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Steele apparently professed his sentiments in this book too openly and honestly for his own good, since the government was soon to use it as evidence against him in his trial before the House.

In the final issues of the Englishman, which ended just as the new session of Parliament began, he provided his enemies with still more ammunition.

For example, No. 56 printed the patent giving the Electoral Prince the title of Duke of Cambridge.

In a few months the Duke was to be the center of a controversy of some significance on the touchy question of the Protestant Succession.

At the order of the Dowager Electress, the Hanoverian agents, supported by the Whig leaders, demanded that a writ of summons be issued which would call the Duke to England to sit in Parliament, thus further insuring the Succession by establishing a Hanoverian Prince in England before the Queen's death.

Anne was furious, and Bolingbroke advised that the request be refused.

Oxford, realizing that the law required the issuance of the writ, took the opposite view, for which the Queen never forgave him.

Accordingly the request was granted, but the Elector himself, who had not been consulted by his mother, rejected the proposal and recalled his agent Schutz, whose impolitic handling of the affair had caused the Hanoverian interest to suffer and had made Oxford's dismissal more likely than ever.

Steele in this paper is indicating his sympathy for such a plan.

A few days after this Englishman appeared, Defoe reported to Oxford that Steele was expected to move in Parliament that the Duke be called over ; ;

Defoe then commented, `` If they Could Draw that young Gentleman into Their Measures They would show themselves quickly, for they are not asham'd to Say They want only a head to Make a beginning ''.