CHAPTER VII.
1708—Vacillation of Anne—Invasion of the Pretender—Results of that event—Secret intrigues with Mrs. Masham—The death of Prince George—The Duchess of Marlborough’s affectionate attentions to the Queen on that occasion—Her disappointment.
Not many days after the dismissal of Harley and the resignation of St. John, and whilst the world of politics was still occupied in discussing Gregg’s ignominious life and courageous death, it was announced that a French fleet, with troops, had sailed from Dunkirk to invade Scotland.
James Stuart, or, as Queen Anne, for the first time after this attempt upon her kingdom, permitted him to be designated, the Pretender, was, however, luckily for himself, prevented from embarking with the squadron, just at the critical time, by an ague;[137]and the fleet was put back by contrary winds. When too late to do any good,James set sail. The fleet, being chiefly filled with landsmen, was greatly distressed for want of water; and, after being tossed about for nearly a month in a tempestuous sea, was obliged to return to Dunkirk. Thus was this vast project, contrived by Louis with the design of drawing off the troops in Flanders, frustrated; nor would the French monarch have been inconsolable, had the Pretender fallen into the hands of the English, of which he ran an imminent risk; for Louis was not particularly anxious to see the unfortunate Prince again in France; and he would have been reconciled to the loss of his fleet, if he could have at the same time been relieved of his guest.[138]The attempt, however, proved nearly fatal to the Tory party in England: for it was believed that Louis would not have risked so small a fleet, and forces so incompetent as those which he sent over, had he not been well assured of assistance in England and Scotland.
On the other hand, the Queen, who was alarmed, and, according to her capability, indignant, on account of her brother’s invasion, perceived the duplicity of those who had so recently assured her that there was not a single Jacobite in the nation. Never before this occurrence had her royal lips been known to mention the Revolution.Her courtiers had universally endeavoured to separate her title to the throne from any connexion with that event; although she had no other claim to the crown than that which was given her by the Act of Settlement. The Queen now, as Parliament was sitting, addressed the Houses; she named the Revolution twice; she received addresses in which the word ‘Pretender’ was applied to her brother: she thus approved that designation, and from this period he is so called in the generality of histories.[139]She declared publicly that she considered those who had brought about the Revolution to be her best friends; and the Whigs as most to be depended upon for the support of her government. She looked to Marlborough for assistance, and, for the first time, cordially agreed with her general, that it was neither for her honour, nor interest, to make the first steps towards a peace,[140]She wrote to him in the most confidential and affectionate terms, signing herself his “humble servant;”[141]and she received from him a respectful and manly answer, assuring her Majesty that the Duke desired to serve his royal mistress “in the army, but not as a minister.”[142]
For a while this good understanding lasted,and the Whigs were sanguine of their entire restoration to royal favour; but, as the Queen’s fears subsided, her inclinations returned to their old channel, and her mind yielded again to the influence of Harley.
That able and persevering courtier continued, during the whole summer after his dismissal, to entertain a secret correspondence with the Queen. Anne, whose nature was quite on a level with that of the most humble of her household, descended so far as to encourage these stolen conferences. The lessons which she had learned during her depression in the court of William and Mary were retained, when the same inducement to those small manœuvres no longer justified the stratagems which nothing but the dread of tyranny can excuse. To enjoy in privacy the gossip, for it could not be called society, of Mrs. Masham, and the flattery of Harley, “she staid,” says the indignant Duchess, “all the sultry season, even when the Prince was panting for breath, in that small house she had formerly purchased at Windsor; which, though hot as an oven, was then said to be cool, because, from the park, such persons as Mrs. Masham had a mind to bring to her Majesty could be let in privately from the garden.”[143]
The Duchess could not long endure this; and, upon the occasion of a thanksgiving for the victory of Oudenarde, and after the memorable siege of Brussels, her wrath broke forth. She still, in spite of her threats, held the office of groom of the stole, which brought her into frequent, unfortunate collision with the Queen. The efforts to please, which the haughty Duchess now condescended to make, were constantly counteracted by her rival. The following letter is truly characteristic. Pique, pride, effrontery, are curiously manifested in its expression.[144]
“I cannot help sending your Majesty this letter, to show how exactly Lord Marlborough agrees with me in my opinion, that he has now no interest with you; though, when I said so in the church on Thursday,[145]you were pleased to say it was untrue: and yet I think that he will be surprised to hear that, when I had taken so much pains to put your jewels in a way that I thought you would like, Mrs. Masham could make you refuse to wear them, in so unkind a manner; because that was a power she had not thought fit to exercise before. I will make no reflection upon it; only that I must needs observe that your Majesty chose a very wrong day to mortify me,when you were just going to return thanks for a victory obtained by Lord Marlborough.”
The Queen thought proper to answer this epistle in the following words. The contest had now arrived at its climax.
“Sunday.
“Sunday.
“Sunday.
“Sunday.
“After the commands you gave me on the thanksgiving-day of not answering you, I should not have troubled you with these lines, but to return the Duke of Marlborough’s letter safe into your hands, and for the same reason do not say anything to that, nor to yours enclosed with it.”
It was impossible for the Duchess, on receiving so extraordinary a letter, to remain silent; and, in truth, she was one of those whom rebuke could not abash, nor argument silence, nor invective intimidate. She again took up the pen, not, as she assured her Majesty, with any view of answering the Queen’s letter, but of explaining what she had said at church. This explanation, like most others, tended to make the matter considerably worse. “I desired you,” says the Duchess, continuing to address the Queen in the character of an equal, “I desired you not to answer me there, for fear of being overheard; and this you interpret as if I had desired you not to answerme at all, which was far from my intention. For the whole end of my writing to you so often, was to get your answer to several things in which we differed, that if I was in the wrong you might convince me of it, and I should very readily have owned my mistakes.”
The Duchess proceeds to say, that she hopes that, some time or other, the Queen may find time to reflect upon the unanswerable arguments which the Duchess had laid before her, and that her Majesty would also occasionally listen to the advice of my Lord Marlborough, and then she would never more be troubled with disagreeable letters from her. “The wordcommand,” adds the Duchess, “which you use at the beginning of your letter, is very unfitly supposed to come from me. For though I have always writ to you as a friend, and lived with you as such for so many years, with all the truth, and honesty, and zeal for your service that was possible, yet I shall never forget that I am your subject, nor cease to be a faithful one.”[146]
This correspondence appears to have had the effect only of widening the breach. It is one peculiarity of our sex, or, at any rate, of the least reflective portion, that the affections once alienated, cannot, by reasoning, by persuasion, even by concession, be restored to their accustomed channel. AtAnne’s side there stood a whisperer ever ready to pour into the royal ear the antidote to all the medicine of too wholesome truth, which the Duchess, in her hardihood, dared to administer. It was indeed her boast, that when, without prejudice or passion, she knew the Queen to be wrong, she should think herself wanting in her duty not to tell her Majesty her opinion, “and the rather, because no one else dares to speak out upon so ungrateful a subject.”
The poor Queen went on, therefore, much in the same state of indecision and mystery as that in which her life had been passed for years; closeted every night with Mrs. Masham and Harley, and watched at every avenue by the Duchess and her emissaries. When the ministry suspected that the Queen was under the influence of the discarded but dreaded Harley, the Duchess despatched a letter full of remonstrances and reproaches, written with her “usual plainness and zeal.” But finding that by this mode she could make no impression upon her Majesty, the Duchess sought an interview, and begged to know what her crime was that had produced so great an alteration in the Queen. This inquiry drew from Anne a charge of inveteracy and of persecution against “poor Masham,” and a declaration that the Queen would henceforth treatthe Duchess as it became her to treat the Duke of Marlborough’s wife, and the groom of the stole; but she forbore specifying any distinct charge against the discarded favourite.
On receiving this letter, the Duchess began a work which it seems she had some time contemplated; namely, a careful review of all the faithful services which, for about twenty-six years, she had performed towards the Queen; of the favour with which she had been honoured, and of the use which she had made of that favour; and of the manner in which she had now lost it, by means of one whom she had raised out of the dust.[147]To savour her apology with some sacred associations, the Duchess prefixed to it the directions given by the author of “The Whole Duty of Man,” with regard to friendship; and the directions in the Common Prayer before the Communion with regard to reconciliation, together with the rules laid down by Bishop Taylor on the same head; and in offering this memorial, the subdued, but not humiliated Duchess, gave her word to her Majesty, that if, after reading these compilations, she would please to answer in two words that she was still of her former opinion, she, the Duchess, would never more trouble her on that head as long as she lived, but would perform her offices withrespect and decorum, remember always that Anne was her mistress and her Queen, and resolve to pay her the respect due from a faithful subject to a Queen.
This despatch was sent from St. Albans, and the Queen promised that she would read and answer it. But ten days afterwards the paper was unread, and the only consolation which the Duchess received for this negligence was a kind look and a gracious smile from her Majesty, as she passed to receive the communion; “but the smile and the look,” adds the Duchess, “were, I had reason afterwards to think, given to Bishop Taylor and the Common Prayer Book, and not to me.”
Meantime the Queen, after more than twenty-five years of matrimony, became a widow. Prince George, in October, sank under the effects of a long-continued asthma, which, during the last few years of his life, had kept him hovering on the brink of the grave. The Queen, who had been throughout the whole of her married life a pattern of domestic affection, had never, during the last trying years of his life, left the Prince either night or day. She attended him with assiduity, and proffered to her sick consort those patient services which are generally supposed only to be the meed of females in the humbler walks of life.
The Prince merited her affection; his manners were amiable, and his conduct respectable; and he had not embarrassed the Queen by taking a conspicuous share in politics. The “Monsieur est il possible” of King James was neither deficient in sense nor in information; but his powers of expression were inferior to his capacity for gaining knowledge.[148]
The Queen, unsentimental though well intentioned, plunged deeper and deeper into petty political intrigues, after the respectable occupation of tending her invalid husband was at an end. Her grief was as edifying as her conjugal affection had been exemplary; yet the parliament, not thinking it too late for such addresses, petitioned her Majesty that she would not allow her grief for the Prince’s death to prevent her from contemplating a second marriage. But Anne continued to be, or, as some said, to seem inconsolable. She avoided the light of day, and could not endure the conversation of her dearest friends, but seemed, as in affliction it is natural so to do, to revert to those companions of her earlier years who had witnessed the felicity of her married life.
Several weeks had elapsed since the Queen and the Duchess had met, when the latter wasapprised that the existence of the Prince of Denmark was drawing to a close. The Duchess, warm in her temper, warm in her feelings, wrote on this occasion to her royal mistress to express her determination to pay her duty, in inquiring after her Majesty’s health, and to declare that she could not hear of so great a misfortune and affliction as the condition in which the Prince was, without offering her services, if acceptable to her Majesty.
This letter was scarcely penned, before further tidings of the Prince’s danger arrived; and the Duchess, setting off for Kensington, carried her letter with her, and sent it to the Queen, with a message that she waited her Majesty’s commands. Anne could scarcely be much flattered by a tribute of respect, which was prefaced by the Duchess with these offensive words:—“Though, the last time I had the honour to wait upon your Majesty, your usage of me was such as was scarce possible for me to imagine, or for any one to believe,” &c. &c. She received her haughty subject “coolly, and as a stranger.” The Duchess, however, touched by her royal mistress’s impending calamity, persevered. It was her lot, after witnessing the nuptials of the Queen with the Prince of Denmark, and after participating for years in their sober privacy, to be present at hislast moments. It was her office to lead the Queen from the chamber of death into her closet, where, kneeling down, the Duchess endeavoured affectionately to console the widowed sovereign, remaining for some time before her in that posture of humiliation.
The Queen’s conduct in this peculiar situation, and at this critical moment, was singularly characteristic of her feeble, vacillating character, on which no strong impression could be made. Whilst the Duchess knelt before her, imploring her Majesty not to cherish sorrow, by remaining where the remembrance of the recent solemn scene would haunt her, but to retire to St. James’s; whilst the arrogant but warm-hearted Duchess forgot all past grievances in her attempts to solace a mistress from whom she had received many favours; the poor Queen’s fluttered spirits were affrighted by the recollection of Mrs. Masham, and of the party who would resent this long and private interview. She yielded, however, to the Duchess’s remonstrances, and promised to accompany her to St. James’s; and, placing her watch in the Duchess’s hand, bade her retire until the finger of that monitor had reached a certain point, and to send Mrs. Masham in the interval. A crowd was collected before the antechamber, and the Duchess, emergingfrom the royal closet, determined, though the game was lost, at least not to betray her defeat. She behaved on this occasion with the address, and dignity, and self command, which a knowledge of her own well-meant intentions, and her long experience in the world, imparted. She ordered her own coach to be prepared for the reception of the Queen, and desired the assembled courtiers to retire, whilst her Majesty, amidst her complicated feelings of grief and embarrassment, should pass through the gallery. The Queen, moved like a puppet to the last by the spirited and intellectual woman who was formed to command, came forth, leaning on the arm of the Duchess. “Your Majesty,” said the lofty Sarah, “must excuse my not delivering your message to Mrs. Masham; your Majesty can send for her at St. James’s, how and when you please.”
The Queen, apparently insensible to the spirit of this reply, or preoccupied by fears as to what “poor Masham” would think, moved along the gallery, whispering some commission to Mrs. Hill, the sister of Mrs. Masham, as she went along, and casting upon Mrs. Masham, who appeared in the gallery with Dr. Arbuthnot, a look of kindness, though without speaking. She was sufficiently composed, on entering the carriage, to intimate to Godolphin that she wished theroyal vaults at Westminster to be inspected previous to the interment of the Prince, in order to ascertain whether there would be room for her body also,—if not, to choose another place of interment; and in these topics the drive from Kensington to St. James’s was occupied. It was not thought by the Queen incompatible with the deep feeling which she professed, to busy herself with those minutiæ to which minds of a common stamp affix so much importance, connected with the disposition of the dead.—The Duchess has commented upon the Queen’s particularities, with the freedom natural to her. After a conference with Lord Godolphin at St. James’s, during which the Duchess retired, the Queen, to use her own expression, “scratched twice at dear Mrs. Freeman’s door,” in hopes of finding the Lord Treasurer within the Duchess’s apartments, in order to bid him, when he sent his orders to Kensington, order a great number of yeomen of the guard to be in attendance to carry the “dear Prince’s body” down the great stairs, which were very steep and slippery, so that it might “not be let fall.”
The transient reconciliation which thus took place between the Queen and the Duchess was not of long duration. Mrs. Masham, indeed,retired that same evening from the supper-room, where the Duchess appeared to attend upon her Majesty; and Anne cautiously forbore to mention “poor Masham’s” hateful name. But when in private, Anne was almost continually attended by the insidious Abigail, and the Duchess rarely entered the royal presence without finding her rival there, or, what was worse, retiring furtively at her approach; and she soon ascertained that the very closet where she had knelt in sorrow and compassion before her sovereign—where she had striven to act the part of consolation—was the scene of Mrs. Masham’s influence. It seemed, indeed, strange that Anne should select for her daily sitting-room the closet which her deceased consort had used as his place of retirement and prayer, and the prying Duchess soon penetrated behind the screen of widowed proprieties. She has laid bare the occupations of the royal mourner, whilst closeted for many hours of the day in Prince George’s apartments. The Duchess, indeed, suspected that some peculiar motive could alone induce Anne to disregard the mournful associations with that retreat; and resolving to ascertain the cause, she had the mortification to discover the true reason of Anne’s choice: this was, that the “back-stairs belonging to itcame from Mrs. Masham’s lodgings, who, by that means, could bring to her whom she pleased.”[149]