In this reign the enclosure of waste lands was practically commenced, sixteen enclosure Acts being passed, and 17, -660 acres of land enclosed. This example, once furnished, was followed in the next reign with increasing rapidity, 226 enclosure Acts being passed in the reign of George II., and 318,778 acres of land enclosed. As Mr. Fawcett states, up to 1845, more than 7,000,000 acres of land, over which the public possessed invaluable rights, have been gradually absorbed, and individuals wielding legislative influence have been enriched at the expense of the public and the poor.
Within six years from his accession, the King was about £600,000 in debt, and this sum was the first of a long list of debts discharged by the nation for these Brunswicks. When our ministers to-day talk of obligations on the part of the people to endow each additional member of the Royal Family, the memory of these shameful extravagances should have some effect. George I. had a civil list of £700,000 a year; he received £300,000 from the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and £300,000 from the London Assurance Companies, and had one million voted to him in 1726 towards payment of his debts.
When the "South Sea Bill" was promoted in 1720, wholesale bribery was resorted to. Transfers of stock were proved to have been made to persons high in office. Two members of the Whig Ministry, Lord Sunderland and Mr. Aislabie, were so implicated that they had to resign their offices, and the last-named, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ignominiously expelled the House of Commons. Royalty itself, or at least, the King's sultanas, and several of his German household, shared the spoil. £30,000 were traced to the King's mistresses, and a select committee of the House denounced the whole business as "a train of the deepest villany and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a nation." Near the close of the reign, Lord Macclesfied, Lord Chancellor and favorite and tool of the King, was impeached for extortion and abuse of trust in his office, and, being convicted, was sentenced to pay a fine of £30,000. In 1716, Mademoiselle Schulenberg, then Duchess of Munster, received £5,000 as a bribe for procuring the title of Viscount for Sir Henry St. John. In 1724, the same mistress, bribed by Lord Bolingbroke, successfully used her influence to pass an act through Parliament restoring him his forfeited estates. Mr. Chetwynd, says my Lady Cowper, in order to secure his position in the Board of Trade, paid to another of George's mistresses £500 down, agreed to allow her £200 a year as long as he held the place, and gave her also the fine, brilliant ear-rings she wore.
In 1724 there appeared in Dublin, the first of the famous "Drapier Letters," written by Jonathan Swift against Wood's coinage patent. A patent had been granted to a man named Wood for coining half-pence in Ireland. This grant was made under the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of the King, and on the stipulation that she should receive a large share of the profits. These "Drapier Letters" were prosecuted by the Government, but Swift followed them with others; the grand juries refused to find true bills, and ultimately the patent was cancelled. Wood, or the Duchess, got as compensation a grant of a pension of £3,000 a year for eight years.
George died at Osnabruck, on his journey Hanover-wards, in June, 1727, having made a will by which he disposed of his money in some fashion displeasing to his son George II.; and as the Edinburgh Review tells us, the latter "evaded the old king's directions, and got his money by burning his will." In this, George II. only followed his royal father's example. When Sophia Dorothea died, she left a will bequeathing her property in a fashion displeasing to Greorge I., who, without scruple, destroyed the testament and appropriated the estate. George I. had also previously burned the will of his father-in-law, the Duke of Zell. At this time the destruction of a will was a capital felony in England.
In concluding this rough sketch of the reign of George I., it must not be forgotten that his accession meant the triumph of the Protestant caste in Ireland, and that under his rule much was done to render permanent the utter hatred manifested by the Irish people to their English conquerors, who had always preferred the policy of extermination to that of conciliation. Things were so sad in Ireland at the end of this reign, that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery, "wrote and published his 'Modest Proposal' for relieving the miseries of the people, by cooking and eating the children of the poor;" "a piece of the fiercest sarcasm," says Mitchell, "steeped in all the concentrated bitterness of his soul." Poor Ireland, she had, at any rate, nothing to endear to her the memory of George I.
CHAPTER III. THE REIGN OF GEORGE II
When George I. died there was so little interest or affection exhibited by his son and successor, that Sir Robert Walpole, on announcing to George II. that by the demise of his father he had succeeded to regal honors, was saluted with a volley of oaths, and "Dat is one big lie." No pretence even was made of sorrow. Greorge Augustus had hated George Lewis during life, and at the first council, when the will of the late King was produced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the new monarch simply took it up and walked out of the room with the document, which was never seen again. Thackeray, who pictures George II. as "a dull, little man, of low tastes," says that he "made away with his father's will under the astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury." A duplicate of this will having been deposited with the Duke of Brunswick, a large sum of money was paid to that Prince nominally as a subsidy by the English Government for the maintenance of troops, but really as a bribe for surrendering the document. A legacy having been left by this will to Lady Walsingham, threats were held out in 1733 by her then husband, Lord Chesterfield, and £20,000 was paid in compromise.
The eldest son of George II. was Frederick, born in 1706, and who up to 1728 resided permanently in Hanover. Lord Hervey tells us that the King hated his son Frederick, and that the Queen Caroline, his mother, abhorred him. To Lord Hervey the Queen says: "My dear Lord, I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world; and that I most heartily wish he were out of it." This is a tolerably strong description of the father of George HI. from the lips of his own mother. Along with this description of Frederick by the Queen, take Thackeray's character of George II.'s worthy father of worthy son: "Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor wit – who tainted a great society by a bad example; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual."
In 1705, when only Electoral Prince of Hanover, George had married Caroline, daughter of the Margrave of Anspach, a woman of more than average ability. Thackeray describes Caroline in high terms of praise, but Lord Chesterfield says that "she valued herself upon her skill in simulation and dissimulation… Cunning and perfidy were the means she made use of in business." The Prince of Anspach is alleged by the Whimperer to have raised some difficulties as to the marriage, on account of George I. being disposed to deny the legitimacy of his son, and it is further pretended that George I. had actually to make distinct acknowledgment of his son to King William III. before the arrangements for the Act of Settlement were consented to by that King. It is quite clear from the diary of Lady Cowper, that the old King's feeling towards George II. was always one of the most bitter hatred.
The influence exercised by Queen Caroline over George II. was purely political; and Lord Hervey declares that "wherever the interest of Germany and the honor of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings were as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the question."
A strange story is told of Sir Robert Walpole and Caroline. Sir Robert, when intriguing for office under George I., with Townshend, Devonshire, and others, objected to their plans being communicated to the Prince of Wales, saying,
"The fat b – h, his wife, would betray the secret and spoil the project." This courtly speech being made known by some kind friend to the Princess Caroline, considerable hostility was naturally exhibited. Sir Robert Walpole, who held the doctrine that every person was purchasable, the only question being one of price, managed to purchase peace with Caroline when Queen. When the ministry suspended, "Walpole not fairly out, Compton not fairly in," Sir Robert assured the Queen that he would secure her an annuity of £100,000 in the event of the King's death, Sir Spencer Compton, who was then looked to as likely to be in power, having only offered £60,000. The Queen sent back word, "Tell Sir Robert the fat b – h has forgiven him," and thenceforth they were political allies until the Queen's death in 1737.
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