The Church of England had for some time been urging the Pretender to return to her bosom, and had even flattered herself that she would succeed in the illustrious conquest. The illusions and imprudence of the Jacobites were increasing: they began to speak openly of a restoration. The majority in Parliament, as well as in the country, remained firmly attached, nevertheless, to the Protestant succession. The nation was anxious and disturbed. On the 12th of April, 1714, the Hanoverian minister, Baron Schutz, who had come to an understanding with the chief of the Whigs, called upon the Chancellor, Sir Simon, afterwards Lord Harcourt, and demanded of him, in the name of the Elcctress Sophia, the summons for her son, the elector, to the House of Lords, in his quality as Duke of Cambridge. { 131} The queen, being at once consulted, peremptorily and angrily refused. Schutz was obliged to leave London. Anne wrote personally to the electress absolutely forbidding the prince, her son, to set foot on English soil. Some days later, on the 28th of May, 1714, the prince became the heir presumptive to the crown of England by the death of his mother. "I would die happy if there could be written upon my coffin: Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," said the electress.
Upon the advice of the House of Lords, alarmed at the ardor of the Jacobites, the queen consented to issue a proclamation offering a reward of £5,000 to any one who would arrest the Pretender if he should set foot upon the soil of England. The peers were preparing to vote an address of thanks, when Bolingbroke entered the house; he was taken unawares. "The best measure of defence for the Protestant succession," said he, "would be to arraign for high treason all who are enrolled in the service of the Pretender." They took him at his word, and the house placed him at the head of the committee appointed to draw up the bill. "Neither the proclamation nor the bill will do us any harm," said Bolingbroke to the French envoy, D'Iberville. He had undertaken, with the Duke of Ormond, to reorganize the army in the interests of Marlborough, with the ultimate view of delivering it into the hands of the Jacobites. By one of those deliberate calculations, which often resemble a ruse, the Lord Treasurer did not furnish the necessary funds in time. Oxford had lost the confidence of the queen; he had quarrelled with Lady Masham. "You have never rendered her Majesty a service, and you are not now in a position to render her one," angrily said the favorite. Oxford did not reply; he clung tenaciously to the remnants of his power. "The least indisposition of the queen causes us great alarm," wrote Swift; "when she recovers, we act as if she was immortal."