CHAPTER VIII.
Trial of Dr. Sacheverell—His solemn protestation of innocence—Scene behind the curtain where the Queen sat—Fresh offence given by the Duchess to Anne.—1709–1710.
The year 1709, which witnessed the almost final alienation of the Queen from her early favourite, was disgraced by the strange spectacle of Dr. Henry Sacheverell’s trial, his punishment, and triumph.
A celebrated female historian has well observed, that it is difficult to say “which is most worthy of ridicule,—the ministry, in arming all the powers of government in their attack upon an obscure individual, or the public, in supporting a culprit whose doctrine was more odious than his insolence, and his principles yet more contemptible than his parts.”[150]
This “trumpeter of sedition,” as Cunningham calls him, or, according to the ladies and other zealous partisans of his day, this persecuted saint, was a preacher of little merit, but of great pretensions; who, in a discourse delivered on the fifth of November, 1709, at St. Paul’s cathedral, attacked Queen Elizabeth, decried the authors of the Revolution, abused the ministers of the reigning sovereign, and upheld the doctrines of divine right, in one “incoherent jumble,” at once passionate, ill constructed, and, one would have supposed, innocuous.
The subsequent trial and conviction of this agitator of the unsettled times in which he lived, have been copiously detailed in history. There has doubtless been many a more solemn, but there assuredly never was a more singular scene than that which was exhibited in Westminster Hall on the day of his trial. A court was prepared exactly in the form of a tribunal in the House of Lords, and seats were placed for the peers. The Queen herself attended, as a private individual, in a box placed near the throne, with a curtain drawn between her and the assembly. The hero of the piece, Dr. Sacheverell, came forward to the bar with Dr. Atterbury and Dr. Smalridge, two Tory prelates, and made his obeisance to the court,with all the effrontery and indifference which marked his whole career.
The court was thronged without by an infuriated mob, ready to wreak, in deeds of vengeance, the excitement which they called religious zeal, on the opposing party, should Sacheverell suffer the penalties of the misdemeanors with which he was charged. Within, the enclosure of the stately pile was lined with ladies of rank, who dreaded, says Cunningham, lest the “Observer” or the “Tatler” should satirise their dress and conduct; yet none who could enter, absented themselves from a scene so full of interest and diversion. The known inclination of the Queen to favour the doctrines advanced by Sacheverell, however preposterous and derogatory to her own right, induced many fair politicians, who went to see and to be seen, to harass their minds with discussions upon those knotty points, the fallaciousness of which it is far better to leave to practical experience to prove, than to seek to expose by arguments which only inflame the passions.
All listened with interest to the numerous charges, amongst which was the grave accusation of having plainly called the Lord High Treasurer of this kingdom “Volpone;” but, after the elaborateand learned speeches made in this famous cause by the managers of the House of Commons; when the lawyers and judges had been duly listened to,—after the doctor’s own counsel had spoken, he himself replied to the charges in an able oration, stated not to be his own. After expatiating upon the dignity of the holy order to which he belonged, he called solemnly upon the Searcher of hearts to witness that he entertained no seditious designs, and was wholly innocent of the crimes alleged against him. When he had concluded, a general sentiment of indignation pervaded the assembly. The Countess of Sunderland, pious, sincere, young in the ways of a corrupt court, was so affected by this appeal to God, that she could not help shedding tears at what she believed to be falsehood and blasphemy.[151]
Sacheverell, however, returned in triumph to his lodgings in the Temple; and his sentence, which was suspension from preaching for three years, though not so severe as had been contemplated, was followed by riots, both in London and in the country, similar in spirit and outrage to the famous disturbances which Lord George Gordon, a fanatic less reprehensible, and of less political importance, contrived many years afterwards to excite.
But the Whigs, unhappily, had failed in this trial of their power, and had foolishly betrayed their weakness. The Duke of Marlborough, who had recommended the prosecution of Sacheverell, “lest he should preach him and his party out of the kingdom,” must have repented, when it was too late, the adoption of counsels which hastened on the crisis that approached. Happily for the common sense of the nation, Sacheverell, intoxicated by the applause of the multitude, soon showed his motives and character in their true light. He paraded the country, intermeddling with the affairs of others, and assuming a sort of spiritual authority wherever he went. He performed a tour to congratulate his party on his and their common safety; and, as is usual, alas for womankind! his proselytes, his confidantes, the compassionate consolers for the contumacy which he received from men worthy of the name, were all misled, devoted, prejudiced women.
The Duke of Argyll, who had opposed his sentence, hearing that Sacheverell was going to call upon him to return him thanks, refused to receive him or his acknowledgments. “Tell him,” said the Duke, “that what I did in parliament was not done for his sake.”[152]
The Duchess of Marlborough, constrained bythe duties of her office to wait upon the Queen, was present during the whole of the trial of Sacheverell; and whilst the assembled throng in court were intent upon the scene below the bar, small intrigues for favour and secret heart-burnings were carried on behind that curtain, screened by which, her Majesty sat to hear the singular proceedings in court. The Duchess has given the following account of the new causes of offence which she was so unfortunate as to give to her Majesty.[153]
“This was at Dr. Sacheverell’s trial, where I waited upon the Queen the first time she went thither, and having stood above two hours, said to the vice-chamberlain, that when the Queen went to any place incognito (as she came to the trial, and only looked from behind a curtain) it was always the custom for the ladies to sit down before her; but her Majesty had forgot to speak to us now; and that since the trial was like tocontinue very long every day, I wished he would put the Queen in mind of it: to which he replied very naturally, ‘Why, madam, should you not speak to the Queen yourself, who are always in waiting?’
“This I knew was right, and therefore I went up to the Queen, and stooping down to her as she was sitting, to whisper to her, said, ‘I believed her Majesty had forgot to order us to sit, as was customary in such cases.’ Upon this, she looked indeed as if she had forgot, and was sorry for it, and answered in a very kind easy way, ‘By all means, pray sit;’ and, before I could go a step from her chair, she called to Mr. Mordaunt; the page of honour, to bring stools, and desire the ladies to sit down, which accordingly we did—Lady Scarborough, Lady Burlington, and myself. But as I was to sit nearest to the Queen, I took care to place myself at a good distance from her, though it was usual in such cases to sit close to her, and sometimes at the basset table, where she does not appear incognito; but, in a place of ceremony, the company has sat so near her as scarce to leave her room to put her hand to her pocket. Besides this, I used a further caution, of showing her all the respect I could in this matter, by drawing a curtain behind me in such a manner, betwixt her and me, as to appear to beas it were in a different room from her Majesty. But my Lady Hyde,[154]who stood behind the Queen when I went to speak to her, (and who I observed, with an air of boldness more than good breeding, came up then nearer to hear what I said,) continued to stand still in the same manner, and never came to sit with the rest of us that day, which I then took for nothing else but the making show of more than ordinary favour with the Queen.
“The next day the Duchess of Somerset came to the trial, and before I sat down I turned to her, having always used to show her a great deal of respect,[155]and asked her if her grace would notbe pleased to sit; at which she gave a sort of start back, with the appearance of being surprised, as if she thought I had asked a very strange thing, and refused sitting. Upon this I said it was always the custom to sit before the Queen in such cases, and that her Majesty had ordered us to do so the day before, but that her refusing it now looked as if she thought we had done something that was not proper. To which she only answered, that she did not care to sit; and then she went and stood behind the Queen, as Lady Hyde had done the day before, which I took no farther notice of then, but sat down with my Lady Burlington as we did before. But when I came to reflect upon what these two ladies had done, I plainly perceived that, in the Duchess of Somerset especially, this conduct could not be thought to be the effect of humility, but that it must be a stratagem that they had formed in their cabal, to flatter the Queen by paying her more respect, and to make some public noise of this matter that might be to my disadvantage, or disagreeable to me.
“And this I was still the more confirmed in, because it had been known before that the Duchess of Somerset, who was there with her lord, was to act a cunning part between the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. TheWhigs and Tories did not intend to come to the trial.
“As, therefore, it was my business to keep all things as quiet as possible till the campaign was over, and preserve myself in the mean while, if I could, from any public affront, I resolved to do what I could to disappoint these ladies in their little design; and in order to this, I waited upon the Queen the next morning, before she went to the trial, and told her that I had observed, the day before, that the Duchess of Somerset had refused to sit at the trial, which I did not know the meaning of, since her Majesty was pleased to order it, and it was nothing more than what was agreeable to the constant practice of the court in all such cases; but however, if it would be in any respects more pleasing to her Majesty that we should stand for the future, I begged she would let me know her mind about it, because I should be very sorry to do anything that could give her the least dissatisfaction. To this she answered, with more peevishness than was natural to her, in these words: ‘If I had not liked you should sit, why should I have ordered it?’
“This plainly showed that the cabal had been blowing her up, but that she could not, however, contradict her own order. What she had now said was still a further confirmation of it, andmade it more difficult for the cabal to proceed any farther in this matter, and therefore the next day the Duchess of Ormond and Lady Fretchwell came to the trial, and, to my great surprise, sat down amongst the rest of us. And thus this matter ended; only that the Duchess of Somerset used some little arts afterwards, which are not worth mentioning, to sweeten me again, and cover her design, which I suppose now she was ashamed of.”[156]
Whilst proceedings were pending against Sacheverell, the Queen’s design, to disgust her ministers and to induce them to resign, became apparent. Notwithstanding the open warfare between “poor Masham” and the Duchess, Anne, upon a vacancy occurring, wrote to the Duke of Marlborough to obtain the colonelcy of a regiment for Mr. Hill, the brother of that Abigail who had undermined all the Duke’s greatness, and put to flight the small portion of the Duchess’s forbearance.
Of this scion of the notable family to whom he belonged, the Duchess has given an account in her Vindication. Jack Hill, as she calls him, was a younger brother of Mrs. Masham, and, like the rest of the family, was provided for by the Duchess.The occupations which these dependent relations held were suitable to their lowly conditions, and, as the Duchess seemed to think, to the inferiority of their condition to her own. It has been already specified how she had provided for them. The younger sister had, as we have seen, been appointed by the Duke of Marlborough laundress to the Duke of Gloucester, and, when that prince died, had received a pension of two hundred a year out of the privy purse, coming directly from the Duchess’s hands. The elder brother obtained, through the Duke’s interest, a place in the Custom-house; and upon security being required, previously to his being promoted to a more responsible situation, the Duchess persuaded a relation of the Duke’s to be guarantee for that sum.
Thus had she laboured successfully to provide for these indigent relations, who afterwards proved briers in her path of life. Mrs. Masham, the elder sister, whom she had treated as her sister, and to whom she had given an asylum in her house, availed herself of opportunities to supplant her. It was the fortune of “honest Jack Hill,” as his boon companions called him, to bring a second humiliation upon the Duke his patron.
Years had passed away since these favourshad been shown to Mr. Hill, and he was now a partisan of those who were foes to his benefactors, having long since forgotten by whose means he was raised from abject poverty to respectability.
It was concerning the promotion of Mr. Hill to the command of a regiment, vacant by the death of the Earl of Essex, that the first open rupture between the Queen and the Duke of Marlborough occurred. The plot which Harley and the Masham party had woven, appeared now, according to the opinions of the Duchess, in undisguised colours. Already had they induced the Queen to prefer bishops who were not acceptable to the ministry; and it was now their successful aim to lead her Majesty into another snare. They therefore persuaded her to make military appointments without the consent of her general; and the choice of Mr. Hill for the purpose of mortifying the Duke was, it must be allowed, eminently successful, if they wished to lower the authority of that great commander. A double design was thus intended. If the Duke permitted his relative’s promotion, the whole army would feel the injustice done to their profession; if he resisted it, it would lend new force to the arguments by which the weak and credulous mind of Anne was perpetually assailed,namely, that she was but a cipher in the hands of the Marlborough family; and thus, the Duke and his wife were by the same dexterous arrangement equally injured, or at any rate insulted.
The wary but high-minded Duke resented this measure loftily and stoutly. He waited at first on her Majesty, and endeavoured respectfully to change her resolution, by representing the injustice which the promotion of a young and untried officer would be deemed by the army. He argued earnestly upon the encouragement which would be given to the party adverse to the ministry, by promoting Mrs. Masham’s brother. But he could extract from the sullen Queen no kind expression, and only the cautious reply, “That the Duke would do well to consult with his friends.”[157]Godolphin, at this time writhing under the agonies of a mortal disorder, which his cares and vexations must have aggravated, went also to the Queen, and sought by persuasion to change her obstinate, Stuart-like determination; but without success.
Marlborough, indignant, left London, on the fifteenth of January, on a council day. Her Majesty took no notice of his absence; but the world spoke resentfully of an injustice done to their great and once popular general; and theHouse of Commons testified by some votes their sense of the impropriety of Anne’s conduct. Eventually she was obliged to yield; for her new counsellors perceived that they had gone too far, and her Majesty was obliged to write word to the Duke that he might dispose of the regiment as he thought fit, and also to order his return to court, and to “assure him that he had no ground for suspicion of change in her Majesty’s good intentions.”[158]
This seeming disposition to relent in favour of the Marlborough family was, however, the effect of a deep policy. Anne, naturally obstinate, and close in her expressions, had been taught lessons of duplicity, and rendered more than ever the tool of a faction. Mrs. Masham’s influence was, indeed, becoming too notorious to be endured, not only by the Whigs, but by men of influence and popularity, who were not especially attached to either party. The sway of the lofty and arbitrary Duchess had been, for many reasons, endured with a degree of patience which the world could not extend to her rival. The great associations with the name of Churchill, the extensive patronage which the Duke and his Duchess possessed, the intermarriages of their beautiful and admireddaughters into families of influence; and perhaps, not least of all, the habit into which society had grown of considering the rule of the Marlborough family as indestructible, had lessened the disgust which men evince towards female domination, and had reconciled the public mind to that of which all could complain, but of which none could anticipate the decline. Besides, there was something imposing in the ascendency which the high-bred and intellectual Duchess haughtily assumed—something almost magnificent in the unfair, yet lofty habit of rule which suited her so well, and to which she seemed born. The Duke, by common acclamation the first of subjects, seemed to merit such a companion, such an ornament of his greatness, a star always conspicuous in its steady brilliancy on the political horizon.
But when the artful, humble, prudent Mrs. Masham crept into royal favour, and planted herself behind that throne near which the Duchess had proudly stood, the odious features of intrigue appeared despicable in comparison with the fearless demeanour, and open defiance of her enemies, which the Duchess had exhibited. Anne, that automaton moved successively by secret springs of different construction and power, seemed to the world to have degeneratedin her greatness when she fell into the meaner hands of the lowliest of her waiting women, one who had been a “rocker” in the royal household, scarcely of gentle blood, and whose ready subserviency spoke so plainly of her early initiation into those prying, petty ways which a long apprenticeship in the services, still menial, of the royal bedchamber, was likely to produce.
It was during the heat of Sacheverell’s business, and before that notable comedy had been brought to a close, that several of the privy counsellors, disgusted by Mrs. Masham’s influence, consulted privately as to the expediency of moving an address for her dismissal from the royal confidence.[159]These conferences, which were held late at night, were kept profoundly secret. They were attended by Lords Somers, Wharton, Halifax, and Sunderland, the Chancellor Cowper, and the Lord Treasurer. Halifax and Wharton, the most violent of the party, with all duty to the Queen, are said to have insisted modestly, that evil counsellors of one sex might be as well removed from the royal councils as those of another, by the advice of parliament. Somers, Godolphin, and Cowper were of a different opinion, and judged that such a remonstrance could not be made, consistently with thelaws of the land. Sunderland was violent and impatient, and bitterly inveighed against the moderation of Somers, formerly his oracle, but now no longer able to control the rash spirit of his once enthusiastic votary. Marlborough, also, resisted the impetuosity of his son-in-law; and whilst he had proved himself capable of frustrating, by manly determination, the arch-enemy’s plans, resolved, with Somers, to wait until a favourable opportunity of annihilating her influence should occur; not, unconstitutionally, to force the Queen to abandon her favourite, as Sunderland required. Even in his chariot, when setting off for Holland, Marlborough is reported to have refused the importunities of his son-in-law.[160]
The Queen, meantime, fearing, lest some motion relative to Mrs. Masham should be made in parliament, rallied her friends around her, and occupied herself in sundry closetings, which included many avowed enemies to the Revolution, and gave, says the Duchess, “encouragement to the Jacobites, who were now observed running to court, with faces as full of business as if they were going to get the government into their hands.”
The Queen, elated with the notion infused intoher, that she was by these preferences gaining a victory over the Marlborough family, became more and more estranged from one to whom she had, in her ignorance of the meaning of the word, professed true friendship. It was reported, that as the peers returned out of her closet, she said to them severally, “If ever any recommendation of mine was of weight among you, as I know many of them have been, I hope this one may be specially regarded.”[161]It is difficult to say whether, at this time, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were most injured by their professed friends, or by avowed enemies. It is, perhaps, a problem which we may often vainly endeavour, in our progress through life, to solve, whether injudicious zeal or open enmity should most inspire us with apprehension. Enthusiasm in friendship is the parent of indiscretion; and what is termed devotion, in a human sense, has so often as its source a fund of selfishness, that we are apt to consider ourselves safer when encountering indifference, than when constrained to bend to the persuasions of ardent attachment.
Godolphin was, undoubtedly, amongst all the band of adherents, the only true friend whom the Duke and Duchess possessed. His attachment to them was genuine; their confidence inhim was entire. No variations of temper—no differences of opinion, seem to have disturbed that perfect accordance in sentiment, that respectful admiration on one side, and that reposing of every thought or wish on the other, which is the true elysium of affectionate hearts. Godolphin now experienced, in the decline of his fortunes, the mutability of all other friendships, the hollowness and selfishness of public men. It is easy to the interested to persuade themselves that they really contemn those who are not only no longer useful to them, but whose friendship might even be prejudicial. The Duke of Somerset, once the friend of Marlborough, as his Duchess had been of the Duchess—a man of great pride, and of considerable influence—now seceded from his once intimate associates, piqued by the Duke’s refusing a regiment to his son. The Duke of Argyll and the Earl of Rivers had already made a friendly compact to divide between them the offices which they expected soon to be vacant, on the disgrace or resignation of Marlborough. Other noblemen were drawn in by their necessities to desert to the opposite party. But the most remarkable defection from the Whig party was that of the Duke of Shrewsbury, the early friend of Lord Somers, but now the partisan of Harley, the associate of Swift, and the husband of a Roman Catholic wife, an Italianlady, who had followed him to Augsburg from Rome, and whose ardent passion for the accomplished Shrewsbury had induced him to make her Duchess of Shrewsbury.
The influence of these noblemen, joined to the enmity of others, amply sufficed, with the Queen’s aid, to level the fortunes of the Marlborough family. Before the trial of Sacheverell, it was even expected that the Duke would resign all the offices which he held, except the command of the army, which could not, without injury to the cause of the continental confederates, be surrendered to his political foes. But the Duke could not, without a struggle, relinquish the cherished honours which had been long the aim of his arduous life, to which he had looked as the reward of a career of exertion wholly unexampled. His feelings at this crisis may be readily conceived. Stung to the heart, sick of courts, of princes, and of politicians, it is said that he contemplated the resignation of all his civil offices, yet not without a compromise; but that he could not bring himself to give up that military command, which, says an historian, “no good man envied him.”[162]
Harley, meantime, was sedulously availing himself of an opportunity to work up his way to the ephemeral and precarious power which heafterwards enjoyed so little, and with so much personal risk. During the ferment which the trial of Sacheverell produced, he courted familiarity with persons of all persuasions. He fasted with the prime zealots of the different sects, or he invited the more convivial believer. He promised all that was asked of him; he dispersed hopes and expectations around him; yet kept his own designs secret, except to those whom he could confidently trust.
The Duchess, meantime, before resigning her offices, made one effort more to win back the Queen’s lost regard, or at any rate to efface from her Majesty’s mind every impression unfavourable to her. She had heard that Anne was given to understand that she spoke disrespectfully of her in company; and as she knew herself to be innocent of this charge, she waited on her Majesty on the third of April, 1710, and entreated to be favoured with a private interview. Three several hours were named by the Duchess, when she knew her Majesty to be usually alone; but the Queen appointed six o’clock in the afternoon, the time for prayers, when there was little probability of finding her Majesty at home for any private conversation. But even this appointment was broken, and a note was sent from the Queen, to command that whatever the Duchessshould have to say, should be put into writing, “and to beg her to gratify herself by going into the country as soon as she could.” The Duchess waited on the Queen, and used all the arguments she could to obtain a private hearing, adding, “that she was now going out of town for a long time, and should perhaps never have occasion to trouble her Majesty again as long as she lived.” The Queen still refused her request several times, “in a manner hard to be described,” but yielded, so far as to appoint the next day after dinner: yet, on the following morning, this appointment was broken also, and another note from her Majesty arrived, telling the Duchess that she was going to Kensington to dinner, and desiring her to put her thoughts in writing.
These weak pretexts either prove that Harley and Mrs. Masham still dreaded a revival of the long-asserted influence which they had successfully combated, and that Anne was the undignified tool of their manœuvres—or they betray the Queen’s dread of again encountering the earnest, and, doubtless, violent disputant, whose “commands” in the chapel royal were still fresh in the royal memory. Stouter nerves than those of the weak and harassed Queen may have been shaken by the lofty, and at times not very courteous demeanour of the Duchess.
Persevering in her attempt, the Duchess again wrote to the Queen, and again pressed an interview, assuring her Majesty that she would give her no uneasiness, but only clear herself from charges which had been wrongfully made against her; adding, that if the afternoon were not inconvenient, she would come every day and wait until her Majesty would allow her an interview. The particulars of this remarkable scene would lose much of the diversion which they must necessarily produce, if given in any other language than in that of the chief actor in the comedy.[163]
“Upon the sixth of April,” says the Duchess, “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 measures of behaviour if I were admitted. But at last he came out, and told me I might go in. As I was entering, the Queen said, she was just going to write to me; and when I began to speak, she interrupted me four or five times with these repeated words,‘whatever you have to say, you may put in writing.’ I said, her Majesty never did so hard a thing to any as to refuse to hear them speak, and assured her that I was not going to trouble her upon the subject which I knew to be so ungrateful to her, but that I could not possibly rest until I had cleared myself from some particular calumnies with which I had been loaded. I then went on to speak, (though the Queen turned away her face from me,) and to represent my hard case; that there were those about her Majesty who had made her believe that I had said things about her, which I was no more capable of saying than of killing my own children; that I seldom named her Majesty in company, and never without respect, and the like. The Queen said,without doubt there were many lies told. I then begged, in order to make this trouble the shorter, and my own innocence the plainer, that I might know the particulars of which I had been accused; because if I were made to appear guilty, and if I were innocent, this method only could clear me. The Queen replied thatshe would give me no answer, laying hold on a word in my letter, that what I had to say in my own vindicationwould have no consequence in obliging her Majesty to answer, &c.; which surely did not at all imply that I did not desire to know the particular things laid to mycharge, without which it was impossible for me to clear myself. This I assured her Majesty was all I desired, andthat I did not ask the names of the authors or relators of those calumnies; saying all that I could reasonable to enforce my just request. But the Queen repeated again and again the words she had used, without ever receding; and it is probable that this conversation would never have been consented to, but that her Majesty had been carefully provided with those words, as a shield to defend her against every reason I could offer. I protested to her Majesty, that I had no design, in giving her this trouble, to solicit the return of her favour, but that my sole view was to clear myself, which was too just a design to be wholly disappointed by her Majesty. Upon this the Queen offered to go out of the room, I following her, begging leave to clear myself; and the Queen repeating over and over again, ‘You desired no answer, and shall have none.’ When she came to the door, I fell into great disorder; streams of tears flowed down against my will, and prevented my speaking for some time. At length I recovered myself, and appealed to the Queen, in the vehemence of my concern, whether I might not still have been happy in her Majesty’s favour, if I could have contradicted or dissembled my real opinion of men or things?whether I had ever, in the whole course of our long friendship, told her one lie, or played the hypocrite once? whether I had offended in anything, except in a very zealous pressing upon her that which I thought necessary for her service or security? I then said I was informed by a very reasonable and credible person about the court, that things were laid to my charge of which I was wholly incapable; that the person knew that such stories were perpetually told to her Majesty to incense her, and had begged of me to come and vindicate myself; the same person had thought me of late guilty of some omissions towards her Majesty, being entirely ignorant how uneasy to her my frequent attendance must be, after what had happened between us. I explained some things which I had heard her Majesty had taken amiss of me; and then with a fresh flood of tears, and a concern sufficient to move compassion, even where all love was absent, I begged to know what other particulars she had heard of me, that I might not be denied all power of justifying myself. But still the only return was, ‘You desired no answer, and you shall have none.’ I then begged to know if her Majesty would tell me some other time? ‘You desired no answer, and you shall have none.’ I then appealed to her Majesty again, if she did not herself knowthat I had often despised interest, in comparison of serving her faithfully and doing right? and whether she did not know me to be of a temper incapable of disowning anything which I knew to be true? ‘You desired no answer, and you shall have none.’ This usage was severe, and these words so often repeated were so shocking, (being an utter denial of common justice to me, who had been a most faithful servant, and now asked nothing more,) that I could not conquer myself, but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke to the Queen in my life, and yet, what such an occasion and such circumstances might well excuse, if not justify: and that was, that I was confident her Majesty would suffer for such an instance of inhumanity. The Queen answered, ‘That will be to myself.’”[164]
“Thus,” observes the Duchess, “ended this remarkable conversation, the last that I ever had with her Majesty. I shall make no comment on it. Yet,” she adds, with her inherent magnanimity, “the Queen always meant well, however much soever she may be blinded or misguided.” And she adds to this temperate observation a passage from a letter of her husband’s, the Duke, written about eight months before, in which she says,“There is something so pertinent to the present occasion, that I cannot forbear transcribing the passage.”[165]
“It has always been my observation in disputes, especially in that of kindness and friendship, that all reproaches, though ever so just, serve to no end but making the breach wider. I cannot help being of opinion that, however insignificant we may be, there is a Power above that puts a period to our happiness or unhappiness. If anybody had told me eight years ago, that after such great success, and after you had been a faithful servant for twenty-seven years, that even in the Queen’s lifetime we should be obliged to seek happiness in a retired life, I could not have believed that possible.”