Death of the Duke of Gloucester—Its effects on the Succession—Illness
and Deathbed of William—His last actions—1700.
The death of the Duke of Gloucester cast a gloom over the last year of
King William’s life, whilst it caused not only maternal grief, but
scruples of serious import, in the mind of the young Prince’s mother,
the conscientious but weak-minded Anne.
The Earl and Countess of Marlborough were at Althorp when they were
apprised of the dangerous illness which had attacked the young
Prince.[337] The Duke was of delicate frame, and for some years had been
languishing. It was not to be supposed that a child could live in health
or enjoyment whose premature intellect was, before the age of eleven,
stocked with “Greek and Roman histories,” “the gothick constitution, and
the beneficiary and feudal laws,” added to various other acquirements,
equally obnoxious to the natural tastes of children, and therefore to be
gradually and slowly introduced into their progressive capacities.
Neither could the visits of five cabinet ministers, once a quarter, to
inquire, by the King’s orders, into his progress, have been otherwise
than stimulating and fatiguing to the unhappy child.[338] On the 24th of
July, 1700, he attained his eleventh year. On the ensuing day he was
taken ill; “but that,” says his Episcopal tutor, “was imputed to the
fatigues of a birthday, so that he was too much neglected.” On the
following day he grew much worse, and at the end of the fourth day he
was carried off, his complaint proving to be a malignant fever. His
mother, the Princess, attended him throughout his illness “with great
tenderness,” according to Burnet, “but with a grave composedness that
amazed all who saw it: she bore his death with a resignation and piety
that were indeed very singular.”[339]
The Earl of Marlborough hastened to Windsor upon the first intelligence
of the fatal disease, but arrived only in time to receive the last sigh
of his young and interesting charge. Thus died the last of seventeen
children that the Princess Anne had borne, dead and living, and thus
William expressed his feelings on the event, in reply to the letter sent
him upon this occasion by the Earl of Marlborough.
“I do not think it necessary to employ many words in expressing my
surprise and grief at the death of the Duke of Gloucester. It is so
great a loss to me, as well as to England, that it pierces my heart with
affliction.”[340]
By this melancholy event the strength of the Jacobite party was
considerably augmented. The Princess, indeed, still leaned to that
faction. The part which she had acted in the Revolution had occasioned
her incessant regret. Zeal for the Protestant religion, the popular
outcry, and the persuasion that the Prince of Wales’s birth was an
imposture, had, at that eventful period, influenced her conduct. Upon
the death of her son, however, her feelings were awakened towards her
own family. She wrote to inform James the Second of her calamity. She
began to regard her brother’s legitimacy with different views from those
which, during the irritations between her and her mother-in-law, she had
been disposed to entertain.[341] She privately solicited her father’s
sanction for her acceptance of the crown in case of the King’s death;
and, far from being averse to the restoration of her own family, she
declared her resolution to make a restitution of the crown, whenever it
was in her power to perform what she considered an act of justice.[342]
The decline in William’s bodily health, and mental energy, rendered
these negociations by no means unimportant, for the King’s mind had been
harassed by a series of trying and aggravating events. His distress and
irritation upon the disbanding of his guards, and his exclamation, “If I
had a son, by God these guards should not leave me!” betrayed the
humiliation and the bitterness of spirit from which the unhappy monarch
suffered; and it is well known that he even meditated relinquishing that
crown which had cost him his peace of mind. Wasted with vexation,
asthmatic, dropsical, his Majesty had recourse to wine to recruit his
cheerfulness. Even in a state of partial inebriation, William was still
the politician. He wished to have it supposed that he intended to settle
the succession upon the reputed Prince of Wales, in order that his real
design, of entailing it upon the Electress of Hanover, might not
transpire prematurely. In one of those parties in which the King relaxed
himself, in company with the infamous Lord Wharton, whom he always
called “Tom,” he said to his lordship, “Tom, I know what you wish
for—you wish for a republic.” “And not a bad thing, sir, neither,” was
the reckless peer’s reply. “No, no,” returned the King, “I shall
disappoint you there. I shall bring over King James’s son upon you.”
Lord Wharton, with a low bow, and an affectation of deep reverence,
answered, sneeringly, “that is as your Majesty pleases.” William was not
displeased at the answer thus elicited.[343]
When the succession was, by act of parliament, entailed upon the
Princess Sophia of Hanover, a woman of rare endowments, of science,
knowledge of the world, and personal accomplishments, it was the office
of Lord and Lady Marlborough, by their endeavours, to prevent any
opposition on the part of Anne; and they are supposed to have employed
their influence, since, independent of their advice, she adopted no
measure.[344] The Prince of Denmark took little share in public affairs,
and was merely the affable, obliging cipher that nature had originally
intended him to appear.
Upon the death of James the Second, and the proclamation of his son, in
France, King of England, a storm was suddenly aroused in the British
dominions. Both Whigs and Tories at this time were averse to the
restoration of the Stuarts. It has been alleged, as a reason for this
indifference, that the Tories being in power, and having place, had
little more to desire. The Whigs were bound by the principles which
actuated them at the Revolution. All parties were indignant that the
King of France should presume to name a King of England, without
consulting the English people.
The summoning of a new parliament which entered into all William’s views
for war, and the conclusion of what is called by historians the Second
Alliance, were events which rapidly followed the indignity imposed at
St. Germains. Not satisfied with those proceedings, the House of Commons
attainted the young Pretender, a boy of twelve years old, and framed a
bill, which passed into a law, requiring all persons in public stations
to abjure him. A similar act, attainting the exiled Queen, Mary of
Modena, was also contemplated; but the peers, high-minded generally as a
body, refused to countenance the measure.
William, conscious of his decay, signed this treaty, the last to which
he put his name. He appointed the Earl of Marlborough general of the
troops in Flanders, and ambassador at the same time, knowing his great
abilities both as a general and as a diplomatist, and believing he could
best serve his country by placing such a trust in such a man. The final
actions of the sovereign were those of a benefactor to his country. The
last charter which he signed was the East India Charter, then esteemed,
as a political measure, of great importance. The last act of parliament
to which he gave his consent, was that fixing the succession in the
House of Hanover. The last message which he sent to Parliament was a
recommendation of an union between England and Scotland: this was five
days before his death.
Broken with premature decay, for he was now only in the fifty-second
year of his age, William, whilst planning a war which he calculated to
finish with glorious success in four years, received his death-stroke.
Some say that he was mounted on a charger once belonging to the
unfortunate Sir John Fenwick, whose death was imputed to William as an
act of injustice; others, that he was on a young and ill-trained horse,
when, by the stumbling of the animal, he was thrown, and dislocated his
collar-bone. The King was near Hampton Court at the time of the
accident. The bone was set, and might have united without difficulty;
but his Majesty had business at Kensington, whither, disregarding pain,
he went in his coach. The bandage of the setting was unloosed, but was
set again. Fever came on; a cough, fatal to so debilitated a frame,
succeeded. The King, retaining his composure to the last, gave his
consent, when on his deathbed, to the act of attainder against the
Pretender, in compliance, it is said, with the entreaties of the
Princess Anne,[345] who was terrified at the anticipated result of his
death without the act being completed.
And now William prepared to meet that Creator, whose precepts, as given
to us through his Son, he had in many respects studied to obey; though
the snares of a political career, and the peculiar situation in which
his elevation to the throne had raised him in this country, had
presented to him incessant temptations. Since the death of his Queen,
the King had been devoted to Lady Orkney, to whom he had made a grant of
some lands in Ireland, which, in common with those given to Lord
Portland, and other followers, had been revoked by parliament. Yet,
whilst unfaithful to Mary during her lifetime, and degrading the pure
memory of her character, and her enthusiastic attachment to himself, by
putting such a successor in her place in his affections, William
cherished the memory of his lost wife. Fastened to his arm was found a
ribbon attached to a gold ring, in which was some hair of Queen Mary.
Unknown to any of his attendants, the reserved monarch had carried this
relic about him, and it was discovered only when the last offices of
laying out the body were performed.[346]
On his deathbed, William’s affections seemed to be restored to their
wonted channel. Lord Portland, whose faithful services had been of late
superseded by the attractive qualities of Keppel Lord Albemarle, stood
near him. The dying King looked steadfastly at him, endeavoured to speak
to him, but was unable. He placed Portland’s hands upon his heart, and
in that position expired. His last words, uttered with composure, were
these, “Je tire vers ma fin.” It is remarkable, that upon the
post-mortem examination, when almost every important organ of the
suffering monarch’s emaciated frame was found to be diseased, his head
was alone exempted from any trace of disease.[347] Hence his eye, that
eagle eye, which his foe, the Duke of Berwick, could not regard at the
Battle of Landen without admiration, retained its brilliancy and its
searching keenness of expression to the last.[348]
The character of William the Third has been minutely expatiated upon by
historians. In comparison with the monarchs of the Stuart line, he rose
transcendent; but even without challenging such a parallel, his merits
appear of the highest order. His intellectual powers were by nature
capacious and sound. His acquirements were admirably adapted for the
station which he held. Courageous, prompt, discerning, war was his
favourite pursuit. Reserved and taciturn in private life, on public
occasions his eloquence was both effective and polished. The last speech
that he made in parliament, and which appears to have been impromptu,
was one of the ablest harangues ever addressed by a British monarch to
his subjects.
The outward deportment of William, like the unsightly binding of a
scarce book, concealed his merits from the vulgar eye, whilst, by the
reflective, the intrinsic value was more strongly exemplified by
contrast. More than irritable, passionate, or, as the language of the
times expresses it, “choleric” to his attendants of the bedchamber, his
benevolence, his ready forgiveness, his magnanimous appreciation of
merit even in those whom he personally disliked, were shown in
innumerable passages of his life. These qualities were conspicuously
displayed in the restoration of Lord Marlborough to royal confidence,
after a detected intercourse with the court of St. Germains. And whilst
Lady Marlborough casts aspersions on the noble-minded monarch, of petty
import, she is obliged, for consistency’s sake, to pass over those later
days of his life, when William generously placed a man whom he disliked
at the head of military affairs, for the simple, but unfashionable, and,
unhappily, not often regal reason, that he thought him best adapted to
fill that trust. The unreasonable jealousy which he evinced towards the
Princess Anne was, in fact, the great blemish of his social character.
Descended from a noble succession of heroes, the five great Princes of
Orange, William, proud of his own country, must, in spite of that
natural partiality, be regarded as one of the greatest benefactors that
these islands have ever possessed. To him we owe the secure
establishment of that faith for which he showed regard, not by forms,
for those he somewhat too much despised, but by maintaining that
toleration which is its essence. It is melancholy to reflect that
William, deceived, disappointed, and latterly disliked by his subjects,
was often so depressed as to long for his release. Yet, as his prospects
brightened, and when James’s death removed a continual source of
faction, he declared to his faithful Portland, that “he could have
wished to live a little longer.”[349]
By the King’s death, the weight of affairs in England fell upon
Marlborough, who immediately returned to this country. And now, to the
dawn of his fortunes, overclouded as they had sometimes been, succeeded
the brightness of day. In his fifty-third year, Marlborough was still
vigorous; his activity was unimpaired, his constitution unbroken, except
by occasional attacks of ague, when in campaign. His experience of men,
his insight into parties, his popular qualities, independent of his
public services, had been attained during a long course of vicissitudes;
circumstances sufficiently adverse to form a decided and well-poised
character. At this period, too, the manly comeliness of person which he
is said afterwards to have regretted, when gazing at an early picture of
himself he exclaimed, “That _was_ a man,” still remained, undiminished
by age and toil.
“From his birth,” says a contemporary writer, “the Graces were appointed
to attend and form him; polished in address, and refined in manners as
in the gifts of nature; fit to adorn a court, and shine with
princes.”[350]
The Countess of Marlborough, ten years younger than her distinguished
husband, though past the bloom, could scarcely have lost the attractions
of her surpassing, and what is more remarkable, unfading beauty of face
and form. Perhaps the “scornful and imperious” character of her
countenance, described by Horace Walpole, may have assumed its fixed
expression about this time, when she discovered the extent of her
influence, and was betrayed into a forgetfulness of what was due to her
own station, and to majesty. “Her features and her air,” says her
sarcastic censor, “announced nothing that her temper did not confirm;”
and he seems to consider it doubtful which of these two attributes had
the greatest influence in “enslaving her heroic lord.”[351]
Until an advanced age, Lady Marlborough possessed evident remains of
remarkable loveliness; her fair hair, so celebrated, was unchanged by
time; her most expressive eyes still lighted up her countenance; her
flashes of wit enlivened her natural turn for communicating those
reminiscences of former days, which could scarcely have appeared tedious
under any circumstances, but which the shrewdness and talent of this
extraordinary woman rendered exceedingly diverting.
There was one feature in the Duchess of Marlborough’s composition which
contributed to enhance the charms of her conversation, and which,
probably, strengthened the influence which she acquired over the minds
of others. This was her fearless plain-speaking. The style of her
Vindication shows her candour; the matter of that amusing work, with
certain exceptions,[352] establishes her character for truth. Even her
worst enemies appear in their replies to have been unable to disprove,
or even to deny, most of her statements, but were forced to content
themselves with abusive comments.[353] The same honesty and openness, we
are told, were manifested in the Duchess’s conversation as in her
writings. “This might proceed,” observes the editor of a recent
publication, “partly from never thinking herself in the wrong, or caring
what was thought of her by others.”[354] It might also proceed from that
knowledge and that tact, which, during “sixty years of arrogance,” as
Horace Walpole terms her career, she must have acquired; and which,
perhaps, taught her, that needless explanations are, in conversation, as
in print, the worst of policy. But, with all her faults, duplicity has
never been alleged against the lofty Duchess of Marlborough. It was
foreign to the generous warmth of her nature; it was foreign to the
audacity, for no milder term can be applied, of her temper. Evasion
would scarcely have suited her purpose with the placid, subservient, but
also somewhat manœuvring Anne, who was born not to rule, but to be
ruled, and who was daunted by the arrogance and fearless truth of her
groom of the stole. Disingenuousness would have destroyed her influence
over the just and honourable Marlborough,—an influence which even
coldness, conjugal despotism, nay, fiercer passions, could not destroy,
but which would have sunk directly, had the foundation of that faulty
but lofty character been found defective. It was not Lady Marlborough’s
beauty, it was not her native, though untutored ability, it was not her
wit, which prolonged her influence over her husband; but it was her
truth, her contempt of meanness, her abhorrence of flattery, and her
genuine fidelity to friends.
She was, as Doctor Johnson has expressed it, “a good hater;” and if that
signify “a hater” without the garb of dissimulation—a hater who eschews
false alliances, and hangs out true colours—one may be allowed to feel a
certain respect for the character, even whilst we condemn the principle
of hatred. No one ever accused the Duchess of Marlborough of smiling to
betray. She could have torn her foes to pieces, sooner than have
accorded to them one reverence which her heart conceded not. Her
insolence to the Queen, her contempt of Anne’s understanding, and her
presumption and arrogance, cannot, however, be defended. Nor can the
unfeminine qualities which she displayed, be viewed otherwise than with
dislike and disgust.
The Duchess of Marlborough’s dismissal from Anne’s favour may be said to
have commenced, in reality, when that Princess ascended the throne of
England. The favourite was now wholly devoted to Whig principles; Anne
was always, in her heart, a Tory. Lady Marlborough could ill brook
opposition from one whose actions she had for years guided, and who had
scarcely dared to move except at her bidding. The Queen had, as a
monarch, one great failing, which characterised the house of Stuart: she
allowed too great familiarities in those around her, and forbore to
rebuke insolence, or even to check presumption.[355] No one was so
likely to presume upon this want of dignity as the Countess of
Marlborough. Her haughtiness soon grew into downright contumacy. Even
whilst holding the Queen’s fan and gloves, or presenting them to her
Majesty, in the capacity of an attendant, she turned away her head with
contempt directly afterwards, as if the poor harmless Queen inspired her
with disgust.[356] How long Anne bore with such conduct, remains to be
seen. For the first ten years of her reign Lady Marlborough, however,
ruled paramount.