Change of manner in James—Character of Queen Mary—Her submission to
her husband—Surrender of the crown to William—The indecision and
reluctance of Anne—Her stipulation for a settlement—The part which
Lady Churchill is said to have taken in the affair—She asks advice
from Lady Russell and Archbishop Tillotson—The different qualities
of these two advisers—1688.
The Protestant Lords assembled at the Privy Council held by James the
Second imagined that the King was altered, and that his powers of mind
had forsaken him. They asked each other “where were the looks, and where
was the spirit, which had made three nations tremble?” “They perceived
not,” says Dalrymple, “that the change was not in the King, but in
themselves.”[126] In their consciousness of the monarch’s feebleness,
contrasted with former power, consisted the change.
The Princess Anne was not, it is to be presumed, enabled to conquer her
fears of encountering her humbled parent, since no mention is found of
her return to the metropolis until after all storms were hushed and
Mary, “possessing neither the authority of a queen, nor the influence of
a wife,”[127] became the presiding power of the concerns of a remodelled
court.
The personal character of Mary may be said to have had a considerable
influence upon the conduct of Lady Churchill, and upon her position in
that purified region, the British court; since, during the whole period
of her short reign, the two royal sisters were scarcely ever on
affectionate or even friendly terms; and it has been deemed necessary by
Lady Churchill to justify herself as the supposed cause of these
continual differences, not to say complete though disguised alienation,
between those Princesses.
Bishop Burnet has described, in his character of Queen Mary, a perfect
model of feminine excellence. “The queen,” he says, “gave an example to
the nation, which shined in all the parts of it.”[128] Tall and
majestic, of a form exquisitely proportioned, her countenance expressive
and agreeable, notwithstanding a constitutional weakness in her eyes,
Mary moved with dignity and grace, spoke with equal propriety and
spirit, and acted, when occasion required, with masculine resolution. In
all that duty and station exacted, she was admirable. She possessed, in
its perfection, that quality, “not a science,” as Pope expresses it,
“but worth all the seven, prudence.” Her intentions for the benefit of
her subjects were excellent.[129] Her first and continual care was to
promote reform in every department which she superintended. She began by
attacking those habits of idleness which had tended to demoralise the
court, and exposed its fair ornaments to many temptations. She set the
fashion of industry, by employing herself in needlework, working many
hours a day herself, with her ladies and her maids of honour similarly
engaged around her, whilst one of the party read to the rest. She freed
her court from all doubtful or censurable characters, so that there was
not a colour of suspicion of any improprieties, such as had been the
source of just censure in the preceding reigns. She expressed a deep
sense of religion, and formed a standard of principle and duty in her
mind, upon the sense of her obligations as a Christian. Industrious and
pious, she was consequently cheerful and unconstrained. Every moment had
its proper employment; her time being so apportioned out to business and
diversion, to the devout exercises of the closet, and to the polite
customs of the court, that the most scrupulous observer could not
pronounce her to be too serious or too merry, too retiring or too busy,
nor could find out the slightest cause of censure in her well-considered
actions, nor in her prudent yet engaging deportment. Her capacity was
great; her memory, and the clearness of her comprehension, were
particularly remarkable; her attention to everything laid before her was
that of a superior and reflective mind. Yet she was humility itself; her
distrust of her own judgment was accompanied by an absolute reverence
for the King’s opinions; and her perfections were crowned, in the sight
of the English people, by her firm though unobtrusive adherence to the
Protestant faith, of which she was regarded as the chief stay and
support, after her merits and her opinions had been fully disclosed.
Such were the qualities assigned to Mary by her zealous panegyrist; but
with all these attributes,—admirable in a private sphere, excellent in a
queen,—like many persons of regular habits, patterns of virtue in a
quiet way,—perfect when not put out of their habitual course,—prudent,
submissive, and placid, Mary had one grand defect. She wanted heart.
Gentle in her nature, whilst free from the passions of pride and anger,
she was devoid also of the generosity which sometimes accompanies those
defects in character. She rarely gave cause of offence, but she could
not forgive. Too good a wife, she sacrificed filial to conjugal duty;
forgetting that the Saviour, whose precepts she honoured, throughout all
his high vocation, knew no obligation which could obliterate the duty to
parents. But Mary may be held up to the degenerate wives of the present
day, as one who would have been at once their model and their reproof,
had she been placed under different circumstances. In anything less than
the cruel alternative of ceasing to revere and to protect a parent at
the command of a husband, or, for the sake of her consort’s political
views, Mary would have risen pre-eminent in esteem, both immediate and
posthumous.
Transplanted early to a foreign soil, she devoted herself with ready
submission to the wishes, the pursuits, the very prejudices of a husband
whom she could not have loved, had she not possessed feelings different
from those of her sex in general. At his command she became sedate and
obedient; her naturally good spirits were subdued into the tone which
her reserved but not unimpassioned husband deemed becoming in woman, and
essential in her who had the honour of sharing his damp climate and cold
heart.
This, indeed, became her second nature; yet, at the king’s command, the
staid, domestic Mary roused herself from her simple habits and matronly
reserve, and was converted into a patroness of mirth and folly; for she
was enjoined to use every art to entertain, and charm the fascinating
Duke of Monmouth, in order to annoy and endanger her father and his
throne. William, jealous to a degree, and concealing under his dry
exterior a temper of a furious violence,[130] ordered his exemplary wife
to attract and to be attractive, and she obeyed. She received visits in
private from the Duke; she danced, she skated, because Monmouth loved
those amusements. “It was diverting,” says a contemporary writer, “to
behold a princess of Mary’s decency and virtue, with her petticoats
tucked half-way to her waist, with iron pattens on her feet, sometimes
on one foot, sometimes on the other.” No less extraordinary was it to
hear that Mary was permitted to receive the Duke alone every day after
dinner, to teach her country dances in her own apartment.[131] So
accommodating was this pattern of conjugal obedience, that she could not
only lay aside natural feelings, but, what is perhaps more difficult,
dispense with long-cherished habits, and reassume the part of girlhood,
after a long period of matronly dignity, which somewhat resembled the
precision, without the liberty, of a single life.
In matters of weightier import than learning country dances, or skating
on Dutch canals, Mary was equally subservient. The flight of James from
London; the arrival of the Prince of Orange at St. James’s; the
subsequent withdrawal of James entirely from the British dominions; the
acknowledgment of the convention summoned by William, that the
tranquillity of the country was owing to his administration, and the
petition of that body that he would continue to exercise regal
power,—were events which would have been regarded by an ambitious woman
with the utmost intensity of interest.
The declaration of the Houses of Parliament, five days afterwards, that
the crown had become vacant by the desertion or abdication of James
disclosed fully to Mary the realization of those dreams of greatness,
which an aspiring or even busy female would have cherished in her heart,
in the absence of those natural feelings with which Mary was but little
troubled. But the gentle Queen was here again all duty and obedience;
her mind was but a reflection of her husband’s will and pleasure.
Instead of hurrying to occupy the throne to which she might with
scarcely an effort have been raised, she remained, at the desire of her
consort, patiently in Holland, in order to prevent any intrigues which
might be formed in favour of her ruling alone,—a proposal[132] which
gnawed into the very heart of the proud, reserved William.[133] Upon her
being detained still longer in Holland by contrary winds, or perhaps by
a secret gale in the form of a conjugal command, the Earl of Danby was
despatched for the purpose of detailing to her the debate in Parliament
respecting the successor to the vacant throne; and at the same time to
intimate that if she desired to reign alone, he doubted not but that he
should be able to insure the accomplishment of her wishes. The Princess,
with a firmness which had something of magnanimity in it, replied, “that
she was the wife of William Prince of Orange, and would never be any
other thing than what she could share in conjunction with him;” adding,
“that she should take it very ill if, under pretext of a concern for
her, any faction should set up a divided interest between her and her
husband.” To confirm this answer, and to prevent misunderstanding, she
sent the letter brought to her by Lord Danby, and her answer, to the
Prince; and thus prevented any jealousy, on the score of her hereditary
right from interfering with her domestic comfort and the confidence of
her husband.[134]
Such was Mary, unlike the rest of her imprudent race;—unlike them,
perhaps, from the early tuition[135] of her stern husband, a very
Utilitarian of the seventeenth century. That she will be fully proved
deficient in tenderness—that her feelings were even too much under
control—(for we may control our feelings until they cease to
exist—extinguished by the constant pressure of a dense and foggy mental
atmosphere)—that the good principle within her displayed itself rather
in the absence of wrong than in active zeal—that she was amiable without
being beloved, and commendable without attaining popularity, was fully
shown during her short possession of regal power.
Whilst the debates concerning the monarchy were carried on, the Princess
Anne began to manifest some traits of character for which the world had
not hitherto given her credit. Unlike her sister, she was not an
unconcerned observer of the startling schemes which were bruited, nor of
the great changes to which the absence of her father had already given
birth. Even her placid temper appears to have been ruffled at the
reported desire of William, through the intrigues of his favourite
Bentinck, to rule alone; and to exclude her family from the possession
of a crown which they were little likely to regain when lost. But
William, checked by the demonstration of English spirit in one of his
English adherents, contented himself with a declaration, first, that in
case of a regency being proposed, he should decline that office: he
would accept of no dignity dependent on the life of another. Secondly,
that if it were the design of the people to settle the Princess alone on
the throne, and to admit him to a participation of power only through
her courtesy, he should decline that proposal also. “Her rights he would
not oppose. Her virtue he respected. No one knew them better than he
did. But he thought it proper to let them know that he would hold no
power dependent on the will of a woman.” And he concluded with an
intimation that if either of these schemes were adopted, “he should give
them no assistance in the settlement of the nation, but return to his
own country, happy in the consciousness of the services which he had,
though in vain, endeavoured to do theirs.”[136]
This declaration on the part of William had the intended effect. There
appeared to men of all parties no alternative between making the Prince
of Orange king, or recalling the exiled monarch. The first of these
plans was, after much procrastination, adopted.
One obstacle alone was opposed to the decision of the leading partisans
of William;—the consent of the Princess Anne to waive her right to the
crown was necessary before the accession of William could be
accomplished.
The Jacobite party, on the pretext of regard to Anne, but actually for
their own factious purposes, supported her in the indecision, not to
term it opposition, which the Princess at first evinced, in respect to
the proposal to relinquish her right in favour of William.
Anne, after wavering long, after contradicting herself at various times,
and keeping all around her and connected with her in suspense, at last
consented to postpone her claim in favour of the Prince of Orange;
stipulating at the same time for an ample revenue, to support her
dignity as next heir to the throne.[137] This step, which was, under all
circumstances, the wisest for herself, and the most considerate for the
good of the nation, that Anne’s counsellors could have advised, was
attributed to Lady Churchill,—“one,” says Dalrymple, “of the most
interested of women, who possessed at that time the dominion of her
spirit, and who hoped to serve her own interest and her husband’s by
betraying those of her mistress.”[138]
It will here be necessary, and we think not uninteresting to the reader,
to insert Lady Churchill’s account of the share which she had in the
transaction.
“Quickly after this,” (speaking of the Princess Anne’s flight to
Nottingham,) “the King fled into France. The throne was hereupon
declared vacant, and presently filled with the Prince and Princess of
Orange. The Parliament thought proper to settle the crown on King
William for life, and the Princess of Denmark gave her consent to it.
This was another event which furnished simple people with a pretence to
censure me. It was intimated that, to make my court to the King and
Queen, I had influenced the Princess to forego her undoubted rights. The
truth is, I did persuade her to the project of that settlement, and to
be easy under it after it was made. But no regard to the King nor the
Queen, nor any view of ambition, had the least share in moving me to
this conduct, any more than to what inconsiderable part I acted in the
business of the Revolution.”[139]
Lady Churchill proceeds to say, that, with respect to the Revolution,
“it was evident to all the world, that as things were carried on by King
James, everybody sooner or later must be ruined who would not become a
Roman Catholic. This consideration made me very well pleased at the
Prince of Orange’s undertaking to rescue us from such slavery. But I do
solemnly protest, that if there be truth in any mortal, I was so very
simple a creature, that I never once dreamt of his being King. Having
never _read_, nor employed my time in anything but playing at cards, and
having no ambition myself, I imagined that the Prince of Orange’s sole
design was to provide for the safety of his own country, by obliging
King James to keep the laws of ours, and that he would go back as soon
as he had made us all happy; that there was no sort of difficulty in the
execution of this design, and that to do so much good would be a greater
pleasure to him than to be king of any country upon earth. I was soon
taught to know the world better. However, as I was perfectly convinced
that a Roman Catholic was not to be trusted with the liberties of
England, I never once repined at the change of the government; no, not
in all the time of that persecution I went through. I might, perhaps,
wish it had been compassed by some other man, who had more honour and
justice than he who could depose his father-in-law and uncle to maintain
liberty and the laws, and then act the tyrant himself in many instances;
but I never once wished that the change had not been made.
“And as to giving King William the crown for life, it was the same
principle of regard for the public welfare that carried me to advise the
Princess to acquiesce in it. It is true, that when the thing was first
started, I did not see any necessity for such a measure; and I thought
it so unreasonable, that I took a great deal of pains (which I believe
the King and Queen never forgot) to promote my mistress’s pretensions.
But I quickly found that all endeavours of that kind would be
ineffectual; that all the principals, except the Jacobites, were for the
King, and that the settlement would be carried in Parliament, whether
the Princess consented to it or not. So that in reality there was
nothing advisable but to yield with a good grace. I confess that, had I
been in her place, I should have thought it more for my honour to be
easy in this matter, than to show an impatience to get possession of a
crown that had been wrested from my father. And as it ought to have been
a great trouble to the children of King James to be forced to act the
part they did against him, even for the security of liberty and
religion, (which was truly the case,) so it seems to me, that she who
discovered the less ambition would have the more amiable character.
However, as I was fearful about everything the Princess did, while she
was thought to be advised by me, I could not satisfy my mind till I had
consulted with several persons of undisputed wisdom and integrity, and
particularly with Lady Russell of Southampton House, and Dr. Tillotson,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. I found them all unanimous in the
opinion of the _expediency of the settlement proposed, as things were
situated_. In conclusion, therefore, I carried Dr. Tillotson to the
Princess, and, upon what he said to her, she took care that no
disturbance should be made by the pretended friends, the Jacobites, who
had pressed her earnestly to form an opposition.”[140]
Having thus explained to Anne the reasons which, in her opinion,
rendered it compatible with the honour of the Princess to surrender her
right to the crown for the time being, Lady Churchill, aware of the
responsibility in which she involved herself, and acknowledging that she
was fearful about everything the Princess did, whilst she was thought to
be advised by her, adopted the wise precaution of consulting persons of
“undisputed wisdom and integrity,” before she permitted the Princess to
send in her decision upon this momentous point.
The individuals to whom Lady Churchill applied for counsel were such as
a woman of discernment, and of right intentions, would desire to
consult. The female friend to whom she addressed herself was the
illustrious Rachel Lady Russell, the beloved wife, counsellor, friend,
the high-minded support and solace, of one of the most noble of men.
The tragedy in which Lord Russell terminated his life, was fresh in the
remembrance of the public. Five years before the Revolution, he had been
brought before his Peers on his trial, and being told that he might
avail himself of the assistance of one of his servants to take notes of
the proceedings in short-hand,—“I ask none,” was his reply, “but that of
the lady who sits by me.” And when the assembly beheld the daughter of
the virtuous Lord Southampton rising to assist her lord at this
extremity, a thrill of anguish moved the spectators.[141]
But very recently, the loyalty, the good faith, the bravery of the
Russells, had been recalled to public remembrance, even by the unhappy
cause of their heartfelt calamity. When James, in his utmost need, had
summoned a council of the Peers to ask their advice, in passing to the
council chamber he met the Earl of Bedford, father of Lord Russell, who
had offered a hundred thousand pounds for his son’s life—a sum which
James, then Duke of York, had persuaded his brother to refuse. James,
reflecting upon the probity and influence of the Russells, and catching,
in his hopeless state, at any straw which could arrest his ruin, said to
the Earl, “My lord, you are a good man; you have much interest with the
Peers; you can do me service with them to-day.” “I once had a son,” was
the heart-broken father’s reply, “who could have served your Majesty on
this occasion;” and with a deep sigh he passed on.
To the widowed daughter-in-law of this venerable man Lady Churchill
addressed herself. Nor would Lady Russell have permitted any step to be
entertained, that was derogatory to the honour of her who sought such
aid in her judgment; for in this noble woman, faithful in her grief to
the memory of him whom she constantly prayed to rejoin, the gentlest
qualities were united to the loftiest heroism. Her husband’s death was
preferable in her eyes to his dishonour. In one long fixed look, in
which the tenderness of the fondest affection was controlled on the part
of her husband by great and lofty resolves, on hers by a fortitude which
sprang from the deepest feelings, had the Lady Russell parted from her
lord.
From the time of his death, Lady Russell, from a sort of common tribute,
had taken a high place in society. She bore her sorrows with the
patience of an humble believer in a future state of peace and of
re-union with the lost and the beloved; but not all the too late
tributes to the motives and excellence of him whom she had lost—neither
the reversal of the attainder by parliament, nor the ducal honours
conferred upon the family, nor even the universal respect and national
sympathy—could recal her to the busy world, bereaved, to her, of all
that was valuable. She lived in a dignified and devout seclusion at
Bedford House, formerly Southampton House, in Bloomsbury Square, that
beloved abode, at the sight of which the eyes of her noble husband had
been filled with tears, as he passed to the place of his execution in
Lincoln’s-inn-fields. Here, consoled by the society of the pious and the
learned, cheered by the hopes of an hereafter, and honoured in her dark
old age, Lady Russell resided, until death, in 1723, released her from
an existence rendered still more mournful by blindness, brought on by
continual weeping.[142]
One of the brightest ornaments of the age in which she lived, Lady
Russell was as accomplished as she was high-minded. To her counsels the
celebrated Dr. Tillotson often recurred. By him, as by all who knew her,
she was regarded as the first of women;[143] nor could that woman
continue her friend, whose motives were not pure, and whose conduct was
not irreproachable.
The other counsellor to whom Lady Churchill put forth her case, was the
good, the learned, but calumniated Archbishop Tillotson.
In this selection, also, she showed great prudence. Tillotson was the
common friend of both the Princesses, and the spiritual adviser of Mary,
who entrusted to him the chief charge of the concerns of the church,
with which William the Third did not consider himself justified to
interfere.
Tillotson was of a different temperament from the heroic Lady Russell,
and it was perhaps for this very reason that Lady Churchill consulted
him. With the soundest judgment and the kindest temper, this revered
prelate had a sensitiveness of disposition which tended to render him
cautious, perhaps timid, in his measures. “He was,” says his dearest
friend, “a faithful and zealous friend, but a gentle and soon conquered
enemy.”[144] But he was truly and seriously religious, without
affectation, bigotry, or superstition; and it may be supposed that the
dauntless thinker, Lady Churchill, whose original mind detested these
prevalent defects, delighted in conversing with one of so enlightened a
spirit. “His notions of morality were fine and sublime;”[145] and she
might well feel that she could not go wrong, with one so scrupulously
virtuous to guide her. The influence of Dr. Tillotson as a preacher, his
sermons being then accounted the patterns for all such compositions,
might also sway her in requesting his counsels; whilst “the perpetual
slanders, and other ill usage,” with which, according to his friend, he
had been followed, and which gave him “too much trouble, and too great a
concern,”[146] might, she may well have thought, have taught him to feel
for others, and induced him to double caution in pointing out the right
path, to one beginning the weary road of public life, in which she, too,
found that vanity and vexation of spirit went along with her on her
journey.
It is not to persons such as these that we address ourselves, when we
intend to follow a crooked line of policy. We may judge favourably of
the purity of our motives, when we determine to question the wise and
the good, upon the mode and spirit of our actions; and Lady Churchill,
when she hastened to disclose her perplexities, and to unfold her
intentions, to two persons of undoubted probity and of known piety, may
have felt satisfied that she need not blush to confess them to a higher
power.
The result of her deliberations was a determination to influence the
Princess to surrender what she could scarcely deem her rights, in favour
of William and Mary, during their separate lives; but with precedence to
her, and to her children, to any issue which William might have by a
second marriage, in case of the death of his Queen. And it might have
been inferred that, for this important decision, the gratitude of the
King and Queen would have been effectually secured to Lord and Lady
Churchill, who had both shared in the good office. But such was not the
result.
This obstacle to the settlement of the crown being removed, the Prince
and Princess of Orange were declared King and Queen, in accordance with
the votes severally of both Houses of Parliament, upon a motion of Lord
Danby. The populace, who remembered how the crown had tottered on
James’s head at the coronation, and who recalled the pleasantry of Henry
Sidney, keeper of the robes, who kept it from falling off, remarking, as
he replaced it, “This is not the first time that our family has
supported the crown,”[147] were now startled by the circumstance, that
the day of the proclamation of William and Mary was also that of the
accession of the unfortunate James; and the assembled crowds pointed at
the statue of the unhappy monarch, with its face turned to the river,
and its back to the palace, in bitter and sarcastic allusion.[148]
This event, which took place on the 6th of February, 1689, was, in six
days afterwards, succeeded by the arrival of Queen Mary in London. Her
singular, and, to a sensitive mind, truly painful situation, raised many
conjectures with respect to her probable conduct. But whether, as it is
asserted by some, she was warned by William to control her emotions, for
his sake, upon her first appearance as a sovereign, the deposer and
successor of her father; or whether her extraordinary levity proceeded
from the heartlessness of a common-place character, it is difficult to
decide. Political feuds may, indeed, sufficiently, though not
satisfactorily, account for hardness of heart, and an oblivion of the
dearest ties; and Mary’s pliant mind, and warped, but not unaffectionate
temper, had been long worked upon, during a series of intrigues, of
which her father was the object, and her husband the first agitator.
Whatever was the nature of her feelings, the cold and light deportment
which she manifested on her entrance into her palace at Whitehall, the
last refuge of her deposed and deserted father, gave considerable
offence. Mary, it was thought, might have remembered, with compassion,
the unfortunate, and, as far as grave offences were concerned, the
innocent Queen, her stepmother, Mary of Modena, who had last inhabited
the very apartments into which she was now herself conducted. She might
have bestowed one passing serious thought upon that unhappy fugitive,
who only two months previously, had left that house privately, with her
infant son, the Prince of Wales, then five months old, carried by his
nurse; one faithful friend, the Count de Lauzun, the sole companion of
her flight. From this palace she had crossed the Thames, in the darkness
of night, unsheltered, in an open boat, the wind, and rain, and swell of
the river, conspiring to detain and terrify her, and to add to the gloom
of her situation. On this palace, standing for shelter under the walls
of an old church in Lambeth, had the wretched Queen fixed her eyes,
streaming with tears, and searching, with fruitless tenderness, for the
flitting shadow of her husband across the lighted window; whilst,
starting at every sound which came from that direction, the desolate
mother sometimes suspended her anxious gaze, to look upon her sleeping
infant,[149] unconscious of her miseries, unconscious of the hope
deferred, the disappointment, the perplexities which awaited him in his
future career, as the penalty to be paid for royal birth.
But if Mary, disliking her stepmother, of whom, indeed, she knew but
little, and regarding her as a bigot whose pernicious influence drove
James, in the opinion of the Princess Anne, into greater outrages upon
justice than he would otherwise have inflicted; if Mary, thus
prejudiced, gave not one reflection to her stepmother, nor doubted the
reality of her imputed brother’s relationship, she might yet have
bestowed some few natural tears upon the fate of her father. Many there
were who could have told her, had her heart yearned for such or for any
intelligence, how James, when his Queen and his son were gone, shuddered
at the solitude of his palace; how, in every look from others, he read
danger and dark design; how he dreaded alike kindness or distance; and
when informed by Lord Halifax (who, to induce him to leave England,
deceived him) that William meditated his death, he broke out into the
bitter exclamation, “that small was the distance between the prisons of
princes and their graves”: a saying which he quoted of his father, and
which now appeared to his affrighted mind prophetic of his own destiny.
The indecision, the confusion of mind, the helplessness of her father,
might rise to Mary’s mind, as she entered the hall whence he had been
accustomed to issue. The feebleness of majesty without power might occur
to her; the hapless King ordering out guards, no longer his, to fight
the Prince, and affecting to summon a council which would no longer meet
at his command, might have induced some reflections on her own account.
But Mary, unmoved, entered the palace, passed through those rooms which
scarcely two months before had been opened, the day after James’s
flight, to receive his expected levee, and walked unconcerned towards
her bedchamber, and into the suite of apartments prepared for her. It
was, on this occasion, the duty of Lady Churchill to attend her Majesty,
and her account of the Queen’s conduct is too lively, has too much an
air of truth, to be omitted.
“I was one of those,” says the Duchess, “who had the honour to wait upon
her (the Queen) to her own apartment. She ran about, looking into every
closet and conveniency, and turning up the quilts upon the bed, as
people do when they come into an inn, and with no other sort of concern
in her appearance but such as they express; a behaviour which, though at
that time I was extremely caressed by her, I thought very strange and
unbecoming. For whatever necessity there was for deposing King James, he
was still her father, who had been so lately driven from that chamber,
and from that bed; and if she felt no tenderness, I thought she should
at least have looked grave, or even pensively sad, at so melancholy a
reverse of his fortune. But I kept these thoughts in my own breast, not
imparting them even to my mistress, to whom I could say anything with
all the freedom imaginable.”[150]
Two days after the arrival of Mary, both Houses of Parliament went in
state to bestow the crown upon her husband and on her. The King, having
accepted the gift for himself, and for his consort, was proclaimed with
Mary, King and Queen, “in the very hall of that palace,” says Dalrymple,
“from which the father had been driven; and at the gate of which her
grandfather had, by some of those who now placed the crown on her head,
and by the fathers of others, been brought to the block.”[151] On the
following day Lord Churchill was sworn a member of the privy council,
and a lord of the bedchamber; and two days before the coronation he was
created Earl of Marlborough,—a title which he was supposed to have taken
in consequence of a connexion on his mother’s side with the family of
Ley, Earls of Marlborough, extinct ten years previously. But this famous
designation did neither augur unbroken prosperity to the receiver, nor
insure to the donor, King William, the devoted fidelity of Marlborough;
and the reign upon which we are now entering may be considered to have
been, in most respects, a season of anxiety to the spirits, and of
depression to the affairs, of Lord Marlborough, and of her who
participated in every emotion of his heart.