ABSTRACT
French warships in the Channel in 1744 and a Jacobite army in Derby in 1745 might appear to reflect failures of policy and implementation, as well as to make issues of politics and foreign policy redundant. Indeed, politics and foreign policy were both the cause of the crisis that affected Britain and, also, were part of the solution. The determination of the post-Walpole ministry, established in 1742, to broaden the conflict with Spain into a war with France and thus, in its eyes, to rescue the European system, to win glory, and to revive the Whig brand, led both to the French riposte and to an upsurge in Jacobite conspirac. British neutrality when Austria was attacked in the War of the Polish Succession had underlined the degree to which Continental interventionism was not a necessary policy. The strengthened reputation of the Hanoverian dynasty, a reputation celebrated in music by Handel, was not matched by the political success of the monarch.
