Release of Marlborough from prison—Confession of Young—Altercations
between Anne and Mary—Illness of Anne—of Mary—Death of the
latter—Reconciliation of King William to the Princess. 1694.
The pretended association and audacious forgery of Young were discovered
immediately upon his being confronted with the Bishop of Rochester. The
Earl of Marlborough was consequently released, but not until the 15th of
June, that being the last day of Term. He was then admitted to bail, the
Marquis of Halifax and the Duke of Shrewsbury being his sureties; an act
of kindness for which they were, however, erased shortly afterwards from
the list of privy counsellors.[267]
Some time afterwards, when Young was on the point of suffering the
penalty of death for another offence, he confessed, with pretended
contrition, that he had obtained the Earl of Marlborough’s seal and
signature by addressing him under the character of a country gentleman,
inquiring the character of a domestic. This avowal completely exonerated
Marlborough, who had been himself startled at the similarity of the
signature, subscribed to the association, to his own handwriting.
Conscious, perhaps, of deserving disgrace, Lord Marlborough remained
during the latter years of Williams reign chiefly at Sandridge,
sometimes exchanging his residence for apartments at Berkeley-House,
which Lady Marlborough, in virtue of her office about Queen Anne,
inhabited on the removal of the Princess thither from Sion House. The
Countess of Marlborough meantime devoted herself to the care of the
Princess, who was confined, at Sion House, of a lifeless infant, whilst
yet altercations between her and her sister were rife. Anne, however,
sent due intelligence of her confinement to Queen Mary, first by Sir
Benjamin Bathurst, and then by Lady Charlotte Beverwart, who waited
until the Queen should have held a conference with the Earl of
Rochester, before she could see her Majesty. The delivery of her message
produced a visit to Sion House, of which the Duchess gives the following
account.[268]
“She (the Queen) came attended by the Ladies Derby and Scarborough. I am
sure it will be necessary to have a good voucher to persuade your
Lordship[269] of the truth of what I am going to relate. The Princess
herself told me, that the Queen never asked her how she did, nor so much
as took her by the hand. The salutation was this: ‘I have made the first
step, by coming to you, and now I expect you will make the next, by
removing my Lady Marlborough.’ The Princess answered, that she had never
in all her life disobeyed her, except in that one particular, which she
hoped would some time or other appear as unreasonable to her Majesty as
it did to her. Upon which the Queen rose up and went away, repeating to
the Prince, as he led her to the coach, the same thing that she had said
to the Princess.”
Lady Derby, one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, took up the cue from
her royal mistress, and never even went up to the bedside to inquire how
the Princess was. The Queen, indeed, upon her return, was heard to say,
“she was sorry for having spoken to the Princess,” whose agitation she
had observed was so great, that “she trembled, and looked as white as
the sheets.”[270] Nevertheless, soon after this visit, all company was
forbidden to wait upon the Princess, and her guards were taken from her.
The King was not in England when these indignities were offered to the
Princess, and Mary and her constant adviser, Lord Rochester, were alone
responsible for the harshness with which an only sister was treated. But
Anne, as the presumptive heir apparent, was dear to a people who dreaded
the horrors of civil war, and of a disputed succession. In coming from
Sion House to London, without guards, her coach was attacked by
highwaymen, a circumstance which produced many severe animadversions on
the danger to which the heir of the throne was exposed, without an
escort, at a period when such adventures were not unknown even in
Piccadilly.[271]
Lady Marlborough, distressed at being the manifest cause of the
indignities offered to her gracious mistress, entreated Anne to allow
her to leave her, and used every argument her thoughts could suggest to
persuade the Princess to that effect. These well-meant endeavours were
unavailing; for “when I said anything that looked that way,” the Duchess
relates, “she fell into the greatest passion of tenderness and weeping
that is possible to imagine;[272] and though my situation at that time
was so disagreeable to my temper, that could I have known how long it
was to last, I could have chosen to have gone to the Indies sooner than
to endure it, yet, had I been to suffer a thousand deaths, I think I
ought to have submitted rather than have gone from her against her
will.”
The result of the Princess’s vexations was a fever, after her
confinement, on recovering from which she sent to Dr. Stillingfleet,
Bishop of Worcester, hoping through his mediation to convey to Mary her
sense of the honour which the Queen, in her last heartless visit, had
conferred upon her. Dr. Stillingfleet, whom the Princess found, in her
conversation with him, to have become very partial to the Queen,
undertook to be the bearer of a letter, in which Anne requested
permission to pay her duty to her sister. The Queen’s reply evinced a
determined, and, if not an unkind, almost persecuting spirit. She began
by telling her sister that since she had herself never used compliments,
“so now they will not serve.” She declared that “words would not make
them live together as they ought;” there was but one thing she had
required, “and no other mark would satisfy her.”[273] But she must have
been ignorant of the tenacity of her sister’s disposition, and only
partially aware of the influence which the Duchess exercised over the
easily moulded Anne, if she could have expected such a sacrifice.
Meantime Lord and Lady Marlborough had the misfortune to lose their
infant son, Lord Brackley,—an event to which Anne alludes in the
following terms.
“I am very sensibly touched with the misfortune that my dear Mrs.
Freeman has had of losing her son, knowing very well what it is to lose
a child; but she knowing my heart so well, and how great a share I bear
in all her concerns, I will not say any more on this subject, for fear
of renewing her passion too much. Being now at liberty to go where I
please, by the Queen’s refusing to see me, I am mightily inclined to go
to-morrow, after dinner, to the Cockpit, and from thence privately in a
chair to see you some time next week. I believe it will be time for me
to go to London, to make an end of that business of Berkeley-house.”
This letter of condolence contained a copy of the cold and arbitrary
reply of the Queen to the Princess; the original, Anne specifies, being
kept by her, in case it should be necessary to show it for her own
justification. At the same time she observes, that having extorted an
admission from Dr. Stillingfleet that she had made “all the advances
that were reasonable,” she thought that the more “it was noised about
that she would have waited on the Queen, but that she refused to see
her, the better; and therefore that she should not scruple saying so to
anybody, when it came in the way.”[274]
Not, however, satisfied with the perpetual assurances of the Princess,
that “only death should part her from her dear Mrs. Freeman”—that if her
dear friend should ever leave her, “it would break her faithful Mrs.
Morley’s heart”—and other repeated declarations of the same nature, the
Countess sought to ascertain the sentiments of the Prince George, upon
the subject of her quitting the Princess’s service. The reply of the
warm-hearted, and certainly at this period of her life, the generous
Anne, was equally distinct upon this point as upon the other bearings of
the question.
“In obedience to dear Mrs. Freeman, I have told the Prince all she
desired me, and he is so far from being of another opinion, that, if
there had been any occasion, he would have strengthened me in my
resolutions, and we both beg you would never mention so cruel a thing
any more.”
“Can you think either of us so wretched,” she continues, “as for the
sake of twenty thousand pounds, and to be tormented from morning to
night with flattering knaves and fools, we should forsake those we have
such objections to, and that we are so certain are the occasion of all
their misfortunes?”
“No, my dear Mrs. Freeman,” she thus addressed her in another part of
her letter, “never believe your faithful Morley will ever submit. She
can wait with patience for a sunshiny day, and if she does not see it,
yet she hopes England will flourish again. Once more give me leave to
beg you would be so kind never to speak of parting more, for, let what
will happen, that is the only thing that can make me miserable.”[275]
It is curious, but to the experienced observer of all that passes among
the social relations of life, whether of friendship, love, or kindred,
not surprising, to find these letters so full of tenderness, and of
disinterested attachment, and so acceptable at one time to Lady
Marlborough, thus characterized, when she dipped her pen in gall to
write the character of her former patroness.
“Her letters,” says the plain-spoken Duchess in her private memoranda,
“were very indifferent, both in sense and spelling, unless they were
generally enlivened with a few passionate expressions, sometimes pretty
enough, but repeated over and over again, without the mixture of
anything either of diversion or instruction.”[276]
Thus firmly fixed in the affections of the Princess, none of the
numerous efforts which were made by different members of the household,
many of whom had been promoted to their situations by the Countess,
availed to induce Anne to allow her favourite to be removed—Lord
Rochester, her uncle, in vain working to effect that end. The result was
a direct and unhappily prolonged hostility between the Queen and the
Princess, and it was made a point of duty with regard to the one sister,
that no courtier should visit the other. Lady Grace Pierrepoint was one
of the few ladies, with the exception of some female members of Jacobite
families, who determined to make her election between the two courts in
favour of Anne; other ladies of high rank made their visits very rare,
paying their respects only on certain occasions. A more decided mark of
royal spleen was testified, through the agency of Lord Rochester, when
the Princess visited Bath. This nobleman, who loved pageants and
addresses, “wrote to the Mayor of Bath, a tallow-chandler, forbidding
him, or any of his brethren of the corporation, to show any respect to
the Princess Anne, without leave from the court.”
“But it must be owned,” says the Duchess in her contemptuous way, “that
this lord had a singular taste for trifling ceremonies. I remember, when
he was treasurer, he made his white staff be carried by his chair-side,
by a servant bare-headed; in this, among other things, so very unlike
his successor, my Lord Godolphin, who cut his white staff shorter than
ordinary, that he might hide it, by taking it into the chair with
him.”[277]
“My Lord Rochester,” however, must, the Duchess imagines, “have been
disappointed, if he expected that the Princess regarded this petty
exertion of power with anything but contempt.” Anne was, in fact,
infinitely more vexed to observe a frown on the brow of her favourite,
than to be precluded from the honours usually paid her.
“Dear Mrs. Freeman must give me leave to ask her,” writes the submissive
Queen, on one occasion, “if anything has happened to make her uneasy. I
thought she looked to-night as if she had the spleen. And I can’t help
being in pain whenever I see her so.”[278]
With respect to the mayor’s omission of the wonted respect of going to
church with her, Anne thought it was a thing to be laughed at; nor was
she probably disturbed in her general placidity by “another foolish
thing,” as the Duchess calls it, a trifling, but characteristic proof of
Mary’s unsisterly vengeance. When the Princess resided at
Berkeley-House, it was her habit to attend St. James’s church; and the
preacher, in compliance with custom, ordered a copy of his text to be
laid upon her cushion. But Mary, carrying her resentments into that
sacred edifice without whose porch worldly passions should be left,
ordered that this observance also should be abandoned: the minister,
however, refusing to comply, unless an order were given in writing,
which the Queen and her advisers “did not care to do,” “that noble
design,” as the Duchess terms the Queen’s prohibition, “was dropt.”[279]
Berkeley-house, to which the Princess about this time removed, was the
scene of all those cabals, those fears and resentments, those
heart-burnings and bickerings, by which a minor court, in open hostility
with the more powerful, but less popular head of the family, is
tolerably sure to be infested. Berkeley-house, standing on the site of
Devonshire-house, and giving the name to Berkeley-square, was at this
time the last house in Piccadilly, a distinction which Devonshire-house
also possessed until long after the year 1700.[280]
The Princess lived here with her favourite and other friends in a very
quiet manner, never seeing the Queen, who still, through Lady
Fitzharding and other mediators, insisted upon the dismissal of Lady
Marlborough as the condition of reconciliation between herself and Anne;
whilst Anne, with her native obstinacy, adhered to her friend in
preference to her kindred.
The unkindness of the Queen, however, could only injure the Princess in
one way, that of stopping her revenues; but Lord Godolphin was
Treasurer, a man too useful to the court to be offended, and who, as the
King knew, would quit his office in preference to refuse paying an
annuity which had been voted by act of Parliament. Between these
discordant sisters, one stay, one common subject of interest and source
of affection, there still however was, to mitigate the anger of Mary,
and to preserve the semblance of a bond of union between the family. The
hopes of the nation, the pride of his family and his preceptors, and the
promising representative of weak parents, the infant Duke of Gloucester
was now the sole object of mutual interest, for to their common parent
the royal sisters could not look conjointly for comfort. Anne had,
indeed, already reconciled herself to that culpable monarch, though
injured parent, whom she had deserted in the hour of trial; and, upon
the threatened invasion of James, had written to assure him that she
should fly to him the instant she heard of his landing, saying, “She
could ask for his forgiveness, being his daughter, but how could she ask
him to present her duty to the Queen?”[281] But Mary, at variance to her
dying day with her father, could not join with her sister in those
expressions of duty and sentiments of affection, which might have proved
a bond between her and Anne, but which were all turned to bitterness in
the mind of one who loved her husband, to use her own habitual
expression, “more than she loved her life.”[282]
William Duke of Gloucester, a child, at this time, of three years old,
was now, therefore, the only bond between these disunited sisters. This
Prince, subsequently the favoured charge of the great Marlborough, and
of the celebrated Bishop Burnet, was the only surviving offspring of the
Prince and Princess of Denmark, of six children, most of whom had died
as soon as they were born, and only one of whom, a daughter, had
attained the age of a twelvemonth. Both William and Mary appear to have
regarded this promising but premature scion of their house as their own
peculiar possession; and William, especially after the death of his
Queen, manifested the tenderest solicitude for the health and welfare of
the young Prince; a circumstance which seemed to imply that the Duke had
been dear to his deceased and lamented wife.[283]
The Duchess of Marlborough, indeed, intimates that whenever her Majesty
made the young Prince any present of “rattles” or other playthings, “she
took especial care to have her attention inserted in the Gazette.
Whenever the Duke was ill, she sent a bedchamber woman to Camden-house,
to inquire how he did. But this compliment was made in so offensive a
manner to the Princess, that I have often wondered how any mortal could
hear it with patience. For whoever was sent, used to come without any
ceremony into the room where the Princess was, and passing by her, as
she stood or sat, without taking more notice of her than if she had been
a rocker, go directly up to the Duke, and make their speech to him, or
to the nurse, as he lay in her lap.”[284]
The Princess, however, happy in her favourite circle, seems to have
received these indignities with her wonted apathy, whilst she testified
her affection for Lord and Lady Marlborough by the offer of a pension of
a thousand pounds a year, creating a new place in her household as an
excuse for that granted annuity to one whom she considered as a victim
in her cause. But Marlborough, though his income was materially reduced
by the loss of his lucrative employments, respectfully declined the
generosity of his kind patroness.[285]
These bickerings between the Queen and the Princess were soon, however,
painfully and effectually terminated. The small-pox at that time raged
fearfully in London. Thousands died of the disease, and apprehensions
were entertained for the safety of the Queen, who had never had the
cruel distemper. Mary had a short time previously been much concerned at
the sudden decease of Archbishop Tillotson, who was struck with palsy
whilst performing service in Whitehall Chapel. She had spoken of this
revered prelate with tears, and her mind had been considerably disturbed
at the loss of so valuable a friend. Whilst still grieving for this
event, she fell ill; but her natural spirits sustained her. The disease
seemed to subside; and to Bishop Burnet, who was with her for an hour on
the day of the attack, she complained of nothing. On the following
morning she went out; but returned oppressed with the cruel malady to
her closet. There she shut herself up, burnt many of her papers, and put
the rest in order. Nevertheless, thinking it might be only a transient
indisposition, she used some slight remedies: these were ineffectual to
relieve her, and in two days the small-pox appeared in its most
malignant form.[286]
The Princess Anne was at this time indisposed, and remaining, by her
physician’s advice, upon one floor, lying constantly on a couch. Yet,
upon hearing of the Queen’s illness, she sent a lady of the bedchamber
with a message of kindness and respect, begging that her Majesty would
allow her the happiness of waiting on her, and declaring that she would
run any risk in her present situation to have that satisfaction. To this
message, which was delivered to the Queen herself, a reply was returned,
in the King’s name, that the Queen would send an answer on the following
day. Accordingly a letter arrived, announcing that, since the Queen was
ordered to be kept as quiet as possible, the writer, Lady Derby,[287]
was ordered by the King to request that the Princess would defer her
visit.
The construction which Lady Marlborough put upon this “civil answer was,
that poor Queen Mary’s disease was mortal, more than even if the
physicians had told her that it was;” yet she added also the
uncharitable interpretation, “that the deferring the Princess’s coming
was only to leave room for continuing the quarrel, in case the Queen
should chance to recover, or for reconciliation with the King (if that
should be thought convenient) in case of the Queen’s death.”[288]
Be that as it may, the two sisters never met again. The King,
overwhelmed by a knowledge of the Queen’s danger, seems to have been
occupied with far different thoughts than those imputed to him by the
Duchess, and probably consulted only the Queen’s well-doing, when he
prohibited a harassing interview between her and the Princess, which
might have hastened the approaching event. On the third day of Mary’s
illness, the stern, reserved monarch was completely bowed down by the
intelligence that the medical advice called to supersede the erroneous
treatment of Dr. Ratcliffe, was resorted to too late. He called Dr.
Burnet into his closet, and with a burst of anguish exclaimed, that
there was “No hope of the Queen; that, from being the happiest, he was
now going to be the most miserable creature upon earth.” The Queen bore
the awful consciousness of approaching death with far more composure
than he, for whom she had sacrificed every other tie, could assume. When
apprised by Archbishop Tenison that all hope of her recovery was at an
end, she quickly comprehended the reverend prelate’s intention, for
which he sought to prepare her by degrees. She evinced no agitation. She
said, she thanked God that she had always resolved that nothing should
be left to the last hour; she had then nothing to do, but to look up to
God, and submit to his will. Indeed, as one who loved this virtuous
Princess observes, “her piety went farther than submission, for she
seemed to desire death rather than life.”[289]
Whilst this solemn scene was passing at Kensington, the Princess sent
every day to inquire after the state of the Queen, but received no
encouragement to urge her desire of an interview. On one occasion, the
Lady Fitzharding, who had the charge of the Duke of Gloucester, broke
into the room where the dying Mary lay, and declaring the Princess’s
message to her, endeavoured to impress her Majesty with a sense of her
sister’s distress. The Queen, according to the Duchess of Marlborough,
returned no answer but “a cold thanks.”[290] Nor did she ever, in the
course of her illness, send any message whatsoever to the sister from
whom she was estranged. In extenuation of this seeming inconsistency in
one so devout, it must be stated, that she had so far adopted the
stoical notions of her husband, as to preclude him and herself from the
trial of a last farewell. After causing to be delivered to him a small
casket, in which she had formerly written her sentiments, she devoted
her time to prayer. The Archbishop of Canterbury administering, and all
the bishops standing round, Mary received the Holy Communion—that solemn
service, in which, even in the fulness of health, we cannot participate
without an awful consciousness of the immediate presence of our Maker.
Faint but calm, the dying Queen followed the whole office; and, when
that was concluded, she composed herself to meet her God. She slumbered
sometimes, but she was not refreshed; for, “like others who labour and
are heavy laden,” nothing refreshed her but prayer. At last her strong
reason began to be obscured, her speech to falter; she tried in vain to
say something to the King; she endeavoured to join in the holy offices
of the archbishops. Cordials were given her; but all was ineffectual;
and she sank about one o’clock in the morning of the twenty-eighth of
December, her disorder having first displayed fatal symptoms on
Christmas Day.[291]
In this beautiful picture of an exemplary deathbed, but two objects are
wanting: a father reconciled, a sister restored to affection. But the
father, who regretted more that his daughter died unforgiven by him, and
undutiful, than her death itself, was at a distance; his pardon and his
blessing could not have been obtained. The sister prayed for admission,
and was refused. Such is the effect of party violence, which ruled even
in the breast of the pious, affectionate, and strong-minded Mary! If it
be said, “how hardly shall a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven,” it
may also be a matter of consideration how difficult it must prove for
the soul, torn by the strong contending passions which darken a
political career, to enter into that blessed rest, where selfishness and
ambition can find no mansion!
The Princess Anne, unchecked by indifference to her amiable advances, by
the advice of Lord Sunderland and others, wrote to the King, shortly
after the Queen’s death, a letter expressive of her “sincere and hearty
sorrow for his affliction,” and declaring herself “as sensibly touched
by his misfortune,” as if she had not been so unhappy as to fall under
her sister’s displeasure. Her letter found the King too dejected, and
too much humbled by his calamity, to think of refusing her petition.
During the Queen’s illness, his anguish had broken out into violent
lamentations; after her death his spirits sank so low, that many persons
feared that he was following her. In this depression of spirits and
strength, he betook himself to those aids of religion which, with a due
seriousness, and a respect for sacred subjects, he had never, during his
busy intercourse with the great world, resorted to with heartfelt
earnestness, as the only solace, the only cure for bereavements which
leave us heart-broken, dependent, and wretched beings.
Whilst William was in this state of mind, the great and good Lord
Somers, who had long lamented the feuds which disturbed the royal
family, visited him at Kensington, for the purpose of interceding with a
view to reconciling these differences. He found the King sitting at the
end of his closet in an agony of grief, little to be expected from one
who rarely betrayed the passions by which his spirits were now
overwhelmed. The King, lost in his own bitter reflections, paid no
attention to the entrance of Lord Somers, until that nobleman,
remarkable for his courtesy and prudence,[292] broke the silence by
expressing a hope that now all disunion between his Majesty and the
Princess Anne might cease. “My lord, do what you will; I can think of no
business,” was the agonised reply of the King; and to all the
observations which Somers made, he returned no other answer.[293] The
Duchess of Marlborough, however, imputes the reconciliation to Lord
Sunderland, who had, on all occasions, as she says, shown himself to be
a man of sense and breeding, and had used his utmost endeavours, before
the Queen’s death, to make up the breach between the two sisters,
though, she thinks, he never could have succeeded during the lifetime of
Mary. Although the reconciliation was opposed by the Earl of Portland,
yet the quarrel was at last adjusted; and Anne visited the King, who
received her with cordiality, and promised her that St. James’s palace
should in future be her residence.[294]
“And now,” says the Duchess, “it being publicly 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 Carmarthen 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.”
But although matters were thus publicly made up, the King, at least in
the opinion of the Duchess, never cared to testify the slightest public
respect for Anne, nor to conciliate her regard. From the beginning of
his reign, when he committed the heinous offence on which much stress
was laid, that of disappointing the Princess of a plate of peas on which
she had set her mind,[295] to the last hour, he was still mightily
indifferent to the placid, but, it must be acknowledged, somewhat
uninteresting Anne. But all his affronts were borne with imperturbable
patience by the Princess. When she waited upon his Majesty at
Kensington, no more respect was shown her than to any other lady, “till
the thing caused some discourse in town, after which Lord Jersey waited
upon her once or twice down stairs, but not oftener. And if any one came
to meet her,” continues the Duchess, “it was a page of the back-stairs,
or some person whose face was not known. And the Princess, upon these
occasions, waited an hour and a half, just upon the same foot as the
rest of the company, and not the least excuse was made for it.”[296]
All this submission was very galling to the proud, high-spirited
favourite, who would have braved William in presence of his whole court,
had she been the Princess, rather than have paid one tribute of respect
to the careless and contemptuous monarch. Lady Marlborough looked on
indignant, and was of opinion that the Princess conciliated a great deal
too much. She could not endure that her royal mistress should move a
single step that she would not have taken in her place; nor was there a
single advance on Anne’s part of which she approved, except her last
letter to the Queen, and her offer of visiting her dying sister.[297]
This candid acknowledgment she makes with an almost indecent boldness,
not to be wondered at in one who, in her later days, defended herself,
in a court of justice, a suit against her grandson.[298]
It must, indeed, be allowed, that the list of petty grievances with
which the Duchess swells the indignities offered to the Princess Anne,
appears, at this distance of time, puerile and vexatious. Her complaints
are detailed with a solemnity which seems ridiculous, now that all the
stirring passions which gave importance to those incidents are at rest.
Her narrative, sarcastic as it is, was unfortunately polished by the
hired assistance of Hook, the historian, and, after repeated revisions,
which must have shorn many pungent and characteristic passages, was
given to the disappointed public, respectably moderate. Still these
“annals of a wardrobe,” as Horace Walpole designates them, this “history
of the back stairs,” possess—as even he who speaks of “old Marlborough”
with bitter contempt is fain to allow—some “curious anecdotes, some
sallies of wit, which fourscore years of arrogance could not fail to
produce in so fantastic an understanding.”[299]
With the account of the death of Queen Mary, much of the Duchess’s
caustic satire subsides. Still she has a few touches reserved for
William. Even the sorrow which the monarch experienced, and his desolate
situation in a foreign country, where he reigned unloved, did not soften
the unceasing aversion and contempt with which the Duchess regarded the
royal widower.
His first grave offence, after Mary’s decease, was his silence in regard
to a letter written by the dutiful and subservient Anne, congratulating
his Majesty upon the honour done to his name and adopted country, by the
taking of Namûr. Probably the King would have received congratulations
with a better grace, from any one than from her, who might regard
herself as having a sort of partnership interest in the glory of
England. Good wishes from Anne were somewhat like the next heir to an
estate setting forth a strain of rejoicing, on the growth of timber, or
on the improvement of lands, to him who was actually in possession. The
King took no notice of the humble epistle, or, in the Duchess’s words,
“showed his brutal disregard for the writer,” by never returning “any
answer to it, nor so much as a civil message.”[300]
The next offence, and it certainly was one which spoke ill of William’s
good breeding, was his compelling Prince George to wear coloured clothes
on the royal birthday, almost immediately after the death of his
brother, the King of Denmark. The Prince, knowing that deep mourning was
sometimes allowed in certain instances, requested, through Lord
Albemarle, permission to keep on his mourning when he paid his respects
to his Majesty.[301] William’s ungracious reply was, that he should not
see his brother-in-law unless he came in colours; and the subservient
Prince was forced to comply.
“I believe,” says the Duchess, after relating this instance of William’s
contemptuous conduct, “I could fill as many sheets as I have already
written, with relating the brutalities that were done to the Prince and
Princess in this reign. The King was, indeed, so ill-natured, and so
little polished by education, that neither in great things nor in small
had he the manners of a gentleman.”[302]
The Duchess makes no allowance for his Majesty’s habits and character.
Precise as he seems to have been in the article of Prince George’s
attire, William hated formalities, and especially those public addresses
which must be so peculiarly tedious to a sovereign. Respecting this very
siege of Namûr, touching which he gave so much offence to the Duchess,
he committed an act of ill-breeding towards no less an individual than
the mayor of a borough. This worshipful person having come to court to
present an address, combining the two dissimilar topics of condolence
for the death of the Queen, and congratulation for the success at Namûr,
introduced himself by saying that “he came with joy in one hand and
grief in the other.” “Pray put them both into one hand, good Mr. Mayor,”
was the King’s laconic remark, heedless of the impression which he made
upon formal courtiers and ladies in waiting, who, like the Duchess of
Marlborough, could sooner pardon a defect in morals, than a solecism in
manners.[303] It was probable, from his Majesty’s known aversion to
compliments, public and private, that he intended no offence to the
Princess Anne, when he committed the “brutality” of not answering her
letter.
Notwithstanding the spirit manifested in these animadversions by the
Countess of Marlborough, the Earl sought every opportunity of
maintaining the good understanding between the Princess and the
court.[304] This he justly thought of importance, possibly for the
reason avowed by Dalrymple, that an apparent reconciliation between the
royal family had all the good effects of a real one, “because it obliged
inferior figures to suspend their passions by the example of their
superiors.”[305] But Marlborough, although taking an active part in the
House of Lords, was not at present allowed to enter the royal presence,
though having a “fair and very great reversion” of favour.[306]
The only adverse event during the remaining portion of William’s reign,
which particularly affected Lord and Lady Marlborough, was the
conspiracy of Sir John Fenwick, one of the most active Jacobites of the
day. With this party, though not personally with Fenwick, Marlborough,
it cannot be denied, had been deeply and culpably implicated. No
considerations can excuse the dishonourable intercourse which
Marlborough, in conjunction with Godolphin and others, had carried on
with the exiled monarch. It resulted from a temporising and mean policy,
which sought to secure an indemnity from James in case of his
restoration, or of the accession of the Prince of Wales. If the reasons
which engaged Marlborough to aid the accession of William were valid,
and sprang from a pure source, those reasons were still in force to
promote the peaceable rule of the reigning monarch, and to support him
on his throne.
The rash encouragement which Godolphin and Marlborough had given to
James’s emissaries, now involved them in a serious dilemma. Fenwick,
convicted, upon the evidence of an intercepted letter to his wife, of
being concerned in the plot formed at this time to assassinate William,
sought to avert the justly merited sentence from which he afterwards
suffered, by a disclosure of the names of those whom he declared to have
been concerned in the conspiracy. He was instructed in the details of
his pretended confessions, by Lord Monmouth, afterwards the noted and
eccentric Earl of Peterborough. He accused the Duke of Shrewsbury, the
Earl of Marlborough, Godolphin, and Russell, of treasonable practices;
and of having, in particular, accepted pardons from the late King.
These noblemen were, however, fully cleared of the charges made against
them by Fenwick; and Marlborough, standing up in his place in the House
of Lords, solemnly denied ever having had any conversation whatsoever
with Sir John Fenwick during the reign of the present King. Lord
Godolphin vindicated himself in the same manner. Fenwick was executed,
and Monmouth stripped of all his offices, and sent to the Tower; but was
saved from further punishment by the mediation of Bishop Burnet.[307]
Cleared, therefore, from this atrocious accusation, Marlborough, who,
with his wife, had suffered much uneasiness whilst the proceedings
against Fenwick were pending, experienced, in the end, the security
which a subject derives from the dominion of a rightly thinking and
high-minded prince, and the superior strength and wisdom of such a
government to the uncertain rule of passion and despotism. It was
William’s policy to make large allowance for the transient defection of
his subjects; to endeavour to bring them back to duty by mildness and
forgiveness; and to show no petty spleen, nor undue displeasure at the
lingering fondness which they might cherish for their absent and
justly-deposed monarch. Some time, however, elapsed before Marlborough
received any outward proof of his sovereign’s restored confidence.
William, indeed, openly regretted that he could not employ a nobleman
who was great both in military affairs and as a cabinet minister, and
“one who never made a difficulty.”[308] But, at length, either the
King’s scruples were overcome: or, as he allowed, in any enterprise,
choosing to act upon the principle of converting an enemy into a friend,
he appointed Marlborough to a situation of the highest trust.