CHAPTER II.

GEORGE II., 1727-1760 (33 years).

Born 1683; married, 1705, Caroline of Anspach.

Chief Characters of the Reign.-Queen Caroline; Walpole; Bolingbroke; Pulteney; Carteret; John and Charles Wesley; Porteous; Wilmington; Henry Pelham; William, Duke of Cumberland; Anson; Prince Charles Edward; Cope; Henry Fox; William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham; Pelham, Duke of Newcastle; Dupleix; Clive; Admiral Byng; the Duke of Devonshire; Rodney; Wolfe. THE new king, George II., was wholly under the influence of his wife, Caroline of Anspach. This remarkable woman had as great ascendency over her husband as the Duchess of Marlborough had over Queen Anne; but, as she had more tact in exercising it, she kept it till her death, and during the first ten years of the reign, Caroline, much more than her husband, was the real head of the government. In accordance with his sentiments as Prince of Wales, George's first act was to dismiss Walpole, and to ask Sir Spencer Compton. Speaker of the House of Commons, to take his place. Sir Spencer, however, was so incompetent, that he actually asked Walpole to help him in writing the king's speech. Caroline, who was Walpole's

Influence of
Queen
Caroline.

Walpole retained

in power.

friend, at once pointed out to the king the absurdity of this. George was convinced by her arguments, and when Walpole himself promised to propose a large addition to the king's annual income, or civil list, the old minister was restored to his place, and the opposition were disappointed. They did not, however, relax their efforts, but did all they could to harass the minister and to win new recruits for their own party

Meanwhile Walpole steadily carried out his old policy both at home and abroad. Spain was still hostile to the treaty of Utrecht,

and in 1726 she induced Austria, which was jealous of Hanoverian influence in Germany, to join her. This movement Walpole's was met by an alliance made at Hanover between policy abroad. England, France, and Prussia. War ensued; but Walpole confined England's operations strictly to the defensive, and, an attack of the Spaniards upon Gibraltar having failed, peace was concluded at Seville in 1729. At home, Walpole was not willing

His policy

at home.

to excite a disturbance by doing much for the Nonconformists, as he feared that to do so would only throw the Church into the arms of the opposition; but he began the practice of passing an annual Bill of Indemnity for those who had broken the Test and Corporation Acts. This was not a very satisfactory way of dealing with the question, but it served Walpole's purpose for the time.

Lord Townshend leaves the ministry.

left Walpole withdrew to His work in

In 1730 Lord Townshend left the ministry. He was Walpole's brother-in-law, and had been his firm friend; but Walpole's overbearing conduct, and his practice of making the House of Lords reject any bills which he did not feel strong enough to resist in the Commons, alienated Townshend, and he retired after an open quarrel, and supreme. Townshend did not go into opposition, but the country, where he devoted himself chiefly to agriculture, in which he did great service by encou- the country. raging the growth of turnips, a useful vegetable, which can be grown while the soil is recovering after the exhaustion caused by the growth of a crop of wheat, without interfering with the process of recovery. Before Townshend's time such fields were allowed to lie fallow for a year, so that the introduction of the turnip was a real gain to the country.

The first success of the opposition was gained in 1733. In that year Walpole brought forward his celebrated excise scheme, by which he proposed to substitute a very small duty Walpole's and an excise levied at the shops where they were excise scheme. sold, for the large customs duties hitherto levied at the ports on wine and tobacco. By this plan smuggling would be checked, because the reduction of the customs duty would make it not worth while to run the risk of detection; and also the public would have to pay a less price for their wine, because the cost of articles would be increased

only by the exact sum levied at the shop by government, instead of there being added to it the interest on the tax levied at the port. It was also believed that the system would encourage importation. The scheme, however, was violently denounced by the opposition, first on the ground that an Englishman's house is his castle, and that liberty would be destroyed if excise officers might at any time call to inspect a man's goods; secondly, on the ground that Walpole's real object was to create an army of excisemen, who by their votes would turn every election in favour of the government candidate. By these arguments Pulteney and Bolingbroke roused the passions of the mob, and Walpole, though he could probably have carried it through Parliament, thought it better to withdraw the bill. The changes, however, were introduced gradually without comment, though the fact that fifty years later it was found that seventy elections depended on the votes of excisemen, shows that the second argument had not been without foundation.

In 1736 all Scotland was agitated by the Porteous riots. These riots, which were of little political significance, arose out of an order The Porteous given by one Captain Porteous to fire upon the mob,

riots. at the execution in Edinburgh of a certain smuggler, who had enlisted their sympathy by a brave and successful attempt to secure the escape of one of his fellows. For this Porteous was condemned to die, but was reprieved by the government; and the mob, angry at this, broke open the gaol, and hanged him on a barber's pole. For this disturbance the magistrates of Edinburgh were reprimanded, and the city was fined £2000. These events form the groundwork of Sir Walter Scott's novel, "The Heart of Midlothian."

Rise of the

The most important event of the early years of George II. was the rise of the Methodists. When this king ascended the throne, the chief Nonconformist bodies in England were the Methodists. Independents, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Society of Friends. The members of the Church of England were much more numerous than those who belonged to these bodies; but the condition of the Church was far from satisfactory. This was in part due to the alienation which existed between the lower clergy, who were for the most part Tories, and the bishops, who since the accession of George I. had been invariably appointed from the

Whigs. Another cause was the silencing of Convocation, which, except under the commonwealth, had since the time of Edward I. always sat at the same time as Parliament. After the Restoration, however, Convocation had ceased to vote the taxes of the clergy, and after 1718, when its meetings from the violence of party feeling had become a trouble to the government, it had not been allowed to transact business. Moreover, since the reign of Anne the cause of the Church had been made a mere party cry, and the clergy, not wholly through their own fault, had become partisans. Accordingly there was very little life in the Church, and consequently religion was falling into decay, both in the country and at the universities. It was under these circumstances that in 1730 a little knot of Oxford men formed themselves into a society which aimed at living a systematic religious life. The heads of this society were two brothers, John and Charles Wesley, and they were soon joined by George Whitfield. From the regularity of their lives they were called by their fellows " Methodists," and the name is still used and honoured by their followers. In 1739 they removed the head-quarters of their society to London, and numbers soon joined them, which before Wesley's death in 1791 amounted to many thousands. At first they regarded themselves as members of the Church of England, but when the clergy refused to allow them to preach in their churches, they began to hold meetings of their own, sometimes in the open air, sometimes in barns, afterwards in chapels of their own, and so by degrees they drifted away from the Church. Four years after Wesley's death their preachers began to administer the sacraments, and then they became a nonconformist body. The rise of the Methodists was a good thing for religion, as their example acted upon the Church, and made the clergy more energetic and sincere than they had been before its occurrence.

The beginning of Wesley's work, however, attracted little notice, for all eyes were turned upon the great contest which was going on between Walpole and the opposition. Pulteney and Contest his friends had been making way both in Parliament and in the country; but Walpole's position was very the opposition. strong. In those days, when a great many of the boroughs were small indeed, the chief influence at the elections was in the

very

between Walpole and

hands of a few men, and the corruption of many boroughs was so great that seats could be bought and sold. Walpole took full advantage of this to get his friends elected, and when they had taken their seats he secured their allegiance by bribery and patronage. At that time neither the division lists of the House nor the speeches of the members were reported, so that few knew which side members took. Under these circumstances corruption was certain, and Walpole reduced it to a regular system.

Walpole's

The first great shock to Walpole's power was the death of Queen Caroline, in 1737. The king, however, remained true to him, but the Prince of Wales had united himself to the power shaken. opposition, and since the retirement of Bolingbroke. who left England in 1734, had been the nominal head of the country party. A more serious danger to Walpole's power than the mere party attacks of the opposition was, however, arising. This was the growth of a hostile feeling between England and Spain. This enmity arose out of the colonial policy of the two countries. As we saw, Spain had, by the treaty of

Hostility

of England and Spain.

Utrecht, given the English the privilege of sending one ship a year to trade with the Spanish colonies. This right had been abused by the English, who had sent out, beside the single ship, a number of tenders, who, keeping out of sight of land, replenished the trading vessel with fresh goods. The English colonies, too, were always trying to set up a contraband trade with those of Spain, and the Spaniards tried to stop this by searching English vessels for smuggled goods. This naturally led to quarrels, in one of which a certain Englishman, named Jenkins, had his ear cut off by a Spanish sailor. Jenkins brought his severed ear home, and used to carry it about wrapped in cotton wool. When asked what his feelings were when in the hands of the Spaniards, he replied, "I commended my soul to God and my cause to my country." The opposition, of course, made the most of this, and accused Walpole of neglecting the interests of the country.

Walpole, however, had no mind to go to war. He feared that war with Spain would soon develop into war with France, and that, he was aware, would mean the renewal of the Jacobite intrigue. The opposition, however, had the country and the king on its side, and Walpole, rather than lose office,

War with
Spain.