A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins

A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins

Author:Simon Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2011-10-20T16:00:00+00:00


Painted ceiling in the Royal Hospital in Greenwich: though firm Protestants, William and Mary revelled in Stuart grandeur and understood the potency of monarchical symbols.

Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs. Her death without an heir passed the crown to the Hanoverians.

In 1708 the first Anglo-Scottish election put the Whigs emphatically in power. This rendered the fervently Tory Anne inconsolable. She remained a Stuart and deeply distrustful of the Whigs who had toppled her father. Her misery was deepened when the same year she lost her beloved husband, George. She was the last monarch to chair ministerial meetings in her private ‘cabinet’ and disliked having to admit to it politicians she detested. But on one matter she was in full agreement with the Whigs, the continuation of what was now seen as Marlborough’s ‘great war’. Campaigning had taken on a medieval character, with summer battles giving way to winter rest and recuperation. By 1709 it was clear, even to Louis XIV, that peace should be sought, but the Whigs demurred, recklessly demanding that Louis withdraw his grandson, Philip, from the Spanish throne. This he would not do, and hostilities resumed.

In 1709 the two sides, replenished with fresh troops, returned to the battlefield at Malplaquet near Mons. Here Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy deployed a vast force of 30,000 cavalry. The outcome was another triumph for Marlborough, but the deaths of 20,000 allied troops sickened public opinion. The carnage of Malplaquet infuriated the Tories and finished the Whigs. Peace was preached from every pulpit and Anne dissolved parliament. At the resulting 1710 election, the anti-war Tories secured a majority and took power under Robert Harley, a dissenter, bibliophile and astute political operator.

Harley became leader and chancellor of the exchequer, while his headstrong and overtly Jacobite colleague Henry St John, later Lord Bolingbroke, took charge of foreign affairs. The new government coincided with a furious breach between the queen and Sarah Marlborough, who was now replaced in the queen’s affections by a Harley protégée, Abigail Hill, leading to bitter accusations by Sarah of lesbianism. Marlborough, long the champion of war, now lost both political and court influence. His corrupt abuse of army commissions was savaged by the satirist, Jonathan Swift, as that of a British Midas who ‘now neglected stands / with asses’ ears and dirty hands’. The Tories began secret negotiations with Louis that led to Marlborough’s dismissal and the appointment as allied commander of the openly Jacobite Duke of Ormonde. His orders from Bolingbroke, kept secret from the allies, were to avoid battle and seek peace. The French were delighted. A gleeful Louis remarked that the turn of events ‘does for us all we desire’.



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