er lost provinces,
to recover Gibraltar and Minorca, and to restore her old monopoly of
trade with her American colonies. She had learned that she could do
this only by breaking the alliance of the Four Powers, which left her
isolated in Europe; and she saw at last a chance of breaking this league
in the difficulties of the House of Austria. The Emperor Charles the
Sixth was without a son. He had issued a Pragmatic Sanction by which he
provided that his hereditary dominions should descend unbroken to his
daughter, Maria Theresa, but no European state had as yet consented to
guarantee her succession. Spain seized on this opportunity of detaching
the Emperor from the Western powers. She promised to support the
Pragmatic Sanction in return for a pledge on the part of Charles to aid
in wresting Gibraltar and Minorca from England, and in securing to a
Spanish prince the succession to Parma, Piacenza, and Tuscany. A grant
of the highest trading privileges in her American dominions to a
commercial company which the Emperor had established at Ostend, in
defiance of the Treaty of Westphalia and the remonstrances of England
and Holland, revealed this secret alliance; and there were fears of the
adhesion of Russia, which still remained hostile to England through the
quarrel with Hanover. The danger was met for a while by an alliance of
England, France, and Prussia, in 1725; but the withdrawal of the last
Power again gave courage to the confederates, and in 1727 the Spaniards
besieged Gibraltar while Charles threatened an invasion of Holland. The
moderation of Walpole alone averted a European war. While sending
British squadrons to the Baltic, the Spanish coast, and America, he
succeeded by diplomatic pressure in again forcing the Emperor to
inaction; after weary negotiations Spain was brought in 1729 to sign the
Treaty of Seville and to content herself with the promise of a
succession of a Spanish prince to the Duchies of Parma and Tuscany; and
the discontent of Charles the Sixth at this concession was allayed in
1731 by giving the guarantee of England to the Pragmatic Sanction.

[Sidenote: George the Second.]

The patience and even temper which Walpole showed in this business were
the more remarkable that in the course of it his power received what
seemed a fatal shock from the death of the king. George the First died
on a journey to Hanover in 1727; and his successor, George the Second,
was known to have hated his father's Mini