The Whigs and the country in general were
bent upon securing a Protestant succession, but there were some,
especially amongst the Tories, who were secret supporters of the
Pretender, James Stuart, son of James II. The Act of Settlement had
provided for the accession of Sophia as the nearest Protestant
descendant of James I, on the failure of Anne's issue. At one time the
Scotch Parliament threatened to elect as king a different sovereign
from that of England, unless Scotland should be given the same
commercial privileges as England possessed. The Act of Security,
passed in 1704, declared as much. Both Bolingbroke and Harley were in
correspondence with the Pretender, and it was only through the death
of the Queen earlier than had been expected that a revolution in
favour of the exiled Stuarts was averted.
2. GOVERNMENT BY PARTY
Until the reign of Anne what we now call Party Government was unknown.
We may see the beginnings of the division of politicians into Whig and
Tory in the Roundhead and Cavalier factions in the reign of Charles I.
Government by the one strong man of the time--a Burleigh, a Cromwell,
a Marlborough--was the usual thing. Marlborough was the last who tried
to govern without party. During the reign of Anne the Whigs and Tories
were combined in varying proportions, till the final return of a Tory
House of Commons and the formation of a purely Tory ministry, in 1711.
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