Character of Godolphin—His advice respecting the pension to the
Duchess of Marlborough—Feuds of Mary and Anne—Deficiency of respect
towards Prince George—Attachment of Marlborough to his wife—Her
residence at Holywell House—Birth of her children—Cloud lowering
over the fortunes of Lord Marlborough.—1789.
Whilst encountering many enemies, both male and female, whose hostility
the Countess of Marlborough might set down to the score of envy, she
possessed one friend who, through life, influenced all her actions, and
who has been supposed to have gained her affections.
It would be a libel upon human nature to imagine, that the cherished
wife of John Duke of Marlborough could be fascinated by the lesser
constellation of talents and of virtues, displayed in the character of
the minister Godolphin. The impure and consequently illiberal judges of
conduct, who pride themselves on what is called knowledge of the world,
may decree that a cordial and confidential friendship, in the simple
acceptation of the word, cannot exist between the two sexes, where
similarity of age is joined to congeniality of temper and taste. But,
happily for society, some men are honourable, some women high-minded;
reliance may gratify one party, and approbation and esteem secure the
kindly feelings of the other. A friendship firm, generous, and delicate,
may exist between persons of different sexes; and where it has this pure
source, it will ever be found beneficial, permanent, and delightful.
Resembling, in one respect, his distinguished friends, Godolphin had
early in life been attached to the service of the Stuart family. The
first situation that he held was that of page to Charles the Second; the
last appointment that he retained under the Stuarts was the painful and
precarious office of lord chamberlain to the blameless and unhappy Mary
of Modena, for whose beauty, misfortunes, and interests, he ever
expressed admiration, compassion, and regard.[175]
Queen Anne, it is said,[176] had been touched by the merits of one whom
it required merit to appreciate, and had loved Godolphin when young, but
was prevented by state necessity from marrying a subject.[177] After the
revolution, in the progress of which Lord Godolphin acted the part of an
honest statesman, yet forgot not the duty of a grateful subject, he was
approved and retained in the Treasury by William, who appointed him also
one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom in his absence. Godolphin,
indifferent to the blandishments of rank, absolutely declined the honour
of the garter; and raised, unwillingly, to the Peerage, was as
disinterested in respect to the gains, as in regard to the honours of
successful ambition. In this particular he displayed a character totally
unlike that of the gifted woman for whom he has been said, by Tory
writers, to have cherished a passion which influenced his political
bias.[178] His disposition, in other respects, little resembled hers. He
was of a reflective, inquisitive turn of mind; slow but unerring in his
conclusions; possessed of exquisite judgment in all the affairs of life;
yet of a temper so peculiarly amiable, possessed of sentiments so
unusually lofty, that he might have lived in the most innocent
retirement, from the purity of his motives and the elevation of his
general character. Superior to the low practices by which weaker spirits
toiled for ascendency, Godolphin never condescended to a courtier’s
arts. His promise was inviolate; he detested not only falsehood, but,
what in his situation was most difficult, he never permitted himself to
have recourse to the more prevailing, and as it is believed safer, form
of that vice, dissimulation. Like Marlborough, Godolphin, when asked to
confer favours, softened his refusals with a kindness and frankness
which propitiated even the disappointed.
The notions of economy, which this great minister adopted, not grounded
on a passion for wealth which sullied the brightness of the great
Churchill’s virtues, were applied with the same rigid care to the public
means, as to the expenditure of his own private fortune. Grave even to
sternness, he won universal esteem from his inflexible justice, and in
society was the object of affection, no less than of respect. Disfigured
in countenance by the small-pox, and severe in expression, there was yet
something bright and penetrating in his eye, something engaging in his
smile, which procured him the favour of the female sex,—to whom, with
all his profound experience of men and manners, with all his
infallibility of judgment, and his gravity of deportment, Lord Godolphin
was, during the whole of his life, passionately devoted.[179]
The name of Godolphin (signifying a white eagle) was of ancient origin.
His immediate progenitors, country gentlemen of the county of Cornwall,
were distinguished for their loyalty to the Stuarts during the civil
war.[180] According to Dean Swift, who mentions the circumstance in that
casual, careless way which answers the intentions of malice without
wearing its aspect, Godolphin was intended for some trade, until his
friends procured him the office of a page at the court of Charles the
Second.[181] From this humble station he rose rapidly into political
consequence; for he sat in the first Parliament after the Restoration,
as member for Helston in Cornwall, and was shortly afterwards employed
in various high offices, until appointed to the commissionership of the
Treasury, at the same time that he was called to the House of Peers.
During the reign of James the Second, Godolphin enjoyed the favour of
Queen Mary, to whom he was chamberlain, and of James, who reappointed
him one of the Lords of the Treasury. Educated in high church tenets,
Godolphin, like his friend Lord Marlborough, became a Whig when the
Protestant succession was in danger. Yet, whilst he managed, with
consummate prudence, to act as one of the commissioners appointed by
James to treat with William at his landing, and was so skilful and so
fortunate as to retain his situation of Treasury Lord upon the accession
of William,—Godolphin, courageous, and, like most courageous men,
tender-hearted, was among the few of the deposed monarch’s courtiers who
gave him the solace of their attendance and sympathy. He accompanied the
abdicated King to the sea-side when he quitted England, and maintained a
correspondence with him until his death.
It is not always possible to calumniate noble and popular characters,
but it is generally easy to ridicule the greatest and the best. Lord
Godolphin’s weakness, according to one whose inimitable strokes of
satire sink into the memory, were love of play and vanity.
“Physiognomists would hardly discover,” says Dean Swift,[182] “by
consulting the aspect of this lord, that his predominant passions were
love and play—that he could sometimes scratch out a song in praise of
his mistress with a pencil and a card—or that he hath tears at his
command, like a woman, to be used either in an intrigue of gallantry or
politics.” Conformably to this devotion to dames and damosels was his
lordship’s romantic admiration of the beautiful exiled Queen, Mary of
Modena, whom he used to address in letters, in which love was
ambiguously mingled with respect; “whilst little presents of such things
as ladies like”[183] accompanied these epistles,—such tokens of regard
to one so unfortunate and so interesting being always first shown to
King William, though with the knowledge of James’s Queen. But in these
minor traits, mentioned as inconsistencies and follies, there is a touch
of generous sentiment, at the disclosure of which Lord Godolphin, amidst
all his vast concerns and political pursuits, need not have blushed.
It was to this valued friend, both her own and her husband’s best
counsellor, that the Countess of Marlborough applied for advice, about a
year after the settlement on the Princess had been made, in a matter of
some delicacy. The Princess, from gratitude for her friend’s exertions,
wrote to offer her a pension of a thousand pounds. The manner in which
this proof of a generous friendship was offered, speaks honourably for
Anne’s goodness of heart and propriety of feeling.[184]
“I have had something to say to you a great while, and I did not know
how to go about it. I have designed, ever since my revenue was settled,
to desire you would accept of a thousand pounds a year. I beg you will
only look upon it as an earnest of my good-will, but never mention
anything of it to me; for I shall be ashamed to have any notice taken of
such a thing from one that deserves more than I shall be ever able to
return.”
Some delay having taken place in the payment of this annuity, the
Princess wrote a letter, couched in terms of the most sincere affection,
to her “dear Mrs. Freeman,” begging her not to think meanly of her
faithful Morley for the negligence of her treasurer.
Upon this the Countess began to take seriously into consideration the
propriety of accepting her Highness’s kindness. The circumstances of her
family were not, as she alleged, great; yet she was far from catching at
“so free and large an offer,” until she had sent the first letter from
the Princess to Lord Godolphin, and consulted him upon the matter.
Lord Godolphin’s opinion was favourable to the wishes of the Princess.
He replied, that there was no reason in the world for Lady Marlborough
to refuse the pension, knowing, as he did, that it was entirely through
her activity, and the indefatigable industry of Lord Marlborough, that
the Princess had obtained her settlement;[185] and the proffered income
was gratefully accepted.
The good understanding which had subsisted between the two royal sisters
had never been based upon sincere affection, and the slightest accident
served to discompose, and even to annihilate, their apparent friendship.
Anne, who had repented, with tears, of her conduct to her father,[186]
and was not consoled for filial disobedience by her husband’s expected
aggrandisement, was doubtless scandalised by the manifest determination
of her sister to encourage every demonstration of public opinion which
her father had discountenanced. An occasion soon offered. The only
dramatic exhibition which the retiring Queen witnessed was the play of
the “Spanish Friar,” which had been forbidden by the late King. But Mary
was duly punished for this want of good taste, to say the least of it,
or deficiency in filial feeling. The repartees in the drama happened to
be such as the spectators, hearing them with preoccupied minds, could
readily appropriate to the Queen. Mary was abashed, and forced to hold
up her fan, and, to hide her confusion, turned round to ask for her
palatine, her hood, or any article of dress she could recollect; whilst
the audience, not yet softened towards her by those respectable
qualities which afterwards gained their esteem, directed their looks
towards her, whenever their fancy led them to make any application of
what was said, to the undutiful and unpopular daughter of James; and the
Queen, upon another diversion of this kind being proposed, excused
herself upon the plea of some other engagement, whilst the affair
furnished the town with discourse for a month.[187]
It was evidently the policy or pleasure of Mary to retain the different
members of her family, as much as circumstances permitted, in
subjection. In particular she insulted her sister by a marked
indifference to Prince George, her brother-in-law, who, though
remembered by posterity as the “_Est-il possible_” of King James, was a
man of respectable conduct, of valour, humanity, and justice.[188]
William, however, held his brother-in-law in utter contempt; and the
manner in which he repaid the Prince’s desertion of his father-in-law,
would have been peculiarly galling to a gentleman of a warmer temper
than, fortunately, the Prince appears to have been. When William was
obliged to go to Ireland, and to enter upon that memorable campaign
which finally decided the peace of the United Kingdom, Prince George
involved himself in a great expense to attend his Majesty, with a zeal
returned only by ungracious and unbecoming conduct,—William not even
suffering the Prince to go in the same coach with him; an affront never
before offered to any person of the same rank.[189]
Prince George, a pattern of patience, one of those characters who have
not, and who cannot have, a personal enemy, submitted not only to this
indignity, but to every possible species of irreverence, during the
whole campaign. He distinguished himself at the battle of the Boyne, and
was yet treated by the King, says the Duchess in her “Conduct,” “with no
more respect than if he had been a page of the back-stairs.”[190]
These slights and disappointments came to a crisis, when the ill-used
Prince, determined not again to be exposed to such contumely, requested
permission of the King to serve him at sea as a volunteer, without any
command. The King, who was going to Flanders, embraced him by way of
adieu, but said nothing; and silence being generally taken for consent,
the Prince made preparations, and sent his baggage, arms, &c., on board.
But the Queen, according to the Duchess, had “her instructions neither
to suffer the Prince to go to sea, nor to forbid him to go, if she could
so contrive matters as to make his staying at home appear his own
choice.”
Mary, in conformity with her invariable practice, followed to the very
letter the wishes of her royal husband, and endeavoured to make the
Countess of Marlborough her agent upon this occasion. But her Majesty
had yet to learn the fiery temper of her with whom she attempted to
deal. “She sent a great lord to me,” says the Duchess, “to desire I
would persuade the Princess to keep the Prince from going to sea, and
this I was to compass without letting the Princess know that it was the
Queen’s desire.” The Countess’s reply was, that she had all the duty
imaginable for the Queen, but that no consideration could make her so
treacherous to her mistress as she should consider herself, if she
attempted to influence her in that matter, without telling her the
reason; and she intimated that she “would say what her Majesty pleased
to the Princess, if she were allowed to make use of the Queen’s name.”
The affair ended in Prince George’s submission to a peremptory message,
forbidding him to go to sea, and conveyed through the Earl of
Nottingham. He justly felt himself rendered ridiculous to the public, by
being obliged to recal his preparations, to obey like a school-boy, and
to remain at home.
Whilst these minor events were disturbing the peace of the royal
household, the first campaign in Ireland called Marlborough away from
the home and the wife whom he loved so well. Every letter to the
Countess which he penned during his absence, breathes a devotion which
time and distance seem only to have heightened. In the hurry of military
movements, in the excitement of unparalleled triumphs, his heart was
ever with her. “I am heart and soul yours,” was his constant expression.
“I can have no happiness till I am quiet with you.” “I cannot live away
from you.”[191] Again, he beautifully concludes one letter: “Put your
trust in God as I do, and be assured that I think I can’t be unhappy as
long as you are kind.” So true and elevated was the attachment of that
affectionate heart. “Pray believe me,” he says, writing in 1705,
immediately after the battle of Ramilies, “when I assure you that I love
you more than I can express.”[192] These and other innumerable fond
asseverations, even when his wife had passed the bloom of youth, and, it
appears, no longer possessed (if she ever did) equanimity of temper,
speak an attachment not based upon evanescent advantages. With a candour
inseparable from a great mind, he generously took upon himself the blame
of those contentions by which the busy and harassing middle period of
married life, that period in which love often dies a natural death, is,
in all stations, apt to be embittered. On one occasion, after thanking
her, as for a boon, for “very many kind expressions” to him in a letter,
he says, “in short, my dear soul, if I could begin life over again, I
would endeavour every hour of it to oblige you. But as we can’t recal
what is past, forget my imperfections, and as God has been pleased to
bless me, I do not doubt but he will reward me with some years to end my
days with you; and if that be with quietness and kindness, I shall be
much happier than I have ever yet been.”
This longing for home, and for the undisturbed enjoyment of all that
home gives, appears in every effusion of that warm heart, the natural
feelings of which neither the dissipations of a court, nor the
possession of power, nor the incense of nations, could alienate from the
fondest objects which life presents to a mind not vitiated by
selfishness. Marlborough, amidst all his troubles, was happiest in his
nursery. There the guilelessness, the freshness of the infant mind
appeared to him in beautiful contrast with the measured phrase, and the
mask of prudence, adopted insensibly in the world; the petty cares and
wants of children, so easily solaced—their unconsciousness of all that
is painful, all that is anxious—operate as a charm on the sickened heart
and harassed mind, and bring to the wearied passenger through life some
sense of happiness, some trust and hope that all is not disappointment
and deception in this probationary state. Those parents who turn with
disgust and indifference from children, as merely sources of care, may
picture to themselves the great Marlborough the playfellow of his little
girls.
“You cannot imagine,” he writes from Tunbridge to Lady Marlborough, “how
I am pleased with the children; for they, having nobody but their maid,
are so fond of me, that when I am at home they will always be with me,
kissing and hugging me. Their heats are quite gone, so that against you
come home they will be in beauty.
“If there be room I will come on Monday, so that you need not write on
Sunday.
“Miss is pulling me by the arm, that she may write to her dear mamma; so
that I shall say no more, only beg that you will love me always as well
as I love you, and then we cannot but be happy.”
To this charming and natural letter the fond father added, in his own
handwriting, the following little postscript from his daughter:—
“I kiss your hands, my dear mamma.—HARRIET.”[193]
Happy and amiable Marlborough! and blessed the parents, to whom still
the affectionate though unconscious dependence of their children brings
a thousand minute and indescribable enjoyments!
With the affections of such a man, Lady Marlborough might have been the
happiest, as well as one of the most distinguished of women, had she
risen superior to the temptation of intrigue, and discarded the workings
of tea-table politics with the scorn which they deserved. But her
unquiet spirit allowed her no real happiness. External circumstances,
which were peculiarly in her favour, contributed to ruin her peace, by
fostering her domineering and busy temper. Indulged by her husband in
living at her birthplace, he gratified her inclination still further, by
purchasing the respective shares of her sisters, Frances and Barbara,
joint co-heiresses with herself, and built a mansion on the spot, called
Holywell House. At this place Lord and Lady Marlborough resided, the
house being described as one of great magnificence, and they left it
only to enter upon the yet more majestic pile of Blenheim House, when
repeated success had raised them to the climax of their greatness. The
birth of six[194] children successively—of two sons and four
daughters—added to their domestic felicity, whilst yet those children
were spared to them, and continued amenable to the domestic control.
Some troubles, incident to human nature generally, were allotted to the
distinguished parents, but mitigated by advantages so abundant, that the
early portion of their married life must be considered as peculiarly
blessed.
During the first two years after the accession of William, Lord
Marlborough only enjoyed his home and country at brief intervals, that
were tantalising even to one who felt himself destined to high offices,
and framed for glorious enterprises. On his return from the Netherlands,
the King, though secretly nettled at his interference in the affair of
the settlement, was obliged to acknowledge that it was to Marlborough
that the success of his troops at the siege of Walcourt, a small town in
the Low Countries, was to be chiefly attributed.[195] In the close of
the year 1690, Marlborough was entrusted with the command of troops sent
to Ireland, in which country he had refused to act whilst James the
Second, his former benefactor, remained in that island. But when James
retired to France, Marlborough prepared to use his utmost exertions, in
conjunction with others, to reduce the remainder of that kingdom to
obedience. The success of his endeavours enabled him to return to
England on the 28th of October, and to experience a favourable reception
from King William; but he was obliged almost immediately to resume his
command in Ireland, where he remained during the winter. The following
year found him still active in military affairs, serving under William
himself in Flanders, with a distinction and success that wrung praises
from his enemies. Even William was forced to acknowledge that “he knew
no man so fit for a general who had seen so few campaigns;”[196] and to
the praises of the Prince de Vaudemont, who prophesied of Marlborough
that he would attain a higher point of military glory than any subject
William possessed, the phlegmatic monarch relaxed so far from his usual
taciturnity as to reply with a smile, “he believed that Marlborough
would do his part to make his words good.” But all these services were
obliterated shortly afterwards from the royal mind; and a cloud of
adversity, though not of disgrace—for nothing can disgrace the
virtuous—lowered over the fortunes of Marlborough.