persuade the king that the difficulties, into which he had been thrown, were occasioned by the odium in which the ministry were held in the house of commons. Various charges had been there preferred against Lord Somers, particularly that he had removed several gentlemen from the commission of the peace, who refused to subscribe the voluntary association which had been very generally entered into, upon the discovery of the assassination plot of 1696. In these removals Lord Somers had merely acted in conformity to an order of the council, directing that those justices of the peace, who refused to subscribe, should be dismissed. Though his enemies did not succeed in procuring a vote of the house against him, yet the repeated attempts which they made were considered by the king to be so injurious to his service, that he resolved to dismiss Lord Somers from the office of chancellor. This act seemed the more ungracious, as the chancellor was, at the time, suffering severely from an illness, induced by his close attendance upon his various duties in court and in the cabinet. On his first appearance at court, after his restoration to health, the king told him that it seemed necessary for his service that his lordship should part with the seals, and that it was desirable that the delivery of them up should be his own act. To this proposal Lord Somers replied, that he could not make a voluntary surrender of his office, which might give his enemies occasion to charge him with being intimidated or guilty; but that if his majesty should be pleased to send a warrant, under his hand, demanding the seal, he would instantly resign it. Soon afterwards, the warrant being brought by Lord Jersey, Somers immediately delivered to that nobleman the seal which he had for seven years held with so much honour.*

The conduct of William, in thus dismissing one of the most faithful and attached of his ministers, at the instigation of his enemies, a victim to the violence of faction, ill became that high character for justice and

resolution which had raised him to the throne of England. Every honourable and well-judging person was disgusted with the coolness and want of heart with which the king consented to sacrifice a man, whose greatest offence was that he had been one of the principal instruments in accomplishing that happy settlement of the nation, which placed his ungrateful master on the throne. At the close of his life, William is said to have adverted to the dismissal of Somers as an act of which he most sincerely repented.* Such was the indecent haste with which he gratified the wishes of the Tories, that no one had been selected to fill the vacant office. The seals were offered both to Holt and Trevor, who declined them; and after having been a short time in commission, were placed in the hands of Sir Nathan Wright. For some time it was thought that Lord Somers would possibly be reinstated †; but the king had fallen into the hands of the Tories, who resisted, with all their influence, his return to office.

Having thus succeeded in removing Lord Somers from the king's councils, his enemies resolved to harass him with an impeachment. The principal ground of this impeachment was the part taken by him in the celebrated partition treaties, which had rendered him extremely obnoxious to the house of commons; and accordingly, on the 1st of April, 1701, he was impeached, together with the Earl of Portland and the Earl of Orford, of high crimes and misdemeanors. Not contented with this proceeding, on the 23rd of April, the commons presented an address to the king to remove those noblemen from his councils; but the lords, on the other hand, presented a counter-address, begging his majesty not to pass any censure on the accused, while the impeachment was pending against them. At length, on the 19th of May, the commons exhibited articles of impeachment against Lord Somers, which were grounded, 1. On his conduct with regard to the partition treaties; 2. On

Cunningham's Hist. vol. i. p. 252.

+ Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii. p. 436.

his improperly passing certain grants under the great seal to himself and others; 3. On the affair of Captain Kidd.

The history of the partition treaties is too well known to require repetition; but it may be proper to state with some particularity the part taken in that affair by Lord Somers. In 1698, while the king was in Holland, certain overtures were made to him by the French government, for a treaty, settling the succession to the throne of Spain in case of the death of Charles II., whose health was at that time in a very precarious state. The terms proposed were, that the electoral prince of Bavaria should have the kingdoms of Spain, the Indies, and the Low Countries; that the Dauphin should possess the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, with certain other territories; and that the Duchy of Milan should. be settled on the emperor's second son, the Archduke Charles. William was pleased to entertain these proposals, and on the 15th of August, 1698, addressed a letter to Lord Somers, desiring to have his opinion on the treaty, and commanding him to send full powers under the great seal, with the names in blank, for the appointment of commissioners to treat with Count Tallard, the agent of the king of France. By the king's permission the subject of his letter was communicated to Lord Orford, the Duke of Shrewsbury, and Mr. Montague; and on the 28th of August, Lord Somers transmitted to the king the result of their deliberations. † He remarked the ill-consequences with which the proposal would be attended should the French not be sincere; though at the same time, in case no treaty should be entered into, there was, he observed, considerable danger that the French, having so large a force in readiness, might take possession of Spain in case of Charles's death. He laid before the king the state of England, discontented with the amount of the taxes, and averse to a new war; and he remarked upon the unfavourable position in which the trade of England might be placed by

the transferring of Sicily to the French.

Pursuant to the royal commands, the requisite commissions, with the names of the commissioners in blank, were forwarded to the king. The treaty was prepared and signed without any further communication with Lord Somers, who, so far from affording any encouragement to it, had suggested doubts as to its policy.

The charge respecting the grants improperly passed by him appears to have been equally unfounded. He freely acknowledged that the king had been pleased to grant to him certain manors and rents; but he denied that such grants were procured by his own solicitation.

The article which charged Lord Somers with granting a commission, under the great seal, to Captain Kidd was founded on some singular circumstances which took place in the year 1695. The colonists of America had been greatly annoyed by the attacks of certain pirates, who infested those seas; and in consequence of their representations a commission was granted to Captain Kidd, the commander of a privateer, which had been fitted out for the expedition by subscription, to authorize the privateer to proceed and capture the pirates; and a grant was made, to the adventurers, of the prizes which they might take, reserving a portion to the crown. It unfortunately happened that Captain Kidd, finding himself in the command of a well-appointed vessel, conceived that it would be more profitable to become a pirate himself than to be the capturer of pirates; and accordingly commenced a career, which ended, a few years afterwards, in his execution for murder and piracy."

To all these articles Lord Somers, on the 24th of May, delivered in his answert, which, on the face of it, exhibited a full and satisfactory denial; and it remained for the commons to substantiate their impeachment by proofs. They insisted, however, upon the appointment of a committee of both houses to settle the preliminaries of the trial, a proposition to which the lords were unwilling to * State Trials, vol. xiv. p. 123. + Id. p. 263.

accede; and,after various conferences and much dispute, the lords fixed the 17th of June for the trial. On that day, the commons not appearing in support of their impeachment, Lord Somers was acquitted. Had the commons, instead of screening themselves by affected delays, proceeded to the proofs of the charges against Lord Somers, there is little doubt that the result must still have been an acquittal. The answer given by the accused was full and sufficient; and was supported, so far as they appear, by his proofs. It was soon after this impeachment that Swift, who had just visited London with an earnest desire to engage his pen in politics, published his "Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome, with the Consequences they had on both those States." In this pamphlet, which the author devoted to the interests of the Whigs, whose party he soon afterwards forsook, the character of Lord Somers is given under the name of Aristides. "Their next great man was Aristides. Besides the mighty service he had done his country in the wars, he was a person of the strictest justice, and best acquainted with the laws as well as forms of their government, so that he was in a manner chancellor of Athens. This man, upon a slight and false accusation of favouring arbitrary power, was banished by ostracism; which, rendered into modern English, would signify, that they voted he should be removed from their presence and council for ever. But, however, they had the wit to recall him; and to that action owed the preservation of their state by his future services." At a subsequent period of his life, when he had become an active partisan of the Tory administration, Swift composed a very different character of Lord Somers, which will be noticed hereafter.

The conduct of the king, in dismissing Lord Somers from his councils, did not inspire him with any of that morose indisposition to serve his country which persons of meaner minds might have displayed. At