CHAPTER II

THE QUEEN AND THE DUCHESS

A year after the accession of William and Mary, and before any of the

bitternesses and conflicts above recorded had openly begun, the only

child of Anne on whose life any hopes could be built was born. Her many

babies had died at birth or immediately after, and their quick and

constant succession, as has been said, was the distinguishing feature of

her personal life. But after the Revolution, when everything was

settling out of the confusion of the crisis, and when as yet no further

family troubles had disclosed the family rancors and disagreements, in

the country air of Hampton Court, where the new king and queen were

living, a little prince was born. Though he was sickly at first, like

all the rest, he survived the dangers of infancy, and, called William

after the king, and bearing from the first day of his life the title of

Duke of Gloucester, was received joyfully by the nation at large and

everybody concerned as the authentic heir to the crown. This child kept,

it would seem, a little hold on the affections of the childless Mary

during the whole course of the quarrel with his mother, bitter as it

was, and continued an object of interest and kindness to William as long

as he lived. The interposition of the quaint and precocious boy, with

his big head, his premature enlightenment as to what it was and was not

prudent to say, his sparkle of childish ambition, and all his

old-fashioned ways, made a curious and welcome diversion in the troubled

scene where nothing was happy, not even the child. He was the chief

occupation of Anne’s life when comparative peace followed the warlike

interval above related, and a cold and forced civility replaced the

active hostilities which for years had been raging between the court and

the household of the princess.

Anne has never got much credit for her forbearance and self-effacement

at the critical moments of her career. But it is certain that she might

have given William a great deal of trouble had she asserted her rights

as Mary’s successor, as she might also have done at the time of the

first settlement. No doubt he would on both occasions have carried the

day, and with this certainty the historians have been satisfied, without

considering that a woman who was not of a lofty character, and who was a

Stuart, must have felt it doubly bitter to find herself the subject of a

gloomy brother-in-law who slighted her, and who, her rasher partizans

did not hesitate to say, ought to have been her subject so long as he

remained in England after her sister’s death, and not she his. The

absence of any attempt on her part to disturb or molest, nay, her little

advances, her letters of condolence, and of congratulation the first

time that a victory gave occasion for it, showed no inconsiderable

magnanimity on the part of the prosaic princess--all the more that she

had not been in the habit, as is usual among women, of putting the

scorns she had suffered to another woman’s account, and holding Mary

responsible, but had uniformly attributed to the “Dutch monster,” the

Caliban of her correspondence, all the slights that were put on her--all

the more that William did very little to encourage any overtures of

friendship. He received her after his wife’s death, and they are said by

one of her attendants to have wept together when the unwieldy princess,

then unable to walk, was carried in her chair into the very

presence-chamber. But if a common emotion drew them together at this

moment, it did not last; and in the diminished

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

ENGRAVED BY R. G. TIETZE, FROM MEZZOTINT BY JOHN SMITH, AFTER THE

PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.]

ceremonial of the bereaved court, Anne had but scant respect and no

welcome. But she made no further complaint, and did what she could to

keep on terms of civility at least with her brother-in-law, writing to

him little letters of politeness, notwithstanding the disapproval of

Lady Marlborough, who was of no such gentle temper, and the absence of

all response from William. He, with all his foreign wars and home

troubles, solitary, sad, broken in health and in life, had little heart,

we may suppose, for those commonplace advances from a woman he had never

been able to tolerate. But though Anne’s relations with the king were

scarcely improved, her position in respect to the courtiers who had

abandoned her in her sister’s lifetime was different indeed. Lady

Marlborough describes this with her usual force.

And now it being quickly known that the quarrel was made up,

nothing was to be seen but crowds of people of all sorts flocking

to Berkeley House to pay their respects to the prince and princess;

a sudden alteration which I remember occasioned the half-witted

Lord Carnarvon to say one night to the princess as he stood close

by her in the circle, “I hope your highness will remember that I

came to wait upon you when none of this company did,” which caused

a great deal of mirth.

Meanwhile, the little boy, the heir of England, interposes his quaint

little figure with that touch of nature which always belongs to a child,

in the midst of all the excitement and dullness, awakening a certain

interest even in the solitary and bereaved life of William, and filling

his mother’s house with tender anxieties and pleasures. He was sickly

and feeble from his childhood, but early learned the royal lesson of

self-concealment, and was cuffed and hustled by the anxious cruelty of

love into the use of his poor little legs years after his contemporaries

had been in full enjoyment of their liberty. It is characteristic of the

self-absorbed and belligerent chronicler of the princess’s household,

whose narrative of all the quarrels and struggles of royal personages

is so vivid, that she has very little to say about either the living or

dying of the only child who was of such importance both to her mistress

and to the country. His little existence is pushed aside in Lady

Marlborough’s record, and but for a little squabble over the appointment

of the duke’s “family,” which she gives with great detail, we should

scarcely have known from her that Anne had tasted that happiness of

maternity which is so largely weighted with pains and cares. But the

story of little Gloucester’s life, as found in the more familiar record

of his waiting-gentleman, Lewis Jenkins, is both attractive and

entertaining. The little fellow seems to have been full of lively spirit

and observation, active and restless in spite of his feebleness, full of

a child’s interest in everything about him, and of precocious judgment

and criticism. Some of the stories that are told of him put these gifts

in a startling light. “Who has taught you to say such words?” his mother

asks him when the child has been betrayed into innocent repetition of

the oaths he had heard from his attendants. The boy pauses before he

replies. “If I say Dick Dewey,” he whispers to a favorite lady, “he will

be sent down-stairs. Mama, I invented them myself,” he adds aloud. The

little being moving among worlds not realized, learning to play his

little part, taking his cue from the countenances round him, forming his

little policy in the twinkling of an eye, could not have had a better

representative. His careless indifference to his chaplain’s religious

services, but happy learning of little prayers and verses with the old

lady to whom he takes a fancy, his weariness of lessons, yet eager

interest in the diagrams that drop from Lewis Jenkins’s pocket-book, and

in all the bits of history he can induce his Welsh usher to tell him,

and all the rest of his innocent childlike perversities, awaken in us an

amused yet pathetic interest. A troublesome, lovable, perverse,

delightful child, not always easy to manage, constantly asking the most

awkward questions, full of ambition and energy and spirit and

foolishness, the dull prince’s somewhat tedious house brightens into

hope and sweetness so long as he is there.

In every respect this was the brightest moment of Anne’s life. There was

no longer any possibility of treating the next heir to the crown, the

mother of the only prince in whom the imagination of England could take

pleasure, with slighting or contumely. She was permitted to have her

share of the honors and comforts of English royalty. St. James’s old

red-brick palace was given over to her as became her position; and, what

was more wonderful, Windsor Castle, one of the noblest of royal

dwellings, became the country-house of Anne and her boy. King William

preferred Hampton Court, with its Dutch gardens, in which he could

imagine himself at home: the great feudal castle, erecting its massive

towers from the crest of the gentle hill which has the value of a much

greater eminence in the midst of the broad plain that sweeps forth in

every direction round, was not, apparently, to his taste. And few

prettier or more innocent scenes have been associated with its long

history than those in which little Gloucester was the chief actor. He

had a little regiment of boys of his own age whom it was his delight to

drill and lead through a hundred mock battles and rapid skirmishings,

mischievous little urchins who called themselves the Duke of

Gloucester’s men, and played their little pranks like their elders, as

favorites will. When he went to Windsor, four Eton boys were sent for to

be his playmates, one of them being young Churchill, the son of Lady

Marlborough. The little prince chose St. George’s Hall for the scene of

his mimic battles, and there the little army stormed and besieged one

another to their hearts’ content. When his mother’s marriage-day was

celebrated, he received his parents with salvos of his small artillery,

and, stepping forth in his little birthday-suit, paid them his

compliment: “Papa, I wish you and Mama unity, peace, and concord, not

for a time, but forever,” said the serious little hero. One can fancy

Anne, smiling and triumphant in her joy of motherhood, with her

beautiful chestnut curls and sweet complexion and placid roundness,

leaning on good George’s arm,--her peaceful companion, with whom she had

never a quarrel,--and admiring her son’s infant wisdom. It was their

happy time: no cares of state upon their heads, no quarrels on hand,

Sarah of Marlborough, let us hope, smiling too, and at peace with

everybody, her own boy taking part in the ceremonial.

The little smoke and whiff of gunpowder, the little gunners at their toy

artillery, the great hall still slightly athrill with the mimic salute,

add something still to the boundless hopefulness of the scene; for why

should not this little English William grow up as great a soldier and

more fortunate than his grim godfather, and subdue France under the feet

of England, and be the conqueror of the world? All this was possible in

those pleasant days.

On another occasion there was a great chapter of Knights of the Garter

to witness the installation of little Gloucester in knightly state as

one of the order. The little figure, seven years old, seated under the

noble canopywork in St. George’s beautiful chapel, scarcely visible over

the desk upon which his prayer-book was spread out, gazing with blue

eyes intent, in all the gravity of a child, upon the great English

nobles in their stalls around him, listening to the voices of the

choristers pealing high into space, makes another touching picture. King

William himself had buckled the garter round the child’s knee and hung

the jewel about his neck,--St. George slaying his dragon, that

immemorial emblem of the victory over evil; and no doubt in the vague

grandeur of childish anticipation, the boy felt himself ready to emulate

the feat of the patron saint. He was a little patriot too, eager to lend

the aid of his small squadron to his uncle when William went away to the

wars, and bringing a

[Illustration: GARDEN FRONT, HAMPTON COURT.

DRAWN BY JOSEPH PENNELL, ENGRAVED BY J. F. JUNGLING.]

smile even upon that worn and melancholy face as he manœuvered his

little company and showed how they would fight in Flanders when the

moment came. When William was threatened with assassination and the

country woke up to feel that though she did not love him it would be

much amiss to lose him, little Gloucester, at eight, was one of the most

loyal. Taking counsel with his little regiment, he drew up a memorial,

written out, no doubt, by the best master of the pen among them, with

much shedding of ink, if not of more precious fluid. “We, your Majesty’s

subjects, will stand by you while we have a drop of blood,” was the

address to which the Duke of Gloucester’s men set all their tiny fists.

The little duke himself, not content with this, added to it another

address of his own:

I, your Majesty’s most dutiful subject, had rather lose my life in

your Majesty’s cause than in any man’s else; and I hope it will not

be long ere you conquer France.

GLOUCESTER.

Heroic little prince!--a Protestant William, yet a gallant and gentle

Stuart. With this heart of enthusiasm and generous valor in him, what

might he not have done had he ever lived to be king? These marred

possibilities, which are so common in life, are almost the saddest

things in it, and that must be a heart very strong in faith that is not

struck dumb by the withdrawal from earth’s extreme need of so much

faculty that seemed created for her help and succor. It certainly awoke

a smile, and might have drawn an iron tear down William’s cheek, to see

this faithful little warrior ready to “lose his life” in his defense.

And the good pair behind, George and Anne, who had evidently suffered no

treacherous suggestion to get to the ear of the boy,--no hint that

William was a usurper, and little Gloucester had more right than he to

be uppermost,--how radiant they stand in the light of their happiness

and hope! The spectator is reluctant to turn the page to the coming

gloom.

“When the Duke of Gloucester was arrived at an age to be put into men’s

hands,” William’s relenting and change of mind was proved by the fact

that Marlborough, who had been in disgrace all these years, and whom

only the constant favor of Anne had kept out of entire obscurity, was

recalled into the front of affairs in order to be made “governor” of the

young prince. It is true that this gracious act was partially

neutralized by the appointment of Bishop Burnet as little Gloucester’s

tutor, a choice which was supposed to be as disagreeable to Anne as the

other was happy. No distinct reason appears for this sudden and

extraordinary change. Marlborough’s connection with the family of the

princess made him indeed peculiarly suitable to have the charge of her

son, but William had not hitherto shown any desire to honor her likings;

and this was not reason enough for all the other marks of favor bestowed

upon him, bringing him back at once from private life and political

disgrace to a position as high as any in the kingdom. Burnet himself did

by no means relish the honor thus thrust upon him. He was almost

disposed, he tells us, “to retire from the court and town,” much as that

would have cost him, rather than take upon him such a charge. But the

pleasure of believing that “the king would trust that care only to me,”

and also an unexpected “encouragement” received from the princess,

decided him to make the experiment. The little pupil was about nine when

he came into the bishop’s hands, and he gives the following account of

his charge:

I had been trusted with his education now for two years, and he had

made amazing progress. I had read over the Psalms, Proverbs, and

Gospels with him, and had explained things that fell in my way very

copiously; and was often surprised with the questions that he put

to me, and the reflections that he made. He came to understand

things relating to religion beyond imagination. I went through

geography so often with him that he knew all the maps very

particularly. I explained to him the forms of government in every

country, with the interests and trades of that country, and what

was both bad and good in it. I acquainted him with all the great

revolutions that had been in the world, and gave him a copious

account of the Greek and Roman histories of Plutarch’s lives; the

last thing I explained to him was the Gothic constitution and the

beneficiary and feudal laws: I talked of these things at different

times more than three hours a day; this was both easy and

delighting to him. The king ordered five of his chief ministers to

come once a quarter and examine the progress he made; they seemed

amazed both at his knowledge and the good understanding that

appeared in him; he had a wonderful memory and a very good

judgment.

Poor little Gloucester! The genial bishop breaking down all this

knowledge into pleasant talks so that it should be “both easy and

delighting,” and his lessons in fortification, which were more

delightful still, and his own little private princelike observation of

men’s faces and minds, were all to come to naught. On his eleventh

birthday, amid the feastings and joy, a sudden illness seized him, and,

a few days after, the promising boy had ended his bright little career.

As a matter of course, blame was attached to the doctor who attended

him, and who had bled him in the beginning of a fever; but this was

almost universally the case in the then state of medical science. “He

was the only remaining child,” the bishop says, “of seventeen the

princess had borne, some to the full time and the rest before it. She

attended on him during his sickness with great tenderness, but with a

grave composedness that amazed all who saw it. She bore his death with a

resignation and piety that were indeed very singular.” It would be small

wonder indeed if Anne had been altogether crushed by such a calamity. It

is said by some historians of the Jacobite party that her mind was

overwhelmed by a sense of her guilt toward her own father, and of just

judgment executed upon her in the loss of her child, and that she

immediately wrote to James, pouring out her whole heart in penitence,

and pledging herself to support the claims of her brother should she

ever come to the throne. This letter, however, was never found, and

does not seem to be vouched for by witnesses beyond suspicion. But for

the fact that Anne was stricken to the dust, no parent will need any

further evidence. Her good days and hopes were over; henceforward, when

she wrote to her dearest friend in the old confidential strain, it was

as “your poor unfortunate Morley” that the bereaved mother signed

herself. Nothing altered these sad adjectives. She felt herself as poor

and unfortunate in her unutterable loss when she was queen as if she had

been the humblest woman that ever lost an only child.

Marlborough was absent when his little pupil fell ill, but hurried back

to Windsor in time to see him die. It was etiquette in those days that

in case of a death the survivors should instantly leave the place in

which it had happened, leaving the dead in possession, to lie in state

there and receive the homage of curious or interested spectators. But

Anne would not be persuaded to leave the place where her child was, and,

four or five days after, the little prince was carried solemnly by

torchlight through the summer woods, through Windsor Park, and by the

river, and under the trees of Richmond, to Westminster: a silent

procession pouring slowly through the odorous August night. His little

body lay in state in Westminster Hall--a noble chamber for such a tiny

sleeper--for five days more, when it was laid with the kings in the

great abbey which holds all the greatest of England. A more heartrending

episode is not in history.

William did not take any notice of the announcement of the death for a

considerable time, which embarrassed the ambassador at Paris greatly on

the subject of mourning, and has given occasion for much denunciation of

his hardness and heartlessness. When he answered at last,

however--though this was not till more than two months after, in a

letter to Marlborough--it was with much subdued feeling. “I do not think

it

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER

ENGRAVED BY R. A. MULLER, FROM MINIATURE BY LEWIS CROSSE IN THE

COLLECTION AT WINDSOR CASTLE; BY SPECIAL PERMISSION OF QUEEN

VICTORIA.]

necessary to employ many words,” he writes, “in expressing my surprise

and grief at the death of the Duke of Gloucester. It is so great a loss

to me as well as to all England, that it pierces my heart with

affliction.” It seems impossible that the loss of a child who had shown

so touching an allegiance to himself should not have moved him; but

perhaps there was in him, too, a touch of satisfaction that the rival

pair who had been thorns in his flesh since ever he came to England,

were not to have the satisfaction of founding a new line. At St.-Germain

the satisfaction was more marked still, and it was supposed that the

most dangerous obstacle in the way of the young James Stuart was removed

by the death of his sister’s heir. We know now how futile that

anticipation was; but at the time this was not so clear, and the anxiety

of the English parliament to secure before William’s death a formal

abjuration of the so-called Prince of Wales shows that the hope was not

without foundation.

This and the new and exciting combination of European affairs produced

by what is called the “Spanish Succession,” occupied all minds during

the two years that remained of William’s suffering life. It was a moment

of great excitement and uncertainty. Louis XIV., into whose hands, as

seemed likely, a sort of universal power must fall if his grandson were

permitted to succeed to the throne of Spain, had just vowed at the

death-bed of James his determination to support the claims of the

exile’s son, and, on James’s death, had proclaimed the boy King of

England. Thus England had every reason of personal irritation and even

alarm for joining in the alliance against the threatening supremacy of

France, whose power--had she been allowed to place one of her princes

peaceably on the Spanish throne, to which the rich Netherlands still

belonged--would have been paramount in Europe. It was on the eve of the

great struggle that William died. With a determination equal to that

with which he had made head against failing fortune in many a

battle-field, he fought for his life, which, at such a crisis, was

doubly important to the countries of his birth and of his crown, and to

the cause of the Protestant religion and all that we have been taught to

consider as freedom throughout Europe. There is something pathetic in

the struggle, in the statement of his case, under one name or another as

a private individual, that there might be no doubt as to the frankness

of the opinions which he caused to be made among the great physicians of

Europe. His life in itself could not have been a very happy or desirable

one. He had no longer his popular and beloved Mary to leave behind him

in England as his representative when he set out for the wars, and there

were few in England whom he trusted fully, or who trusted him. To die at

the beginning of a great European struggle, leaving the dull people whom

he disliked to take his place in England, and the soldier whom he had

crushed and subdued and sternly held in the shade as long as he was

able, to assume his baton, and win the victories it had never been

William’s fortune to gain, must have been bitter indeed. It would appear

even that he had entertained some idea of disturbing the natural order

of events to prevent this, and that it had been suggested to the

Electress Sophia, after poor little Gloucester’s death, that her family

should at once be nominated as his immediate successors, to the

exclusion of Anne, a proposal which the prudent electress evaded with

great skill and ingenuity by representing that the Prince of Wales--who

must surely have learned, he and his counselors, wisdom from the failure

of his father--was the natural heir, and would, no doubt, do well enough

on a trial. Bishop Burnet denies that such a design was ever

entertained, but Lord Dartmouth, in his notes upon Burnet, gives the

following very distinct evidence on the subject:

I do not know how far the Whig party would trust a secret of that

consequence to such a blab as the bishop was known to be: but the

Dukes of Bolton and Newcastle both proposed it to me, and used the

strongest arguments to induce me to come into it; which was that it

would be making Lord Marlborough King at least for the time if the

Princess succeeded; and that I had reason to expect nothing but

ill-usage during such a reign. Lord Marlborough asked me afterward

in the House of Lords if I had ever heard of such a design. I told

him Yes, but did not think it very likely. He said it was very

true: but by God if ever they attempted it we would walk over their

bellies.

Thus until the last moment Anne’s position would seem to have been

menaced; but a more impossible scheme was never suggested, for even the

idea of Marlborough’s triumph was unable to raise the smallest party

against the princess, and to the country in general she was the object

of a kind of enthusiasm. The people loved everything in her, even the

fact that she was not clever, which of itself is often highly

ingratiating with the masses. William, it is said, with a magnanimity

which was infinitely to his credit, named Marlborough as his most fit

successor in the command of the allied armies before he died. The formal

abjuration of the Prince of Wales was made by Parliament only just in

time to have his assent, and then all obstacles were removed out of the

princess’s way. It was thought by the populace that everything

brightened for the new reign. There had been an unexampled continuance

of gloomy weather, bad harvests, and clouds and storms. But to great

Queen Anne the sun burst forth, the gloom dispelled, the country broke

out into gaiety and rejoicing. A new reign full of new possibilities has

always something exhilarating in it. William’s greatness was marred by

externals and never heartily acknowledged by the mass of the people, but

Anne had many claims upon the popular favor. She was a woman, and a kind

and simple one. That desertion of her father which some historical

writers have condemned so bitterly, had no great effect upon the

contemporary imagination, nor, so far as can be judged, upon her own;

and it was the only offense that could be alleged against her. She had

been unkindly treated and threatened with wrong, which naturally made

the multitude strenuous in her cause; and everything conspired to make

her accession happy. She was only thirty-seven, and though somewhat

unwieldy in person, still preserved her English comeliness, her

abundant, beautiful hair, and, above all, the melodious voice by which

even statesmen and politicians were impressed. “She pronounced this,”

says Bishop Burnet, describing her address to the Privy Council when

they first presented themselves before her, “as she did all her other

speeches, with great weight and authority, and with a softness of voice

and sweetness in the pronunciation that added much life to all she

spoke.” The commentators who criticize so sorely the bishop’s chronicles

are in entire agreement with him on this subject. “It was a real

pleasure to hear her,” says Lord Dartmouth, “though she had a

bashfulness that made it very uneasy to herself to say much in public.”

Speaker Onslow unites in the same testimony: “I have heard the queen

speak from the throne, and she had all the author says here. I never saw

an audience more affected; it was a sort of charm. She received all that

came to her in so gracious a manner that they went from her highly

satisfied with her goodness and her obliging deportment; for she

hearkened with attention to everything that was said to her.” Thus all

smiled upon Anne in the morning of her reign. Her coronation was marked

with unusual splendor and enthusiasm, and though the queen herself had

to be carried in a chair to the Abbey, her state of health being such

that she could not walk, this did not affect the splendid ceremonial in

which even to the Jacobites themselves there was little to complain of,

since their hopes that Anne’s influence might advance her father’s young

son to the succession after her were still high, notwithstanding that

the settlement of the crown upon Sophia of Brunswick and her heirs had

already been made.

[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE.

FROM COPPERPLATE ENGRAVING BY PIETER VAN GUNST, AFTER THE PAINTING BY

SIR GODFREY KNELLER.]

It is needless for us to attempt a history of the great war which was

one of the most important features in Anne’s reign. No student of

history can be ignorant of its general course, nor of the completeness

with which Marlborough’s victories crushed the exorbitant power of

France and raised the prestige of England. There is no lack of histories

of the great general and his career of victory: how he out-fought,

out-marched, and out-generaled all his rivals, and scarcely in his ten

years of active warfare encountered one check; how, though he did not

accomplish the direct object for which all the bloodshed and toil were

undertaken, he yet secured such respect for the English name and valor

as renewed our old reputation and made all interference with our natural

settlement or intrusion into our private economy impossible forever.

“What good came of it at last?” says the poet. But the inquiry, though

so plausible, appealing at once to humanity and common sense, is not

perhaps so hard to answer as it seems. Up to this time it has been

impossible to procure in the intercourse of nations any other effectual

arbiter but the sword: a terrible one, indeed, but apparently as yet the

only means of keeping a check upon the rapacity of some, and protecting

the weakness of others. At all events, whatever individual opinion may

be on the point now, there was a unanimous conviction then, and no one

doubted at the opening of the war that it was most necessary and just.

And of its conduct there has been but one opinion. Contemporaries

accused Marlborough of every conceivable wickedness,--of peculation,

treachery, even personal cowardice; but no one ventured to say that he

was not a great general. And as we have got further and further from the

infuriated politics of his time, his gifts and graces, his wisdom and

moderation, as well as his wonderful military genius, have been done

more and more justice to. Coxe, his special biographer, may be supposed

to look with partiality upon his hero; but this cannot be said of more

recent writers,--of Lord Stanhope in his tolerant and sensible history,

or of Dr. Hill Burton in his sagacious volumes on the reign of Queen

Anne.

It is, however, with Marlborough’s wife and not with himself that we are

chiefly concerned, and with the stormy course of Anne’s future

intercourse with her friend rather than the battles that were fought in

her name. It is said that by the time she came to the throne her

faithful affection to her lifelong companion had begun to be impaired,

but the date of the first beginning of their severance will probably

never be determined, nor its immediate cause. Miss Strickland professes

to have ascertained that certain impatient words used by Sarah of

Marlborough, which were overheard by the queen, were the occasion of the

breach; but as there is no very satisfactory foundation for the story,

and it is added that Anne kept her feelings undisclosed for long after,

we may dismiss the legend as possible enough, but no more.

All the great hopes which the pair must have formed seemed likely to be

fulfilled in the early part of Queen Anne’s reign. A very short time

after her accession, Marlborough, who had at once entered upon the

conduct of foreign affairs and the preparations for war, according to

William’s appointment, received the garter which Anne and her husband

had vainly asked for him in the previous reign; and when he returned

from his first campaign, a dukedom was bestowed upon him, with many

pretty expressions on Anne’s part.

Indeed, the queen’s gift of “writing pretty, affectionate letters,”

which was the only thing, according to the duchess’s opinion of her

expressed in later days, that she could do well, is still abundantly

proved by the correspondence. Anne was as anxious as ever to serve and

please her friend and favorite. She prays God, in her little note of

congratulation after the siege of Bonn in 1703, to send Marlborough

“safe home to his and my dear adored Mrs. Freeman,” with all the grace

of perfect sympathy; for the great duke was as abject in his adoration

of that imperious, bewitching, and triumphant Sarah as the queen

herself. With the tenderest recollection of her friend’s whims, the

queen gave her the rangership of Windsor Park (strange office for a

woman to hold!), in which was included “a lodge in the great park,”

which the duchess describes as “a very agreeable place to live in,” ...

“remembering that when we used in former days to ride by it, I had often

wished for such a place,” although it was necessary to turn out

Portland, King William’s friend and favorite, in order to replace him by

Lady Marlborough; no doubt, however, this summary displacement of the

Dutchman added to the pleasure both of giving and receiving. Lady

Marlborough had a multiplicity of other offices in addition to

this,--such as those of mistress of the robes, groom of the stole, and

keeper of the privy purse,--offices, however, which she had virtually

held for years in the household of the princess. All these brought in a

great deal of money, a matter to which she was never indifferent; and

along with the dukedom, the queen bestowed upon Marlborough a pension of

£5000 a year; so that the resources of the new ducal house were

abundant. They would seem by their posts and perquisites alone to have

had an income between them not far short of £60,000 a year, an enormous

sum for those times, not to speak of less legitimate profits--presents

from contractors, and percentages on the pay of the troops, which

Marlborough took, as everybody did, as a matter of course, though it was

afterward charged against him as if he had invented the custom. The

queen also promised a little fortune to each of their daughters as they

married--a promise certainly fulfilled in the case of Henrietta, who

married the son of Godolphin, thus uniting the colleagues in the closest

family bonds. Anne also offered a pension of £2000 a year to the

duchess from the privy purse, a bounty declined at first, but of which

afterward, in the final breaking up of their relations, Sarah was mean

enough to demand the arrears, amounting to no less a sum than £18,000.

Thus every kind of gift and favor was pressed upon the royal favorite in

the early days of Anne’s reign.

Before this the means of the pair had been but small. Marlborough had

been long deprived of all preferment, and the duchess informs us that

she had discharged in the princess’s household all the offices for which

afterward she was so highly paid on an allowance of £400 a year. It was

for this reason that the dukedom was unwelcome to her. “I do agree with

you,” her husband writes to her, “that we ought not to wish for a

greater title till we have a better estate,” and he assures her that “I

shall have a mind to nothing but as it may be easy to you.” It was in

this strain that the great conqueror always addressed his wife, and it

would be difficult to say which of her two adorers, her husband or her

queen, showed the deepest devotion. When Marlborough set out for his

first campaign in the war which was to cover him with glory, and in

which for the first time he had full scope, this is how he writes to the

companion of his life (she had gone with him to Margate to see him

embark):

It is impossible to express with what a heavy heart I parted from

you when I was by the water’s side. I could have given my life to

have come back though I knew my own weakness so much that I durst

not, for I know I should have exposed myself to the company. I did

for a great while with a perspective glass look out upon the cliffs

in hopes I might have had one sight of you. We are now out of sight

of Margate and I have neither soul nor spirits, but I do at this

time suffer so much that nothing but being with you can recompense

it.

These lover-like words were written by a man of fifty-two to his wife of

forty-two, to whom he had been married for nearly a quarter of a

century. In all the pauses of these wars, amid the

[Illustration: WINDSOR TERRACE, LOOKING WESTWARD.

ENGRAVED BY J. W. EVANS AFTER AQUATINT BY P. SANDBY]

plans and combinations of armies, and all the hard thinking and hard

fighting, the perpetual activity and movement of his life for the next

ten years, the same voice of passionate attachment, love, and longing

penetrates for us the tumults of the time. She was flattered to the top

of her bent both by husband and mistress; and it is not much to be

wondered at if she came to think herself indispensable and above all

law.

In the midst, however, of this prosperity and quickly growing greatness,

the same crushing calamity which had previously fallen upon Anne,

overwhelmed these companions of her life. Their only son, a promising

boy of seventeen, died at Cambridge, and both father and mother were

bowed to the dust. The queen’s letter on this occasion expresses her

sense of yet another melancholy bond between them. It is evident that

she had offered to go to her friend in her affliction. “It would be a

great satisfaction to your poor unfortunate faithful Morley if you would

have given me leave to come to St. Alban’s,” she writes, “for the

unfortunate ought to come to the unfortunate.” With a heavy heart

Marlborough changed his will, leaving the succession of the titles and

honors, so suddenly deprived of all value to him, to the family of his

eldest daughter, and betook himself sadly to his fighting, deriving a

gleam of satisfaction from the thought that other children might yet be

granted to him, yet adjuring his wife to bear their joint calamity with

patience, whatever might befall. She herself says nothing on this

melancholy subject. Perhaps in her old age, as she sat surveying her

life, that great but innocent sorrow no longer seemed to her of the

first importance in a record crossed by so many tempests--or perhaps it

was of so much importance that she would not trust herself to speak of

it at all. The partizans of the exiled Stuarts were eager to point out

how both she and her mistress had suffered the penalty of their sin

against King James and his son, by being thus deprived of their

respective heirs. It was a “judgment”--a thing dear to the popular

imagination and most easily concluded upon at all times.

It would not seem, however, that this natural drawing of “the

unfortunate to the unfortunate” had the effect it might have had in

further cementing the union of the queen and the duchess. The

little rift within the lute

That by and by will make the music mute

began to be apparent shortly after, though not at first showing itself

by any lessening of warmth or tenderness. The existence of a division of

opinion is the first thing visible. “I cannot help being extremely

concerned that you are so partial to the Whigs, because I would not have

you and your poor unfortunate faithful Morley differ in the least thing.

And, upon my word, my dear Mrs. Freeman,” adds Queen Anne, “you are

mightily mistaken in your notion of a true Whig. For the character you

give of them does not in the least belong to them.”

We need not discuss here the difference between the meaning of the names

Tory and Whig as understood then and now. Lord Mahon and Lord Macaulay

both consider a complete transposition of terms to be the easiest way of

making the matter clear, but in one particular at least this seems

scarcely necessary; for the Tories, then as now, were emphatically the

church party, which was to Anne the only party in which safety could be

found. The queen had little understanding of history or politics in the

wider sense of the words, but she was an excellent churchwoman, and in

the sentiments of the Tory leaders she found, when brought into close

contact with them, something more in accord with her own, the one

sympathy in which her bosom friend had been lacking.

“These were men who had all a wonderful zeal for the Church, a sort of

public merit that eclipsed all others in the eye of the Queen.... For

my own part,” the duchess adds, “I had not the same prepossessions. The

word _Church_ had never any charm for me in the mouths of those who made

the most noise with it, for I could not perceive that they gave any

other proof of their regard for the thing than a frequent use of the

word, like a spell to enchant weak minds, and a persecuting zeal against

dissenters and against the real friends of the Church who would not

admit that persecution was agreeable to its doctrine.”

This difference had not told for very much so long as neither the queen

nor her friend had any share in public affairs, but it became strongly

operative now. How much the queen had actually to do with the business

of the nation, and how entirely it depended upon the influence brought

to bear upon her limited mind who should be the guide of England at this

critical moment, is abundantly evident from every detail of history.

Queen Victoria, great as her experience is, and notwithstanding the

respectful attention which all classes of politicians naturally give to

her opinion, changes her ministry only when the majority in Parliament

requires it, and has only the very limited choice which the known and

acknowledged heads of the two parties permit when she transfers office

and power from one side to the other. But Queen Anne had no compact body

of statesmen, one replacing the other as occasion required, to deal

with; but put in here one high official and there another, according as

intrigue or impulse gained the upper hand.

There is something about a quarrel of women which excites the scorn of

every chronicler, an insidious contempt for the weaker half of the

creation which probably no one would own to, lying dormant in the minds

of the race generally, even of women themselves. Had Anne been a king of

moderate abilities, and Marlborough the friend and guide to whom he owed

his prosperity and fame, the relationship would have been noble and

honorable to both; and when the struggle began, the strenuous efforts

of the great general to secure the coöperation of ministers with whom he

could work, and whose support would have helped toward the carrying out

of his great plans for the glory of his country and the destruction of

her enemies, would, whether the historical critic approved of them or

not, have at least secured his respect and a dignified treatment. But

when it is Sarah of Marlborough, with all the defects of temper that we

know in her, who, while her lord fights abroad, has to fight for him at

home, to scheme his enemies out of, and his friends into, power, to keep

her hold upon her mistress by every means that her imagination can

devise, the idea that some nobler motive than mere self-aggrandizement

may be in the effort occurs to no one, and the hatred of political

enmity is mingled with all the ridicule that spiteful wit can discharge

upon a feminine squabble. Lady Marlborough was far from being a perfect

woman. She had a fiery temper and a stinging tongue. When she was

thwarted at the very moment of apparent victory, and found herself

impotent where she had been all-powerful, her fury was like a torrent

against which there was no standing. But with these patent defects it

ought to be allowed her that the object for which she struggled was not

only a perfectly legitimate, but a noble one. What the great William had

spent his life and innumerable campaigns in endeavoring to do, against

all the discouragements of frequent failure, Marlborough was doing, with

a matchless and almost unbroken success. It was no shame to either the

general or the general’s wife to believe, as William did, that this was

the greatest work of the time, and could alone secure the safety of

England as well as of her allies. And the gallant stand of Lady

Marlborough for the party and the statesmen who were likely to carry out

this object, deserved some better interpretation from history than it

has ever received.

And it cannot be said that there was anything petty in Anne’s

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH.

ENGRAVED BY J. H. E. WHITNEY, FROM AN ENGRAVING BY PIETER VAN GUNST,

AFTER PAINTING BY ADRIAAN VANDER WERFF.]

public acts while she remained under the influence of her first friend.

The beginning of her reign showed no ignoble spirit. One of the first

things the queen did was to abolish the old and obstinate practice of

selling places, which had hitherto been accepted as the course of

nature; so much so that when Marlborough fell into disgrace under King

William, he had been bidden to “sell or dispose of” the places he held,

and the princess had herself informed Sarah at least on one occasion of

vacancies, in order that her friend should have the profit of filling

them up. “Afterwards, I began to consider in my own mind this practice,”

the lady says; but whether she took the initiative in so honorable a

measure, it would be rash to pronounce upon the authority of her own

word alone. It certainly, however, was one of the first acts of the

queen, and the credit of such a departure from the use and wont of

courts should at least be allowed to the new reign. Anne did various

other things for which there was no precedent. As soon as her civil list

was settled, she gave up voluntarily £100,000 a year to aid the public

expenses, then greatly increased by the war, and, shortly after, she

made a still more important and permanent sacrifice by giving up the

ecclesiastical tribute of first-fruits and tithes; namely, the first

year’s stipend of each cure to which a new incumbent was appointed, and

the tenth of all livings--to which the crown, as succeeding the Pope in

the headship of the church, had become entitled. Her object was the

augmentation of small livings, and better provision for the necessities

of the church, and there can be little doubt that this act at least was

exclusively her own. The fund thus formed continues to this day under

the name of Queen Anne’s Bounty, but unfortunately remained quite

inefficacious during her reign, in consequence of various practical

difficulties; and it has never been by any means the important agency

she intended it to be. But the intention was munificent and the desire

sincere. Throughout her life the church was the word which most moved

Anne. She was willing to do anything to strengthen it, and to sacrifice

any one, even as turned out her dear friend, in its cause.

The first subject which quickened a vague and suspicious disagreement

into opposition was the bill against what was called occasional

conformity, a bill which was aimed at the dissenters and abolished the

expedient formerly taken advantage of in order to admit nonconformists

to some share in public life--of periodical compliance with the

ceremonies of the church. The new law not only did away with this

important “easement,” but was weighted with penal enactments against

those who, holding office under government, should be present at any

conventicle or assembly for worship in any form but that of the Church

of England. Upon this subject the queen writes as follows:

I must own to you that I never cared to mention anything on this

subject to you because I knew you would not be of my mind, but

since you have given me the occasion, I can’t forbear saying that I

see nothing like persecution in the bill. You may think it is a

notion Lord Nottingham has just put into my head, but upon my word

it is my own thought. I promise my dear Mrs. Freeman faithfully I

will read the book she sent me, and beg she will never let

differences of opinion hinder us from living together as we used to

do. Nothing shall ever alter your poor unfortunate faithful Morley,

who will live and die with all truth and tenderness yours.

As the differences go on increasing, however, Queen Anne gradually

changes her ground. At first she “hopes her not agreeing with anything

you say will not be imputed to want of value, esteem, or tender

kindness, for my dear, dear Mrs. Freeman”; but at last, as the argument

goes on, plucks up a spirit and finds courage enough to declare roundly

that whenever public affairs are in the hands of the Whigs, “I shall

think the Church beginning to be in danger.” Thus the political

situation became more and more difficult, and gradually embittered even

the personal relations between the friends, and the duchess had not even

the support of her husband in her political preferences. He had himself

belonged to the moderate Tory party, and, even though they thwarted and

discouraged him, showed no desire to throw himself into the arms of the

Whigs, whither his wife would so fain have led him. He was almost as

little encouraging to her in this point as the queen was. “I know,” he

says, “they would be as unreasonable as the others in their expectations

if I should seek their friendship,--for all parties are alike.” It was

thus a hard part she had to play between the queen’s determination that

the Whigs were the enemies of the church, and her husband’s conviction

that all parties were alike. He, perhaps, was the more hard to manage of

the two. He voted for the occasional conformity bill, against which she

was so hot, and trusted in Harley, who indeed owed his first beginning

to Marlborough’s favor, but whom the duchess saw through. In young St.

John, too, the great general had perfect faith; “I am very confident he

will never deceive you,” he wrote to Godolphin. Thus the husband warmed

in his bosom the vipers that were to sting him and bring a hasty end to

his career. He, too, remained obstinately indifferent, while she stormed

and entreated and wrote a hundred letters and used every art both of war

and peace in vain. It is easy to see how this perpetual letter-writing,

her determination to prove that her correspondent was in error and she

right, and her continual reiteration of the same charges and reproaches,

must have exasperated the queen and troubled Marlborough, in the midst

of the practical difficulties of his career. But yet there are many

points on which Sarah has a just claim to our sympathy. For she foresaw

what actually did happen, and perceived whither the current was tending,

but was refused any credit for her prognostications or help in subduing

the dangerous forces she dreaded. How irritating this position must have

been to a fiery temper it is needless to point out, and the duchess

would not permit herself to be silenced by either husband or queen. Lord

Macaulay’s description of the astonishing state of affairs which

compelled two of the ablest statesmen in Europe to have recourse for the

conduct of the imperial business to the influence of one woman over

another, was thus far less true even than it seems on the surface; for

Sarah of Marlborough suspected the real state of the case when no one

else did, fighting violently against her husband’s enemies before they

had disclosed themselves, and her final overthrow was as much the result

of a new tide in political affairs as of the straining of the personal

relations between her and her queen.

Meanwhile, Marlborough was going on in his career of conquest. It was a

very costly luxury; but the pride of England had never been so fed with

triumphs. Queen Anne was in her closet one day at Windsor, a little

turret-chamber with windows on every side looking over the green and

fertile valley of the Thames, with all the trees in full summer foliage

and the harvest beginning to be gathered in from the fields, when there

was brought to her a scrap of crumpled paper bearing upon it the few

hurried lines which told of the “glorious victory” of the battle of

Blenheim. It had been torn off in haste from a memorandum book on the

field, and was scribbled over with an inn-reckoning on the other side.

The commotion it caused was not one of unmixed joy; for though the queen

wrote her thanks and congratulations, and there was a great thanksgiving

service at St. Paul’s, which she attended in state, the party in power

did all that in them lay to depreciate the importance of the victory.

When, however, Marlborough appeared in England with his prisoners and

trophies,--a marshal of France among the former,--and many standards

taken in the field, the popular sentiment burst all bounds, and his

reception was enthusiastic. The crown lands of Woodstock were bestowed

upon him as a further reward, and the queen herself commanded that a

palace should be built upon the estate at the expense of the crown, to

be called Blenheim in commemoration of the extraordinary victory. A

curious relic of ancient custom religiously carried out to the present

day was involved in this noble gift. The quit-rent which every holder of

a royal fief has to pay, was appointed to be a banner embroidered with

three _fleurs-de-lis_, the arms then borne by France, to be presented on

every anniversary of the battle. Not very long ago the present writer

accompanied a French lady of distinction through some part of Windsor

Castle under the guidance of an important member of the queen’s

household. When the party came into the armory, on each side of which, a

vivid spot of color, hung a little standard fresh in embroidery of gold,

the kind cicerone smiled, and whispered aside, “We need not point out

these to her.” One of them was the Blenheim, the other the Waterloo

banner, both yearly acknowledgments, after the old feudal fashion, for

fiefs held of the crown.

Among the honors done to Marlborough at this triumphant moment, when, an

English duke, a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and, still more

splendid title, the greatest soldier of his time, he came home in glory

to England, were the verses with which Addison saluted him. There were

plenty of odes piping to all the winds in his honor, but this alone

worthy of record. Every reader will recollect the simile of the great

angel who “drives the furious blast;”

And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

The compliment might be supposed to be somewhat magnificent even for the

greatest of commanders. And yet whatever Marlborough’s faults may have

been, his attitude during this wonderful war is scarcely too splendidly

described by the image of a calm and superior spirit beholding

contemporary events from a higher altitude than that of common humanity,

executing vengeance and causing destruction without either rage or fear,

in serene fulfilment of a great command and in pursuance of a mighty

purpose. His unbroken temper, his patience and courtesy in the midst of

all contentions, the firm composure with which he supports all the

burdens thrown upon him, appeals from home as well as necessities

abroad, might well suggest a spirit apart, independent, not moved like

lesser men. No man ever bore so many conflicting claims more calmly.

Even the adjurations, the commands, the special pleadings of his

“dearest soul” do not lead him a step farther than he thinks wise. “When

I differ from you,” he says, “it is not that I think those are in the

right whom you say are always in the wrong, but it is that I would be

glad not to enter into the unreasonable reasoning of either party; for I

have trouble enough for my little head in the business which of

necessity I must do here.” There could not be a greater contrast than

between the commotion and whirlwind that surrounds Duchess Sarah and the

great general’s calm.

It is not necessary for our purpose to enter into those changes of

ministry which first temporarily consolidated the Marlborough interest

and afterward wrought its destruction, nor into the intrigues by which

Harley and St. John gradually secured the reins of state. It is not to

be supposed that these fluctuations were wholly owing to the influences

brought to bear upon the queen; but that her prevailing disposition to

uphold the party which to her represented the church kept the

continuance of the war and the foreign policy of the country in constant

danger, there can be no doubt. It is only in 1707, however, that we are

made aware of the entry of a new actor upon the scene, in the person of

a smooth and noiseless woman, always civil, always soft-spoken,

apologetic, and plausible, whose sudden appearance in the vivid

narrative of her great rival is in the highest degree dramatic and

effective. This was the famous Abigail who has given her name, somewhat

injuriously to her own position, to the class of waiting-women ever

since. She was in reality bedchamber-woman to the queen--a post now very

far removed from that of a waiting-maid, and even then by no means on a

level, notwithstanding the duchess’s scornful phrases, with that of the

class which ever since has been distinguished by Mrs. Hill’s remarkable

name. Her introduction altogether, and the vigorous _mise en scène_ of

this new episode in history, are fine examples of the graphic power of

Duchess Sarah. Her suspicions, she informs us, were roused by the

information that Abigail Hill, a relation of her own, and placed by

herself in the royal household, had been married without her knowledge

to Mr. Masham, who was one of the queen’s pages; but there are allusions

before this in her letters to the queen to “flatterers,” which point at

least to some suspected influence undermining her own. She tells us

first in a few succinct pages who this was whose private marriage

excited so much wonder and indignation in her mind. Abigail and all her

family owed their establishment in life to the active exertions of the

duchess, who had taken them in their poverty upon her shoulders--or

rather had succeeded in passing them on to the broader shoulders of the

public, which was still more satisfactory. Thus she had been the making

of the whole band, henceforward through other members besides Abigail to

prove thorns in her flesh. Harley, who was at this time secretary of

state, and aiming at higher place, was related in the same degree on the

father’s side to Mrs. Abigail; so that, first cousin to the great

duchess on one hand and to the leader of the House of Commons on the

other, though it suits the narrator’s purpose to humble her, Mrs. Hill

was no child of the people. It is curious to remark here that Harley too

came to his first advancement by Marlborough’s patronage.

From the moment of this discovery, and of the further facts that the

marriage had taken place under Anne’s auspices, and that Abigail had

already taken advantage of her favor to bring Harley into close

relations with the queen, the duchess gave her mistress little peace.

Fiery letters were showered daily upon the queen. She let nothing pass

without a hasty visit, or a long epistle. If it were not for the

pertinacity with which she returns again and again to one subject, these

letters have so much force of character in them that it would be

impossible not to enter with sympathetic excitement into the fray. The

reader is carried along by the passionate absorption of the writer’s

mind as she pours forth page upon page, flying to her desk at every new

incident, transmitting copies of every epistle to Godolphin to secure

his coöperation, and to Marlborough, though so much farther off, to show

him how she had confuted all his adversaries. And then there follows a

record of stormy scenes, remonstrances, and appeals that lose their

effect by repetition. The duchess would never accept defeat. Every new

affront, every symptom of failure in the policy which she supported with

so much zeal, made her rush, if possible, to the presence of the queen,

with a storm of reproaches and invectives, with tears of fury and

outcries of wrath,--or to the pen, with which she reiterated the same

burning story of her wrongs. Anne is represented to us throughout in an

attitude of stolid and passive resistance, which increases our sympathy

with the weeping, raging, passionate woman, whose eloquence, whose

arguments, whose appeals and entreaties all dash unheeded against the

rock of tranquil obstinacy which is no more moved by them than the cliff

is moved by the petulance of the rising tide; although, on the other

hand, a similar sympathy is not

[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

ENGRAVED BY R. G. TIETZE, FROM MEZZOTINT AFTER PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY

KNELLER.]

wanting for the dull and placid soul which could get no peace, and which

longed above all things for tranquillity, for gentle attentions and soft

voices, and the privilege of nominating bishops and playing basset in

peace. Poor lady! on the whole it is Queen Anne who is most to be

pitied. She was often ill, always unwieldly and uncomfortable. She had

nobody but a soft, gliding, smooth-tongued Abigail to fall back upon,

while the duchess had half the great men of the time fawning upon her,

putting themselves at her feet: her husband prizing a word of kindness

from her more than anything in the world; her daughters describing

her as the dearest mother that ever was; money--which she

loved--accumulating in her coffers; and great Blenheim still a-building,

and all kinds of noble hangings, cut velvets and satins, pictures, and

every fine thing that could be conceived, getting collected for the

adornment of that great house.

Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that Duchess Sarah represented a

nobler idea and grander national policy than that into which her

mistress was betrayed. Her later intercourse with Anne was little more

than a persecution; and yet what she aimed at was better than the

dishonoring and selfish policy by which she was finally conquered. The

Marlboroughs were not of those who pressed the German heir upon the

queen, or would have compelled her to receive his visit, which she

passionately declared she could not bear; but they were determined, all

treasonable correspondence notwithstanding, upon the maintenance of the

Protestant succession, upon the firm establishment of English

independence and greatness,--those objects which alone had justified the

Revolution and made the stern chapter of William’s life and reign

anything better than an incidental episode. Though he had been false to

William, as everybody was false in those days, and had lain so long in

the cold shade of his displeasure, Marlborough had, in his whole

magnificent career, been little more than the executor of William’s

plans, the fulfiller of his policy. The duchess, on her side, with much

love of power and of gain, with all the drawbacks of her temper and

pertinacity, still bent every faculty to the work of backing up that

policy, as embodied in her husband, keeping his friends in power,

neutralizing the efforts of his enemies, and bringing the war to an

entirely successful conclusion. A certain enlightenment was in all her

passionate interferences with the course of public affairs. The men whom

she labored to thrust into office were the best men of the time; the

ascendency she endeavored so violently to retain was one under which

England had been elevated in the scale of nations and all her liberties

confirmed. Such persecuting and intolerant acts as the bill against

occasional conformity, which was a test of exceptional severity, had her

strenuous opposition. In short, had there been no Marlborough to carry

on the half-begun war at William’s death, and no Sarah at Anne’s ear to

inspire the queen’s sluggish nature with spirit and to keep her up to

the mark of the large plans of her predecessor, England might have

fallen into another driveling period of foreign subserviency, into a new

and meaner Restoration.

That the reader may see, however, to what an extraordinary pass the

friendship had come which had been so intimate and close, we add the

duchess’s account of the concluding interview. Every kind of

exasperating circumstance had accumulated in the mean time between the

former friends. There had been violent meetings, violent letters by the

score; even in the midst of a thanksgiving service Sarah had taken her

mistress to task and imperiously bidden her not to answer. Indeed, the

poor queen was more or less hunted down, pursued to her last corner of

defense, when the mistress of the robes made her sudden appearance at

Kensington one April afternoon in the year 1710, when everything was

tending toward her downfall.

As I was entering, the Queen said she was just going to write to

me, and when I began to speak she interrupted me four or five times

with these repeated words, “Whatever you have to say you may put it

in writing.” I said her Majesty never did so hard a thing to any as

to refuse to hear them speak, and assured her that I was not going

to trouble her upon the subject which I knew to be so ungrateful to

her, but that I could not possibly rest until I had cleared myself

from some particular calumnies with which I had been loaded. I then

went on to speak (though the Queen turned away her face from me)

and to represent my hard case, that there were those about her

Majesty that had made her believe that I said things of her which I

was no more capable of saying than of killing my own children. The

Queen said without doubt there were many lies told. I then begged,

in order to make this trouble the shorter and my own innocence the

plainer, that I might know the particulars of which I had been

accused, because if I were guilty that would quickly appear, and if

I were innocent this method alone would clear me. The Queen replied

that she would give me no answer, laying hold on a word in my

letter that what I had to say in my own vindication _need have no

consequence in obliging her Majesty to answer_, etc., which surely

did not at all imply that I did not desire to know the particular

things laid to my charge, without which it was impossible for me to

clear myself. This I assured her Majesty was all I desired, and

that I did not ask the names of the authors or relaters of these

calumnies, saying all that I could think reasonably to enforce my

just request. I protested to her Majesty that I had no design in

giving her this trouble, to solicit the return of her favor, but

that my sole view was to clear myself: which was too just a design

to be wholly disappointed by her Majesty. Upon this the Queen

offered to go out of the room, I following her, and begging leave

to clear myself, and the Queen repeating over and over again, “You

desired no answer and shall have none.” When she came to the door I

fell into great disorder; streams of tears flow’d down against my

will and prevented my speaking for some time. At length I recovered

myself and appealed to the Queen in the vehemence of my concern

whether I might not still have been happy in her Majesty’s favour

if I could have contradicted or dissembled my real opinion of men

or things? whether I had ever, during our long friendship, told her

one lie, or play’d the hypocrite once? whether I had offended in

anything, unless in a very zealous pressing upon her that which I

thought necessary for her service and security? I then said I was

informed by a very reasonable and credible person about the court

that things were laid to my charge of which I was wholly incapable;

that this person knew that such stories were perpetually told to

her Majesty to incense her, and had beg’d of me to come and

vindicate myself: that the same person had thought me of late

guilty of some omissions towards her Majesty, being entirely

ignorant how uneasy to her my frequent attendance must be after

what had happened between us. I explained some things which I had

heard her Majesty had taken amiss of me, and then, with a fresh

flood of tears and a concern sufficient to move compassion, even

where all love was absent, I beg’d to know what other particulars

she had heard of me, that I might not be denied all power of

justifying myself. But the only return was, “You desired no answer

and you shall have none.” I then beg’d to know if her Majesty would

tell me some other time? “You desired no answer and you shall have

none.” I then appealed to her Majesty again, if she did not herself

know that I had often despised interest in comparison of serving

her faithfully and doing right? And whether she did not know me to

be of a temper incapable of disowning anything which I knew to be

true? “You desired no answer and you shall have none.” This usage

was so severe, and these words, so often repeated, were so shocking

(being an utter denial of common justice to one who had been a most

faithful servant, and now asked nothing more) that I could not

conquer myself, but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke

to the Queen in my life, and yet what such an occasion and such

circumstances might well excuse if not justify, and that was, that

“I was confident her Majesty would suffer for such an instance of

inhumanity.” The Queen answered, “That will be to myself.” Thus

ended this remarkable conversation, the last I ever had with her

Majesty [the duchess adds].

After this there was no more possibility of reconciliation. Attempts of

all kinds were made, and there is even a record of a somewhat pitiful

scene in which great Marlborough himself, on his return from the wars,

appears on his knees pleading with Queen Anne to take back her old

companion into favor, but without effect. Unfortunately for himself, he

did not resign at this turning-point, being persuaded both by friends

and foes not to do so; and with the evident risk before his eyes of

hazarding all the combinations of the war and giving a distinct

advantage to the enemy against whom he had hitherto operated so

forcibly. He kept his command, therefore, for the public interest rather

than his own, and returned, when the season of warfare recommenced, to

the post which all these events made uneasy for him, and where his

credit was shaken and his prestige diminished by the disfavor of the

court and the opposition of the ministry. The responsibility was

therefore left upon Anne and her ministers of dismissing him, which they

did in the end of 1711, to the consternation of their allies, the

delight of the French, and the bewilderment of the nation. The party

plots by which this came about are far too long and involved to be

capable of explanation here--neither can we enter into the semi-secret

negotiations for the humiliating and disgraceful peace secured by the

treaty of Utrecht, which were carried on unknown to Marlborough, to the

destruction of the alliance and confusion of all his plans. Never,

perhaps, was so great a man treated with such contumely. His associate

in his work, the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, the great financier of his

time, had already fallen, leaving office so poor a man that he would

have been wholly dependent on his relations but for the unexpected death

of a brother who left him a small fortune. He has left an account of his

dismissal by the queen herself and on the ground apparently of personal

offense, which is extraordinary indeed.

Anne herself was no doubt little more than a puppet in the hands of

successive politicians; but yet the struggle that took place around her

at this unfortunate period--the maintenance by every wile of somebody

who could influence her, the conflict for her ear and favor--shows her

immense importance in the economy of public life. Queen Victoria is the

object of universal veneration and respect, but not the smallest

official in her government need fear the displeasure of the queen as the

highest minister had to fear that of Anne, for whom no one entertained

any particular respect. Yet there was little real power in the

possession of the unfortunate woman who, badgered on all sides, and

refused both peace and rest, sank slowly into disease and decay during

the two years which followed the disgrace of the friend of her youth.

She had no longer an audacious Freeman to tell her unwelcome truths and

tease her with appeals and reproaches; but it is probable that she soon

found her soft-voiced Abigail, her caressing duchess (of Somerset)

little more satisfactory; never was a head that wore a crown more

uneasy. She held fast to the power which she had been persuaded she was

to get into her own hands when she was delivered from the sway of the

Marlboroughs, and for a little while believed it possible that she could

reign unaided. But this was a delusion that could not last long; and her

death was hastened, it is said, by a violent altercation between Harley

and St. John, when the inevitable struggle between the two who had

pushed all competitors out of place occurred at last. They wrangled over

the staff of office in Anne’s very presence, overwhelming her with

agitation and excitement. Apart from politics, the royal existence was

dull enough. When Dean Swift was at Windsor, following Harley and

waiting for the decision of his Irish business, we have occasional

glimpses through his eyes which show the tedium of the court. “There was

a drawing-room to-day,” he says, “but so few company that the Queen sent

for us into her bedchamber, where we made our bows, and stood, about

twenty of us round the room, while she looked round with her fan in her

mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were

nearest her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went out.” The

same authority mentions her way of taking exercise, which was a strange

one. “The Queen was hunting the stag till four this afternoon,” he says;

“she drove in her chaise about forty miles, and it was five before we

went to dinner.... She hunts in a chaise with one horse, which she

drives herself, and drives furiously like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter

like Nimrod.” Windsor’s great park and forest must have afforded room

and space for some part at least of this course, and a hunt in August

would need to have been confined to ground less cultivated than that of

the smiling plain which skirts the castle hill on the other side. Queen

Anne’s Ride and Queen Anne’s Drive are still well-known names in the

locality where the strange apparition of the queen, solitary in her high

chaise, and “driving furiously” after the hunt, must once have been a

familiar sight.

The end of this poor queen’s life was disturbed by a new and terrible

struggle, in which natural sentiment and public duty, and all the

prepossessions and prejudices of her nature, were set in conflict one

against the other. This was upon the question of the succession. The

family of Hanover, the Electress Sophia and her son and grandson, had

been chosen solemnly by Parliament as the nearest members of the royal

race who were Protestants, and were recognized as the heirs to the

throne in all public acts and in the prayers of the church. But to Anne

the house of Hanover was of no special interest. She did not love the

idea of successor at all. She had declared to Marlborough passionately

that the proposed visit of the Hanoverian prince was a thing which she

could not bear, and there was no friendship, nor even acquaintance,

between her and relatives so far removed. But apart from all public

knowledge, in the secret chambers and by the back-stairs came whispers

now of another name, that of James Stuart, more familiar and kindly--the

baby-brother about whom Anne had believed the prevailing fable, that he

was a supposititious child, for whom she had invented the name of the

Pretender, but who now in her childless decay began to be presented

before her as the victim of a great wrong. Poor queen! she was torn

asunder by all these contradictions; and if her heart was melting

toward her father’s son, all the dull experience which she had acquired

in spite of herself must have convinced her that this solution of the

difficulty was impossible. Her life of late had been one long conflict;

imperious Sarah first, then Harley and St. John quarrelling in her very

presence-chamber; and when the door was shut and the curtains drawn and

all the world departed save Abigail lying on a mattress on the floor to

be near her mistress, here was the most momentous question of all. She

who desired nothing so much as quiet and to be left in peace, was once

again compelled to face a problem of the utmost importance to England,

and on which she alone had the power to say a decisive word. Little

wonder if Anne was harassed beyond all endurance. But those who pressed

this question upon her waning senses were the instruments of their own

overthrow. The powers of life worn out before their time could bear no

more. The hopes of the Jacobite party were rising higher every day as

the end drew near; but at the last she escaped them, having uttered no

word of support to their cause; and in the confusion which ensued,

George I. was peacefully proclaimed as soon as the queen out of her

lethargy had slipped beyond the boundaries of any earthly kingdom.

The Marlboroughs, who had been living on the Continent since their

disgrace, came back after this new change. The duke’s entry into London

“in great state, attended by hundreds of gentlemen on horseback and some

of the nobility in their coaches” a few days after, is reported by one

of the chroniclers of the time. The duchess followed him soon after, and

whether her temper and disposition had so far mended as to allow him to

enjoy the peace he had so often longed for by the side of her he loved,

he had at least a tranquil evening-time among his friends and

dependents, and the grandchildren who were to be his heirs--for only one

of his own children survived at his death. Duchess Sarah lived long

after him.

[Illustration: BISHOP GILBERT BURNET.

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

SMITH, AFTER THE PAINTING BY JOHN RILEY.]

She was sixty-two when he died, but, nevertheless, in spite of temper

and every other failing, was still charming enough to be sought in

marriage by two distinguished suitors--one of them that proud Duke of

Somerset whose first wife had supplanted her at court. She answered this

potentate in the only way consistent with the dignity of a woman of her

age and circumstances; but added, with a noble pride which sat well upon

her, that had she been but half her age, not the emperor of the world

should ever have filled the place sacred to great Marlborough. It is a

pity we could not leave her here in the glow of this proud tenderness

and constancy. She was capable of that and many other noble things, but

not of holding her tongue, of withdrawing into the background, or

accepting in other ways the natural change from maturity to age. Her

restless energies, however, had some legitimate outlet. She finished

Blenheim, and she wrote innumerable explanations and memoranda, which

finally shaped themselves into that “Account of the Conduct of the

Duchess of Marlborough from her first Coming to Court,” which is one of

the most interesting of all _mémoires pour servir_. This was published

in her eighty-second year, and it is curious to think of the vivacious

and unsubdued spirit which could throw itself back so completely out of

the calm of age into the conflicts and the very atmosphere of what had

passed thirty years before. And she did her best to prepare for a great

life of Marlborough which should set him right with the world. But her

time was not always so innocently employed, and it is to be feared that

she wrangled to the end of her life. The “Characters” of her

contemporaries which she left behind are full of spite and malice. There

was no peace in her soul. A characteristic little story is told of her

in an illness. “Last year she had lain a great while ill without

speaking; her physicians said she must be blistered or she would die.

She called out, ‘I won’t be blistered and I won’t die!’ and apparently

for the moment kept her word.” She lived long enough to be impaled by

Pope in verses which an involuntary admiration for this daring,

dauntless, impassioned woman makes us reluctant to quote. She survived

almost her entire generation, and was capable of living a hundred years

more had nature permitted. She was eighty-four when she succumbed at

last, in the year 1744, thirty years after the death of the queen.