ordinary Supply off the Commons.....
Division in the Ministry..... The Commons pass the South Sea
Act, the Bank Act, and the General Fund Act..... Trial of
the Earl of Oxford..... Act of Indemnity..... Proceedings in
the Convocation with regard to Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of
Bangor._

{GEORGE I, 1714--1727}

STATE OF PARTIES.

It may be necessary to remind the reader of the state of parties at this
important juncture. The Jacobites had been fed with hopes of seeing the
succession altered by the earl of Oxford. These hopes he had conveyed
to them in a distant, undeterminate, and mysterious manner, without any
other view than that of preventing them from taking violent measures to
embarrass his administration. At least, if he actually entertained at
one time any other design, he had, long before his disgrace, laid it
wholly aside, probably from an apprehension of the danger with which it
must have been attended, and seemed bent upon making a merit of his zeal
for the house of Hanover; but his conduct was so equivocal and unsteady,
that he ruined himself in the opinion of one party without acquiring
the confidence of the other. The friends of the pretender derived fresh
hopes from the ministry of Bolingbroke. Though he had never explained
himself on this subject, he was supposed to favour the heir of blood,
and known to be an implacable enemy to the whigs, who were the most
zealous advocates for the protestant succession. The Jacobites promised
themselves much from his affection, but more from his resentment; and
they believed the majority of the tories would join them on the
same maxims. All Bolingbroke's schemes of power were defeated by the
promotion of the duke of Shrewsbury to the office of treasurer; and all
his hopes blasted by the death of the queen, on whose personal favour
he depended. The resolute behaviour of the dukes of Somerset and Argyle,
together with the diligence and activity of a council in which the
whig interest had gained the ascendancy, completed the confusion of the
tories, who found themselves without a head, divided, distracted, and
irresolute. Upon recollection, they saw nothing so eligible as silence
and submission to those measures which they could not oppose with any
prospect of success. They had no other objection to the succession in
the house of Hanover but the fear of seeing the whig faction once more
predominant; yet they were not without hope that their new