During the early 18th century, Great Britain was undergoing a government shift into a two party system. The leading conservative political grouping, the Tories, was the primary political party, but at the turn of the 18th century the Whigs, a liberal faction, had begun to rise in influence.[1] As the parties struggled for power in Parliament, tensions rose. When the Whig Party continued to grow in power and influence, gaining more representation in Parliament and recognition in the general public, the Tories found themselves challenged over their policies and opinions.[1] The arguments of government went beyond the House of Parliament. Public speeches, debates, and other forms of popular influence arose, creating a new style of politics. This was the environment that Princess Anne found herself when she became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702.[2] Her brother-in-law, William III of England and II of Scotland, who had preceded her, had been in support of the growing two party system, and in respect, Anne "endured" the Whigs despite her personal preference for the Tory party.[3] The tensions between the parties had escalated to the point where party members became paranoid of conspiracies and conducted plots against one another. The Whigs conspired assassination plots against important Tory figures as an attempt to make way for their policies and political agendas.
The first accused conspiracy was that of the Screw Plot. This plot was assumed to be an assassination attempt on the life of Queen Anne in 1708.[4] According to Tory belief, the Whigs planned to kill the Queen, and close advisers, by designing a chandelier to fall upon them.[4] Although the accusations have been today determined as faulty,[5] the Tories seeded doubt in the public eye. In 1710, the Whigs attempted to assassinate Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, in what has been labelled as the Bandbox Plot.
Two-party conflict
At the turn of the 18th century, the Whig influence in Parliament was rising. The Whigs and Tories’ major disagreements were in regards to who should run the country.[1] The conservative, Tory, party supported the influence of the monarchy of the inner-goings of government, while the Whigs insisted that Parliament take on a greater role.[1] By giving Parliament more power, the Whigs believed that the general population of the country would be able to control more of what actions the government takes. The Whigs also disagreed with the Tories of the influence of the church on government.[1] During the turn of the 18th century, the church had a close tie with the monarchy, and thus had influence on decisions made by the government.[1] This era was at the dawn of The Enlightenment, a time of political and social reformation.[6] The Whigs supported many of the ideas about basic rights of the public. During the turn of the century, the church had a close tie with the monarchy,[2] and thus had influence on decisions made by the government. These growing issues were debated on frequently in Parliament, tensions rose, and political battles were then taken to the public eye.
Screw Plot
The Screw Plot was an alleged assassination attempt on Queen Anne of England in 1708.[7] In St. Paul's Cathedral, loose screws were discovered in the building's supporting beams above the seating area for the Queen,[7] and it was suggested that these were intended to allow the beams to fall on the Queen and other government figures during her thanksgiving for the victory of Oudenarde.[8] The Tories leaked to the press that the Whigs were to blame.[8] Although later proved to be simply the result of poor construction work,[8] tensions between the parties grew even greater.
Public opinion
When the newspaper reported that the Whigs had attempted to take the life of Queen Anne, the public was shocked. Despite the tensions between the parties, a conspiracy like this hadn't happened since the rule of James II. The Tories continued to personally attack the Whigs using cases similar to that of the Screw Plot to illustrate a sense of immorality among the party. Jonathan Swift, a famous author of the time, wrote many politically influenced poems and stories. His satires discussed many issues of the day, not only the Screw Plot. The Ballad Plot upon Plot focused on the many "pathetic" attempts of the Whigs to take down the Tory party.[4]
"Some of your Machiavelian crew From heavy roof of Paul Most traitorously stole every screw, To make that fabric fall; And so to catch Her Majesty, And all her friends beguile." (Plot Upon Plot, Jonathan Swift)
By the nineteenth century, the Screw Plot was regarded as a hoax, simply an inefficient building project blown out of proportion by on-edge Tory Party members.[8] Many recognized figures, such as Sir Walter Scott merely dismiss in-depth discussion in their works focusing on the time during Anne's reign. In Scott's collection of works by Jonathan Swift, he briefly mentions the plot in a footnote to explain the context of which Swift was writing a letter to Stella. Simpson Sparrow wrote an article about both the Screw Plot and the Bandbox Plot in 1892. He called the Screw Plot, "one of the greatest fables" of the Queen's reign.[8] He mentions to his readers that in fact that St Paul's Cathedral was still undergoing construction when the plot was "unveiled" thus making the reality of a conspiracy unlikely.[8]
This failed assassination took place in 1712, targeted at the British Lord Treasurer, Robert Harley.[9] A hat box containing three pistols tied to the lid so that when opened they would fire, was sent to Harley.[9] Jonathan Swift was with him and saw the attached string, so the men cut the string then opened the box to find the loaded pistols inside.[9]
Notes and references
1 2 3 4 5 6 Rogers, Nicholas. "Party Politics During the Whig Ascendancy" Canadian Journal of History; Aug 1983, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p 253
↑ Scott, Sir Walter and Jonathan Swift. The Works of Jonathan Swift, DD: Additional Letters, Tracts, and Poems. Edinburgh. Vol iii. Page 124. Oxford University: 1814.
↑ Bannet, Eve Tavor. "Secret History" Huntington Library Quarterly Vol 68 (2005) p 375-396
1 2 Brewer, E. Cobham. "The Screw Plot"Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1898; Bartleby.com, 2000.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Simpson, W. Sparrow. "The Screw Plot." Notes and Queries. (No 41) 8 October 1892
1 2 3 Brewer, E. Cobham. "The Bandbox Plot"Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1898; Bartleby.com, 2000.
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Conservative Party in 1912.
Anne was Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland from 8 March 1702 until 1 May 1707. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, the kingdoms of England and Scotland united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. Anne continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death in 1714.
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford,, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology. He supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for the Pretender. He was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman (1726–1735) by adopting the formerly Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle."
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS was an English statesman and peer of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a prime minister, although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed exclusion in the belief inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
The Exclusion Crisis ran from 1679 until 1681 in the reign of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. Three Exclusion Bills sought to exclude the King's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Catholic. None became law. Two new parties formed. The Tories were opposed to this exclusion while the "Country Party", who were soon to be called the Whigs, supported it. While the matter of James's exclusion was not decided in Parliament during Charles's reign, it would come to a head only three years after James took the throne, when he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Finally, the Act of Settlement 1701 decided definitively that Catholics were to be excluded from the English, Scottish and Irish thrones, now the British throne.
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The Patriot Whigs, later the Patriot Party, were a group within the Whig Party in Great Britain from 1725 to 1803. The group was formed in opposition to the government of Robert Walpole in the House of Commons in 1725, when William Pulteney and seventeen other Whigs joined with the Tory Party in attacks against the ministry. By the mid-1730s, there were over one hundred opposition Whigs in the Commons, many of whom embraced the Patriot label. For many years, they provided a more effective opposition to the Walpole administration than the Tories were.
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