THE PRINCESS TRIUMPHS AT VERSAILLES.
IN the balls given at Marly, she appeared loftily self-possessed, easy
and familiar by turns, ogling people one after another with her
eye-glass; and at one of these balls she made her appearance with a tiny
spaniel under her arm, as though she had been in her own house, and
(which was more remarked than anything else) the King caressed the
little dog on several different occasions, when he went up to converse
with her, and he did so nearly throughout the evening. "She had never
before been seen to take so grand a flight."
Madame des Ursins, who, though a woman of imagination, was, as we have
said, but little liable to be dazzled, might still have been pardoned
giving way during these months of royal favour to an excess of
intoxication; but above all, and at the same time that she displayed the
treasures of her continual and inexhaustible conversation, she evinced a
lively appreciation of the King's mental qualities. She returns to the
subject afterwards too frequently, and enters too minutely into detail
of what she discovered in him, not to show on her part a truthfulness
stronger than flattery. She never speaks of the King otherwise than as
_l'homme du monde le plus aimable_, as the _meilleur ami_, and _le plus
honnête homme du monde_.
"If I had further, Madam, as you observe to me (she writes to Madam
de Maintenon) the happiness of his being more accustomed to me, I
ingenuously confess to you that it only depends upon his Majesty to
perceive that I find him _very good company_. Really, although I
can boast of having, in my time, entertained in France, Italy, and
Spain, all the wittiest and most agreeable persons therein, I have
never been so much pleased with them as with his Majesty. You must
own that this is a very frank avowal."
There were not wanting those who even went so far as to suppose that the
views of Madame des Ursins went much further--"the age and health of
Madame de Maintenon tempting her." The question must have occurred to
the Princess, it was hinted, whether the prospect of replacing her in
France was not more alluring than any she was likely to meet with in
Spain. Such conjectures, however, touching the inmost secrets of a
woman's heart, are more easily formed than verified.
That which appears far more certain is, that independently even of
politics there was a mental triumph achieved by her in this close
contact with the great King. Madame de Maintenon, Madame des Ursins, and
Louis XIV. were all three for some time under the same spell: "I often
recall to mind your ideas and that amiable countenance which so charmed
me at Marly," Madame de Maintenon writes to her a year later; "do you
still preserve that equanimity which allowed you to pass from the most
important topics of conversation with the King to indulge in _badinage_
with Madame d'Heudicourt in my cabinet?" Madame des Ursins, who was only
at that moment a bird of passage, was of those in whom the delight of
pleasing and the feeling of success doubly enhanced every innate grace.
That slight fascination which she probably underwent, she repaid with a
shower of sparkling phrases.
Louis XIV. himself was seduced both by her grace and her talent. He had
expected, according to all accounts, to find in Madame des Ursins a
woman of the Fronde, somewhat post-dated: instead of that he discovered
a person whom it cost little to be naturally a person of authority, with
a capacity for governing, and whose social powers never failed of their
charm, so elevated were their characteristics. She, even as a third
party, from her intercourse with Madame de Maintenon, felt herself grow
quite young again. Of these three potential persons, the assertion may
be hazarded that Madame des Ursins was still that one who best
maintained her position, possessed the happy knack of turning all things
to advantage through her lucid common sense: of the three she played her
part the most unrestrictedly, and therefore so much the better, through
an energetic will in carrying out what an acute judgment told her was
best.
Her brow encircled with the halo of victory, Madame des Ursins, after a
year's absence, re-entered that Spain which she had quitted humiliated:
she returned to it amid the acclamations of its populace, welcomed in
all its cities as a sovereign. The citadels fired salutes as she passed;
the Spanish Court went out to meet her as far as Burgos; the King and
Queen received her at some two leagues from Madrid. She returned
strengthened by disgrace, so much the stronger that her absence had
proved injurious, treating henceforward as between Power and Power with
the Court of Versailles, which, yielding to a political necessity,
recognized and graciously accepted, had restored her with its own hand
to the summit of power, and seemed, by that signal preference, to menace
beforehand all those who should pretend to struggle against her
sovereign mission.
Once re-established in Spain, Madame des Ursins, thus acting in harmony
once more with Louis XIV., set herself to pursue a more measured course,
more regular and thoroughly irreproachable with relation to those whose
envoy she was. She took no step save in concert with the sagacious
ambassador M. Amelot. If the letters she addressed to Madame de
Maintenon, and which commence immediately after her departure from
Paris, do not reveal her genius in all its vigour and brilliancy, they
at any rate allow us to divine it in certain passages, and give us
clearly the chief outlines of her character. The natural tone of her
mind was serious, positive, somewhat dry at bottom, but frank,
deliberate, and bold. Unlike Madame de Maintenon, she had political
ideas which she dared not only avow, but put into execution. Before all
else she decided upon the complete restoration of the King's authority.
With reference to a claim advanced by the grandees against the captain
of the guards, she was anxious to break up effectually that cabal of the
grandees who profited by the weakness of the new régime in order to
create titles and prerogatives for themselves: otherwise it would be the
means of throwing Spain again into the same embarrassments as those in
which France found herself during the Fronde, "when Frenchmen only
busied themselves with provoking one another." She was of opinion that
the chiefs of that party should feel the effects of the King's
displeasure before there was time to receive replies from France, in
order that it might clearly appear that it was a determination taken by
the King of Spain himself, and not a suggestion of others:
"Do not be frightened, Madame, I entreat you, at these resolutions.
It is fortunate that the grandees have given us such a lucky
opportunity of mortifying them. Lacking strength and courage, these
haughty nobles are ceaseless in their attempts to overthrow the
authority of their king, and against whom I am incensed beyond
measure for all which they did so long as they had the uppermost in
the _Despacho_ (Privy Council)."
The virile tone of that paragraph carries us far beyond Madame de
Maintenon. There was one thing, however, of more importance to Madame
des Ursins than appeasing the grandees, and that was to procure troops
and find the means of paying them. That done, she might laugh at every
other difficulty. "Would to heaven," she exclaimed, "that it were as
easy to get the uppermost over the priests and monks, who are the cause
of all the revolts you hear of!"
The first portion of the Princess's labours was accomplished. Her most
dangerous enemies had fallen: she reigned. But there yet remained a few
hostile nobles, and she resolved to strike at them. One of them,
formerly her ally, the Duke de Montellano, president of Castile, excited
the suspicion of this mistrustful woman. She manifested towards him,
from the moment of her return, a haughty coldness. She dreaded to see in
a post of such eminence a man placed by his birth amongst her worst
enemies. Montellano, offended at her attitude towards him, tendered his
resignation. The King hesitated, but the Princess made him accept it,
and the corregidor of Madrid, Ronquillo, a man of obscure origin, was
nominated to the presidentship. Amelot was equally mistrustful of
certain grandees in the Privy Council, as was the Princess; and, whether
they tendered their resignation or that it was required of them, the
Duke de Montalto and the Count de Monterei were replaced by devoted
partisans of the Princess. The high aristocracy, indignant at this
manoeuvre, worked against her in an underhanded opposition, in which the
double character of the Duke de Medina-Coeli was more and more
developed. Their plans were foiled in the very outset, but we shall see
them again make their appearance upon the political arena at a moment
when it required nothing less than all the power and skill of Madame des
Ursins to triumph over them.
The Princess was, in fact, triumphing on the very brink of a volcano.
Spain was in a blaze, and every day seemed to call in question the
existence of that throne under the shadow of which she had come to
reign. Lord Peterborough had torn Barcelona from Philip V., and the
greater part of its garrison had recognised the Archduke, who, acting
henceforward as King of Spain, had just made his entrance into that city
amidst the acclamations of the Catalan people. The principal fortresses
of the province had shared the fate of the chief city; and on one side
the insurrection spread to Saragossa, whilst on the other, the important
city of Valencia proclaimed Charles III. The situation was little better
in the west of the kingdom, for an Anglo-Portuguese army had penetrated
into Estramadura, commanded by a French refugee who had been made an
English peer,[35] and whose hatred pursued Louis XIV. on every field of
battle. Constrained to carry on the struggle simultaneously in Flanders,
Italy, and beyond the Pyrenees, in order to defend the integrity of a
monarchy which more and more hesitated in its obedience, the French King
had just sent to Spain thirty battalions and twenty squadrons, which it
became necessary to supplement by despatching a new army. Unhappily, the
time was approaching when the French soldiery had more cause to dread
their own generals than those of the enemy; and these forces, besides
being insufficient, were placed under the command of Marshal de Tessé, a
cunning courtier but mediocre general, incapable of any initiative
strategy, and whose sole study was to carry out to the letter the
personal instructions of Louis XIV. and Chamillard. However, either from
want of sufficient resources or want of skill, Tessé failed this once in
the execution of his master's formal orders, which directed him to
suspend all his operations in order to retake Barcelona at any cost. A
siege languidly conducted in presence of a fleet mistress of the seas,
on which the French flag dared no longer show itself, was followed by a
disaster aggravated by the presence of the King of Spain and by bitter
recriminations between the two nations together engaged in that fatal
enterprise. Alike indifferent to misfortune and success, still it might
be seen in Philip, since the presence of his rival in Spain, that there
was an indomitable resolution to die sword in hand in defence of the
sole right which touched his pride and his conscience. Before Barcelona
he had displayed a useless courage, and when de Tessé rendered it
necessary to raise the siege by his refusal to continue it, the
insurrection had closed to the King every road which gave access to his
capital. To rejoin the Queen Regent in the heart of the two Castiles,
Philip was compelled to take, in mortal agony, the road to France, in
order to direct his steps by way of Rousillon towards Navarre, thus
giving his enemies a plausible pretext for turning his going out of the
kingdom into a desertion of the crown.
[35] The Duke of Berwick.
Trials not less formidable awaited the young Queen at the hands of
fortune. Excited by the greatness of the danger, but finding a succour
in the _sang-froid_ of Madame des Ursins, which her youth and ardour
denied her, adored by the inhabitants of Madrid, to whom in the hour of
crisis she confided herself with a touching helplessness, the
_Savoiana_, by the spell of her gentle and steady virtues, alone
maintained the royal authority in a country where "it was necessary to
have almost an army in each province."[36]
[36] Despatch of Marshal de Tessé to Chamillard, 4th Feb.,
1706.--_Mémoires_ de Noailles, tom. ii., p. 380.
At length the day came when despair reigned everywhere save at the
_Retiro_ Palace. The square d'Alcantara, defended by ten battalions, the
last remains of the Spanish army, had surrendered without fighting.
Whether through folly or treason, Salamanca had also just fallen into
the enemy's hands, and the Anglo-Portuguese troops advanced by forced
marches upon Madrid, in order there to proclaim Charles III. There was
nothing left but flight--but to quit a city of proved devotion and
confide in others of doubtful fidelity. The King had rejoined the French
army; the Queen, accompanied by her _camerara mayor_ and a few female
attendants, was compelled to repair to Burgos, in order there to keep up
at least some shadow of legitimate government. The little party was
without resources, money, almost without victuals. The silver plate
belonging to the palace was hastily flung into the melting-pot; the
sovereign of so many realms, after having borrowed by pawning so many
thousand pistoles, packed up with her own hands those jewels which were
a tribute to her from the new world, the pride and recreation of her
sorrowful youth, previous to pledging them to the Jew brokers. Her
court, lately so numerous, had been dispersed by the wind of adversity,
not with the intent of influencing events, but, shameful to record, only
to await them; and Marie Louise _enceinte_ with the first child of her
marriage, shaped her course towards the land of the Cid, resolved to go
thither and defend the monarchy even among those rugged mountains which
had been its cradle. Destitution prevailed throughout the solitudes of
Castile as well as in those poor _posadas_, bare as an Asiatic
caravanserai. If in the central provinces the populace showed itself
faithful, it was not without extreme suffering and the most cruel
perplexity that the journey could be accomplished by almost
impracticable ways, through detachments of the enemy, launched in
pursuit of the royal retinue. Nothing certainly is more honourable to
the memory of the Princess des Ursins than the letters in which she
relates with charming naturalness the daily accidents of that
adventurous life, which she supported at the age of sixty-five with all
the gaiety of a youthful tourist.[37]
[37] Letters of the Princess to Mad. de Maintenon, from the 24th of
June to 26th October, 1706.--Tom. iii., pp. 305 to 367.
In the midst of these disasters, therefore, Philip V. found a firm
support in the devotion of the people and in the indefatigable zeal of
Madame des Ursins. At Madrid and in all the provinces, except Catalonia,
the allies were received with that repugnance which presages a
disastrous future and belies the most brilliant promises of victory.
Madame des Ursins multiplied herself: speeches, letters, overtures--she
spared nothing to obtain from the people the money indispensable for
carrying on the war. She thus arrested desertion, consolidated in Old
Castile, and even in Andalusia the King's authority; she propagated, in
short (if we may so express it) the feeling of devotedness. She knew how
to surround Philip V. with the austere majesty of royal misfortune
endured with courage and consoled by the watchful love of the nation. At
the same time her cheerful and confident spirit restored to its serenity
the little court of Burgos. She locked within her own bosom her
discouragements and inquietudes: she clung to hope, and that
successfully. She sought and found in her own firm will consolation
justified by events. All her correspondence at this epoch, at times
amiable, witty, affectionate, at others grave, precise, and altogether
politic, full of facts, plans, exact details, worthy of a minister, and
of a great minister too, shows the extraordinary genius of the woman. It
was not she alone, certainly, who saved the dynasty, for it was
necessary to fight and conquer to do that, but she was unquestionably
one of the most vigorous instruments ever made use of by Providence to
work out its own purposes in defence of a nation.
She had some ideas about war too--we do not say they were of the best,
but she had some--and about plans of defence and the choice of generals.
She anticipated coming dangers, which she laid bare and exposed without
allowing herself to be discouraged by them. She described the native
troops in their true colours, the places of importance entirely
unprovided for, according to Spanish custom; she energetically claimed
help from France, and after asking for strong battalions in the body of
her letter, adds in a postscript that she has advised the King of Spain
to have prayers offered up. She did not forget to send appropriate
flatteries also to Madame de Maintenon.
A few days after the arrival of the Duke of Berwick, in order to thank
Madame de Maintenon for such aid, she spoke to her about Saint-Cyr, well
aware that nothing could be more agreeable, and knowing _the weakness of
mothers_.
"The Queen has highly approved of all your Saint-Cyr rules; our
ladies are anxious to have them, and I am working hard at
translating them into Spanish to afford them that satisfaction. If
her Majesty were not under engagements very different to those of
the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, I really believe that she would like
to be one of your pupils."
Her flattery knew well in what language to couch itself; but there were
moments at which, discontented at feeling Spain abandoned and lost sight
of by Versailles, she became plain spoken even to rudeness. Great
allowance, however, ought to be made for the Princess's occasional
bluntness when it is remembered that she was then in her sixty-fourth
year, suffering from rheumatism and a painful affection of one of her
eyes, a condition altogether very unpropitious in which to commence the
career of arms in the capacity of field-marshal to a youthful Queen.
Notwithstanding all this, however, she exerted herself to enliven
everybody, to console, to inspire fortitude and a spirit of joyousness
around her, never to see things on their darkest side or through her
ailing eye, but to obey rather the buoyant spirit and an inclination to
hope for the best, which was natural to her.
"It often happens, Madame," she writes to Madame de Maintenon,
"that when one thinks all is lost some fortunate circumstance
occurs unexpectedly which entirely changes the face of things." "I
think," she says in another letter, "that fortune may again become
favourable to us; that it is with its favours as with too much
health; I mean that one is never so near falling sick as when one
feels oneself so remarkably well, nor so near being unfortunate as
when our measure of happiness is full to the brim. I reverse the
medal, and I await some consolation which may effectually alleviate
my sorrows. I wish, Madame, that you would do the same, and that
your temperament were your best friend, as mine is that on which I
can surest reckon; for I think, to speak frankly, that I have more
obligation to it than to my reason, and that there is no great
merit in possessing that tranquillity of mind, of which you are
disposed, in your extreme kindness, to think me possessed, and on
which you bestow so much praise."
Madame de Maintenon, in fact, who, strong-minded as she might be, was
nevertheless perpetually tormenting herself and wailing about something
or other, continually eulogised that natural equanimity which she
envied, that courage allied with good temper, that amiability, and that
_beau sang qui ne laissait rien d'âpre et de chagrin en elle_.
Her letters to Madame de Maintenon from Burgos, admirably paint this
characteristic tranquillity of mind. "To enliven you," she writes, "I
must give you a description of my quarters. They consist of a single
room, which may measure twelve or thirteen feet at most. One large
window which will not shut, facing the south, occupies almost entirely
one side. A somewhat low door gives me admittance to the Queen's
chamber, and another still smaller opens into a winding passage, into
which I dare not go, although it always has two or three lamps lighted
in it, because it is so badly _paved_ that I should break my neck there.
I cannot say that the walls are whitewashed, for they are so dirty. My
travelling bedstead is the sole piece of furniture I have in it, besides
a folding stool and a deal table, which latter serves me alternately for
a toilette, to write upon, or to hold the Queen's dessert--there being
no receptacle in the kitchen or elsewhere wherein to put it. I laugh at
all this ... and amidst all the sombre occurrences which have befallen
us, I console myself with my own reflections. I imagine that fortune may
take a good turn, and I calmly and trustfully wait for those
consolations which are powerful to assuage all my trouble."[38] "Action
becomes you," Madame de Maintenon might remark with great truth. It was,
in fact, an original and most distinctive feature in the Princess des
Ursins' character, that of having been known to be a person so
thoroughly calm in the main during a career so active and a destiny so
agitated; and it was to this very characteristic equanimity that she was
indebted, after so abrupt a downfall at sixty-two, for the lot reserved
for her of dying in peace and of old age at eighty. But there are many
other traits worthy of study in her composition, and which place her in
perfect contrast with her friend Madame de Maintenon.
[38] Mém. de Noailles, tom. iii., p. 375, and Letters to Mad. de
Maintenon, tom. iv., p. 163.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
SARAH JENNINGS AND JOHN CHURCHILL.
THE succession of the Duke d'Anjou to the Spanish crown had, in fact,
destroyed the balance of power in Europe; and our William the Third,
then recently dead, but even beyond the grave the most resolute enemy of
Louis the Fourteenth, had bequeathed to him the new league which bore
the name of the Great Alliance, and which had for its aim to place the
Spanish crown upon the head of the Archduke Charles, the son of the
Emperor of Germany; or in default of dispossessing Philip the Fifth of
his kingdom, to trace round the two nations of France and Spain a limit
which should never be overpassed by the ambition of either. All hope of
success for the Archduke Charles--the legitimate successor to the last
four effete kings of Spain--all the means which he might have of
preserving in Europe two houses of Austria, and of continuing that grand
Austrian duality which the sceptre of Charles the Fifth had produced,
but which was then broken in twain, rested chiefly upon the English
alliance. There, for the adversaries of Louis the Fourteenth, was the
knot of the question. With the treasures of England, with her navy, with
her troops also, together with the advantage of her situation, which
allowed of her doing so much mischief to France, the Imperialists might
effect much; without her they could scarcely do anything. Hence with
them the necessity of keeping in power a party favourable to them--the
Whigs, a party which preferred that ancient duality to the new
duality--in other words, the ambition of Louis the Fourteenth to
therewith augment the House of Bourbon, and in effect more dangerous
than the other to the English nation. But that necessity created
another: it was requisite to have near Queen Anne some one who, at
Court, should be, as it were, the advanced sentinel of the Whigs,
attached to the interests of Austria, and who would hinder from
penetrating, or at any rate prevailing therein any other interest than
theirs. This precaution was so much the more indispensable that Queen
Anne's feeling towards the Whigs was purely official, and not a genuine
sympathy. To these zealous partizans of Parliament and liberty, to these
avowed heirs of those who had made the revolution of 1640, she secretly
preferred the Tories. Amongst them she found admirers of the absolute
order of government that Louis XIV., lord of France instead of being
legislator of it, had for too long a time substituted for the too much
contemned troubles of the Fronde. And the rather as they might be
termed, under that relation, a veritable French party, did she lean
towards them, because they were the defenders of the royal prerogative.
The exactions, the delays, the innumerable formalities of constitutional
monarchy, wearied her to such an extent, that more than once the rumour
ran that she was willing to treat for the recall of her brother, the
ex-King James the Third. These reports were not without foundation, as
the Duke of Berwick tells us in his "Memoirs"; the desire alone of
preventing civil war, to which fresh endeavours on the part of that
prince would give rise, was alleged as the generous motive for
relinquishing a design which the disgust of a too-limited power had
inspired. The Whigs well knew how to conjure that peril. But they had
always to dread that whilst continuing to wear the crown, Anne might not
so much consider the welfare of England as that of her own pleasure,
where such welfare interfered with her peculiar sympathies; and lest in
turning to the side of the Tories she might carry away from the Archduke
Charles the support of England, in other words his chief reliance. The
question was how to guarantee themselves from that untoward eventuality?
One means devised--and it was not the less available in this case of
royalty exercised by a woman--was to secure to Queen Anne the adhesion
of the Mistress of the Robes, Lady Churchill, the clever wife of the
brilliant soldier, afterwards Duke of Marlborough.
This remarkable woman, who, without possessing great talents, and with
the disadvantage of an imperious and capricious temper, exercised for so
long a period such exceptional influence over public affairs, was the
second of the three daughters of Richard Jennings, a country gentleman
of good family but moderate fortune, her mother being Frances
Thornhurst, daughter of Sir Gifford Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, in Kent,
and his heiress. She was born at Holywell, near St. Alban's, 29th May,
1660, the very day of the restoration of Charles the Second. In
recompense for the services rendered by their father during the civil
wars, the two elder sisters were received when very young into the
household of the Duchess of York.
When only twelve years old, Sarah Jennings had the good fortune to
become the inseparable companion of the Princess Anne, who was about the
same age. Her beauty was not characterised by regularity of feature, but
she possessed an animated countenance, with eyes full of fire. She was
small of stature, more piquante than imposing, and her chief charms
were centered in her magnificent tresses, the delicacy of her features,
and certain peculiar graces of mind and person. These attractions were
enhanced by a conversation full of vivacity and intelligence. Prudent
and virtuous--for even Swift, who was otherwise the remorseless enemy of
the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, renders homage to the virtue of the
latter--in the midst of a corrupt Court, and enjoying the highest favour
of the Royal Family, she had for admirers some men of the highest rank
in England. Amongst those who aspired to her hand may be cited the
admired Earl of Lindsay, afterwards Marquis of Ancaster, "the star and
ornament of the Court," whose suit she rejected for that of the young
and handsome Colonel Churchill. A single trait suffices to prove the
lady's attractiveness--the avaricious John Churchill wooed and wedded
her although all along he knew Sarah to be altogether portionless.
This successful wooer--afterwards Lord Churchill and Duke of
Marlborough--who had entered the army at sixteen, was the son of a poor
cavalier knight who had come to London after the Restoration. Love, not
War, was the first stepping-stone to his subsequent high fortune. The
Duke of York, heir to the Crown, "young and ardent in the pursuit of
pleasure," became enamoured of Arabella Churchill one of the
maids-of-honour to his first wife, and afterwards his avowed mistress.
Through this lady's interest, her elder brother John obtained a pair of
colours in the Guards. In his twenty-third year he made his first
campaign in the Low Countries when Charles and Louis united their forces
against Holland. Distinguished by his commanding stature and handsome
face, he was known to the French soldiery as the "handsome Englishman."
Turenne complimented him on his gallantry and "serene intrepidity"
before the allied armies. The Marshal had been attracted to him by his
courage, and is said to have laid a wager, which he won, on the subject
of Churchill's gallantry, on the occasion of a post of importance having
been abandoned by one of his own officers. "I will bet a supper and a
dozen of claret," said he, "that my handsome Englishman will recover the
post with half the number of men commanded by the officer who lost it."
The event justified the Marshal's opinion. Emboldened by the praise of
such a general, Churchill solicited but did not obtain the command of a
regiment from Louis XIV.,[39] the great King refusing his services, as
he declined those of Prince Eugene a few years later. He was esteemed
one of the handsomest and most attractive gentlemen of the day. Lord
Chesterfield, the _arbiter elegantiarum_, declared that the grace and
fascination of young Churchill was such, that he was "irresistible
either by man or woman."
[39] This curious fact was lately ascertained by M. Moret, through
the discovery of an inedited, but authentic document, in the
_Archives de la Guerre_ in Paris. It appears in a letter of Lord
Lockhart, the English Ambassador at Paris, who asks that the
colonelcy of a regiment might be given to Churchill. It is dated
27th of May, 1674.--_Archives de la Guerre_, vol. 411, No. 193.
On his return to London at the close of the war, the young soldier
became attached to the household of the Duke of York, and rose rapidly
in that witty, gallant, and corrupt Court, where shone the Grammonts,
Rochesters, and Hamiltons, and where Churchill sought the society of the
sultanas who shared with Charles the government of England. The handsome
Churchill became, for a short time, the object of the violent but fickle
fondness of the head sultana, the Duchess of Cleveland. On one occasion
the audacious gallant was very nearly caught in the frail beauty's
apartments by "old Rowley," and only escaped by leaping from the window
at the risk of his life. For this exploit the grateful Duchess presented
her daring lover with five thousand pounds. Churchill made no scruple of
receiving the money, so early had the sordid propensity for gain taken
hold of him, and with it he at once bought an annuity of five hundred a
year, well secured on the estate of Lord Chesterfield's grandfather,
Halifax.[40]
[40] Chesterfield's Letters, November 18th, 1748.
After some disputes and obstacles on the part of the Churchill family,
which the Duchess of York herself took the trouble to obviate, the two
lovers were united in the month of April, 1678: and whilst the husband
advanced in the confidence and favour of James, his wife made still more
rapid progress in the affections of the young Princess, his daughter.
During many years of married happiness, Churchill testified the greatest
affection for his wife, and always kept her minutely informed--even
amidst councils and battle-fields--upon the state of public affairs, and
showed the most entire deference and the liveliest affection for her.
Most of his letters end with these words: "I am yours, heart and soul."
Lady Churchill governed this great man, in fact, like a child--who
himself governed kings. Like the Princess des Ursins, she possessed
incontestably certain qualities, a liking and capacity for public
business, a knowledge of men, the shrewdness of her sex, the obstinacy
of her race, an inconceivable love of domination; but she was hard,
vindictive, insatiable of honours and wealth, and united to the pride of
a queen the rage of a fury.
Aided by his sister, by the King's imperious mistress and his own
incontestable merit, Churchill climbed fast up the ladder of
preferment. He obtained successively the command of the only dragoon
regiment in the service, a Scotch peerage, and the post of Ambassador to
the Court of France. Lord Churchill, however, was destined to be
advanced still higher in court favour through the influence of his wife
and his own genius as a general.
At the Revolution of 1688, he coldly foorsook James II., his benefactor,
and carried over his formidable sword to the House of Orange. The
Revolution augmented his fortune. Created Earl and General by William
III.; Duke, Knight of the Garter and Commander of the British Armies by
Queen Anne. Marlborough was one of those men whom conviction astonishes,
devotedness confounds; who acknowledge no other law than that of their
own interest, no other deity than success, and which the uncontrollable
current of human affairs not unfrequently brings rapidly to the surface.
Cradled in revolutions, he had seen the Commonwealth pass away, the
Stuarts fall, the House of Orange proclaimed. He had taken part in
intrigues, plots, apostacies, defections: doubt alone survived every
other political instinct of his heart. Faithful to the very brink of
misfortune, he ever adhered unswervingly until the dawning of the evil
days. Well aware how quickly dynasties expire in a country convulsed by
revolutions, he had learnt to anticipate approaching catastrophes, and
to secure to himself beforehand an _appui_ amongst the victorious
survivors. Whilst he was defending the cause of the House of Orange in
Europe, he corresponded secretly with the Stuarts, kept up assiduous
relations with the little Court of St. Germains, and made underhand
preparations for marrying one of his daughters with the Pretender, then
ex-King (James III.), at St. Germains, and, perhaps, on the morrow _de
facto_ King of England. But if Marlborough's soul was mean and sordid,
his genius was vast and powerful. In parliament, at St. James's, in
foreign councils, in foreign courts, on the field of battle, everywhere
he dominated men. His education had been so very much neglected that he
could scarcely write correctly his native English, and yet, when he rose
to speak in the House of Lords, the entire assembly hung upon his words,
and the most consummate orators, the heads of the British forum, were
envious of that natural eloquence which without effort went straight to
the heart; and he exercised that charm even upon his foes, to such a
degree that Bolingbroke once remarked to Voltaire, when speaking of him:
"He was such a great man that I have forgotten his vices."[41]
[41] Voltaire, Beuchot's edition, tom. xxxvii. Lettre xii., p. 172.
At the period of which we are now treating, Marlborough was the most
powerful personage in England: by his wife, the Queen's favourite, he
ruled the household; by the Whigs, become his friends, parliament and
the ministry; by his rank and his military popularity, the army; by
Prince Eugene, his comrade in arms, the councils of Austria; by his old
friend Heinsius, the States-General; by the weight of his name, his
conduct and address, the suppleness of his character, Prussia and the
princes of the Empire. It was he who raised their regiments, who
regulated their subventions, who appeased their quarrels. He was the
head and arm of the coalition. As potent as Cromwell, more of a king
than William III.; without affection or hatred, he justified the saying
of Machiavelli: "The universe belongs to the phlegmatic."
We will now revert to his no less celebrated wife, who, as Lady
Churchill and Duchess of Marlborough, so long and wholly swayed the mind
and ruled the court of Queen Anne. Brought up in such close intimacy
with the Princess, Lady Churchill had assumed from childhood an absolute
ascendancy over her mind. Anne was indolent and taciturn; she delighted
in the lively talk of her companion and bosom friend, and loved her in
spite of her haughty temperament, to which her own easy disposition
yielded without offering the slightest resistance. Married to a sullen
and insignificant husband, whose sole delight was centred in a crapulous
love of the bottle; she had lost her only son during his minority--had
seen her father, James II. dethroned, her brother, the Chevalier St.
George, proscribed, and, to the exclusion of that well-beloved brother,
she was compelled to leave her crown to a stranger--the Elector George
of Hanover, for whom she felt an invincible aversion. Anne confided all
her griefs to her favourite Mistress of the Robes, and by degrees an
ardent affection for her inseparable companion, which had in it all the
delicate tenderness of feminine friendship, sprung up in the Princess's
bosom. Such was the strength of the attachment that it was the desire of
the Princess that all distinction prescribed by etiquette should be
waived. She required that in their epistolary correspondence they should
treat each other as equals, under the assumed names of Mrs. Morley and
Mrs. Freeman. Lady Churchill chose the latter, which would be, she said,
the emblem of her "frank, open temper." Under these assumed names they
wrote frequently to each other to communicate their sentiments of joy,
anguish, hope or fear, according to the events of the day, and gave
themselves up unrestrictedly to the momentary impulse of their hearts.
"I both obtained and held the place in her service," the favourite goes
on to relate, "without the assistance of flattery--a charm which, in
truth, her (the Princess's) inclination for me, together with my
unwearied application to serve and amuse her rendered needless; but
which, had it been otherwise, my temper and turn of mind would never
have suffered me to employ. Young as I was when I first became this high
favourite, I laid it down as a maxim, that flattery was falsehood to my
trust, and ingratitude to my dearest friend.... From this rule I never
swerved: and though my temper and my notions in most things were widely
different from those of the Princess, yet, during a long course of
years, she was so far from being displeased with me for openly speaking
my sentiments, that she sometimes professed a desire, and even added her
command, that it should be always continued, promising never to be
offended at it, but to love me the better for my frankness."
CHAPTER II.
STATE OF PARTIES IN ACTION ON THE ACCESSION OF ANNE--HARLEY AND
BOLINGBROKE AIM AT OVERTHROWING THE SWAY OF THE DUCHESS--ABIGAIL HILL
BECOMES THE INSTRUMENT OF THE DUCHESS'S DOWNFALL.
THE year following that in which the Duke d'Anjou succeeded to the
throne of Spain saw Anne Queen of England.
On her accession Queen Anne had found three parties in action--the
Tories, the Whigs, and the Jacobites. The first asserting the
sovereignty of the royal prerogative; the second the extension of public
liberty; the last demanding the exclusion of the Protestant George of
Hanover, designated by the Commons as the Queen's heir, and the recall
of the Chevalier St. George, the Romanist son of James II., then an
exile in France, where Louis XIV. had welcomed him under the title of
James III.
Of these three parties, the last, who were desirous of a revolution with
a change of dynasty, naturally found themselves excluded from public
affairs; the Queen, facile and conciliating, divided the power of the
State between the two others, and chose a ministry comprising the most
eminent men among both Whigs and Tories.
Those statesmen jointly carried on the government for four years, after
which the opposition of their sentiments and interests became so violent
that it divided them. The Tories, representing the landed interest,
which had suffered during the war, clamoured for peace with all their
might; the Whigs, on the contrary, representing the monied interest,
had lent their funds to the State, and desired the continuance of
hostilities, as it enhanced the value of their capital. The Whigs
triumphed in this first struggle. They ejected, in the first instance,
three Tories from the Ministry, and afterwards obtained the dismissal of
all the rest--Mansel, Harley, and Bolingbroke, and then ruled without
division. They reckoned amongst their ranks the most illustrious men of
the day: Marlborough, the great soldier; the skilful financier,
Godolphin; the formidable speaker, Robert Walpole; the army, public
opinion, parliament, and even the very heart of the Queen, through the
Duchess of Marlborough, who, intoxicated with her almost unlimited sway,
no longer deigned to ask, but commanded.
The influence of the Duchess of Marlborough at the court of Queen Anne
was now well understood by the continental powers of Europe. When
England, in 1703, received a foreign potentate as her guest, the Duchess,
was, of all her subjects, the object peculiarly selected for
distinction. Charles, the second son of the Emperor of Austria, having
recently been proclaimed, at Vienna, King of Spain, in opposition to the
Duke of Anjou, completed his visits to sundry courts in Germany, whither
he had repaired to seek a wife, by paying his respects to Anne of
England. Anne received her royal ally with great courtesy at Windsor,
whither he was conducted by Marlborough, and there entertained with a
truly royal magnificence. All ranks of people crowded to see the young
monarch dine with the Queen in public, and his deportment and appearance
were greatly admired by the multitude, more especially by the fair sex,
whose national beauty was, on the other hand, highly extolled by
Charles. The Duchess of Marlborough, though no longer young, still
graced the court which she controlled. It was her office to hold the
basin of water after dinner to the Queen, for the royal hands to be
dipped, after the ancient fashion of the laver and ewer. Charles took
the basin from the fair Duchess's hand, and, with the gallantry of a
young and well-bred man, held it to the Queen; and in returning it to
the Duchess, he drew from his own finger a valuable ring and placed it
on that of the stately Sarah.
It was two years after this visit that Charles sent a letter of thanks
for the assistance granted him by the Queen against the French, which he
addressed to the Duchess of Marlborough, "as the person most agreeable
to her Majesty." The King might have added, as a partisan most
favourable to the aid afforded him, and most inimical to the sway of
France, which, by the will of the late King of Spain, Charles the
Second, had been unjustly extended over the Spanish monarchy.
At the time of the overthrow of the Tories, she had pushed obsession of
her royal mistress even as far as constraint. To the Whigs, who had
proscribed her brother, Anne preferred the Tories; but, in spite of
these sympathies the favourite had demanded the dismissal of the
Ministry, and the Queen had yielded, though not without the deepest
grief, to her imperious Mistress of the Robes.
Thus got rid of by an intrigue, the Tories, and at their head the two
celebrated statesmen, Harley and Bolingbroke, worked steadfastly in the
dark to regain power. Harley was a skilful and eloquent orator. He had
quitted the bar to enter parliament, and his suppleness as well as his
talents had rapidly carried him on to the Speakership and the Ministry.
He had specially directed his attention to finance, and passed for the
most skilful financier of his day. A man of wit and taste, he loved
books and manuscripts, and patronised the most illustrious writers of
the reign: Swift, the English Rabelais, Pope, Boileau, and Prior, the
Regnier of Great Britain. But he was not unjustly reproached for his
obstinacy of character, the changeableness of his opinions, his
proneness to descend to little means, and an unfortunate passion for
drink.[42]
[42] This habit of drinking had then invaded even the highest ranks
of English society, the Queen herself not being exempt. Walpole,
Harley's enemy, has traced a curious and tolerably accurate portrait
of him in his "Letters."
The other chief of the Tory party was Henry St. John, so well-known
under the name of Bolingbroke.[43] He descended from an old Norman
family allied to the royal house of Tudor. His grandfather, as though he
had foreseen the future, had bequeathed him the greater part of his
property, and Bolingbroke began the world under the happiest auspices of
birth and fortune. At twenty-six, after a career of youthful
licentiousness, he married and entered parliament. He had all the
necessary qualifications for playing a distinguished part therein: a
noble countenance, ready eloquence, an incredible capacity for work, a
mind which later astonished Voltaire, a memory so retentive that he
avoided reading mediocre books from the fear of retaining their
contents. At thirty, his lofty and copious oratory, unceasingly fed by
study of the ancient models, captivated both Lords and Commons. His
powerful and versatile genius embraced at once poetry and jurisprudence,
history and the _belles lettres_. He was associated, like Harley, with
the first writers in England--Pope, Prior, Swift, Dryden, even with
Addison himself, the Whig poet and essayist. He was one of those
consummate orators who, joining grace to eloquence, was the foremost
alike in pleasure or business. He was in the habit of saying that only
fools were unable to find or enjoy leisure. He possessed, in short, the
peculiar talents and vices which were destined later to immortalise as
well as disgrace Mirabeau.
[43] He was only created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712, but we give
him the name by which he is best known in history.
Uniting their talents and their rancour against the imperious and
uncompromising woman who had compassed their disgrace, Harley and
Bolingbroke, in their turn, had set about overthrowing the sway of the
Duchess. They craftily endeavoured to undermine, therefore, that
friendship which constituted her strength, and sought for a rival who
might supplant her in the Queen's heart. There was then at court a young
lady named Abigail Hill, the daughter of a bankrupt merchant of London,
who, when in poverty, had been taken by the hand by the Duchess of
Marlborough, to whom she was cousin, and through her influence appointed
bedchamber-woman to the Queen. By a singular chance, Abigail Hill was
also a cousin of Harley, who during his administration married her to
Masham, a dangling official of the royal household, who had been
indebted for his post rather to his birth and connections than any
personal merit.
Up to the period of Marlborough's brilliant victory of Ramilies (May,
1706), the influence of the Duchess over the mind of her sovereign was
not visibly lessened by her own indiscretion, or by the arts of her
opponents. From the moment of Anne's accession, she had flung herself
with ardour into politics. To dominate was her favourite passion. And
she imagined that she could decide affairs of State as easily as she
directed a petty intrigue, or suppressed a squabble within the interior
of the royal household. Instead of using the absolute sway she had over
the Queen with tact and moderation, she exercised it with an imprudent
audacity. Her party predilections were diametrically opposed to those of
Anne, who was sincerely attached to the principles of the Tories, and
who ardently desired to bring them into power. The Duchess did not allow
her a moment's repose until she had, by concession after concession,
surrounded herself by the chiefs of the Whig party, whom she at heart
detested. Hence an endless succession of piques, misunderstandings, and
jars between the royal Lady and her imperious Mistress of the Robes. The
glory and the important services of the Duke had, however, long deferred
the explosion of these secret resentments; but it was when Harley found
it impossible by any means to establish himself in the favour of the
Duchess, and gain her over to his interest, that he hit upon a plan
which succeeded to the utmost, as trifles often do when more important
engines fail. The one he used was ready to his hand in the person of the
bedchamber-woman, who had been placed about the Queen by the Duchess
herself. In a letter, supposed to have been addressed to Bishop Burnet,
the Duchess gives a brief account of this person, who was her kinswoman,
in explanation to his inquiry as to the first cause of her disagreement
with the Queen.
Abigail Hill--a name rendered famous from the momentous changes which
succeeded its introduction to the political world--was the appropriate
designation of the lowly, supple, and artful being on whose secret
offices Harley relied for the accomplishment of his plans. Mistress Hill
at this time held the post of dresser and chamber-woman to her Majesty.
The world assigned certain causes for the pains which the proud
favourite (the Duchess) had manifested to place her cousin in a post
where she might have easy access to the Queen's ear, and obtain her
confidence. The Duchess, it was said, was weary of her arduous
attendance upon a mistress whom she secretly despised. She had become
too proud to perform the subordinate duties of her office, and proposed
to relieve herself of some of them, by placing one on whom she could
entirely depend, as an occasional substitute in the performance of those
duties which even habit had not taught her to endure with patience.
Since after the elevation of the Duke, in consequence of the battle of
Blenheim, she had become a princess of the empire,[44] she was supposed
to consider herself too elevated to continue those services to which she
had been enured, first in the court of the amiable Anne Hyde, then in
that of the unhappy Mary of Modena, and since, near her too gracious
sovereign, the meek, but dissembling Anne.
[44] Lediard, vol. ii., p. 2.
The ungrateful kinswoman had been early acquainted with adversity, which
was the remote cause of her ultimate greatness. "Mrs. Masham," the
Duchess tells us, in her succinct narrative, "was the daughter of one
Hill, a merchant in the city, by a sister of my father. Our grandfather,
Sir John Jenyns, had two-and-twenty children, by which means the estate
of the family, which was reputed to be about four thousand pounds a
year, came to be divided into small parcels. Mrs. Hill had only £500 to
her fortune. Her husband lived very well for many years, as I have been
told, until turning projector, he brought ruin on himself and family.
But as this was long before I was born, I never knew there were such
people in the world till after the Princess Anne was married, and when
she lived at the Cockpit; at which time an acquaintance of mine came to
me and said, _she believed I did not know that I had relations who were
in want_, and she gave me an account of them. When she had finished her
story, I answered, _that indeed I had never heard before of any such
relations_, and immediately gave her out of my purse ten guineas for
their present relief, saying I would do what I could for them."
Not contented with conferring important benefits on Abigail's brothers
and sister, the Duchess tells us that even the _husband_ of Mrs. Masham
had several obligations to her. "It was at my instance," says the
indignant benefactress, "that he was first made a page, then an equerry,
and afterwards groom of the bedchamber to the Prince; for all which he
himself thanked me, as for favours procured by my means."
Towards the Queen, Mrs. Hill displayed a servile, humble, gentle, and
pliant manner, in singular contrast with that of the commanding and
haughty Duchess. Anne, accustomed to opposition and remonstrance, nay,
sometimes rebukes, upon certain points she had at heart, was delighted
to find that as regarded both religious opinions and politics, her lowly
attendant coincided with her. Mrs. Hill was, or pretended to be to serve
her purpose, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, if not a partizan of
the exiled Stuarts--subjects on which the Queen and the Duchess were
known to have frequent controversies, which sometimes degenerated into
angry disputes. Such was the woman whom the Tories set up to oppose and
undermine the influence of the redoubtable Sarah. Mrs. Masham was able
to give them, by means of her court-appointment, continual access to the
Queen. She had neither the wit nor the intelligence of her rival, but
she pleased Anne by the simplicity of her manners and the amenity of
her temper. Moreover, two powerful ties, political and religious, though
strangely contradictory in their sympathies, attached her to her royal
mistress. An ardent Jacobite, she, equally with the Queen, desired the
return of the Pretender; like her, too, she was a zealous Protestant.
Carrying out Harley's injunctions, Mrs. Masham strove secretly
to sap the power and credit of the Whigs at Court, by daily
representing to Queen Anne the disquieting influence of their chief,
Marlborough--master, as he was, of the parliament, the army, the
ministry, the court,--more sovereign, in fact, than the Queen herself;
and she recalled to mind that last dismissal of the Tories, so rudely
and imperiously dictated by the Duchess. The Queen, moved even to terror
by such advice, drew closer by degrees to her new confidante, and
shortly manifested towards her a favour which the Duchess of Marlborough
was the first to perceive. But instead of seeking to revive a friendship
still endeared to the Queen, the Duchess complained sharply of it being
shared. At the same time she heaped every species of contempt, sarcasm,
and insult upon Mrs. Masham, spread the vilest calumnies about her, and
then, perceiving the inutility of her efforts, directed the current of
her wrath against the throne. In the month of August, 1708, during a
thanksgiving service at St. Paul's on the occasion of the battle of
Oudenarde, Anne found that she had not put on her diamonds, and blamed
the Duchess for the omission, it belonging to her duty as Mistress of
the Robes. The quondam favourite made her Majesty a haughty reply; and
Anne, hurt at it, repeated her reproaches with greater warmth. The
Duchess, furious, imposed silence upon her royal mistress. "I don't ask
you for an answer," she exclaimed loud enough to be heard by the court
and congregation, "don't answer me." The Queen remained silent, dreading
further scandal, but she did not forget that day's incident.[45]
[45] The extent of her insolence towards the Queen on this occasion
is scarcely conceivable. "The Duchess gave her her gloves to hold,"
relates Walpole; "and, on taking them back, suddenly turned away her
head, as though the breath of her royal mistress had imparted a
disagreeable odour."
A year afterwards, during the autumn of 1709, another altercation took
place still more deplorable. Anne was in the habit of allowing a bottle
of wine to be daily carried to one of her laundrymaids who was ailing,
without previously asking leave of the Mistress of the Robes. This
coming to the knowledge of the Duchess, she ran after the Queen one day
as Anne was proceeding on her charitable errand, reproached her for
having usurped her functions, and behaved with such violence that the
lackeys at the bottom of the stairs could overhear what she said.
Indignant at this, Anne rose to leave the room, but the Duchess
prevented her by placing her back against the door, and, during an hour,
exhausted herself by launching invectives against her sovereign. Having
sufficiently vented her rage, the angry woman ended by saying that
doubtless she should never see her again, but she cared very little
about that. "I think," calmly replied Anne, "the seldomer the better."
The Duchess at length quitted the room, but from that day the links of
their hitherto close friendship were rudely broken, their correspondence
interrupted, and the Queen gave her entire confidence to Mrs. Masham.
The subtle Abigail was ever on the watch to closely observe the frequent
disagreements between her Majesty and the Mistress of the Robes, and did
not fail to turn them to skilful account. When the storm had subsided,
and the Queen poured into her friendly ear confidential complaints of
the absent Duchess, Abigail's sympathy, acquiescence, and responsive
condolences, were ever ready, and effected their purpose. The
lady-dresser thus gradually wormed herself into the Queen's affections,
and as gradually undermined what remained of friendly feeling between
her powerful kinswoman and their royal mistress. Every one at court had
become aware of the influence of the new favourite before the Duchess
herself perceived it; but it was not in the power of the artful
relative, nor of her tool, the Queen, much longer to blind the woman
whom they had, with true vulgarity of mind, gloried in deceiving.[46]
[46] MSS. Brit. Mus., Coxe Papers, vol. xliv.
From the time of Mrs. Masham's admittance to close attendance on the
Queen, the Duchess seemed in a constant state of irritation and
annoyance. Her letters to Anne showed the mortification and vexation she
endured, and prove the petty and ungrateful conduct of the
bedchamber-woman, whose hold on the Queen's regard was sustained by a
thousand mean and paltry instances of treachery to her benefactress.
That Queen Anne, who had once been really attached to a woman like the
Duchess of Marlborough, could condescend to replace her by such a rival
is not a little surprising, and shows the true bent of her character to
have been such as to render her unworthy of the friendship of an honest
and high-minded woman. That the Duchess herself entered into details of
petty injuries, and descends to justify herself, cannot be wondered at;
for such subjects were forced upon her, and much as it galled her
feelings to be obliged to notice what she held in contempt, still she
had no other course to pursue.
At length, the Duchess perceived clearly enough that she had been
hoodwinked in certain matters by the Queen and Mrs. Masham, and that
without any reasonable cause for resorting to mystery or deception.
Having discovered that not only was Mrs. Hill's marriage known to the
Queen, though she had denied any knowledge of the event, but that her
Majesty had been herself at the wedding, and given a large dower to the
bride, the Duchess immediately wrote to Mrs. Masham, to desire an
explanation of her reasons for concealing so important an occurrence
from one whom she had every reason to consider her only friend. The
cautious answer which she received to her question was dictated, as she
easily perceived, by no other than Harley, whose tool she now saw, too
late, her unworthy cousin was; and it became sufficiently plain that her
empire over the mind of the weak Queen was gone.
The Duchess was, whatever her faults, upright, honest, truthtelling, and
fearless; and _she_ was long before she could suspect the treachery and
meanness of a dependent; and still longer in believing that the woman
who had for so many years been her pupil, and had been accustomed to her
frankness, could condescend to a low cabal, and, displacing her from her
councils, solace herself with the society of a person so immeasurably
her inferior.
The betrayed Mistress of the Robes could now trace the whole system of
deception which had been carried on to her injury for a considerable
time; her relative and former dependent being the chief agent--her
sovereign the accomplice. She could account for the interest which
Harley had now acquired at court by means of this new instrument. She
could explain to her astonished and irritated mind certain incidents,
which had seemed of little moment when they occurred, but which
afforded an unquestionable confirmation of all that she had learned.
When the Duchess could no longer doubt the mortifying truth, she
communicated the fact to her friend, Lord Godolphin, and to her husband,
then abroad. Marlborough wearied with these, as he considered them,
petty dissensions, wrote a somewhat stern letter to his wife. The great
soldier was annoyed and distressed at the details of paltry wrongs which
he was obliged to hear, and grown impatient, forgot that sometimes,--
"Dire events from little causes spring;"
he did not contemplate his own, his wife's, and his friend's disgrace,
from the contemptible quarrels among the women about the court.
"If you have good reasons," he writes, "for what you write of the
kindness and esteem the Queen has for Mrs. Masham and Mr. Harley, my
opinion should be, that my Lord Treasurer and I should tell her Majesty
what is good for herself; and if that will not prevail, to be quiet, and
to let Mr. Harley and Mrs. Masham do what they please; for I own I am
quite tired, and if the Queen can be safe I shall be glad. I hope the
Lord Treasurer will be of my mind; and then we shall be much happier
than by being in a perpetual struggle."
At length the mask of affected humility assumed by Mrs. Masham was
thrown off entirely; and, confident in the support of her royal
mistress, the upstart favourite exhibited all the scorn and insolence
which was in her nature. The Duchess expatiates with feminine
pertinacity upon the stinging impertinences and insulting condescensions
she had to endure from her lately exalted cousin. One instance she
dwells on with bitter recollection, for it was the first time the minion
of the Queen had dared to show her how little she regarded her.
When having with difficulty obtained an interview with Mrs. Masham, the
Duchess upbraided her with her treachery, and observed, that she was
certain no good intentions towards herself could have influenced her
actions, Abigail replied:--
"... very gravely, that she was sure the Queen, who had always loved me
extremely, would _always be very kind to me_. I was some minutes before
I could recover from the surprise with which so extraordinary an answer
struck me. To see a woman whom I had raised out of the dust put on such
a superior air, and to hear her assure me, by way of consolation, that
the Queen would always be very kind to me!--I was stunned to hear her
say so strange a thing!"
The Duchess of Marlborough was now, therefore, at open variance with her
cousin. Towards her Majesty she stood in a predicament the most curious
and unprecedented that perhaps ever existed between sovereign and
subject. The amused and astonished court beheld Anne cautiously creeping
out of that subjection in which the Duchess had, according to her
enemies, long held the timid sovereign.
A confidential friend of the Duchess, Mr. Mainwaring, remarks of her, in
one of his letters, that she was totally deficient in that "part of
craft which Mr. Hobbes very prettily calls crooked wisdom."[47] Apt, as
she herself expresses it, "to tumble out her mind," her openness and
honesty were appreciated, when at an advanced age, and after she had run
the career of five courts--by that experienced judge, the Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, who often presumed upon the venerable Duchess's
candour in telling her unpalatable truths, which none but the honest
could have borne to hear. It was this uprightness and singleness of mind
which rendered the Duchess unwilling to believe in the duplicity and the
influence of her cousin. Warned of it by Mr. Mainwaring, it was not
until she found in the Queen a defender of Mrs. Masham's secret
marriage, that the Duchess was roused into suspicion. It was then that
she communicated her conviction to Lord Godolphin and to Marlborough,
and besought their advice and assistance.
[47] Private Correspondence, vol. i., p. 105.
The Duke had just then prepared measures for carrying on the war, and
had completed every arrangement for his voyage into Holland; the only
thing which detained him in England was, says Cunningham, "the quarrel
among the women about the court." He desired his often-offended Duchess
"to put an end to those controversies, and to avoid all occasions of
suspicion and disgust; and not to suffer herself to grow insolent upon
the favour of fortune; "otherwise," said he, "I shall hardly be able
hereafter to excuse your fault, or to justify my own actions, however
meritorious." To which the Duchess replied, "I will take care of those
things, so that you need not be in any fear about me; but whoever shall
think to remove me out of the Queen's favour, let them take care lest
they remove themselves."
It was not long before Marlborough perceived that the Duchess was not
mistaken in her apprehensions; nor before he became painfully aware of
the fact, that services of the greatest magnitude are often not to be
weighed against slights and petty provocations.
Queen Anne, however, had some pangs of conscience, in spite of her joy
at being emancipated from the thraldom of her haughty Mistress of the
Robes, in ill-treating the great general who had filled her reign with
glory; but the uninterrupted gossip which she delighted now to indulge
in with her waiting-woman compensated for all.
Soon after Marlborough had won the sanguinary battle of Malplaquet, the
celebrated trial of the noted Doctor Sacheverell took place; on which
occasion an incident occurred which completed the downfall of the
Duchess. The prosecution of Sacheverell had been advised by the Duke,
lest he should preach him and his party out of the kingdom.
CHAPTER III.
SUCCESS OF THE CABAL, ETC.
THE result of the trial of Sacheverell made Harley and the favourite
sure of the temper of the nation, and they resolved to hesitate no
longer. The cabal had succeeded, and the Queen, a tool in the hands of
others, by degrees gave up every appearance of regard for the Duchess,
or of gratitude to the Duke. Though still fighting his country's battles
and gaining immortal honours, the cabal sought to overwhelm him with
unkindness and mortification at home. On the death of Lord Essex, the
Queen was urged to give the Duke's regiment to Major Hill, Mrs. Masham's
brother. Marlborough, highly indignant, insisted on Abigail being
dismissed, or else he would resign; but the efforts of Godolphin and
other friends accommodated the matter, and he was contented with the
disposal of the regiment being left with him. To prove, as it were, the
influence of the favourite, the Queen soon after gave Hill a pension of
£1,000 a year; and she made the Duke consent to raise him to the rank of
brigadier.
It was Harley's plan to overthrow the Ministry by degrees; and when Lord
Godolphin was dismissed from office, the triumph of the adverse party
was complete. Thus fell the most able, and perhaps the most patriotic
administration that England had possessed since the days of Elizabeth.
It fell by disunion in itself, by the imprudent impeachment of a
contemptible divine, and by the intrigues of the bedchamber, where a
weak woman, whom the constitution had invested with power, was
domineered over by one attendant and wheedled and flattered by another.
It was thus that, after seven-and-twenty years' service and professed
friendship, Anne emancipated herself from all obligations, and shook off
the yoke which pressed too heavily on her mind, regardless of the
confusion into which her weak compliance with interested persons cast
the country.
It was now that all the malice which had been long repressed burst out,
and poured forth its vengeance on the disgraced favourite. Among other
libellers in the service of the new Ministry Swift employed his great
talents to cover her with ridicule and obloquy. In the celebrated
journal called "The Examiner," his unjust insinuations must have been
even more galling than his abuse. He represents the Duke and Duchess as
extortioners and dissipators of the public money, insatiable in their
avarice, and greedily swallowing all that they could get into their
power, disposing of places, and seizing on rewards in a manner the most
odious. "Even the Duke's courage," says Smollet, "was called in
question, and this consummate general was represented as the lowest of
mankind." Yet he did not resign; for Godolphin and the Whigs, the
Emperor, and all the allies implored him to retain the command of the
army, as otherwise all their hopes would be gone.
The clamour raised by Dr. Sacheverell's affair, not less than the
acrimonious temper of the Duchess, contributed to ruin the Whigs in the
Queen's favour, who was present _incognita_ during every debate. During
the course of Sacheverell's trial, the government advocate, in order to
establish the true Whig doctrine, calumniated by the Doctor, uttered
words which seemed revolutionary to the royal ears. It will be readily
understood that the theory of absolute obedience, preached by
Sacheverell and adopted by certain Tories, was more consonant with the
Queen's taste than the maxims of the Whigs, who asserted the dogma of
the sovereignty of nations and recognised their right of insurrection
against royalty. Anne was a zealous Protestant, and sincerely attached
to the Anglican Church, of which she was the head. She blamed the
tolerance of the Whigs, and thought with Sacheverell that it was
necessary to defend the Church both against Popery and indifferentism.
The Tories fomented these dissensions in an underhand way, turning them
dexterously against their enemies. The negotiations then set on foot in
Holland occurred still more favourably to advance their projects. Anne
had a horror of bloodshed: since her accession she had not permitted a
single political execution. She sighed deeply on hearing of the
continual levies for the war, and shed tears on receiving the long lists
of dead and wounded from the Low Countries. One day, having to sign
certain papers relative to the army, her tears were seen to blot the
paper, as she exclaimed, "Great God! when will this horrible effusion of
blood cease?" The Tories, who, like herself, wished for peace with all
their hearts, adroitly fostered her grief. With her, they deplored the
butchery of Malplaquet, the increase of taxation, the misery entailed by
the interminable campaigns, and repeated that it was time to put an end
to the sufferings of the people. Such hideous carnage seemed at last to
cry aloud to Heaven for cessation. Pity and conscience, so long stifled
and tyrannised over, claimed at length to be heard. Weighing well also a
consideration no less potent over the Queen's heart, they represented
that the Whigs were her brother's most implacable enemies--that they
had set a price upon his head--that they (the Whigs) would never
recognise, as her successor, any other king than the Elector of Hanover;
that they (the Tories), on the contrary, felt neither repulsion nor
hatred for the Pretender, and that if the good of the country demanded
it, they would willingly favour his return. Finally they dwelt upon the
odious tyranny of the Duchess of Marlborough,[48] especially in the
scenes enacted at St. Paul's and Windsor, and promised the Queen to
deliver her from a woman whom she had ceased to love, and who had begun
to terrify her.
[48] Bolingbroke says so in express terms: "The true cause (of the
change of Ministry) was her discontent," &c.--Secret Memoirs of Lord
Bolingbroke, p. 18.
Lending a willing ear to such arguments, Anne gave herself up entirely
to Mrs. Masham, and the misunderstanding between the Queen and the
Duchess had become public, when a fresh outbreak of violence on the part
of the latter precipitated her disgrace.
On the occasion of a christening, at which Marlborough was to stand
godfather, the Duchess vowed that she would never consent to it if the
child were to bear the name of Anne, and she made use of an epithet
which neither a queen nor a woman could ever pardon. The word was duly
reported at St. James's. Anne heard it with the deepest indignation, and
so gross an outrage extinguished any latent spark of tenderness left in
her heart. The downfall of the Duchess and the Whigs was resolved upon.
Recognising her error when too late, the Duchess requested an audience
of the Queen, in the hope of exculpating herself. Anne, who dreaded her
furious violence, replied that she could justify herself by letter, and
to avoid the chance of an interview, left London for Kensington Palace.
Explicit, however, as was this step, it did not stop the Duchess. She
despatched a letter to the Queen, in which she excused herself, on the
score of the impossibility of writing such a justification, and
requested an interview--a proposition the most alarming conceivable to
the poor Queen, on account of the advantage which her antagonist
possessed in powers of tongue. She therefore parried it as long as
possible, and would evidently have not assented at all, had not the
Duchess extorted the permission by stratagem. Unfortunately, however,
for her success, she had told the Queen, in a letter which preceded it,
that she only desired to be seen and be heard by her Majesty. There was
no necessity, she said, for the Queen to answer. The Queen, in fact, had
answered so many of her tormentor's letters in the negative, that the
Duchess, not foreseeing what would be the consequence of this general
preclusion of response in her Majesty's favour, was resolved to prevent
further epistolary acknowledgment by following up her last letter in
person. She says, in the foolish "Account" which she gave to the world
of her "Conduct," and which had the reverse effect of what she intended
(which is the usual case with violent relaters of their own story):--
"I followed this letter to Kensington, and by that means prevented the
Queen's writing again to me, as she was preparing to do. The page who
went in to acquaint the Queen that I was come to wait upon her stayed
longer than usual; long enough, it is to be supposed, to give time to
deliberate whether the favour of admission should be granted, and to
settle the measure of behaviour if I were admitted. But, at last, he
came out and told me I might go in."
The Queen was alone, engaged in writing. "I did not open your letter
till just now," she said, "and I was going to write to you."
"Was there anything in it, Madam, that you had a mind to answer?"
"I think," continued poor Anne, who even now endeavoured to stop the
coming torrent of words, "I think there is nothing you can have to say
but you may write it."
But as this was the very thing over which the Duchess thought she had
triumphed, she must have heard the proposal with contemptuous delight;
and she proceeded accordingly to pour forth her complaints.
"I cannot write such things," exclaimed the haughty Sarah, alluding to
the grossness of the language attributed to her, adding, "Won't your
Majesty give me leave to tell it you?"
"Whatever you have to say, you may write it," was the royal answer.
"I believe your Majesty never did so hard a thing to anybody as to
refuse to hear them speak--even the meanest person that ever desired
it."
"Yes," said the Queen, "I _do_ bid people put what they have to say in
writing, when I have a mind to it."
"I have nothing to say, Madam," replied the Duchess, "upon the subject
that is so uneasy to you. That person (Lady Masham) is not, that I know
of, at all concerned in the account that I would give you."
"You can put it into writing," reiterated the Queen, who, desirous at
any cost of avoiding a quarrel, which, from the temper of her quondam
favourite, seemed inevitable, repeated the same words several times,
purposely interrupting the Duchess, who was already beginning to defend
herself.
In spite of the Queen's injunctions, Sarah continued to affirm that she
was no more capable of making such disrespectful mention of her Majesty
than she was of killing her own children, to which Anne coolly remarked,
"There are, doubtless, many lies told on 'both sides.'"
During a whole hour, nevertheless, the Duchess strove to establish her
innocence by protestations or prayers. But the Queen's heart was
irrevocably closed. Desirous of terminating an interview that grew more
and more embarrassing, and remembering the scene in St. Paul's, when her
Mistress of the Robes had told her to be silent and make no answer, and
that lately, in writing to her, the Duchess had said that she required
no answer, or that she would not trouble the Queen to give her one, Anne
said, "You did not require an answer from me, and I will give you none."
This frigid resistance exasperated the Duchess, who, astounded to find
herself caught in her own trap, and taken at her word, declared, of
course, that the phrase was not intended to imply what it did; but the
Queen, she says, repeated it again and again, "without ever receding."
The Duchess protesting that her only design was to clear herself, the
Queen repeated over and over again, "You desired no answer, and shall
have none."
The angry but still politic Sarah next passed from prayers to
reproaches. "I will leave the room," said Anne, with dignity.
"I then begged to know if her Majesty would tell me some other time."
"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."
On hearing these words, which left no further hope, the Duchess burst
into tears; then, as though ashamed of her weakness, she withdrew into
the gallery to suppress her passionate fit of weeping. Returning after
the lapse of a few minutes, she tried a last and decisive application:
"I have been thinking," said the Duchess, "whilst I sat there, that if
your Majesty came to the Castle at Windsor, where I heard you were soon
expected, it would not be easy to see me in public now, I am afraid. I
will therefore take care to avoid being at the Lodge at the same time,
to prevent any unreasonable clamour or stories that might originate in
my being so near your Majesty without waiting on you."
"Oh," said the Queen, promptly, "you may come to me at the Castle: it
will not make me uneasy."
The Duchess, however, still persevered. "I then appealed to her Majesty
again, if she did not herself know, &c. And whether she did not know me
to be of a temper incapable of, &c."
"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."
Finding Anne thus inflexible, the Duchess rose up in a towering rage at
having vainly humiliated herself, and gave vent to her passion in a
storm of recrimination.
"This usage," concludes the Duchess, "was so severe, and these words, so
often repeated, were so shocking, &c, that I could not conquer myself,
but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke to the Queen in my
life; and that was, that I was confident her Majesty would suffer for
such an instance of inhumanity."
She quitted the presence, in fact, exclaiming, "God will punish you,
Madam, for your inhumanity."
"That only concerns myself," drily answered the Queen.
"And thus ended," says the Duchess, "this remarkable conversation, the
last I ever had with her Majesty." (April 6th, 1710.)
Such, too, was the end of a thirty years' friendship, and the last
interview between Anne and her once-cherished favourite.[49] The Duchess
remained in the household for a short time afterwards, but never saw her
royal mistress save on public occasions; and from that day the Queen
never spoke to her again.
[49] Private Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough, vol. 1,
p. 301.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DISGRACE OF THE DUCHESS.
THE disgrace of the Duchess involved the fall of the Whigs. A few days
after the scene at Kensington, Anne named two Tories to court
appointments, and next dismissed successively all the Whigs from the
Ministry--Boyle, Russell, Godolphin, and Walpole. They were replaced by
Bolingbroke, Harley, the Earl of Jersey, and the Dukes of Ormonde and
Shrewsbury. Anne spared only the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough--not
from compassion but through fear. The irate Mistress of the Robes drove
about London daily in her splendid equipage, and repeated at every visit
she made that she would publish the Queen's letters, and that some day
the infamous motives which had brought about her disgrace would be
disclosed. Whilst the timid Anne grew terrified at these menaces, the
formidable Sarah remained at St. James's, holding her head aloft and
dealing out bitter denunciations against her enemies the victorious
Tories.
When the Duke of Marlborough came back from Flanders, during the
Christmas holidays, he met with the coldest reception possible. The
usual motion of thanks to him had been dropped by his friends for fear
of its being negatived by the Tory majority. The new ministers, however,
waited upon him, promising that he should have all his present military
commands, and also the nomination of the generals who were to serve
under him. His wife had never ceased making efforts at court, by means
of "_one_ person" there, who happened to be in good favour with the
Queen, and to whom the Duchess wrote long accounts of the past,
justifying herself, and exposing the ingratitude, as well as malice, of
her enemies. All these accounts that gentleman read to Anne; but he
might as well have read them to a stock or stone. According to her
Grace, the Queen never offered a word, good or ill, except on one
particular point. Lady Masham and Harley had employed Swift and other
writers to accuse the Duchess of having grossly cheated her royal
mistress of vast sums of money; and on that occasion her Majesty was
pleased to say, "Everybody knows cheating is not the Duchess of
Marlborough's crime." Where there was so much received in what was
deemed an honourable as well as regular way,[50] there was no great
temptation to embezzle and cheat; and the Duchess was in all respects a
higher-minded person than her husband, in whom love of money became at
last the ruling passion to such a degree as to make him stoop to all
kinds of mean and paltry actions. The Duchess, as Mistress of the Robes,
boasts that she had dressed the Queen for nine years for thirty-two
thousand and some odd hundred pounds; and she asks if ever Queen of
England had spent so little in robes! "It evidently appears," says her
Grace, "that, by my economy in the nine years I served her Majesty, I
saved her near ninety thousand pounds[51] in clothes alone.
Notwithstanding this," continues the Duchess, "my Lord-Treasurer
(Harley) has thought fit to order the _Examiner_ (Swift) to represent me
in print as a pick-pocket all over England; and for that honest
service, and some others, her Majesty has lately made him a Dean."
[50] The Marlborough family were said to be in the receipt of
£90,000 a year, including all their places and pensions.
[51] Anne's sister, Queen Mary, had been charged £12,600 for her
dresses one year, and £11,000 another year.
Just at this moment, the Duchess thought herself obliged to appear at
Court "on account of some new clothes which, as Groom of the Stole, she
had by her mistress's orders bought for her;" but the Queen charged the
only friend her Grace had there to advise her, as from himself, not to
come. It was scarcely possible, after this to think of retaining her
office; and it appears that the Duchess, of her own accord, sent in her
resignation. Lord Dartmouth, however, gives another version of the
matter, as follows:--
Emboldened and urged by her Ministers, Anne requested Marlborough to
demand the return of the golden Keys which were the symbols of her
office. The Duke, who dreaded the consequences of such a step, entreated
the Queen to wait till the end of the campaign, promising that he would
then retire with his wife. But Anne was driven to extremity by calumnies
that reddened her cheek with shame, and she demanded the immediate
return of the Keys. Marlborough threw himself on his knees, and
entreated her to give him at least ten days' respite. Anne consented to
three days, and that interval having expired, renewed her commands. The
Duke hastened to the palace, and demanded to be ushered into the
presence. But Anne refused to receive him until she received back her
gold Keys from the Duchess, and Marlborough at length resigned himself
to encounter his wife's anger. On reaching home, he told the Mistress of
the Robes that she must give up the golden insignia of office, which she
at first refused; but on his persistently intimating the necessity of
her resignation, she threw her gold Key on the floor, and told him to do
what he liked with it; and that then Marlborough caught it up and
carried it to the Queen.[52]
[52] The Duchess herself says, "When, after a very successful
campaign, the Duke of Marlborough was returned to London, the Queen
most readily accepted the resignation that _he_ carried _from me_ of
my offices."--_Account._
About one point there is no doubt--Anne accepted the resignation with
eagerness and joyfulness, and divided the Duchess's Court places between
Lady Masham and the Duchess of Somerset. It astonished most people to
see the Duke consent to serve when his wife was dismissed--to see him
continue to hold command of the troops under the Ministry which had
sprung out of a bed-chamber squabble, and which was sure to thwart him
in all his measures. His enemies have generally accounted for this by
assuming that the Duke's avarice was at the bottom of it; but his lady
assigns very different reasons. "The Duke of Marlborough," she says,
"notwithstanding an infinite variety of mortifications, by which it was
endeavoured to _make_ him resign his commission, that there might be a
pretence to raise an outcry against him, as having quitted his Queen's
and his country's service merely because he could not govern in the
cabinet as well as in the field, continued to serve yet another
campaign. All his friends here, moved by a true concern for the public
welfare, pressed him to it, the confederates called him with the utmost
importunity, and Prince Eugene entreated him to come with all the
earnestness and passion that could be expressed." These were certainly
powerful inducements, and they may have mingled (together with that
passionate fondness for a fine army which every good general must
contract) with Marlborough's love of money.
Mr. Hallam says, with strong and proper feeling, "It seems rather a
humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest prince enjoys even in
a limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe should have been changed
by nothing more noble than the insolence of one waiting woman and the
cunning of another. It is true that this was effected by throwing the
weight of the crown into the scale of a powerful _faction_; yet the
House of Bourbon would probably not have reigned beyond the Pyrenees but
for Sarah and Abigail at Queen Anne's toilette."[53]
[53] Hallam--Constitutional History.
The Queen, altogether unmindful of her former warm attachment to her
Mistress of the Robes, overjoyed to find herself free, wrote, with her
own hand, the dismissal of the Duchess, and gave herself up to her
enemies.
The Duchess, quite beside herself with chagrin and fury, only thought of
some means or other of revenge. As a first step she demanded payment of
the arrears of her pension--a boon she had with great high-mindedness
refused on Anne's accession. But that was not all. When she was about to
quit the sphere of her palace triumphs, she gave directions for the
removal of the locks from the doors and the marble chimney-pieces she
had put up at her own cost in her apartments. "It is all very well,"
remarked the Queen to her Secretary of State, "but tell the Duchess if
she demolishes the fittings-up of my palace, she may depend upon it that
I will not build hers at Woodstock." The Duchess consented to abandon
the chimney-pieces, and withdrew at once to her country seat, near St.
Alban's, where she lived in a style of great magnificence.