the treaty and live in good fellowship with the king of France, to whom she was so closely allied in blood. At supper she said publicly that she had agreed to treat with France. The ministers were just as incautious, for Swift, who was a devoted fortune hunter at the elbows of Harley and St. John, and had recently been introduced to the queen by them, was invited by St. John the same evening to sup with him and a small party in his apartments in Windsor Castle. This party consisted of no other persons than Mesnager himself, Gualtier, and the infamous Abbé Dubois, tutor to the young duke of Orleans, this profligate having also been engaged in assisting Mesnager in the treaty. With them was Prior. All these particulars Swift wrote, as he wrote everything, to Stella, his mistress in Ireland. Yet when the preliminaries were handed to count Gallas, the imperial ambassador, who, in his indignation, immediately had them translated and inserted in one of the daily papers, the queen was so indignant, that she forbade his reappearing at court, and informed him that he could quit the kingdom as soon as he thought proper. He departed immediately, and the queen, to prevent an explosion on the part of the allies, wrote to the emperor to say that she should be happy to receive any other person that he might send. Raby, now earl of Strafford, was hurried to the Hague to announce to the States the fact of her having signed these preliminaries, and to desire them to appoint a spot where the plenipotentiaries of the allies and France should meet to discuss them. Both the Dutch and the emperor were startled and greatly confounded at the discovery of the nature of the terms accepted. They used every means to persuade the queen to draw back and accept no terms except those which had been offered to France after the battle of Malplaquet, but rather to push on the war vigorously, certain that they must very soon obtain all they demanded.
Nor was the excitement less at home. The news was out—the preliminaries were before the public by the act of the imperial ambassador, and the whigs were in a fury of indignation. They accused the ministers of being about to sacrifice the country, its power, and interests, to a shameful cowardice at the very moment that the labours and sufferings of years had brought it to the verge of triumph, and when Louis XIV. was old and tottering into the grave, leaving his kingdom exhausted and powerless. The tories, on the other hand, represented the whigs as insatiable for war and bloodshed, never satisfied to obtain honourable conditions when they could have them, but for their own selfish and sanguinary views seeking to reduce this country to the same depth of misery and poverty to which France was reduced. The press teemed with pamphlets: libels, Mesnager wrote, flew about as thick as bullets on a battlefield. The queen was in a great state of alarm and agitatation; fell several times into fainting fits, and her agitation aggravated the gout, with which she was affected. Hearing that the apprentices of London were going to burn all the ministry in effigy on "Queen Bess's day," she issued an order in council forbidding the usual procession and bonfires. The whigs had hired Tom D'Urfey to write a song for the occasion, with the refrain, "Save the Queen;" and the prime minister represented as the devil, with the pope on one hand and the pretender on the other, was to be burnt in a great pyre at the foot of queen Elizabeth's statue, near Temple Bar. Swift, who was busy writing squibs and libels for the ministers, went to see these puppets, which he found figuring amid a crowd of other effigies of ministers, cardinals, Jesuits, and Franciscan friars placed round a great cross eighteen feet high.
But notwithstanding the violent opposition both at home and abroad, the ministers persisted in their course. The queen wrote to the electress Sophia of Hanover, entreating her and her son to use their exertions with the allies for the peace of Europe. She sent over the earl of Rivers to further her appeal; but the electoral prince, so far from dreading to endanger his succession, sent back a letter by earl Rivers to the queen, strongly condemning the terms on which the peace was proposed, and he ordered his ambassador, the baron von Bothmar, to present a memorial to the queen, showing the pernicious consequences to Europe of allowing Philip to retain Spain and the Indies. This bold and independent act greatly exasperated the queen and her ministers, and was extolled by the whigs. There had been attempts to influence the elector by offering him the command of the army in Flanders, in case of the revival of Marlborough, but that also he declined. Many of the tories were as much opposed to the terms of the treaty as the whigs, and it was proposed to unite in a strong remonstrance against the conduct of the ministers in being willing to accept them; but the intention getting wind, the queen suddenly prorogued parliament to the 7th of December, with the expectation of the arrival of absent Scottish peers, who were all tories, and a determination, if necessary, to create a batch of English tory peers. Notwithstanding all resistance, it was finally settled with the allies that their representatives should meet those of England and France, to treat for a general peace, at Utrecht, on the 1st of January, 1712.
The ministers, in the meantime, went on strengthening their position. Raby, now lord Strafford, whom Swift says was not worth the buying, being a man of no parts or learning, went to his post at the Hague. Sir Simon Harcourt was created baron Harcourt, and was raised from lord-keeper of the seal to lord chancellor; the duke of Buckingham was appointed president of the council in the room of lord Rochester, deceased; and was succeeded in his office of steward of the household by earl Paulet, who had quitted the treasury to make way for Harley's elevation to the treasurership. The duke of Newcastle dying, Robinson, bishop of Bristol, was made lord privy seal, a new thing for a churchman since the days of Wolsey and Laud. In Scotland the Jacobites were so much elated by the proceedings of the tories, and by whispers of what really took place, while Mesnager was in secret conference with the queen—namely, a zealous advocacy on his part of the setting aside the protestant succession, and the readmission of the pretender's claims—that they proceeded to great lengths. They were in the end so daring as to induce the faculty of advocates of Edinburgh to receive a medal of the pretender from the same ardent duchess of Gordon who had sent him word to come when he pleased, and to what port he pleased, and that he would be well received. This medal had on
