PERFIDIOUS ALBION

Stanhope had occupied Minorca in the name of Charles III, but was determined that Britain should have it for herself. He took immediate steps to bring this about, evacuating all Spanish troops and admitting only British ones to the fort. A puppet Spanish governor was set up at the other end of the island at Ciudadela to soothe Charles, and he appointed Colonel Pettit, his senior engineer, as interim governor of the castle, who was thus able from the start to use his skill in strengthening Fort St Philip. He kept writing to Sunderland and Marlborough almost defiantly: 

'Let who will be King of Spain, we should temporise in the matter, but have it yielded absolutely to us,' adding, 'I cannot give a greater demonstration of the opinion I have of this considerable acquisition for England, than by offering to stay and live here three or four years, to put it in order.'

Sunderland and his government agreed willingly to the plot, suggesting he bring pressure on Charles to cede Minorca formally to Britain, as 'some sort of security' for all her expenses on his behalf. Stanhope started a war of nerves against Charles. He told the king his whole cause and throne would collapse without British support, and to deny him at his peril. In April 1709 Charles's ministers handed over Minorca as a 'mortgage security' for the expenses Britain had incurred in fortifying Fort St Philip, from which Charles of course derived no benefit. Stanhope had written to England asking that a very high figure should be quoted, 'to put the island out of possibility of being redeemed'. .
When the War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1713, Minorca and Gibraltar passed legally to the British Crown, under the Treaty of Utrecht, and the Second Duke of Argyll was appointed the first governor of the new British dominion. Gibraltar remains British today by that same treaty, but Minorca was to change hands many times until it finally became Spanish in 1802.
The Treaty of Utrecht has been generally agreed by historians to have been a disgraceful act, deserting the hapless Charles, and leaving him to fend for himself. It is said that the British troops in Barcelona just could not believe it and wept.

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