Political Women Volume II Part 11

THE result of the trial of Sacheverell made Harley and the favourite sure of the temper of the nation, and they resolved to hesitate no longer. The cabal had succeeded, and the Queen, a tool in the hands of others, by degrees gave up every appearance of regard for the d.u.c.h.ess, or of grat.i.tude to the Duke. Though still fighting his country's battles and gaining immortal honours, the cabal sought to overwhelm him with unkindness and mortification at home. On the death of Lord Ess.e.x, the Queen was urged to give the Duke's regiment to Major Hill, Mrs. Masham's brother. Marlborough, highly indignant, insisted on Abigail being dismissed, or else he would resign; but the efforts of G.o.dolphin and other friends accommodated the matter, and he was contented with the disposal of the regiment being left with him. To prove, as it were, the influence of the favourite, the Queen soon after gave Hill a pension of 1,000 a year; and she made the Duke consent to raise him to the rank of brigadier.

It was Harley's plan to overthrow the Ministry by degrees; and when Lord G.o.dolphin was dismissed from office, the triumph of the adverse party was complete. Thus fell the most able, and perhaps the most patriotic administration that England had possessed since the days of Elizabeth.

It fell by disunion in itself, by the imprudent impeachment of a contemptible divine, and by the intrigues of the bedchamber, where a weak woman, whom the const.i.tution had invested with power, was domineered over by one attendant and wheedled and flattered by another.

It was thus that, after seven-and-twenty years' service and professed friends.h.i.+p, Anne emanc.i.p.ated herself from all obligations, and shook off the yoke which pressed too heavily on her mind, regardless of the confusion into which her weak compliance with interested persons cast the country.

It was now that all the malice which had been long repressed burst out, and poured forth its vengeance on the disgraced favourite. Among other libellers in the service of the new Ministry Swift employed his great talents to cover her with ridicule and obloquy. In the celebrated journal called "The Examiner," his unjust insinuations must have been even more galling than his abuse. He represents the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess as extortioners and dissipators of the public money, insatiable in their avarice, and greedily swallowing all that they could get into their power, disposing of places, and seizing on rewards in a manner the most odious. "Even the Duke's courage," says Smollet, "was called in question, and this consummate general was represented as the lowest of mankind." Yet he did not resign; for G.o.dolphin and the Whigs, the Emperor, and all the allies implored him to retain the command of the army, as otherwise all their hopes would be gone.

The clamour raised by Dr. Sacheverell's affair, not less than the acrimonious temper of the d.u.c.h.ess, contributed to ruin the Whigs in the Queen's favour, who was present _incognita_ during every debate. During the course of Sacheverell's trial, the government advocate, in order to establish the true Whig doctrine, calumniated by the Doctor, uttered words which seemed revolutionary to the royal ears. It will be readily understood that the theory of absolute obedience, preached by Sacheverell and adopted by certain Tories, was more consonant with the Queen's taste than the maxims of the Whigs, who a.s.serted the dogma of the sovereignty of nations and recognised their right of insurrection against royalty. Anne was a zealous Protestant, and sincerely attached to the Anglican Church, of which she was the head. She blamed the tolerance of the Whigs, and thought with Sacheverell that it was necessary to defend the Church both against Popery and indifferentism.

The Tories fomented these dissensions in an underhand way, turning them dexterously against their enemies. The negotiations then set on foot in Holland occurred still more favourably to advance their projects. Anne had a horror of bloodshed: since her accession she had not permitted a single political execution. She sighed deeply on hearing of the continual levies for the war, and shed tears on receiving the long lists of dead and wounded from the Low Countries. One day, having to sign certain papers relative to the army, her tears were seen to blot the paper, as she exclaimed, "Great G.o.d! when will this horrible effusion of blood cease?" The Tories, who, like herself, wished for peace with all their hearts, adroitly fostered her grief. With her, they deplored the butchery of Malplaquet, the increase of taxation, the misery entailed by the interminable campaigns, and repeated that it was time to put an end to the sufferings of the people. Such hideous carnage seemed at last to cry aloud to Heaven for cessation. Pity and conscience, so long stifled and tyrannised over, claimed at length to be heard. Weighing well also a consideration no less potent over the Queen's heart, they represented that the Whigs were her brother's most implacable enemies--that they had set a price upon his head--that they (the Whigs) would never recognise, as her successor, any other king than the Elector of Hanover; that they (the Tories), on the contrary, felt neither repulsion nor hatred for the Pretender, and that if the good of the country demanded it, they would willingly favour his return. Finally they dwelt upon the odious tyranny of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough,[48] especially in the scenes enacted at St. Paul's and Windsor, and promised the Queen to deliver her from a woman whom she had ceased to love, and who had begun to terrify her.

[48] Bolingbroke says so in express terms: "The true cause (of the change of Ministry) was her discontent," &c.--Secret Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, p. 18.

Lending a willing ear to such arguments, Anne gave herself up entirely to Mrs. Masham, and the misunderstanding between the Queen and the d.u.c.h.ess had become public, when a fresh outbreak of violence on the part of the latter precipitated her disgrace.

On the occasion of a christening, at which Marlborough was to stand G.o.dfather, the d.u.c.h.ess vowed that she would never consent to it if the child were to bear the name of Anne, and she made use of an epithet which neither a queen nor a woman could ever pardon. The word was duly reported at St. James's. Anne heard it with the deepest indignation, and so gross an outrage extinguished any latent spark of tenderness left in her heart. The downfall of the d.u.c.h.ess and the Whigs was resolved upon.

Recognising her error when too late, the d.u.c.h.ess requested an audience of the Queen, in the hope of exculpating herself. Anne, who dreaded her furious violence, replied that she could justify herself by letter, and to avoid the chance of an interview, left London for Kensington Palace.

Explicit, however, as was this step, it did not stop the d.u.c.h.ess. She despatched a letter to the Queen, in which she excused herself, on the score of the impossibility of writing such a justification, and requested an interview--a proposition the most alarming conceivable to the poor Queen, on account of the advantage which her antagonist possessed in powers of tongue. She therefore parried it as long as possible, and would evidently have not a.s.sented at all, had not the d.u.c.h.ess extorted the permission by stratagem. Unfortunately, however, for her success, she had told the Queen, in a letter which preceded it, that she only desired to be seen and be heard by her Majesty. There was no necessity, she said, for the Queen to answer. The Queen, in fact, had answered so many of her tormentor's letters in the negative, that the d.u.c.h.ess, not foreseeing what would be the consequence of this general preclusion of response in her Majesty's favour, was resolved to prevent further epistolary acknowledgment by following up her last letter in person. She says, in the foolish "Account" which she gave to the world of her "Conduct," and which had the reverse effect of what she intended (which is the usual case with violent relaters of their own story):--

"I followed this letter to Kensington, and by that means prevented the Queen's writing again to me, as she was preparing to do. The page who went in to acquaint the Queen that I was come to wait upon her stayed longer than usual; long enough, it is to be supposed, to give time to deliberate whether the favour of admission should be granted, and to settle the measure of behaviour if I were admitted. But, at last, he came out and told me I might go in."

The Queen was alone, engaged in writing. "I did not open your letter till just now," she said, "and I was going to write to you."

"Was there anything in it, Madam, that you had a mind to answer?"

"I think," continued poor Anne, who even now endeavoured to stop the coming torrent of words, "I think there is nothing you can have to say but you may write it."

But as this was the very thing over which the d.u.c.h.ess thought she had triumphed, she must have heard the proposal with contemptuous delight; and she proceeded accordingly to pour forth her complaints.

"I cannot write such things," exclaimed the haughty Sarah, alluding to the grossness of the language attributed to her, adding, "Won't your Majesty give me leave to tell it you?"

"Whatever you have to say, you may write it," was the royal answer.

"I believe your Majesty never did so hard a thing to anybody as to refuse to hear them speak--even the meanest person that ever desired it."

"Yes," said the Queen, "I _do_ bid people put what they have to say in writing, when I have a mind to it."

"I have nothing to say, Madam," replied the d.u.c.h.ess, "upon the subject that is so uneasy to you. That person (Lady Masham) is not, that I know of, at all concerned in the account that I would give you."

"You can put it into writing," reiterated the Queen, who, desirous at any cost of avoiding a quarrel, which, from the temper of her quondam favourite, seemed inevitable, repeated the same words several times, purposely interrupting the d.u.c.h.ess, who was already beginning to defend herself.

In spite of the Queen's injunctions, Sarah continued to affirm that she was no more capable of making such disrespectful mention of her Majesty than she was of killing her own children, to which Anne coolly remarked, "There are, doubtless, many lies told on 'both sides.'"

During a whole hour, nevertheless, the d.u.c.h.ess strove to establish her innocence by protestations or prayers. But the Queen's heart was irrevocably closed. Desirous of terminating an interview that grew more and more embarra.s.sing, and remembering the scene in St. Paul's, when her Mistress of the Robes had told her to be silent and make no answer, and that lately, in writing to her, the d.u.c.h.ess had said that she required no answer, or that she would not trouble the Queen to give her one, Anne said, "You did not require an answer from me, and I will give you none."

This frigid resistance exasperated the d.u.c.h.ess, who, astounded to find herself caught in her own trap, and taken at her word, declared, of course, that the phrase was not intended to imply what it did; but the Queen, she says, repeated it again and again, "without ever receding."

The d.u.c.h.ess protesting that her only design was to clear herself, the Queen repeated over and over again, "You desired no answer, and shall have none."

The angry but still politic Sarah next pa.s.sed from prayers to reproaches. "I will leave the room," said Anne, with dignity.

"I then begged to know if her Majesty would tell me some other time."

"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."

On hearing these words, which left no further hope, the d.u.c.h.ess burst into tears; then, as though ashamed of her weakness, she withdrew into the gallery to suppress her pa.s.sionate fit of weeping. Returning after the lapse of a few minutes, she tried a last and decisive application:

"I have been thinking," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "whilst I sat there, that if your Majesty came to the Castle at Windsor, where I heard you were soon expected, it would not be easy to see me in public now, I am afraid. I will therefore take care to avoid being at the Lodge at the same time, to prevent any unreasonable clamour or stories that might originate in my being so near your Majesty without waiting on you."

"Oh," said the Queen, promptly, "you may come to me at the Castle: it will not make me uneasy."

The d.u.c.h.ess, however, still persevered. "I then appealed to her Majesty again, if she did not herself know, &c. And whether she did not know me to be of a temper incapable of, &c."

"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."

Finding Anne thus inflexible, the d.u.c.h.ess rose up in a towering rage at having vainly humiliated herself, and gave vent to her pa.s.sion in a storm of recrimination.

"This usage," concludes the d.u.c.h.ess, "was so severe, and these words, so often repeated, were so shocking, &c, that I could not conquer myself, but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke to the Queen in my life; and that was, that I was confident her Majesty would suffer for such an instance of inhumanity."

She quitted the presence, in fact, exclaiming, "G.o.d will punish you, Madam, for your inhumanity."

"That only concerns myself," drily answered the Queen.

"And thus ended," says the d.u.c.h.ess, "this remarkable conversation, the last I ever had with her Majesty." (April 6th, 1710.)

Such, too, was the end of a thirty years' friends.h.i.+p, and the last interview between Anne and her once-cherished favourite.[49] The d.u.c.h.ess remained in the household for a short time afterwards, but never saw her royal mistress save on public occasions; and from that day the Queen never spoke to her again.

[49] Private Correspondence of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, vol. 1, p. 301.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DISGRACE OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS.

THE disgrace of the d.u.c.h.ess involved the fall of the Whigs. A few days after the scene at Kensington, Anne named two Tories to court appointments, and next dismissed successively all the Whigs from the Ministry--Boyle, Russell, G.o.dolphin, and Walpole. They were replaced by Bolingbroke, Harley, the Earl of Jersey, and the Dukes of Ormonde and Shrewsbury. Anne spared only the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough--not from compa.s.sion but through fear. The irate Mistress of the Robes drove about London daily in her splendid equipage, and repeated at every visit she made that she would publish the Queen's letters, and that some day the infamous motives which had brought about her disgrace would be disclosed. Whilst the timid Anne grew terrified at these menaces, the formidable Sarah remained at St. James's, holding her head aloft and dealing out bitter denunciations against her enemies the victorious Tories.

When the Duke of Marlborough came back from Flanders, during the Christmas holidays, he met with the coldest reception possible. The usual motion of thanks to him had been dropped by his friends for fear of its being negatived by the Tory majority. The new ministers, however, waited upon him, promising that he should have all his present military commands, and also the nomination of the generals who were to serve under him. His wife had never ceased making efforts at court, by means of "_one_ person" there, who happened to be in good favour with the Queen, and to whom the d.u.c.h.ess wrote long accounts of the past, justifying herself, and exposing the ingrat.i.tude, as well as malice, of her enemies. All these accounts that gentleman read to Anne; but he might as well have read them to a stock or stone. According to her Grace, the Queen never offered a word, good or ill, except on one particular point. Lady Masham and Harley had employed Swift and other writers to accuse the d.u.c.h.ess of having grossly cheated her royal mistress of vast sums of money; and on that occasion her Majesty was pleased to say, "Everybody knows cheating is not the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough's crime." Where there was so much received in what was deemed an honourable as well as regular way,[50] there was no great temptation to embezzle and cheat; and the d.u.c.h.ess was in all respects a higher-minded person than her husband, in whom love of money became at last the ruling pa.s.sion to such a degree as to make him stoop to all kinds of mean and paltry actions. The d.u.c.h.ess, as Mistress of the Robes, boasts that she had dressed the Queen for nine years for thirty-two thousand and some odd hundred pounds; and she asks if ever Queen of England had spent so little in robes! "It evidently appears," says her Grace, "that, by my economy in the nine years I served her Majesty, I saved her near ninety thousand pounds[51] in clothes alone.

Notwithstanding this," continues the d.u.c.h.ess, "my Lord-Treasurer (Harley) has thought fit to order the _Examiner_ (Swift) to represent me in print as a pick-pocket all over England; and for that honest service, and some others, her Majesty has lately made him a Dean."

[50] The Marlborough family were said to be in the receipt of 90,000 a year, including all their places and pensions.

[51] Anne's sister, Queen Mary, had been charged 12,600 for her dresses one year, and 11,000 another year.