merely nominal, and it was only in consequence of fortuitous circumstances that certain of the heads of the Empire were able to exercise a real authority in these parts. Frederick I., by his marriage with Beatrix (1156), had become uncontested master of the countship of Burgundy; Frederick II., who was more powerful in Italy than his predecessors had been, and was extending his activities into the countries of the Levant, found Provence more accessible to his influence, thanks to the commercial relations existing between the great cities of this country and Italy and the East. Moreover, the heretics and enemies of the church, who were numerous in the south, upheld the emperor in his struggle against the pope. Henry VII. also, thanks to his good relations with the princes of Savoy, succeeded in exercising a certain influence over a part of the kingdom of Arles. The emperors further tried to make their power more effective by delegating it, first to a viceroy, William of Baux, prince of Orange (1215), then to an imperial vicar, William of Montferrat (1220), who was succeeded by Henry of Revello and William of Manupello. In spite of this, the history of the kingdom of Arles in the 13th century, and still more in the 14th, is distinguished particularly by the decline of the imperial authority and the progress of French influence in the country. In 1246 the marriage of Charles, the brother of Saint Louis, with Beatrice, the heiress to the countship of Provence, caused Provence to pass into the hands of the house of Anjou, and many plans were made to win the whole of the kingdom for a prince of this house. At the beginning of the 14th century the bishops of Lyons and Viviers recognized the suzerainty of the king of France, and in 1343 Humbert II., dauphin of Viennois, made a compact with the French king Philip VI. that on his death his inheritance should pass to a son or a grandson of the French king. Humbert, who was perhaps the most powerful noble in Arles, was induced to take this step as he had just lost his only son, and Philip had already cast covetous eyes on his lands. Then in 1349, being in want of money, he agreed to sell his possessions outright, and thus Viennois, or Dauphiné, passed into the hands of Philip’s grandson, afterwards King Charles V. The emperor Charles IV. took an active part in the affairs of the kingdom, but without any consistent policy, and in 1378 he, in turn, ceded the imperial vicariate of the kingdom to the dauphin, afterwards King Charles VI. This date may be taken as marking the end of the history of the kingdom of Arles, considered as an independent territorial area.
See the monumental work of P. Fournier, Le Royaume d’Arles et de Vienne (Paris, 1890); Leroux, Recherches critiques sur les relations politiques de la France avec l’Allemagne de 1292 à 1378 (Paris, 1882). For the early history of the kingdom, L. Jacob, Le Royaume de Bourgogne sous les empereurs franconiens (1038–1129), (Paris, 1906). The question of the nature and extent of the rights of the Empire over the kingdom of Arles has given rise, ever since the 16th century, to numerous juridical polemics; the chief dissertations published on this subject are indicated in A. Leroux, Bibliographie des conflits entre la France et l’Empire (Paris, 1902). (R. Po.)
ARLINGTON, HENRY BENNET, Earl of (1618–1685), English statesman, son of Sir John Bennet of Dawley, Middlesex, and of Dorothy Crofts, was baptized at Little Saxham, Suffolk, in 1618, and was educated at Westminster school and Christ Church, Oxford. He gained some distinction as a scholar and a poet, and was originally destined for holy orders. In 1643 he was secretary to Lord Digby at Oxford, and was employed as a messenger between the queen and Ormonde in Ireland. Subsequently he took up arms for the king, and received a wound in the skirmish at Andover in 1644, the scar of which remained on his face through life.[1] And after the defeat of the royal cause he travelled in France and Italy, joined the exiled royal family in 1650, and in 1654 became official secretary to James on Charles’s recommendation, who had already been attracted by his “pleasant and agreeable humour.”[2] In March 1657 he was knighted, and the same year was sent as Charles’s agent to Madrid, where he remained, endeavouring to obtain assistance for the royal cause, till after the Restoration. On his return to England in 1661 he was made keeper of the privy purse, and became the prime favourite. One of his duties was the procuring and management of the royal mistresses, in which his success gained him great credit. Allying himself with Lady Castlemaine, he encouraged Charles’s increasing dislike to Clarendon; and he was made secretary of state in October 1662 in spite of the opposition of Clarendon, who had to find him a seat in parliament. He represented Callington from 1661 till 1665, but appears never to have taken part in debate. He served subsequently on the committees for explaining the Irish Act of Settlement and for Tangiers. In 1663 he obtained a peerage as Baron Arlington of Arlington, or Harlington, in Middlesex, and in 1667 was appointed one of the postmasters-general. The control of foreign affairs was entrusted to him, and he was chiefly responsible for the attack on the Smyrna fleet and for the first Dutch War. In 1665 he advised Charles to grant liberty of conscience, but this was merely a concession to gain money during the war; and he showed great activity later in oppressing the nonconformists. On the death of Southampton, whose administration he had attacked, his great ambition, the treasurership, was not satisfied; and on the fall of Clarendon, against whom he had intrigued, he did not, though becoming a member of the Cabal ministry, obtain the supreme influence which he had expected; for Buckingham first shared, and soon surpassed him, in the royal favour. With Buckingham a sharp rivalry sprang up, and they only combined forces when endeavouring to bring about some evil measure, such as the ruin of the great Ormonde, who was an opponent of their policy and their schemes. Another object of jealousy to Arlington was Sir William Temple, who achieved a great popular success in 1668 by the conclusion of the Triple Alliance; Arlington endeavoured to procure his removal to Madrid, and entered with alacrity into Charles’s plans for destroying the whole policy embodied in the treaty, and for making terms with France. He refused a bribe from Louis XIV., but allowed his wife to accept a gift of 10,000 crowns;[3] in 1670 he was the only minister besides the Roman Catholic Clifford to whom the first secret treaty of Dover (May 1670), one clause of which provided for Charles’s declaration of his conversion to Romanism, was confided (see Charles II.); and he was the chief actor in the deception practised upon the rest of the council.[4] He supported several other pernicious measures—the scheme for rendering the king’s power absolute by force of arms; the “stop of the exchequer,” involving a repudiation of the state debt in 1672; and the declaration of indulgence the same year, “that we might keep all quiet at home whilst we are busy abroad.”[5] On the 22nd of April 1672 he was created an earl, and on the 15th of June obtained the Garter; the same month he proceeded with Buckingham on a mission, first to William at the Hague, and afterwards to Louis at Utrecht, endeavouring to force upon the Dutch terms of peace which were indignantly refused. But Arlington’s support of the court policy was entirely subordinate to personal interests; and after the appointment of Clifford in November 1672 to the treasurership, his jealousy and mortification, together with his alarm at the violent opposition aroused in parliament, caused him to veer over to the other side. He advised Charles in March 1673 to submit the legality of the declaration of indulgence to the House of Lords, and supported the Test Act of the same year, which compelled Clifford to resign. He joined the Dutch party, and in order to make his peace with his new allies, disclosed the secret treaty of Dover to the staunch Protestants Ormonde and Shaftesbury.[6] Arlington had, however, lost the confidence of all parties, and these efforts to procure support met with little success. On the 15th of January 1674 he was impeached by the Commons, the specific charges being “popery,” corruption and the betrayal of his trust—Buckingham in his own defence having accused him the day before of being the chief instigator of the French and anti-Protestant policy, of the scheme of governing by
- ↑ See his portrait in the earl of Arlington’s Letters to Sir W. Temple, by Tho. Babington (1701).
- ↑ Clarendon’s Life and Continuation, 397.
- ↑ Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, by Sir John Dalrymple (1790), i. 125.
- ↑ Ibid. 114 et seq.
- ↑ Arlington to Sir B. Gascoyn, in J.T. Brown’s Miscellanea Aulica (1702), 66.
- ↑ On the authority of Colbert, 20th November 1673; Dalrymple’s Memoirs, i. 131.
