1708—Vacillation of Anne—Invasion of the Pretender—Results of that
event—Secret intrigues with Mrs. Masham—The death of Prince
George—The Duchess of Marlborough’s affectionate attentions to the
Queen on that occasion—Her disappointment.
Not many days after the dismissal of Harley and the resignation of St.
John, and whilst the world of politics was still occupied in discussing
Gregg’s ignominious life and courageous death, it was announced that a
French fleet, with troops, had sailed from Dunkirk to invade Scotland.
James Stuart, or, as Queen Anne, for the first time after this attempt
upon her kingdom, permitted him to be designated, the Pretender, was,
however, luckily for himself, prevented from embarking with the
squadron, just at the critical time, by an ague;[137] and the fleet was
put back by contrary winds. When too late to do any good, James set
sail. The fleet, being chiefly filled with landsmen, was greatly
distressed for want of water; and, after being tossed about for nearly a
month in a tempestuous sea, was obliged to return to Dunkirk. Thus was
this vast project, contrived by Louis with the design of drawing off the
troops in Flanders, frustrated; nor would the French monarch have been
inconsolable, had the Pretender fallen into the hands of the English, of
which he ran an imminent risk; for Louis was not particularly anxious to
see the unfortunate Prince again in France; and he would have been
reconciled to the loss of his fleet, if he could have at the same time
been relieved of his guest.[138] The attempt, however, proved nearly
fatal to the Tory party in England: for it was believed that Louis would
not have risked so small a fleet, and forces so incompetent as those
which he sent over, had he not been well assured of assistance in
England and Scotland.
On the other hand, the Queen, who was alarmed, and, according to her
capability, indignant, on account of her brother’s invasion, perceived
the duplicity of those who had so recently assured her that there was
not a single Jacobite in the nation. Never before this occurrence had
her royal lips been known to mention the Revolution. Her courtiers had
universally endeavoured to separate her title to the throne from any
connexion with that event; although she had no other claim to the crown
than that which was given her by the Act of Settlement. The Queen now,
as Parliament was sitting, addressed the Houses; she named the
Revolution twice; she received addresses in which the word ‘Pretender’
was applied to her brother: she thus approved that designation, and from
this period he is so called in the generality of histories.[139] She
declared publicly that she considered those who had brought about the
Revolution to be her best friends; and the Whigs as most to be depended
upon for the support of her government. She looked to Marlborough for
assistance, and, for the first time, cordially agreed with her general,
that it was neither for her honour, nor interest, to make the first
steps towards a peace,[140] She wrote to him in the most confidential
and affectionate terms, signing herself his “humble servant;”[141] and
she received from him a respectful and manly answer, assuring her
Majesty that the Duke desired to serve his royal mistress “in the army,
but not as a minister.”[142]
For a while this good understanding lasted, and the Whigs were sanguine
of their entire restoration to royal favour; but, as the Queen’s fears
subsided, her inclinations returned to their old channel, and her mind
yielded again to the influence of Harley.
That able and persevering courtier continued, during the whole summer
after his dismissal, to entertain a secret correspondence with the
Queen. Anne, whose nature was quite on a level with that of the most
humble of her household, descended so far as to encourage these stolen
conferences. The lessons which she had learned during her depression in
the court of William and Mary were retained, when the same inducement to
those small manœuvres no longer justified the stratagems which nothing
but the dread of tyranny can excuse. To enjoy in privacy the gossip, for
it could not be called society, of Mrs. Masham, and the flattery of
Harley, “she staid,” says the indignant Duchess, “all the sultry season,
even when the Prince was panting for breath, in that small house she had
formerly purchased at Windsor; which, though hot as an oven, was then
said to be cool, because, from the park, such persons as Mrs. Masham had
a mind to bring to her Majesty could be let in privately from the
garden.”[143]
The Duchess could not long endure this; and, upon the occasion of a
thanksgiving for the victory of Oudenarde, and after the memorable siege
of Brussels, her wrath broke forth. She still, in spite of her threats,
held the office of groom of the stole, which brought her into frequent,
unfortunate collision with the Queen. The efforts to please, which the
haughty Duchess now condescended to make, were constantly counteracted
by her rival. The following letter is truly characteristic. Pique,
pride, effrontery, are curiously manifested in its expression.[144]
“I cannot help sending your Majesty this letter, to show how exactly
Lord Marlborough agrees with me in my opinion, that he has now no
interest with you; though, when I said so in the church on
Thursday,[145] you were pleased to say it was untrue: and yet I think
that he will be surprised to hear that, when I had taken so much pains
to put your jewels in a way that I thought you would like, Mrs. Masham
could make you refuse to wear them, in so unkind a manner; because that
was a power she had not thought fit to exercise before. I will make no
reflection upon it; only that I must needs observe that your Majesty
chose a very wrong day to mortify me, when you were just going to return
thanks for a victory obtained by Lord Marlborough.”
The Queen thought proper to answer this epistle in the following words.
The contest had now arrived at its climax.
“Sunday.
“After the commands you gave me on the thanksgiving-day of not answering
you, I should not have troubled you with these lines, but to return the
Duke of Marlborough’s letter safe into your hands, and for the same
reason do not say anything to that, nor to yours enclosed with it.”
It was impossible for the Duchess, on receiving so extraordinary a
letter, to remain silent; and, in truth, she was one of those whom
rebuke could not abash, nor argument silence, nor invective intimidate.
She again took up the pen, not, as she assured her Majesty, with any
view of answering the Queen’s letter, but of explaining what she had
said at church. This explanation, like most others, tended to make the
matter considerably worse. “I desired you,” says the Duchess, continuing
to address the Queen in the character of an equal, “I desired you not to
answer me there, for fear of being overheard; and this you interpret as
if I had desired you not to answer me at all, which was far from my
intention. For the whole end of my writing to you so often, was to get
your answer to several things in which we differed, that if I was in the
wrong you might convince me of it, and I should very readily have owned
my mistakes.”
The Duchess proceeds to say, that she hopes that, some time or other,
the Queen may find time to reflect upon the unanswerable arguments which
the Duchess had laid before her, and that her Majesty would also
occasionally listen to the advice of my Lord Marlborough, and then she
would never more be troubled with disagreeable letters from her. “The
word _command_,” adds the Duchess, “which you use at the beginning of
your letter, is very unfitly supposed to come from me. For though I have
always writ to you as a friend, and lived with you as such for so many
years, with all the truth, and honesty, and zeal for your service that
was possible, yet I shall never forget that I am your subject, nor cease
to be a faithful one.”[146]
This correspondence appears to have had the effect only of widening the
breach. It is one peculiarity of our sex, or, at any rate, of the least
reflective portion, that the affections once alienated, cannot, by
reasoning, by persuasion, even by concession, be restored to their
accustomed channel. At Anne’s side there stood a whisperer ever ready to
pour into the royal ear the antidote to all the medicine of too
wholesome truth, which the Duchess, in her hardihood, dared to
administer. It was indeed her boast, that when, without prejudice or
passion, she knew the Queen to be wrong, she should think herself
wanting in her duty not to tell her Majesty her opinion, “and the
rather, because no one else dares to speak out upon so ungrateful a
subject.”
The poor Queen went on, therefore, much in the same state of indecision
and mystery as that in which her life had been passed for years;
closeted every night with Mrs. Masham and Harley, and watched at every
avenue by the Duchess and her emissaries. When the ministry suspected
that the Queen was under the influence of the discarded but dreaded
Harley, the Duchess despatched a letter full of remonstrances and
reproaches, written with her “usual plainness and zeal.” But finding
that by this mode she could make no impression upon her Majesty, the
Duchess sought an interview, and begged to know what her crime was that
had produced so great an alteration in the Queen. This inquiry drew from
Anne a charge of inveteracy and of persecution against “poor Masham,”
and a declaration that the Queen would henceforth treat the Duchess as
it became her to treat the Duke of Marlborough’s wife, and the groom of
the stole; but she forbore specifying any distinct charge against the
discarded favourite.
On receiving this letter, the Duchess began a work which it seems she
had some time contemplated; namely, a careful review of all the faithful
services which, for about twenty-six years, she had performed towards
the Queen; of the favour with which she had been honoured, and of the
use which she had made of that favour; and of the manner in which she
had now lost it, by means of one whom she had raised out of the
dust.[147] To savour her apology with some sacred associations, the
Duchess prefixed to it the directions given by the author of “The Whole
Duty of Man,” with regard to friendship; and the directions in the
Common Prayer before the Communion with regard to reconciliation,
together with the rules laid down by Bishop Taylor on the same head; and
in offering this memorial, the subdued, but not humiliated Duchess, gave
her word to her Majesty, that if, after reading these compilations, she
would please to answer in two words that she was still of her former
opinion, she, the Duchess, would never more trouble her on that head as
long as she lived, but would perform her offices with respect and
decorum, remember always that Anne was her mistress and her Queen, and
resolve to pay her the respect due from a faithful subject to a Queen.
This despatch was sent from St. Albans, and the Queen promised that she
would read and answer it. But ten days afterwards the paper was unread,
and the only consolation which the Duchess received for this negligence
was a kind look and a gracious smile from her Majesty, as she passed to
receive the communion; “but the smile and the look,” adds the Duchess,
“were, I had reason afterwards to think, given to Bishop Taylor and the
Common Prayer Book, and not to me.”
Meantime the Queen, after more than twenty-five years of matrimony,
became a widow. Prince George, in October, sank under the effects of a
long-continued asthma, which, during the last few years of his life, had
kept him hovering on the brink of the grave. The Queen, who had been
throughout the whole of her married life a pattern of domestic
affection, had never, during the last trying years of his life, left the
Prince either night or day. She attended him with assiduity, and
proffered to her sick consort those patient services which are generally
supposed only to be the meed of females in the humbler walks of life.
The Prince merited her affection; his manners were amiable, and his
conduct respectable; and he had not embarrassed the Queen by taking a
conspicuous share in politics. The “Monsieur est il possible” of King
James was neither deficient in sense nor in information; but his powers
of expression were inferior to his capacity for gaining knowledge.[148]
The Queen, unsentimental though well intentioned, plunged deeper and
deeper into petty political intrigues, after the respectable occupation
of tending her invalid husband was at an end. Her grief was as edifying
as her conjugal affection had been exemplary; yet the parliament, not
thinking it too late for such addresses, petitioned her Majesty that she
would not allow her grief for the Prince’s death to prevent her from
contemplating a second marriage. But Anne continued to be, or, as some
said, to seem inconsolable. She avoided the light of day, and could not
endure the conversation of her dearest friends, but seemed, as in
affliction it is natural so to do, to revert to those companions of her
earlier years who had witnessed the felicity of her married life.
Several weeks had elapsed since the Queen and the Duchess had met, when
the latter was apprised that the existence of the Prince of Denmark was
drawing to a close. The Duchess, warm in her temper, warm in her
feelings, wrote on this occasion to her royal mistress to express her
determination to pay her duty, in inquiring after her Majesty’s health,
and to declare that she could not hear of so great a misfortune and
affliction as the condition in which the Prince was, without offering
her services, if acceptable to her Majesty.
This letter was scarcely penned, before further tidings of the Prince’s
danger arrived; and the Duchess, setting off for Kensington, carried her
letter with her, and sent it to the Queen, with a message that she
waited her Majesty’s commands. Anne could scarcely be much flattered by
a tribute of respect, which was prefaced by the Duchess with these
offensive words:—“Though, the last time I had the honour to wait upon
your Majesty, your usage of me was such as was scarce possible for me to
imagine, or for any one to believe,” &c. &c. She received her haughty
subject “coolly, and as a stranger.” The Duchess, however, touched by
her royal mistress’s impending calamity, persevered. It was her lot,
after witnessing the nuptials of the Queen with the Prince of Denmark,
and after participating for years in their sober privacy, to be present
at his last moments. It was her office to lead the Queen from the
chamber of death into her closet, where, kneeling down, the Duchess
endeavoured affectionately to console the widowed sovereign, remaining
for some time before her in that posture of humiliation.
The Queen’s conduct in this peculiar situation, and at this critical
moment, was singularly characteristic of her feeble, vacillating
character, on which no strong impression could be made. Whilst the
Duchess knelt before her, imploring her Majesty not to cherish sorrow,
by remaining where the remembrance of the recent solemn scene would
haunt her, but to retire to St. James’s; whilst the arrogant but
warm-hearted Duchess forgot all past grievances in her attempts to
solace a mistress from whom she had received many favours; the poor
Queen’s fluttered spirits were affrighted by the recollection of Mrs.
Masham, and of the party who would resent this long and private
interview. She yielded, however, to the Duchess’s remonstrances, and
promised to accompany her to St. James’s; and, placing her watch in the
Duchess’s hand, bade her retire until the finger of that monitor had
reached a certain point, and to send Mrs. Masham in the interval. A
crowd was collected before the antechamber, and the Duchess, emerging
from the royal closet, determined, though the game was lost, at least
not to betray her defeat. She behaved on this occasion with the address,
and dignity, and self command, which a knowledge of her own well-meant
intentions, and her long experience in the world, imparted. She ordered
her own coach to be prepared for the reception of the Queen, and desired
the assembled courtiers to retire, whilst her Majesty, amidst her
complicated feelings of grief and embarrassment, should pass through the
gallery. The Queen, moved like a puppet to the last by the spirited and
intellectual woman who was formed to command, came forth, leaning on the
arm of the Duchess. “Your Majesty,” said the lofty Sarah, “must excuse
my not delivering your message to Mrs. Masham; your Majesty can send for
her at St. James’s, how and when you please.”
The Queen, apparently insensible to the spirit of this reply, or
preoccupied by fears as to what “poor Masham” would think, moved along
the gallery, whispering some commission to Mrs. Hill, the sister of Mrs.
Masham, as she went along, and casting upon Mrs. Masham, who appeared in
the gallery with Dr. Arbuthnot, a look of kindness, though without
speaking. She was sufficiently composed, on entering the carriage, to
intimate to Godolphin that she wished the royal vaults at Westminster to
be inspected previous to the interment of the Prince, in order to
ascertain whether there would be room for her body also,—if not, to
choose another place of interment; and in these topics the drive from
Kensington to St. James’s was occupied. It was not thought by the Queen
incompatible with the deep feeling which she professed, to busy herself
with those minutiæ to which minds of a common stamp affix so much
importance, connected with the disposition of the dead.—The Duchess has
commented upon the Queen’s particularities, with the freedom natural to
her. After a conference with Lord Godolphin at St. James’s, during which
the Duchess retired, the Queen, to use her own expression, “scratched
twice at dear Mrs. Freeman’s door,” in hopes of finding the Lord
Treasurer within the Duchess’s apartments, in order to bid him, when he
sent his orders to Kensington, order a great number of yeomen of the
guard to be in attendance to carry the “dear Prince’s body” down the
great stairs, which were very steep and slippery, so that it might “not
be let fall.”
The transient reconciliation which thus took place between the Queen and
the Duchess was not of long duration. Mrs. Masham, indeed, retired that
same evening from the supper-room, where the Duchess appeared to attend
upon her Majesty; and Anne cautiously forbore to mention “poor Masham’s”
hateful name. But when in private, Anne was almost continually attended
by the insidious Abigail, and the Duchess rarely entered the royal
presence without finding her rival there, or, what was worse, retiring
furtively at her approach; and she soon ascertained that the very closet
where she had knelt in sorrow and compassion before her sovereign—where
she had striven to act the part of consolation—was the scene of Mrs.
Masham’s influence. It seemed, indeed, strange that Anne should select
for her daily sitting-room the closet which her deceased consort had
used as his place of retirement and prayer, and the prying Duchess soon
penetrated behind the screen of widowed proprieties. She has laid bare
the occupations of the royal mourner, whilst closeted for many hours of
the day in Prince George’s apartments. The Duchess, indeed, suspected
that some peculiar motive could alone induce Anne to disregard the
mournful associations with that retreat; and resolving to ascertain the
cause, she had the mortification to discover the true reason of Anne’s
choice: this was, that the “back-stairs belonging to it came from Mrs.
Masham’s lodgings, who, by that means, could bring to her whom she
pleased.”[149]