Reasons Against the Succession of the House of Hanover

The pretender will no doubt bring us good medicines, and cure us of all our hypochondriac vapours that now make us so giddy. But, say some, he will bring popery in upon us; popery, say you! alas! it is true, popery is a sad thing, and that, say some folk, ought to have been thought on before now; but suppose then this thing called popery! How will it come in? Why, say the honest folk, the pretender is a papist, and if a popish prince come upon the throne we shall have popery come in upon us without fail. Well, well, and what hurt will this be to you? May not popery be very good in its kind? What if this popery, like the vomit made of poison, be the only physic that can cure you? If this vomit make you spew out your filth, your tory filth, your idolatrous filth, your tyrannic filth, and restore you to your health, shall it not be good for you? Where pray observe in the allegory of physic; you heard before when you take a vomit, the physic given you to vomit is always something contrary to nature, something that if taken in quantity would destroy; but how does it operate? It attacks nature, and puts her upon a ferment to cast out what offends her; but remark it, I pray, when the patient vomits, he always vomits up the physic and the filth together; so, if the nation should take a vomit of popery, as when the pretender comes most certain it is that this will be the consequence, they will vomit up the physic and the filth together; the popery and the pretender will come all up again, and all the popish, arbitrary, tyrannical filth, which has offended the stomach of the nation so long, and ruined its digesture, it will all come up together; one vomit of popery will do us all a great deal of good, for the stomach of the constitution is marvellous foul. Observe, people! this is no new application; the nation has taken a vomit of this kind before now, as in Queen Mary I.'s time; the reformation was not well chewed, and being taken down whole, did not rightly digest, but left too much crudity in the stomach, from whence proceeded ill nourishment, bad blood, and a very ill habit of body in the constitution; witness the distemper which seized the Gospellers in Suffolk, who being struck with an epilepsy or dead palsy in the better half of their understanding, to wit, the religious and zealous part, took up arms for a popish pretender, against the protestant successor, upon the wild-headed whimsey of the right line being jure divino. Well, what followed, I pray? Why, they took a vomit of popery; the potion indeed was given in a double vehicle, viz., of fagots a little inflamed, and this worked so effectually, that the nation having vomited, brought up all the filth of the stomach, and the foolish notion of hereditary right, spewed out popery also along with it. Thus was popery, and fire and fagot, the most effectual remedy to cure the nation of all its simple diseases, and to settle and establish the protestant reformation; and why then should we be so terrified with the apprehensions of popery? Nay, why should we not open our eyes and see how much to our advantage it may be in the next reign to have popery brought in, and to that end the pretender set up, that he may help us to this most useful dose of physic? These are some other of my reasons against the protestant succession; I think they cannot be mended; it may perhaps be thought hard of that we should thus seem to make light of so terrible a thing as popery, and should jest with the affair of the protestants; no, people! no; this is no jest, – taking physic is no jest at all; for it is useful many ways, and there is no keeping the body in health without it; for the corruption of politic constitutions are as gross and as fatal as those of human bodies, and require as immediate application of medicines. And why should you people of this country be so alarmed, and seem so afraid of this thing called popery, when it is spoken of in intelligible terms, since you are not afraid alternately to put your hands to those things which as naturally tend in themselves to bring it upon you, as clouds tend to rain, or smoke to fire; what does all your scandalous divisions, your unchristian quarrellings, your heaping up reproaches, and loading each other with infamy, and with abominable forgeries, what do these tend to but to popery? If it should be asked how have these any such reference? the question is most natural from the premises. If divisions weaken the nation; if whig and tory, even united, are, and have been, weak enough to keep out popery, surely then widening the unnatural breaches, and inflaming things between them to implacable and irreconcileable breaches, must tend to overthrow the protestant kingdom, which, as our ever blessed Saviour said, when divided against itself cannot stand. Besides, are not your breaches come up to that height already as to let any impartial bystander see that popery must be the consequences? Do not one party say openly, they had rather be papists than presbyterians; that they would rather go to mass than to a meeting-house; and are they not to that purpose, all of them who are of that height, openly joined with the jacobites in the cause of popery? On the other hand, are not the presbyterians in Scotland so exasperated at having the abjuration oath imposed upon them, contrary, as they tell us, to their principles, that they care not if he, or any else, would come now and free them from that yoke? What is all this but telling us plainly that the whole nation is running into popery and the pretender? Why then, while you are obliquely, and by consequences, joining your hands to bring in popery, why, O distracted folk! should you think it amiss to have me talk of doing it openly and avowedly? Better is open enmity than secret guile; better is it to talk openly, and profess openly, for popery, that you may see the shape and real picture of it, than pretend strong opposition of it, and be all at the same time putting your hands to the work, and pulling it down upon yourselves with all your might.

But here comes an objection in our way, which, however weighty, we must endeavour to get over, and this is, what becomes of the abjuration? If the pretender comes in we are all perjured, and we ought to be all unanimous for the house of Hanover, because we are all perjured if we are for the pretender. Perjured, say ye! Ha! why, do all these people say we are perjured already? Nay, one, two, three, or four times? What signify oaths and abjurations in a nation where the parliament can make an oath to-day, and punish a man for keeping it to-morrow! Besides, taking oaths without examination, and breaking them without consideration, hath been so much a practice, and the date of its original is so far back, that none, or but very few, know where to look for it; nay, have we not been called in the vulgar dialect of foreign countries "the swearing nation"? Note, we do not say the forsworn nation; for whatever other countries say of us, it is not meet we should say so of ourselves; but as to swearing and forswearing, associating and abjuring, there are very few without sin to throw the first stone, and therefore we may be the less careful to answer in this matter: it is evident that the friends of the pretender cannot blame us; for have not the most professed jacobites all over the nation taken this abjuration? Nay, when even in their hearts they have all the while resolved to be for the pretender? Not to instance in the swearing in all ages to and against governments, just as they were or were not, in condition to protect us, or keep others out of possession; but we have a much better way to come off this than that, and we doubt not to clear the nation of perjury, by declaring the design, true intent, and meaning of the thing itself; for the good or evil of every action is said to lie in the intention; if then we can prove the bringing in the pretender to be done with a real intention and sincere desire to keep him out, or, as before, to spew him out; if we bring in popery with an intention and a sincere design to establish the protestant religion; if we bring in a popish prince with a single design the firmer and better to fix and introduce the protestant Hanover succession; if, I say, these things are the true intent and meaning, and are at the bottom of all our actions in this matter, pray how shall we be said to be perjured, or to break in upon the abjuration, whose meaning we keep, whatever becomes of the literal part of it. Thus we are abundantly defended from the guilt of perjury, because we preserve the design and intention upright and entire for the house of Hanover; though as the best means to bring it to pass we think fit to bring in popery and the pretender: but yet farther, to justify the lawfulness and usefulness of such kind of methods, we may go back to former experiments of the same case, or like cases, for nothing can illustrate such a thing so aptly, as the example of eminent men who have practised the very same things in the same or like cases, and more especially when that practice has been made use of by honest men in an honest cause, and the end been crowned with success. This eminent example was first put in practice by the late famous Earl of Sunderland, in the time of King James II., and that too in the case of bringing popery into England, which is the very individual article before us. This famous politician, if fame lies not, turned papist himself, went publicly to mass, advised and directed all the forward rash steps that King James afterwards took towards the introducing of popery into the nation; if he is not slandered, it was he advised the setting up of popish chapels and mass-houses in the city of London, and in the several principal towns of this nation; the invading the right of corporations, courts of justice, universities, and, at last, the erecting the high commission court, to sap the foundations of the church; and many more of the arbitrary steps which that monarch took for the ruin of the protestant religion, as he thought, were brought about by this politic earl, purely with design, and as the only effectual means to ruin the popish schemes, and bring about the establishment of the protestant religion by the revolution; and, as experience after made it good, he alone was in the right, and it was the only way left, the only step that could be taken, though at first it made us all of the opinion the man was going the ready way to ruin his country, and that he was selling us to popery and Rome. This was exactly our case; the nation being sick of a deadly, and otherwise incurable disease, this wise physician knew that nothing but a medicine made up of deadly poison, that should put the whole body into convulsions, and make it cast up the dregs of the malady, would have any effect; and so he applied himself accordingly to such a cure; he brought on popery to the very door; he caused the nation to swallow as much of it as he thought was enough to make her as sick as a horse, and then he foresaw she would spew up the disease and the medicine together; the potion of popery he saw would come up with it, and so it did. If this be our case now, then it may be true that bringing the pretender is the only way to establish the protestant succession; and upon such terms, and such only, I declare myself for the pretender. If any sort of people are against the succession of the house of Hanover on any other accounts, and for other reasons, it may not be amiss to know some of them, and a little to recommend them to those who have a mind to be for him, but well know not wherefore or why they are so inclined. 1. Some being instructed to have an aversion to all foreign princes or families, are against the succession of the princes of Hanover, because, as they are taught to say, they are Dutchmen; now, though it might as well be said of the pretender that he is a Frenchman, yet that having upon many accounts been made more familiar to them of late, and the name of a Dutch king having a peculiar odium left upon it, by the grievances of the late King William's reign, they can by no means think of another Dutch succession without abhorrence; nay, the aversion is so much greater than their aversions to popery, that they can with much more satisfaction entertain the notion of a popish French pretender than of the best protestant in the world, if he hath anything belonging to him that sounds like a Dutchman; and this is some people's reason against the Hanover succession; a reason which has produced various effects in the world since the death of that prince, even to creating national antipathies in some people to the whole people of Holland, and to wish us involved in a war with the Dutch without any foundation of a quarrel with them, or any reason for those aversions; but these things opening a scene which relates to things farther back than the subject we are now upon, we omit them here for brevity sake, and to keep more closely to the thing in hand at this time. Others have aversions to the Hanover succession as it is the effect of the revolution, and as it may reasonably be supposed to favour such principles as the revolution was brought about by, and has been the support of, viz., principles of liberty, justice, rights of parliaments, the people's liberties, free possession of property, and such like; these doctrines, a certain party in this nation have always to their utmost opposed, and have given us reason to believe they hate and abhor them, and for this reason they cannot be supposed to appear forward for the Hanover succession; to these principles have been opposed the more famous doctrines of passive obedience, absolute will, indefeasible right, the jus divinum of the line of princes, hereditary right, and such like; these, as preached up by that eminent divine, Dr. Henry Sacheverell, are so much preferable to the pretences of liberty and constitution, the old republican notions of the whigs, that they cannot but fill these people with hatred against all those that would pretend to maintain the foundation we now stand upon, viz., the revolution; and this is their reason against the Hanover succession, which they know would endeavour to do so.

Come we in the conclusion of this great matter to one great and main reason, which they say prevails with a great part of the nation at this time to be for the pretender, and which many subtle heads and industrious hands are now busily employed all over the kingdom to improve in the minds of the common people, this is the opinion of the legitimacy of the birth of the pretender; it seems, say these men, that the poor commons of Britain have been all along imposed upon to believe that the person called the pretender was a spurious birth, a child fostered upon the nation by the late king and queen; this delusion was carried on, say they, by the whigs in King William's time, and a mighty stir was made of it to possess the rabbles in favour of the revolution, but nothing was ever made of it; King William, say they, promised in his declaration to have it referred to the decision of the English parliament, but when he obtained the crown he never did anything that way more than encourage the people to spread the delusion by scurrilous pamphlets to amuse the poor commons; have them take a thing for granted which could have no other thing made of it; and so the judging of it in parliament was made a sham only; and the people drinking in the delusion, as they who were in the plot desired, it has passed ever since as if the thing had been sufficiently proved. Now upon a more sedate considering the matter, say they, the case is clear that this person is the real son of King James, and the favourers of the revolution go now upon another foundation, viz., the powers of parliaments to limit the succession; and that succession being limited upon King James's abdication, which they call voluntary; so that now, say they, the question about the legitimacy of the person called the pretender is over, and nothing now is to be said of it; that he is the son of King James, there is, say they, no more room to doubt, and therefore the doctrine of hereditary right taking place, as the ancient professed doctrine of the Church of England, there can be no objection against his being our lawful king; and it is contrary to the said Church of England doctrine to deny it. This, then, is the present reason which the poor ignorant people are taught to give why they are against the protestant succession, and why they are easily persuaded to come into the new scheme of a popish pretender, though at the same time they are all heartily against popery as much as ever.

It becomes necessary now to explain this case a little to the understanding of the common people, and let them know upon what foundation the right of these two parties is founded, and if this be done with plainness and clearness, as by the rights and laws of Englishmen and Britons appertaineth, the said commons of Britain may soon discover whether the succession of the house of Hanover, or the claim of the person called the pretender, is founded best, and which they ought to adhere unto. The first thing it seems to be made clear to the common people is, whether the pretender was the lawful son of King James, yea, or no? And why the contrary to this was not made appear, according to the promises which, they say, though falsely, were made by the late King William? In the first place is to be considered, that the declaration of the said king, when P. of O. putting the said case in the modestest manner possible, had this expression, That there were violent suspicions that the said person was not born of the queen's body, and that the prince resolved to leave the same to the free parliament, to which throughout the said declaration the said prince declared himself ready to refer all the grievances which he came over to redress. I shall give you this in the words of a late learned author upon that head.

That before a free parliament could be obtained, King James withdrew himself, and carried away his pretended son into the hands of the ancient enemies of this nation, and of our religion, viz., the French, there to be educated in the principles of enmity to this his native country.

By which action he not only declined to refer the legitimacy of his said son to the examination of the parliament, as the Prince of Orange had offered in his said declaration, but made such examination altogether useless and impracticable, he himself (King James) not owning it to be a legal parliament, and therefore not consenting to stand by such examination.

By the said abdication, and carrying away his said pretended son into the hands of the French to be educated in popery, &c., he gave the parliament of England and Scotland abundant reason for ever to exclude the said King James and his said pretended son from the government of these realms, or from the succession to the same, and made it absolutely necessary for them to do so, if they would secure the protestant religion to themselves and their posterity; and this without any regard to the doubt, whether he was the lawful son of King James, or no, since it is inconsistent with the constitution of this protestant nation to be governed by a popish prince.

The proof of the legitimacy being thus stated, and all the violent suspicions of his not being born of the queen being thus confirmed by the abdication of King James, come we next to examine how far this abdication could forfeit for this pretender, supposing him to be the real son of King James; this returns upon the right of the parliament to limit the succession, supposing King James had had no son at all; if the abdication be granted a lawfully making the throne vacant, it will be very hard to assign a cause why the parliament might not name a successor while the father was alive, whose right had no violent suspicions attending it, and not why they might not name a successor though the son was living; that the father's abdication forfeited for the son is no part of the question before us; for the father is not said to forfeit his right at all; no one ever questioned his right to reign, nor, had he thought fit to have stayed, could the parliament have named a successor, unless, as in the case of Richard II., he had made a voluntary resignation or renunciation of the crown, and of his people's allegiance; but the king having voluntarily abdicated the throne, this was as effectual a releasing his subjects from their allegiance to him, as if he had read an instrument of resignation, just as King Richard did; all the articles of such a resignation were naturally contained in the said abdication, except the naming the successor, as effectually as if they had been at large repeated; and since the resigning the crown has been formerly practised in England, and there is so eminent an example in our English history of the same, it will questionless be of use to the reader of these sheets to have the particulars of it before his eyes, which for that purpose is here set down at large, as it was done in the presence of a great number of English peers, who attended the king for that purpose, and is as follows: —

In the name of God, Amen. I Richard, by the grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, do hereby acquit and discharge all Archbishops, Bishops, Dukes, Marquisses, and Earls, Barons, Lords, and all other my subjects, both spiritual and secular, of what degree soever, from their oath of fealty and homage, and all other bonds of allegiance, to me due from them and their heirs, and do hereby release them from the said oath and allegiance, so far as they concern my person, for ever.

I also resign all my kingly majesty and dignity, with all the rights and privileges thereunto belonging, and do renounce all the title and claim which I ever had, or have, to them. I also renounce the government of the said kingdom, and the name and royal highness thereunto belonging, freely and wholly, and swearing upon the Evangelists that I will never oppose this my voluntary resignation, nor suffer it to be opposed, as judging myself not unworthily deposed from my regal dignity for my deserts.

This resignation being read again in parliament, they grounded the deposing King Richard upon it, and declared him accordingly deposed, that is, declared the throne vacant; and immediately, by virtue of their own undoubted right of limiting the succession, named the successor. See the form in the history of that time, thus: —

That the throne was vacant by the voluntary cession and just deposition of King Richard II., and that therefore, according to their undoubted power and right so to do, they ought forthwith to the naming a successor to fill the said throne, which they forthwith did, by naming and proclaiming Henry, Duke of Lancaster, to be king, &c.

See the history of the kings of England, vol. fol. 287.

This was the same thing with King James's abdication, and King James's abdication was no less or more than an effectual resignation in form; now the parliament, upon the resignation of the crown by the king, having a manifold and manifest right to supply the throne so become vacant, had no obligation to regard the posterity of the abdicated prince, so far as any of them are concerned in, or involved by, the said abdication, and therefore considered of establishing and limiting the succession, without mentioning the reasons of the descent, having the reasons in themselves; but suppose the son of King James had been allowed legitimate, yet as the father had involved him in the same circumstances with himself, by first carrying him out of the kingdom, and afterwards educating him in the popish religion, he became abdicated also with his father; neither doth the being voluntary or not voluntary alter the case in the least, since in the laws of England a father is allowed to be able to forfeit for himself and for his children, and much more may he make a resignation for himself and his children, as is daily practised and allowed in law in the cutting off entails and remainders, even when the heir entail is in being, and under age. The people of Britain ought not then to suffer themselves to be imposed upon in such a case; for though the pretender were to be owned for the lawful son of King James, yet the abdication of King James his father, and especially his own passive abdication, was as effectual an abdication in him as if he had been of age, and done it voluntarily himself, and shall be allowed to be as binding in all respects in law as an heir in possession cutting off an heir entail. If this is not so, then was the settlement of the crown upon King William and Queen Mary unrighteous, and those two famous princes must be recorded in history for parricides and usurpers; nor will it end there, for the black charge must reach our most gracious sovereign, who must be charged with the horrible crimes of robbery and usurpation; and not the parliament or convention of the estates at the revolution only shall be charged as rebels and traitors to their sovereign, and breakers of the great command of rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, but even every parliament since, especially those who have had any hand in placing the entail of the crown upon the person of the queen, and in confirming her majesty's possession thereof since her happy accession; and every act of parliament settling the succession on the house of Hanover must have likewise been guilty of treason and rebellion in a most unnatural manner. This is a heavy charge upon her majesty, and very inconsistent with the great zeal and affection with which all the people of Britain at this time pay their duty and allegiance to her majesty's person, and acknowledge her happy government; this may indeed be thought hard, but it is evident nothing less can be the case, and therefore those people who are so forward to plead the pretender's cause, on account of his being King James's lawful son, can do it upon no other terms than these, viz., to declare that the queen is herself an illegal governor, an usurper of another's right, and therefore ought to be deposed; or, that the hereditary right of princes is no indefeasible thing, but is subjected to the power of limitations by parliament. Thus I think the great difficulty of the pretender's being the rightful son of the late King James is over, and at an end; that it is no part of the needful inquiry relating to the succession, since his father involved him in the fate of his abdication, and many ways rendered him incapable to reign, and out of condition to have any claim; since the power of limiting the succession to the crown is an undoubted right of the parliaments of England and of Scotland respectively. Moreover, his being educated a papist in France, and continuing so, was a just reason why the people of England rejected him, and why they ought to reject him, since, according to that famous vote of the commons in the convention parliament, so often printed, and so often on many accounts quoted, it is declared, That it is inconsistent with the constitution of this protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish prince. Vid. Votes of the Convention, Feb. 2nd, 1688. This vote was carried up by Mr. Hampden to the house of lords the same day as the resolution of all the commons of England. Now, this prince being popish, not only so in his infancy, but continuing so even now, when all the acts of Parliament in Britain have been made to exclude him, his turning protestant now, which his emissaries promise for him, though perhaps without his consent, will not answer at all; for the acts of parliament, or some of them, having been past while he, though of age, remained a papist, and gave no room to expect any other, his turning protestant cannot alter those laws, suppose he should do so; nor is it reasonable that a nation should alter an established succession to their crown whenever he shall think fit to alter or change his religion; if to engage the people of Britain to settle the succession upon him, and receive him as heir, he had thought fit to turn protestant, why did he not declare himself ready to do so before the said succession was settled by so many laws, especially by that irrevocable law of the union of the two kingdoms, and that engagement of the abjuration, of which no human power can absolve us, no act of parliament can repeal it, nor no man break it without wilful perjury.