As soon as this news reached France the Pretender hastened to St. Malo in order to embark for Scotland, and Ormonde hastened over from Normandy to Devonshire to join the insurgents, whom he now expected to meet in arms. He took with him only twenty officers and as many troopers from Nugent's regiment. This was the force with which Ormonde landed in England to conquer it for the Pretender. There was, however, no need of even these forty men. The English Government had been beforehand with him; they had arrested all his chief coadjutors, and when he reached the appointed rendezvous there was not a man to meet him. On reaching St. Malo, Ormonde there found the Pretender not yet embarked. After some conference together, Ormonde once more went on board ship to reach the English coast and make one more attempt in the hopeless expedition, but he was soon driven back by a tempest. By this time the port of St. Malo was blockaded by the English, and the Pretender was compelled to travel on land to Dunkirk, where, in the middle of December, he sailed with only a single ship for the conquest of Scotland, and attended only by half a dozen gentlemen, disguised, like himself, as French naval officers.
Director
Whilst things were in this position, Parliament met on the 13th of November. The great question on which the fate of the Ministry depended was that of the subsidies to Hesse and Russia. It was something new to see not merely an ordinary opposition, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Paymaster of the ForcesLegge and Pittranging themselves against the king and their colleagues on this question. In the House of Lords the Address in reply to the royal speech, which implied approbation of these subsidies, was supported by Newcastle, Hardwicke, and the Duke of Bedford, who hitherto, since quitting office, had opposed everything, and was opposed by Lords Temple and Halifax. But the great struggle was in the Commons. The debate began at two in the afternoon, and continued till five the next morningthe longest hitherto recorded, except the one on the Westminster election in 1741. On this occasion William Gerard Hamilton made his first and almost last speech, which acquired him promotion in the Government of Ireland, and the cognomen of "Single-speech Hamilton." Murray spoke splendidly in defence of the subsidies; but Pitt, rising at one o'clock in the morning, after sitting eleven hours in that heated atmosphere, burst out upon the whole system of German subsidies with a tempest of eloquence which held the House in astonished awe. He denounced the whole practice of feeing the little German potentates as monstrous, useless, absurd, and desperate: an eternal drain on England for no single atom of benefit. He compared the union of Newcastle and Fox to the union of the Rh?ne and Sa?nea boisterous and impetuous torrent, with a shallow, languid, and muddy stream. But though Pitt's eloquence dismayed and confounded Ministers, it could not prevent their majority. The Address was carried by three hundred and eleven votes against one hundred and five; and it was now clear that Pitt must quit the Cabinet. In fact, in a very few days, not only he, but Legge and George Grenville, were summarily dismissed, and James Grenville, the other brother, resigned his seat at the Board of Trade.Mother says death is best!MAP OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE TIME WHEN THEY GAINED THEIR INDEPENDENCE.The kindred science of medicine was also in marked advance. Dr. Thomas Sydenham, who died in 1689, at the very commencement of this period, had prepared the way for a more profound knowledge of the science by his careful and persevering observation of facts and symptoms; and the improvements he introduced guided medical men in the treatment of disease till the end of this period. Anatomical science was greatly advanced at this era by Malpighi, Steno, Ruysch, Duverney, Morgagni, Albinus, Haller, and other Continental physicians. In England Humphrey Ridley published a work on the brain in 1695, and William Cowper, in 1698, his anatomical tables, said to be borrowed from the Dutch anatomist, Bidloo. In 1726 Alexander Munro published his "Osteology;" he was also founder of the Medical School of Edinburgh. In 1733 William Cheselden, the most expert operator of his day, published his "Osteography." In 1727 Stephen Hales published his "Vegetable Statics," and in 1733 his "H?mastatics," which carried both vegetable and animal physiology beyond all preceding knowledge either here or abroad. Zoology and comparative anatomy also received some progress from the labours of Nehemiah Grew, Tyson, Collins, and other members of the Royal Society.