appear as mighty men of valour, who, when they come to close quarters with the enemy, do deadly execution upon them or strike them with "panic fear," while the besiegers have little stomach save for plundering. The correspondence, however, shows pretty plainly that the slackness with which the first siege was prosecuted arose mainly from reluctance to press "the honourable and valiant lady" hard. These papers, however, will doubtless prove a welcome addition to the particular history of a struggle, the interest in which is apparently inexhaustible. The papers

relating to the latter half of the seventeenth century are disappointing, even the letters of Burnet shedding very little light upon public affairs.

On the other hand the papers of Queen Anne's reign are of capital importance in regard of the inner political history of the time. They enable us to trace the course of Harley's estrangement from the Whigs from its very beginning to the final rupture. For rather more than a year after his appointment to the Secretary's office all goes smoothly enough, but from the tone of his draft letter to Godolphin of 21 July, 1705, it is evident that he had already incurred the Treasurer's suspicion, and was hard put to it to find language equal to allaying it. The numerous alterations in the draft show the extreme care with which it was studied. But the artist forgot celare artem, the humility is abject, the adulation laid on with a trowel; and such expressions as "I cannot allow a thought disagreeable to you," "have no other views, no other passions, than to be subservient to your Lordship," "know my own heart, and I can die a martyr for what I have written," must have been apt rather to excite than to allay suspicion in a statesman of Godolphin's shrewdness and experience. In a letter of 4 Sept. following we find the first hint of the expediency of broadening the basis of the administration. "I take it for granted that no party in the House can carry it for themselves without the Queen's servants join with them; that the foundation is, persons or parties are to come in to the Queen, and not the Queen to them If the gentlemen of England are made sensible that the Queen is the Head, and not a party, everything will be easy, and the Queen will be courted and not a party: but if otherwise"

Nor did the appointment of Cowper, one of the staunchest of Whigs, to the Lord Keeper's place deter Harley from pressing his

project of a broad bottom administration upon Godolphin with more urgency and at greater length in the following year. On 15 Oct., 1706, he writes that "many of the most staunch Whigs (not whimsical) have, and do frequently lament the fury of their leaders, and have rejoiced when their presumption was humbled, and, to use an expression of one of them, that, if they were gratified in all they desire, they would immediately be undone. I am very far from making them jealous. I did not mean that places should be given to others, and I was humbly of opinion that whoever would come in as a volunteer to the service should be accepted as far as he would go, and I am the more confirmed in this opinion because those who call themselves Whigs, if united, are the inferior number, and that they will not follow those who make themselves their leaders, but yet may be united in the Queen's service by her ministers I have with grief observed that the leaders (or zealots rather) of both parties are frequent even now in their reflections on the Queen's ministers, I mean your Lordship and my Lord Marlborough. I cannot but apprehend danger from both sides in the extreme, and therefore I am humbly of opinion to increase the number of those who would devote themselves to the Queen's and your service would be best."

The appointment (3 Dec.) of Sunderland as secretary in succession to Sir Charles Hedges further strengthened the Whig interest; and thenceforth Harley's letters, though written in much the same sense, are more circumspect in tone, and betray a certain uneasiness as of a man conscious that he was regarded with suspicion. "I am very sensible," he writes on 2 Sept., 1707," of the difficulties which for one reason and for another are like to attend public affairs next winter; it would be very impertinent in me to trouble your Lordship with my poor thought of the true occasions of them; I am sanguine enough to think I see beyond them, but that is not my business;" and eight days later he assumes an apologetic tone, protesting that he has "no attachment to any other person in the world but” Godolphin and Marlborough; and hinting that he has been misrepresented by "a sort of people who wound those they do not like in the dark." At the same time he dreads "the thoughts of running from the extreme of one faction to another, which is the natural consequence of party tyranny, and renders the government like a door which turns both ways upon its hinges to let in

each party as it grows triumphant," adding, "and in truth this is the real parent and nurse of our factions here." In two subsequent letters, 17 Sept. to Godolphin, 16 Oct. to Marlborough, he returns to the alleged misrepresentations. Then followed the discovery of the treasonable correspondence that had passed through his office, and though the examination of his clerk, William Greg, failed to establish Harley's complicity, Godolphin evidently deemed it morally certain, for at the close of the examination he sent Harley word by Attorney-General Harcourt that he was disgraced, a step which in such circumstances admits of no other interpretation, and to Harley's letter protesting his innocence (30 Jan., 1707-8) he returned only the curt answer:-"I have received your letter, and am very sorry for what has happened to lose the good opinion I had so much inclination to have of you, but I cannot help seeing and hearing, nor believing my senses. I am very far from having deserved it from you. God forgive you.”

On what passed between this date and Harley's resignation (9 Feb.) the papers shed no light; nor do they add much to our knowledge of the means by which the subsequent victory was organised, while they are entirely silent as to the events which led to his second fall. Swift's attempt to vindicate him from the imputation of cunning (p. 227 infra) is only interesting by its perversity.

In regard to matters external the most voluminous correspondence is that which relates to the expedition, to the command of which, by Marlborough's advice, Lord Rivers was appointed. At first (21 July, 1706) designed against France, it was eventually despatched to Spain for the reduction of Seville and Cadiz, and sailed in the autumn under convoy of Sir Clowdisley Shovell. Rivers had been assured that he was not to serve under Peterborough, and had taken this to mean that he was to have an independent command. When therefore, soon after his arrival at Lisbon, he received instructions which subordinated him to Lord Galway, and entirely changed the objective of the expedition, he took umbrage and devoted his main energies to the composition of despatches in disparagement of Galway, accusing him of complicity with John Methuen in treasonable intrigues, and insinuating that he was now associated with Paul Methuen in similar practices (pp. 125, 146-150, 155 infra). These imputations were discredited by the Ministry, by whom he