I will not exchange my integrity and a prison for
the mind and the power of some others." ^

Then on March 23rd, 17 16, he writes to his
brother Edward —

^ Harley Papers^ iii. 521.



184 ROBERT HARLEY

"... nothing Is more notoriously known than
my uniform conduct without trepidation in the two
preceding reigns for the service of the present
Royal Family ; and the success has satisfied all
that I foretold them and their Ministers. ... I
never had the least view in anything I did for the
promoting the Protestant succession for my own
private advantage ; my only motive was that I
thought it was for the good of my country."^

To his wife, a homely woman who seldom went
near the Court, he said —

*'. . . as I look for no favour, so I shall do
nothing towards my freedom that may not become
the character of an English gentleman, and I will
go out of this place with the same honour and
innocence as I came into it."

In other private and confidential communica-
tions Harley emphatically denied that he had
schemed for the return of the Pretender, a denial,
the truth of which is confirmed by the fact that
even in April 17 14 the credulous Gaultier was in
doubt of the Lord Treasurer's intentions, and that
in the previous February Berwick had written to
James that Harley in his conversations with
Ormonde |*' never would come to determination,
though pressed very home by the other." ^

These two instances are the strongest which

^ Harley Papers, iii. 530. 2 Hist. MSS. Com. : Stuart Paper, i. 294.



HARLEY AND THE ELECTOR 185

have been advanced against Harley, and they show
the danger of relying too much on mere biographical
relics ; we must look rather to his character and
policy. By temperament he was the last man in
the world to plunge into anything in the nature of
a plot, while all his family sympathies and his early
training were such as to make him an anti- Jacobite.
Again and again he had openly declared to the
Elector his zeal for, and his *' inviolable attachment "
to, the Hanoverian succession.^ His expressions
were never more emphatic than in 17 14, when
Baron Schutz, the Hanoverian Envoy, demanded
a Writ of Summons to the House of Lords for
the Electoral Prince by virtue of his peerage as
Duke of Cambridge. He seized the opportunity
to reiterate his attachment to the house of
Hanover. Writing to his cousin, Thomas Harley,
then English Envoy at Hanover, he said, ** I have
thus sincerely opened my heart to you, and out of
the warmest zeal for the interest of that serene
house, I beg you will lay this before His Electoral
Highness, to whom with my humblest duty you
may give the utmost assurances mortal man is
capable of doing. I will do my utmost to calm
things here. It is the mutual interest of the Queen
and the Elector to have a firm friendship, and that
the world should know it so."^ It is impossible

1 E.g. Harley to Elector, Oct. 5-16, 171 1, Stowe MS., 224, p. 178.

2 Harley Papers^ iii. 418 (13th April 17 14).



186 ROBERT HARLEY

not to contrast these statements in Harley's own
handwriting, so open and so uncompromising, with
the vague gossip upon which so much unjustified
reliance has hitherto been set. The character of
his poHcy and his poHtical position as leader of the
Tory party, the left wing of which was Jacobite,
required that he should from time to time make
some show of Jacobite sympathies. Still it is
astonishing that men could have been so long
duped ; " that which was most wonderful in all
this part was," says De Foe, " that the whole body
of the Jacobites in Britain were capable of being
imposed upon to such a degree, and that it was
possible the Staff could use them as tools to such a
length and not take one real step in their favour,
as It is certain he never did ; and yet they should
be so stupid, as that to the last four months or
thereabouts to believe him in their interest."^ But
as the Whigs and the Elector's advisers were
certainly suspicious of him, it is clear that he
played this dangerous game with a realism
sufficient not only to fool the Jacobites, but to
negative his efforts to stand well with the Elector.
" It is true," wrote Bothmar, the Hanoverian

1 The Secret History of the White Staff, ii. 12. This pamphlet
contains an elaborate defence and explanation of Harley's conduct,
but he did not, openly at least, favour it. " The Whigs brag in print
they caused the two books of the White Staff io be written, and the
policy is plain. He ought to be treated as a fool who had the Staff,
if he ever encouraged a vindication." — Harley to Dr. W. Stratford (?),
23rd November 17 14.



HARLEY'S POLICY 187



Envoy, in July 17 14, '*the Treasurer receives me
very well, but the question is if he is sincere."^

No more elaborate and remarkable political
trickery — ** the most exquisite piece of management
that has been acted by any Minister of State in
this or the last age," is De Foe's delicate descrip-
tion — is to be found in the history of English politics.
Barley's action is the more striking because it was
that not of a bad man or a vicious statesman, but
of one who was actuated by honourable principles,
and by a desire to serve his country, who had
little or nothing to gain by remaining in office,
and everything to lose should a charge of treason
be brought against him. To act so as to hold the
good opinion of the moderate members of two
opposite parties, was an impossibility under the
circumstances of that particular time. To show a
desire for the Hanoverian succession, to engage
in schemes for a political union with Halifax, and
at the same time to affect sympathy with the
Pretender, was to carry a difficult political intrigue
to a point which could hardly fail to result in
political disaster. But whatever we may think of
Harley's methods, they were not treasonable, and
when he reofarded himself as an ill-used man it is
impossible to doubt the genuineness of the feeling.
Certainly, too, the Jacobitism of the Tory party
in England has been exaggerated, for there is no

^ Macpherson Papers^ ii. 633.



188 ROBERT HARLEY

evidence of any real and practical scheme for the
restoration of the Pretender. If he could have
returned to the throne under a new parliamentary
title, or if on an armed attempt considerable popular
enthusiasm had been shown for his cause, there
were many who would have welcomed him. There
was much correspondence of an indefinite kind with
France, and expressions of sympathy were constantly
conveyed across the Channel ; but of any bold and
thorough scheme to place the son of James ii. on
the throne there is no sign.

It may be doubted even whether Bollngbroke,
who in 1 7 14 had become the real leader of the
Tories, had determined on his future action should
the Queen remain alive. We know that he had
decided to construct a strong Tory Government
and fortify it In the country. Having accomplished
— If he could — that object, there were two courses
open to him : either to be content to remain in
power as head of a Tory Administration, accepting
the Act of Settlement, or to endeavour to make
use of his supremacy to bring back the Pretender
before the Queen died. The only reason for
this latter policy was that if James were on the
throne Bollngbroke's personal authority would be
more assured and more considerable than under
the Elector ; and his ambition and love of power
were so remarkable that it is a reason to which
weight must be attached. If, on the other hand,



TORY AIMS IN 1714 189

the Queen were to die before the Act of Settlement
was repealed, the new King would at any rate be
received by a Tory Ministry who would take good
care to capture the inexperienced sovereign, and
would be able to retain their places at the beginning
of another reign. Bolingbroke, unlike Harley, was
free from Whig associations and Whig principles,
and he might well believe that from a purely Tory
vantage point the game in either eventuality was
in his hands. His plans failed because he lacked
Harley 's sagacious understanding both of public
opinion and public men, and had not the personal
authority, the clear sight, and the vigorous deter-
mination to dominate a crisis. Whether, however,
we consider the policy and position of Harley or of
Bolingbroke — or indeed of any prominent member
of the Tory party — it should never be forgotten
that for party purposes no charge by the Whigs
was so effective as an accusation of Jacobitism.
Unless the Elector and the English people were
effectually prejudiced against the advisers of the
Queen, there was always a danger that they might
remain in office under a new sovereign ; and that
danger was painfully present to the minds of the
Whigs whenever they reflected on Harley and on
his remarkable career.

Before finally passing away from the period of
Harley 's imprisonment, it should be noted how he
was the last statesman to hold high office, and to find



190 ROBERT HARLEY

himself in the Tower. Thus he is unquestionably a
link between the old and the new political systems.
At the very moment when English parties were as-
suming their modern forms, the statesman who
more than any other of the age was democratic in
his sensitiveness to public opinion, became a victim
to the methods of the pre-revolutionary era, set in
motion by party leaders and from party bitterness.
The circumstances in which Harley's last years
in office were passed were so exceptional and so
dramatic, that the little which remained to him of
political life after his release from the Tower in 1 7 1 7
appears tame and commonplace. From the moment
when he reached the peerage, his quiet energy had
abated, and a certain dilatoriness of mind and action
characterised the last period of his administration.
In retirement this inertia increased, and after 171 7
Harley seldom took any part in current politics.
In 1718 he spoke in the debate on the state of the
coinage,^ and a few weeks later opposed the Mutiny
Bill ^ of the Ministry, basing his opposition to it both
on the constitutional ground that courts martial
were inconsistent with civil liberty, and on the
practical reason that the number of men asked for
by the Government was too large from a political
and financial point of view. Walpole was at first
a leading opponent of the measure, and in the
dissensions of the Whigs one may probably perceive

1 Pari. Hist., vii. 533. * ParU Hist,^ vii. 538.



THE PEERAGE BILL, 1719 191

the real cause of this parliamentary attack on a
Bill which was easily capable of defence, since a
standing army could not be governed by the common
law, and in numbers a reduction had been made.
But a statesman who had been kept by his opponents
for two years in the Tower could scarcely be ex-
pected to lose this opportunity, especially in an
age when party spirit was so strong. The Peerage
Bill introduced by Sunderland and Stanhope in
the following year was a more fitting object of
opposition, and the vigour with which Harley
attacked it seemed to suggest that he was about
to take again an active part in contemporary
politics. By this measure a radical change in the
constitution was proposed, not for constitutional
reasons, but for the purposes of party safety ; for
the Whigs were alarmed, lest on the accession to
the throne of the Prince of Wales an unlimited
creation of peers should, as in 17 12, overthrow their
power in that House of Parliament where they
were strongest. The object of it was to prevent
the increase of the existing number of English
peers by more than six, though it permitted the
creation of a new on the extinction of an old peerage.
It shortened the tenure of future peerages by
limiting them to the grantees and the heirs male
of their body. It proposed to replace the sixteen
elective peers of Scotland by twenty-five hereditary
noblemen. It would necessarily have resulted in



192 ROBERT HARLEY

an alteration of the character of the English peerage,
which would have become a caste apart from and
ceasing to be replenished by the middle classes.
Harley had every motive to oppose it : he had
seen the utility, as a political mechanism, of the
royal prerogative to create peers, and had used it
on the popular side. As one of those who had
passed from the ranks of the landed gentry to the
House of Peers, he could recognise the value of
the existing constitution ; as a Tory and a party
politician, he might not be without hope that, after
the secession of Walpole and Townshend from
the Ministry in 17 17, a union of dissatisfied Whigs
with the Tories might replace him in power. Thus,
from the moment this constitutional question was
pressed on the attention of Parliament, he opposed
it actively,^ not only in Parliament but in the

^ The following are the steps of this measure : —
1719
28th Feb. The Duke of Somerset moved and the Duke of Argyll
seconded that a day be appointed for the House
to be in Committee to take into consideration the
present state of the peerage of Great Britain.
This motion was opposed by the Earl of Oxford.
2nd March. Message from the King relinquishing his prerogative

of creating peers.
4th March. Resolutions embodying the principle of the Bill were
passed by 83 to 30.
March-April. Bill passed first and second readings, and not further
proceeded with.
25th Nov. Bill again introduced and passed in the House of
Lords.
8th Dec. Bill rejected in the Commons on motion that it be
committed.



END OF HARLEY'S PUBLIC LIFE 193

country. ** Above an hundred peers in Scotland,"
wrote Lord Balmerino to him on the i6th of March
1 719, "owe your Lordship humble thanks."^

Though unable in the House of Peers to
prevent the progress of this measure, Harley's
efforts were certainly not without influence in the
country ; and though it was to Walpole and the
House of Commons that the destruction of the Bill
was finally due, the late Lord Treasurer's conduct
at this juncture must always be placed to his credit
as a patriotic statesman.

But the rejection of this Bill did not overthrow
the Government ; on the contrary, it apparently
strengthened the position of Stanhope and
Sunderland, since it induced them to bring back
Walpole and Townshend to their Administration.
Thus any hope which Harley might have had of
securing some kind of Tory-Whig combination
fell to the ground. On May i6th, Harley had
written, "I congratulate the time being come that
the wolf dwells with the lamb, and the leopard lies
down with the kid. These are very happy prog-
nostics." But the omens were fallacious, and at
the end of the year Harley was definitely and
finally without hope of office.

In his retirement — sometimes in Herefordshire,
sometimes at Wimpole — he more and more
became isolated from that public life in which he

^ Harley Papers^ iii. 58.
13



194 ROBERT HARLEY

had lately taken so noteworthy a part. In 1720,
when the minds of men were engrossed with the
South Sea Company, then so rapidly falling to ruin,
some efforts seem to have been made to induce
him to come to London and save the situation.
The public originator of the scheme, many looked
to him for assistance in this time of trouble ; but he
could have done nothing, and he did do nothing.
Speculation and avarice must have their necessary
results, and any effort to stay the course of events
would, he thought, be unavailing.

And so he lived on quietly, his leisure occupied
with country life, or broken by a rare visit to
London, interested in his own and his brother's
family, content with his bowls and his books, and
with watching the increase of that library which to
many is his most enduring monument.

Considerably removed from the centre of
political and literary activity, he yet kept up some
intercourse with his former associates, though his
growing indolence, arising from bad health, made
him rather a receiver than a giver of correspondence.
Bromley — one of the pillars of the High Church
party — who had served with him in his Administra-
tion, had time to write to him pessimistic letters
on the state of affairs. Prior occasionally corre-
sponded with him. The accomplished diplomatist
and poet, in bad health, not overburdened with
money, an exile from political life, found in Harley's



PRIOR AND HARLEY 195

family the solace of his later years ; Wimpole, the
house of Harley's eldest son, was more a home to
him than his own Down Hall. " I do not think
myself," he says on 23rd December 1720, **more
sensibly obliged to Lord Harley for any favour I
have lately received from him than for the news
he gives me of your being better as to your health,
and to those wishes which he daily makes with
the piety of an excellent son. I know you will
give me leave to add mine, with the sincerity of
a faithful friend. I have almost wintered here,
and indeed have been detained for a month past
by an indisposition which kept me within doors,
which was the only trouble I found from the illness,
for your son has treated me with kindness, which
prevented me asking anything, and with a freedom
which made me think I was in Duke Street, at
Prior's own palace. I am going thither in three
or four days, and shall not stir from thence till
either you come towards Lincoln's Inn or Lord
Harley to Dover Street, for I am frightened with
the roaring of the South Sea, and tired with the
madness of the people. . . . This is the world,
my Lord, and the same tricks are played in Courts
and camps, universities and hospitals, and so men
act and have acted, for the proof which your
Lordship and your humble servant need not read
much history. There are some exceptions to this
rule, but I think I might name them all without



196 ROBERT HARLEY

writing to the bottom of the page ; but I am tired
with the thought, and will quit it for a pleasanter,
which is that of telling you we are all in perfect
good health. My Lord, Yours, Mathew."^

In less than a year — on September i8th, 1721
— this accomplished and versatile man died at
Wimpole. "His death," wrote Lord Harley to
Humphrey Wanley, "is of great trouble to us all
here, but I have this satisfaction, that nothing was
wanting to preserve his life."

Swift sometimes wrote to him. In political
misfortune he had stood staunchly by his patron.
Five days after being committed to the Tower,
Harley had received from him a letter which
began : "It may look an idle or officious thing
in me to give your Lordship any interruption
under your present circumstances ; yet I could
never forgive myself if, after being treated with
the greatest kindness and distinction by a person
of your Lordship's virtue, I should omit making
you at this time the humblest offers of my poor
service and attendance." Distance, engrossment
in Irish affairs, the absence of reciprocal com-
munication, did not, as time elapsed, lessen the
fidelity of this friendship.^

* Harley Papers^ iii. 6io.

2 Sir Henry Craik suggests that Harley, in obtaining only the
Deanery of St. Patrick (17 13) for Swift, had shown ingratitude for
his services : " Swift was vexed at the vacillation, at the strain which
a return so much under his deserts had called for. The picture of




After a pictKrc by Thoi,



MATTHEW PRIOR

Hudson froui a portrait by Jonathan Richardson in the National Portrait Gallery



SWIFT AND HARLEY 197

" Bussy Rabutin," — Swift thus wrote from Dublin
on 6th November 1723, — *'in his exile of twenty
years writ every year a letter to the King, only to
keep himself in memory, but never received an
answer. This hath been my fortune, and yet I
love you better than ever I did, and I believe you
do not love me worse. I ever gave great allow-
ance to the laziness of your temper in the article of
writing letters, but I cannot pardon your forgetful-
ness in sending me your picture. If you were still
a first Minister, I would hardly excuse your promise
of nine years ; I will be revenged, I will put Lord
Harley, nay, I will put Lady Harriet, upon you.
Mr. Minet hath sometimes made me uneasy with
his accounts of your health ; but he and the public
papers being silent in that particular, I am in hopes
it is established again. I am recovering mine by
riding, in hopes to get enough one summer to attend
you at Brampton Castle, for I have a thousand
things to say to you in relation to somewhat quod
et hunc in annum vivat et plures. Be so kind in
two lines to invite me to your house ; you asked
me once when you governed Europe whether I
was ashamed of your company ; I ask you now
whether you are ashamed of mine. It is vexatious



timidity, shuffling, and ingratitude on the part of Oxford is not a
pleasant one" {Life of Swift ^ p. 261). Harley seems to have done
the best he could for Swift, and the latter, if not satisfied, was certainly
not displeased with Harley.



198 ROBERT HARLEY

that I, who never made court to you in your great-
ness, nor ask anything from you, should be now
perpetually teasing for a letter and a picture.
While you were Treasurer you never refused me
when I solicited for others ; why in your retirement
will you always refuse me when I solicit for myself ?
I want some friend like myself near you to put you
out of your play. In my conscience I think that
you, who were the humblest of men in the height of
power, are grown proud by adversity, which I confess
you have borne in such a manner that if there be
any reason why a mortal should be proud, you
have it all on your side. But I, who am one of
those few who never flattered or deceived you
when you were in a station to be flattered and
deceived, can allow no change of conduct with
regard to myself, and I expect as good treatment
from you as if you were still first minister. Pray,
my Lord, forgive me this idle way of talk, which
you know was always my talent, and yet I am very
serious in it, and expect you will believe me, and
write to me soon, and comply with everything I
desire. It is destined that you should have great
obligations to me, for who else knows how to
deliver you down to posterity, though I leave you
behind me ? Therefore make your court and use
me well, for I am to be bribed, though you never
were. I pray God preserve you and your illustrious
family (for I hope that title is not confined to



DEATH OF HARLEY 199

' Germanes'), and that you may live to save your
country a second time." ^

But in those days Herefordshire and Ireland
were far apart, and Swift and Harley were never to
meet again ; for little more than six months later,
on May 21st, 1724, Harley, whose health had for
some time been failing, died during one of his short
visits to London at a house in Albemarle Street.
His body was borne to Brampton, and laid in the
quiet churchyard with his worthy fathers. Within
the church a marble tablet was placed to his
memory, on which are narrated the chief events in
his life, and on which the four last lines of Pope's
famous dedication are inscribed as an epitaph.
"His friendship and conversation," wrote Swift to
the new Earl,^ on hearing of his death, *' you will
ever want, because they are qualities so rare in the
world, and in which he so much excelled all others."
Harley could not have asked for a more pleasing
epitaph, and, a little overstrained though it may be.



^ Harley Papers^ iii. 636.

2 Harley had by his first wife: Edward, Lord Harley (1689-1741),
who married Henrietta Cavendish, daughter of John, first Duke of
Newcastle ; Elizabeth, who married the third Duke of Leeds ; and
Abigail, who married the seventh Earl of Kinnoul. The title became
extinct on the death of Alfred, sixth Earl of Oxford, in 1853. The
estates devolved on his sister. Lady Langdale, and on her death in
1872, Robert William Daker Harley, a direct descendant of Sir Bryan
de Harley, son of Sir Robert de Harley. See p. 6.

Harley's second wife (marriage Oct. 1694) was Sarah, hitherto said
to be dau^jHter of Simon Middleton, but see Harley Papers^ i. 552, 554
(widow?). See ante^ p. 13.



200 ROBERT HARLEY

it stated with truth his most agreeable characteristic.
It is the last word in a personal union which ex-
hibits in Swift a constant heart and an independent
spirit, in Harley the recognition of genius, of tried
and invaluable services, and of a friendship which
was unbroken in good fortune and in adversity.

Harley 's courage and patience, his good temper
and absence of pride and affectation, were very attrac-
tive to Swift, and no one had better opportunities
of perceiving them. To us it is as a politician
that he is chiefly interesting. With many of the
characteristics of the modern Liberal, perceptive