During the reigns of the first two Hanoverian Kings the Tory party was virtually proscribed. By the beginning of December 1714 it was possible to say that ‘hardly one Tory is left in any place, though never so mean a one’.
The first of a series of abortive attempts to recover power by restoring the Stuarts, the rebellion of 1715, was directed, so far as it related to England, by Ormonde in conjunction with Bolingbroke, both of whom fled to France, where they entered the Pretender’s service. The rebellion was preceded by widespread riots, described in a message from the King to Parliament on 20 July 1715 as ‘set on foot and encouraged by persons disaffected to my Government, in expectation of being supported from abroad’,
On the collapse of the rebellion Bolingbroke severed his connexion with the Pretender, henceforth doing all in his power to persuade the Tory party to follow his example. Combining this object with that of making his peace at home, he warned his friend, Sir William Wyndham, in September 1716 not to engage in a new Jacobite project which was on foot, sending the letter by a channel which ensured that it should be read by the Government. Next month an intercepted letter from the Swedish minister in London, Count Gyllenborg, showed that the Jacobites were planning to rise again if Charles XII of Sweden, who was determined to revenge himself on George I for having as Elector of Hanover taken advantage of his difficulties to dispossess him of Bremen and Verden, would assist them by sending troops.
The Gyllenborg plot coincided with a split in the Whig party, raising the question whether the Tories should ally themselves with Sunderland or Walpole. Bolingbroke, still in exile, was in favour of their joining the Government. He was said to be ‘very active with his Tory friends in England to persuade them that now is the time to recover all their losses by coming in [to the Government], and he doubts not they may by accepting anything now be in a capacity to turn out the remaining Whigs in a short time’.
was a measure undertaken by the discontented Whigs, and not by the Tories, who only came into it because, the matter being plain upon him, they thought in justice to themselves and their country they could do no less, and, as their scheme is to make the Government impracticable to the present ministers, but not to go so far as to force it into stronger hands, in all appearance it is more for the King’s [i.e. the Pretender’s] service that this matter was not carried against Cadogan than if it had ... All the King’s friends could do in this situation without any light to direct them was to manage things in both Houses of Parliament so as thoroughly to divide the Whigs, and to prevent a union between the Tories and any part of them, in order to form a new Administration, in which they have hitherto succeeded, and it ought to be known that Mr. Shippen’s services in this matter in the House of Commons can never be sufficiently acknowledged.
In another letter on the same day Murray reported that all projects to draw the Tories into one side or the other had been defeated.
After the reunion of the Whig party in 1720 a similar line was taken by the Tories towards overtures made to them by Sunderland to join interests with him against Walpole at the impending general election.
that the Tory party of themselves were now formed into so great a body that nothing but dividing and breaking them could secure the Government from their attempts at home or their solicitations to foreign powers abroad to assist them in the pursuit of their principles, their interest, or their revenge. This, he maintains, cannot be effected but by gaining a few of the chief and more considerable men of that party to join in the measures of the Court by giving them money, places or pensions. They had suffered so much of late in the South Sea projects that at present it would be no difficult matter to persuade them.
R. Freebairn to John Hay, 8 Jan. 1722, Stuart mss 57/18.
At a subsequent meeting of the Cabinet, presided over by George I, Sunderland is said to have
opposed the buying the ensuing elections, that it was a method very expensive, which the present situation of affairs could not dispense with, so that it was impossible for the Treasury to hold out by procuring pliable persons to be elected, who after they were chosen must be maintained with places and pensions etc. ... Mr. Walpole asked with some heat if his Lordship was bringing in the Tories and having a Tory Parliament? To this the Earl [i.e. Sunderland] replied that the Tories and the Whigs were equally entitled to a share in the Administration, and that he was not for governing by brigades. King George stared the Earl of Sunderland in the face at the name of a Tory Parliament, for it seems nothing is so hideous and frightful to him as a Tory.
James Hamilton to the Pretender, Feb. 1722, Stuart mss 58/38.
Sunderland even entered into a scheme for restoring the Pretender,
As soon as the new Parliament met, 9 Oct. 1722, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended to enable Atterbury and other conspirators to be detained in custody pending the investigation of the plot by a committee set up by the House of Commons. On 1 Mar. 1723 the committee’s report was read to the House, who a week later passed a motion without a division that ‘there had been a horrid and detestable conspiracy framed and carried on by persons of figure and distinction’ etc. The attorney-general then moved for leave to bring in a bill of pains and penalties against one of Atterbury’s principal agents, John Plunket, which in the words of a report by Sir Edward Knatchbull, a moderate Tory,
created a debate till nine at night and upon division carried by 289 against 130. The arguments on one side were the necessity of using the legislative power when the courts below could not reach people that were grown so artful in plots as to do everything that was really treason but not within the strict rules of the law, and therefore for security of the Government, the power of Parliament must be exerted. The argument of the other side was the danger of such precedents, especially since there were laws to punish this man who by his own confession and two witnesses appears to be guilty.
On 11 Mar. a similar bill against Atterbury’s secretary, George Kelly, was carried by 280 to 111, on which Knatchbull reports:
There was less reason for the Tories to have divided against this than in Plunket’s case because there were two witnesses to convict him, so his case was straining the power of Parliament, but in this case it was only exerting it where there was not sufficient evidence for the courts below, and yet the person was thought to be guilty.
This was followed by another bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury, based on three letters alleged to have been written by him, which led to a debate lasting till 10 at night:
The arguments on one side was the want of evidence since it was all hearsay and uncertainty of cyphers, and the three letters which were brought down no farther than to Kelly, for they could not prove them to be the Bishop’s, no, nor his dictating them but by circumstances. The argument on the other hand was that because they could not do that and everyone was convinced it was the Bishop’s doing (and owned on all hands to be high treason if proved), therefore a bill by the power of Parliament was necessary to shew people they should not escape here, though they might by the arts of plotting in the courts below.
The bill was carried by 285 to 152, so that, as the Whigs were virtually unanimous for it, nearly ninety per cent of the 168 Tory Members of the House must have voted against it. The only point on which the Whigs were not united was whether the death penalty should be inflicted. This, Knatchbull reports, ‘divided the Court much and made the leaders very uneasy, who were for tempering justice with mercy as the prudenter way’.
The effect of these proceedings on the Tories is described by one of their leaders, William Bromley, in a letter of 16 Dec. 1723 to Lord Oxford, stating that he feared that many of them would not come up for the next session, because they were ‘discouraged, despond, and conclude they can do no service by their attendance’.
there being very little appearance of carrying anything for the good of the country, many Tories in both Houses absented, and those that were present had little or no concert amongst themselves, and except in the business of the army hardly thought it worth while to make any opposition. I own in my opinion I thought this conduct not right, but there was no getting the better of it, many of the Tories thinking it better to lie still and to give no provocation where there is no prospect of success to people who have the command of great forces and vast sums of public money, and who act by no other rules but their own arbitrary and cruel wills. These are pretty much the general sentiments of the body of the Tories, and therefore I shall not wonder if they should quite despond and almost abandon all hopes of relief.
Stuart mss 70/158.
Atterbury’s disappearance from the political scene coincided with the reappearance of Bolingbroke, who for his ‘great services to the Government, and particularly in the late conspiracy’,
he was doing a most imprudent thing, who was to expect his salvation from a Whig Parliament, to be negotiating to bring in a set of Tories; that if this should be known, his case would be desperate in Parliament; and desired and advised him to give this answer to his friends.
Coxe, Walpole, ii. 264-5.
In 1725 a bill enabling Bolingbroke to inherit his family estates, but not restoring his peerage, so that he remained excluded from Parliament, was carried by 231 to 113, five Tories, Sir Jermyn Davers, Charles Leigh, Sir William Milner, Sir Christopher Musgrave, and Sir Thomas Sebright, voting against it to show their disapproval of his treatment of the Pretender. About ten Tories, including Shippen, abstained for the same reason, but 52 voted for it.
On George II’s accession in June 1727, Charles Caesar reported to the Pretender, 27 June:
Some of the Tories, particularly such as Lord Bolingbroke could influence, had shown an inclination to quit their principles in hopes of preferment, and upon the Duke of Hanover’s death and his son’s succeeding him, your steady friends found that many more would do the same, they could not tell where it would stop, they thought that the only way to prevent a considerable breach amongst the Tories upon this occasion was to go one and all to court.
A similar report was sent to the Pretender by Lord Orrery. By or about this time Caesar and Orrery appear to have secretly come to terms with Walpole, Caesar in return for government support at his election, and Orrery for a pension, which, according to Walpole, ‘he well earned’.
It is plain that the Tories at this turn hoped to get into place, if not into power; and though they resolved to keep their principles and inclinations if they had done so, yet I much question whether they really would; or rather I am satisfied that the bulk of them would not; and therefore it is a happiness to you, Sir, that their aims have hitherto been, and will probably continue to be, defeated.
Mahon, ii. app. p. xxviii.
In the new House of Commons the Tories, reduced to 128, their lowest number so far, were divided on the question of coalescing with the opposition Whigs, Wyndham, now ‘the head of those who called themselves Hanoverian Tories’, supporting a coalition, which was opposed by Shippen, ‘the head of the veteran staunch Jacobites’.
the discontented Whigs had concerted a perfect coalition with the Tories of all degrees, and it was agreed to act heartily and vigorously in the same Opposition, and for that purpose a summons should be made of all the Tories to be present, without suffering any excuse, and this was pursued with so much zeal, that I believe there has been in town this year, above 110 Tories, which is within a very few of the whole number elected.
Coxe, Walpole, ii. 671-2.
This development was brought about by a letter from the Pretender at the beginning of 1730, recommending very strongly ‘that my friends next sessions of Parliament may unite in the measures against the Government and even with those who oppose it for different views than theirs’.
For the next ten years the Tories co-operated with the discontented Whigs, voting against Walpole’s excise bill in 1733, though as country gentlemen they stood to benefit from a measure designed to lighten taxation on the landed interest. Nevertheless difficulties arose from the diametrically opposed political opinions of the two parties composing the coalition. Thus during the excise bill crisis Wyndham, in the words of the 1st Lord Egmont, made Pulteney alter the opposition list for the ballot on a secret committee by putting in ‘several we esteem Jacobites’ such as himself, Sir John Hynde Cotton, and Sir Thomas Sebright, declaring that ‘otherwise the Tories would be against him’, which enabled Walpole once again to rally his party by representing the Opposition as dominated by Jacobites and that ‘Bolingbroke was at the bottom of it all’. A few days later, on a message from the King, desiring a marriage portion for the Princess Royal, Egmont observes: ‘It was some pleasure to see the discontented Whigs on this important point separate themselves from the Tories, the heads of whom, Shippen, Sir John Hynde Cotton, and Bromley of Warwickshire, spoke obstinately against the King’s message.’ In 1734 the opposition Whigs were obliged to vote for the repeal of the Septennial Act, ‘a favourite point of the Tories’, though ‘Pulteney and his party were not fond of it, many of them having been for making Parliaments septennial. However they all joined issue’ on it.
No man of common prudence will profess himself openly a Jacobite; by so doing he not only may injure his private fortune, but he must render himself less able to do any effectual service to the cause he has embraced; therefore, there are but few such men in the kingdom. Your right Jacobite, Sir, disguises his true sentiments, he roars out for revolution principles; he pretends to be a great friend to liberty, and a great admirer of our ancient constitution, and under this presence there are numbers who every day endeavour to sow discontents among the people, by persuading them that the constitution is in danger and that they are unnecessarily loaded with many and heavy taxes ... These are the men we have most reason to be afraid of: they are, I am afraid, more numerous than most gentlemen imagine, and I wish I could not say they have been lately joined, and very much assisted by some gentlemen, who, I am convinced, have always been, and still are, very sincere and true friends to our present happy establishment. By the accession of these new allies, as I may justly call them, the real but concealed Jacobites have succeeded even beyond their own expectation; and therefore I am not at all ashamed to say I am in fear of the Pretender.
He continued:
Whilst there is such a considerable disaffected party amongst us, nothing can secure us effectually against small and sudden invasions but a sufficient number of regular forces ready to march at an hour’s warning. Five or six thousand men may be embarked in such a small number of ships, and so speedily, that it is impossible to guard against it by means of our fleet. Such a number may be landed in some part of the island, before we can hear of their embarkation: and if such a number were landed, with the Pretender at their head, there is no question but that they would meet with many, especially the meaner sort, to join them. In such a case, we could not march our whole army against those invaders and their assistants; because, if we should draw all our regular forces away from the other parts of the kingdom the disaffected would rise in every county so left destitute of regular troops; and the rebels, being thus in possession of many parts of our sea coasts, would be continually receiving supplies, by single ships, from those who had at first invaded us. Thus, Sir, a civil war, at least, would be entailed upon us, and might continue for several years ... Against this danger there is no possible way of guarding absolutely, but by keeping up such a number of regular troops, as that we may spare to send six or seven thousand of them against any small and sudden invasion that can be made upon us, and yet leave in every other part of the kingdom, especially the most disaffected, a number sufficient for preventing the designs of those who want only an opportunity for rising in arms against the Government; and, for this purpose, considering the number of the disaffected we have still the misfortune to have amongst us, I must think eighteen thousand is the smallest number we can in common prudence keep up; for we must always keep five or six thousand about our capital, otherwise our Government may be in danger of losing even that, and with that all its treasure, and thereby our fleet itself may be turned against us. I am sure five or six thousand more is the smallest number that can be thought necessary for being dispersed in the several parts of the kingdom in order to keep the disaffected in obedience.
Parl. Hist. x. 400-3.
That Jacobitism was not extinct was shown on the outbreak of war with Spain in 1739, when hopes that France would be drawn in on the Spanish side led to a revival of schemes for bringing about a Stuart restoration with French assistance. An emissary sent by the Pretender to sound the Jacobite chiefs in 1740 reported that Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Sir John Hynde Cotton, and Lord Barrymore had undertaken that the party would not fail to join such troops as the King of France should send to their assistance, but Cardinal Fleury, the head of the French Government, on being approached, refused to assist.
France would certainly not go into a war with us during the life of the Cardinal, but after his death, he believed, she would, for the majority of the council were for it, though some were in the Cardinal’s scheme of improving their trade while we were at war. He said Sir John Hynde Cotton was certainly the Pretender’s secretary [of state].
Referring to the violent anti-ministerial agitation fomented by the Jacobites in the city of London, Walpole observed that ‘this came to the court of Rome and other foreign courts as the sense of the people for the Pretender and that they want nothing but a standard and five thousand men to begin with’. He also said that there was a
great difference between the Jacobites and the patriot Whigs, particularly those of the Prince’s court; that they had a meeting in the vacation [the recess] when one of the Prince’s friends proposed a revolution in favour of the Prince, saying that the King’s interest was entirely lost and he could not support it, but the Jacobites said if there was to be an alteration, it should be a restoration. These broke off that treaty. He assured me this was told him by one present at the meeting.
Walpole added that
Pulteney and Sir William Wyndham don’t agree. Sir William was for some violent measures and inclined not to have come to Parliament, as they found things turned out too well for the ministry, but Pulteney would not come into that. The reason of Pulteney’s proceedings he believes to be his real fear of the Pretender, as he has a vast estate, near £10,000 a year, from the Crown since the revolution.
Sir Dudley Ryder’s diary, 6 and 18 Oct. 1739, Harrowby mss.
On Wyndham’s death in 1740 George Lyttleton
wrote:
His influence with the Tories was the only means of keeping that party in any system of rational measures. Now he is gone ... it is much to be feared that resentment, despair, and their inability of conducting themselves may drive the Tories back into their old prejudices, heat and extravagance.
M. Wyndham, Chronicles of the 18th Century, i. 76.
This forecast was fulfilled in the next session, when an opposition Whig motion for Walpole’s dismissal was defeated by 290 to 106, many of the Tories refusing to vote or dividing against it. The conduct of the Tories in breaking the coalition ‘is silly, infamous, and void of any colour of excuse’, Bolingbroke wrote, adding that if Wyndham had lived, ‘he would have hindered these strange creatures—I can hardly call them men—from doing all the mischief they have lately done, and will perhaps continue to do’.
if the name of Whig comes across them, it locks up all their faculties, and they cannot exert them. They stand, like knights errant of old, under sudden enchantment, with their arms extended, and their mouths open, in the very attitude to act and speak for the man when the charm comprehended in that syllable seizes them; and they can do neither for the Whig.
HMC Egmont Diary, iii. 192-3; Coxe, Walpole, iii. 573.
Yet when the new Parliament met in December 1741, 127 of the 136 Tories returned at the general election joined the opposition Whigs to defeat Walpole’s candidate for the chairman of the elections committee on 16 Dec. by 242 to 238, the first of a series of defeats which caused a ministerial supporter to write: ‘Notwithstanding the personal candour that was shown upon the motion last year, there is some cement that holds the Opposition together now, stronger than I believe any considerations will be able to break through.’
to all those with you who wish me well that they should pursue vigorous and unanimous measures in the next session of Parliament. They will probably have many occasions of greatly distressing the present Government and ministry and perhaps find some who will concur with them in that, though not out of goodwill to my cause ... In such cases I hope my friends will make no scruples in joining heartily with them for whatever their particular motives may be anything that tends to the disadvantage of the present Government and to the bringing it into confusion cannot be but of advantage to my cause. Opportunities may offer during the next sessions which if lost may recur no more, and besides the consequences that my friends showing a proper spirit may have at home, nothing certainly can more effectually encourage Cardinal Fleury to declare for us. Enfin, I take my friends’ behaviour next sessions to be a matter of the greatest importance, and I doubt not but when they consider seriously what they owe both to themselves and me, they will not be wanting in anything that may contribute to our common welfare, and indeed that of our country. I desire you will communicate this letter or the contents of it to as many as you can with safety and prudence.
This letter, of which about a hundred copies are said to have been distributed in November,
had been sent by the party, in the preceding September, to France to request the Duke of Ormonde (at Avignon) to obtain the Pretender’s order to the Jacobites to vote against Sir R.W. upon any question whatever; many of them having either voted for him, or retired, on the famous motion the last year for removing him from the King’s councils.
Walpole to Mann, 10 Dec. 1741, n; Harrowby mss 10 (L. Inn), 4 Dec. 1741. For Chesterfield’s movements abroad see his Letters ed. Dobrée, 467, 471-3,475, and Mémoires du duc de Luynes, iii. 464.
In the light of subsequent developments it is probable that Chesterfield had been authorized by the elements of the Whig opposition headed by the Duke of Argyll to promise that they would restore the Pretender in return for the Jacobite vote, as Sunderland had done in 1722. When Pulteney was invited to form a new Administration his reaction was, ‘now, I thank God, we are out of the power of the Tories’.
Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, with a considerable number of other Parliament men, repaired to his Grace, and exposed to him that unless matters were in a further way of settlement they should all break to pieces next Thursday [18 Feb.] when the Parliament were to meet: that when the question about the army should come on, he and the rest were determined to oppose continuing the same number unless his Grace were at the head of it, and therefore they pressed him hard to accept his Majesty’s offer to restore him to his posts.
HMC Egmont Diary, iii. 255.
In view of these representations Argyll agreed to take office, kissing hands on 18 Feb., when ‘a large body of Tories, with Lords Gower, Bathurst, Sir John Hynde Cotton, and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn at the head, went also to the King’s court in a body from the Cocoa Tree’,
The reason of the Jacobites for wishing Argyll to become head of the army is made clear by two letters sent by the Pretender to Cecil. One
was to thank Mr. Burnus [Duke of Argyll] for his services and that he hoped he would answer the assurances given of him. The other was to command the Jacobites and to exhort the patriots, to continue what they had mutually so well begun, and to say how pleased he was with their having removed Tench [Walpole].
Walpole to Mann, 30 June 1742.
In June Lord Barrymore, on behalf of Cecil, handed these documents to Argyll, who sent them to the ministry through his brother Lord Ilay. No action was taken against Argyll, who on 7 Aug. 1742 ‘waited on the King, promised to assist him in his measures, and was graciously received’. Walpole’s verdict on this was that Argyll ‘was got into the Pretender’s scheme but when Colonel Cecil sent him a letter from the Pretender he had not courage to stand to his promise’.
During the recess Cotton met Dodington to agree measures for a new opposition, which opened next session. In a debate on the hiring of 16,000 Hanoverians, 10 Dec. 1742,
Sir Watkin Williams Wynn declared that England was made a mere province of Hanover, and when there were some for taking the words down, Sir J. H. Cotton got up, averred it to be so in fact, repeated and justified the words so that the House acquiesced ... Sir John St. Aubyn ... declared it to be his sentiment, that we lived under a Prince who being used to arbitrary power in his dominions abroad, was minded to establish it here, that all his measures were calculated for that end, and that of the Hanoverian troops in particular ... This speech made him in a moment the darling toast of London.
Thomas Carte to the Pretender, 4 Mar. 1743, Stuart mss 269/115.
Another Jacobite, Sir John Philipps, declared that ‘it is Hanover and Hanover only that seems now to be our care’, calculating that £392,697 were charged for the Hanoverian troops by the King as elector, though they cost him only £100,000.
After Cardinal Fleury’s death in 1743 Louis XV sent his master of the horse, James Butler, related to Ormonde, in the summer to England, ostensibly to buy horses for the royal stables, but in reality to report on the readiness of the English Jacobites to join their opposite numbers in Scotland in effecting a Stuart restoration with French support. In London Butler met the Duke of Beaufort, Barrymore, and Wynn, who ‘declared their readiness to give what assistance was in their power, provided a considerable body of troops were landed in England, but would not consent to give any writing under their hand’, on the ground that a copy of the names of those who signed the association in 1688, taken from the very desk of the Prince of Orange, had been sent to James II, who might have prevented the Revolution had he not disbelieved it.
On 14 Feb. 1744 the Government learned of this project from a French official in their pay, who for a special gratification of £2,000 supplied them with the names of Barrymore, Cotton, and Wynn as the principal managers of the English part of it.
In May-June the English Jacobite leaders sent over messages that conditions were very favourable for an attempt, as George II was going to Hanover, the Dutch troops sent for during the late emergency were going back, most of the army was abroad in Flanders, and the disposition of the nation, particularly the city of London, was better than ever. They therefore urged that the Young Pretender should arrive with a competent body of troops somewhere near London as soon as possible. Barrymore also advised that the fleet in the Mediterranean should be ‘attacked without loss of time, being fully satisfied that if it be done not one of the British ships will escape’. In October there arrived in France an emissary, deputed by the Tory party, to give an account of public opinion in England and of the measures to be taken for a restoration of the Stuarts. The emissary, referred to as W, was probably Wynn, for in December the Pretender was informed that assurances from the King of France to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn that another expedition would be launched had been given to his supporters in England.
While these negotiations for another invasion were proceeding, dissensions in the ministry led to overtures from Pelham to the opposition leaders, including Gower, the accredited leader of the Tory party, who had resigned in December 1743 on finding that no more Tories were to be admitted, but who now agreed to resume his office, provided that suitable provision was made for his party in the new Administration. The only other Tories who accepted office in the so-called Broad-bottom Government were Cotton, Philipps, and John Pitt, Wynn refusing the offer of a peerage but supporting the new Government. According to Horace Walpole, ‘several Tories have refused to accept the proffered posts: some from an impossibility of being re-chosen for their Jacobite counties. But upon the whole it appears that their leaders have had very little influence with them, for not above four or five are come into place. The rest will stick to opposition,’ transferring their allegiance from Gower to the Duke of Beaufort most determined and unwavering Jacobite’.
After the collapse of the rebellion Murray of Broughton, the Young Pretender’s secretary, turning King’s evidence, disclosed the treasonable conversations held by Barrymore, Cotton and Wynn in 1743. The Government decided to take no action against them, except by arranging for Murray to give evidence to this effect at Lord Lovat’s trial in 1747.
In the new House of Commons, where the Tories totalled only 115, their lowest number during the period, no signs of a coalition were visible till the opening of the second session, 29 Nov. 1748, when ‘to the great surprise of the ministry’ the Tories appeared ‘in intimate league with the Prince’.
This menace gave occasion to a meeting and union between the Prince’s party and the Jacobites, which Lord Egmont has been labouring all the winter. They met at the St. Alban’s Tavern near Pall Mall last Monday morning, 112 lords and commoners. The Duke of Beaufort opened the assembly with a panegyric on the stand that had been made this winter against so corrupt an Administration, and hoped it would continue, and desired harmony. Lord Egmont seconded this strongly and begged they would come up to Parliament early next winter. Lord Oxford spoke next, and then Potter with great humour and to the great abashment of the Jacobites, said he was very glad to see this union and from thence hoped, that if another attack like the last rebellion should be made on the royal family, they would all stand by them. No reply was made to this. Then Sir Watkin Williams [Wynn] spoke ... and the meeting broke up.
Walpole to Mann, 3 May 1749.
According to an account sent to the Pretender of the behaviour of the Tories on this occasion,
the attempt against the university of Oxford brought them all up at once to town, which nothing else would, and in their zeal on that account, they entered into a sort of coalition with Prince Frederick’s party to stand by the university of Oxford, to join in opposing all unconstitutional points, but to be under no obligation to visit Prince Frederick’s court, nor unite in other points.
The report went on to say that
there can’t be two better men, nor more universally esteemed, than the Duke of Beaufort and the Earl of Oxford, the chiefs of the Tories. But they are not active enough, the one by his gout and the other by his constitution. Sir John Hynde Cotton and Sir Watkin Wynn are both active, and the former has the best head and judgment of any of them, but it is not easy to spirit up people that have been long dull and unthinking.
Carte to the Pretender, n.d., Stuart mss Box 1/299.
All these four Jacobite leaders figure in a list of persons to receive offices or honours on the Prince’s accession, drawn up by Egmont on 29 Apr. 1749, Beaufort for a garter, Oxford as lord privy seal, Cotton for his former office of treasurer of the Chamber, which he had been turned out of in 1746, and Wynn for a barony. Other Tory peers and Members put down for future offices in this or subsequent lists were Lords Lichfield, Orrery, and Westmorland, Sir Edward Dering, Fazakerley, Sir Cordell Firebrace, Lord Guernsey, Lord Harley, Edward Kynaston, Sir Charles Mordaunt, John Morton, William Northey, Edward Popham, Peniston Powney, and Thomas Prowse.
On Wynn’s death in September 1749 Pelham wrote:
I don’t know whether it will serve us in Parliament this session or not, for I conclude Cotton will now have the whole body of Tories at his command; and he will certainly carry them to the Prince if he can, which I am apt to think my old friend Watkin would not have done. Time however will open everything.
To Hartington, 30 Sept. 1749, Devonshire mss.
In the event the Jacobites ‘would not join with the Prince’, after whose death in 1751, followed next year by that of Cotton, ‘the last Jacobite of any sensible activity’, effective opposition in Parliament virtually ceased for the rest of this Parliament.
Soon after Wynn’s death a Jacobite agent reported to the Pretender that the Duke of Beaufort and Sir John Philipps, who had retired from the House of Commons ‘on the desperate situation of the Jacobite cause’,
Je m’aperçois depuis quelque tems que le parti des Jacobites n’est plus clans le même abatement où il étoit tombé depuis la paix; l’espérance renait parmi eux; ils forment des projets, ils prennent des mesures pour réussir dans leurs plans ... il se flattent que la sévérité outrée de M. le Duc de Cumberland, les taxes imposées à l’occasion de la guerre dernière sur les terres, le séjour du Prince Edouard en Angleterre et ses premiers succès leur ont acquis beaucoup de partisans.
AECP Angl. 429, ff. 157-9.
Later in the same month the Young Pretender paid a secret visit to London, where he met about fifty of his supporters, including Beaufort and Westmorland, to discuss a project for seizing power by a coup de main, which was decided to be impracticable.
One may easily see the views with which the King of Prussia has taken this offensive step; first, for the sake of doing an impertinence to the King, then to deter us from going on with our negotiations in the Empire for the election of a King of the Romans, and to encourage the Jacobite party that we may apprehend disturbances from them, if a rupture should ensue, in consequence of the measures we are taking abroad.
Coxe, Pelham, ii. 404.
In 1752 Sir John Astley and his son-in-law Anthony Langley Swymmer visited the Young Pretender in Paris about a new scheme for a rising in the Highlands with Prussian assistance. Later that year the Young Pretender told two of his adherents, Alexander Murray, who had taken a prominent part in the recent Westminster by-election (q.v.) and Dr. Archibald Cameron, an attainted rebel, that he hoped in a short time to have a strong alliance with Prussia, but that ‘he did not desire the highlanders to rise in arms until General Keith [a Jacobite officer in the Prussian army] was landed in the north of Scotland with some Swedish troops.’ In May 1753 James Dawkins, M.P., a wealthy West Indian, the nephew of James Dawkins, brought some money to the Young Pretender in Paris, whence he went on to Berlin to confer with Frederick about this project.
In 1754 or 1755 Dawkins was sent abroad again, this time to inquire into adverse reports about the Young Pretender, of whom he gave so unsatisfactory an account ‘that the principal of the party here gave over all thought of him’.
The fading out of Jacobitism marks the end not only of the old Tory party as an effective political force, but of party distinctions. As Horace Walpole put it in his memoirs of 1764, written 1768-9:
Hitherto it might be said that the two parties of Whig and Tory still subsisted; though Jacobitism, the concealed mother of the latter, was extinct ... The subsequent contests were rather a struggle for power than the settled animosity of two parties, though the body of Opposition still called itself Whig, an appellation rather dropped than disclaimed by the Court; and though the real Tories still adhered to their own distinctions while they secretly favoured, sometimes opposed, the Court, and fluctuated according as they esteemed particular chiefs not of their connection or had the more agreeable opportunity of distressing those who supported the cause of freedom. As their whole conduct was comprised in silent votes, and never was considerable enough to turn a single scale in the political changes, I shall seldom mention them any more.
Mems. Geo. III, ii. 66-67.
This state of affairs lasted till the emergence of new issues—America, the French revolution, and electoral reform—led to a revival of the two-party system, in which the ministerial side gradually assumed the name of Tory, leaving that of Whig to their opponents.