The Go-Between
THE world is very unreasonable,' wrote Lord Sunderland in 1693, 'but since we cannot make it as one would wish, let us make the best of it as it is.' He certainly tried. Charles ll's Secretary of State in 1677, Williamite Exclusionist in 1680, the instrument of despotism from 1682 to 1688, virtual leader of the Catholic Party under James II whilst still nominally a Protestant, converted to Catholicism when an heir was born to James, re- converted by the Revolution of 1688, the only man excluded from pardon by both James and William Ill : it was no mean feat after that to be- come William's most intimate English confidant.
Sunderland was a 'court artist.' He approached Charles •Il and William III through their mis- tresses, James through his wife : in all three cases the ladies seem to have been genuinely devoted to hiS interests, as his own wife never failed to be. But Sunderland also owed much to Louis XIV. His return to office in 1682 was assisted by a promise to the French Ambassador 'that he would display all his life an unqualified attachment to His Most Christian Majesty's interests.' When Charles died Sunderland urged Louis to influence James in his favour. He enjoyed a secret French,
pension of some £7,000 a year, and as soon as James's throne began to totter his chief minister
demanded from France a sum of money 'which'
would enable him to contemplate with less un- easiness the revolutions so frequent in England.: He made the best of the world as it was. Never-, theless, if William was prepared to buy him back after 1689, Sunderland must have had something valuable to sell. What was it? Dr. Kenyon's impressive book shows us : an unrivalled technical virtuosity, in foreign policy and parliamentarY management. 'He went farther than any of his col' leagues towards solving the problems of parlia- mentary government in the Nineties.' He was 'the first of the great "undertakers" or intermediaries between the Crown and faction.'
Dr. Kenyon's smooth and lively narrative car- ries us effortlessly through a jungle of detail, and his immense learning is tempered by a dry wit. He makes sympathetic sense of Sunderland's career without trying to whitewash him. He i5 often illuminating on matters tangential to his main theme. Sunderland's relations with his, wife were at times of political importance, and Dr. Kenyon sketches them with sympathy and charm. In its scholarship, its narrative skill and its urbanity, this is a model of what a political bio. graphy should be.
One moral which emerges is the ineffectiveness of mere technical skill in managing seventeenth' century Parliaments. Sunderland was a virtuoso in the arts by which England was governed in the mid-eighteenth century—electioneering, bribe* distributing 'places,' disciplining placemen. Yet even he failed to produce docile Parliaments so long as he served monarchs fighting against the main stream of political development. In 1680 Sunderland 'miscalculated the effect that even the most successful foreign policy was likely to have on the exclusionist Opposition.' In the absence of a police force it was almost impossible to execute Orders in Council against the will of the corporation men and the county gentry' (that Was 1687). Sunderland succeeded only when he had learnt that 'whenever the government has leaned to the Whigs it has been strong : whenever the other has prevailed it has been despised.' It was Sunderland who weaned William frorll the Tories. 'In supporting the Country Whigs Sunderland was looking ahead. They not onlY commanded a majority in this House of Comment! [1696], they and their class and type seemed like'/5 to dominate all future parliaments.' This supremacy of politics over technique is Warte pondering by historians who believe that there need have been no civil war or military dictator: I ship if only lames I and Cromwell had emploYee. more adroit parliamentary managers. So long II; the ruling class was politically divided, an
governments were in opposition to the strong,
trend, not even the arts of a Sunderland coe create a stable government.• Sixty years after Sunderland's death, %Ars Catherine Macaulay believed that it is becnnl, an accepted maxim that corruption is a necessary engine of government,' and that this dated. fr°1 the reign of William III. Dr. Kenyon shows thsr, Sunderland, more than any other individual, PeA fected the mechanics of 'managing' elections and parliaments, tamed the 'Court Whigs,' induce King and Tories to work with them, and so e_ 5 sured that 1688 marked no decisive break. ,.1 was undoubtedly his greatest achievement. Pe Kenyon wisely limits himself to describing t...1 process : unlike Mrs. Macaulay, he leaves Mn" verdicts to his readers.
Ili' CHRISTOPHER -1
Previous page
