of punishment. George the First,
however, chose to ascribe the impeachment to the malice and the
influence of the Prince of Wales, and when Macclesfield had paid the
fine by the mortgage of an estate, the King undertook to repay the
money to him. George actually did pay to Macclesfield one instalment
of a thousand pounds, but fate interposed and prevented any further
payment. Macclesfield retired from the world, and spent his remaining
years in the study of science and in religious meditation. He died in
1732. His was a strange story. He had many of the noblest qualities;
he had had, on the whole, a great career. It is not easy, if we may
borrow the words which Burke applied to a more picturesque and
interesting sufferer, "to contemplate without emotion that elevation
and that fall."

During all this time of comparative quietude we are not to suppose that
there were no threatenings of foreign disturbance. The adherents of
the Stuarts were never at rest; the controversies which grew out of the
Treaty of Utrecht were always sputtering and menacing. Cardinal {264}
Fleury, a statesman devoted to peace and economy, had become
Prime-minister of France. Other new figures were arising on the field
of Continental politics. Alberoni, in exile and disgrace, had been
succeeded by a burlesque imitation of him, the Duke of Ripperda, a
Dutch adventurer who turned diplomatist, and had risen into influence
through Alberoni's favor. In 1725 Ripperda negotiated a secret treaty
between the Emperor, Charles the Sixth, and the King of Spain, and was
rewarded with the title of duke. He became Prime-minister of Spain for
a short time, to be presently disgraced and thrown into prison, quite
after the fashion of a royal favorite in the pages of "Gil Blas." He
was a fantastic, arrogant, feather-headed creature, an Alberoni of the
_opera bouffe_. He betook himself at last to the service of the
Sovereign of Morocco. England had a sort of Ripperda of her own in the
person of the wild Duke of Wharton, the man whose eloquent and
ferocious invective had contributed to the sudden death of Lord
Stanhope, and who had since that time devoted himself to the service of
James Stuart on the Continent, and actually fought as a volunteer in
the ranks of the Spanish army at the abortive siege of Gibraltar. It
is to the credit of the sincerer and better supporters of the Stuart
cause that they would not even still consent to regard it as wholly
l