were the least homogeneous of the parties, for they were an alliance of nonconformist churchmen at one end of the spectrum, and grandees at the other, their most notable figures known as the ‘Lords of the Junto’ in the first decade of the eighteenth century.* The more astute Whig leaders, like Lord Wharton, recognised that if they were to succeed it would be by a political organisation which their rivals lacked. On the other hand the Tories applauded the restoration of a monarch sanctified by God, and although most of them expected him to obey the law, they believed that there were times when he could use his royal prerogative to override it. Some High Tories went further, arguing that he held his throne by divine right and was accountable only to God, and not to man.
Supporters of the established Church, with its bishops and prayer book, tended to the Tory view. Presbyterians and the descendants of the Civil War puritans hoped to see the Church of England reformed before they could work within it. They agreed with the Anglicans in their dislike of separatist sects, but they were generally whiggish in sympathy. Both parties found their views easily misrepresented by opponents, and the pamphleteering of the age, unshackled by the removal of censorship in 1695, left no stone unhurled when it came to blackguarding opponents: the Tories were Popish and autocratic, seeking to turn England into Louis XIV’s France, while the Whigs were nonconformist republicans who would bring back the dark days of the interregnum.
In addition to declared Whigs and Tories, there were always some ‘Queen’s Servants’, who were inclined to support the government of the day. These were often numerous enough to swing the balance of the Commons, and Marlborough and Godolphin could scarcely have survived without the support of these gentlemen, most of whom were moderate Tories by persuasion. Service officers were often MPs: over the period 1660–1715 the Commons never had fewer than between 12 and 18 per cent of its members in the army or the navy. James II’s tendency to reward the political opposition of officers by removing their commissions meant that, in his reign and immediately after it, most officer MPs tended to be Tories. By 1702, though, most of them, like generals William Cadogan, George Macartney and Francis Palmes, were Whigs. John Webb, the victor of Wynendaele, was a Tory, and his fellow Tories made much of the fact that he had allegedly received scant recognition for his victory. In his private correspondence Marlborough professed disdain for party politics so often that one believes him. Given a choice, he would probably have been a moderate Tory, while Sarah, never one for half-measures, saw all Tories as closet Jacobites, and lost no opportunity to tell Queen Anne of the danger they posed. Whatever else united John and Sarah, it was certainly not politics.
There is no simple political map of the England of Marlborough’s day. Country squires like Sir Roger de Coverly were proverbially Tory, and the Spectator’s engaging sketches of the good-natured baronet show a man who behaved, in his own little kingdom, much as a benevolent monarch might act on a bigger stage. The parish clergy, whose comfortable liaison with the squirearchy produced the squarson, that hybrid of squire and parson who was more comfortable on his hunter than in his pulpit, were usually Tory, though Low Church bishops often tilted the political balance in the Lords in favour of the Whigs.
The City of London, so important to Parliament’s success during the Civil War, was firmly Whig. What Trevelyan called ‘the middling classes of society … rich merchants, small shopkeepers, freehold yeomen, artisans and craftsmen’ were whiggish, as were those, like younger sons and merchants trading overseas, who found ‘antique custom and privilege’ more hindrance than help.74 There were great noble houses on both sides, sometimes as much because of traditional rivalries and an eye for the main chance as because of genuine political conviction, and in terms of ‘wantonness, unbelief and faction’ there was little to choose between the High Tory Henry St John, champion of the bishops, and the Whig Lord Wharton, mainstay of the dissenters.75 Indeed, our earnest Victorian believed that it was all about interest: ‘The leading men of all parties aimed chiefly at getting into high places.’ Nor should we discount the way that the terms ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ became tribal markings, with the smoky little loyalties of club, coffee house and hunting field holding men together, like a covey of partridges in the same patch of stubble.
There was political movement too. During the last four years of his reign, in the early 1680s, Charles II managed to appeal to opinion in the wider political nation ‘out of doors’, reaching out past the Whigs in Parliament to find a solid majority of royalists in the country at large, encouraging meetings and addresses which undercut the Whigs’ claim to be speaking for the people. In contrast, Whig grandees like Wharton recognised that their own party, an essentially disparate alliance, could only hope to win if it emphasised its agreement on the key issues of the day: religious toleration for all Protestants; war with France; union with Scotland; and the Hanoverian succession. Although the Tories constituted a ‘solid phalanx’ based on the Church and landed interest, they were divided on all these issues.
The fact that the war was financed largely by a land tax of four shillings in the pound meant that however much Sir Roger and his cronies revelled in the spectacle of the French, widely regarded as England’s natural enemies, getting a good drubbing, they became increasingly concerned that their own broad acres were paying for it. It was easy enough to put this out of their minds ‘while Marlborough and Galway beat/The French and Spaniards every day’. But as the Allies’ early successes were followed by disaster in Spain and apparent stalemate in the Low Countries, so the Tories became increasingly sure that the war was neither in the nation’s interest, nor – perhaps more to the point – in their own.
Ruling the country actually involved a good deal more than securing a majority in Parliament, for what Tim Harris calls the ‘social history of politics’ reveals that, in order to make its writ run, any government needed to control
peers, gentry and merchants at the top level who served as Lord Lieutenants [of counties], deputy Lieutenants, grand jurors, JPs, mayors and common councilmen, down to the men of lesser social standing who served as petty jurors, militiamen, tax assessors, churchwardens, overseers, vestrymen, constables and other parish and ward officers.76
In this context Sir Roger’s neighbour, hacking into the county town with his spaniel at his side, was scarcely less important than the baronet himself. He was
a Yeoman of about an hundred Pounds a year, an honest man: He is just within the Game-Act, and qualified to kill an Hare or a Pheasant … He would be a good neighbour if he did not destroy so many partridges: in short, he is a very sensible man; shoots flying; and has been several Times Foreman of the Petty-Jury.77
Successive governments used their interest to try to ensure a favourable balance of power locally, in particular by removing those justices of the peace – in default of a paid bureaucracy the keystones of local administration – who were known to oppose their policy. This straightforward spoils system found supporters at both political extremes, but the majority, like Queen Anne herself, correctly feared that it caused local instability and increased political rancour. It is always as well to remember that while Marlborough’s England could be threatened, cajoled and bribed, it could not be coerced, and that solid and unremarkable truth, however elusive it might have seemed in Whitehall, underlies the febrile politics of the period.
* The George referred to here was the Riband Badge of the Order of the Garter, with a central depiction of St George killing the dragon, usually cut in cameo in hard stone, encircled by large rose-cut brilliants, usually diamonds. Sardonyx is a form of onyx in which white alternates with cornelian.
* They included Somers, Montagu (Halifax), Wharton and Russell
