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