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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2009
Written ‘to supply the defect of an ill memory’, Sir Arthur Kaye's manuscript diary is one of the few early eighteenth-century accounts of Parliamentary politics that have survived to the present day. It is also one which scholars in the field have found very useful. As Geoffrey Holmes, the doyen of early eighteenth-century British history, has put it: ‘no contemporary material illustrates more vividly the negative side of the country member's prejudices’. The Parliamentary speeches also preserved amongst Kaye's papers are less well known but in their own way are just as valuable, hence the publication of the two in conjunction.
page 323 note 1 The diary is interspersed among the Dartmouth MSS held by Staffordshire County Record Office. Years 1710–14 are in D.1778/V/200, years 1715–20 are in D(W)1778/V/202 and years 1720–1 are in D(W)1778/III/156. I am grateful for their kind permission to publish Kaye's diary and speeches.
page 323 note 2 Holmes, G., British Politics in the Age of Anne (2nd edn, 1987), p.123.Google Scholar
page 323 note 3 All Kaye's speeches are located in Staffs R.O., Dartmouth MSS, D(W)1778/III/156.
page 323 note 4 The House of Commons 1660–1690, ed. B.D. Henning (3 vols, 1983) ii. 668–9. The estate was valued at £2, 109 per annum in 1722: Dartmouth MSS, D(W)1778/I/ii/580.Google Scholar
page 323 note 5 The House of Commons 1715–1754, ed. R.R. Sedgwick (2 vols, 1970), ii. 183.Google Scholar
page 324 note 6 Szechi, D., Jacobitism and Tory Politics 1710–14 (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 75–84, 98–9, 123–4Google Scholar; Holmes, G. and Jones, C., ‘Trade, the Scots and the Parliamentary Crisis of 1713’, Parliamentary History, i (1982), 47–78.Google Scholar
page 324 note 7 Quadriennium Annae Postremum; or the Political State of Great Britain, ed. A. Boyer (8 vols, 1718–1719), iii. 117–21Google Scholar; Jonathan Swift: Journal to Stella, ed. H. Williams (2 vols, Oxford, 1948), i. 195.Google Scholar
page 324 note 8 Szechi, , Jacobitism and Tory Politics, pp. 104–5, 106–10, 137, 161–70.Google Scholar
page 324 note 9 Ibid., p. 174.
page 325 note 10 House of Commons 1715–54, ii. 183Google Scholar; Speck, W.A., Tory and Whig. The Struggle in the Constituencies 1701–15 (1970), p.41.Google Scholar
page 325 note 11 House of Commons 1715–54, i. 112.Google Scholar
page 325 note 12 Holmes, G., The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973), pp.35–46Google Scholar; Szechi, , Jacobitism and Tory Politics, p.174Google Scholar. Cf. Colley, L., In Defiance of Oligarchy. The Tory Party 1714–60 (1982), p.13.Google Scholar
page 327 note 1 William Bromley of Baginton, M.P. for Oxford University and a leading High Church Tory. His election as Speaker probably went uncontested by the Whigs because, following the Tories' landslide victory at the polls, they were loth to highlight their weakness in the Commons so early in the session.
page 327 note 2 I.e. they were Whigs. Place bills traditionally united courtiers and civil servants from both parties in opposition to the measure as much as they united backbenchers from both parties in their favour.
page 328 note 3 The Quakers' privilege of affirming to, rather than swearing, public oaths was one many Tories bitterly opposed. Clawing back that particular concession to religious Dissent was seen by many Tories as a necessary first step in a complete overhaul of the religious settlement of 1689. See: Szechi, , Jacobitism and Tory Politics, pp.98–9, 122, 159.Google Scholar
page 328 note 4 Two Whigs: Thomas White and Thomas Westby.
page 328 note 5 With the ministry.
page 329 note 6 Tory M.P. for Honiton and a lord of the Admiralty.
page 329 note 7 Robert Benson, Tory M.P. for York and at this time a lord of the Treasury. Subsequently Chancellor of the Exchequer and 1st Lord Benson.
page 329 note 8 John Aislabie, at this time a Tory (he went into opposition with the earl of Nottingham in December and by degrees mutated into a Whig by 1714), M.P. for Ripon and a lord of the Admiralty.
page 330 note 9 See diary entry for 21 Dec. 1710.
page 330 note 10 Robert Harley, M.P. for New Radnor and premier minister. Subsequently earl of Oxford and Mortimer.
page 330 note 11 I.e. the Lords, where the Whigs retained a slight majority (when they could persuade Court Whig placemen to vote with them) until January 1712.
page 330 note 12 A reference to the former, Whig, administration.
page 330 note 13 John Poulet, 4th Lord (and subsequently 1st Earl) Poulet, a High Church Tory with Jacobite proclivities who was nonetheless a devoted follower of Harley.
page 331 note 14 Sir John Cope of Bramshill, a Whig, a director of the Bank of England and a Commissioner of the Equivalent.
page 331 note 15 Henry Manaton, unseated in favour of James Bulteel, a Tory who subsequently joined the October Club.
page 331 note 16 Henry St. John, Secretary of State, later Viscount Bolingbroke, was at this time managing affairs in the Commons for the ministry due to Harley's enforced absence while he recuperated from wounds he had received during the Abbé Guiscard's attempt on his life in February. Bolingbroke's abilities as a Parliamentary manager were thrown into question by the loss of the leather duty to the October Club's raid on the 26th, and he only retrieved his reputation by persuading enough of the Octobermen to relent to let the duty pass under another title next day. Dickinson, H.T., Bolingbroke (1970), pp.81–2.Google Scholar
page 331 note 17 Kaye's figures suggest that Dickinson was incorrect in stating that St. John's hide tax ‘met little opposition’. Dickinson, , Bolingbroke, p.82.Google Scholar
page 331 note 18 This actually occurred on 17 April not 26 March. CJ, xvi. 600–603, 17 04 1711.Google Scholar
page 332 note 19 The substance of the report that led to the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711.
page 332 note 20 Petitioners against measures taken to relieve the sufferings of Protestant (but Calvinist) refugees from the Palatinate. See: Dickinson, H.T., ‘The Poor Palatines and the Parties’, EHR, lxxxii (1967), 464–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 333 note 21 Kaye's figures conceal a split in the October Club revealed by the presence of prominent Octobermen as tellers on both sides of the division. CJ, xvi. 28 04 1711.Google Scholar
page 333 note 22 The grants resumption bill. This was a measure designed to resume all royal grants of land and pensions since the accession of William and Mary. Many Tory peers enjoyed such grants and were correspondingly loth to support the bin. Scottish Record Office, Register House, Dalhousie Papers GD 45/14/352/8: Lord Balmerino to Henry Maule, 1 May [1711].
page 333 note 23 I.e. the proprietors were to be shareholders in Harley's new South Sea Company, for details of which see: Hill, B.W., Robert Harley. Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (1988), pp. 144–5.Google Scholar
page 333 note 24 The overwhelming bulk of these missing monies, as with the allegedly ‘missing’ £35 million noted by Kaye on 24 April, had not been embezzled (as the Octobermen feared) but were instead enmeshed in the toils of the snail-like accounting procedures used by the Treasury at the time of the Commission of Accounts' investigation.
page 335 note 25 The ‘No Peace Without Spain’ clause and the occasional conformity bill which followed it were in fact two halves of a political bargain. In return for the support of the High Church Tory earl of Nottingham and his friends in the Commons and (more importantly) the Lords, where Nottingham's defection gave the Whigs the crucial one vote extra they needed to pass the ‘No Peace Without Spain’ amendment to an address of thanks to the Queen, the Whigs in the Lords finally allowed an occasional conformity bill to pass after having successfully blocked such legislation for the previous nine years. Horwitz, H., Revolution Politicks. The Career of Daniel Finch Second Earl of Nottingham (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 185–7, 189–90, 197, 232–4.Google Scholar
page 335 note 26 I.e. Dissenting Academies (later the principal target aimed at in the Schism Act).
page 335 note 27 Robert Walpole, Whig M.P. for King's Lynn (the future premier minister), was accused by the Commission of Accounts of having taken bribes from a syndicate of army contractors in return for the allocation to them of a contract to supply forage to troops stationed in Scotland in 1708. The Lockhart Papers, ed. A.A. Aufrere (2 vols, 1817), i. 359–61.Google Scholar
page 336 note 28 Kaye confused the Ayes and Noes on this occasion. CJ, xvii. 30Google Scholar: 17 Jan. 1712.
page 336 note 29 The Captain-General was John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and the Commission of Accounts condemnation of his levying a fee from the army's bread contractors was connived at by the ministry with a view to discrediting him and thereby driving him out of politics. Lockhart Papers, i. 352–9Google Scholar; Szechi, , Jacobitism and Tory Politics, pp. 107–8.Google Scholar
page 336 note 30 By this time the Queen had at a stroke created 12 new Tory peers so as to give the ministry a majority in the Lords (Gregg, E., Quern Anne (1980), pp.349–50Google Scholar). Consequently the Whigs there did not see any point in straining their new alliance with Nottingham and his friends by futilely opposing something their allies were likely to be in favour of.
page 336 note 31 The Scottish Episcopalian Toleration Act was another measure allowed to pass unopposed by the ministry as part of its effort to keep on good terms with the Country Tories in general and the October Club in particular. See: D. Szechi, ‘The Politics of “Persecution”: Scots Episcopalian Toleration and the Harley Ministry, 1710–12’, in, Toleration and Persecution, Studies in Church History, ed. W.J. Sheils, xxi (1984), 275–89.Google Scholar
page 336 note 32 A further token of the October Club's determination to cut back the Dissenters' civil and political rights, starting with the Quakers.
page 337 note 33 This series of resolutions and those of 15 Feb. were designed to empower the ministry to ignore its obligations to the Dutch republic under the Barrier Treaty of 1709 during forthcoming peace negotiations with France. The Tory backbenchers, who virtually uniformly loathed the Dutch, were more than happy to support the ministry on this issue. Szechi, , Jacobitism and Tory Politics, pp. 108–9.Google Scholar
page 337 note 34 The military alliance and commercial treaty negotiated by John and Paul Methuen with Peter II of Portugal in 1703.
page 338 note 35 Leopold I and Joseph I.
page 338 note 36 Charles VI.
page 339 note 37 Despite Walpole's expulsion from the Commons and imprisonment in the Tower for corruption, the borough of King's Lynn persisted in re-electing him until 6 Mar., when the Commons finally declared that there were to be no further by-elections to replace him.
page 339 note 38 Richard Steele of Llangunnor, Whig M.P. for Stockbridge, the famous essayist and playwright.
page 339 note 39 William Prynne of Swainsrick, M.P. for Bath, the pamphleteer whose attacks on the government of Charles I cost him his ears in 1637, but who zealously supported the restoration of Charles II in 1660. In 1661 he was forced to admit his authorship of a pamphlet accusing borough M.P.s who had voted for the Corporation Act (a measure designed to exclude Dissenters from municipal office) of perjury, and was lucky to escape with a tearful, grovelling apology to the Commons and a severe reprimand from the Speaker.
page 340 note 40 Kaye was clearly present at the debate, and as he does not figure in the lists of those who spoke or voted in Steele's favour (Cobbett, W., Parliamentary History of England (36 vols, 1806–1820), vi. col. 1282–3Google Scholar), it seems reasonable to assume that he voted for Steele's expulsion.
page 340 note 41 I have been unable to find any record of the introduction of such a bill.
page 341 note 42 The bill appears to have lapsed at this stage.
page 341 note 43 A Tory attempt to exclude Deists and anti-Trinitarian Christians from office.
page 342 note 44 Possibly a reference to Bishop Benjamin Hoadley's controversial Erastian sermon on the theme, ‘my kingdom is not of this world’, preached before George I on 31 Mar. 1717 (and subsequently published as The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ), which sparked the Bangorian controversy. See Clark, J.C.D., English Society 1688–1832 (1985), pp.300–1.Google Scholar
page 342 note 45 Possibly a reference to the anti-episcopal pamphleteers Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard.
page 342 note 46 A reference to the writings of Thomas Chubb the Deist pamphleteer.
page 343 note 47 During the War of the Spanish Succession.
page 343 note 48 The act of Parliament passed in 1716 extending the maximum life of a Parliament to 7 years.
page 344 note 49 This may be a jibe at Sir Robert Walpole, the earl of Sunderland and Sir George Byng respectively.
page 345 note 50 The Cavalier Parliament of 1661–79.