CHAPTER XV._Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and of the Court of Queen Anne Vol. 1 (of 2)

Remarks on costume and manners in the time of Anne—Literary men, their

habits and station in society—The system of patronage—Its effects in

degrading the moral character of writers—In producing not only

flattery, but slander—Mrs. De la Rivière Manley—Dr.

Drake—Prior—Congreve.

The manners and spirit of the period of which we treat are so fully

exemplified in those periodical publications of the day, which are in

the hands of every English reader, that no digression for the purpose of

illustrating the mode of social life, with which we are all so familiar,

appears necessary. With the costumes of the fashionable world, the pages

of the “Tatler,” “Spectator,” and other works, have rendered us

intimately acquainted. It is sufficient to remark, that in this last

respect the customs which prevailed in the reign of William were but

slightly varied when Steel and Addison handed them down to fame.

Formality of manner, and decorum in dress, had already succeeded the

negligence and indelicacy of the preceding century. Still there were

gross absurdities creeping into vogue. As we have ever borrowed the most

startling extravagances from the French, so we owed to Louis the

Fourteenth the long reign of perukes, in the adoption of which we were

servile copyists, until good sense drove out those disfiguring

encumbrances, and left mankind free to breathe and to move untrammelled.

When Anne reigned, many lived, more especially amongst the sons of the

aristocracy, who could scarcely remember to have worn their own locks.

Boys were quickly disguised in flowing curls—the higher the rank, the

greater the profusion. Thence they rose to the dignity of a _scratch_

for their undress, and to that of the waving flaxen peruke, called by a

wag, “the silver fleece.” White wigs, frosted with powder, had succeeded

the dark curling perukes which were in vogue in the reign of Charles the

Second; and the use of powder had become lamentably universal. For this

extravagance outraged nature was indebted, also, to that most artificial

of human beings, Louis the Fourteenth, whose very statues were laden

with enormous wigs; and the monarch himself wore one even in bed.[486]

William the Third seldom varied his dress; but, after the accession of

Anne, female extravagance and male absurdity rose to their climax.

Whilst the summit of each exquisite courtier was crowned with a flowing

peruke, redolent of perfume, and replete with powder, on the which sat a

small cocked-hat, his nether proportions were mounted aloft on high

heels, affixed to varnished and stiffened boots, or to shoes garnished

with large buckles. The costume of the present court dress, with its

accompaniments of plain cravats and lace ruffles, completes the picture.

The ladies of the court of Anne were befitting partners for such

objects. Their hair was curled and frizzed, and in the early part of the

eighteenth century it rose high, surmounted by a sort of veil or lappet,

but diminished to a small caul with two lappets, termed a mob. Raised

heels continued in vogue to a very late period; whilst hoops, in Anne’s

time, were in their infancy, commencing in what was then called a

“commode,” which gently raised and set out the flowing train. In this

respect our fair ancestresses resembled our modern ladies; but in one

essential point they differed greatly. Modesty of attire, brought into

public estimation by the example of their truly respectable Queen, was

uniformly studied; and the loose and indelicate style in which Sir

Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely painted the female aristocracy, was

to be seen no more. With some deviations, the commendable practice of

being adequately clothed, continued until after the time of Sir Joshua

Reynolds, whose portraits bear out the fact, that decency of apparel in

_his_ days, as it had been in those before him, distinguished a

gentlewoman from a female of loose character. Unhappily for the

nineteenth century, this distinction is now thoughtlessly abandoned.

Concerning the immorality of our forefathers, many hints must

necessarily, in the course of this work, escape, without any intention

of enlarging upon so disagreeable a subject. There is little doubt but

that the free strictures of the public press, conjoined with the

influence and example of the court, served greatly to check the misrule

and reckless profligacy which, even in the sober days of William, had

been accounted spirited and fashionable by the young nobility and their

sycophants. The “Hectors,” a species of the bravo genus, were the

illustrious predecessors of the “Mohawks,”[487] whose inglorious courses

have been the subjects of so much admirable satire from Addison,[488]

and who have gradually subsided into a description of creature less

dangerous, though perhaps equally reprehensible and offensive. The

female portion of the community, among the higher ranks, are described

by a contemporary writer to have been the slaves of punctilio and

ceremony, and to have sat, in all the stateliness of their costume,

“silent as statues”[489] in the company of men,—amongst whom alone

cultivation of the intellect, in those days, had become general.

No sooner was a settled monarchy established, and the country relieved

from the dreaded dangers of a second civil war, than literature revived,

and resumed the flourishing aspect, though not the sound and vigorous

condition, to which, in the days of Elizabeth, it had happily attained.

The impoverished state of a great portion of the country, and the decay

of many ancient and once wealthy families, rendered the pursuit of

literature essential as a profession to those who preferred walking in

the paths of science, or following the footsteps of the Muses, to the

perilous duties of a soldier, or to the service of a church torn by

contentions, and threatened with hourly destruction.

The profession of letters is supposed to have been at its height of

prosperity during the middle and latter part of the reign of Anne. Some

unpleasant peculiarities, however, attended its exercise. Since those

days, the extension of education, and the general taste for knowledge

which has consequently been diffused, have gradually effected a

considerable change in the position of literary men. The lettered and

the scientific are now able to rise to fame independent of individual

patronage, excepting in instances of extreme poverty, by which the

exertions are either shackled or turned into different and inferior

channels.

In the times of Anne, that approbation of literary merit which is

necessary to its existence, and which gradually swells into an universal

tribute to genius, originated with the higher orders of society, or, at

least, if unparticipated by them, languished and died away. In our own

days, on the contrary, it is the testimony of the middle classes to

merits which they are now qualified to discern, and the gratification

which they manifest in the productions of the lettered world, which lead

the way to what is vaguely called popularity. It is not easy to define

the causes of this remarkable change in one part of our social economy.

From the exclusive enjoyment of the privileges of education, which were

confined to the higher classes, and by them only moderately enjoyed,

arose the system of patronage which, for nearly a century, regulated the

commonwealth of letters. The benefits conferred proceeded solely from

the nobility and richer gentry, amongst whom literature and the arts

found that protection which is now derived from the common tribute of

mankind. No distinction was accounted greater, among the nobility, than

the power, and disposition, to reward literary merit. To be a patron of

the learned, to protect, with more effectual aids than mere empty

commendations, some one, if not several, of the needy wits who came to

the metropolis on speculation, was as essential a line of conduct to any

young nobleman who aspired to fashionable distinction, as it is now to

belong to a certain order of society, or to possess the attributes,

without which gentlemen, in every age, must sooner or later sink in the

estimation of their own class. There were few of the stately halls and

pleasure saloons of the noblemen of that time, in which some learned

dependent was not to be seen, sharing the festivities, and enhancing the

social pleasures of the liberal patron, whom he failed not to repay in

sonorous verse, or with dedications in prose, of lofty phraseology. The

old system of remunerating dedications by sums of money, unhesitatingly

offered and unblushingly received, prevailed even until the close of the

eighteenth century. More solid advantages were also derived to the

fortunate literati by patronage. The celebrated St. Evremond took his

seat at Devonshire-house, pensioned by its high-minded and noble owner,

and experienced such liberality in England, that he declined returning

to France, even when not only permitted, but encouraged to dwell in his

native country. Dryden had his Buckingham and his Ormonde, ducal patrons

with whom he lived on terms of familiarity; and Congreve had friends no

less elevated in rank, the Dukes of Marlborough and of Newcastle.

Halifax, as we have seen, was “fed with dedications,” by Steele and

others. Gay had his Queensberry, in whose stately abode he was

absolutely domesticated. Innumerable other instances might be adduced.

The notorious fact, that whilst the middling and lower classes were

generally indifferent to literature, the gay and the great mingled some

attentions to it with all their daily frivolities and nightly revelries,

may be accounted for, in the beginning of the last century, by the

distinctions of Cavalier and Roundhead being not as yet wholly obsolete:

the spirit, though not the form, of these distinctions remained. Before

the civil wars, and as long as the Stuarts ruled, taste, fancy, wit, the

culture of letters, and the patronage of the arts, were cherished by the

highly-horn and the well-bred, the more that they were avoided by the

Puritans, as temptations to forget the grand business of life. The young

nobleman who had not some small amount of poetical fame, amplified into

extraordinary fecundity of genius by the gratitude of poorer and wittier

men, seemed to the world scarcely to have fulfilled his destiny, as a

man born to all the luxuries of praise and fame. The commotions of the

second James’s reign, and the indifference of his grave successor to the

interests of learning, checked, but did not annihilate the notion, that

to nobility some exhibition of literary taste, and an extensive

appreciation of it in others, were essential attributes.

The effect of this prevailing fashion of patronage on the one side, and

of dependence on the other, was not to destroy our literature,

assuredly, for never were its shoots so abundant, nor its blossoms so

fair, as in the famed Augustan age; but whilst it called forth

imaginative minds, and rendered the pursuit of letters a profession

worthy of the name, in so far as emoluments might be procured, it

debased the moral character of men in proportion as it rendered their

intellectual powers marketable to the rich and the powerful. Adulation

became a trade; and when such base commodity was found to be in request,

slander was soon perceived to be no less profitable to him who sped the

arrow of calumny which flieth by night, or the pestilence of destruction

by day.

Indelicacy, and its consequence, immorality, being likewise acceptable,

in an age when a father could jest with his son on the success of that

son’s amours,[490] the taste of the lofty and luxurious patron was even

consulted by writers whose nobleness of thought and elevation of fancy

might have led the world to expect better fruits from the growth of

their own untrammelled inclinations. Hence that mixture of “dissolute

licentiousness and abject adulation,” of which Johnson too justly

accuses Dryden; but from which our older poets, the pure and exalted

Milton, and his inimitable predecessors, Shakspeare, Cowley, Spenser,

were nobly exempt. The merriment, and the adulation of Dry den were, as

Johnson also remarks, “artificial and constrained, the effects of study

and meditation,—his trade, rather than his pleasure;” and the same may,

with reverence, be observed of the prince of flatterers, the great, the

little, the powerful, the weak, the satirical, the fawning Alexander

Pope.

The system of patronage called into being another class of writers, who

also “traded in corruption.” These were the political pamphleteers of

the day, a paid regiment, in which, to the disgrace of the sex, a female

author, unparalleled in any day for the power of invention, or rather of

perversion, received no slight encouragement in her gross and horrible

attacks upon personal character, from the most eminent in rank and in

intellect among the party by whom her services were hired.

Mrs. de la Rivière Manley, or Rivella as she was figuratively called,

the pupil, in her early days, of the infamous Madame Mazarin, and the

confidante of the scarcely less infamous Duchess of Cleveland, was the

disseminator, if not the originator, of those calumnies which party

spirit chose to affix to the characters of the Duke and Duchess of

Marlborough, and of the latter in conjunction with Lord Godolphin. Her

own history, translated from the French, and supposed in the narrative

to be communicated by Louis Duc d’Aumont, ambassador in England, in

1712, to his friend General Tidcomb, whilst taking the air in

Somerset-house garden, is said, by its dreadful details, sufficiently to

prepare those who are condemned to read it, for the subsequent works of

this wretched woman. Of these, the most popular were her “Atalantis,”

the “History of Prince Mirabel’s (Marlborough’s) Infancy, Rise, and

Disgrace, collected from the Memoirs of a Courtier lately deceased,” and

the “Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians,”[491] first

published and inserted among the State Tracts by Dean Swift, in

1715.[492] This patronage on the part of Swift, which scarcely excites

our wonder in the clergyman who could remodel and publish the “Tale of a

Tub,” ceased only with the life of the abandoned Rivella, which closed

at an advanced age, in 1724.

Dr. James Drake, the author of “The Memorial of the Church of England,”

was a man of liberal education and of considerable attainments, which,

unhappily for him, were applied to serve political rancour, instead of

being confined to the medical profession, of which he was a member. Dr.

Drake was a native of Cambridge, a Master of Arts in that university,

and fellow both of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society.

Yet he found it more profitable, notwithstanding the patronage of Sir

Thomas Millington, to devote his talents to the service of booksellers,

who quickly appreciated his powers of invective and ridicule. It was

disappointment on not being made one of the commissioners of the sick

and wounded, which induced Drake, after successive publications, to

publish the “Memorial,” in conjunction with Mr. Poley, the member for

Ipswich. In this production, after referring to the death of King

William, Drake comments upon the “numerous, corrupt, and licentious

party throughout the nation, from which the House of Commons was

sometimes not free,” who might “entertain hopes, from the advantage of

being at the helm, and the assistance of their rabble, to have put into

practice their own schemes, and to have given us a new model of

government of their own projection,” and “to have mounted their own

beast, the rabble, and driven the sober part of the nation like cattle

before them.” That this was no conjecture was proved, the author stated,

by the conduct of the party to the Queen, towards whom, “not contented

with showing her a constant neglect and slight themselves, they also

instructed their whole party to treat her with disrespect and slight.

They were busy to traduce her with false and scandalous aspersions; and

so far they carried the affront, as to make her at one time almost the

common subject of the tittle-tattle of every coffee-house and

drawing-room, which they promoted with as much zeal, application, and

venom, as if a bill of exclusion had been then on the anvil, and these

were the introductory ceremonies.”[493]

Lord Godolphin, and certain other of the ministry, were so much

scandalized at these comments, that they represented to Queen Anne that

the publication was an insult to her honour, and prevailed upon her

Majesty to address both Houses upon the subject, in the Parliament which

met October 27th, 1705. Accordingly, after a long debate, “it was voted

that the church was not in danger,” and her Majesty was entreated to

punish the authors of the “Memorial.” The printer was accordingly taken

into custody, and, being examined before one of the secretaries of

state, deposed that the manuscript of the “Memorial” was brought to him

by a lady in a mask, accompanied by another lady barefaced, who,

together, stipulated to have two hundred and fifty copies printed, which

were delivered to four porters sent by the parties who brought the

“Memorial.” But although the lady without a mask and three of the

porters were found, Dr. Drake remained undiscovered; and the indignant

ministry were obliged to convict him upon another publication.

Drake was the editor of a newspaper, entitled “The Mercurius Politicus,”

for which he was prosecuted in the Queen’s Bench in the ensuing year,

but acquitted upon a flaw in the information, the word NOR being

inserted in the written information, and, in the libel given in

evidence, the word NOT. Eventually the prosecution killed Drake, for the

anxieties attending it, and the ill usage of some of his party, brought

on a fever of which he died, bitterly exclaiming against the severity of

his enemies. Thus speedily were extinguished an energetic spirit, and

abilities adapted to higher purposes than those to which they were

applied. Besides displaying in his writings great command of language,

Dr. Drake possessed a well-stored and philosophic mind. Amid historical,

political, and even dramatic works, he published a “New System of

Anatomy,” which met with deserved praise and success.[494]

It would require a work of some extent to describe the innumerable

productions of the day in which the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough,

under fictitious names, were alternately defamed and defended. The

authors of these productions came forth like bats and owls, in the

twilight and in darkness, when the political day of the great Colossus,

as the Duke was called, and of “Queen Sarah,” was overcast by the shades

of night. They were for the most part answered, and they cannot, on the

whole, be said to have affixed any stain upon the memory of the great

hero, or on the more faulty conduct of the imperious favourite, whom

they assaulted generally in the grossest manner, and with invective

rather than facts.[495]

Attacks so violent as these soon pass out of remembrance, consumed in

their own heat; for it is only the wary and well-directed operations of

a cautious hand that wound, and injure, and endure. Already had the

Duke, and Duchess, and their party a powerful, though latent foe, who,

in the retirement of an Irish parsonage, divided his days between the

gentler arts of deluding the affections, and alternately beguiling and

breaking the hearts, of weak, but fondly disinterested women; and of

advancing the cause of the church,—if those efforts could be called

advancement, which disseminated immorality, whilst they advocated the

constitution of the hierarchy. Jonathan Swift, by all accounts the least

lovable, and yet the most dangerous, of mankind, was at this time

nominally a Whig, but a disappointed Whig, in his inert and chrysalis

state, awaiting only the necessary change to become a Tory. Brought up

in dependence, and his deportment as a “fine gentleman spoiled,” as he

declared, by a subservience half affectionate, half abject, towards his

great patron, Sir William Temple,[496] the arbitrary, sarcastic, and

selfish spirit of this most able, but most unhappy man, grew under the

check of adversity, which cannot soften all natures. He was a

tyrant,—from the domestic cruelty of forcing a guest to eat asparagus in

King William’s way,[497] to the monstrous ingratitude, indelicacy, and

perfidy of influencing his supposed wife, the beautiful, the devoted

Stella, to bear the imputed ignominy of being his mistress. He was a

timeserver, as selfish men may be expected to become; and a calumniator,

from the same narrow principles of self-advancement. Swift, at this

period, was living in the unrestrained enjoyment of the attachment with

which he had inspired the unhappy Stella, then scarcely twenty years of

age, in all the bloom of that beauty of form and face which were

destined to fade beneath the pressure of suspense, expectation,

disappointment, and despair. Already had the moral profligate, if we may

so call him, secured his Stella from the addresses of a respectable

clergyman, who had applied to Swift in the capacity of the lady’s

guardian, acting in which office Swift had demanded such unreasonable

terms of settlement, that the honest lover was unable to accede to

them.[498] This love of evasion, this mixture of moderation with

passion, of prudence with grasping desires, marked the political, as

well as the personal character of Swift. Generally speaking, the high

churchmen of those days were Tories, and the low churchmen Whigs. It is

not easy to say why, except for the purposes of party, this should be

the case; nor can we reasonably justify a suspicion that an ardent

promoter of the principles of the Revolution, like Swift, could not be

equally sincere in his ultra notions of liberty, and in his vehement

advocacy of the high church cause. His subsequent abandonment of the

Whig party confirms the uncomfortable and foreboding feelings with which

we behold him, in one poem extolling the constancy of Archbishop

Sancroft, who refused the oaths to William and Mary,[499] and, in

another, on the burning of Whitehall,[500] declaring that nothing could

purify that ancient palace, after the residence of the Stuarts. Speaking

of James the Second—

“He’s gone—the rank infection still remains;

Which to repel requires eternal pains:

No force to cleanse it can a river draw,

Nor Hercules could do’t, nor great Nassau.”[501]

It was not difficult to predict that Swift would be one of the first to

lend his too powerful aid to darken the portraits of the Whigs, when any

future cloud should throw a gloom over those services and talents which

he once magnified and extolled.

The advocate of Somers, and of Halifax, Oxford, and Portland, in 1701,

Swift had now become the friend of Addison, Steele, Arbuthnot, and other

noted men, whom he met at Button’s coffee-house, and to whom, not

knowing his rare talents, nor hearing him at first even utter a

syllable, they gave the name of “the mad parson.” The appearance of the

“Tale of a Tub,” in 1704, published in spite of his intimacy with the

little knot of friends, called “Addison’s senate,” in order to benefit

the interests of the high church party, by exposing the errors and

corruptions of Popery, concentrated the good-will of the Tory chiefs,

who could not be blind to the powerful assistance of one who could aid

them with the engine of ridicule. But, in giving to the world this

production, Swift proved himself to be, like many unprincipled men,

near-sighted, and destroyed all hopes of that high preferment to which

he aspired. Although the “Tale of a Tub” has since been claimed, but

with no certainty, as the original idea of Somers,[502] and although it

was, at the time of its publication, imputed to a pedantic and simple

cousin of Swift, the real author was tolerably well surmised, and

eventually ascertained.[503]

The real lovers of religion, and the sincere adherents of the Church of

England, were shocked and disgusted by this celebrated satire, and Queen

Anne could never be prevailed upon to bestow on the author the

preferment which he panted to obtain, by fair, or, if these were

inexpedient, by any means.

If other statements are to be credited, one who held a high place in her

Majesty’s confidence was the original framer of the bold composition.

Whether this conjecture be true or not, there is abundant reason to

conclude that Swift enriched the original design by the effusions of his

surpassing wit, to which he sacrificed the all important considerations

of character. It was not long before he gave proofs, that if he were not

the sole author of the “Tale of a Tub,” he was fully capable of being

so, by his Letter on the “Relaxation of the Sacramental Text,” which he

also endeavoured, but vainly, to conceal.[504] But it was at a later

period that Swift began that series of attacks upon the Duke and Duchess

of Marlborough, and on their party, in his papers in the “Examiner,” a

periodical paper set on foot by himself, Dr. Atterbury, St. John, Prior,

Dr. Frend, and other Tory writers, after the administration had passed

from the hands of Godolphin and Marlborough into those of Harley and his

party. To this powerful production, sustained with an apparent calmness

and exactness of statement, which gave indescribable effect to its

bitter remarks and searching analyses, the Duchess of Marlborough was

indebted for much of her unpopularity, and Harley for a considerable

proportion of his influence over the public mind.[505] The portion of

the papers for which Swift was solely responsible, are acknowledged to

be greatly superior to the subsequent essays. Swift himself prophesied

the inferiority. Upon the publication of number forty-four, which was

the last he wrote, he intimated to his friends that the rest would be

“trash for the future;” and the subsequent papers were, he says,

“written by some under-spur leathers in the city, and were designed

merely as proper returns to those Grub-street invectives which were

thrown out against the (Tory) administration by the authors of the

‘Medley’ and the ‘Englishman,’ and some other abusive detracting papers

of the like stamp.”

The result fully bore out this prediction; and the “Examiner,” of all

the attacks which were made upon the Marlborough party and their

friends, the most obnoxious to them, and beneficial to their enemies,

soon sank in reputation, and altogether ceased. But its disparaging

effects upon those whom it assailed were long experienced; and the party

which this celebrated publication attacked, never recovered the

popularity and stability which it first undermined.

APPENDIX.

LETTER FROM MISTRESS WITTEWRONGE, _daughter-in-law of Sir John

Wittewronge, Bart. of Rothamsted Park, Herts, to the_ DUCHESS OF

MARLBOROUGH, _referring to Mrs. Jennings_.

Sir John Wittewronge came to England from Ghent, in consequence of the

persecutions of the Protestants in Flanders. One of his family was

maid of honour to Queen Anne, probably through the interest of the

Duchess, who appears from this letter to have been a friend of the

family.

May it please your grace, when your grace was last at St. Albans, I

endeavoured to have the honour of making my duty in person, but word was

brought me by the servant I sent, that your grace’s stay there was soe

short, that company was not expected; and not knowing when I may hope to

have any opportunity of speaking, humbly crave pardon, that I presume to

express myself in this manner, which I thought could not be well omitted

without a seeming neglect, both of my duty and interest, since your

grace will please to remember that it was told me I should be in a

capacity in London ere it were long, which I took as a gracious

intimation that some favour was intended for my husband, who, I am sure,

will deserve it, and has no hopes from any other hand. I must own my

affection to the memory of your noble mother, who honoured me with her

love, and bestowed upon me many costly favours, which may seem an odd

argument in my behalf to hope for more from your grace; but it is

godlike to confer new mercies on them who have been the objects of

former ones without any merit, especially upon such as are truly

thankful for what they have received. I begg at least forgiveness, and

shall ever remain

Your grace’s most dutyfull

Thankful Servant,

MARY WITTEWRONGE.

For her grace the Duchess of Marlborough.

(Endorsed in the hand writing of Mr. Wittewronge)

My wife to Duchess Marlb.

_Extract from “An Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough.

1742._”

FROM THE QUEEN TO HER SISTER THE PRINCESS ANNE.

Kensington, Friday, the 5th of Feb.

Having something to say to you which I know will not be very pleasing, I

chuse rather to write it first, being unwilling to surprise you,

although I think what I am going to tell you should not, if you gave

yourself the time to think, that never anybody was suffered to live at

court in my Lord Marlborough’s circumstances. I need not repeat the

cause he has given the King to do what he has done, nor his

unwillingness at all times to come to such extremities, though people do

deserve it.

I hope you do me the justice to believe it is as much against my will

that I now tell you, that after this it is very unfit Lady Marlborough

should stay with you, since that gives her husband so just a pretence of

being where he ought not.

I think I might have expected you should have spoke to me of it. And the

King and I, both believing it, made us stay thus long. But seeing you

was so far from it that you brought Lady Marlborough hither last night,

makes us resolve to put it off no longer, but tell you she must not

stay; and that I have all the reasons imaginable to look upon your

bringing her as the strangest thing that ever was done. Nor could all my

kindness for you (which is ever ready to turn all you do the best way,

at any other time,) have hindered me from showing you that moment, but I

considered your condition, and that made me master myself so far as not

to take notice of it then.

But now I must tell you it was very unkind in a sister, would have been

very uncivil in an equal, and I need not say I have more to claim: which

though my kindness would make me never exact, yet when I see the use you

would make of it, I must tell you I know what is due to me, and expect

to have it from you. ’Tis upon that account I tell you plainly, Lady

Marlborough must not continue with you in the circumstances her lord is.

I know this will be uneasy to you, and I am sorry for it; and it is very

much so to me to say all this to you, for I have all the real kindness

imaginable for you; and as I ever have, so will always do my part to

live with you as sisters ought. That is, not only like so near

relations, but like friends. And, as such, I did think to write to you.

For I would have made myself believe your kindness for her made you at

first forget that you should have for the King and me; and resolved to

put you in mind of it myself, neither of us being willing to come to

harsher ways.

But the sight of Lady Marlborough having changed my thoughts, does

naturally alter my stile. And since by that I see how little you seem to

consider what even in common civility you owe us, I have told you

plainly; but withall assure you, that let me have never so much reason

to talk anything ill of you, my kindness is so great, that I can pass

over most things, and live with you as becomes me. And I desire to do so

merely from that motive; for I do love you as my sister, and nothing but

yourself can make me do otherwise; and that is the reason I chuse to

write this rather than tell it you, that you may overcome your first

thoughts; and when you have well considered, you will find, that though

the thing be hard, (which I again assure you I am sorry for,) yet it is

not unreasonable, but what has ever been practised, and what you

yourself would do, were you in my place.

I will end this with once more desiring you to consider the matter

impartially, and take time for it. I do not desire an answer presently,

because I would not have you give a rash one. I shall come to your

drawing-room to-morrow before you play, because you know why I cannot

make one; at some other time we shall reason the business calmly; which

I will willingly do, or anything else that may show it shall never be my

fault if we do not live kindly together; nor will I ever be other by

choice but your truly loving and affectionate sister,

M. R.

THE PRINCESS ANNE’S ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING LETTER.

Your Majesty was in the right to think your letter would be very

surprising to me. For you must needs be sensible of the kindness I have

for my Lady Marlborough, to know that a command from you to part with

her must be the greatest mortification in the world to me; and, indeed,

of such a nature, that I might well have hoped your kindness to me would

have always prevented. I am satisfied she cannot have been guilty of any

fault to you; and it would be extremely to her advantage if I could here

repeat every word that ever she had said to me of you in her whole life.

I confess it is no small addition to my trouble to find the want of your

Majesty’s kindness to me upon this occasion, since I am sure I have

always endeavoured to deserve it by all the actions of my life.

Your care of my present condition is extremely obliging, and if you

would be pleased to add to it so far as upon my account to recall your

severe command, (as I must beg leave to call it, in a matter so tender

to me, and so little reasonable, as I think, to be imposed upon me, that

you would scarcely require it from the meanest of your subjects,) I

should ever acknowledge it as a very agreeable mark of your kindness to

me. And I must as freely own, that as I think this proceeding can be for

no other intent than to give me a very sensible mortification, so there

is no misery that I cannot readily resolve to suffer, rather than the

thoughts of parting with her. If, after all this that I have said, I

must still find myself so unhappy as to be farther pressed in this

matter, yet your Majesty may be assured, that as my past actions have

given the greatest testimony of my respect both for the King and you, so

it shall always be my endeavour, wherever I am, to preserve it carefully

for the time to come, as becomes

Your Majesty’s

Very affectionate Sister and Servant,

ANNE.

From the Cockpit, Feb. 6th, 1692.

FROM THE PRINCESS ANNE TO THE QUEEN.

I am very sorry to find that all I have said myself, and my Lord

Rochester for me, has not had effect enough to keep your Majesty from

persisting in a resolution which you are satisfied must be so great a

mortification to me, as, to avoid it, I shall be obliged to retire, and

deprive myself of the satisfaction of living where I might have frequent

opportunities of assuring you of that duty and respect which I always

have been and shall be desirous to pay you on all occasions.

My only consolation in this extremity is, that not having done anything

in all my life to deserve your unkindness, I hope I shall not be long

under the necessity of absenting myself from you; the thought of which

is so uneasy to me, that I find myself too much indisposed to give your

Majesty any farther trouble at this time.

February 8, 1692.

_Two Letters of kindness from the Princess of Denmark to Lady

Marlborough._

THE PRINCESS ANNE TO LADY MARLBOROUGH.

To Lady Marlborough.—I had last night a very civil answer from the

Bishop of Worcester, whom I sent to speak with, but have heard nothing

more of him since, so I dare not venture to go to London to-day for fear

of missing him. If he comes in any time to-morrow, I will not fail of

being with my dear Mrs. Freeman about five or six o’clock, unless you

are to go to the Tower. And if you do, pray be so kind as to let me know

time enough to stop my journey. For I would not go to London, and miss

the satisfaction of seeing you. I could not forbear writing, though I

had nothing more to say, but that it is impossible ever to express the

kindness I have for dear Mrs. Freeman.

TO LADY MARLBOROUGH FROM THE PRINCESS ANNE.

To Lady Marlborough.—Sir Benjamin telling me you were not come to town

at three o’clock, makes me in pain to know how your son does, and I

can’t help inquiring after him and dear Mrs. Freeman. The Bishop of

Worcester was with me this morning before I was dress’d. I gave him my

letter to the Queen, and he has promised to send it, and seemed to

undertake it very willingly; though, by all the discourse I had with

him, (of which I will give you a particular account when I see you,) I

find him very partial to her. The last time he was here, I told him you

had several times desired you might go from me, and I repeated the same

thing again to him. For you may easily imagine I would not neglect doing

you right upon all occasions. But I beg it again for CHRIST JESUS’S

sake, that you would never name it any more to me. For be assured, if

you should ever do so cruel a thing as to leave me, from that moment I

should never enjoy one quiet hour. And should you do it without asking

my consent, (which if ever I give you may I never see the face of

heaven,) I will shut myself up, and never see the world more, but live

where I may be forgotten by human kind.

THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH TO THE QUEEN.[506]

This letter proves that, so early as the year 1707, the good

understanding between the Queen and her favourite was undermined.

August 7, 1707.

Lord Marlborough has written to me to put your Majesty in mind of Count

Wrateslaw’s picture, and in the same letter desires me to ask for one

that he sent Lord Treasurer, which came from Hanover, which I have seen,

and which I know you would not have me trouble you with; and I have been

so often discouraged in things of this nature that I believe nobody in

the world but myself would attempt it; but I know Mrs. Morley’s

intentions are good, and to let her run on in so many mistakes that must

of necessity draw her into great misfortunes at last, is just as if one

should see a friend’s house set on fire, and let them be burnt in their

bed without endeavouring to wake them, only because they had taken

laudanum, and had desired not to be disturbed. This is the very case of

poor dear Mrs. Morley; nothing seems agreeable to her but what comes

from the artifices of one that has always been reported to have a great

talent that way. I heartily wish she may discover her true friends

before she suffers for the want of that knowledge; but as to the

business of calling for the Princess Sophia over, I don’t think that

will be so easily prevented as she (perhaps) may flatter herself it

will, though I can’t think there can be many, at least, that know how

ridiculous a creature she is, that can in their hearts be for her. But

we are a divided nation; some Jacobites that cover themselves with the

name of Tory, and yet are against the crown. And whoever comes into the

project of that sort must do it in hopes of confusion. Others there are

that are so ignorant that they really believe the calling over any of

the House of Hanover will secure the succession, and the Protestant

religion. And some of those gentlemen that do know better, and that have

so many years supported the true interest against the malice of all the

inventions of the enemies to this government, I suppose will grow easy,

and be pretty indifferent at least in what they think may be of no ill

consequence, further than in displeasing the court, not only in this of

the Princess Sophia, but in anything else that may happen; and as Mrs.

Morley orders her affairs, she can’t expect much strength to oppose

anything where she is most concerned. Finding Mrs. Morley has little

time to spare, unless it be to speak to those that are more agreeable,

or that say what she likes on these subjects, I have taken the liberty

to write an answer to this, which you will say is sincere, and can be no

great trouble only to sign it with Morley.

_Extract from the Duchess’s Letter to Mr. Hutchinson._ (_This passage

relates to the Duchess accepting two thousand pounds out of the privy

purse: a sum, which she had formerly refused from the Queen._ Taken from

the Coxe Manuscripts, vol. xliii.)

But to return to my own case. When the Queen had turned me out of my

places, the next thing I had to do was to make up my accounts for the

robes and privy purse, with all the care and exactness I could. But in

the mean time, while some of my friends persuaded me to let the Queen be

asked whether she would not allow me to take out of the privy purse the

two thousand pounds a year which she had so often pressed me to accept,

since the reason of my refusing it now ceased, when she turned me out of

my places, I must confess it went much against me to desire anything of

her; but when I considered how great a sum of money I had saved her by

the management of my offices, the real service I had done her in many

respects, and the dear hours of my life I had spent upon her for many

years together, without either asking or having anything of her, (except

those few trifles I mentioned before,) after she came to the crown,

which any one would think was the proper time for her to have rewarded

her old servants, I thought I should not be in her debt though she

should give me what I had so often refused, and therefore that I might

very well suffer myself to be governed by my friends in letting her be

asked about this matter; and accordingly I consented that a copy of one

of her own letters, in which she pressed me so much to take that money

out of the privy purse, should be shown to her, and that the person who

carried it should tell her that I desired to know, before I made up my

accounts, whether she still was willing that I should take the money out

of the privy purse according as she had desired me in that letter. When

this was proposed to her, she blushed and appeared to be very uneasy,

and not disposed to allow of my putting that money into my accounts; but

for want of good counsel or instructions to defend herself in refusing

that which she had been so very earnest with me to accept before, she

consented that I should do it. Then I sent in my accounts with that

yearly sum charged in them from the time she had offered it to me. But I

still used this further caution, of writing at the bottom of the

accounts, before I charged the last sum, a copy of the letter I

mentioned before, that when she signed them, she might at the same time

attest her own letter, and the offer she had made me of her own accord,

and pressed me to take in this manner—“_Pray make no more words about

it, and either own or conceal it, as you like best; since I think the

richest crown could never repay the services I have received from you._”

After this the Queen kept my accounts almost a fortnight by her, in

which time I don’t doubt but they were well examined by Abigal and Mr.

Harley; but there was no fault which they could pretend to find with

them, and they were sent back to me, without the least objection being

made against them, signed by the Queen’s own hand, who had writ under

them that she allowed of them, and was satisfied they were right; so

that the new ministers had nothing left them in this matter but to

whisper about the town some scandalous storys of it, and to employ such

of their agents as the Examiner in propagating them.

I don’t pretend to give you any particular account of these, or any

other abusive storys that were industriously raised of me, but leave you

to judge of them by the matters of fact which I have now given you a

relation of, and which I have told in so full a manner as I think will

give you a clear notion of my whole behaviour in all the concerns I had

with the Queen, and particularly with respect to everything in which she

seemed to show any uneasiness towards me.

_Extract from a Letter written by the Duchess of Marlborough,

vindicating herself from the charge of selling places; and touching also

upon other matters._—Taken from the Coxe Manuscripts, vol. xliv. p. 2.

And upon the whole, I solemnly swear, as I hope for happiness here or

hereafter, that besides the case of the pages to the Princess, which I

have told you of, I never did receive the value of one shilling in

money, jewells, or any such thing, either directly or indirectly, for

the disposing of any employment, or doing any favour during my whole

life, nor from any person whatsoever, upon any such account; and that if

there is any man or woman upon earth that can give the least proof to

the contrary, I am contented for the future to be looked upon both by

friends and enemies, as one of the vilest of women, worse than Abigal

herself, when I consider her as instrumental in doing the greatest

mischief that a nation can suffer; the reducing it from the most

flourishing to at least a dangerous condition; and as acting the most

ungratefully and injuriously to a person to whom she owes her very

bread.

I may be thought, perhaps, in this to put my own vindication upon too

ticklish a bottom, when it is considered how far the malice of men will

go, in these times especially, in maintaining the greatest falsity

against others, when they can serve their own purposes by it. But as

everybody ought to look upon all general reflections, where no proof is

offered at, to be only mere aspersions; so I depend upon it that I shall

be able to convict any man, to his own shame, that shall dare to produce

any particular instance against me, of my having taken anything for the

disposal of any employment. I am sensible my enemies have not wanted

inclination to have done this long ago, if there had been any room for

it; and it is no small vindication of me, that their own impudence, as

great as it is in this respect, has not carried them so far as to offer

at any proof against me of this nature.

There is another public vindication of me which I think I ought to take

notice of, and that is, that soon after the Queen came to the crown, I

was the cause of having the strictest orders made against taking of

money for the disposing of places that were ever known at the court;

which, how consistent it was with having any designs of my own of making

money that way, I leave any one to judge. In the green cloth I found

means of making it necessary, for every one that came into any

employment there, to make an oath, in the strictest terms that could be,

that he did not pay anything for it. And though I could not so easily

procure any such effectual means to prevent the same practice with

respect to the dispensing of other employments, yet I often pressed the

Queen to do all that was possible in it; and upon this there was an

order of council made, which everybody knows of, about it. All this, I

hope, is sufficient to clear me from anything cast upon me with respect

to the disposal of employments.

_Extract from a work called “Sylva, or the Wood,” published in 1788;

describing the limited education of the Duchess, and the manner in which

she delivered the Vindication of her Conduct, so often referred to in

this Volume, to Mr. Hooke._[507]

The “old Sarah,” as she was then called, published, in 1742, an _Account

of her Conduct_ under Queen Anne; which _account_, by the way, affords

an excellent insight into the manœuvres of a court, and would greatly

confirm the idea given of it in the two preceding numbers. She was

assisted herein by Mr. Hooke, the historian, to whom, though oppressed

with the infirmities of age, and almost bed-rid, she would continue

speaking for six hours together. She delivered to him her account

without any notes, in the most lively, as well as the most connected

manner; and though the correction of the language is left to Hooke, yet

the whole is plainly animated with her spirit; and as some philosophers

have said of Saul with regard to body, she was _tota in toto, et tota in

qualibet parte_. She was of a strong understanding and uncommon

sagacity, which I premise to justify my wonder at the strange neglect of

education among the females; for her woman would have written as well,

and perhaps better.

Here follow, merely as curiosities, two letters from her own

handwriting, directed “For Doctor Clarke, att his haus near St. James’

Church,” without alteration of either grammar or orthography; that is

_verbatim et liberatim_, as Mrs. Bellamy upon a like occasion expresses.

_An Inventory of the Jewels belonging to the Duke and Duchess of

Marlborough._—Copied from the Coxe Manuscripts, vol. xlviii.

Weight. Value.

Car. Gr. £ s. d.

In the Duke of Marlborough’s George, eleven

jewels 0 95

A brilliant of the first water, and very

lively weight, in a ring; the gift of the

Emperor 10 1½ 900 0 0

A brilliant drawing to the crown, and a

fowle on one side; the gift of the king of

Prussia, in a coulant to a cross 13 0¼ 1,500 0 0

In her grace the Duchess of Marlborough’s

earrings, the two brilliants under - - 900 0 0

A fine spread brilliant, the bottom very

deep, drawing upon the blue 6 2¾ 450 0 0

A high-crowned brilliant, good water, and

perfect cleane 7 0½ 450 0 0

A clear lively stone, well spread, but a

little drawing, (in the cross) 5 2½ 300 0 0

A fine stone of good water, perfectly

cleane, but thin, (the middle stone of a

button for a loope) 2 3½ 150 0 0

A spread stone, but drawing to the crown,

(in a collet for a little cross) 3 1¾ 150 0 0

A good water, and a fine lively cleane

brilliant, (in the cross) 4 1¾ 130 0 0

A fine lively cleane stone, but drawing in

the water, (in the cross) 4 2½ 130 0 0

The middle stone of a button for a loope,

very white, extremely spread, and cleane

and lively 2 0¾ 100 0 0

A very fine stone, in all perfection of

colour and cleaness, (in the cross) 2 1¾ 60 0 0

A cleane stone, a little drawing, (in the

cross) 2 2¼ 60 0 0

A brilliant of the first water, and almost

perfectly cleane, (in a ring) 5 0 210 0 0

One fassett diamond drawing 2 3¼ 100 0 0

The other fassett drawing yellowish. The two

middle stones of the button 2 0½ 80 0 0

Forty-four fassetts in the loopes 7 2 45 0 0

Sixteen fassetts in the buttons above 9 0 72 0 0

Two high fassett diamonds through the four points in

buttons, each set round with eleven brilliants, all

valued at 220 0 0

Forty-four fassett diamonds in the two loopes 35 0 0

Twenty-two fassett diamonds in a buckle 60 0 0

Two loopes with forty brilliants in them - - -

Twenty-four brilliants round the two brilliant buttons - - -

Twelve buttons of the same sort 355 0 0

Twelve loopes that go with them 135 0 0

Two buttons of another fashion, with seven diamonds,

each of them about the bigness of the middle stone 130 0 0

Two loopes, with thirteen diamonds in each, and one

large diamond at the bottom of each loope 210 0 0

Four buttons, with nine diamonds in each, of another

fashion and smaller 50 0 0

Four loopes, with ten diamonds in each loope 25 0 0

A fine large rose diamond, perfect cleane, set for a

coulant 360 0 0

Five fossett diamonds in a cross 220 0 0

A pair of ruby earrings set with brilliants about

them, and a cross and coulant set with diamonds, and

a pearle necklace to it, with rubies mixt with them,

all at 90 0 0

A blue enamelled cross set with diamonds 20 0 0

A pair of shoe-buckles set with fossett diamonds 20 0 0

A large brilliant in a ring, in which is his grace the

Duke of Marlborough’s picture 800 0 0

Two rose diamonds cut through the pints, very high,

cleane and lively 170 0 0

Two middle drops to earrings 160 0 0

Four side drops to ditto 70 0 0

A yellow rose diamond, set in a ring which his grace

wears 150 0 0

A large brilliant ring; the gift of the Emperor 1,500 0 0

A large rose diamond set in a ring; the gift of the

King of Poland 1,500 0 0

Endorsed in the Duchess’s handwriting with these words:

“All the brilliants and other small diamonds, except those described in

this book, were bought with the Duchess’s own money, as likewise all the

pearles of every sort. The two best pendant drops cost of Mr. Dolbin

500_l._, and were once valued at 2,200_l._”

_Dated December the 30th, 1718, from a book of Sarah Duchess of

Marlborough’s._—Additional Catalogue.

A large pearl necklace, containing thirty-nine pearls; the two end

pearls are what are called pendant pearls.

Two very large pendant pearls that cost five hundred pounds, but are

valued at more than double the price, set in earrings with two brilliant

diamonds.

Two hundred and eighty-four pearls in a string, for a bracelet.

Three strings in a necklace, with a brilliant hook. Near four hundred

pearls in three; and the hook contains sixteen diamonds.

One hundred and forty-seven pearls in a bracelet, with the Duke of

Marlborough’s picture.

Nine old pearls.

A pair of pendants, with eight false French pearls, set about with

brilliants.

A pair of ruby earrings, with six drops, set round with diamonds.

A ruby cross, set round with diamonds.

In the necklace twenty-six fossett diamonds; all the rubies false but

the middle one and those in the cross.

Five large diamonds in a cross; one very large one for the middle

collet, one large one to buckle it behind, with two little ones: in all

nine.

A brilliant buckle for a girdle, with sixteen diamonds.

A brilliant buckle for the Duke of Marlborough’s picture, with eight

diamonds and a drop.

Such another buckle for four pictures of my daughters.

The Duke of Marlborough’s picture in a ring.

A large buckle for a girdle of fossetts.

A buckle for a girdle of lesser fossetts.

Four diamond buckles and loops, to put on the neck of a manteau.

Six diamond buckles and loops for manteau sleeves: there is in the loops

for the sleeves one hundred and twenty-four diamonds, some brilliants,

and some fossetts.

Fifteen loops set for stays, and eight buttons.

One very fine ring fossett set transparent.

Six pendant drops set in a sprig, fossett stones all.

Six very fine brilliant drops in a pair of pendants, and two very fine

fossetts for the earrings of those pendants.

A very large brilliant ring set transparent.

Two pins with four fossett diamonds.

Sixteen collets set with cristalls and hair; sixty little brilliants set

in collets to go between the cristalls.

A buckle for one of the bracelets with eight little brilliants and a

drop.

Ten brilliant buckles for stays, and two taggs (one lost.)

Eight little square buckles for a waistcoat, fossett, and ten taggs.

Seven little white brilliants, unsett.

A little yellow diamond for the hook of a necklace.

Madame d’Escalache’s picture in a locket.

Thirty-six brilliant collets, pretty large, for a necklace.

Seventeen of those diamonds generally used for the boddice.

A little bracelet with gold crosses.

A little locket of cristall with my Lord Godolphin’s hair.

A pair of earrings with four pretty large brilliant diamonds.

Two little diamond hooks to set drops upon.

Fourty-four small diamonds set in fassetts.

Thirteen more of the same sort.

Two small fassett drops with two little diamonds, for earrings.

Two diamond knotts with false blue stones, for earrings.

A large amethyst ring.

A small Turkey ring.

Two French pearls with diamond tops.

A pair of diamond knotts with false green earrings.

A pair of diamond knotts with eight false green stones.

A ring with my mother’s hair, and four brilliant diamonds.

A gold snuff-box, with two of the Duke of Marlborough’s pictures in it.

A gold snuff-box, with the Duchess of Portsmouth’s picture in it.

A pair of shoe-buckles.

* * * * *

Lady Anne Egerton’s and Lady Dye’s diamonds, that are in use, are not in

this account.

Mr. Gibson valued the best pearl necklace by weight that was bought of

the Duchess of Beaufort at six hundred and eight pounds, and said he

would give so much for it to sell it again, in October, 1715; and

besides that, there were five pearls added to it, bought of the Duchess

of Montague.

A little diamond hook to a garnet necklace.[508]

_An Account of what the Grant of Marlborough-House has cost the Duke and

Duchess of Marlborough._[509]

Paid to Sir Richard Beeling, upon a pretended debt of Queen Dowager’s,

two thousand pounds.

Building the house, and making the garden, very near fifty thousand

pounds.

That article seems almost incredible, but it is not really so

extravagant as it appears, because it is the strongest and best house

that ever was built; and if it were worth the trouble to look into old

accounts when they signify nothing, I could prove what I have said by

the payments out of the accounts. As to what has been paid for two

grants in Queen Anne’s time, there being a mistake in one of them which

occasioned another, and the renewal in King George the First’s time;

likewise the fine and payments upon account of the four little houses to

make the way, must have cost a good deal. But it is not worth the

trouble of summing up the particulars. The yearly rents I pay to the

crown are five shillings; and thirteen pounds fifteen shillings for

Marlborough-house; and thirteen pounds fifteen shillings for the four

little houses. The land-tax for Marlborough-house is sixty pounds a

year; for the four little houses I don’t know what it is. The Examiner

magnified the vast profit I had by this grant from the crown, which it

never cost one shilling. Likewise a great value was set upon the

advantage of the lodges in Windsor Park. None of the expense of building

either was done by the crown; and it cost the Duchess of Marlborough a

great sum of money to make those two lodges what they are, who lost an

arrear due from King George the First, the allowance for keeping the

Park. After that, his present Majesty, by letters patent under the privy

seal, bearing date the twenty-ninth day of June, in the second year of

his reign, was pleased to grant to the ranger of the Great Park at

Windsor an allowance of five hundred pounds a year in consideration of

the charge of supplying hay for feed of the deer, and paying

under-keepers, and gate-keepers, and other subordinate officers doing

duty or service there, their wages; and to authorise and direct the

payment of the said fee, salary, or allowance, at the receipt of the

Exchequer, quarterly, out of his treasure applicable to the uses of his

civil government. This salary was stopt by another order at Christmas,

1736, since which time the Duchess of Marlborough has been at the whole

charge of all the payments in his Majesty’s Park; notwithstanding that

by her grant she has as strong a right to it as anybody can have from

the crown. And though Queen Anne gave her this grant, at King George’s

coming to the crown she paid the usual fees as if it had been given her

then, and which ’tis plain, by what has passed since, could not be taken

from her. But she did not think it worth making a dispute about that.

There is likewise in the order to recal the payment, from the crown,

that Mr. Bridgman should not continue his payment for an allowance he

had for keeping one of the King’s gardens in the Park. That is a thing I

don’t pretend to have a right to have, for it is not in my grant; nor do

I know more of it than that my Lord Ranelagh, when he reduced the prices

of the gardeners to the crown, I suppose to please some former ranger

before I had it, obliged the gardeners to pay a hundred pounds a year to

the gardener that kept that garden in the Great Park. And likewise they

paid an allowance out of theirs for keeping the garden that comes into

the Little Park; and some allowance for some fruit-trees planted in that

park. But I don’t know the particulars of the last exactly, because I

have computed that this grant of Marlborough-house, which the crown

never paid one shilling for, besides the constant rent of the crown, and

taxes, at fifteen hundred pounds a year. Now money is at three per cent.

This statement terminates thus abruptly.

-----

Footnote 1:

It is the impression of her descendant, Earl Spencer, that the Duchess

was born at Holywell: and the facts which are stated in chapter i. p.

10 of the first volume, and for which the Authoress is indebted to the

kindness of Mr. Nicholson, abundantly prove that conviction to be

just.

Footnote 2:

Life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, 1745, p. 61.

Footnote 3:

Collins’s Baronage, art. Churchill.

Footnote 4:

The letter, now amongst the papers of John Bennet Lawes, Esq., the

descendant of Sir John Wittewronge, Bart., is too much mutilated to be

copied or inserted in the appendix. The Duchess, from the vicinity of

Sandridge to Rothamsted Park, was probably early acquainted with the

family of Wittewronge. She bought some land from Sir John

Wittewronge.—See her Grace’s will.

Footnote 5:

A Letter from the Duchess. Private Correspondence of the Duke of

Marlborough. Colburn, 1837, vol. ii. p. 112.

Footnote 6:

For a more detailed account of the Jennings or Jennyns family, see

Appendix I.

Footnote 7:

Sandridge is a straggling and by no means picturesque village, in the

vicinity of St. Albans. The property once belonging to the Jennings

family descended to the favourite grandson of the Duchess, Lord John

Spencer, (commonly called “Jack Spencer,”) and was sold by the present

Lord Spencer to John Kinder, Esq., who has built a handsome house on

the estate.

The manor of Sandridge, at the time of the dissolution, formed part of

the possessions of the Abbot of St. Albans, and is thus described in

the Domesday Survey. “It answered for ten hides. There is land to

thirteen ploughs. The Abbot himself holds Sandridge. Three hides are

in the demesne, and there are two ploughs here, and a third may be

made. Twenty-six villanes here have ten ploughs Meadow for two

ploughs. Pasture for the cattle. Pasturage for three hundred hogs. The

whole value is 18_l._ When received 12_l._ And the same in King

Edward’s time.”—_Clutterbuck’s Hist. of Hertfordshire_, p. 216.

Upon the dissolution, this manor came to the crown, and was granted by

charter, anno 32 Henry VIII., to Ralph Rowlat, whose sister married

Ralph Jennings, the grandfather of Richard Jennings.

Footnote 8:

With the day of her birth I have been assisted by the kindness of a

friend. Coxe mentions merely the year.

Footnote 9:

I am enabled, by the kindness and intelligence of the Rev. Henry

Nicholson, rector of the Abbey of St. Alban’s, to give the

corroborating evidence to this fact. A member of the highly

respectable family of a former rector of St. Albans distinctly

recollects that it used to be the boast of her aunt, an old lady of

eighty, not many years deceased, that she had herself been removed,

when ill of the small-pox, to the very room in the house where Sarah

Duchess of Marlborough was born. This was a small building since

pulled down, and its site is now occupied by a summer-house, between

what is called Holywell-street and Sopwell-lane in St. Alban’s, and

within the space afterwards occupied by the pleasure-grounds of the

great house at Holywell. Holywell is said by tradition to have been so

called, because in it was a well, marked in an old map of St. Albans,

where the nuns of Sopwell used to dip their crusts, too hard to be

eaten without such a process.

Footnote 10:

Clutterbuck’s History of Hertfordshire, p. 57.

Footnote 11:

Bishop Burnet’s Hist. of His Own Times, vol. v. p. 53.

Footnote 12:

Granger, art. M. B.

Footnote 13:

Macpherson’s Hist. of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 174.

Footnote 14:

Macpherson, p. 177.

Footnote 15:

Life of James II., edited by Macpherson, vol. i. p. 73.

Footnote 16:

Hist. Brit., vol. i. p. 178.

Footnote 17:

See Archdeacon Coxe’s Life of John Duke of Marlborough, vol. i.

Introduction, p. 45; also Lediard’s Life of Marlborough. For a further

account of the Churchill name and lineage, see Appendix II.

Footnote 18:

See Coxe, p. 47 and 49.

Footnote 19:

See Grammont.

Footnote 20:

This early exploit was the result of a wager of Turenne’s. “I will bet

a supper and a dozen of claret,” said the general, “that my handsome

Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men commanded

by the officer who has lost it.” The wager was accepted and

won.—Lediard, vol. i.

Footnote 21:

Coxe, p. 9.

Footnote 22:

Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, 136.

Footnote 23:

For a specimen of the errors, in this respect, imputed to the Duke,

see Appendix, No. I., in an extract from the newspapers of his time.

Footnote 24:

“Divi Britannici; being a Remark on all the Kings of this isle, from

the year of the world 2855 unto the year of Grace 1660.”—General

Biography, art. Churchill.

Footnote 25:

Coxe, p. 1, 2.

Footnote 26:

See Life of Zarah, p. 2.

Footnote 27:

Life of Zarah, p. 3.

Footnote 28:

Collins’s Baronage, vol. ii. p. 131.

Footnote 29:

Collins’s Baronage, art. Churchill.

Footnote 30:

Coxe, i. 13.

Footnote 31:

Chesterfield’s Letters, p. 136.

Footnote 32:

Bishop Burnet alludes to this intrigue between Marlborough and the

Duchess. “The Duchess of Cleveland, finding that she had lost the

king, abandoned herself to great disorders; one of which, by the

artifice of the Duke of Buckingham, was discovered by the king in

person.”—Hist. of his own Times, vol. i. p. 370.

Footnote 33:

Burnet, vol. i. p. 129.

Footnote 34:

Grammont, vol. ii. p. 284.

Footnote 35:

Chesterfield’s Letters, p. 136.

Footnote 36:

From 1675 to 1678. See Coxe, vol. i. 15.

Footnote 37:

Life of John Duke of Marlborough, p. 39.

Footnote 38:

See Coxe, 14, 15.

Footnote 39:

Continuation of Lord Clarendon’s Life, p. 167.

Footnote 40:

Ibid., p. 148.

Footnote 41:

Granger.

Footnote 42:

Lediard, p. 32.

Footnote 43:

Echard’s Hist. Revolution, p. 113.

Footnote 44:

Coxe, vol. i. p. 15.

Footnote 45:

Coxe.

Footnote 46:

Lediard.

Footnote 47:

Coxe.

Footnote 48:

Coxe, vol. i. p. 18.

Footnote 49:

Coxe, vol. i. p. 18.

Footnote 50:

See Coxe, from Lives of Marlborough and Eugene, vol. i. p. 15.

Footnote 51:

Dalrymple, Appendix, p. 239.

Footnote 52:

Lediard, p. 39, 40.

Footnote 53:

Coxe, vol. i. p. 19.

Footnote 54:

Coxe.

Footnote 55:

Coxe.

Footnote 56:

Lediard.

Footnote 57:

Boyer, p. 36.

Footnote 58:

Granger.

Footnote 59:

Macpherson’s Hist. England, p. 365.

Footnote 60:

Boyer.

Footnote 61:

Granger, vol. i. p. 8.

Footnote 62:

Ibid.

Footnote 63:

Private Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough, vol. ii. p. 116.

Footnote 64:

Priv. Correspondence.

Footnote 65:

Granger, art. Anne.

Footnote 66:

Boyer, p. 716.

Footnote 67:

Ibid.

Footnote 68:

Four last Years of Queen Anne’s Reign, vol. xii. p. 11.

Footnote 69:

Granger.

Footnote 70:

Four last Years, p. 11.

Footnote 71:

Conduct.

Footnote 72:

Conduct, p. 11–15.

Footnote 73:

Conduct, p. 10.

Footnote 74:

Lord Wharncliffe’s edition of Lady M. W. Montague’s Works, vol. i.

Footnote 75:

The Life of Colley Cibber.

Footnote 76:

Burnet’s History of his own Times, vol. i. p. 756.

Footnote 77:

Conduct, p. 11.

Footnote 78:

Ibid., p. 20.

Footnote 79:

Conduct, p. 13.

Footnote 80:

Conduct, p. 15.

Footnote 81:

Coxe, 27.

Footnote 82:

Conduct, p. 13.

Footnote 83:

Conduct, p. 12.

Footnote 84:

Coxe, 28.

Footnote 85:

Dalrymple, i. 104.

Footnote 86:

Ibid.

Footnote 87:

Life of St. Evremond. See Notes to Grammont, vol. ii. p. 351.

Footnote 88:

Brian Fairfax’s Life of the Duke of Buckingham, quoted in Grammont.

Footnote 89:

Macpherson, vol. i. p. 384.

Footnote 90:

Grammont, ii. 190.

Footnote 91:

Burnet, vol. i. p. 368.

Footnote 92:

See Notes to Grammont, vol. i. p. 329.

Footnote 93:

Ibid. 261.

Footnote 94:

See Opinions of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. Edit. 1784, p. 4.

Footnote 95:

£20,000 a year.

Footnote 96:

Ibid. p. 6.

Footnote 97:

Boyer’s Life of Anne, p. 3.

Footnote 98:

See letters from the Princess of Denmark to the Princess of Orange in

Dalrymple’s Mem. vol. ii. Appendix.

Footnote 99:

Conduct, p. 16.

Footnote 100:

Coxe, i. 33.

Footnote 101:

Conduct.

Footnote 102:

Coxe, 34.

Footnote 103:

Conduct, p. 16.

Footnote 104:

Tindal, vol. xv. p. 150.

Footnote 105:

Four Last Years of Queen Anne, p. 10.

Footnote 106:

See Oliver’s Pocket Looking Glass, printed 1711, p. 25.

Footnote 107:

Coxe, p. 34.

Footnote 108:

Dalrymple, book v. p. 215.

Footnote 109:

Dalrymple, book v. p. 215.

Footnote 110:

Dalrymple, 228, book v.

Footnote 111:

See Coxe, Lediard.

Footnote 112:

Macpherson, ii. 479; Clarendon’s Diary, Nov. 9, 1688.

Footnote 113:

Conduct.

Footnote 114:

Tindal, xv. p. 200.

Footnote 115:

Before the Princess had sent to declare her distress.

Footnote 116:

Conduct, p. 16.

Footnote 117:

Tindal, p. 75, vol. xv. See Appendix.

Footnote 118:

Dalrymple, b. vi. p. 230.

Footnote 119:

Life of Colley Cibber, p. 48.

Footnote 120:

The Other Side of the Question, in a Letter to Her Grace the Dowager

Duchess of.... By a Woman of Quality. Ed. London, 1742, p. 5.

Footnote 121:

Conduct, p. 19.

Footnote 122:

Life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, 1746, p. 6.

Footnote 123:

Life of John Duke of Marlborough, by Lediard.

Footnote 124: