The swing to the right was obvious. Lord Derby used with effect his great Tory influence in Lancashire. The City sent back four Tories in place of four Whigs, and Westminster two Tories unopposed. Edward Harley lost his seat in Herefordshire, the furious John Hampden was not re-elected. Sawyer was returned in triumph for the University of Cambridge. Everywhere the clergy took an active part: the Bishop of London took command in Essex, such a moderate man as ✔ Tenison declared from his pulpit for Church candidates, and parish priests led their flocks to the polls.1 With this election, and the return of a Tory majority pledged to support King William (small and fluctuating though it was to prove), may be said to end the year of the Revolution. Monarchy de facto had triumphed indeed. 1 Kenyon papers, 236; P. iii. 444 et seq.; Ranke, iv. 583 X THE SECOND DANBY MINISTRY, 1690-4 THE history of party in this country was never more intricate than between 1690 and 1694, years which have written plain upon them the marks of a transition age. An active king was on the throne, who was determined to rule above party, to take what moderate ministers he could get from either side, and to assert all the Crown's prerogatives. The Revolution had shattered the old Tory basis, and largely destroyed the rationale of the Whigs. The first were drawn by their political reason to support the Crown, but by their sentiment to hate usurpation and Dutch wars. The Whigs, if they were to be true to their past, would be jealous of a kingly rule, but they dared not overturn the saviour of Whig society. Purely religious scruples were losing their strength and being absorbed in factious political systems, but these scruples, too, in so far as they operated at all, diverted each party from the natural course of their affections. How should a high-prerogative Tory vote, who thought the Church in danger, or what should decide a Whig between Parliamentary liberties, which were offensive to the King, and protection for Dissent, which only the King could guarantee? Moreover, the very existence of party was not yet accepted by old-fashioned and loyal country' politicians their constitutional ideal was still a king ruling over a united House of Commons, and thus Sir John Lowther thought the worst consequence of the Revolution was the revival of the buried names of Whig and Tory '.1 If, in addition, we remember that William III's reign saw the creation of Jacobitism, and that it was also the most corrupt period of English politics, we shall not be surprised to find one good observer dividing the new Parliament into 'Tories, Whigs, Court Whigs and Tory Whigs', to hear men of the old school speaking bitterly of modern Tories', or to 1 'Memoirs', ed. Firth, E. H. R. xxx. 1915. discover Godolphin classed alternately as a Whig and a Tory within one year by two excellent judges.1 What was in fact proceeding was a regrouping of parties; by 1698 we shall find this tolerably accomplished, but its first stages began with the Parliament of 1690. The sum of the factors mentioned above involved, it will be seen, an extraordinary uncertainty in politics-comparable only to the fog in which our modern parties' pioneers groped during the middle period of George III. The Tuscan envoy, indeed, was driven back on the politics of Babel for an informative parallel.2 The King, reluctant to abandon his freedom of choice and only anxious to secure ample supply, freely experimented in his selection of ministers—a government predominantly Tory in February 1690 thus changing, by gradual steps, to one almost purely Tory by March 1692, and then, by the same process reversed, changing back again, till by May 1694 it was almost entirely Whig. But the same Parliament continued throughout these vicissitudes, and the formation of Cabinets turned, therefore, not on pressure from constituencies nor even on the voice of the Commons, but rather upon a nice adjustment of many personal and sectional groups to the royal will. It would, indeed, be true to say that in one sense the whole of England during this reign was in Opposition, since the King's method was simply to govern through those groups which would give him money for his wars at the price of reasonable concessions. The material burden cast on the country by his war policy was greater than it had ever known. The estimates for 1690-3 were annually over £4,000,000, and had increased by 1695 to more than £5,000,000. The land tax rose to 4s. in the pound, and the standing army to a strength of 90,000 men. Nor did the King's methods precisely gild the pill.3 Finally, it should be emphasized that men of both parties were 1 P. iii. 446; Hatton Corr. ii. 149; Blanquard to Dykvelt, Denbigh papers. 6/16 Jan. 1693; Shrewsbury to the King (Coxe), June 1694. • Terriesi, B. M. Add. MSS. 25380, 12 May 1690: Non credessi che l'antica Babbilonia si ritrovasse giammai nella confusione che è l'Inghilterra al presente.' ''Whoever goes about to obstruct or divert your application to these matters, preferably to all others, can neither be my friend, nor the Kingdom's,' Speech of 2 November 1690. |