although himself a Lutheran, and only an occasional conformist, found that circumstances compelled him to support the bill.
In 1710, he voted that the clerical Jacobite incendiary, Dr. Sacheverell, was “guilty” of misdemeanour, on account of two discourses preached, not in his ordinary ministrations, but on public occasions, in which, among other things, he virulently maintained, 1st, That the necessary means used to bring about the Revolution of 1688 were odious and unjustifiable; and 2ndly, That the toleration granted by law is unreasonable and unwarrantable — that he is a false brother with regard to God, religion, and the Church, who defends toleration and liberty of conscience, and that it is the duty of superior pastors to thunder out their ecclesiastical anathemas against persons entitled to the benefit of the said Toleration.
In 1714 he protested against the Schism Bill, whose object was to suppress Dissenting Schools and Academies, on the ground that the children of churchmen attended them in alarming numbers. The bill passed the Lords by the slender majority of 77 to 72. The Protest proceeds upon the fact, that “it is not pretended that this Bill is designed as a punishment of any crime which the Protestant Dissenters have been guilty of against the civil government, or that they are disaffected to the Protestant succession as by law established, for in this their zeal is very conspicuous.” “If, nevertheless, the Dissenters were dangerous, severity is not so proper and effectual a method to reduce them to the Church, as a charitable indulgence, as is manifest by experience, there having been more Dissenters reconciled to the Church since the Act of Toleration, than in all the time from the Act of Uniformity to the time of the said Act of Toleration; and there is scarce one considerable family in England in communion with the Dissenters. Severity may make men hypocrites but not converts.” “In all the instances of making laws, or of a rigid execution of the laws, against Dissenters, the design was to weaken the Church, and to drive the Dissenters into one common interest with the Papists. We cannot think that the arts and contrivances of Papists to subvert our church are proper means to preserve it, especially at a time when we are more in danger of Popery than ever by the designs of the Pretender, supported by the mighty power of the French king, and by great numbers in this kingdom who are professedly in his interest.”
It was in January 1711 that the new ministry obtained the unjust censure of Lords Galway and Tyrawley, and of General Stanhope. There was a great displacement of military governors and colonels of regiments, as was usual on a change of ministry. Schomberg was excepted, it being known that he would not help his brother generals, but would stay at home. Feeling uneasy under the new regime, he obtained leave to retire in favour of his son Charles, Marquis of Harwich, who was thus gazetted as Colonel of the 4th Horse, when he was only twenty-seven years of age.
The Duke may now be regarded as a neutral in politics. On 18th June 1710 Lady Caroline, his daughter, died of small-pox, aged twenty-three. In 1711 he was a pall-bearer at the Earl of Rochester’s funeral, and in 1712 at Earl Godolphin’s. The 4th Horse was quartered in Dublin, and there the Marquis of Harwich died, 5th October 1713. The Duke was in his seventy-second year when this severe blow fell upon him. Except in his signature to the Protest already described, he does not again appear in public proceedings, though in the next reign he had to apply for a Private Act of Parliament regarding the destination of his hereditary pension.
If an English landed estate had been actually bestowed upon Marshal Schomberg, then on the death of Duke Mainhardt’s only son, the heir-apparent would have been the Duke’s eldest daughter. But the phraseology of the Patent for the Annuity was such, that the Duke was haunted by alarming visions of a male heir from Germany. In these circumstances, and when Queen Anne was dead, he seems to have renounced his claim upon her Majesty’s grant of £5,000 a year, which at once relieved the revenue of £1,000 annually. Besides, affection for the memory of William of Orange having revived at the accession of George I., reminiscences of regard from the more than Semi-Jacobite Queen Anne could do nothing but harm to a public man; while any proof of reciprocal attachment between King William and him was a testimonial ensuring honour and favour. Accordingly, Schomberg called the attention of the new government to the grant of King William to his father and to his English heirs, and how the affectionate and grateful intentions of the illustrious monarch were in danger of miscarrying, owing to unintentional inaccuracy in writing. A bill was therefore introduced into Parliament to enable King George to revoke the Letters Patent of William III., and to substitute a new grant by which a female heir might inherit; this Bill received the Royal assent, and is the Act of the first year of George I., No. 78.
