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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2023
When Princess Anne ascended the throne on 8 March 1702 as last of the Stuart monarchs upon the death of William III, ‘the whole fabric of the national life was permeated by the spirit of party, to a degree without precedent even during the Exclusion crisis’. The nation was embroiled in the rage of party over the Succession, the Church, the war with France, the Peace, empire, and trade. England was torn by antagonism between Whigs and Tories, who practiced politics as a blood sport. Change of Ministry was ominous, for ministers out of office could be charged with treason for past policies, treaties, or advice to the monarch. They could face the scaffold, the Tower, or choose to flee for their lives. Fresh were memories of the impeachment of the Earl of Danby (1678), in 1683 the trials and executions of Lord Russell for his suspected role in the Rye House plot and of the martyr Algernon Sidney for his republican writings, and (for Whigs) the martyrs of the Bloody Assizes in 1685.
More recently in April 1701, the Tory managers in the Commons vindictively impeached four Whig lords for their role in advising the King about the Partition Treaties of 1698 and 1700. In February 1710 Whigs impeached the high-flying Tory churchman Henry Sacheverell for an incendiary sermon preached at St Paul’s Cathedral. Jonathan Swift wrote to Stella in February 1711 that the aim of the extremist Tory October Club was ‘to call the old [Whig] ministry to account, and get off five or six heads’. In the December 1711 debate on ‘No Peace without Spain’, the Whig Thomas Wharton would threaten that any minister who attempted a separate peace with France ‘might answer for it to the House with his head’. Then with a Tory Commons, in 1712 the Whig MP Robert Walpole would be sent to the Tower on trumped-up charges of corruption, and the Commons would expel the Whig MP Richard Steele in 1714 for his party journalism. At the accession of George I, with Whigs now firmly in power, the Tories Viscount Bolingbroke and Duke of Ormonde would flee to France for safety, and the moderate Tory Earl of Oxford would be impeached and sent to the Tower for two years.
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