her accession, but though she may have chafed under the yoke of her favourite, she could not at once shake off the domination of that imperious will.  The Duchess, finding the extreme Tories unfavourable to the war in which her husband’s honour and interests were deeply engaged, became a hot partisan against them, and used all their blunders to break down their power at Court.  Day by day she impressed upon the Queen the necessity of peace and union at home in the face of the troubles abroad.  The moderate men of both parties must be rallied round the throne.  Extremes on both sides must be discouraged.  Spies were set to work to take note of such rash expressions among “the hot and angry men” as would be likely to damage them in the Queen’s favour.  Queen Anne had not a little of the quiet tenacity and spitefulness of enfeebled constitutions, but in the end reason prevailed, resentment at importunity was overcome, and the hold of the High-Churchmen on her affections gave way.

Nobody, Swift has told us, could better disguise her feelings than the Queen.  The first intimation which the High-Church party had of her change of views was her opening speech to Parliament on the 9th November, 1703, in which she earnestly desired parties in both Houses to avoid heats and divisions.  Defoe at once threw himself in front of the rising tide.  Whether he divined for himself that the influence of the Earl of Nottingham, the Secretary of State, to whom he owed his prosecution and imprisonment, was waning, or obtained a hint to that effect from his Whig friends, we do not know, but he lost no time in issuing from his prison a bold attack upon the High-Churchmen.  In his Challenge, of Peace, addressed to the whole Nation, he denounced them as Church Vultures and Ecclesiastical Harpies.  It was they and not the Dissenters that were the prime movers of strife and dissension.  How are peace and union to be obtained, he asks.  He will show people first how peace and union cannot be obtained.

“First, Sacheverell’s Bloody Flag of Defiance is not the way to Peace and Union. The shortest way to destroy is not the shortest way to unite.  Persecution, Laws to Compel, Restrain or force the Conscience of one another, is not the way to this Union, which her Majesty has so earnestly recommended.”

“Secondly, to repeal or contract the late Act of Toleration is not the way for this so much wished-for happiness; to have laws revived that should set one party a plundering, excommunicating and unchurching another, that should renew the oppressions and devastations of late reigns, this will not by any means contribute to this Peace, which all good men desire.”

“New Associations and proposals to divest men of their freehold right for differences in opinion, and take away the right of Dissenters voting in elections of Members; this is not the way to Peace and Union.”

“Railing pamphlets, buffooning our brethren as a party to be suppressed, and dressing them up in the Bear’s skin for all the dogs in the street to bait them, is not the way to Peace and Union.”