party. And yet I cannot find the least inconsistence with conscience or
honour, upon the death of so excellent a princess as her late Majesty,
for a wise and good man to submit, with a true and loyal heart, to her
lawful Protestant successor; whose hereditary title was confirmed by the
Queen and both Houses of Parliament, with the greatest unanimity, after
it had been made an article in the treaty, that every prince in our
alliance should be a guarantee of that succession. Nay, I will venture
to go one step farther; that, if the negotiators of that peace had been
chosen out of the most professed zealots for the interests of the
Hanover family, they could not have bound up the French king, or the
Hollanders, more strictly than the Queen's plenipotentiaries did, in
confirming the present succession; which was in them so much a greater
mark of virtue and loyalty, because they perfectly well knew, that they
should never receive the least mark of favour, when the succession had
taken place.




THE HISTORY OF THE FOUR LAST
YEARS OF THE QUEEN.

BOOK I.


I propose give the public an account of the most important affairs at
home, during the last session of Parliament, as well as of our
negotiations of peace abroad, not only during that period, but some time
before and since. I shall relate the chief matters transacted by both
Houses in that session, and discover the designs carried on by the heads