OXFORD was present, as a Privy Councillor, at the proclamation of King GEORGE THE FIRST. [Sidenote: OXFORD’S RECEPTION BY GEORGE I.] It was noted by some of the bystanders that his demeanour was buoyant and joyous. When the King reached Greenwich, the Earl went thither with more than usual pomp and retinue. He was received with marked coldness, if not with open contempt. There is little need, in a sketch of this kind, to tell, at length, the story of an impeachment which was stretched over two years, and had no result save that of breaking down, by two years of imprisonment, the health of the defeated statesman. Few and brief words on that head will suffice. [Sidenote: HIS IMPEACHMENT. 1715–1717.] Out of twenty-two articles of impeachment, fourteen accuse the Earl of OXFORD of betrayal of duty, either in the conduct of the negotiations for Peace, or in instructions given for handling the British Army—pending those negotiations—in such a way as to injure the common cause of the Allies, by promoting the conclusion of a treaty ‘on terms fatal to the interests of the Kingdom.’ [Sidenote: 1715. June 24.] The fifteenth article charges him with inserting false statements in the Queen’s Speeches and Messages to Parliament; the sixteenth with improperly advising the Queen to make a creation of Peers. [Sidenote: _State Trials_, vol. xv, Coll. 1052, seqq.] Other articles allege misconduct in the management of an expedition to Canada; the appropriation of sums of ‘Secret Service Money’ to corrupt purposes; and treasonable intercourse with ‘Irish Papists.’ Whilst these charges were still in preparation the Venetian Resident in London wrote a despatch to his Senate in which we have an interesting glimpse, behind the curtain, at the process:—‘The Whigs,’ he says, ‘seek to annihilate the Tories utterly, and to place them under the yoke. They want to impeach even the Duke of SHREWSBURY.’... After enlarging on nascent dissensions amongst the Whigs themselves, as to the lengths to which they might safely carry their party resentments, he proceeds to assert that the more cautious men among them ‘have now, when it is well nigh too late, become aware that the Tory party, recently dominant, was a mixed party. [Sidenote: _Correspondence of Joseph Querini_; from extracts by T. D. Hardy, in _Report on Archives of Venice_, pp. 98, 99.] Some were in favour of the Pretender; some for the House of Hanover. Had His Majesty made this distinction on his accession to the Crown he would have excluded the former, but not the latter. By favouring the Whigs alone, he lost all the others at once.’ In brief, GEORGE THE FIRST had made himself exactly what OXFORD had warned him against becoming, the ‘King of a party.’