On 20 November he spoke at a meeting of the British-German Association, concluding his series of three addresses on the crisis in British politics created by the accession of George, Elector of Hanover to the throne as King George I in 1714.
The Tory Party, which at the start of 1714 had a majority of 200 in the House of Commons, disintegrated as the Hanoverian succession drew closer. The bitter struggle between its warring leaders within the government, Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, moved to a final stage at the end of July 1714 just before the Crown passed to the House of Hanover. Bolingbroke emerged the victor, but was denied appointment as head of a new Tory government.
Division within the leadership was mirrored by division within the parliamentary party. The House of Hanover was rejected by some 100 Tory MPs who pledged loyalty to the Jacobite cause, giving support to the Catholic Old Pretender. He had incontestably the strongest hereditary claim to the throne, but was unacceptable to a large section of the Tory Party which attached overwhelming importance to the maintenance of the Protestant faith as expounded by the Church of England, an integral part of the country’s constitutional settlement.
There was a further deep divide in politics—between the Tory Party as a whole and their implacable Whig opponents. The latter possessed a decisive advantage: they were wholly united in support of the House of Hanover and seized every opportunity to publicise the existence of substantial support for the Old Pretender within the ranks of the Tories.
George I, a much more astute and accomplished man than many history books have suggested, wanted to combine Whigs and Tories loyal to him in government. The plan failed through no fault of the new monarch’s, but as a result of Whig determination to monopolise place and power. A general election in early 1715 produced a Whig majority of 124.Their opponents were ruthlessly purged from office at national and local level—a process referred to at the time as ‘the proscription of the Tories’. Their downfall was completed by the Jacobite rebellion in the autumn of 1715. Only a small number of Tories were implicated, but a barrage of Whig propaganda successfully insinuated widespread Tory treason.
This is therefore not only the tercentenary of an event that brought the country a new royal dynasty, but of one that also reshaped British politics. There was to be no Tory government in Britain again until the end of the Napoleonic wars.
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Summaries of Alistair Lexden’s earlier addresses can be found elsewhere on his website. He published an article, ‘ The Hanoverian Succession and the Downfall of the Tory Party’, in the autumn 2014 edition of the Conservative History Journal which deals more fully with these events ; it can be found in the articles & reviews section of the website.