Robert Harley
Robert Harley was a Country Whig and later Tory politician, member of the Parliament in Great Britain.
Contents
History
Harley emerged as a prominent Whig opposed to the Whig Junto (i.e., Somers, Montagu, Wharton, and Russell) that dominated the Parliament. These Whigs allied with the disorganized Tories to establish a 'country party', as opposed to the 'court party' in power. They became known as the Country Whigs.
As leader of this influential group, Harley negotiated the Act of Settlement with William III to guarantee the Hanoverian succession. He was appointed to the speakership and tasked with pushing the bill through the Parliament.
Harley rapidly lost the confidence of Anne in 1708 and was dismissed from government. He then defected to the Tory Party entirely.
In 1710, the preacher Henry Sacheverell delivered sermons describing Presbyterians as a threat to national security. The House of Commons impeached him, and the House of Lords tried him, on charges of sedition. His conviction sparked the Sacheverell riots and turned public opinion against the Whigs. Following this, and amid mounting opposition to English involvement in the War of Spanish Succession, the Tories won a majority in the general election.
Policies
As leader of the new government, Harley enacted a strategy to force a peace treaty and end the War of Spanish Succession. Churchill was relieved of his command, and English forces were directed to cease combat. Bilateral diplomacy with Louis XIV was opened.
He established the South Seas Company to help right the government's finances. The company had been granted a monopoly on slave trade in the southern Pacific and Atlantic, which attracted interest from private finance. The government sold shares in the company to buy back public debt, effectively consolidating the national debt into a chartered company. This was wildly successful at the time.
He was created the earl of Oxford and earl Mortimer in 1711 by Anne, as a part of her strategy for pushing the Treaty of Utrecht through the Parliament by raising new Tory peerages.
He once again rapidly lost the confidence of Anne in 1714 and was dismissed from government. She died within days, leaving George I to inherit.
Legacy
Shortly after leaving government, with a new king and a new Whig government, Harley was impeached for treason in relation to the Treaty of Utrecht. He was held in the Tower of London for two years, during which: a Jacobite Rebellion erupted, captured the attention of the crown, and was suppressed. Finally he was acquitted and released.
Thereafter he retired from the Parliament, and died in 1724.