CHAPTER I

[Illustration: PRINCESS ANNE OF DENMARK.

ENGRAVED BY H. DAVIDSON, FROM MEZZOTINT BY JOHN SMITH, AFTER THE

PAINTING BY W. WISSING AND I. VANDERVAART.]

HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

OF THE REIGN OF

QUEEN ANNE

BY

MRS. M. O. W. OLIPHANT

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1894

COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1894,

BY THE CENTURY CO.

THE DE VINNE PRESS.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE PRINCESS ANNE 1

CHAPTER II

THE QUEEN AND THE DUCHESS 43

CHAPTER III

THE AUTHOR OF “GULLIVER” 83

CHAPTER IV

THE AUTHOR OF “ROBINSON CRUSOE” 129

CHAPTER V

ADDISON, THE HUMORIST 167

INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PRINCESS ANNE OF DENMARK FRONTISPIECE

Engraved by H. DAVIDSON, from mezzotint by JOHN SMITH, after the

painting by W. WISSING and I. VANDERVAART.

FACING PAGE

ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK 4

Engraved by T. JOHNSON, after the painting by Sir PETER LELY, in possession

of Earl Spencer.

JOHN EVELYN 8

Engraved by E. HEINEMANN, after copperplate by F. BARTOLOZZI in the

British Museum.

PRINCE GEORGE OF DENMARK 12

Engraved by R. A. MULLER, from mezzotint in the British Museum by

JOHN SMITH, after the painting by Sir GODFREY KNELLER.

CHARLES II. 16

Engraved by T. JOHNSON, after original painting by SAMUEL COOPER, in

the gallery of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon.

HENRY COMPTON, BISHOP OF LONDON 20

Engraved from life by DAVID LOGGAN, from print in the British Museum.

Engraved by E. HEINEMANN.

JAMES II. IN HIS CORONATION ROBES 24

Engraved by T. JOHNSON, after the painting by Sir PETER LELY, in possession

of the Duke of Northumberland.

MARY, PRINCESS OF ORANGE 28

Engraved by C. A. POWELL, after the painting by Sir PETER LELY, in possession

of the Earl of Crawford.

QUEEN MARY OF MODENA 32

Engraved by CHARLES STATE, after the painting by Sir PETER LELY, in

possession of Earl Spencer.

WILLIAM III. 40

From copperplate engraving by CORNELIS VERMEULEN, after the Painting

by ADRIAAN VANDER WERFF.

THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER 44

Engraved by R. G. TIETZE, From mezzotint by JOHN SMITH, after the painting

by Sir GODFREY KNELLER.

GARDEN FRONT, HAMPTON COURT 48

Drawn by JOSEPH PENNELL. Engraved by J. F. JUNGLING.

THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER 52

Engraved by R. A. MULLER, from miniature by LEWIS CROSSE, in the collection

at Windsor Castle; by special permission of Queen Victoria.

QUEEN ANNE 56

From copperplate engraving by PIETER VAN GUNST, after the painting by

Sir GODFREY KNELLER.

WINDSOR TERRACE, LOOKING WESTWARD 60

Engraved by J. W. EVANS, after aquatint by P. SANDBY.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH 64

Engraved by J. H. E. WHITNEY, from an engraving by PIETER VAN GUNST,

after painting by ADRIAAN VANDER WERFF.

THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH 72

Engraved by R. G. TIETZE, from mezzotint after painting by Sir GODFREY

KNELLER.

BISHOP GILBERT BURNET 80

Engraved by R. A. MULLER, from mezzotint in the British Museum by

JOHN SMITH, after the painting by JOHN RILEY.

JONATHAN SWIFT 84

From photograph of original Marble Bust of Swift by ROUBILLIAC

(1695-1762), now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

MOOR PARK, RESIDENCE OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE AND OF

SWIFT 88

Drawn by CHARLES HERBERT WOODBURY. Engraved by R. VARLEY.

DEAN SWIFT 92

From copperplate engraving by PIERRE FOURDRINIER, after a painting by

CHARLES JERVAS.

STELLA’S COTTAGE, ON THE BOUNDARY OF THE MOOR PARK

ESTATE 96

Drawn by CHARLES HERBERT WOODBURY. Engraved by S. DAVIS.

HESTER JOHNSON, SWIFT’S “STELLA,” PAINTED FROM LIFE BY

MRS. DELANY, ON THE WALL OF THE TEMPLE AT DELVILLE, AND

ACCIDENTALLY DESTROYED 100

Engraved by M. HAIDER, from copy of the original by HENRY MACMANUS,

R. H. A., now in possession of Professor Dowden.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 104

Engraved by R. A. MULLER, from an engraving in the British Museum, after

a painting by Sir PETER LELY.

DELANY’S HOUSE AT DELVILLE, WHERE SWIFT STAYED 108

Drawn by HARRY FENN. Engraved by C. A. POWELL.

MARLEY ABBEY, THE RESIDENCE OF VANESSA, NOW CALLED

SELBRIDGE ABBEY 112

Drawn by HARRY FENN. Engraved by R. C. COLLINS.

GEORGE, EARL OF BERKELEY 120

From an unfinished engraving, in the British Museum, attributed to DAVID

LOGGAN.

ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN 124

Drawn by HARRY FENN. Engraved by C. A. POWELL.

DANIEL DEFOE 136

Engraved by C. A. POWELL, after copperplate by M. VAN DER GUCHT, in

the British Museum.

CHURCH OF ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE, WHERE DEFOE IS SUPPOSED

TO HAVE BEEN BAPTIZED 144

Drawn by HARRY FENN. Engraved by H. E. SYLVESTER.

ROBERT HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD 152

Engraved by JOHN P. DAVIS, after the original painting by Sir GODFREY

KNELLER, in the British Museum.

JOSEPH ADDISON 176

Engraved by T. JOHNSON, from mezzotint by JEAN SIMON, after painting by

Sir GODFREY KNELLER.

SIDNEY, EARL OF GODOLPHIN 192

Engraved by PETER AITKEN, from mezzotint by JOHN SMITH, in British

Museum. Painted by Sir GODFREY KNELLER.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE

CHAPTER I

THE PRINCESS ANNE

The reign of Queen Anne is one of the most illustrious in English

history. In literature it has been common to call it the Augustan age.

In politics it has all the interest of a transition period, less

agitating, but not less important, than the actual era of revolution. In

war, it is, with the exception of the great European wars of the

beginning of this century, the most glorious for the English arms of any

that have elapsed since Henry V. set up his rights of conquest over

France. Opinions change as to the advantage of such superiorities; and,

still more, as to the glory which is purchased by bloodshed; yet,

according to the received nomenclature, and in the language of all the

ages, the time of Marlborough cannot be characterized as anything but

glorious. A great general, statesmen of eminence, great poets, men of

letters of the first distinction--these are points in which this period

cannot easily be excelled. It pleases the fancy to step historically

from queen to queen, and to find in each a center of national greatness

knitting together the loose threads of the great web. “The spacious

times of great Elizabeth” bulk larger and more magnificently in history

than those of Anne, but the two eras bear a certain balance which is

agreeable to the imagination. And we can scarcely help regretting that

the great age of Wordsworth and Scott, Byron and Wellington, should not

have been deferred long enough to make the reign of Victoria the third

noblest period of modern English history. But time has here balked us.

This age is not without its own greatness, but it is not the next in

national sequence to that of Anne, as Anne’s was to that of Elizabeth.

In the reigns of both these queens this country was trembling between

two dynasties, scarcely yet removed from the convulsion of great

political changes, and feeling that nothing but the life of the

sovereign on the throne stood between it and unknown rulers and dangers

to come. The deluge, in both cases, was ready to be let loose after the

termination of the life of the central personage in the state. And thus

the reign of Anne, like that of Elizabeth, was to her contemporaries the

only piece of solid ground amid a sea of evil chances. What was to come

after was clear to none.

But in the midst of its agitations and all its exuberant life--the wars

abroad, the intrigues at home, the secret correspondences, the plots,

the breathless hopes and fears--it is half ludicrous, half pathetic, to

turn to the harmless figure of Queen Anne in the center of the scene--a

fat, placid, middle-aged woman full of infirmities, with little about

her of the picturesque yet artificial brightness of her time, and no

gleam of reflection to answer to the wit and genius which have made her

age illustrious. A monarch has the strangest fate in this respect: as

long as she or he lives, the conscious center of everything whose notice

elates and elevates the greatest; but as soon as his day is over, a mere

image of state visible among his courtiers only as some unthought-of

lackey or faded gentleman usher throws from his little literary lantern

a ray of passing illumination upon him. The good things of their lives

are thus almost counterbalanced by the insignificance of their

historical position. Anne was one of the sovereigns who may, without

too great a strain of hyperbole, be allowed to have been beloved in her

day. She did nothing to repel the popular devotion. She was the best of

wives, the most sadly disappointed of childless mothers. She made

pecuniary sacrifices to the weal of her kingdom such as few kings or

queens have thought of making. And she was a Stuart, Protestant, and

safe, combining all the rights of the family with those of orthodoxy and

constitutionalism, without even so much offense as lay in a foreign

accent. There was indeed nothing foreign about her, a circumstance in

her favor which she shared with the other great English queen regnant,

who, like her, was English on both sides of the lineage.

All these points made her popular and, it might be permissible to say,

beloved. If she had been indifferent to her father’s deprivation, she

had not at least shocked popular feeling by any immediate triumph in

succeeding him, as Mary had done; and her mild Englishism was delightful

to the people after grim William with his Dutch accent and likings. But

the historians have not been kind to Anne. They have lavished ill names

upon her: a stupid woman,--“a very weak woman, always governed blindly

by some female favorite,”--nobody has a civil word to say for her. Yet

there is a mixture of the amusing and the tragic in the appearance of

this passive figure seated on high, presiding over all the great events

of the epoch, with her humble feminine history, her long anguish of

motherhood, her hopes so often raised and so often shattered, her

stifled family feeling, her profound and helpless sense of misfortune.

There is one high light in the picture, however, though but one, and it

comes from one of the rarest and highest sentiments of humanity: the

passion of friendship, of which women are popularly supposed to be

incapable, but which never existed in more complete and disinterested

exhibition than in the bosom of this poor queen. It is sad that it

should have ended in disloyalty and estrangement; but, curiously enough,

it is not the breach of this close union, but the union itself, which

has exposed Anne to the censure and contempt of all her biographers and

historians. To an impartial mind we think few things can be more

interesting than the position of these two female figures in the

foreground of English life. Their friendship brought with it no harm to

England; no scandal, such as lurks about the antechamber of kings, and

which has made the name of a favorite one of the most odious titles of

reproach, could attach in any way to such a relationship. And nothing

could be better adapted to enhance the dramatic features of the scene

than the contrast between the two friends whose union for many years was

so intimate and so complete.

Yet her friend was as like to call forth such devotion as ever woman

was. Seldom has there been a more brilliant figure in history than that

of the great duchess, a woman beloved and hated as few have ever been;

holding on one side in absolute devotion to her the greatest hero of the

time, and on the other rousing to the height of adoration the mild and

obtuse nature of her mistress; keeping her place on no ground but that

of her own sense and spirit, amid all intrigues and opposition, for many

of the most remarkable years of English history, and defending herself

with such fire and eloquence when attacked, that her plea is as

interesting and vivid as any controversy of to-day, and it is impossible

to read it without taking a side, with more or less vehemence, in the

exciting quarrel. Such a woman, standing like a beautiful Ishmael with

every man’s hand against her, yet fearing no man, and ready to meet

every assailant, makes a welcome variety amid the historical scenes

which so seldom exhibit anything so living, so imperious, so bold and

free. That she has got little mercy and no

[Illustration: ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK.

ENGRAVED BY T. JOHNSON, AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR PETER LELY, IN

POSSESSION OF EARL SPENCER.]

indulgence, that all chivalrous sentiment has been mute in respect to

her, and an angry ill-temper takes possession of every historian who

names her name, rather adds to the interest than takes from it. Women in

history, strangely enough, seem always to import into the chronicle a

certain heat of personal feeling unusual and undesirable in that region

of calm. Whether it is that the historian is impatient at finding

himself arrested by the troublesome personalities of a woman, and that a

certain resentment of her intrusion colors his appreciation of her, or

that her appearance naturally possesses an individuality which breaks

the line, it is difficult to tell; but the calmest chronicler becomes a

partizan when he treats of Mary and Elizabeth, and no man can name Sarah

of Marlborough without a heat of indignation or scorn, almost

ridiculous, as being so long after date.

To us the unfailing vivacity and spirit of the woman, the dauntless

stand she makes, her determination not to be overcome, make her

appearance always enlivening; and art could not have designed a more

complete contrast than that of the homely figure by her side, with

appealing eyes fixed upon her, a little bewildered, not always quick to

understand--a woman born for other uses, but exposed all her harmless

life to the fierce light that beats upon a throne. For her part, she has

no defense to make, no word to say; let them spend all their jibes upon

her, Anne knows no reply. Her slow understanding and want of perception

give her a certain composure which in a queen answers very well for

dignity; yet there is something whimsically pathetic, pitiful,

incongruous in the fate which has placed her there, which can scarcely

fail to soften the heart of the spectators.

The tragedy of Anne’s life, unlike that of her friend, had no utterance,

and there was nothing romantic in her appearance or surroundings to

attract the lovers of the picturesque. Yet in the blank of her humble

intellect she discharged not amiss the duties that were so much too

great for her; and if she was disloyal to her friend in the end, that

betrayal only adds another touch of pathos to the spectacle of

helplessness and human weakness. It is only the favored few of mankind

who are wiser and better, not feebler and less noble, as life draws

toward its end.

Anne was, like Elizabeth, the daughter of a subject. Her mother, Anne

Hyde, the daughter of the great Clarendon, though naturally subjected to

the hot criticism of the moment on account of that virtue which refused

anything less from her prince than the position of wife, was not a woman

of much individual character, nor did she live long enough to influence

much the training of her daughters. Historians have not hesitated to

sneer at the prudence with which this young lady secured herself by

marriage, when so many fairer than she were less scrupulous--a reproach

which is somewhat unfair, considering what would certainly have been

said of her had she not done so. Curiously enough, her own father,

whether in sincerity or pretense, seems at the moment to have been her

most severe critic, exculpating himself with unnecessary energy from all

participation in the matter, and declaring that if it were true “the

king should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower” till

Parliament should have time to pass an act cutting off her head. It

would appear, however, from the contemporary narratives of Pepys and

Evelyn that he was not so bad as his words, for he seems to have

supported and shielded his daughter during the period of uncertainty

which preceded the acknowledgment of her marriage, and to have shared in

the general satisfaction afterward. But this great marriage was not of

much advantage to her family. It did not hinder Clarendon’s disgrace and

banishment, nor were his sons after him anything advantaged by their

close relationship to two queens.

The Duchess of York does not seem to have been remarkable in any way.

She is said to have governed her husband; and she died a Roman

Catholic,--the first of the royal family to lead the way in that fatal

particular: but did not live long enough to affect the belief or

training of her children.

There was an interval of three years in age between Mary and Anne. The

eldest, Mary, was like the Stuarts, with something of their natural

grace of manner; the younger was a fair English child, rosy and plump

and blooming; in later life they became more like each other. But the

chief thing they inherited from their mother was what is called in fine

language, “a tendency to embonpoint,” with, it is said, a love of good

eating, which helped to produce the other peculiarity.

The religious training of the princesses is the first thing we hear of

them. They were put under the charge of a most orthodox tutor, Compton,

Bishop of London, with much haste and ostentation--their uncle, Charles

II., probably feeling with his usual cynicism that the sop of two

extra-Protestant princesses would please the people, and that the souls

of a couple of girls could not be of much importance one way or another.

How they fared in respect to the other features of education is not

recorded. Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on Bishop Burnet’s history,

informs us that King Charles II., struck by the melodious voice of the

little Lady Anne, had her trained in elocution by Mrs. Barry, an

actress; while Colley Cibber adds that she and her sister were

instructed by the well-known Mrs. Betterton to take their parts in a

little court performance when Anne was but ten and Mary thirteen; but

whether these are two accounts of the same incident, or refer to

distinct events, seems doubtful.

The residence of the girls was chiefly at Richmond, where they were

under the charge of Lady Frances Villiers, who had a number of daughters

of her own, one of whom, Elizabeth, went with Mary to Holland, and was,

in some respects, her evil genius. We have, unfortunately, no court

chronicle to throw any light upon the lively scene at Richmond, where

this little bevy of girls grew up together, conning their divinity,

whatever other lessons might be neglected; taking the air upon the river

in their barges; following the hounds in the colder season, for this

robust exercise seems to have been part of their training. When their

youthful seclusion was broken by such a great event as the court mask,

in which they played their little parts,--Mrs. Blogge, the saintly

beauty, John Evelyn’s friend, Godolphin’s wife, acting the chief

character, in a blaze of diamonds,--or that state visit to the city when

King Charles in all his glory took the girls, his heirs, with him, no

doubt the old withdrawing-rooms and galleries of Richmond rang with the

story for weeks after. Princess Mary, her mind perhaps beginning to own

a little agitation as to royal suitors, would have other distractions;

but as to the Lady Anne, it soon came to be her chief holiday when the

young Duchess of York, her stepmother, came from town in her chariot, or

by water, in a great gilded barge breasting up the stream, to pay the

young ladies a visit. For in the train of that princess was the young

maid of honor, a delightful, brilliant _espiègle_, full of spirit and

wilfulness, who bore the undistinguished name of Sarah Jennings, and

brought with her such life and stir and movement as dispersed the

dullness wherever she went.

There is no such love as a young girl’s adoration for a beautiful young

woman, a little older than herself, whom she can admire and imitate and

cling to, and dream of with visionary passion. This was the kind of

sentiment with which the little princess regarded the bright and

animated creature in her young stepmother’s train. Mary of Modena was

herself only a few years older than her stepchildren. They were all

young together, accustomed to the perpetual gaiety of the court of

Charles II., though, let us hope, kept apart from its license, and

[Illustration: JOHN EVELYN.

ENGRAVED BY E. HEINEMANN, AFTER COPPERPLATE BY F. BARTOLOZZI IN THE

BRITISH MUSEUM.]

no shadow of fate seems to have fallen upon the group of girls in their

early peaceful days. Anne in particular would seem to have been left to

hang upon the arm and bask in the smiles of her stepmother’s young lady

in waiting at her pleasure--with many a laugh at premature favoritism.

“We had used to play together when she was a child,” said the great

duchess long after. “She even then expressed a particular fondness for

me; this inclination increased with our years. I was often at court, and

the princess always distinguished me by the pleasure she took to honor

me preferably to others with her conversation and confidence. In all her

parties for amusement, I was sure by her choice to be one.”

Mistress Sarah was one of the actors in the mask above referred to; she

was in the most intimate circle of the Duke of York’s household, closely

linked to all its members, in that relationship, almost as close as

kindred, which binds a court together.

And no doubt it added greatly to the attractions which the bright and

animated girl exercised over her playmates and companions, that she had

already a romantic love-story, and, at a period when matches were

everywhere arranged, as at present in continental countries, by the

parents, made a secret marriage, under the most romantic circumstances,

with a young hero already a soldier of distinction. He was not an

irreproachable hero. Court scandal had not spared him. He was said to

have founded his fortune upon the bounty of one of the shameless women

of Charles’s court. But the imagination of the period was not

over-delicate, and probably had he not become so great a man, and

acquired so many enemies, we should have heard little of John

Churchill’s early vices. About his sister, Arabella Churchill,

unfortunately there could not be any doubt; and it is a curious instance

of the sudden efflorescence now and then of a race which neither before

nor after is of particular note, that Marlborough’s sister should have

been the mother of that one illustrious Stuart who might, had he been

legitimate, have changed the fortunes of the house--the Duke of Berwick.

Had she, instead of Anne Hyde, been James’s duchess, what a difference

might have been made in history! Nobody had heard of the Churchills

before--they have not been a distinguished race since. It is curious

that they should have produced, all unawares, without preparation or

warning, the two greatest soldiers of the age.

Young Churchill was attached to the Duke of York’s service, as Sarah

Jennings was to that of the duchess. He had served abroad with

distinction. In 1672, when France and England for once, in a way, were

allies against Holland, he had served under the great Turenne, who

called him “my handsome Englishman,” and vaunted his gallantry. He was

but twenty-two when he thus gave proofs of his future greatness. When he

returned, after various other exploits, and resumed his court service,

the brilliant maid of honor, whom the little princess adored, attained a

complete dominion over the spirit of the young soldier. There were

difficulties about the marriage, for he had no fortune, and his

provident parents had secured an heiress for him. But it was at length

accomplished so secretly that even the bride was never quite certain of

the date, in the presence and with the favor of Mary of Modena herself.

Sarah, if the dates are correct, must have been eighteen at this period,

and her little princess fourteen. What a delightful interruption to the

dullness of Richmond to hear all about it when the Duchess of York came

with her train and the two girls could wander away together in some

green avenue till Lady Frances sent a page or an usher after them!

Mary of Modena must have been a lover of romances, and true love also,

though her youth had fallen to such a gruesome bridegroom as James

Stuart; for not only Sarah Jennings and her great general, who were to

have so great a hand in keeping that poor lady’s son from his kingdom,

but Mary Blogge and her statesman, who was to rule England so wisely in

the interest of the opposing side, were both secretly married under the

young duchess’s wing, she helping, planning, and sanctioning the secret.

How many additional bitternesses must this have put into her cup when

she was sitting, a shadow queen, at St.-Germain, and all those people

whom she had loved and caressed were swaying the fortunes of England!

And who can tell what tender recollections of his secret wedding and the

sweet and saintly prude whom King James’s young wife gave him, may have

touched the soul of Godolphin in those hankerings after his old

master--if it were not, as scandal said, to his old mistress--which

moved him from time to time, great minister as he was, almost to the

verge of treachery! The Churchills, it must be owned, showed little

gratitude to their royal patrons.

When the Princess Mary married and went to Holland with her husband, the

position of her sister at home became a more important one. Anne was not

without some experience of travel and those educational advantages which

the sight of foreign countries are said to bring. She went to The Hague

to visit her sister. She accompanied her father, sturdy little

Protestant as she was, when he was in disgrace for his religious views,

and spent some time in Brussels, from which place she wrote to one of

the ladies about the court a letter which has been preserved,--with just

as much and as little reason as any other letter of a fifteen-year-old

girl with her eyes about her, at a distance of two hundred years,--in

which the young lady describes a ball she had seen, herself _incognita_,

at which some gentlemen “danced extremely well--as well if not better

than the Duke of Monmouth or Sir E. Villiers, which I think is very

extraordinary,” says the girl, no doubt sincerely believing that the

best of all things was to be found at home. She had little difficulties

about her spelling, but that was common enough. “As for the town,” says

the Princess Anne, “methinks tho’ the streets are not so clean as in

Holland, yet they are not so dirty as ours; they are very well paved and

very easy--they only have od smells.” This is a peculiarity which has

outlived her day, and it would seem to imply that England, even before

the invention of sanitary science, was superior in this respect at least

to the towns of the Continent.

After these unusual dissipations Anne remained in the shade until she

married, in 1683, George, Prince of Denmark, a perfectly inoffensive and

insignificant person, to whom she gave, during the rest of her life, a

faithful, humdrum, but unbroken attachment, such as shows to little

advantage in print, but makes the happiness of many a home. This

marriage was another sacrifice to the Protestantism of England, and in

that point of view pleased the people much. King Charles, glad to

satisfy the country by any act which cost him nothing, thought it “very

convenient and suitable.” James, unwilling, but powerless, grumbled to

himself that “he had little encouragement in the conduct of the Prince

of Orange to marry another daughter in the same interest,” but made no

effort against it. The prince himself produced no very great impression,

one way or another, as indeed he was little fitted to do. “He has the

Danish countenance, blonde,” says Evelyn, in his diary; “of few words;

spoke French but ill; seemed somewhat heavy, but is reported to be

valiant.” He had never any occasion to show his valor during his long

residence in England, but many to prove the former quality,--the

heaviness,--which was only too evident; but Anne herself was not

brilliant, and she was made for friendship, not for passion in the

ordinary sense of the word. She never seems to have been in the smallest

way dissatisfied with her heavy, honest goodman. He was fond of eating

and

[Illustration: PRINCE GEORGE OF DENMARK.

ENGRAVED BY R. A. MULLER, FROM MEZZOTINT IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN

SMITH, AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.]

drinking, but of no more dangerous pleasures. Her peace of mind was

fluttered by no rival, nor her feminine pride touched. Her attendants

might be as seductive as they pleased, this steady, stolid husband was

immovable, and there is no doubt that the princess appreciated the

advantages of this immunity from one of the thorns which were planted in

every other royal pillow.

Her marriage had another advantage of giving her a household and court

of her own, and enabled her at once to secure for herself the

companionship of her always beloved friend. “So desirous was she,” says

Duchess Sarah, “of having me always near her, that upon her marriage

with the Prince of Denmark, in 1683, it was at her own earnest request

to her father I was made one of the ladies of her bedchamber. What

conduced to make me the more agreeable to her in this station was,

doubtless,” she adds with candor, “the dislike she conceived to most of

the other persons about her, and particularly for her first lady of the

bedchamber--the Countess of Clarendon, a lady whose discourse and manner

could not possibly recommend her to so young a mistress; for she looked

like a mad-woman and talked like a scholar. Indeed, her highness’s court

was so oddly composed that I think it would be making myself no great

compliment if I should say her choosing to spend more of her time with

me than with any of her other servants did no discredit to her taste.”

Lady Clarendon was the wife of the great chancellor’s son, and was thus

the aunt, by marriage, of the princess--not always a very endearing

relationship. She was not a great lady by birth, and though a friend of

Evelyn’s and a highly educated woman, might easily be supposed to be a

little oppressive in a young household where her relationship gave her a

certain authority.

The prince was dull, the princess had not many resources. They settled

down in homely virtue, close to the court with all its scandals and

gaieties, but not quite of it; and nothing could be more natural than

that Anne should eagerly avail herself of the always amusing, always

lively companion who had been the friend of her youth. The Cockpit,

which was Anne’s residence, had been built as a royal playhouse, first

for the sport indicated by its name, then for the more refined

amusements of the theater, but had been afterward turned into a private

residence, and bought by Charles II. for his niece on her marriage. It

formed part of the old palace of Whitehall, and must have been within

sight and sound of the constant gaieties going on in that lawless

household, in the best of which the princess and her attendant would

have their natural share. No doubt to hear Lady Churchill’s lively

satirical remarks upon all this, and the flow of her brilliant malice,

must have kept the household lively, and brightened the dull days and

tedious waitings of maternity, into which Anne was immediately plunged,

drawing a laugh even from stupid George in the chimney-corner. And there

was this peculiarity to make the whole more piquant; that it was virtue,

irreproachable, and no doubt pleasantly self-conscious of its

superiority, which thus got its fun out of vice. The two young couples

on the other side of the way were immaculate, devoted exclusively to

each other, thinking of neither man nor woman save their lawful mates.

Probably neither the princess nor her lady in waiting were disgusted by

gossip about the Portsmouths and Castlemaines, but took these ladies to

pieces with indignant zest and spared no jibe. And though the remarks

might be too broad for modern liking, and the fun somewhat unsavory, we

cannot but think that amidst the noisy and picturesque life of that wild

Restoration era, full of corruption, yet so gay and sparkling to the

spectator, this little household of the Cockpit is not without its

claims upon our attention. There was not in all Charles’s court so

splendid a couple as the young Churchills: he already one of the most

distinguished soldiers of the age, she a beautiful young woman

overflowing with wit and energy. And Princess Anne was very young; in

full possession of that _beauté de diable_ which, so long as it lasts,

has its own charm, the beauty of color and freshness and youthful

contour. She had a beautiful voice, the prettiest hands, and the most

affectionate heart. If she were not clever, that matters but little to a

girl of twenty, taught by love to be receptive, and called upon for no

effort of genius. Honest George behind backs was not much more than a

piece of still life, but an inoffensive and amiable one, taking nothing

upon him. If there was calculation in the steadfastness with which the

abler pair possessed themselves of the confidence, and held fast to the

service of their royal friends, it would be hard to assert that there

was not some affection too, at least on the part of Sarah, who had known

every thought of her little princess’s heart since she was a child, and

could not but be flattered and pleased by the love showered upon her. At

all events, in Anne there was no unworthy sentiment; everything about

her appeals to our tenderness. When she attained what seems to have been

the summit of her desires and secured her type of excellence, the

admired and adored paragon of her childhood, for her daily companion,

the formal titles and addresses which her rank made necessary became

irksome beyond measure to the simple-hearted young woman whose hard fate

it was to have been born a princess. The impetuosity of her affection,

her rush, so to speak, into the arms of her friend, her pretty youthful

sentiment, so fresh and natural, her humility and simplicity, are all

pleasant to contemplate. Little more than a year after her marriage,

after the closer union had begun, she writes thus:

If you will let me have the satisfaction of hearing from you again

before I see you, let me beg of you not to call me “your highness”

at every word, but to be as free with me as one friend ought to be

with another. And you can never give me any greater proof of your

friendship than in telling me your mind freely in all things, which

I do beg of you to do: and if it ever were in my power to serve

you, nobody would be more ready than myself. I am all impatience

for Wednesday. Till then farewell.

Upon this there ensued a little sentimental bargain between the two

young women. It was not according to the manners of the time that they

should call each other Anne and Sarah, and the fashion of the Aramintas

and Dorindas had not yet arrived from Paris. They managed the

transformation necessary in a curiously matter-of-fact and English way:

She grew uneasy to be treated by me with the form and ceremony due

to her rank; nor could she bear from me the sound of words which

implied in them distance and superiority. It was this turn of mind

which made her one day propose to me that whenever I should happen

to be absent from her we might in all our letters write ourselves

by feigned names, such as would import nothing of distinction of

rank between us. Morley and Freeman were the names her fancy hit

upon, and she left me to choose by which of them I should be

called. My frank open temper led me naturally to pitch upon

Freeman, and so the princess took the other; and from this time

Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman began to converse as equals, made so

by affection and friendship.

Very likely these were the names in some young lady’s book which had

been in the princess’s childish library,--something a generation before

the “Spectator,”--in which rural virtues and the claims of friendship

were the chief subjects. Morley is one of the typical names of

sentimental literature in the eighteenth century, and might be

originally introduced by some precursor of those proper little romances

which have in all ages been considered the proper reading for “the

fair.”

Mrs. Morley could be no other than the gentle _ingénue_, the type of

modest virtue, and Freeman was of all others the title most suitable for

Sarah, the bright and brave. Historians have not been able to contain

themselves for angry ridicule of this

[Illustration: CHARLES II.

ENGRAVED BY T. JOHNSON, AFTER ORIGINAL PAINTING BY SAMUEL COOPER, IN THE

GALLERY OF THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDON.]

little friendly treaty. To us it seems a pretty incident. The princess

was twenty, the bedchamber woman twenty-four. Their friendly traffic had

not to their own consciousness attained the importance of a historical

fact.

The locality in which the royal houses in London stood was very

different then from its appearance now. Whitehall at present is a great

thoroughfare, full of life and movement, with but one remnant of the old

palace,--once the banqueting-hall, now the chapel royal, where the

window out of which Charles I. is supposed to have passed to the

scaffold is pointed out to strangers,--and still presenting a bit of

gloomy, stately front to the street.

St. James’s Park opposite is screened off and separated now by the Horse

Guards and other public buildings, a long and heavy line which forms one

side of the way. But in those days there were neither public buildings

nor busy street. The palace, straggling and irregular, with walls and

roofs on many different levels, stood like a sort of royal village

between the river and the park, with the turrets of St. James twinkling

in the distance, in the sunshine, over the trees of the Mall, where King

Charles with all his dogs and gentlemen would stream forth daily for his

saunter or his game. The Cockpit was one of the outlying portions of

Whitehall upon the edge of the park.

Anne had been but two years married when King Charles died. And then the

aspect of affairs changed. The mass in the private chapel, and the

presence here and there of somebody who looked like a priest, at once

started into prominence and began to alarm the gazers more than the

dissolute amusements of the court had ever done. James was not virtuous

any more than his brother. One of the first acts which the excellent

Evelyn, one of the best of men, had to do as commissioner of the privy

seal, was to affix that imperial stamp to a patent by which one of the

new king’s favorites was made Countess of Dorchester; but James’s

immoralities were not his chief characteristics. He was a more dangerous

king than Charles, who was merely selfish, dissolute, and

pleasure-loving. James was more; he was a bigoted Roman Catholic, eager

to raise his faith to its old supremacy, and the mere thought that the

door which had been so bolted and barred against popery was now set open

filled all England with the wildest panic. The nation felt itself caught

by the torrent which must carry it to destruction. Men saw the dungeons

of the Inquisition, the fires of Smithfield, before them as soon as the

proscribed priest was readmitted and mass once more openly said at an

unconcealed altar. Never was there a more universal or all-influential

sentiment. The terror, the unanimity, are things to wonder at. Sancroft

and his bishops were not constitutionalists. The personal rule of the

king had nothing in it that alarmed them; but the idea of the

reintroduction of popery awoke such a panic in their bosoms as drove

them, in spite of their own tenets, into resistance; and, for the first

time absolutely unanimous, England was at their back. When we take

history piecemeal, and read it through the individual lives of the chief

actors, we perceive with the strangest sensations of surprise that at

these great crises not one of the leaders of the nation was sure what he

wanted or what he feared, or was even entirely sincere in his adherence

to one party against another. They were the courtiers of James, and

invited William; they were William’s ministers, and kept up a

correspondence with James. The best of them was not without a

treacherous side. They were never certain which was safest, which would

last; always liable to lend an ear to temptations from the other party,

never sure that they might not to-morrow morning find themselves in open

rebellion against the master of to-day. Yet, while almost every

individual of note was subject to this strange uncertainty, this

confused and troubled vacillation, there was such a sweep of national

conviction, so strong a current of the general will, that the supposed

leaders of opinion were carried away by it, and compelled to assume and

act upon a conviction which was England’s, but which individually they

did not possess. Nothing can be made more remarkable, more unexplainable

under any other interpretations, than the way in which his entire court,

statesmen, soldiers, all who were worth counting, and so many who were

not, abandoned King James--some with a sort of consternation, not

knowing why they did it, driven by a force they could not resist. No

example of this can be more remarkable than that of Clarendon, who

received the news of his son’s defection to the Prince of Orange with

what seems to be a heartbroken cry: “O God! that my son should be a

rebel!” yet, presently, ten days afterward, is drawn away himself in a

kind of extraordinary confusion, like a man in a dream, like a subject

of mesmeric influence, although in all the following negotiations he

maintained James’s cause as far as a man could who did not accept ruin

as a consequence. Scarcely one of these men was whole-hearted or had any

determined principle in the matter. But in the mass of the nation behind

them was a force of conviction, of panic, of determination, that carried

them off their feet. The chief names of England appear little more than

straws upon the current, indicating its course, but forced along by its

fierce sweep and impetus, and not by any impulse of their own.

The Princess Anne occupied a very different position from that of these

bewildered statesmen. She had been brought up in the strictest sect of

her religion, Protestant almost more than Christian, a churchwoman above

all. To those who are capable of thinking about their faith it is always

possible to believe in the thoughts of other people, and conceive the

likelihood, at least, that they, in their own esteem, if not in any one

else’s, may be right--which is the only true foundation of toleration.

But it is the people who believe without thinking, who receive what they

are taught without exercising any judgment of their own upon the

subject, and cling to it in exactly the same form in which they received

it, with a conviction that its least important detail is as necessary as

its first principle, who furnish that _sancta simplicitas_ which makes

the cruelest persecution possible without turning the persecutors into

fiends and barbarians. Though her mother had been a Roman Catholic, and

her father was one, and though many of her relations belonged to the old

church, Anne was a Protestant of the most unyielding kind. She was in

herself as good a type of the England of her time as could have been

found, far better than her abler and larger-minded advisers. The

narrowness of her mind and the rigidity of her faith were above all

reassurances of reason, all guarantees of possibility. She was as much

dismayed by her father’s determination to liberate and tolerate popery

as the least enlightened of his subjects. “Methinks it has a very dismal

prospect,” she wrote as early as 1686, only the year after James’s

accession. “Attempts,” Lady Marlborough tells us, “were made to draw his

daughter into his designs. The king, indeed, used no harshness with her;

he only discovered his wishes by putting into her hands some books and

papers which he hoped might induce her to a change of religion, and had

she had any inclination that way the chaplains about were such divines

as could have said but little in defense of their own religion or to

secure her against the pretenses of Popery recommended to her by a

father and a king.” This low estimate of the princess’s spiritual

advisers is whimsically supported by Evelyn’s opinion of Anne’s first

religious preceptor,--Bishop Compton,--of whom the courtly philosopher

declared after hearing a sermon from him that “this worthy person’s

talent is not preaching.”

[Illustration: HENRY COMPTON, BISHOP OF LONDON.

ENGRAVED FROM LIFE BY DAVID LOGGAN, FROM PRINT IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

ENGRAVED BY E. HEINEMANN.]

But Anne required no persuading to stimulate her in the fear of popery

and narrow devotion to the church, outside of which she knew of no

salvation. No doubt her father’s popish tracts, things which in that age

were held to possess many of the properties of the dynamite of to-day,

scared the inflexible and unimaginative churchwoman as much as if they

had been capable of exploding and doing her actual damage. Her training,

so wisely adapted to please the Protestant party, had probably been

thought by her father and uncle to be a matter of complete indifference

on any other ground; but in this way they reckoned altogether without

their princess. With both James’s daughters the process was too

successful. They feared popery more than they loved their father. There

seems not the slightest reason to suppose that Anne was insincere in her

anxiety for the church, or that the panic which she shared with the

whole country was affected or unreal. It is impossible that she could

expect her own position to be improved by the substitution of her sister

and her sister’s husband for the father who had always been kind to her.

The Churchills, whose church principles were not perhaps so undeniable,

and whose regard for their own interest was great, are more difficult to

divine; and yet it appears an unnecessary thing to refer their action to

unworthy motives. It is asserted by some that they had some visionary

plan after they had overturned the existing economy by the help of

William, of bringing in their princess by a side wind and reigning

through her over the startled and subjugated nation. But granting that

such an imagination might have been conceived in the fertile and

restless brain of a young and sanguine woman, it seems impossible to

imagine that Churchill--a man of some experience in the world, and some

knowledge of William--could even for a moment have believed that the

grave and ambitious prince, who was so near the throne, could have been

persuaded or forced to waive his wife’s claims, and those still more

imperative ones which his position of Deliverer gave him, in order to

advance the fortunes of any one else, least of all of the sister-in-law

whom he despised.

It is half ludicrous, half pathetic, in the midst of all the tumult and

confusion of the time, to note the constant allusions to the princess’s

condition, which recurs whenever she is mentioned. There were always

reasons why it should be especially cruel to disturb her, and her state

had constantly to be taken into account. It was very natural in such

circumstances that she should more and more cling to her stronger

friend, and find no comfort out of her presence. “Whatever changes there

are in the world, I hope you will never forsake me, and I shall be

happy,” she writes during this period of excitement and distress. She

herself was weak and not very wise. In a sudden emergency neither she

nor her husband were good for much. They could carry on the routine of

life well enough, but when unforeseen necessities came they stood

helpless and bewildered; but Lady Churchill was quick of wit and full of

inexhaustible resource. To her it was always given to know what to do.

It is unnecessary here to enter into the history of what is called the

Great Revolution. It is the great modern turning-point of English

history, and no doubt it is one of the reasons why we have been exempted

in later days from the agitations of desperate and bloody revolutions

which have shaken all neighboring nations. Glorious and happy, however,

scarcely seem to be fit words to describe this extraordinary event. A

more painful era does not exist in history. There is scarcely an

individual in the front of affairs who was not guilty of treachery at

one time or another. They betrayed one another on every hand; they were

perplexed, uncertain, full of continual alarms. The king who went away

was a gloomy bigot; the king who came was a cold and melancholy alien.

Enthusiasm there was none, nor even conviction, except of the necessity

of doing something of a wide-reaching and undeniable change. The part

which the ladies at the Cockpit played brings the hurry and excitement

of the movement to its crisis. Both in their way were anxious for their

respective husbands, absent in the suite of James, and still in his

power. When the report came that Lord Feversham had begged of James “on

his knees two hours” to order the arrest of Churchill, Mrs. Freeman must

have needed all her courage; while the faithful Morley wept, yet tried

to emulate the braver woman, wondering in her excitement what her own

heavy prince was doing, and eager for William’s advance, which, somehow

or other, was to bring peace and quiet. That heavy prince meanwhile was

mooning about with the perplexed and unhappy king, uttering out of his

blond mustache with an atrocious accent his dull wonder, “Est il

possible?” as every new desertion was announced, till mounting heavily

one evening after dinner, warmed and encouraged by a good deal of King

James’s wine, and riding through the cold and dark, in his turn he

deserted too. When this event happened, the excitement at the Cockpit

was overwhelming. The princess was “in a great fright.” “She sent for

me,” says Lady Churchill, “told me her distress, and declared that

rather than see her father, she would jump out of window.” King James

was coming back to London, sad and wroth, and perhaps the rumor that he

would have her arrested lent additional terrors to the idea of

encountering his angry countenance. Lady Churchill went immediately to

Bishop Compton, the princess’s early tutor and confidential adviser, and

instant means were taken to secure her flight. That very night, after

her attendants were in bed, Anne rose in the dark, and with her beloved

Sarah’s arm and support stole down the back stairs to where the bishop,

in a hackney coach, was waiting for her. Other princesses in similar

situations have owned to a thrill of pleasure in such an adventure. No

doubt at least she breathed the freer when she was out of the palace

where King James with his dark countenance might have come any day to

demand from her an account of her husband’s behavior, or to upbraid her

with her own want of affection. Anyhow, the sweep of the current had now

reached her tremulous feet, and she had no power any more than stronger

persons of resisting it.

Anne’s position was very much changed by the Revolution. If any

ambitious hopes had been entertained or plans formed by her household,

they were speedily and very completely brought to an end. The dull royal

pair with their two brilliant guides and counselors now found themselves

confronted by another couple of very different mark: the serious,

somewhat gloomy, determined, and self-concentrated Dutchman, and the new

queen, Mary, a person far more attractive and imposing than Anne; two

people full of character and power. We have no space here, however, to

appropriate to these remarkable persons. William, in particular, belongs

to larger annals and a history more important than these sketches. Mary

has left an epitome of herself in her letters which is among the most

wonderful of individual revelations; but this cannot now be our theme,

though the subject is a most attractive one.

Two persons so remarkable threw into the shade even Churchill and Sarah,

much more good Anne and George. We have no reason to suppose that Mary

entertained any particular sentiment whatever toward her sister, from

whom she had been entirely separated for the greater part of her life,

and the history of their relations is a painful one from beginning to

end. No doubt the queen regarded the household of the princess with the

contempt which a woman with so entirely different a code would naturally

entertain for a family in which the heads were so lax and secondary, the

counselors so prominent. There was nothing in Mary which would help her

to understand the feeling with which Anne regarded her friend

[Illustration: JAMES II. IN HIS CORONATION ROBES.

ENGRAVED BY T. JOHNSON, AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR PETER LELY, IN

POSSESSION OF THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND.]

Mary. She had herself made use of their influence in the time when it

was all important to secure every power in England for William’s

service, but a proud distaste for the woman whom the princess trusted as

her equal soon awoke in the bosom of the queen. The Churchills, however,

served the new sovereigns signally by persuading the princess to yield

her own rights, and consent to the conjoint reign, and to William’s life

sovereignty--no small concession on the part of the next heir, and one

which only the passive character of Anne could have made to appear

insignificant.

Had she been a stronger and more intellectual woman, this act would have

borne the aspect of a magnanimous and noble sacrifice to the good of the

country, of her own interests, and that of her children. As it was, her

self-renunciation has got her very little credit, either then or now,

and it has been considered rather an evidence of the discretion of the

Churchills than of the generosity and patriotism of the princess. These,

perhaps, are rather large words to use in speaking of Anne, but it must

be remembered that a narrow mind is usually not less, but more,

tenacious of personal honor and advantage than a great one, and that the

dimmer an understanding may be, the less it is accessible to high reason

and noble motive. This sacrifice accomplished, however, there commenced

a petty war between Whitehall and the Cockpit, in which perhaps Mary and

Lady Churchill (now Marlborough) were the chief combatants, but which

from henceforward until her sister’s death became the principal feature

in Anne’s life. Continued squabbling is never lovely even when it is

between queens and princesses, but in this case the injured person has

had no little injustice, and the offender so many partizans that it may

not be amiss to make Anne’s side of the question a little more apparent.

If her friend was to blame for embroiling Anne with the queen, it can

scarcely be believed that the princess’s case would have been more

satisfactory had she been left in her helplessness to the tender mercies

of William, and entirely dependent upon his kindness, which must have

happened had there been no bold and strong adviser in the matter. There

was no generosity in the treatment which Anne received from the royal

pair. She had made a sacrifice to the security of their throne which

deserved some grace in return. But her innocent fancy for the palace at

Richmond, where the sisters had been brought up together, was not

indulged, nor would there be much excuse even if she were in the wrong

for the squabblings about her lodging at Whitehall. But she cannot be

said to have been in the wrong in the next question which occurred,

which was the settlement of her own income. This she had previously

drawn from her father, according to the existing custom in the royal

family, and James had been always liberal and kind to her. But it was a

different thing to depend upon the somewhat grudging hand of an

economical brother-in-law, who had a number of foreign dependents to

provide for, and a great deal to do with the money granted to him. He

alarmed her friends on this point at once by a remark made to Clarendon

as to what the princess could want with so large an income as thirty

thousand a year; and he does not seem at any time or in any particular

to have shown consideration for her. Perhaps the Churchills were afraid

that their mistress would be less able than usual to help and further

their own fortunes, as is universally alleged against them; but, had

they been the most disinterested couple in the world, it would still

have been their duty to do what they could to secure her against any

caprice of the new king, who had no right to be the arbiter of her fate.

Lady Marlborough’s strenuous action to bring the question to the

decision of Parliament was nothing less than her mistress’s interests

demanded. And the sense of the country was so far with them that the

princess’s income was settled with very little difficulty upon a more

liberal basis than her father’s allowance; which, considering that she,

and the children of whom she was every year becoming the mother, were

the only acknowledged heirs of the throne, was a perfectly natural and

just arrangement.

But the king and queen did not see it in this light. “Friends! what

friends have you but the king and me?” Queen Mary asked with

indignation. It is not to be supposed that she meant any harm to her

sister, but with also a sufficiently natural sentiment could not see

what Anne’s objection was to dependence upon herself.

The position on both sides is so clearly comprehensible that the

strength of party feeling which makes Lord Macaulay defend the somewhat

petty attitude of his favorite monarch on the occasion is very

extraordinary. It requires no very subtle penetration to see the

difference between an allowance that comes from a father and that which

depends upon the doubtful friendship of a brother-in-law. Anne had fully

proved her capacity to consider the public weal above her own, and it

was unworthy of William even to wish to keep in the position of a

hanger-on a woman who had so greatly promoted the harmony of his own

settlement.

Parliament finally voted her a revenue of fifty thousand pounds a year,

as a sort of compromise between the thirty thousand pounds which King

William grudged her and the unreasonably large sum which some of her

supporters hoped to obtain; but the king and queen never forgave her,

and still less her advisers, for what they chose to consider a want of

confidence in themselves.

But William was always impatient of the incapable, and the permission

was absolutely denied to him. In all these claims and refusals the

position of Lady Marlborough as the princess’s right hand had been

completely acknowledged by Queen Mary and her husband, who indeed

attempted secret negotiations with her on more than one occasion to

induce her to moderate Anne’s claims and to persuade her into compliance

with their wishes. “She [the queen] sent a great lord to me to desire I

would persuade the Princess to keep the Prince from going to sea; and

this I was to compass without letting the Princess know it was the

Queen’s desire ... after this the Queen sent Lord Rochester to me to

desire much the same thing. The Prince was not to go to sea, and this

not going was to appear his own choice.”

Similar attempts were made in the matter of the allowance. And it is

scarcely possible to believe that Mary, a queen who was not without some

of the absolutism of the Stuart mind, should have failed to feel a

certain exasperation with the bold woman who thus upheld her sister’s

little separate court and interest, and was neither to be flattered nor

frightened into subservience. And very likely this little separate court

was a thorn in the side of the royal pair, keeping constant watch upon

all their actions, maintaining a perpetual criticism, no doubt leveling

many a jibe at the Dutch retainers, and still more at the Dutch master.

Good-natured friends, even in the capacity of courtiers, were no doubt

found to whisper in the presence-chamber the witticisms with which Sarah

of Marlborough would entertain her mistress--utterances not very

brilliant, perhaps, but sharp enough. It would not sweeten the temper of

the queen if she found out, for instance, that her great William was

known as Caliban in the correspondence of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman.

A hundred petty irritations always come in in such circumstances to

increase a breach. What the precise occurrence was which brought about

the final explosion is not known, but one day after a stormy scene, in

which the queen had in vain demanded from her sister the dismissal of

Lady Marlborough, an event occurred which took away everybody’s breath.

[Illustration: MARY, PRINCESS OF ORANGE.

ENGRAVED BY C. A. POWELL, AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR PETER LELY, IN

POSSESSION OF THE EARL OF CRAWFORD.]

This was the sudden dismissal, without reason assigned, at least so far

as the public knew, of Lord Marlborough from all his offices. He was

lieutenant-general of the army, and he was a gentleman of the king’s

bedchamber. Up to this time there had been nothing to find fault with in

his conduct. William was too good a soldier himself not to appreciate

Marlborough’s military talents, and he had behaved, if not with any

enthusiasm for the new order of affairs, with good taste at least in

very difficult circumstances. His desertion of James and his powerful

presence and influence on the opposite side had contributed much to the

bloodless victory of the Prince of Orange; but except so far as this

went, Marlborough had shown no hostility to his old master. In the

convention he had voted for a regency, and when it became evident that

William’s terms must be accepted unconditionally or not at all, he had

refrained from voting altogether; so that his support might be

considered lukewarm. But, on the other hand, he had served with great

distinction abroad, acting with perfect loyalty to his new chief while

in command of the English forces. In short, his public aspect up to this

time would seem on the face of it to have been irreproachable.

This being the case, his sudden dismissal from court filled his friends

with astonishment and dismay. Nobody understood its why or wherefore.

“An incident happened which I unwillingly mention,” says Bishop Burnet,

“because it cannot be told without some reflection on the memory of the

queen, whom I always honored beyond all the persons whom I have ever

known.” This regretful preface affords an excellent guarantee of the

bishop’s sincerity; but Lord Macaulay omits his statement of the case

altogether while quoting passages from the then unpublished manuscript

which seemed to support his own views. “The Earl of Nottingham,” Burnet

continues, “came to the Earl of Marlborough with a message from the King

telling him that he had no more use for his services, and therefore he

demanded all his commissions. What drew so sudden and hard a message was

not known, for he had been with the King that morning and had parted

with him in the ordinary manner. It seemed some letter was intercepted

that gave suspicions: it is certain that he thought he was too little

considered, and that he had upon many occasions censured the King’s

conduct and reflected on the Dutch.” Lord Macaulay, on the other hand,

ignoring this statement, assures his readers that the real ground of the

dismissal had been communicated to Anne on the previous night

(notwithstanding that the great general had been privileged to put on

the king’s shirt next morning as if nothing had happened), and that it

was in reality the discovery of a plot for James’s restoration,

conceived by Marlborough, and in which the princess herself was

implicated. It was reported to be Marlborough’s intention to move in the

House of Lords an address to William, requesting him to dismiss the

foreign servants who surrounded him, and of whom the English were

bitterly jealous. Such a scheme of reprisals would have had a certain

humor in its summary reversal of the position, and no doubt must Sarah

herself have had some hand in its construction, if it ever existed.

William was as little likely to give up Bentinck and Keppel as Anne was

to sacrifice the friends whom she loved, and a breach between the

Parliament and the king would have been, it was hoped, the natural

result--to be followed by a _coup d’état_, in which James might be

replaced under stringent conditions upon the throne. The sole evidence

for this plot is King James himself, who describes it in his diary. Lord

Macaulay adds that it is strongly confirmed by Burnet, but this, we take

leave to think, is not the case. At the same time there seems no reason

to doubt King James, who adds that the plan was defeated by the

indiscreet zeal of some of his own _fidèles_, who feared that

Marlborough, were he once master of the situation, would put Anne on

the throne instead of her father.

Whether, however, this supposed proposal was, or was not, the reason of

Marlborough’s dismissal, it is clear enough that he had resumed a secret

correspondence with the banished king at St.-Germain, whom, not very

long before, he had deserted. But so had most of the statesmen who

surrounded William, even the admiral in whose hands the English

reputation at sea was soon to be placed. The sins of the others were

winked at while Maryborough was thus made an example of: perhaps because

he was the most dangerous; perhaps because he had involved the princess

in his treachery, persuading her to send a letter and make affectionate

overtures to her father. Is it possible that it was this very letter

which Burnet says was intercepted, inclosed most likely in one from

Marlborough more distinct in its offers? Here is Anne’s simple

performance, a thing not calculated to do either harm or good:

I have been very desirous of some safe opportunity to make you a

sincere and humble offer of my duty and submission, and to beg you

will be assured that I am both truly concerned for the misfortunes

of your condition, and sensible as I ought to be of my own

unhappiness: as to what you may think I have contributed to it, if

wishes could recall what is past, I had long since redeemed my

fault. I am sensible that it would have been a great relief to me

if I could have found means to have acquainted you earlier with my

repentant thoughts, but I hope they may find the advantage of

coming late--of being less suspected of insincerity than perhaps

they would have been at any time before. It will be a great

addition to the ease I propose to my own mind by this plain

confession, if I am so happy as to find that it brings any real

satisfaction to yours, and that you are as indulgent and easy to

receive my humble submissions as I am to make them in a free

disinterested acknowledgment of my fault, for no other end but to

deserve and receive your pardon.

These involved and halting sentences by themselves could afford but

little satisfaction to the anxious banished court at St.-Germain. To

say so much, yet to say so little, though easy to a confused

intelligence, not knowing very well what it meant, is a thing which

would have taxed the powers of the most astute conspirators. But there

could be little doubt that a penitent princess thus ready to implore her

father’s pardon, would be a powerful auxiliary, with the country just

then in the stage of natural disappointment which is prone to follow a

great crisis, and that Marlborough was doubly dangerous with such a card

in his hands to play.

A little pause occurred after his dismissal. The court by this time had

gone to Kensington, out of sight and hearing of the Cockpit, Whitehall

having been burned in the previous year. The princess continued, no

doubt in no very friendly mood, to take her way to the suburban palace

in the evenings and make one at her sister’s game of basset, showing by

her abstraction, and the traces of tears about her eyes, her state of

depression yet revolt. But about three weeks after that great event,

something suggested to Lady Marlborough the idea of accompanying her

princess to the royal presence. It was strictly within her right to do

so, in attendance on her mistress, and perhaps it was considered in the

family council at the Cockpit that the existing state of affairs could

not go on, and that it was best to end it one way or another. One can

imagine the stir in the ante-chambers, the suppressed excitement in the

drawing-room, when the princess, less subdued than for some weeks past,

her eyes no longer red, nor the corners of her mouth drooping, came

suddenly in out of the night, with the well-known buoyant figure after

her, proud head erect and eyes aflame, her mistress’s train upon her

arm, but the air of a triumphant queen on her countenance. There would

be a pause of consternation--and for a moment it would seem as if Mary,

thus defied, must burst forth in wrath upon the culprit. What glances

must have passed between the court ladies behind their fans! What

whispers in the

[Illustration: QUEEN MARY OF MODENA.

ENGRAVED BY CHARLES STATE, AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR PETER LELY, IN

POSSESSION OF EARL SPENCER.]

corners! The queen, in the midst, pale with anger, restraining herself

with difficulty; the princess, perhaps beginning to quake; but Sarah,

undaunted, knowing no reason why she should not be there--“since to

attend the princess was only paying her duty where it was owing.”

But next morning brought, as they must have foreseen it would bring, a

royal missive, meant to carry dismay and terror, in which Mary commanded

her sister to dismiss her friend and make instant submission. “I tell

you plainly Lady Marlborough must not continue with you in the

circumstances in which her lord is,” the queen wrote; “never anybody was

suffered to live at court in my Lord Marlborough’s circumstances.” There

is nothing undignified in Mary’s letter. She was in all respects more

capable of expressing herself than her sister, and she had so far right

on her side that Lady Marlborough’s appearance at court was little less

than a deliberate insult to her. “I have all the reason imaginable to

look upon you bringing her here as the strangest thing that ever was

done, nor could all my kindness for you have hindered me showing you

that moment, but I considered your condition, and that made me master of

myself so far as not to take notice of it there,” the queen said. The

princess’s condition had often to be taken into consideration, and

perhaps she was not unwilling that her superiority in this respect to

her childless sister should be fully evident. She was then within a few

weeks of her confinement--not a moment when an affectionate and very

dependent woman could lightly be parted from her bosom friend.

Thus the situation was brought to a climax. It was not to be expected,

however, that Anne could have submitted to a mandate which in reality

would have taken from her all power to choose her own friends; and her

affections were so firmly fixed upon her beloved companion that it is

evident life without Sarah would have been a blank to her. She answered

in a letter studiously compiled in defense both of herself and her

retainer. “I am satisfied she cannot have been guilty of any fault to

you, and it would be extremely to her advantage if I could here repeat

every word that ever she had said to me of you in her whole life,” says

the princess; and she ends entreating her sister to “recall your severe

command,” and declaring that there is no misery “that I cannot readily

resolve to suffer rather than the thought of parting with her.” But

things had gone too far to be stopped by any such appeal. The letter was

answered by the lord chamberlain in person with a message forbidding

Lady Marlborough to continue at the Cockpit. This was arbitrary in the

highest degree, for the house was Anne’s private property, bought for

and settled upon her by Charles III.; and it was unreasonable, for

Whitehall was lying in ruins, and Queen Mary’s sight at Kensington could

not be offended by the spectacle of the couple who had so annoyed her.

The princess’s spirit was roused. She wrote to her sister that she

herself would be “obliged to retire,” since such were the terms of her

continuance, and sent immediately to the Duke of Somerset to ask for a

lease of Sion House. It is said that William so far interfered in the

squabble--in which indeed he had been influential all along--as to ask

the duke to refuse this trifling favor. But of all English noble houses

the proud Somersets were the last to be dictated to; and Anne

established herself triumphantly in her banishment on the banks of the

Thames with her favorite at her side.

A child was born a little later, and the queen paid Anne an angry visit

of ceremony a day or two after the event, saying nothing to her but on

the vexed subject. “I have made the first step by coming to you,” Mary

said, approaching the bed where the poor princess lay, sad and

suffering, for her baby had died soon after its birth, “and I now expect

you should make the next by removing Lady Marlborough.” The princess,

“trembling, and as white as her sheet,” stammered forth her plaintive

protest that this was the only thing in which she had disobliged her

sister, and that “it was unreasonable to ask it of her,” whereupon Mary,

without another word, left the room and the house. It was the last time

they ever met, unlikely as such a thing seemed. Anne made various

overtures of reconciliation, but as unconditional obedience was promised

in none, Mary’s heart was not softened.

The only justification that can be offered for the queen’s behavior was

that they had been long separated and had little but the formal tie of

relationship to bind them to each other. Anne had been but a child when

Mary left England. They were both married and surrounded by other

affections when they met again. They had so much resemblance of nature

that each seems to have been capable of but one passion. It was Mary’s

good fortune to love her husband with all her heart--but to all

appearance no one else. She had not a friend among all the ladies who

had shared her life for years--no intimate or companion who could give

her any solace when he was absent. Natural affection was not strong in

their family. They had no mother, nor bond of common relationship except

the father whom they both superseded. All this explains to a certain

extent her coldness to Anne, and it is very likely she thought she was

doing the best thing possible for her sister in endeavoring to separate

her from an evil influence, an inferior who was her mistress. But this

does not excuse the paltry and cruel persecution to which the younger

sister was henceforward exposed. Every honor that belonged to her rank

was taken from her, from the sentry at her door to the text upon her

cushion at church. She was allowed no guard; when she went into the

country the rural mayors were forbidden to present addresses to her and

pay the usual honors which mayors delight to pay. The great court ladies

were given to understand that whoever visited her would not be received

by the queen. A more irritating and miserable persecution could not be,

nor one more lowering to the character of the chief performer in it.

Anne was but recovering from the illness that followed her confinement,

and with which her sister’s angry visit was supposed to have something

to do, when another blow fell upon the band of friends. Marlborough was

suddenly arrested and sent to the Tower. There was reason enough perhaps

for his previous disgrace in the secret relations with St.-Germain which

he was known to have resumed; but the charge afterward made was a purely

fictitious one, and he and the other great personages involved had

little difficulty in proving this innocence. The correspondence which

took place while Lady Marlborough was in town with her husband on this

occasion reveals Anne very clearly in her affectionate simplicity.

I hear Lord Marlborough is sent to the Tower; and though I am

certain they have nothing against him, and expected by your letter

it would be so, yet I was struck when I was told it; for methinks

it is a dismal thing to have one’s friends sent to that place. I

have a thousand melancholy thoughts, and cannot help fearing they

hinder you from coming to me; though how they can do that without

making you a prisoner, I cannot imagine. I am just told by pretty

good hands that as soon as the wind turns westerly there will be a

guard set upon the prince and me. If you hear there is any such

thing designed and that ’tis easy to you, pray let me see you

before the wind changes: for afterward one does not know whether

they will let one have opportunities of speaking to one another.

But let them do what they please, nothing shall ever vex me, so I

can have the satisfaction of seeing dear Mrs. Freeman; and I swear

I would live on bread and water between four walls with her without

repining; for so long as you continue kind, nothing can ever be a

real mortification to your faithful Mrs. Morley, who wishes she may

never enjoy a moment’s happiness in this world or the next if ever

she proves false to you.

Whether the wind proving “westerly” was a phrase understood between the

correspondents, or if it had anything to do with the event of the

impending battle on which the fate of England was hanging, it is

difficult to tell. If it was used in the latter sense, the victorious

battle of La Hogue, by which all recent discomfitures were redeemed,

soon restored the government to calm and the consciousness of triumph,

and made conspiracy comparatively insignificant. Before this great

deliverance was known, Anne had written a submissive letter to her

sister, informing her that she had now recovered her strength “well

enough to go abroad,” and asking leave to pay her respects to the queen.

To which Mary returned a stern answer declaring that such civilities

were unnecessary as long as her sister declined to do the thing required

of her. Anne sent a copy of this letter to Lady Marlborough, announcing,

as she was now “at liberty to go where I please by the queen refusing to

see me,” her intention of coming to London to see her friend, but this

intention does not seem to have been carried out. “I am very sensibly

touched with the misfortune that my dear Mrs. Freeman has had in losing

her son, knowing very well what it is to lose a child,” the princess

writes, “but she, knowing my heart so well and how great a share I have

in all her concerns, I will not say any more on this subject for fear of

renewing her passion too much.” Throughout this separation these little

billets were continually coming and going, and we cannot do better than

transcribe for the reader some of those innocent letters, so natural and

full of the writer’s heart.

Though I have nothing to say to my dear Mrs. Freeman I cannot help

inquiring how she and her Lord does. If it be not convenient for

you to write when you receive this, either keep the bearer till it

is, or let me have a word from you by the next opportunity when it

is easy to you, for I would not be a constraint to you at any time,

much less now when you have so many things to do and think of. All

I desire to hear from you at such a time is that you and yours are

well, which next to having my Lord Marlborough out of his enemies’

power, is the best news that can come to her, who to the last

moment of her life will be dear to Mrs. Freeman’s....

I give dear Mrs. Freeman a thousand thanks for her letter which

gives me an account of her concerns; and that is what I desire more

to know than other news. I shall reckon the days and hours and

think it very long till the time is out, both for your sake and my

Lord Marlborough’s, and that he may be at liberty and your mind at

ease. And, dear Mrs. Freeman, don’t say when I can see you if I

come to town, therefore I ask which day will be most convenient for

you. I confess I long to see you, but am not so unreasonable to

desire that satisfaction till it is easy to you. I wish with all my

soul that you may not be a true prophetess, and that it may soon be

in our power to enjoy one another’s company more than it has been

of late, which is all I covet in this world....

I am sorry with all my heart Mrs. Freeman meets with so many

delays, but it is a comfort they cannot keep my Lord Marlborough in

the Tower longer than the end of the term, and I hope when the

Parliament sits care will be taken that people may not be clapt up

for nothing, or else there will be no living in quiet for anybody

but insolent Dutch and sneaking mercenary Englishmen. Dear Mrs.

Freeman, farewell--be assured your faithful Mrs. Morley can never

change, and I hope you do not in the least doubt of her kindness,

which, if it be possible, increases every day, and that can never

have an end but with her life. Mrs. Morley hopes her dear Mrs.

Freeman will let her have the satisfaction of hearing again from

her to-morrow....

Dear Mrs. Freeman may easily imagine I cannot have much to say

since I saw her. However, I must write two words, for though I

believe she does not doubt of my constancy, feeling how base and

false all the world is, I am of that temper I think I can never say

enough to assure you of it. Therefore give me leave to assure you

they can never change me. And there is no misery I cannot readily

resolve to suffer rather than the thoughts of parting from you. And

I do swear I would sooner be torn in pieces than alter this my

resolution. My dear Mrs. Freeman, I long to hear from you.

This pretty correspondence changed a little, but only to grow more

impassioned, when the princess had gone to Bath and the friends were

less near each other.

Anne was, however, pursued by the royal displeasure even in her invalid

journey to Bath, and no less a person than Lord Nottingham, the lord

chamberlain, was employed to warn the mayor of that city that his

civilities to the princess were ill-timed. Such a disclosure of the

family quarrel evinced a determination and bitterness which perhaps

frightened even Lady Marlborough, courageous as she was; and she seems

to have offered and even pressed her resignation as a means of making

peace. But nothing altered the devotion of her faithful princess.

I really long to know how my dear Mrs. Freeman got home, and now I

have this opportunity of writing she must give me leave to tell her

if she should ever be so cruel as to leave her faithful Mrs. Morley

she will rob her of all the joy and quiet of her life; for if that

day should come, I could never enjoy a happy minute, and I swear to

you I would shut myself up and never see a creature. If you do but

remember what the queen said to me the night before your lord was

turned out of all; then she began to pick quarrels; and if they

should take off twenty or thirty thousand pounds, have I not lived

upon as little before? When I was first married we had but twenty

(it is true indeed the king was so kind to pay my debts) and if it

should come to that again what retrenchment is there in my family I

would not willingly make and be glad of that pretence to do it?

Never fancy, my dear Mrs. Freeman, if what you fear should happen,

that you are the occasion; no, I am very well satisfied, and so is

the prince, too, that it would have been so however, for Caliban is

capable of doing nothing but injustice; therefore rest satisfied

you are noways the cause, and let me beg once more for God’s sake

that you would not mention parting more, no, not so much as think

of it, and if you should ever leave me, be assured it would break

your faithful Mrs. Morley’s heart.

A still stronger expression of the same sentiment, with a little gleam

of self-assertion and sense of injured dignity, follows, after the

princess had, as would seem, taken counsel with her George. That heavy

prince fully acquiesced at least, if nothing more, in his wife’s

devotion.

In obedience to dear Mrs. Freeman I have told the prince all she

desired me, and he is so far from being of another opinion, if

there had been occasion, he would have strengthened me in my

resolutions, and we both beg you would never mention so cruel a

thing again. Can you think either of us so wretched that for the

sake of twenty thousand pounds, and to be tormented from morning to

night with flattering knaves and fools, we should forsake those we

have such obligations to, and that we are so certain we are the

occasion of all their misfortunes? Besides, will you believe we

will truckle to Caliban, who from the first moment of his coming

has used us at that rate as we are sensible he has done, and that

all the world can witness that will not let their interest weigh

more with them than their reason? But suppose I did submit, and

that the king could change his nature so much as to use me with

humanity, how would all reasonable people despise me? How would

that Dutch monster laugh at me, and please himself with having got

the better! and which is much more, how would my conscience

reproach me for having sacrificed it--my honor, reputation, and all

the substantial comforts of this life--for transitory interest,

which even to those who make it their idol, can never afford any

real satisfaction, much less to a virtuous mind? No, my dear Mrs.

Freeman, never believe that your faithful Mrs. Morley will ever

submit. She can wait with patience for a sunshine day, and if she

does not live to see it, yet she hopes England will flourish again.

Once more give me leave to beg you would be so kind never to speak

of parting more, for, let what will happen, that is the only thing

that can make me miserable.

Such are the letters which Lord Macaulay describes as expressing “the

sentiments of a fury in the style of a fish-woman.” It was not indeed

pretty to call great William Caliban, but Anne was fond of nicknames,

and the king’s personal appearance was not his strong point. To us the

above outburst of indignation seems both natural and allowable. She had

been subject to an inveterate and petty persecution--her little

magnanimities had been answered by exactions. We are all so ready to

believe that when a woman is involved she must be the offender, that

most readers will have set down the insults to which Anne was subject to

the account of Mary. But it is curious to note that in these letters all

the blame is thrown upon the harsh brother-in-law, the Dutch monster,

the alien, who had made so many strangers into English noblemen, and who

identified Marlborough, among all the other courtiers who had been as

[Illustration: WILLIAM III.

FROM COPPERPLATE ENGRAVING BY CORNELIS VERMEULEN, AFTER THE PAINTING BY

ADRIAAN VANDER WERFF.]

little steadfast to him, as the object of a pertinacious persecution.

The princess says nothing of her sister. It is Caliban who is capable of

nothing but injustice. It is he who will laugh if he gets the better of

her. Anne’s style is perhaps not quite worthy of the Augustan age, but

it is at least very intelligible and full of little individual turns

which are more characteristic than the smoother graces. That she loved

her friend with her whole heart, that she had a generous contempt for

interested motives, and, humble as she was, a just sense of her own

dignity, are all abundantly and very simply manifest in them. They will

give to the impartial reader the impression of a natural and artless

character, with much generous feeling and much tender affectionateness:

tenacious of her rank and its observances, yet willing to throw all

these trifles down at the feet of her friend. Poor young lady! When we

recollect how constantly the princess’s “condition” had to be thought

of, how her long patience and many pains ended constantly in the little

waxen image of a dead baby and nothing more, who can wonder that the

world seemed falling to pieces about her when she was threatened with

the loss of the one strong sustaining prop upon which she had hung from

her childhood--the friend who had helped her through all the first

experiences of life, the companion who had amused so many weary days and

made the time pass as no one else could do!

All these miserable disputes, however, were ended in a moment when

brought into the cold twilight of a death-chamber, where even kings and

queens are constrained to see things at their true value. Of all the

royal personages in the kingdom, Mary’s would have seemed to any outside

spectator the soundest and safest life. William had never been healthy,

and was consumed by the responsibilities and troubles into which he had

plunged. Anne had these ever-succeeding maternities to keep her at a low

level; but Mary was young, vigorous, and happy--happy at least in her

devotion to her husband and his love for her. It was she, however, who,

to the awe and consternation of the world, was cut down in her prime

after a few days’ illness, in the midst of her greatness. Such a

catastrophe no one could behold without the profoundest impulse of pity.

Whatever she had done a week before, there she lay now helpless, all her

splendors gone from her, the promise of a long career ended, and her

partner left heartbroken upon the solitary throne to which she had given

him the first right.

The sight of so forlorn a man,--so powerful, yet as impotent when his

happiness was concerned as the meanest,--left thus heartbroken without

courage or strength, his sole companion gone, and nothing but strangers,

alien minds, and doubtful counselors round, is enough to touch any

heart. Anne, like the rest of the world, was shocked and startled by the

sudden calamity. She sent anxious messages asking to be admitted to her

sister’s bedside; and, when all was over, partly no doubt from policy,

but we may be at least permitted to believe partly from good feeling,

presented herself at Kensington Palace to show at least that rancor was

not in her heart. Unfortunately, there was no reconciliation between the

sisters: the breach continued to the end of the queen’s life, Burnet

informs us. But when the forlorn and solitary king was roused in his

misery to receive his sister-in-law’s message, a sort of peace was

patched up between them over that unthought-of grave. There was no

longer any public quarrel or manifestation of animosity--and with this

melancholy event the first half of Anne’s history may be brought to an

end.