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and the respective proprietors. In return, the company consented that the interest on their original capital of nine millions four hundred thousand pounds, as well as the interest on the public debt, should after midsummer, 1727, be reduced to four per cent., and be redeemable by parliament. Exclusive of this reduction, the company were to pay into the exchequer four years and a half purchase of all the long and short annuities that should be subscribed, and one year's purchase of such long annuities as should not be subscribed, amounting to seven millions sterling for raising which sum they were empowered to open books of subscription, to grant redeemable annuities, and to convert the money so raised into additional stock. The dangers of the project soon appeared; a wild spirit of speculation seized the whole nation; the successive subscriptions filled with amazing rapidity, and the directors declared a dividend of thirty per cent. for Christmas, 1720, and fifty per cent. for the next twelve years. The transfer price of stock rose in a very short time from one hundred and thirty to one thousand; so that those who were in the secret of the plot were enabled to realize vast fortunes before the bubble burst. In a few months the stock fell with greater rapidity than it had risen, and the victims, awaking from their golden dreams, found themselves reduced to a deplorable state of distress and ruin. The king, being in Germany when the catastrophe happened, was sent for express, to discuss with his ministers the means of quelling the disturbances it had occasioned, and of restoring public credit, which it had almost destroyed. A committee of the house of commons proceeded with great diligence to investigate this disastrous affair, which was styled in the report, a train of the deepest villany and fraud hell ever contrived for the ruin of any nation. It appeared that a great number of the parliamentary supporters of the bill had been bribed by its unprincipled projectors, and the profits of the company were found to amount to thirteen millions. Some of the guilty parties were heavily muleted, and many judicious steps were taken to relieve their dupes; but the public credit had sustained an injury which it did not recover for many years. It is curious that France had but just recovered from the effect of a similar misfortune, in the rise and fall of the Mississippi company, projected by the famous Law.

In 1722, the partizans of the pretender began once more to bestir themselves in his favour, on the supposition, doubtless, that the shock produced by the failure of the South Sea project would be favourable to their designs. The measures of government, however, were at once so judicious and prompt, that the conspiracy was crushed in embryo. Several noblemen were arrested on suspicion; Bishop Atterbury was exiled for life; but only one person, Christopher Layer, a barrister of the Temple, suffered capital punishment. He was convicted of hightreason, in enlisting men for the service of the pretender. At this period a very disgraceful tax of £100,000 was levied on the estates of Roman catholics.

In May, 1725, George I. revived the ancient order of the Bath, which had lain dormant since the coronation of Charles II. In January, 1726, the king encountered a violent storm at sea on his return from his yearly visit to Hanover; he was in great danger for two days, and landed with extreme difficulty at Rye in Sussex. It would be difficult to give a stronger proof of his attachment to the electorate than the alacrity he

displayed in hastening to his beloved country the moment he could detach himself from the burthen of public business. These visits naturally excited discontent in England, and produced several satirical effusions against the monarch, his ministers, and his mistresses; among which was a poem entitled 'The Regency,' written by Samuel, brother of the celebrated John Wesley. Of this production-which appears to have obtained more notice than it deserved the following is a specimen :

As soon as the wind it came fairly about,

That kept the king in, and his enemies out,
He determined no longer confinement to bear,
And thus to the dutchess his mind did declare:

Quoth he, 'My dear KENNY, I've been tired a long while

With living obscure in this poor little isle;

And now Spain and Pretender have no more mines to spring,
I'm resolved to go home and live like a king.'

The dutchess, in reply, approves of the monarch's intentions; and after ludicrously describing the regency by which the kingdom was to be governed during his absence, she says,

'On the whole, I'll be hanged, if all over the realm
There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm ;
So for this time be easy, nor have jealous thought,
They hav'nt sense to sell you, nor are worth being bought.'
'Tis for that,' quoth the king, in very bad French,
'I chose them for my regents, and you for my wench;
And neither, I'm sure, will my trust e'er betray,
For the devil won't take you if I turn you away.'

Notwithstanding the danger which had attended his return from Germany in 1726, in the following summer, although now an old man, the king determined on visiting his electorate. He accordingly embarked at Greenwich on the 3d of June, and landed in Holland on the 7th. In the progress of his journey he was attacked with a kind of lethargic paralysis, which he foresaw would be speedily mortal, and exclaimed to his attendant, "I am a dead man!" But his desire to reach his electoral capital was so great, that he caused himself to be carried on to Osnaburg. Having lost all sense and motion on his arrival at that place, his further progress was impossible, and he died on the 11th of June, 1727, in the sixty-eighth year of his age and the thirteenth of his reign. He was buried at Hanover on the 3d of the following September.

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"The person of the king," says Walpole, "is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday: it was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins-not tall-of an aspect rather good than august-with a dark tie wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all." His own grand-daughter, the princess of Bareuth, in her Memoires,' characterizes him as a very stupid man, with great airs of wisdom. He had no generosity, she says, but for his favourites and the mistresses by whom he let himself be governed; he spoke little, and took no pleasure in hearing any thing but niaiseries: since his accession to the throne of England, she adds, he had also become insupportably haughty and imperious. In his old age the king was guilty of the wickedness and folly of taking an additional mistress. This person was Anne Brett, eldest daughter, by her second husband,

of the repudiated wife of the earl of Macclesfield, the unnatural mother of Savage the poet. We learn from Walpole that Miss Brett was very handsome, but dark enough, by her eyes, complexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty, and that a coronet was to have rewarded her compliance, had not the king died before it could be granted. He appears to have entertained a very low opinion of the political integrity of his courtiers and the honesty, of his household. He laughed at the complaints of Sir Robert Walpole against the Hanoverians for selling places; and would not believe that the custom was not sanctioned by his English advisers and attendants. Soon after his first arrival in this country, a favourite cook whom he had brought from Hanover, grew melancholy, and wanted to return home. The king having inquired why he wished to quit his household, the fellow replied, "I have long served your majesty honestly, not suffering any thing to be embezzled in your kitchen, but here, the dishes no sooner come from your table, than one steals a fowl, another a pig, a third a joint of meat, a fourth a pie, and so on, till the whole is gone; and I cannot bear to see your majesty so injured !" The king laughing heartily, said, " My revenues here enable me to bear these things; and, to reconcile you to your place, do you steal like the rest, and mind you take enough!" The cook followed this advice, and soon became a very expert and flourishing thief.

About a year before the king's own death, that of his unfortunate consort, the princess of Zell, took place; and her royal husband most iniquitously caused her will, together with that of her father, the duke of Zell, to be burned, in order, as it was believed, to deprive his own son, the prince of Wales, of some important bequests. Walpole declares, that he had this fact from Queen Caroline. A female fortuneteller had warned George the First to take care of his wife, as he would not survive her a year, and the king gave such credit to the prediction, that on the eve of his last departure to the continent, he took leave of his son and the princess of Wales with tears, telling them that he should never see them more. It was certainly his own fate that melted him, says Walpole, not the thought of quitting for ever two persons he hated. He did his son the justice to say, 'Il est fongueux, mais il a de l'honneur;" but for Caroline, he termed her, to his confidants, "Cette diablesse, madame la princesse!" About the same period, in a tender mood, he promised the dutchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The dutchess on his death so much expected the accomplishment of this engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with great respect and tenderness.

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George the First evidently possessed no taste either for literature or science. He had, however, a really German ear for music, and warmly patronized Handel. His military talents appear to have been respectable; and the manner in which he managed his electorate before he became king of England, was highly creditable to his judgment. Toland says, in a pamphlet published about the year 1705, "I need give no more particular proof of his frugality in laying out the public money, than that all the expenses of his court, as to eating, drinking, fire, candles, and the like, are duly paid every Saturday night; the officers

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James Stwart

The Chombier de St George

Engraved by S. Freeman from the original printing .

A. Fulletin & Co London & Edinburgh

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