland, who was then ambassador in France, and Count Tallard, the French agent, is fully developed in Williams's correspondence with Secretary Heinsius in the Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii.

of the same year the king wrote to Lord Somers from Loo, explaining to him the proposed treaty, desiring his opinion upon the several articles, and commanding him to forward, in the most secret manner, to him in Holland, a formal commission in blank under the great seal, appointing persons to treat with the commissioners of the French government. Lord Somers, after communicating with Lord Orford, the Duke of Shrewsbury, and Mr. Montague, as he had been authorized to do, transmitted to the king their joint opinion, which suggested several objections to the proposed treaty, and forwarded at the same time the required commission. Lord Somers undoubtedly disapproved of the partition treaties: and it was his duty, as a responsible minister of the crown, to have expressed his opinion to the king explicitly when the opportunity was offered to him; but this was the 'head and front of his offending.' He had neither proposed nor advised the measure: and the treaty was afterwards negotiated abroad, and finally signed by plenipotentiaries of France and England without any further communication with him.

Though the power of the house of commons at this period was increased, its character as a deliberative assembly was much depreciated: 'very little of gravity, order, or common decency," says Burnet, appeared among them:' but the acrimony of the debates in the house on the Partition Treaty is almost unexampled in the history of parliament. One of the members termed it a felonious treaty:' which, considering that the king was universally known to be, from the beginning, personally engaged much more than his ministers in the transaction, was perhaps the most indecent expression ever used in the unbounded licence of parliamentary debate. The king himself was so offended and exasperated by it, that he passionately declared, that had his rank permitted, he would have demanded personal satisfaction for the insult. All the papers relating to the negotiation were scrutinized with malignant activity; and the character and conduct of every individual in the slightest degree connected with the transaction were attacked with sarcasm, ridicule, and the most unmeasured abuse. In the midst of this raging

commotion of faction Lord Somers desired to be heard in the house of commons in his own defence. His

application being granted, he was introduced within the bar, and addressed the house in his usual calm and dignified style of reasoning, declaring fully and perspicuously the motives of his conduct. He admitted that the king had asked the advice of his confidential servants upon this occasion; and that his majesty had even informed him, that if he and his other ministers thought that a treaty ought not to be made upon such a project, that the whole matter must be let fall, for he could not bring the French to better terms.' He further told the house, that when he received the king's letter from Holland, with an order to send over the necessary powers, he conceived that he should be assuming too much upon himself if he caused any delay in the progress of so important a treaty, considering the precarious state of the health of the king of Spain; for if the Spanish king died before the treaty was completed, he would not have been justified in delaying the transmission of the powers, as the king's letter amounted in fact to a warrant: it was not indeed an actual and formal warrant, but in its effect a substantial and positive command; that, at all events, he did not think it became him to endanger the public interest by insisting on a point of form, at a very critical time, and when the greatest despatch was requisite; that, nevertheless, he had written his own. opinion very fully to his majesty, objecting to several particulars in the treaty, and proposing other articles which he thought were for the interest of England; that he thought himself bound, by the duty of his office, to put the great seal to the treaty when it was concluded; and that, in the whole course of the transaction, he had offered his best advice to his sovereign as a privy councillor, and as chancellor had executed his office according to his conception of his duty. This address, delivered with much eloquence, and a simplicity and earnestness of manner which were peculiar to Lord Somers, produced so deep an impression upon the house, that it was believed by Walpole, who was present*, that had the question upon his impeachment been put immediately, it would have been negatived by a large majority. After he had withdrawn, however, a warm debate ensued, in the course of which the favourable disposi

Coxe's Life of Sir Robert Walpole, vol. i. p. 25

tion produced by Lord Somers's statement was entirely effaced: it ended in a resolution, carried by a majority of only ten, that John, Lord Somers, by advising his majesty to conclude the Treaty of Partition, whereby large territories of the Spanish monarchy were to be delivered up to France, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour.' Similar resolutions were passed against Lord Portland, Lord Orford, and Mr. Montague, the latter of whom had been lately raised to the peerage with the title of Marquess of Halifax; and all of them were impeached at the bar of the house of lords.

Greater unfairness and partiality can hardly be conceived than were exhibited by the house of commons in the institution of these proceedings. The Earl of Jersey, a tory, was beyond all comparison more active than Lord Somers in the negotiation of the Partition Treaties; he had in fact signed the treaties, as plenipotentiary, with the Earl of Portland: yet, though he held an office in the government, and was near the king's person, he was not impeached, nor was there any motion made for his removal. Sir Joseph Williamson, likewise a tory, and a privy councillor, who had signed the treaty as a plenipotentiary, was also passed over, and remained unimpeached in his office. The commons, however, were fully aware that they could not secure a majority in the house of lords to forward their partial and factious schemes, and, in all probability, never intended to proceed seriously with the impeachment. They therefore passed a resolution of censure, immediately after the votes of impeachment, in the form of a motion, for an address to his majesty to remove the Lords Somers, Orford, Portland, and Halifax, from his presence and councils for ever.' inconsistency of the commons in urging the king to punish before trial, and to inflict, without a hearing, a heavy censure upon persons for conduct which they had themselves placed in a course of judicial investigation, was so obvious to the lords, that they immediately voted an address to the king, praying that the lords impeached at the bar of their house might not have any censure passed upon them till they were tried upon the impeachments, and judgment was given according to the usage of parliament and the law of the land.

The flagrant

The commons, having carried their resolution for a censure upon the impeached lords, which they were satisfied would have the effect of excluding them from the public service, became indifferent to the progress of the impeachment. Several weeks elapsed during which not a single step was taken, and it was not until a message had been sent from the lords to remind them of the necessity of proceeding, that the formal articles of impeachment were prepared and presented. The articles against Lord Somers principally charged him with having affixed the great seal to the blank commission for the Partition Treaty sent to the king in Holland, and afterwards to the treaty itself; with having shared in the projected piracy of Captain Kidd; and with having received various grants from the crown for his own personal emolument. To each of these articles he answered promptly and fully. To the two first he replied the facts of each case as above related; and in answer to the third he admitted that the king had been pleased to make certain grants to him, but denied that they had been made in consequence of any solicitation on his part. After many frivolous delays and repeated disputes between the two houses, a day was peremptorily fixed for the trial of the impeachment. The lords went down to Westminster Hall in the form usual on such occasions; the articles were first read, and then the answers to them; but the commons not appearing to prosecute their articles, the lords returned to their own house, and, after a long and warm debate, resolved, by a considerable majority, to acquit Lord Somers of the charges, and to dismiss the impeachment.

The conduct of the lords in the course of these proceedings received the general approbation of the nation, whilst the violence and folly of the tories in the house of commons were universally condemned by all thinking people, and the character of that party was much lowered in public estimation. The eyes of the king, too, were now opened to his error in having changed his ministry at so critical a period. He found, to his infinite disquietude, that, instead of enabling him to manage the commons as they had promised, the tory leaders had rendered them far more intractable and imperious than before; and that instead of sincerely endeavouring to promote

peace abroad and quiet government at home, each man was pursuing his own paltry objects of private passion or revenge. The Earl of Rochester was at the head of the tory administration, and the king is said to have repeatedly declared that the year in which that nobleman directed his councils was the most uneasy of his life, and to have resolved to disengage himself quickly from him, and never to return to him any more*.

The whole of the summer of 1701, the king spent at Loo, in Holland, in a very feeble state of health. At the beginning of the month of September, he wrote from thence to Lord Sunderland, expressing his disposition to change his ministry, and earnestly desiring his advice generally upon the state of his affairs in England*. Lord Sunderland, in his reply, which is a most remarkable document, advises the king, in decided terms, to dismiss his tory ministry, who,' he says, 'grow more hated every day, and more exposed.' After reminding the king of the difficulties into which he had been brought by the tories, and the failure of all the hopes they had held out to him, Lord Sunderland concludes this singular letter in the following manner: But at last what can the king do? Let him come into England as soon as he can, and immediately send for my Lord Somers. He is the life, the soul, and the spirit of his party, and can answer for it; not like the present ministers, who have no credit with theirs, any further than they can persuade the king to be undone. When his majesty speaks to my Lord Somers, he ought to do it openly and freely, and ask him plainly what he and his friends can do, and will do, and what they expect, and the methods they would propose. By this the king will come to make a judgment of his affairs, and he may be sure that my Lord Somers will desire nothing for himself, or any of the impeached lords, but will take as much care not to perplex the king's business as can be desired; and if he can do nothing his majesty shall like, he will remain still zealous and affectionate to his person and government. This is thought to be the best way the king can take, and, perhaps, the only means of being able to resolve with reason. It should be

Burnet's Own Times, vol. ii. p. 280. ↑ Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii. p. 443, Ibid. p. 444,

considered that, by the present ministry, the tories have infinitely lost their credit, and the others have in proportion gained. It is a melancholy thing, that the king, who has more understanding than any body who comes near him, is imposed on by mountebanks, or by such as he himself knows hate both his person and government !'

In conformity with the advice of Lord Sunderland, the king immediately wrote to Lord Somers, desiring him to communicate unreservedly to him through Lord Galway his sentiments upon public affairs, and assuring him of the continuance of his friendship*. Lord Somers, upon this communication, drew up certain heads of arguments for a recurrence to a whig administration, and the immediate dissolution of the parliament, which were afterwards communicated to the king. The affairs of the nation were, at this precise point of time, in an extremely critical situation. On the 16th September, 1701, while this negotiation was proceeding between the king and Lords Sunderland and Somers, the abdicated monarch, King James II., died at St. Germain's. The death of an exile, who, for several years, had extinguished all ambition of regaining the throne of England in the austerities and extravagances of religious fanaticism, would have been entirely insignificant, had it not derived importance from the events which ensued, and the peculiar crisis of the affairs of England. Immediately upon his death, the prince his son was proclaimed by the officers of his household king of England, with the title of James III.; and a few days afterwards the French king, in opposition to the advice of his ministers, and in violation of the arrangements of the treaty of Ryswick, by which it was expressly stipulated that he should not disturb the king of Great Britain in the peaceable possession of his dominions, gave orders that he should be publicly recognized in that capacity. On receiving intelligence of the event, the king of England despatched a courier to the king of Sweden, who had guaranteed the treaty of Ryswick, to complain of this obvious infraction; and he sent an express to the Earl of Manchester, then his ambassador at the French court, commanding him to return to England without taking his audience of

Hardwicke State Papers, vol. fi. p. 443,

leave. Though it does not seem to have been intended by the king of France to have this effect, the acknowledgment of the title of the abdicated house resembled a declaration of perpetual war; at all events, it furnished William with abundant reasons for joining the other powers of Europe in resisting the grasping ambition of Louis. The hostile effect which this injudicious act produced upon the feeling of the people of England was instantaneous and universal. William returned to England in November, and upon his arrival addresses from all parts of the country poured in upon him, expressive of approbation of his conduct in having at once assumed a hostile attitude, of loyalty and devotion to his title, and of a determination to support him in maintaining his just rights against all foreign dictation or invasion. Such was the state of feeling in the nation at large upon the king's return, in which, however, those who occupied the great offices of government by no means cordially participated. Upon this the king at once determined to adopt the advice of Lord Somers, by calling a new parliament, and changing the ministry at the earliest practicable moment. With this intention a proclamation was issued immediately after his arrival, dissolving the parliament and summoning the new parliament to meet on the 30th of December, 1701. In the mean time various changes were made in the ministry, to the disadvantage of the tory party; it is even said that the seals were at that time offered to Lord Somers, and upon his hesitating, and suggesting the possibility of circumstances arising which might bring back the opposite party into power, the king passionately exclaimed, Never, never, never!'*. Lord Somers, however, did not at this time become a member of the government, though he was on the point of being restored to office. There is no doubt, that he composed William's last address to his parliament, which Burnet calls the best speech that he or, perhaps, any other prince ever made to his people,' Lord Hardwicke having seen the draft of it in Lord Somers's handwriting amongst the manuscripts destroyed by fire at Lincoln's-inn. The simple eloquence of this celebrated speech, and the sagacity with which every line of it is weighed

2 Ralfe, 1005,