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Presidential Address: The Treaty of Seville (1729)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Richard Lodge
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Extract

The first impulse to make a special study of the Treaty of Seville came from my interest in the career of that eminent diplomatist, Benjamin Keene, on whom I discoursed at some length last February. But at that time my attention was concentrated upon Keene's second mission to Spain from 1749 to 1757, and I only gave a very superficial glance at his earlier mission from 1727 to 1739. In reference to this I stated that he played an active part in bringing about the Treaty of Seville, that he was deposed at the last minute from being the sole English signatory of the treaty by the return of William Stanhope, and that he felt some chagrin because all the credit and reward for making that treaty went to his senior colleague, whereas he himself received no recognition of his services. There was no doubt about his discontent, because I found frank expression of it in his letters, but I was curious to ascertain how far this discontent was justified. The study of this minor problem led me on to consider the importance of the treaty in the history of Europe. I came to the conclusion that it was a notable landmark in the rather tangled diplomacy of the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. The tangle arose from the temporary dislocation of interstate relations in Europe from normal into abnormal grooves, and a prominent cause of that dislocation was that national interests were largely superseded or overshadowed by dynastic claims and uncertainties.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 16 , December 1933 , pp. 1 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1933

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References

page 7 note 1 I have described this in an article on “The Treaty of Åbo and the Swedish Succession” in The English Historical Review, vol. xliii (October, 1928).

page 8 note 1 On this subject see Geyl, P., Willem IV en Engeland tot 1748 (The Hague, 1924).Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 Keene had done something to earn the confidence of the British Ministers when Stanhope sent him to London in 1726 to give a verbatim report of Ripperda's disclosures, which the Ambassador thought too important to be committed to paper.

page 23 note 1 Waldegrave, who was temporarily in charge of the Paris embassy during Horatio Walpole's absence, wrote to Newcastle on 31 January, 1728, that Chauvelin had declared “that it was for the sake of England that France had been wrangling these seven months: that insisting upon justice being done to its allies had cost the nation 7 or 8 millions of piastres. … I never saw him so hot in my life.” Add. MSS. 32754, f. 142.

page 24 note 1 When Newcastle on 13 January (o.s.) told Horatio Walpole to come home for the meeting of Parliament and to leave further negotiations to Waldegrave, he sent him certain orders for the Admiral and Governor at Gibraltar, and added: “H.M. thinks that, considering the indiscreet behaviour of Mr. Keene, it is by no means safe to trust him with the original orders until everything is friendly adjusted with Spain.” Add. MSS. 32754, f. 16.

page 24 note 2 Waldegrave wrote to Newcastle (very private) on 21 February, 1728, that he was convinced that Chauvelin was no friend to England, and that even Fleury, whom he had thought to gratify by telling him that Keene's powers had arrived, “told me with a good deal of coldness that they ought to have been here this fortnight; he did not like the limitation of the power; he said that we were for governing the whole world, that we were d'une hauteur insupportable, that all the foreign ministers at this Court were scandalized at our dilatory proceedings, that we put ourselves in the wrong by our ways, that an Englishman was now as odious to the people of Spain as he had been to the Queen of Spain.” Waldegrave attributed this outburst of candour to the influence of Chauvelin. Ibid., f. 276.

page 24 note 3 For the terms of the Convention, see Baudrillart, Philippe V et la Cour de France, III, p. 403. It was signed by Königsegg, Rottembourg, Van der Meer, Keene, and the Marquis de la Paz.

page 26 note 1 The Dutch share in the negotiations which preceded the Treaty of Seville has been ably and carefully analysed by Goslinga, A., in Slingelandt's Efforts towards European Peace (The Hague, 1915).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 26 note 2 Elizabeth Farnese was in the habit of taunting the French ministers by declaring that Walpole was the real Foreign Secretary in France.

page 28 note 1 Keene to Newcastle, 25 January, 1729 (from Badajoz), in B.M. Add. MSS. 32760, f. 40; and Newcastle's reply on 24 January (o.s.), Ibid., f. 64. Keene must have been in great pecuniary difficulties, as on 9 October, 1728, he had begged Delafaye to intercede for him with New-castle and Walpole, as “I am drove to my last shifts, and a little time will complete my ruin” (S.P., Spain, 99).

page 29 note 1 On more than one occasion Keene deliberately kept his actions secret from Van der Meer. See especially his dispatch to Newcastle of 3 May, 1729 (Ibid., f. 378). There was good reason for this because there was considerable divergence between English and Dutch views on commercial questions.

page 31 note 1 Professor Basil Williams in his Stanhope has given a very full and luminous account of that statesman's successful diplomacy.

page 33 note 1 Newcastle to H. Walpole, 26 March (o.s.), 1728. Keene may assure the Queen of the King's desire for renewed friendship with Spain. “He may add, as from himself, that he is persuaded that the prejudice that she may have entertained against the two crowns, as being averse to the aggrandizement of her Family, is so far from being well founded that, whatever views she may have of that kind, even that of a match for her son with an Archduchess, provided the same may be so regulated as that the Balance of Europe may be preserved, they will be so far from opposing it that they will readily concur in it.” B.M. Add. MSS. 32755, f. 123 (printed by Legg in Dip. Instructions, vi, p. 20).

page 34 note 1 Quoted from Brancas' despatch to Chauvelin by Baudrillart, Philippe V et la Cour de France, III, p. 444. See also Keene to H. Walpole, 6 September, 1728, in B.M. Add. MSS. 32758, f. 69.

page 36 note 1 On 12 May, 1729, Keene wrote to Newcastle from Seville (in cypher) that “the Queen's great view is the securing Don Carlos's succession, and next to that to have her revenge upon the Emperor for having so long amused her” (S.P., Spain, 100).

page 37 note 1 Newcastle to Stanhope and H. Walpole, 28 September, 1728: “As to the articles for securing the succession of Don Carlos to the states of Parma and Tuscany, it is perfectly indifferent to the King whether the garrisons proposed for that purpose be Swiss or Spanish” (B.M. Add. MSS. 32758, f. 331).

page 39 note 1 Keene to the plenipotentiaries in Paris (very secret), October, 1729 in B.M. Add. MSS. 32764, f. 63.

page 39 note 2 Stanhope replied to Newcastle's pressing letters, that it might “expose me to the loss of my reputation in case I could (as is most likely) do nothing, and to that of my head in case I concluded any treaty, tho' with never so honest intentions” (Ibid., 32762, f. 262. The letter is printed in Coxe, Sir Robert Walpole, II, p. 650). On 7 September he intimated acceptance of the mission, and added that it was “the greatest sacrifice I ever did or can make in all my life” (Add. MSS. 32762, f. 319). On 29 August (o.s.) Newcastle excused the urgency of his appeal on the ground that “Keene is very good but by no means equal to this thing,” and in a second letter of the same date he adds that the draft treaty “will come from you with greater weight than it possibly can from Mr. Keene, who, tho’ he has acted all along perfectly well, yet labours under the disadvantage of being much inferior in rank to the ministers with whom he is to transact” (Ibid., ff. 386 and 389).

page 40 note 1 Stanhope and Keene to Newcastle, 10 November, 1729: “The King of Spain would look upon himself as dishonoured in the world, should he be said to have signed a Treaty in the very terms in which it had been offered to him” (B.M. Add. MSS. 32764, f. 3).

page 40 note 2 When it was thought that an objection might be made to Keene on the score of inferior rank H. Walpole had written to him; “I should be very sorry if, from a pure nicety of form, you should have been deprived of the satisfaction and honour of putting the last hand to a negotiation in which you have had no little share and trouble” (Ibid., 32763, f. 385). The letter of congratulation from Walpole and Poyntz is Ibid., 32764, f. 202.

page 41 note 1 However, H. Walpole and Poyntz wrote on 24 November, “We are persuaded this important affair would still have suffered several difificultys and delays, had not Mr. Stanhope undertaken that tedious and fatiguing journey” (B.M. Add. MSS. 32764, f. 124).

page 41 note 2 See “English Neutrality in the War of the Polish Succession” in Transactions, Fourth Series, Vol. XIV.