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

by Mrs. A. T. Thomson

INTRODUCTION.

Had the subject of this Memoir lived in the present day, copious accounts of the part which she performed in public life would have instantly been given to the world. Her domestic habits, and her merits and demerits of every description, would have been amply discussed. With her personal qualities we should, from a thousand channels, have been familiarised. Every peculiarity of her resolute and singular character would have been unveiled to the inspection of an inquisitive and amused public: nor would there have been wanting those who would have eagerly grasped at such an opportunity of commenting upon the politics, manners, and events of the day, as that which the biography of the Duchess of Marlborough affords.

It is, nevertheless, a fact, that ninety-six years have elapsed since the death of this celebrated woman, and, as yet, no complete account of her singular career, no memoirs of her as a private individual, of any length, or of any importance in other respects, have appeared; and it is remarkable, that both the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, two persons who acquired in their lifetime as great a share of celebrity as any British subjects ever enjoyed, incurred a risk of not being commemorated, after their decease, by any connected and adequate work.

The biography of John Duke of Marlborough, undertaken by three individuals, was completed only by Lediard, who had served under the hero of Blenheim, and who may be supposed to have felt a sort of personal interest in his illustrious career. The coldness of those to whom the task was deputed, recommended as it was to their zealous attention by the promise of a considerable sum to forward its completion, proves how feebly the public called for such a production. It was not until the Duchess was on her deathbed that she began to arrange the voluminous materials of the life of her husband. It was not until two years before her death that she published her own Vindication, which she entitled “An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court, to the year 1510.”

This book, published in 1742, after provoking several replies, fell into a partial oblivion. The animadversions and discussions to which it gave rise, and the contemptuous opinion pronounced upon it by Horace Walpole, whose fiat in the fashionable world was decisive, have therefore remained unanswered. Garbled as it was, it is yet a work replete with ability, carrying a conviction of the sincerity of its authoress, and unfolding the motives by which she was actuated, with force and clearness. The following extract will afford the reader an opportunity to form a judgment of the Vindication by the Preface to the Duchess’s narrative. The just and noble sentiments which she expresses upon the acquisition of a good name, and likewise upon posthumous reputation, must prepossess the mind strongly in favour of that which is to follow these sound and well-expressed motives of action.

“I have been often told that there is a sort of philosophy, by which people have brought themselves to be indifferent, not only whether they be at all remembered after death, but whether, in case their names should survive them, they be mentioned with praise or infamy. If this be really a point of wisdom, it is infinitely beyond my reach; and I shall own further, that it seems to me too refined and sublimed to be attained by anybody who has not first got rid of the prejudices of common sense and common honesty. I will not pretend to say that the passion for fame may not sometimes be excessive, and deservedly the subject of ridicule. But surely, my lord, there never was a single instance of a person of true honour, who was willing to be spoken of, either during life or after it, as a betrayer of his country or his friend; and I am persuaded that your lordship must have observed, that all those who, at this day, declare themselves wholly careless about what the world, or the circle of their acquaintance, will say of them when they are dead, are quite as unconcerned to deserve a good character while they live.

“For my own part, I frankly confess to you, and to the world, that whatever vanity or weakness the ambition of a good name may be thought, either by philosophers or by ministers of state, to imply, I have ever felt some degree of that ambition from the moment I could distinguish between good and evil. My chief aim (if I have any acquaintance with my own heart) has been, both in public and private life, to deserve approbation: but I have never been without an earnest desire to have it, too, both living and dead, from the wise and virtuous.

“My lord, this passion has led me to take more pains than you would easily imagine. It has sometimes carried me beyond the sphere to which the men have thought proper, and, perhaps, generally speaking, with good reason, to confine our sex. I have been a kind of author. About forty years ago, having understood that the wife of the late Bishop Burnet, a lady whom I greatly esteemed, had received unfavourable impressions of me, on account of the unhappy differences between Queen Mary and her sister, I wrote a faithful narrative of that affair purely to satisfy that one person.

“And when, after my dismissal from Queen Anne’s service, I perceived how industriously malice was employed in inventing calumnies to load me with, I drew up an account of my conduct in the several offices I had filled under her Majesty. This piece I intended to publish immediately, but was dissuaded from it by a person (of great eminence at this day) whom I thought my friend. I have since imagined that he had, by instinct, an aversion to accounting. It was said, as a reason for deferring the publication of my Account, that prejudice and passion were grown too violent and stormy for the voice of reason to be heard, but that those would, after some time, subside, and that the truth then brought to light would unavoidably prevail. I followed the advice with the less reluctance, as being conscious of the power of an easy vindication, whenever my patience should be pushed to extremity.

“After this I set myself another task, to which I was partly urged by the injustice, and I may say ingratitude, of the Whigs. It was to give an account of my conduct with regard to parties, and of the successful artifice of Mr. Harley and Mrs. Masham, in taking advantage of the Queen’s passion for what she called the church, to undermine me in her affections. In this undertaking I had the assistance of a friend to whom I furnished materials. Some parts of the work were of my own composition, being such passages as nobody but myself could relate with exactness. This was not originally intended to be published until after my death.

“But, my lord, as I am now drawing near my end, and very soon there will remain nothing of me but a name, I am desirous, under the little capacity which age and infirmities have left me for other enjoyments, to have the satisfaction, before I die, of seeing that name (which, from the station I have held in the great world, must unavoidably survive me,) in possession of what was only designed it for a legacy. From this desire I have caused the several pieces above mentioned to be connected together, and thrown into the form into which I now venture to address them to your lordship. They may possibly be of some use towards correcting the folly and injustice of those who, in order to judge of the conduct of others, begin with forming to themselves characters of them, upon slight and idle reports, and then make such characters the rule by which they admit or reject whatever they afterwards hear concerning them. If any such happy effect as this might reasonably be hoped from the perusal of these papers, I should be far from making any apology for offering them to your lordship; I would not call it troubling your lordship with them. No, my lord, you will not esteem it a trouble to read them, even though you should judge them useless for the purpose I have mentioned. The friendship you favour me with will make you find a particular satisfaction in this justification of my injured character to the world. And I imagine that there is no honest mind, how much soever it may chance to be prejudiced against me, but will feel something of the same pleasure in being undeceived.

“The original letters, of which, either in whole or in part, the copies will be here found, I have directed to be preserved in my family as incontestable vouchers of the truth of what I am going to relate.”

The works which this “Account” very soon elicited, in reply to its able strictures upon persons and things, are enumerated in those chapters of this work which relate particularly to the scurrilous attacks from which the Duke and Duchess perpetually suffered. The latter, indeed, lived too short a period after her Account of her Conduct appeared, to refute the misstatements which were circulated in various pamphlets, and by other works of ephemeral celebrity. It was, perhaps, for the best, that an opportunity of acrimonious retaliation was not afforded to one who was apt, to use her own expression, to “tumble out her mind” in a manner not always either very decorous, nor very gratifying to her hearers. Those who recommended the Duchess to postpone her work were doubtless well acquainted with her peculiarities, and dreaded the violence of that explosion which must ensue. It was, probably, the wish of her friends and relations, as it is said to have been their expectation, that the Vindication should be posthumous.

The Duchess of Marlborough, in addition to her own powerful efforts, had the good fortune also to be defended by the pen of the celebrated Henry Fielding. It must, however, be acknowledged, that possibly the defence of the great novelist was not disinterested. Fielding wrote, as it is well known, many fugitive political tracts, for which he was accused of venality, and it was generally understood that they were remunerated by the party whom he espoused. It is extremely probable that a man disposed to make his talents profitable may not have been ashamed to vindicate the conduct of the wealthy and powerful Duchess, for a consideration; and there were circumstances in the family of Fielding which confirm the supposition. His father, Edward Fielding, served under the Duke of Marlborough; and his sister Sarah, the accomplished friend of Bishop Hoadly, had, through that medium, ample opportunities of introducing her brother to the Duchess. The work which Fielding published in 1742, was entitled “A Full Vindication of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, both with regard to the Account lately published by her Grace, and to her Character in general; against the base and malicious invectives contained in a late scurrilous pamphlet, entitled ‘Remarks on the Account,’ &c. In a Letter to the noble Author of those Remarks.”

The Duchess had been dead nearly two years, when an anonymous biography, concise and meagre, entitled “The Life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough,” was published in 1745. This small volume, for into one small volume in those days was the long life of the departed Duchess compressed, has every appearance of being written by a person amicable to the Duchess, although not in her confidence; no original letters are introduced, and the anecdotes of the Duchess, which are given, though favourable, are not so voluminous as those which one might glean in an hour, in the present day, from newspapers. The Life was, in all probability, according to the custom of the Duchess, ordered and paid for by her; perhaps the task was remunerated whilst she was alive; but, from the coldness with which it is written, it was probably completed after her death.

This little book has hitherto constituted the sole biography of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. Her own Vindication commences and ends with her court life, and its title-page distinctly states it to be “An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court to the year 1710. In a letter from herself to my Lord ——.” The name of this favoured nobleman, Earl Cholmondeley, has been supplied by Sir John Dalrymple in his manuscript notes on the work entitled the “Opinions of the Duchess of Marlborough.”

With such scanty materials for a foundation, those who are disposed to read the work of which this Introduction forms a portion, might naturally dread that many of its details must be gleaned from report, supported by questionable authority. Fortunately, however, the Duchess, among other precise and valuable habits, had a custom, not only of preserving every letter that she had received, but of describing its contents in her own peculiar terms on each epistle. During her residence abroad with the Duke, after their reverse of favour, she composed, also, an elaborate justification of herself, in the form of a letter to Mr. Hutchinson; a narrative which supplies ample materials for compiling that period of her life to which it relates. She likewise prepared other statements, which, with her letter to Mr. Hutchinson, she was persuaded, as she says, by her friends, not to publish, until a very long time after the events to which they related were almost forgotten by the world. These she framed afterwards into the Account of her Conduct, leaving out, as Horace Walpole declared upon report, and as subsequent investigations have manifested, the most pungent, and of course the most interesting, portion of her communications.

A great portion of the Duchess’s narrative having been delivered in conversation to Hooke, the historian whom she employed to make the book intelligible, the most characteristic portion of the Account, which was suppressed by the prudence of Hooke, is of course wholly lost. In the materials which the Duchess collected to form the volume, many minute particulars which were not deemed worthy of insertion in the Account, are, however, preserved; and it has been the good fortune of the authoress of these Memoirs to supply, in some instances, the garbled passages from the Duchess’s papers, and to restore to the Vindication the Duchess’s own language; those expressive and happy phrases which, as the reader will perceive, described her own sentiments, and portrayed the characters of others, in a manner that no dispassionate historian could imitate.

Of such papers as were deemed fit for publication by the Marlborough and Spencer families, Archdeacon Coxe, in compiling his elaborate “Life of John Duke of Marlborough,” had the free use, with the privilege of making copies. In the able work of this indefatigable historian he availed himself, in some measure, of most of these valuable materials; but in the progress of his heavy task, he never forgot that he was compiling a biography of the Duke, not the Duchess, of Marlborough; that he was dealing with the enterprises, the treaties, the opinions, and the projects, of men, and not with the intrigues, the foibles, the feelings, and the quarrels of women. He has, therefore, but rarely, and incidentally, referred to the Duchess of Marlborough: hastening from the subject, as if he indeed feared that her formidable spirit might be recalled by the expressions of disapproval which he cautiously bestows upon her, by the hints which he gives of her temper, and the conclusion to which he fails not to lead the reader, that she was the source of all the Duke’s disappointments and reverses. This determination on the part of the Archdeacon, and the manifest prejudice which he had imbibed against the Duchess of Marlborough, may readily be traced, by those who are induced to examine the manuscripts which were placed in the Museum by the executors of Dr. Coxe. These papers, which formed, in part, the materials for the Life of the great General, and also for the Duchess’s “Account,” are extremely interesting, and afford a satisfactory basis for a memoir. They contain, amongst other documents, many private letters, from which a selection has been already published, with great success, under the title of “Private Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough.” They comprise also, not only a mass of papers relating to the Duke’s continental and political affairs, but a discussion upon the reasons for the dismissal of Lord Godolphin, the mode in which it was effected by Queen Anne, some curious correspondence relative to the building of Blenheim, the letters of Lord Coningsby to the Duchess, and her grace’s long and reiterated remonstrances with the Treasury upon various topics, passages of which develope more of her character than long pages of description could unfold.

These documents arrived at the manuscript office of the British Museum in a state of the greatest confusion, rendering it almost surprising that they had been preserved at all. By the industry and judgment of Mr. Holmes, they have been carefully arranged, in a manner well adapted to lighten the task of examining manuscripts, always, be the writing ever so legible, more or less laborious. To them, many of the details, and much of the interest, which the second volume of this work may perhaps be found to possess, are to be attributed. An author may augur somewhat confidently of interesting and pleasing a reading public, when he can make his principal characters speak for themselves. Without the aid of these manuscripts, the Memoirs of the Duchess would not have had the character of originality to which, in some degree, it is presumed, they may aspire. It is curious that in many instances the Authoress has found it desirable to extract from these documents the very passages which Dr. Coxe had most carefully rejected. In the few memorials of the Duchess to which he has referred in his work, he has passed his pen across all lively observations, as irrelevant, all detail, however illustrative of her character, as unnecessary. Everything that could cheer the reader during the recital of vexatious politics, and after the enumeration of battles, was discarded, or discussed briefly.

Such are some of the sources from which information for these Memoirs has been gleaned. The published works which have been consulted, were selected without any reference to their political bias. The merits of those famous questions which agitated this country in the reigns of James the Second, William, and Anne, have been so fully and ably treated in the histories of Dalrymple, Macpherson, Cunningham, Somerville, Swift, and by many other writers, that it would be presumptuous, inadequate to the task as the Authoress considers herself, to revive such discussions. The aim of this work is chiefly to develope private history, connecting it, by general remarks, with the leading events of the day. From a sense of her own incompetency, the Authoress has, therefore, abstained as much as possible from political discussions; conceiving also, that to the generality of readers, it is a relief to escape from subjects which provoke controversy, and to retire into the private sphere of life, where the contemplation of character, and the investigation of motives, become chiefly interesting.

These Memoirs, although they aspire not to the dignity of history, must, however, necessarily embrace various themes, and comprise descriptions of public men. The Authoress has endeavoured, in all that she has had to perform, to regard justice and moderation as her guides; to draw her portraits from the most approved sources, discarding all considerations of party, until the outlines were traced, and the colours filled in. The ferment of political strife which impeded important business, and disgraced society in the reign of Anne, subsiding during the reign of her successor and his son, is revived amongst us; and the similarity of those great topics which then came before parliament, to those which have, of late years, engaged our legislators, cannot but be obvious to such persons as are conversant with our annals.

It is singular that a degree of uncertainty prevails both with respect to the birthplace of the Duchess of Marlborough, and with regard to the place of her grace’s decease. Neither is there any record in the possession of her descendants which supplies us with an account of her last moments. Regarding this important point, the Authoress applied both to his Grace the Duke of Marlborough and to Earl Spencer for information. To her inquiries, a prompt, but unsatisfactory reply was returned by the Duke of Marlborough; namely, that he had, in compliance with the Authoress’s request, examined such documents as he possessed, relating to the Duchess of Marlborough; but that the search had been fruitless, as far as any account whatsoever of her death was concerned. His Grace expressed also uncertainty respecting the spot where his celebrated ancestor breathed her last, but stated that he believed it to have been at Holywell. To Earl Spencer a similar application was made. His lordship answered, almost in the same terms as the Duke of Marlborough, that every paper relative to the Duchess which was fit for publication had been published, and that there was nothing in such as were not deemed proper for publication, relating in any way to her last hours.

It appears singular that there should have been no record preserved, among her numerous grandchildren and relatives, of the decline and death of one who had played so conspicuous a part in life as the Duchess of Marlborough. Perhaps this deficiency may be accounted for by the dissensions which divided the Duchess from her grandchildren, more particularly Charles Duke of Marlborough, her grandson, and from his Duchess, the daughter of her enemy, Lord Trevor. On the other hand, her favourite and heir, the honourable John Spencer, was one of those reckless beings who are not likely to dwell with much attention upon the deathbed of an aged relative. With respect to the belief entertained by the present Duke, though not, as his grace expresses it, with any certainty, that the Duchess died at Holywell, the Authoress has only to offer the opposing testimony of the work before alluded to, namely, the Life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, which states that she died at the Friary, St. James’s, Marlborough-house. There is much presumptive evidence in favour of this statement. Almost to her latest hour, as may be seen in the Coxe Manuscripts, the Duchess was in correspondence with Mr. Scrope, secretary to Mr. Pelham, who, in one of his letters, begs the honour of an interview, and names an evening. This occurred about four days before the Duchess’s demise. Now it is not probable that a man in an official station could undertake a journey to St. Albans in those days, when even the passengers by the mailcoach to Windsor rested at Staines, and dined upon the road. It seems, therefore, probable that her Grace’s earliest biographer was right, and that the worn-out frame and restless spirit of this wonderful woman ceased to exist in the great metropolis.

---

It is incumbent upon the Authoress to express to his Grace the present Duke of Marlborough her thanks for his prompt and polite replies to the inquiries with which she ventured to trouble his Grace. To the right honourable Earl Spencer she has to make similar acknowledgments. To several of her literary friends she also owes obligations.

It seems scarcely necessary, where anything curious is to be elicited, or any kind action to be performed, to mention the name of William Upcott. That name occurs many times in the course of this work. To Mr. Upcott the Authoress owes, besides several valuable suggestions, two interesting manuscript letters, now for the first time published in the Appendix of the second volume. The first of these completes the correspondence,—on the part of the Duchess, angry and characteristic,—between her Grace and the Duke of Newcastle; part of which is to be found in the “Private Correspondence.”

The second letter, likewise in the Duchess’s handwriting, a copy of which Mr. Upcott has allowed the Authoress to make from his valuable collection of autographs, relates to an action with which the Duchess was threatened in 1712. The Authoress is also indebted to Mr. Upcott for a fac-simile of the Duchess’s handwriting, for various anecdotes selected from the newspapers of the day, those perishable but important records; and for a perusal of several scarce tracts and books, of which ample use has been made in these volumes. She cannot, indeed, recal to mind the urbanity, liberality, and intelligence of that gentleman, without rejoicing that she has been favoured with his aid, in the performance of a task of no inconsiderable difficulty.

It is with the greatest pleasure and gratitude that the Authoress acknowledges her obligations to Mr. Holmes. Upon her application to him at the Museum, he entered with a kind and lively interest into her researches, and facilitated them in every way. To his aid, and to his intimate knowledge of the manuscripts, she owes that selection of materials which he pointed out as most remarkable.

The Authoress has expressed, in a note in the first volume of these Memoirs, her acknowledgments to the Rev. Henry Nicholson, Rector of St. Alban’s Abbey, for the important information which she derived from him, regarding the birthplace of the Duchess. Had it not been for the assistance of that gentleman, directed to the subject by the local inquiries of friends, she must have followed Dr. Coxe in erroneously stating that the Duchess was born at Sandridge.[^[1]]

The Authoress has great pleasure in acknowledging her obligations to another gentleman of great classical and literary attainments, the Rev. I. S. Brewer, to whom she owes so many useful suggestions, that she only regrets she had not the benefit of referring to his superior knowledge at an earlier period of the work than that at which it was first obtained.

The Authoress cannot close this introduction to the latest of four historical and biographical works, without thus publicly expressing her thanks to Mr. Keats, of the British Museum, for his indefatigable attentions to her; and for the assistance which she has on many occasions derived from his endeavours to aid her researches.

Hinde Street, London,

April 27, 1839.

CONTENTS
OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

CHAPTER I.
State of the country previous to the birth of Sarah Jennings—Her parentage—Account of her sister, La Belle Jennings—James the Second—Characters of Anne Duchess of York, and of her successor Maria d’Esté—The Princesses Mary and Anne—Origin and character of John Churchill—His family and circumstances	Page [1]
CHAPTER II.
Marriage of the Princess Mary—Marriage of Colonel Churchill and Miss Jennings—Characters of Anne and Mary—Friendship of Anne for Lady Churchill—Appointment of the latter to be Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess—Death of Charles the Second	[37]
CHAPTER III.
State of manners and morals—Of parties—Defence of Churchill—His share in the Revolution—Progress of that event	[71]
CHAPTER IV.
Change of manner in James—Character of Queen Mary—Her submission to her husband—Surrender of the crown to William—The indecision and reluctance of Anne—Her stipulation for a settlement—The part which Lady Churchill is said to have taken in the affair—She asks advice from Lady Russell and Archbishop Tillotson—The different qualities of these two advisers	[109]
CHAPTER V.
State of the British Court—Character of William	[136]
CHAPTER VI.
Character of Godolphin—His advice respecting the pension to the Duchess of Marlborough—Feuds of Mary and Anne—Deficiency of respect towards Prince George—Attachment of Marlborough to his wife—Her residence at Holywell House—Birth of her children—Cloud lowering over the fortunes of Lord Marlborough	[161]
CHAPTER VII.
State of Parties—Character of Lord Nottingham—of Bentinck—Influence of the Villiers family—Of Lady Orkney—Quarrel of the Queen and Princess—Marriage of Frances Jennings to the Duke of Tyrconnel—Suspicions of the Earl and Countess of Marlborough entertained at court—Disgrace of Lord Marlborough	[180]
CHAPTER VIII.
Release of Marlborough from prison—Confession of Young—Altercations between Anne and Mary—Illness of Anne—of Mary—Death of the latter—Reconciliation of King William to the Princess	[234]
CHAPTER IX.
Circumstances attending the Peace of Ryswick—Appointment of Marlborough to the office of preceptor to the Duke of Gloucester—Bishop Burnet—His appointment and character	[265]
CHAPTER X.
Death of the Duke of Gloucester—Its effects on the Succession—Illness and Deathbed of William—His last actions	[297]
CHAPTER XI.
Accession of Anne to the throne—That event considered by the Whigs as unpropitious—Coronation of the Queen—Dislike of Anne to the Whigs—Efforts of Lady Marlborough—Dismissal of Somers and Halifax	[314]
CHAPTER XII.
Dissatisfaction of the Countess of Marlborough—Formation of the new Cabinet—Her efforts to convert the Queen—Quarrels with Lord Rochester—Reports concerning the sale of offices—The Duchess’s sentiments on the proper mode of such appointments—Cabals within the court	[357]
CHAPTER XIII.
Dangers which beset Marlborough—Peculiar circumstances attending his return to England—Order in Council forbidding the sale of places—Lord Marlborough raised to a Dukedom—Sentiments of the Duchess on that occasion	[376]
CHAPTER XIV.
Death of the Marquis of Blandford—His character	[413]
CHAPTER XV.
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—producing not only flattery, but slander—Mrs. De la Rivière Manley—Dr. Drake—Prior—Congreve	[432]
Appendix	[455]

Fac-Simile of a Letter of the Duchess of Marlborough.
J. Netherdift Lithog.

MEMOIRS

OF THE

DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

CHAPTER I.
From 1660 to 1678.

State of the country previous to the birth of Sarah Jennings:—Her parentage—Account of her sister, La Belle Jennings—James the Second—Characters of Anne Duchess of York, and of her successor Maria d’Esté—The Princesses Mary and Anne—Origin and character of John Churchill—His family and circumstances.

The period which preceded the birth of the distinguished individual whose singular course is traced out in these Memoirs, was one of apparent luxury and security, but of actual and imminent peril to the national welfare. Charles the Second, in the decline of what could scarcely be deemed his days of prosperity, had not, indeed, experienced the bitterness of grief, which, in the fatal events that succeeded the rebellion of Monmouth, reduced the afflicted monarch to a state of depression which hurried him to an unhonoured grave. That painful scene, which in its effects upon the health and happiness of Charles recalled to remembrance the anguish of the royal mourner for Absalom, had not been as yet enacted: Monmouth was to appearance still loyal, at least, still trusted; and the ascendancy of the Roman Catholic persuasion over our Established worship was, at that time, problematical.

The opinions of reflective men, hushed by the wise determination not to anticipate the effect of probable events, which might accomplish all that they secretly desired, were resolving, nevertheless, into those famous schools of politics, which it were wrong to denominate factions, and which were afterwards divided into the three parties interwoven with all modern history, denominated Jacobites, Tories, and Whigs.

It is true it was not until some years afterwards that these celebrated appellations affixed to each combination certain characters, which have ever since, with little variation, retained the stamp which each originally bore; but the names only were wanting. Public opinion, in those worthy to assert its importance, had actually arranged itself under three different banners; although it required some signal manifestations on the part of government, to draw forth the forces marshalled under these, from the state of inaction in which for the present they remained.

Amongst the middle, or moderate party,—who, not contending, like the Jacobites, for the indefeasible and divine right inherent in one family under every circumstance, asserted generally the principles of arbitrary government,—a great portion of the gentry, landed proprietors, numbers of whom had fought and bled for the Royal cause, and yet, who were, from the same high spirit and loyal dispositions, equally ready to defend their country from oppression should occasion require, might at this period be enumerated. This respectable portion of the community were, for the greater part, of the Protestant faith; and, therefore, whilst dreading the notion of republicanism, they were attached to the reigning monarchs, and averse to the succession of James, or to the Yorkist Party, as it was called—a name which, by a singular coincidence, had already proved fatal to the peace of England.

Upon the virtue and strength of the Tories, as they might then be called,—though eventually they merged, as the abettors of the Revolution, into the bolder faction, with whom from necessity they were joined,—much of what has since been preserved to us, depended. Notwithstanding the practice which obtained among those who had sufficient influence, of sending their sons into the army, and their daughters to court, it is from the royalist families that many of those who promoted the Revolution, and who even suffered for their premature exertions in the cause of liberty, have sprung. Individuals who would have shuddered at the name of Revolution, whilst yet their restored monarch ruled the country,—with a facility which, when we consider his character and example, is incomprehensible,—became, in after times, impatient to distinguish themselves in a resistance to the unsettled mandates of a court, and in their eagerness to promote the dominion of just and fixed laws. Amongst this class was the family of Churchill; and, if we consider the Duchess as its chief representative, that of Jennings. The origin, principles, and circumstances of the latter family we are now about to discuss.

Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, the subject of this Memoir, a gentlewoman by birth, and a favourite of fortune, affords, in the narrative of her chequered life, an instance that integrity, unless accompanied by moderation, cannot protect from the assaults of slander, nor personal and hereditary advantages insure happiness.

This celebrated woman, the beautiful and intellectual offspring of wealthy and well-descended parents; the wife of the most distinguished, and also of the most domestic and affectionate of men; blessed as a parent beyond the lot of most mothers; the favourite of her sovereign, and endowed with superabundant temporal means; lived, nevertheless, in turbulence and discontent, and died, unloved, unregretted, and calumniated.

Her original condition in life was fixed by Providence in a station, neither too high to enjoy the quiet privileges of domestic comfort, nor too low to aspire to distinction; and it was rather her misfortune than her privilege, that she was singled out, in early life, to receive the favours of the great. She was the daughter of a country gentleman in good circumstances. Her family had, for many generations, possessed an estate at Sandridge in Hertfordshire, near St. Albans, at which place, it has been stated, the father of the Duchess could muster a tenantry sufficient to influence considerably the election of members for the adjacent borough of St. Albans.[^[2]]

The family of Jennings had been held in high estimation by the House of Stuart, and were distinguished among the adherents to the Royal cause. The Duchess, whatever might be her subsequent opinions of rulers and princes, sprang from a race devoted to the hereditary monarchy. Her grandfather, Sir John Jennings, received the order of the Bath, in company with his unfortunate young patron, Charles the First, then Prince of Wales; and the partiality of the Stuart family, when restored, was successively manifested by proofs of favour to the owners of Sandridge.[^[3]]

These details refute the reports which prevailed, during the sunshine of prosperity which the Duchess enjoyed, that her parents were of mean origin. It was also stated, by the scandalous writers of the day, that her mother was a woman of abandoned character, rejected from society, and of the lowest extraction. Among the various proofs which might be adduced in contradiction of this aspersion, the most convincing is the correspondence which Mrs. Jennings maintained, with families of respectability in her own neighbourhood. A letter is still extant, between Sarah Duchess of Marlborough and the daughter-in-law of Sir John Wittewronge of Rothamsted Park, near St. Albans, in which this calumniated lady is referred to by Mrs. Wittewronge, addressing the Duchess, as “your noble mother.”[^[4]] This, and the still stronger testimony which will be presently adduced, disprove the insinuations of party writers, who required but a slender foundation of surmise upon which to ground their injurious attacks.

Those who thus wrote were perhaps aware, that they could scarcely wound a person of the Duchess’s disposition more deeply than by an aspersion of this description. Yet, in her celebrated Vindication, written in old age, the Duchess, with calmness, refutes in these terms those who sought to defame her origin: “Though I am very little concerned about pedigree or families, I know not why I should not tell you, that his (her father’s) was reckoned a good one; and that he had in Somersetshire, Kent, and St. Albans, about four thousand pounds a year.”[^[5]]

The mother of the Duchess belonged, in fact, to a family in some degree superior to that of her husband. She was Frances Thornhurst, daughter of Sir Giffard Thornhurst of Agnes Court in Kent, and heiress to her father’s property. Thus, on both sides, the Duchess might regard her origin with complacency; and the expression of the antiquary Collins, when he describes her relatives “as a considerable family,” is justified.[^[6]]

This point, of little importance had it not been obscured by malignity, is readily ascertained: but of the dispositions, principles, and attainments of the parents who nurtured one who played so conspicuous a part, we have no authentic record. It is a singular fact, that until a diligent inquiry was made, with a view to the compilation of these Memoirs, a degree of obscurity existed, even with regard to the birthplace of the Duchess. Archdeacon Coxe explicitly declares that she was born at Sandridge; but, on examining the parish registers of that place, no mention of that fact, nor indeed of the birth of any of the Jennings family, is to be found in them; nor are there in the church, as it now stands, any monuments inscribed with that name. Neither does there appear to have been any house on the estate at Sandridge, of nearly sufficient importance to have been the residence of the Jennings family.[^[7]] It appears, however, from indisputable testimony, that Sarah Jennings was born on the twenty-ninth day of May,[^[8]] in the year 1660, at Holywell, a suburb of St. Albans, and in a small house, very near the site of the spacious mansion afterwards erected there by her husband, John Duke of Marlborough.

It is to be regretted that a reference to the registers of the Abbey of St. Albans will not assist in establishing this point: in the fire which broke out in that noble building in 1743, a portion of those valuable memorials was burnt. But tradition, corroborated by probability, has satisfied the minds of those most qualified to judge, that at Holywell, the future “viceroy,” as she was sarcastically denominated, first saw the light.[^[9]]

This celebrated woman was one of five children, all of whom, excepting Frances Duchess of Tyrconnel, she survived. Her brothers Ralph and John died young; and one of her sisters, Barbara, who married a gentleman of St. Albans, named Griffiths, died in London in 1678, in the twenty-seventh year of her age.[^[10]]

By the early demise of these relatives, the Duchess acquired that hereditary property which became afterwards her home. At a very early age, however, she must have left Holywell, to enter upon the duties of a courtier. She was preceded in the service of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, by her eldest sister Frances, the celebrated La Belle Jennings, who graced the halls in which the dissolute Charles and James held carousal, and who followed the destinies of the exiled James to a foreign land.

Resembling in some respects her sister, Frances Jennings was equally celebrated for her talents and for her beauty. Her personal charms were, however, of a softer and more alluring character than those of the imperious Sarah. Her bright yet delicate complexion, her luxuriant flaxen hair, and her attractive but not elevated features, might have been liable to the charge of insipidity, but that a vivacity of manner and play of countenance were combined with youthful loveliness, in riveting the attention on a face not to be forgotten. Like her sister, Frances possessed shrewdness, decision, penetration, and, their frequent attendant in woman, a love of interfering. Proud rather than principled, and a coquette, this lovely, aspiring woman had no sooner entered upon her duties of a maid of honour, than her youth and innocence were assailed by every art which could be devised, among men whose professed occupation was what they termed gallantry. Frances united to her other attractions remarkable powers of conversation; her raillery was admirable, her imagination vivid. It was not long before her fascinations attracted the notice of that devotee and reprobate, James Duke of York, whose Duchess she served. But James, in directing his attention to a Jennings, encountered all the secret contempt that a woman could feel, and received all the avowed disdain which she dared to show. To his compliments, the indignant and persecuted maid of honour turned a deaf ear; and the written expressions of the Duke’s regard were torn to pieces, and scattered to the winds. Nor was it long before Frances Jennings found, in a sincere and honest attachment, an additional safeguard against temptation.

Sarah, at twelve years of age, was introduced into the same dangerous atmosphere. Fortunately for both sisters, in Anne Duchess of York they found a mistress whom they could respect, and in whose protection they felt security; for she possessed—the one great error in her career set apart—a sensible and well-conditioned mind.

Her court was then the chief resort of the gay and the great. It was the Duchess’s foible (in such circumstances one of injurious effect) to pride herself upon the superior beauty of her court, and on its consequent distinction in the world of fashion, in comparison with that of the Queen, the homely Katharine of Braganza. But she had virtue and delicacy sufficient to appreciate the prudence and good conduct of those around her, and to set an example of propriety and dignity, in her own demeanour, becoming her high station. United to a husband who, in the midst of depravity, “had,” says Burnet, “a real sense of sin, and was ashamed of it.”[^[11]] Anne, had she lived, might have possessed, as a Protestant, and as a woman of understanding, a salutary influence over the mind of her husband;—an influence which prudent women are found to retain, even when the affections of the heart are alienated on both sides. But her death, which happened in 1671, deprived England of a queen-consort who professed the national faith; and, in her, James lost a faithful and sensible wife, and the court a guide and pattern which might have checked the awful demoralization that prevailed.

Anne was succeeded by the unfortunate Maria Beatrix d’Esté, Princess of Modena, called, from her early calamities, “the Queen of Tears.”[^[12]] Into the service of this lovely child, for such she then was, Sarah Jennings, in consequence of the partiality entertained by the Stuarts for her family, who had been always Royalists, was, shortly after the death of her first patroness, preferred.

In the young Duchess of York Sarah found a kind mistress, an affectionate and a liberal friend. Her subsequent desertion of this unhappy Princess is, we are of opinion, one of the worst features of a character abounding in faults; and proves that ambition, like the fabled Upas tree, blights all the verdure of kindly affections which spring up within the human heart.

Maria Beatrix, the beloved, adopted daughter of Louis XIV., encountered, in her marriage with James, a fate still more calamitous than that which the ungainly Katharine of Braganza, or the lofty but neglected Anne Hyde, bore in unappreciated submission. Beautiful beyond the common standard, and joyous as youth and innocence usually are, this unhappy woman came, in all the unconsciousness of childhood, to incur the miseries of suspicion and obloquy, and to experience subsequent reverse, even poverty. She was hurried over to England, when little more than fourteen years of age, to become the bride of James, then no longer young, in whom bigotry was strangely united to looseness of morals, which habitual and prompt repentance could not restrain. In his phlegmatic deportment, in spite of the natural grace of all the Stuarts, vice failed to attract, yet ceased not to disgust; nor can we be surprised that repeated and fruitless negociations were necessary to procure him a wife, after remaining a widower for more than two years.[^[13]]

In November, 1673, the ill-fated Princess of Modena landed at Dover. The match, which had been accelerated by the promise of a portion to Maria, his adopted daughter, from the King of France, was universally unpopular in England. It had been, however, already concluded, the Earl of Peterborough having, in September, married the Princess by proxy, in Italy. He had conducted the bride to Paris, when Parliament met, and the Commons voted an address to the King, to prevent the marriage of his brother and the Princess, on the plea of her religion. The hopes of a dowry prevailed, at a time when Charles was so impoverished as to entertain an idea of recalling the ambassadors from foreign courts, from the want of means to support them; and the Princess was married to the Duke, at Dover, on the same evening that she landed, to prevent further obstacles, the ceremony being performed according to the rites of the Church of England.[^[14]]

The Duke and the Duchess proceeded to Whitehall, where no very cordial welcome awaited their arrival. The Duchess was refused the use of the private chapel, which had been stipulated by the marriage articles, and the Duke was advised by his friends to withdraw from the country.[^[15]]

Such was the reception of Maria D’Esté, the mother of the Pretender, and, as such, the innocent cause of many national disasters. In her service, and favoured by her kindness, Sarah Jennings passed many years; nor can the subsequent desertion of this lovely and unfortunate Princess, which the then influential Countess of Marlborough justified to herself, be viewed in any other light than as an act of the coldest ingratitude. During the twelve years that Mary enjoyed a comparatively private station as Duchess of York, she passed her time, and engaged those around her, in innocent amusements and revels, which have been always peculiarly agreeable in their rulers to the English people. Young and light-hearted as she then was, Mary was herself the fairest flower of the court, over which she presided with the gay grace of her country. “She was,” says Macpherson, “of exquisite beauty. Her complexion was very fair, her hair black, her eyes full of sweetness and fire. She was tall in her person, and admirably shaped; dignified in her manner, and graceful in her deportment.”[^[16]]

By the sweetness and propriety of her conduct, she, in her hours of sunshine, made herself universally beloved, notwithstanding her religion; and amid the storms of her subsequent career she showed a spirit and heroism which deserved a better cause, and a clinging attachment to James which merited a worthier object.

There is no reason to conclude that at first Sarah Jennings lived constantly in the household of the Duchess. “I was often at court,” is an expression which occurs in a passage of her Vindication. She seems, indeed, to have remained in the proximity of the Duchess, chiefly for the purpose of being a sort of playmate, rather than attendant, of the Princess Anne, the step-daughter of her royal mistress, whose favour she ultimately succeeded in obtaining, and for whose dawning greatness she relinquished her adherence to the falling fortunes of the Duchess. It is probably to this intimacy with the juvenile branches of the court that Sarah, in part, owed that correctness of conduct, which not even the malice of her enemies could successfully impugn; and soon a sincere and well-founded attachment, the great safeguard to wandering affections, ended in an engagement which gave to the beautiful Miss Jennings an efficient and devoted protector.

In the year 1673, John Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, was appointed to be a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke of York,—probably on occasion of the Duke’s marriage. Churchill was at this time a colonel in the army, and already his fame stood high as an officer of enterprise; whilst, at the court, there were few of the young gallants of the day who could cope with this gifted man, in the dignity and symmetry of his person, in the graces of his manner, or in the charm which good-breeding, and a species of benevolence in small and every-day matters, confer upon the deportment.

The illustrious name of Churchill requires, however, some comment, before the disturbed course of his love-suit to his future wife, the solace and torment of his later days, can be unfolded.

Roger de Courselle, or Courcil, one of the Barons of Poitou, who followed William the Conqueror to England, and settled first in Somersetshire, and afterwards in Devonshire, under the anglicised name of Churchill, was the direct progenitor of Colonel Churchill. It is worthy of remark, that at different periods the ancestors of our great warrior have been noted for valour. In the reign of Stephen, Sir Bartholomew Churchill lost his life defending Bristol Castle, in the cause of the king; and in the disturbed times of Edward the Fourth, William, a lineal descendant of Sir Bartholomew, fought under the banners of the Courtenays in Devonshire, for his sovereign. Successive proofs of loyalty were given by the Churchill family; and Sir Winston, the father of the hero of Blenheim, left the University of Oxford, whilst a youth, to enlist in the army of Charles the First, in which he served with distinction, as a captain of horse, in several battles.[^[17]]

It was the inevitable consequence of the political turmoils in which the family of Colonel Churchill bore a part, that his patrimony should have suffered. His youth was passed in privacy and restraint; and perhaps to that circumstance may be traced that love of order in his affairs, and that close regulation of his expenditure, which in his prosperous days procured for him the opprobrium of penuriousness. During the civil wars, his father had married a daughter of Sir John Drake, of Ashe in Dorsetshire, where Sir Winston was thankful, after the execution of Charles the First, to retire, his estates being sequestrated by Parliament, and a fine of upwards of four thousand pounds imposed upon him for his adherence to the Royal cause.

In the safe seclusion of Ashe, John Churchill was nurtured; and, although upon the restoration of Charles the Second the family estate was recovered, his father was honoured with knighthood, and employed by government, his valiant son never derived any pecuniary advantage from the paternal property.[^[18]] Sir Winston ultimately was reduced to circumstances of difficulty, in which he died, bequeathing his estate to his widow, with a request that she would leave it to his third son, Charles. To his family connexion, not solely to fortune or to his own merits, was John indebted for his elevation to distinction. His condition therefore, in some respects, resembled that of his early and late affection, as far as worldly and external circumstances are concerned.

The family of Churchill, like that of Jennings, was ancient; and young Churchill possessed, in the power of referring to a long line of ancestry, an incentive, to an ardent mind peculiarly attractive, to aim at distinction, not only for self-gratification, but with the hope of restoring to former honour those whose fortunes and fame had been crushed, but not obliterated. Colonel Churchill, even from his childhood, had been connected with a court, and destined to share a courtier’s duties and rewards. From his boyhood he was honoured with the notice of Royalty, the Duke of York being his first patron.

To the influence of James he owed his rapid promotion in the army; and, as in all similar cases, several causes, such as were incidental to the Stuart family, and probably from their known looseness of principle, were assigned for his success. But to the good-nature and discernment of James the Second, the first opportunity afforded to Marlborough of becoming great must be attributed. Observing the enthusiasm of the high-minded boy, then his page, during the reviews of the regiments of Foot Guards, James inquired of the youth “what profession he would prefer?” Churchill, neither overpowered nor abashed by this trait of condescension, fell upon his knees, and owned a predilection for that of arms, venturing to beg “for a pair of colours in one of those fine regiments.” His petition was granted, and at sixteen years of age Churchill entered the army.

This commencement of his fortune has been stated, but erroneously, to have been the result of James’s passion for Arabella Churchill, the sister of the young officer, and afterwards the acknowledged mistress of the prince. But Arabella, who was younger than her brother, had not at that time attracted the notice of her brother’s patron. In all probability her transient influence over the Duke—that influence which excited the sole pang of jealousy ever evinced by Anne Hyde—accelerated the rise to eminence which Churchill gained with unusual rapidity, and in consideration of which he appears, in compliance with the custom of the day, to have witnessed, without the burning blushes of shame, his sister’s disgrace. Arabella, indolent, easy, not beautiful,[^[19]] and unambitious, soon lost her royal lover’s regard. She bore him, however, two sons, one, the celebrated James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick; the other, Henry, Grand Prior of France; and two daughters, Lady Waldegrave and Mrs. Godfrey.

At the period of his appointment in the household of the Duke of York, Colonel Churchill was in his twenty-fourth year. Already had he distinguished himself at the siege of Tangier during his first campaign, and had served afterwards under the Duke of Monmouth, and nominally under Louis the Fourteenth; but, to the especial advantage of his military character, he had fought under the banners of Marshal Turenne. Already had he signalised himself in the attacks on Nimeguen, where his courage attracted the discerning eye of Turenne, who gave him the name of the “handsome Englishman;” and a station of importance having been abandoned by one of Turenne’s officers, Captain Churchill was appointed to maintain it, which he effected, expelling the enemy.[^[20]]

At the siege of Maestricht Churchill still further advanced his fame, and received the thanks of Louis the Fourteenth, and his fortunes seemed to his youthful mind advancing to their climax, when he was presented to Charles the Second by the Duke of Monmouth, with this warm-hearted asseveration, characteristic of that gallant nobleman. “To the bravery of this gallant officer,” said the Duke, addressing his royal father, “I owe my life.” The last reward of Churchill’s valiant exertions had been an appointment to the command of the English troops auxiliary to France; a post which the Earl of Peterborough had resigned.[^[21]] The fame of these various services had been extolled by friends at court, and by connexions, influential in various degrees, and for various reasons.

Recalled, at sundry times, to the duties of a court life, the hero who surpassed the generals under whom he served, surpassed also the courtiers with whom he came into frequent collision. He was endowed with personal beauty, height of stature, (being above the middle size,) activity, and sweetness of expression: in short, the perfection of the species, high intellect combined with perfect grace, was exhibited in this great, and, when chastened by the course of events, subsequently good man. His countenance was mild, thoughtful, commanding; his brow lofty, his features regular but flexible. His deportment was dignified, and, at the same time, winning. “No one,” said one who knew him personally, “ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough.”[^[22]]

The same consummate judge even attributed the great success of the Duke “to the Graces, who protected and promoted him.” “His manner,” Lord Chesterfield declares, “was irresistible, either by man or woman.”

Like most young men destined to the profession of arms, the education of Churchill was limited. Lord Chesterfield, indeed, declares that the great Marlborough was “eminently illiterate, wrote bad English, and spelt it worse;” and he goes so far as to assert, that “he had no share of what is commonly called parts; he had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius.”

But with this opinion, however backed by high authority, it is impossible for those who trace the career of Marlborough to agree. That he was not a man of extensive intellectual cultivation, as far as the learning to be acquired from books was concerned—that he was not calculated to harangue in the senate with peculiar distinction, nor addicted deeply to the study of the closet—may readily be admitted. It may even be allowed that he was deficient in the science of orthography—in those days less carefully instilled in youth than in the present time.[^[23]] But that he was absolutely illiterate, or even of mediocre parts moderately cultivated, his private letters sufficiently disprove. They are all admirably expressed; clear, emphatic, and in well-constructed sentences. His father was a man of letters, the author of an historical work,[^[24]] and by Sir Winston was the education of Churchill superintended, until he was placed at St. Paul’s school, London.[^[25]]

To the “cool head and warm heart” of Marlborough, as King William the Third expressed it, he owed his early and progressive success. He was at once the object of affection and of confidence. His calmness, the suavity of his temper, until disease, most cruel in its effects on that, broke down his self-command; his forbearance—his consideration for others—the gentleness with which he refused what he could not grant—the grace with which he conferred favours—these qualities, combined with indefatigable industry, hardihood, and a judgment never prejudiced by passion, were the true sources of Churchill’s greatness, the benignant spirits which made the gifts of fortune sweeter when they came.

It is uncertain at what time or in what manner the first tokens of ardent affection between Colonel Churchill and the youthful Sarah were exchanged. The authoress of the “Life of Zarah” has given a romantic description of their first meeting, in which, as in other ephemeral works, we may suppose there may be some foundation of truth, but no accuracy of detail. According to this account, the youthful fancy of Sarah was first attracted by the grace of her valiant lover in the dance—a recreation in which he particularly excelled. “Every step he took carried death in it,”[^[26]] and the applause and admiration which Colonel Churchill obtained, sank deep into the heart of one whose ambition was perhaps as easily stimulated as her love. Yet that her affections were interested in the addresses of the brave Churchill, is manifest from her rejection of another suitor of higher rank, the Earl of Lindsay, afterwards Marquis of Ancaster, and of others, by whom she was considered as “the star and ornament of the court.”[^[27]]

The correspondence between these celebrated lovers during the anxious days of courtship was preserved by the survivor, with a care that marked the honour which she felt she had received in being beloved by such a man as Marlborough. They are said, by Archdeacon Coxe, to have displayed the most ardent tenderness on the part of Churchill, with alternations of regard and petulance on that of the lady. Her haughtiness, and the sensibility of her future husband, fully appear in these letters. Yet, notwithstanding the defects of character which they betrayed in the one party, the attachment on the side of the other increased in ardour, and continued sufficiently strong to overcome all obstacles. Amongst these, the scanty portion of Sarah, no less than the still greater deficiency of means on the part of her lover, formed the principal impediment. In order to show the different circumstances of each of the families with which they were connected, it is necessary to give some account of their various members, and of the fortunes which they had at this time begun to share.

The adherence of the Churchill family to the royal House of Stuart, and the adverse effect of that adherence upon the fortunes of Sir Winston Churchill, have been already mentioned. Sir Winston, a man of considerable learning and of approved bravery, had indeed so far retrieved his circumstances, and relieved his estate of its heavy burdens, as to be able, in 1661, to stand for the borough of Weymouth, and to sit in the first parliament called by Charles the Second. He was afterwards appointed a commissioner of the Court of Claims in Ireland, and constituted, on his return from that country, one of the comptrollers of the Board of Green Cloth,—an office from which he was removed, but to which he was restored. But these appointments appear to have been the sole compensation which he received for his active services; and he seems to have devoted the latter portion of his days to pursuits of literature rather than of ambition, being one of the first fellows of the Royal Society, and the author of an able and elegant historical work on the Kings of England, which composition he dedicated to Charles the Second.[^[28]]

Sir Winston’s means were encumbered, however, with seven sons and four daughters; and although seven of this numerous family died in infancy, yet still a sufficient number remained to entail anxiety upon the owner of an impoverished estate. George Churchill, the third surviving son, like his brother John, owed the first gleams of royal favour to family interest, but insured its continuance by his merit. He distinguished himself both by sea and land; was a faithful servant, for twenty years, as a gentleman of the bedchamber to George of Denmark, and attained, under King William, the post of one of the commissioners of the Admiralty.

Charles, the fourth son, was also bred to arms, and, at an early age, signalised himself at the time of the Revolution. To him the landed property of Sir Winston descended, on account of some pecuniary obligations which his father owed him, and which prove how circumscribed were still the means of the brave and estimable Sir Winston. Like his brothers, Charles held offices under the crown, and was appointed governor of the Tower of London by Queen Anne.[^[29]] Thus, whilst, by merit and interest conjoined, the sons of Sir Winston Churchill attained independence, and perhaps wealth, it was natural for him to desire that his eldest surviving son should farther advance his fortunes by an advantageous marriage; nor was it inconsistent with the notions of the day, to look upon marriage solely as a negociation in which the affections were not even consulted, or were at least regarded as of secondary import.

That such were the sentiments of Sir Winston and Lady Churchill, appears from the strenuous opposition which they made to their son’s union with Miss Jennings: for at present her portion was inconsiderable, and her family interest not to be compared with that of the Churchills. It is true that the estate at Sandridge, to which the Duchess afterwards became co-heiress, was more productive than those lands which Sir Winston Churchill had saved from the grasp of the parliament; but still it was encumbered by a provision for her grandfather’s numerous issue; nor was it until the death of her brothers, without children, that Sarah and her sister Frances shared the patrimonial property. Thus circumstanced, and precluded on both sides from the expectation of parental aid, the young soldier was obliged to depend upon his own powers of exertion, to find means to form an establishment for the lady to whom he made his ardent suit.

The young Duchess of York was, at this juncture, the counsellor and confidante of Sarah, and she appears to have offered her and Colonel Churchill some pecuniary assistance in this emergency.[^[30]] Nor was her bounty the only source from which a future provision for the lovers was derived.

It is always an ungracious task to touch upon the errors of those who, by a subsequent career of honour, have left, as the final testament to posterity, an example of domestic virtue. The income which Colonel Churchill possessed,[^[31]] is said to have been derived from a dishonourable source.[^[32]] Amongst the causes of his rapid rise in the army, as well as of his success at court, his relationship to the celebrated Barbara Villiers, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, has been naturally regarded as one of the most powerful explanations of the favours which he received. This infamous woman, described by Bishop Burnet as “a woman of great beauty, but enormously vicious and ravenous, foolish, but imperious,”[^[33]] governed Charles the Second, as it is well known, by the exhibition of the most tempestuous passions, which she ascribed in his presence to jealousy of him, whilst her intrigues with other men were notorious. She was second cousin to Churchill by his mother’s side, being the daughter of Villiers Lord Grandison, who was killed at the battle of Edge Hill. Whilst Churchill was a youth, she imbibed for him too strong a partiality, in such a mind as hers, to appear even innocent, if it really were so. Her passion for him was as sudden as it was disgusting; and however it may have procured him some temporary assistance, it drew upon him the displeasure of the King, who at one time forbade him the court.[^[34]] The advocates of Churchill have endeavoured to attach little importance to this disgraceful connexion, for which his youth and the temptations of the court alone furnish an apology; yet they cannot, whilst they excuse, entirely deny a fact which undoubtedly sullies the fair fame of Churchill.

Lord Chesterfield, in holding up the Duke of Marlborough as a model of good breeding and irresistible elegance and suavity, thus touches upon the fact of his being under pecuniary obligations to the imperious Duchess of Cleveland. “He had,” says his lordship, “most undoubtedly an excellent, good, plain understanding, with sound judgment. But these alone would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to King James the Second’s queen. There the graces protected and promoted him; for while he was an ensign in the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress of the King, struck by those very graces, gave him five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity of five hundred pounds a year, of my grandfather Halifax, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune.”[^[35]]

Upon this slender annuity, thus disreputably obtained, the hopes of Churchill and of the young object of his affections depended. Sarah appears to have been capricious and undecided in her conduct during the progress of their engagement, which lasted three years.[^[36]] The cause of these variations of feeling has been assigned to the opposition made by Sir Winston and Lady Churchill to their son’s forming a union so far below their expectations; but it may be referred to various other sources. The high-minded Sarah must have been often offended and wounded, in the nicest feelings, by the past irregularities of Churchill’s life. Those irregularities were renounced, it is true, upon his engagement with her, and his honourable and well-toned mind was recalled to a sense of that beauty which attends purity of conduct, and its power to dignify characters even of a common stamp. But the effects of his past conduct were found in the bitterness and jealousy of those by whom he had been hitherto flattered,[^[37]] and by whom doubtless the defects of his moral character may have been grossly exaggerated. Sarah may have intended to prove the constancy of her accomplished lover, when, hearing that his parents destined him to become the husband of a young lady of superior fortune to her own, though of less beauty, she petulantly entreated him “to renounce an attachment which militated against his worldly prospects;” and adding many reproaches, pungent as her pen could write,—and in the vituperative style she had few equals,—she declared that she would accompany her sister Frances, then Countess of Hamilton, to Paris, thus finally to end their engagement. Her address to the honour, to the heart of Churchill, was not made in vain; he answered her by an appeal to her affection, and by earnest remonstrances against her cruelty, and a reconciliation was the result.[^[38]]

Whilst these sentiments secretly occupied the heart of Churchill, and of her who loved him, perhaps, less for his excellencies than for the effect which they produced upon others, several events took place at the court of Charles, in which Colonel Churchill, during the intervals of his military service, participated,—his office of master of the robes to the Duke of York, an appointment granted him in 1673, retaining him near the court; whilst Sarah, in the course of her attendance on the Princess Anne, must have taken a considerable interest in the events which immediately concerned the royal family.

CHAPTER II.
COURT OF CHARLES II.—1677 to 1681.

Marriage of the Princess Mary—Marriage of Colonel Churchill and Miss Jennings—Characters of Anne and Mary—Friendship of Anne for Lady Churchill—Appointment of the latter to be Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess—Death of Charles the Second.

It was fortunate for the subject of this Memoir that her introduction into the great world took place under the auspices of a young and virtuous Princess, almost of the same age with herself. It is true, that to the charge of Katharine, the neglected wife of Charles the Second, no graver crime could be alleged than her subserviency to the King’s pleasures; for in her own conduct she was irreproachable. When first she became Queen of England, she endeavoured, with such judgment as she possessed, to reform the manners of her adopted country, and to introduce propriety of demeanour into the court. Unhappily Katharine was not endowed with those graces which are likely to recommend virtue. She is described by a contemporary as “a little ungraceful woman, so short-legged, that when she stood upon her feet you would have thought she was on her knees, and yet so long-waisted, that when she sat down she appeared like a well-sized woman.”[^[39]]

Brought up in a monastery, the simple-minded Katharine vainly hoped to reform her dissolute husband, whose inconstancy at first grieved and shocked her virtuous notions. Unlike her rival, Anne Duchess of York, a shrewd and worldly woman, who strove to fill her saloons with the young and the fair, Katharine was surrounded by her countrywomen, old, stiff, ungainly, repulsive Portuguese ladies, of birth and pride, who soon became the subjects of infinite merriment to King Charles’s court. These exemplary ladies came possessed with the notion that they should quickly bring the English to conform to their new customs; but Charles speedily undeceived them, and by his express order they were soon shipped off again for Portugal.[^[40]]

The injured Queen was, at the time that Sarah and Colonel Churchill became acquainted, sinking fast into the obscurity which was alone redeemed from oblivion, after Charles’s death, by her patronage of musical science, and by the concerts which she gave at Somerset House, whither she retired, to reside until she returned to Portugal.[^[41]]

Charles, impoverished in circumstances, and governed at this time almost wholly by the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was under the influence of France, astonished both his subjects and the foreign courts, by the alliance which he selected for his niece, the Princess Mary, at this time in her fifteenth year. It was whilst Colonel Churchill and his future wife were in all the uncertainties of suspense, that the nuptials of William of Nassau with Mary were solemnised. This young Princess is said to have owed the decision which gave her a husband to whom she was entirely subservient, to a sudden prepossession of her royal uncle in favour of the Prince. The King is reported to have said to Sir William Temple these characteristic words:—“I never yet was deceived in judging a man’s honesty by his looks; and if I am not deceived in the Prince’s face, he is the honestest man in the world, and I will trust him, and he shall have his wife; and you shall go immediately and tell my brother so, and thus it is a thing resolved on.”[^[42]]

This mode of deciding an union highly agreeable to the English, although unwelcome to the Duke of York, was adopted and carried instantly into effect, in order to avoid the importunities of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was entirely an instrument in the interests of France. Louis the Fourteenth, when informed of the marriage being declared in council, could not help marking his resentment towards the Duke of York, through the English ambassador, Lord Darnley,—who justified James by saying that “he did not know of the King’s decision until an hour before it was proclaimed, nor did the King himself above two hours previously.” Upon which Louis uttered these prophetic words: that “James had given his daughter to his greatest enemy.”[^[43]]

In the ensuing year, 1678, the marriage of Sarah Jennings and Colonel Churchill is presumed to have taken place.[^[44]] Secret their union certainly was, for a letter addressed by Colonel Churchill to his wife, from Brussels, April 12, 1678, is directed to Miss Jennings; but the epistle was carefully preserved by his wife, who left, in her own handwriting, these words on the back: “I believe I was married when this was written, but it was not known to any but the Duchess” (of York.) In the same year he writes to her, addressed to Mrs. Churchill, at Mintern, his father’s seat, where probably the young bride had taken up her abode in the intervals of her attendance at court; or perhaps that attendance was discontinued, and not constantly resumed until a year or two afterwards. The ceremony took place in the presence of Mary Duchess of York, who bestowed presents of considerable value on the bride; and some months afterwards the marriage was avowed.[^[45]]

Little of domestic comfort for several years seems to have been the portion of Colonel Churchill in his marriage. His first absence was on occasion of the Duke’s retiring, first to Brussels, and afterwards to the Hague, accompanied by the Duchess of York, and by the Princess Anne; an event which took place in the beginning of the year 1678. But although at this time attached to the service of the Duke of York, and ignorant of the Duke’s designs upon the religion and the liberties of England,[^[46]] Colonel Churchill’s interests with Charles appear not to have suffered; for he obtained in February a regiment of foot, and was shortly afterwards sent on a mission of importance to the Prince of Orange. The following letter from him to his wife breathes sincere affection. It is dated Brussels, April 12th.

“I writ to you from Antwerp, which I hope you have received before now, for I should be glad you should hear from me by every post. I met with some difficulties in my business with the Prince of Orange, so that I was forced to write to England, which will cause me to be two or three days longer abroad than I should have been. But because I would lose no time, I despatch all other things in the mean time, for I do, with all my heart and soul, long to be with you, you being dearer to me than my own life. On Sunday morning I shall leave this place, so that on Monday night I shall be at Breda, where the Prince and Princess of Orange are; and from hence you shall be sure to hear from me again; till then, my soul’s soul, farewell.”[^[47]]

Colonel Churchill had, however, the enjoyment of passing the summer of this year with his wife at Mintern, where he had the happiness of finding her reconciled to his parents; but this transient enjoyment of domestic quiet was not of long duration. The Colonel was obliged to repair to London, where he received instructions to join the allied troops in hostilities against France, and received a commission from the Duke of Monmouth, appointing him, as British commander-in-chief in the Netherlands, to the command of a brigade in Flanders. But, happily, being driven back by contrary winds to Margate, Colonel Churchill learned, in time to prevent his proceeding to the Continent, that the Prince of Orange had signed a treaty with the French, and that a general peace was the result.[^[48]]

The dissolute rule of Charles was now drawing to a close; but its last years were disturbed by faction, and disgraced by acts of rigour, which were with justice imputed to the influence of the heir apparent. Colonel Churchill and his wife remained, however, attached to the service of the Duke and Duchess of York, and accompanied their royal highnesses to the Hague and to Brussels—a journey which was undertaken by James in compliance with a request addressed to him from his brother, that he would for a time absent himself from the British dominions.

This may probably be considered as the happiest epoch in the life of Churchill, and of the partner of his bright fortunes. Although confided in by James in all important points, notwithstanding the difference of their religious faith, Churchill took no share in political intrigues, and with a calm dignity retained his own opinions, unbiassed by example, or by what might be deemed interest. “Though I have an aversion to popery,” thus he explained his sentiments to a confidential friend, “yet I am no less averse to persecution for conscience sake. I deem it the highest act of injustice to set every one aside from his inheritance upon bare suppositions of intentional evils, when nothing that is actual appears to preclude him from the exercise of his just rights.”[^[49]]

On the other hand, Mrs. Churchill had at present no important part in life to act, no dreams of greatness to disturb her routine of duty and service to a mistress who appears to have treated her with the utmost kindness. The Princess Anne, indeed, accompanied her father to the Continent, and shared with her stepmother the attentions and the society which afterwards became so essential to the future Queen of England. But Anne’s importance was at present overshadowed, and her chances of future elevation were remote, even in her own anticipations.

During the course of the summer, James was recalled to England by the illness of his brother; but finding that Charles was likely to recover, he returned to Flanders, in order to bring over his family to the British Isles,[^[50]] although he was not permitted by the King to remain in London. Colonel Churchill, meantime, was despatched to Paris upon diplomatic business, with an especial recommendation from James, who designated him in his letter “master of the wardrobe.”[^[51]] It was not, however, considered expedient by Charles or his advisers that the Duke of York should continue in England, and accordingly it was given out, by authority, that the Duke having represented to his Majesty that it would be more proper that he should remain in his Majesty’s dominions than in those of any other Prince, the King had consented to his Royal Highness’s removal to Scotland.

The Duke and Duchess of York, therefore, with a numerous suite, composed of many of the nobility and persons of distinction, departed for Edinburgh, leaving the Princess Anne, and Isabella, her half-sister, at St. James’s. In this tedious journey, which, performed with much parade, lasted a month, Churchill and his wife accompanied the Duke and Duchess,[^[52]]—Colonel Churchill, from the desire of escaping those contentions which then agitated public men, and occupied both Houses, concerning the succession,[^[53]] prudently avoiding a seat in parliament, which he might readily have obtained.

It was for some years the occupation of Churchill, and of his wife, to follow the footsteps, and in some measure to share the anxieties, of the Duke and Duchess of York. During the present year, James returned to London; but he was again driven to Scotland by the efforts of the adverse party, and was again accompanied by Churchill.

After a year spent on the part of Churchill in many important missions, he had the happiness of hearing, on his return to Scotland after one of these embassies, that he had become a father. The infant Henrietta, afterwards Duchess of Marlborough, was born in London, whither Mrs. Churchill had accompanied the Duchess of York, July the tenth, 1681.[^[54]]

The character of the Duchess of Marlborough as a mother remains yet to be developed; but the letters of Colonel Churchill to her, at this period, bespeak a sense of domestic happiness, and prove that she was still, as indeed she ever was, ardently beloved by his, the most affectionate, as it was the bravest heart.

“I writ to you,” he says in one of these unpremeditated epistles, “last night by the express, and since that I have no good news to send you. The yachts are not yet come, nor do we know when they will, for the wind is directly against them, so that you may believe I am not in a very good humour, since I desire nothing so much as being with you. The only comfort I had here was hearing from you, and now, if we should be stopped by contrary winds, and not hear from you, you may guess with what satisfaction I shall then pass my time; therefore, as you love me, you will pray for fair winds, that we may not stay here, nor be long at sea.

“I hope all the red spots of our child will be gone against I see her, and her nose strait; so that I may fancy it to be like the mother, for she has your coloured hair. I would have her to be like you in all things else. Till next post-day farewell. By that time I hope we shall hear of the yachts, for till I do, I have no kind of patience.”[^[55]]

The constant services of Churchill were at length rewarded with an elevation to the peerage, an honour which he owed entirely to the recommendation of James in his favour. He was created Baron Churchill of Eyemouth in Scotland, and made also Colonel of the third troop of Guards.[^[56]]

Weary, probably, of a courtier’s life, it was now Lord Churchill’s desire to withdraw Lady Churchill from the court, and to enjoy with her the privacy which their mutual affection might have rendered delightful. But so peaceful a lot was not to be the portion of this remarkable pair, who were destined to act a conspicuous part in the great sphere of public action.

It is not stated what were Lord Churchill’s particular motives for thus wishing to withdraw from the greatness which was “thrust upon him,” at a time when James, his patron, was restored to his royal brother’s favour, and when his own influence was daily increasing. But we may look into the history of those fearful times for a solution of this inquiry. The feelings, upright and humane, of Churchill, and even of his less sensitive wife, had doubtless been harrowed by the occurrences of the preceding year. The Rye House Plot, and its melancholy termination, must have saddened the heart even of the strictest adherent to James, and probably opened the eyes of Churchill to the real dispositions of that Prince, whose indifference to the value of human life gave the character of retribution to his subsequent misfortunes. Russell sacrificed, and the unhappy Essex, impelled by a fear of his impending fate, forced to commit suicide, it is no wonder that Churchill was sickened by the events of those calamitous days, and that he longed to withdraw her who was dearest to him from a scene in which the events of tragedy were mingled with the heartless merriment of a festive court.

Whilst Lord Churchill was advancing his fortunes, the influence of his young wife over the pliant mind of the Princess Anne was equally advancing, though unseen, and establishing for Lady Churchill an ascendency which fixed her destiny in the public walks of life.

From childhood, Anne had been accustomed to the society of her future favourite. A slight difference of age, Lady Churchill being the elder of the two, aided, rather than impeded, the happy intimacy of girlhood. Anne was accustomed to depend for amusement upon her new friend; and as they grew up, and became severally absorbed in the cares of womanhood, Anne, as well as Sarah, found that hopes and disappointments, on the all-engrossing subject of wedlock, were the portion of the Princess as well as of the subject.

Anne, like others of her high rank, was spared the perplexity of choice. Already, at an early age, she had been addressed, in secret, with professions of attachment by the young Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Marquis of Normanby, one of the most accomplished and amiable noblemen of his time. But these proposals were checked as soon as they were discovered, yet not before Anne had imbibed a partiality, or, in the cold words of the historian of her reign, an “esteem,” for the young man, which continued in the form of a kindly regard, until party and politics broke the charm which the recollection of an early attachment had created.[^[57]]

George the First, at that time possessing very slender hopes of becoming King of England, visited this country with the intention of marrying the Princess Anne, but left the British shores somewhat dishonourably, without justifying the hopes which he had excited.[^[58]] At the period when he married his cousin, the ill-fated Dorothea, there was indeed a third daughter of James Duke of York living, the Princess Katharine, who died in 1671. Anne, therefore, was by no means an object of so much importance in the eyes of European princes as she became upon the failure of issue to Mary, and after the abdication of her father. Her uncle, Charles the Second, undertook, however, the disposal of her fate, as he had already decided that of her elder sister.

In selecting the husbands of his nieces, the profligate, well-bred monarch seems to have searched for qualities as opposite as possible to those displayed in the Stuart line; consigning Mary, at sixteen, to the sickly, reserved, grave, and even austere Prince of Orange; and choosing for Anne a worthy, staid individual, ten years older than herself, and exactly such a man as would have filled with propriety the situation of a country gentleman, and enjoyed the not arduous, but yet not unimportant duties which usually fall to the lot of that respectable class. Prince George of Denmark, recommended to the favour of Charles chiefly by his being of the Protestant faith,[^[59]] had, four years previous to his marriage, visited England; and at the command of his brother, Christian the Fifth of Denmark, he returned to make an offer of marriage to the Princess Anne.[^[60]] It cannot for a moment be supposed that, even with the advantage of these renewed opportunities, there was any great attachment on either side. Never, however, in the annals of royal wedlock, were two characters more completely assimilated than that of Anne and her approved lover. The Prince was brave, good-natured, and not too wise; yet sufficiently sensible to be free from ambition, and to remain contented, in after times, with being the first royal consort that had not shared monarchical power. His patrimony was small, but ample enough to render him comfortable until a settlement was made, and consisted in the revenues of some small islands belonging to the crown of Denmark, which yielded about ten thousand pounds a year.[^[61]] He was inclined to those principles which had recently acquired the name of Toryism, but never took more than a subordinate part in politics; and was so unoffending, that he made not a personal enemy. Neither was the good Prince George without accomplishments. He had travelled much, was a linguist, somewhat of an antiquary, and patronized the arts. Report asserted that an asthmatic complaint, with which he was severely affected during the course of his life, and of which he ultimately died, had its origin in convivial habits, in which Anne, when Queen, has been declared not loath to join.[^[62]] But that propensity, when not carried to excess, was never in England an unpopular quality; and Prince George was eminently qualified to endear himself to the English nation.

The Princess to whom he was affianced possessed a temper almost as replete with good-nature as his own. At the period of her marriage, the qualities which eventually formed the subject of so much vituperation and of so much praise, could not have been developed, even to the scrutinizing observation of her young companion, Mrs. Churchill, who afterwards portrayed her royal mistress with the distinctness of a powerful and sarcastic mind. The education of the Princess had been limited, and her capacity was inferior to that of her sister Mary; yet the characters of both these Princesses, represented differently by different parties, appear to have been possessed of considerable merit. If we set apart, first, her conduct to her father, and afterwards the undue jealousy evinced by Mary towards her sister, few individuals appear in so amiable a point of view as that of the Princess of Orange. Religious without bigotry, gentle yet firm, fond of domestic life, yet coming forward, when occasion called her, into the sphere of public duties with credit to herself and with benefit to the nation, Mary, as a queen and a wife, was a pattern not only to persons of her own elevated station, but to women of every sphere and in every age. This Princess was, at the time of her sister’s marriage, in Holland, with her husband, William of Nassau.

Anne was a personage altogether of an inferior stamp. In many points she resembled strongly the other members of her family who have figured in history. Like Charles the First, she was pious, generous, and affectionate, but obstinate, and not devoid of duplicity when it suited her purpose. Her religion had not, however, the sublimated character of that which consoled the unhappy Charles in adversity; but became, like all her other dispositions, a habit, an implicit faith, a formal observance, rather than a sentiment. Her nature was a strange compound of warm affections and of repelling coldness. As in all weak minds, her friendships were called into being by the gratification of her selfish inclinations; and hence, as the Duchess of Marlborough well describes them, “they were flames of extravagant passion, ending in indifference or aversion.”[^[63]] With those defects which proceeded from deficient cultivation, Anne, however, as a lady of elevated rank, and afterwards as a ruler, possessed some admirable qualities. Her sense of duty supplied the place of strong sensibility. She was a kind mistress; as a wife, incomparable; though lavish to her favourites, (an hereditary trait,) not to be led by them into what she disapproved; just and economical, gracious in her manners, and desirous of popularity. Her nature was placid, her temperament phlegmatic; great designs and lofty sentiments were not to be expected from one of so gentle and easy a temper; but in propriety she equalled, if she could not excel, her reflective and discreet sister. In the early part of her life she was, like the Stuarts generally, extremely well-bred, until unnecessary and indecorous familiarity with her inferiors broke down the effects of early habit.

In person Anne was comely, and of that ample conformation and stature well adapted for royalty. Her love of etiquette, and her exactness in trifles, were convenient and commendable qualities in the rules of a court, in the days of the good old school; and an attention to those forms which are much observed in the monarch of a people prone to free discussion, rendered her a favourite with the public. Her figure, before it became matronly, or in the words of the Duchess, (after their quarrel,) “exceeding gross and corpulent,” was esteemed graceful; her face was agreeable, though, from a weakness in her eyes, her countenance had contracted somewhat of a scowl, described by the Duchess, whilst she admits that “there was something of majesty” in the Queen’s look, “as mixed with a sullen and constant frown, that plainly betrayed a gloominess of soul and a cloudiness of disposition within.”[^[64]] But this may have been the effect of years and of care, when the complexion also participated in the coarseness of the person, induced, as it was said, by the use of cordials, to which the Prince her husband incessantly invited his consort.[^[65]]

To complete the portrait of Anne, the beauty of her hands, and the sweetness of her voice in speaking and reading, must not be forgotten: they were universally allowed; whilst her graceful delivery in addressing the Houses of Parliament met with incessant applause.[^[66]] It is remarkable that with such respect was Anne treated by her subjects, that the Peers, in her presence, waived the privilege of wearing hats in parliament, to show that they are hereditary legislators.[^[67]]

Such was the Princess Anne; and few contrasts could be more singular than herself, and the friend whom she selected for her confidante, and whom she made many sacrifices to conciliate.

The Duchess of Marlborough, according to Swift, was the victim of “three furies which reigned in her breast, the most mortal of all softer passions, which were—sordid avarice, disdainful pride, ungovernable rage.”[^[68]] The first of these demons may be the companion of middle age: rage and pride may have haunted the young and lovely maid of honour; but avarice is not the vice of youth. In all lesser points of disposition and feeling, the Princess and her favourite were dissimilar. The Princess was a lover of propriety and etiquette, even to an inspection of the ruffles and periwigs of her servants. Her sense of decorum was so nice, that, on her accession to the throne, she caused the bust of herself on the gold coin to be clothed as it was, according to ancient custom, on the silver. Nothing offended her, as Queen, so much as a breach of the customary observances; and Lord Bolingbroke having visited her one day in haste, in a Ramillie tie, she remarked “that she supposed his lordship would soon come to court in his nightcap.”[^[69]]

For the Duchess of Marlborough, in her old age, and probably still more in the days of her youth, to dwell on trifles, was a burden too heavy for one of so impetuous a nature. Though we are not authorised to conclude from the assertion of her enemy, “that she delighted in disputing the truth of the Christian religion, and held its doctrines to be both impossible and absurd,”[^[70]] yet it is certain, from her own avowal, that she was a latitudinarian in matters of form, and detested and set at defiance those who made “the church” a word of excuse for intolerance and faction.

The occupations in which these young friends delighted were also totally dissimilar. The Duchess, all her life, delighted in conversation, in which the Princess not only did not excel, but in which she took little pleasure.[^[71]] Anne was an accomplished performer on the guitar; she loved the chase, and rode with the hounds until disabled by the gout. Her companion found the amusements of the court very tedious, and but little suited to her restless and energetic mind. But habit on the one hand, and interest on the other, soon reconcile differences. From playing together as children, the Princess learned, first, to prefer her companion to any other child; next to endure, then to love, the plain-spoken, fearless girl, who, according to her own account, and to that of her friend Dr. Burnet, never flattered any one; then soon grew up a sentimental feeling, which they called friendship, and distinctions of rank were laid aside, and names of familiarity adopted in place of titles of honour.[^[72]] When the Princess became the wife of George of Denmark, she made it her earnest request to her father that her friend should be appointed one of the ladies of the bedchamber—a wish with which James, an affectionate parent, readily complied. The Duchess of Marlborough, when arranging, in hours of sickness and in old age, the materials for her Vindication, thus simply relates the steps preparatory to her preferment.

“The beginning of the Princess’s favour for me,” says the Duchess, “had a much earlier date than my entrance into her service. My promotion to this honour was chiefly owing to impressions she had before received to my advantage. We had used to play together when she was a child, and she had even then expressed a particular fondness for me. This inclination increased with our years. I was often at court, and the Princess always distinguished me by the pleasure she took to honour me, preferably to others, with her conversation and confidence. In all her parties for amusement I was sure, by her choice, to be one; and so desirous she became of having me near her, that upon her marriage with the Prince George of Denmark, 1683, it was at her own request to her father I was made one of the ladies of the bedchamber.”[^[73]]

Assisted by the force of early associations, the stronger mind quickly asserted an influence over the weaker intellect, an influence retained so long as prudence directed its workings. But the Duchess, in what appears to be an impartial statement of facts, declares that she owed this influence partly to a dislike which the Princess had imbibed against Lady Clarendon, her relation and first lady of the bedchamber, who, according to the Duchess, “looked like a mad woman, and talked like a scholar.” And, indeed, she adds, “her Highness’s court was so oddly composed, that I think it would be making myself no great compliment if I should say, her choosing to spend more of her time with me than with any other of her servants did no discredit to her taste.”

The writer of the foregoing paragraph might, however, have carried away the palm from women superior even to the Countess of Clarendon, whom she has been accused of misrepresenting. Beautiful according to the opinion of her contemporaries, her beauty indeed appears, in the portraits painted in her bloom of youth, to have been commanding as well as interesting. Her figure is asserted to have been peculiarly fine, and her countenance was set off by a profusion of fair hair, which she is said to have preserved, without its changing colour, even at an advanced age, by the use of honey-water.[^[74]] Several years after she had become a grandmother, the freshness of her lovely complexion, and her unfaded attractions, caused her, even in the midst of four daughters, each distinguished for personal charms, to be deemed pre-eminent among those celebrated and high-bred belles.[^[75]]

But the secret of that extraordinary influence which Sarah Duchess of Marlborough acquired over every being with whom she came into contact, originated not in her attributes of beauty and of grace. Mrs. Jennings, her mother, represented as she was by the infamous Mrs. Manley, the wretched authoress of the “New Atalantis,” as a sorceress and a depraved creature too vile to live, was also allowed by the same authority to have cultivated in her daughter every art that could charm. That of conversation, in particular, the Duchess of Marlborough is said to have possessed. Shrewd, sarcastic, fearless, so beautiful that all she said was sure to be approved by the one sex; so much in fashion and in favour, that nothing she did could possibly be disapproved by the other; Sarah might readily, without any extraordinary cultivation of intellect, figure greatly in repartee, dogmatize with the security of a youthful beauty, and gain, perhaps, in asserting her crude opinions, knowledge and experience from the replies which one so lively would know well how to elicit. It appears that at this time she had never even dreamed of politics, nor thought of cultivating that vigorous intellect so much applauded in after times by the great ones of the earth. Education had contributed little to extend the sphere of her inquiring mind. She knew no language but her own, and never had the industry nor the ambition to learn even French.

Bishop Burnet, who knew her intimately, thus describes his own and his wife’s friend.

“The Duchess of Marlborough was,” says he, “a woman of little knowledge, but of a clear apprehension and a true judgment.”[^[76]]

The account which the Duchess gives of the manner in which many hours of her day, in the season when the improvement of reason ought to be progressive, were dissipated, is, in few words, “that she never read nor employed her time in anything but playing cards, nor had she any ambition.”[^[77]] Well might she declare herself to be weary of a court life.

Such was the friend to whom the Princess was early bound by the ties of habit, and afterwards by something almost more ardent than common friendship; and exactly was she adapted, from independent, uncompromising spirit, half magnanimous and half insolent, to attain a complete dominion over every faculty of Anne’s shallow mind. The Princess, inured to courts, and probably sickened by the mechanical homage which she could remember from her infancy, might have distrusted adulation in one not much older than herself, and who had been her playmate before the cruel distinctions of rank were recollected or regretted. “But a friend was what she most courted.”[^[78]]

“Kings and princes, for the most part,” remarks the Duchess, “imagine they have a dignity peculiar to their birth and station, which ought to raise them above all connexions of friendship with an inferior. Their passion is to be admired and feared, to have subjects awfully obedient, and servants blindly obsequious to their pleasure. Friendship is an offensive word; it imports a kind of equality between the parties; it suggests nothing to the mind, of crowns or thrones; high titles, or immense revenues, fountains of honour, or fountains of riches, prerogatives which the possessors would always have uppermost in the thoughts of those who approach them.”[^[79]]

Such were the notions of royalty which the Duchess entertained, and which Hook, the historian, whom she employed in her old age to write the famous Vindication of her career from which this quotation is borrowed, has well expressed in his own language. Yet the decided, dauntless way in which this clause against monarchs is struck off, is strongly characteristic of the Duchess, and must have met with her cordial approbation, if not solely suggested by herself. “The Princess,” she, however, proceeds to state, “had a different taste. A friend was what she most coveted; and, for the sake of friendship, (a relation which she did not disdain to have with me,) she was fond of that equality which she thought belonged to it. She grew uneasy to be treated by me with the form and ceremony due to her rank; nor could she bear from me the sound of words which implied in them distance and superiority. It was this turn of mind which made her one day propose to me, that whenever I should happen to be absent from her, we might in our letters write ourselves by feigned names, such as would import nothing of distinction between us. Morley and Freeman were the names her fancy hit upon, and she left me to choose by which of them I would be called. My frank, open temper led me to pitch upon Freeman, and so the Princess took the other; and from this time Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman began to converse together as equals, made so by affection and friendship.”[^[80]]

This well-meant but dangerous experiment shows at least that Anne understood the nature of true friendship, which, like all other “perfect love, casteth out fear;” whilst it is also obvious that the kind-hearted Princess did not comprehend the character of the remarkable and highly gifted being for whose sake she thus broke through the trammels of etiquette.

The friendly compact, unequal as it was, grew under the pressure of those trials which Anne had to encounter during the reign of her father and sister. When she found that James had complied with her earnest request that Lady Churchill might be placed in her service, she communicated the intelligence to her favourite, in terms of joy and affection.

“The Duke came in just as you were gone, and made no difficulties, but has promised me that I shall have you, which I assure you is a great joy to me. I should say a great deal for your kindness in offering it, but I am not good at compliments. I will only say that I do take it extremely kind, and shall be ready at any time to do you all the service that lies in my power.”[^[81]]

This graceful mode of making the person on whom the favour was conferred, appear to give, not to receive, the benefit, was met by Lady Churchill, according to her own account, with a sincerity which was the surest test of regard, and the proof of real gratitude.

“I both obtained and held this place without the assistance of flattery—a charm which, in truth, her (the Princess’s) inclination for me, together with my unwearied application to serve and amuse her, rendered needless; but which, had it been otherwise, my temper and turn of mind would never have suffered me to employ. “Young as I was when I first became this high favourite, I laid it down as a maxim, that flattery was falsehood to my trust, and ingratitude to my dearest friend.”[^[82]]

“Well would it be for society if this maxim were universal!

“From this rule I never swerved; and though my temper and my notions in most things were widely different from those of the Princess, yet, during a long course of years, she was so far from being displeased with me for openly speaking my sentiments, that she sometimes professed a desire, and even added her command, that it should be always continued, promising never to be offended at it, but to love me the better for my frankness.”[^[83]]

Consistently with this injunction, we find the Princess thus affectionately addressing her future “viceroy.”

“If you will not let me have the satisfaction of hearing from you again before I see you, let me beg of you not to call me your highness at every word, but to be as free with me as one friend ought to be with another; and you can never give me a greater proof of your friendship, than in telling me your mind freely in all things, which I do beg you to do; and if ever it were in my power to serve you, nobody would be more ready than myself. I am all impatience for Wednesday, till when, farewell.”[^[84]]

The marriage of Anne was followed immediately by the execution of Lord Russell, which, with the trial and condemnation of Algernon Sidney, took place during the same month, and within five days of each other; and the populace, who had viewed with smothered indignation the sufferings of these patriots, were ready to cheer their future Princess, the Defender of their Faith. Subsequent events brought all thinking and disinterested observers to regard with hope the consistent though quiet adherence of the Princess to those principles in which her uncle Charles had from policy caused her to be nurtured; his firmness in this respect showing both the laxity of his own faith, and the paramount influence which worldly considerations had over his wavering and probably sceptical mind.

The banishment of the Duke of Monmouth from court, the execution of Sidney, the sentence of fine upon Hampden, the surrender of their charters by the corporations, and lastly, the death of Charles the Second, succeeded each other in rapid and fearful array; and a critical period to all those connected with public affairs was now drawing near. But the thoughtless life and pernicious example of the monarch who had so grossly betrayed his trust, now drew to its close; and the retribution of what are called “the pleasant vices” became more painful to the beholder from the force of contrast.

In the midst of a plan for subverting the liberties of his people, by forming a military power, to be governed solely by Roman Catholic officers, and devoted to the crown, Charles fell into despondency. His usual vivacity forsook him; and, with it, his gaiety of spirits, his politeness, in him the result of innate good-nature, deserted him. The best bred man in Europe became rude and morose. He saw indeed that the popularity which he had in the early part of his reign enjoyed, was now no longer his; he reflected that he had no son to succeed him; that he was, as far as the crown was concerned, childless. Monmouth, the child of shame, whom he had recklessly raised to honour and importance, had caballed against his father; yet that father loved him still. Monmouth had outraged the filial duties, but Charles could not eradicate from his own heart the parental affections. The unhappy King pined at the absence of his son. He perceived and dreaded the designs and principles of James, and was mortified at the court already paid to his successor. Upon some altercation between the brothers, Charles was one day heard to say, “Brother, I am too old to go to my travels a second time; perhaps you will.”[^[85]]

Broken-spirited, but not reclaimed, Charles sought to console himself in the dissolute conversation of those wretched women whose society had been the chief object of his life. But even the worst of men have an intuitive sense of what is due to domestic ties; and the mind is so constituted, that transient pleasure only, and not daily comfort, is to be found in those connexions which have the troubles, without the sanctity of marriage. The Duchess of Portsmouth, who is said really to have loved Charles, was unable to console him without sending for his son. Monmouth came, and was admitted to an interview with his father; but whilst measures were being concerted for sending James again into Scotland, Charles was struck with apoplexy. He died in two days afterwards, by his last act reconciling himself to the Church of Rome, and belying all his previous professions. “He was regretted,” says Dalrymple, “more on account of the hatred which many bore to his successor, than of the love entertained to himself.”[^[86]]

CHAPTER III.
1684 TO 1687.

State of manners and morals—Of parties—Defence of Churchill—His share in the Revolution—Progress of that event.

The new reign brought with it early demonstrations of royal confidence towards Lord Churchill, and consequently to his wife. Almost the first act of James was to despatch Churchill to Paris to notify his accession, and to establish more firmly the good faith which already subsisted between James and the French monarch.

Lady Churchill, meantime, continued to hold the same post near the person of Anne, who resided at her palace in the Cockpit, Westminster. The Duchess, in her “Conduct,” has given no insight into this period of her life. We may suppose it to have been passed in the quiescent round of duties more insipid than fatiguing, and in the still more irksome society of the domestic, good-natured, but uninteresting Princess.

The court amusements in those days were of a description perfectly in unison with the tastes and habits of the higher classes, to whom the satire of St. Evremond, upon a similar order of persons in France, might have been, without even a shadow of sarcasm, applied. “You live in a country,” says St. Evremond, writing to Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, “where people have wonderful opportunities of saving their souls: there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode as virtue; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good manners, almost as much as religion.”[^[87]] The sarcasm was just,—that not what is good or what is bad, but what was considered fashionable, or agreeable, was the rule for those who lived in the great world to observe. Gambling was the passion, intrigue the amusement, of those days of fearful iniquity. The female sex, in all ages responsible for the tone given to morals and manners, were in a state of general depravity during the whole period of Lady Churchill’s youth; and even those who were reputed most virtuous, and held up as patterns to their sex, overlooked, if they did not countenance, the open exhibition of vice within their very homes. The Duchess of Buckingham, “a most virtuous and pious lady in a vicious age and court,”—“lived lovingly and decently with” her husband, the arch-profligate of the time; and though she knew his delinquencies, never noticed them, and had complaisance enough even to entertain his mistresses, and to lodge them in her own house.[^[88]] Queen Katharine, the neglected and insulted wife of Charles the Second, deemed it her conjugal duty to fall down on her knees at his deathbed, and to entreat pardon for her offences. Whereupon the King vouchsafed to answer her, “that she had offended in nothing.”[^[89]] So humbled, so degraded, were the few virtuous female members of the debased English aristocracy; and so slight was that virtue which could bear, in the closest tie, the constant exhibition of vice! That a woman should forgive—that her best interests, her only chance of happiness, consist in a dignified endurance of the worst of evils, a vicious husband—no reasonable being can doubt; but that as a Christian, as a female, she cannot be excused in remaining within the contamination of vice, is not to be disputed.

Continental alliances, the exile of the restored Princes during the greater portion of their youth, and the consequent introduction of foreign amusements and foreign manners, to which we must add a yet tottering and unsettled national faith, may account, in a great measure, for this universal corruption. Nor can we suppose the lofty Lady Churchill to have escaped wholly from the pernicious influence of what she must have seen and heard. Masquerading was the rage; and not only in private, or in gay halls or banquet-rooms, but in the streets and alleys, the theatre, and other places of public resort, it was adopted as a diversion, to pass away hours tedious to uneducated minds.

In the reign of Charles, Frances Jennings, the eider sister of the Duchess, was flattered, rather than ashamed, at the publicity of her adventure in the theatre, disguised as an orange-girl, in the sight of the Duchess of York, her patroness, and of the whole court.[^[90]] The frolic was, indeed, fully borne out in its extravagance and assurance by precedent. “At this time,” says Bishop Burnet, “the court fell into much extravagance in masquerading; both the King and the Queen and all the court went about masked, and came into houses unknown, and danced there with wild frolic. In all this, people were so disguised, that, without being in the secret, none could know them. They were carried about in hackney chairs. Once the Queen’s chairmen, not knowing who she was, went from her. So she was quite alone, and was much disturbed, and came to Whitehall in a hackney coach, some say in a cart.”[^[91]]

On another occasion, Queen Katharine thought it not unseemly to resort to a fair at Audley, in company with the Duchesses of Buckingham and Richmond, disguised like country lasses, all in red petticoats, waistcoats, et cetera; Sir Bernard Gascoigne riding before the Queen on “a cart jade,” and the two Duchesses also on double horses, one with a stranger before her, the other with Mr. Roper. These ladies happened so to have overdressed their parts, as to excite the attention of the crowd; looking, as it is related, “more like antiques than country volk.” The Queen, however, who made her way up to a booth, to buy “a pair of yellow stockings for her sweethart,” was discovered, as well as her attendant, Sir Bernard, “by their giberish,” to be strangers. The result may easily be supposed; the assembled country people mounted their horses, and, all amazement and curiosity, pursued the royal party to the court gate.[^[92]]

This adventure was, however, less remarkable in those days, from the practice which Charles the Second maintained, of pursuing his diversions almost continually in the midst of his people, walking about the town without guards, and with a single friend. Hyde Park, described by a contemporary as “a field near the town,” and used as a course, was beginning to be fashionable, and was preferred to other places of resort by Charles, on account of its fine air, and extent of prospect. It was at this time the private property of a publican, and the entrance was guarded by porters with staves, by whom a sum of money was levied upon every horseman, coach, or cart that entered.[^[93]] Here, to give a specimen of the manners of the day, Charles exhibited one of the first coaches made with glass windows, presented to him by the accomplished Grammont, and the source of a bitter contention between Lady Castlemaine, and Miss Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, as to which of them should succeed the Queen, and the Duchess of York, in the distinction of driving in the new-fashioned vehicle.

Spring Gardens, the resort of the fashionable world after driving in Hyde Park, and the scene in which many of the plots of our old comedies are laid, were also much in vogue at this period. “Here” says an old writer, “were groves and warbling birds, alleys and thickets,” and in the centre a place for selling refreshments, similar to the cafés in the Parc at Brussels, or in the Bois de Boulogne at Paris. And here, the enclosure opening into the broad walks of St. James’s Park, were many idle hours wiled away by both sexes. These recreations, with water parties on the Thames, were the amusements in which the soberminded Anne, and her high-bred and haughty attendant, Lady Churchill, might indulge without loss of dignity, or danger to reputation.

The Princess regulated her household concerns with the utmost order, and maintained a decree of economy which could not have been carried on had she mixed generally in the amusements of the court, or dipped into the dangerous diversions of games of chance.[^[94]] According to the Duchess of Marlborough, she had a much less allowance for her privy purse than any previous sovereign had before received;[^[95]] but she managed with so much prudence, as to pay out of that, and from the civil list, many pensions and other matters, which had never previously been discharged from the same source.

“She bought no jewels,” says her friend, “nor made any foolish buildings during the whole of her reign;”—“and in the article of robes,” continues the Duchess, “she was saving; for it will appear by all the records in the Exchequer, where the accounts were passed, that in nine years she spent only 32,050l., including the Coronation expenses.”[^[96]]

In the service of this staid Princess, Lady Churchill continued an inactive, but not an inattentive observer of all that was passing in the busy world, in which her turn to govern, and to shine with unrivalled splendour, had not yet arrived. Anne, meantime, was occupied with maternal cares. Her first living child, a daughter, died when a year old, in 1686;—another similar loss, nearly at the same age, succeeded. Some years afterwards, the birth of William, declared at his baptism to be Duke of Gloucester, an event which took place at Hampton Court in 1689, was regarded by the country, as well as by the royal parents of this cherished and promising child, as a boon which might completely establish the Protestant succession.

During the short but eventful reign of James, little is mentioned of Lord Churchill, or of his lady. Whatever were their sentiments, they engaged in no public discussion on the occurrences which agitated all men’s minds, until the revolution was ripe for execution. From the King’s first public attendance at mass, to his secret and hurried departure from his kingdom, all was confusion and mournful anticipation, and, by a succession of tragical events, the public mind was prepared for the last great result.

At length Queen Mary became the mother of a living son, and in the disputes to which the birth of the Prince of Wales gave rise, we find Lady Churchill’s name mentioned in some correspondence relative to that affair. Party differences ran high upon this subject, and Lord Chesterfield is of opinion that the shameful fable of the Prince’s supposititious birth effected more to secure the Protestant succession than any other event whatsoever. The concurring testimony of successive writers has now assigned to the unfortunate Pretender the legitimacy which, by the singular and audacious attempts of a faction, and the fabrication of a servant, was disputed. Happy would it have been for that individual if the calumnies of his enemies had had foundation, and the secure contentment of a private station had been his lot!

Lady Churchill appears, from some expressions of the Princess Anne, to have been a witness of the singular intrigues which, in behalf of Anne’s interests, as well as to further those of the Protestant cause, were carried on, to throw discredit on the birth of the Prince. Various were the accounts of the part taken by Anne on this occasion. It is said, that upon some quarrel on the subject between her Highness and the Queen, touching the approaching confinement of the latter, her Majesty, sitting at her toilet, threw her glove at the face of the Princess; upon which Anne, indignant, withdrew from court; and upon the pretext of her health, or perhaps in consequence of the command of the King, she repaired to Bath, in order to drink the waters at that fashionable place of resort.[^[97]] From this circumstance, the Princess was absent at the time of the birth of the infant Prince; but her letters upon the subject, and the inferences which she draws from details gathered from hearsay, afford a curious specimen of the coarseness of court gossip, and the peculiar vulgarity and common-place character of Anne’s mind.[^[98]]

It is a proof of the consistent firmness of Lord Churchill in adhering to the mode of faith which he venerated, that no employment, nor any distinction but a colonelcy of a troop of horse-guards upon the quelling of Monmouth’s insurrection, was assigned to him during the short reign of James, for he was not of that material which James wanted to turn to active purposes.

Whilst the King’s designs were not developed, and the liberties of his country were not openly threatened, Lord Churchill remained inactive, if not neutral: but, after the declaration of Indulgences in 1686, he was roused into exertion by apprehensions from past events, perfectly justifiable. That he had also private intelligence of James’s endeavours to gain the Princess over to his religious persuasion, appears from the statement given by the Duchess, in her concise account of affairs at this period.

“What were the designs of that unhappy Prince (James) everybody knows. They came soon to show themselves undisguised, and attempts were made to draw his daughter into them. The King, indeed, used no harshness with her; he only discovered his wishes, by putting into her hands some books and papers, which he hoped might induce her to a change of religion; and had she had any inclination that way, the chaplains were such divines as could have said but little in defence of their own religion, or to secure her against the pretences of popery, recommended to her by a father, and a King.”[^[99]]

Anne had been the object, since her father’s accession, of the jealousy of the court, on account of her having borne children. In her heart a true Protestant, she had expressed herself to Lady Churchill, two years previously, in a manner which showed evidently that she was not disposed to be a convert, and which proved also her dependence upon her strong-minded friend. Her expressions relate to the introduction of four peers of the Roman Catholic persuasion into the privy council.

“I was very much surprised,” she writes, “when I heard of the four new privy counsellors, and am very sorry for it; for it will give great countenance to those sort of people, and methinks it has a very dismal prospect. Whatever changes there are in the world, I hope you will never forsake me, and I shall be happy.”[^[100]]

These sentiments, consistent with the character of a Princess who is said, by one who knew her best, “to have had no ambition,”[^[101]] were participated by the Prince of Denmark, who, although a privy counsellor during the reign of his father-in-law, had always been treated with coldness by that sovereign. Upon the declaration of Indulgences by James in his own person, without the consent of parliament, Lord Churchill began overtures to the Prince of Orange, through Dykefelt his agent, and Russell and Sidney, the great instruments of the revolution. The resolution of the Princess Anne to “suffer all extremities, even to death itself, rather than be brought to change her religion,” was transmitted through the same channel. The terms in which these assurances were conveyed, were worthy of the great mind from which they proceeded.

“In all things but this,” writes Lord Churchill to the Prince of Orange, “the King may command me; and I call God to witness that, even with joy I should expose my life for his service, so sensible am I of his favours. I know the troubling you, sir, with this much of myself, I being of so little use, is very impertinent; but I think it may be a great ease to your Highness and the Princess to be satisfied that the Princess of Denmark is safe in the trusting of me; I being resolved, though I cannot live the life of a saint, if there be ever occasion for it, to show the resolution of a martyr.”[^[102]]

Happily, however, there proved to be no necessity for the performance of this brave determination; “the projects of that reign,” as the Duchess well observes, “being effectually disappointed as soon as they were openly avowed.”[^[103]]

The birth of a son, and the ceremony which declared him to be Prince of Wales, accelerated, in a marked manner, the course of the infatuated King’s destruction. Nonconformists, and the High Church party, Whigs and Tories, now plainly foresaw a total subversion of government in Church and State, all hopes of a Protestant succession to the throne being annihilated. Those who had upheld the doctrine of passive obedience, perceived that they were authorised, by the measures which James adopted, to form schemes for the prevention of his further designs: otherwise there would be no difference between the constitution of Great Britain and that of an absolute monarchy. The doctrines of passive obedience had, it was well understood, been so industriously spread throughout the laity, as well as among the clergy, from a dread of those excesses which the Presbyterians and Conformists had permitted and extenuated in the last revolution, that many conscientious persons for some time doubted whether they ought to refuse an unlimited obedience to the sovereign. But the dangers of a sinking state, and of a tottering church, opened the eyes even of the most scrupulous, and convinced them that much ought to be sacrificed, in order to restrain the royal prerogative, and to save their best interests, and the objects of their veneration, from destruction.[^[104]]

Under these threatening clouds, an union of all parties began to be considered as the only safe, the only practicable, the only honourable project to guard the country from anarchy, by protecting the laws. Nor can those be censured, who from considerations of such importance, and from general views, divest themselves, in such an extremity, of private interests, even of private obligations, for the sake of ensuring peace, by obtaining justice, and with it, the protection of a moderate and constitutional ruler. It requires infinite moral courage to give up the long-maintained and often-repeated dogmas of a party; and we are bound to hope, and to believe, that when great evils require so great a sacrifice, the motive which impels the change must proceed from some source higher than mere personal advancement. But unhappily, the world generally judges otherwise.

Lord Churchill, and the gifted woman who probably in a great degree participated his irresolution, and influenced his counsels, have shared largely in the condemnation bestowed upon others who adopted the same course which they, on this great occasion, thought it wise and right to pursue. Those who accuse them of ingratitude, must, however, recollect that there is a higher degree of gratitude than any which can be due to an earthly power; and that there are duties which no obligations can annul; a disregard of which becomes treachery in its most extended sense.

The conduct of Lord Churchill, throughout the reign of James the Second, was a consistent endeavour to withdraw from all participation in honours which he could not receive from the King without degradation, and from schemes which he must have viewed with disgust. Even when James sent to require his presence at the birth of the Prince of Wales, he declined to attend, assigning some slight reason. His desertion of James, as it was called, was the work of some years, not the sudden impulse of a day; it was wrung from Churchill unwillingly, and by painful degrees, and not till after his reflective mind had been saddened by an unparalleled succession of injuries inflicted upon his unhappy country, until mournful presage knew not where to stop. Brought up in notions of devoted loyalty to the Stuarts, his own family, that of his wife, his intimate friends, and his brothers, being all wedded to the same opinions and devoted to the same cause, the conduct of Churchill on this occasion astounded the King more, it is said, than that of any of the other men of character and influence of the time. It was easy for the enemies of Churchill, or of his party—for personal enemies he could scarcely have—to account for the measures taken with caution, but pursued with vigour and firmness, by this great man. Dean Swift, whose aspersions, unlike most ephemeral writings, ate into the heart of his victims like caustic, and when once engrafted on the memory even of the indifferent, can scarcely be erased, has thus in his own charitable way explained the matter.

In describing the character of Churchill he says:—“He was bred up in the height of what is called the Tory principle, and continued with a strong bias that way till the other party had bid higher for him than his friends could afford to give.”[^[105]] In another singular production of the day, entitled “Oliver’s Pocket Looking Glass,” he was compared to Judas, and even reproached for ingratitude towards James, on the score of his lavish generosity to the degraded Arabella Churchill, the sister of the Duke.[^[106]] But Churchill adopted not the measures which he prudently but resolutely adhered to, without a respectful but manly remonstrance with James, which proved his real attachment to the royal person, and his desire to warn him, if possible, from continuing his infatuated course.[^[107]]

The recapitulation of those events by which the liberties of the people, and the stability of the Church of England, were secured, belong to history. The fatal blow given to the King’s power was struck by the union of the Tories and the Whigs. Whilst the majority of the laity and clergy laboured in conjunction to effect the important end in question, some there were who deemed that determined but calm resistance rebellion, and who formed the new party under the name of Jacobites.

After this explanation, it is obvious what path the subject of this Memoir was henceforth called to pursue; although in a secure and peaceful course, even in that popular career, she and Lord Churchill were not, from the difficulties of the times, enabled to continue.

1688. At length, after a delay of a month within his own territories, the Prince of Orange hastened to the sea-coast, in order to set sail for England. But he was prevented from embarking by continued south-west winds, which lasted for nearly three weeks, during which time the anxiety of the English, and of the inhabitants of London in particular, could only be equalled by the panic of James, and the miserable uncertainties of all who were connected with the royal family.

Meantime all ordinary occupations in the city of London were suspended; the usually busy citizens were employed in inquiring the news, and in looking at the steeples and weathercocks to ascertain which way the wind blew. The general eagerness for the arrival of William was only exceeded by the general apathy respecting James. Even prayers were offered for that usually unwelcome visitant, an east wind, or, as it was now christened, “the Protestant wind.”[^[108]] Many individuals were known to rise in the night, to gratify their curiosity on this point.

But this intense expectation pervaded the metropolis only. In the country there was an indifference more fatal to James than the utmost turbulence could have proved: “A state of apathy,” says Dalrymple, “which to the wise appeared more dangerous to the King than all the zeal of those in London against him; for opposition leads to opposition of sentiment; but that Prince approaches to his ruin whose subjects are unconcerned about his fate.” Meantime James, blinded by his danger, gave orders for the host to be elevated forty days for his protection: thus rashly offending the opinions of that people whom he vainly attempted to enslave.[^[109]]

At length the Prince of Orange, after many interruptions and dangers, landed at Torbay, whilst the King, still confiding in the protection of those spiritual weapons upon which he placed reliance, remained inert. When a report that the armament of the Prince of Orange was shipwrecked was brought to him one day at dinner, he was heard with great devotion to say, “It is not to be wondered at, for the host has been exposed these several days.” Even his adversary was not without some superstitious feelings; his great desire being to land on the fourth of November, because it was his birthday and his marriage-day, and it might therefore prove fortunate. But his English adherents were rejoiced that the landing could not be made effectual until the day after, which was the anniversary of the discovery of the gunpowder plot.

Notwithstanding a conditional promise from James, “upon the faith of a King,” to call a free Parliament, disaffection to his cause grew rapidly, spreading among those upon whom the unhappy monarch had most fondly relied. He placed himself, however, at the head of his assembled troops, consisting of twenty-four thousand men, at Salisbury, resolving, as he declared, to show himself King of England.[^[110]] He entrusted the command of a brigade to Lord Churchill, whom he appointed lieutenant-general. The memorable letter addressed by Churchill to his sovereign, relinquishing the command, did not guard him from certain strictures upon this passage of his life; with what measure of justice, it has been left to the biographers of that illustrious general to declare.[^[111]]

Meantime the Princess Anne and Prince George were acting in concert with the popular party, whom they had long secretly favoured, although the exact mode and time of their proceedings appears not to have been fixed. During the six days that James remained at Salisbury, the unhappy monarch’s mind was every hour fretted and depressed by the news of some fresh defection. The first sea-officer that went over to the Prince of Orange was the brother of Lord Churchill, Captain Churchill, who joined the Dutch fleet with his ship. Humbled and alarmed lest he should be delivered up even by his own troops, James retreated towards London. The night before he commenced his march, Prince George of Denmark and the young Duke of Ormond, who had lately received the order of the garter, supped with him. The King was in deep dejection; the Prince and the Duke were also lost in thought, meditating their own private schemes. On the following morning intelligence was brought to James, that his two guests of the preceding evening had gone over in the night to the Prince of Orange. Prince George thought it his duty to leave a letter of excuses. This royal personage, long a cipher in the court, which he could be said neither to disturb nor to adorn, had been accustomed to say, when he heard of the desertion of any of James’s friends, “Est-il possible?” an ingenious mode of avoiding any expected opinion on so awkward a subject. On being acquainted with the Prince’s flight, James recalled to his attendants the notable phrase, by the sarcastic observation, “So est-il possible is gone too!” And with this sole exclamation he allowed his relative to pass from his remembrance.

Having left his troops quartered at different places, deserted indeed as he went along by most of his officers, but retaining the common soldiers, whose simple reasoning taught them to follow their sovereign, James re-entered his capital.

But here a severer blow than any which he had hitherto experienced, fell upon him: the Princess Anne had fled. At first, to aggravate the distress of James, a mystery was made of her flight, and it was insinuated that the King, by encouraging the Papists, had been instrumental in the death of his child. The Earl of Clarendon, her maternal uncle, and her nurse, ran up and down like distracted persons, declaring that the Papists had murdered the Princess. James, who had fondly loved his daughter, and who had always shown her the utmost tenderness,[^[112]] burst into tears, and in the agonies of parental feeling exclaimed—“God help me, my own children have forsaken me!”

He had trusted, as it seemed, to the kindly and womanly nature of Anne; but her affection was considerably less than her prudence. Yet public opinion, adjudging to the Princess those softer qualities which become a wife and a daughter, were willing to exculpate her, at the expense of her advisers, for a feature in her character and conduct which offended the natural feelings. It was soon perceived that an ill-timed caution, not excusable fear, dictated her flight. By all good minds Anne has been, and she remains, condemned for this act.

It was doubtless the duty of the Princess to remain, to have received and consoled her father. However others might judge or counsel, she was still his child; and the heart which could be cold towards a parent in such an extremity as that in which the degraded and unhappy monarch now found himself, must have been deficient in all that is high and generous, even if it could boast some amiable dispositions in the sunshine of life.

It was soon ascertained with whom, and where, Anne had fled; and the public, commonly right in matters of feeling, could not readily forgive her whom they fixed upon as the prime adviser of the Princess.

Upon learning that the Prince of Denmark had deserted the King, and that James was returning to London, the Princess, as Lady Churchill in her own Vindication declared, was “put into a great fright. She sent for me,” continues the same writer, “told me her distress, and declared that rather than see her father she would jump out of the window. This was her very expression.”[^[113]]

Such was Anne’s first outbreak of emotion, not for her father, but for herself; it was probable she was more afraid of her quick-tempered stepmother than of her subdued and unhappy father. A rumour had indeed prevailed that the Queen had treated the Princess ill, and had even gone so far as to strike her.[^[114]] Be that as it might, Anne addressed a letter to her stepmother, announcing that having heard of her husband’s desertion of James, she felt too much afraid of the King’s displeasure to remain, and to risk an interview. She stated her intention not to remove far away, in order that she might return in case of a happy reconciliation. She declared herself in a distressing condition, divided between duty to a husband, and affection to a father; and, after commenting upon the state of public affairs, she ended her epistle in these terms:—“God grant a happy end to all these troubles, that the King’s reign may be prosperous, and that I may shortly meet you again in peace and safety. Till then, let me beg of you to continue the same favourable opinion that you hitherto had of

“Yours, &c.

“Anne.”

The following account of the caution with which Anne concerted her flight, and the mode in which she put it into execution, is given by her who acted so conspicuous a part in the tragicomic transaction.

“A little before,[^[115]] a note had been left with me, to tell me where I might find the Bishop of London, (who in that critical time absconded,) if her Royal Highness should have occasion for a friend. The Princess, on this alarm, sent me immediately for the Bishop. I acquainted him with her resolution to leave the court, and to put herself under his care. It was hereupon agreed that, when he had advised with his friends in the city, he should come about midnight in a hackney coach to the neighbourhood of the Cockpit, in order to convey the Princess to some place where she might be private and safe.

“The Princess went to bed at the usual time, to avoid suspicion. I came to her soon after; and by the back-stairs which went down from her closet, her Royal Highness, my Lady Fitzharding, and I, with one servant, walked to the coach, where we found the Bishop and the Earl of Dorset. They conducted us that night to the Bishop’s house in the city, and the next day to my Lord Dorset’s, at Copt Hall. From thence we went to the Earl of Northampton’s, and from thence to Nottingham, where the country gathered round the Princess; nor did she think herself safe until she saw herself surrounded by the Prince of Orange’s friends.”[^[116]]

Inoffensive, and even popular from her strict adherence to Protestantism, Anne immediately met with defenders. A small body of volunteers mustered round her, and formed a guard, commanded by no less a person than Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, the resolute prelate who had opposed the court on various occasions, and especially in his refusal to suspend a Protestant clergyman for exposing papistical errors.[^[117]] This zealous man, who had been a cornet of dragoons in his youth, now rode before the Princess and her suite, including Lady Churchill, carrying a drawn sword in his hand, and pistols on his saddle-bow.[^[118]] In this chivalric guise the fugitive party reached Northampton, and travelled on to Nottingham; where the gallant Earl of Devonshire, the friend of Russell, had raised a band of volunteers to assist the cause of the revolution.

It happened that the famous Caius Gabriel Cibber, the sculptor, or, as it was called in those days, statuary, was at this time at Chatsworth, engaged by Lord Devonshire in the embellishment of that sumptuous place, and, in the words of Colley Cibber, in altering “from a Gothic to a Grecian magnificence.” Colley Cibber himself was visiting at Chatsworth, in order to be under the restraint of his father’s eye, until the period of his going to college should arrive; no unnecessary precaution, as it appeared by his after life. Colley Cibber, in pursuance of his father’s commands, travelled from London to Nottingham, and found the country in a state, if it may be so expressed, of peaceful commotion. When he arrived at Nottingham, he found his father in arms there, among the Earl’s volunteer company. Caius, the sculptor, whose undying fame is preserved in the exquisite figures on Bethlehem Hospital, was aged, and averse to the thoughts of a winter campaign; and he persuaded his patron to allow him to retire to Chatsworth to finish his works, and to substitute his young son, more fit for the business of war, into his honours and regimentals.

The Earl consented, and Colley Cibber “jumped,” as he expressed it, “into his father’s saddle.”

He had not been many days at Nottingham, before news of the Princess Anne’s flight reached that city, accompanied by the report that two thousand of the king’s dragoons were in pursuit to bring her back to London. On this alarm, the volunteers scrambled to arms, and advanced some miles on the London road, in order to meet the Princess and her cavalcade, Anne being attended only by the Lady Churchill and by the Lady Fitzharding. The party, thus guarded, entered Nottingham in safety, and were lodged and provided for by the care and at the charge of the Earl of Devonshire; and the same night all the noblemen and other persons of distinction in arms had the honour to sup at her Highness’s table. There being more guests in number than attendants out of liveries to be found, Cibber, being well known in the Earl of Devonshire’s family, was desired by the maître d’hotel to assist at the table. It fell to the lot of the young officer of volunteers to attend upon Lady Churchill, and he has left the following interesting memorandum of that occasion.

“Being so near the table, you may naturally ask me what I might have heard to have passed in conversation at it, which I certainly should tell you, had I attended to above two words that were uttered there, and those were, ‘some wine and water.’ These, as I remember, came distinguished to my ear, because they came from the fair guest whom I took such pleasure to wait on. Except at that single sound, all my senses were collected into my eyes, which, during the whole entertainment, wanted no better amusement than that of stealing now and then the delight of gazing on the fair object so near me. If so clear an emanation of beauty, such a commanding grace of aspect, struck me into a regard that had something softer than the most profound respect in it, I cannot see why I may not, without offence, remember it, since beauty, like the sun, must sometimes lose its power to choose, and shine into equal warmth the peasant and the courtier.”[^[119]]

Such was the impression which Lady Churchill, most likely unconsciously, produced upon the imaginative Cibber, who, fifty years after this memorable scene, describes it in the foregoing glowing terms.

The Duchess, in more homely phrase, thus describes the share which she took in this event, in the narrative which her enemies feared would be posthumous;[^[120]] so late in life was it before she could resolve to enter upon a review of those events of her youth, in which sweet and bitter recollections were mingled.

“As the flight of the Princess to Nottingham has been by some ignorantly, not to say maliciously, imputed to my policy and premeditated contrivance, I thought it necessary to give this short but exact relation of it. It was a thing sudden and unconcerted; nor had I any share in it, further than obeying my mistress’s orders in the particulars I have mentioned, though indeed I had reason enough on my own account to get out of the way, Lord Churchill having likewise, at that time, left the King, and gone over to the other party.”[^[121]]

The assistance which Lady Churchill afforded the Princess on this occasion, was the first action of her life in which she directly took a share in public affairs, and evinced the effects of that influence upon her gracious patroness, which afterwards became so conspicuous and remarkable. Her conduct was severely criticised, and “a deluge of scurrility, falsehood, and defamation,”[^[122]] was drawn down upon her by this first manifestation of her importance in the political world.

In analysing her conduct in this transaction, we have first to consider the truth of her statements, and afterwards the cogency of those reasons which swayed her actions at so critical a period.

It is scarcely possible, in the first place, to suppose that no plan had been concerted by the Princess and her friends, for her security in a storm which they must have beheld lowering for some considerable period of time. Lord Churchill had chalked out his own course, and with that decision and prudence which characterized his whole career, had avowed his intentions, and carried them promptly into effect. Prince George, a weaker vessel, had coqueted with the winds, and hovered about the shore, before putting out his barque of small resolution to sea, trusting to the only gale that ever blew him any importance in the course of his royal existence. These two, for the time, influential men, the one borrowing all his small lustre from the Princess his wife, the other passionately attached to a woman of rising influence and of strong discernment, could never have desired to conceal their projects, nor even the slightest particulars of their daily movements, from those on whose affections they placed dependence, and whose sentiments were in unison with their own. There can be but little doubt that the plans for the demeanour of the Princess were fully matured before it was necessary to have recourse to action; with the Bishop of London, an avowed enemy to court measures, for her spiritual adviser, Lady Churchill for her friend, and Cavendish, the friend of Russell, for her host. Whether on this, and on all other occasions of minor politics, Lord Churchill controlled his wife, or his wife controlled him, it is of little purpose to inquire. On this occasion they doubtless were wholly agreed; nor can we view the actions of the Princess Anne from this period until the memorable year 1710, otherwise than with a reference to the opinions and wishes of her presiding genius.

To these observations may be added the rumours, stated by Lediard as facts, that six weeks before she left Whitehall, Anne had ordered a private staircase to be made, under pretext of a more convenient access to Lady Churchill’s apartments, but, in fact, to secure a mode of escape whenever her person or her liberty were in danger. The night before her Royal Highness withdrew, the Lord Chamberlain had orders to arrest the Ladies Churchill and Berkley, but, on the request of the Princess that he would defer executing those orders until after she had spoken to the Queen, he complied with her wishes. The Princess’s women, on entering her chamber the morning after her flight, were surprised to find their mistress fled; and the excitement of the people, on the suspicion of outrage to her, was so great, that they threatened to pull down Whitehall, unless the place of her retirement was instantly discovered.[^[123]]

It cannot be disputed but that the Princess acted with a degree of pusillanimity which was a feature in her character, and throughout her subsequent life made her the victim of daring minds, of whose intrigues she was the slave, and at the same time, from her exalted station, the active principle. Anne knew her father too well to suppose, that whilst he retained the power to defend his daughter, he would suffer her to be treated with indignity, or allow violence to be done to her feelings as a wife, or to her opinions as a Protestant. The pretext that it was unsafe for her to remain, on account of the schemes which might be formed against her by the priests, was a needless alarm, and an ungenerous insinuation. If we are to conclude that Princes may discard natural feeling, and ties of duty, from their consideration, in times of difficulty, we may commend the prudence of Anne in absenting herself from a scene of distress wherein her father was the chief actor; we may excuse her from remaining to receive the deserted and degraded king, justly expiating grave offences by the bitterest mortifications, but stung most by the utter alienation of one daughter, and the heartless discretion of the other. But had Anne continued in London, had she waited to receive the dishonoured King, and, by kindly sympathy and filial affection which is of no party, endeavoured to soothe the pangs of his return to his gloomy capital—had she thus solaced the most painful hours of a father whom she was to see no more, she would have compromised no party, nor entailed upon herself any responsibility. She was a passive neutral being; unambitious, and, in those days, whilst her brother and sister lived, comparatively unimportant: any breach of what is called consistency, that fatal word which seems, in a public sense, to be invented to banish sincerity and to smother nature, would, in her, have been attributed to the most amiable source; except, perhaps, by her stern formal brother-in-law, or by her virtuous, wise sister,—a pattern of wives, but an undutiful and heartless daughter, and a cold and ungracious sister.

Anne wanted soul—wanted resolution and character more than heart; and at a critical period, when she might have acted so as to avoid subsequent self-reproach, and might have reaped the satisfaction to her own mind that she had not added to the sharpness of the “serpent’s tooth,” she absconded—for the flight had much of that character—under the auspices of Lady Churchill, and guarded by the Bishop of London. It is natural to suppose that the yearnings which in her latter days she felt towards her brother, the Pretender, and her manifest distaste to the Hanoverian succession, proceeded, in a degree, from a too late regret for the part which on this occasion she had been induced to take, and which was quickly followed by her surrender of her right to William the Third.

There is something in the very style of Lady Churchill’s exposition of the whole matter, that marks a sense of shame and regret, as she slides rapidly over the particulars of the event.

Fearless herself, one may almost picture to the mind her contempt, when the Princess expressed, in childish terms, her fear of her father. Upon that point, the alleged excuse of her nocturnal flight, Lady Churchill endeavours guardedly to excuse her royal mistress. She dwells with far less minuteness and distinctness on her own motives than on the subsequent explanations of other matters, in which she avows and defends her unequivocal counsels to the Princess, and brings conviction that she acted a sincere and upright part on those occasions.

Her known character for resolutely maintaining her own will, in opposition even to that of Anne, fixed upon her all the ephemeral obloquy with which the Jacobite party assailed the proceeding. It was supposed, and not without reason, that the Princess was even at this time much more under her control, than was the first lady of the bedchamber under that of her mistress, whom she scorned to cajole, but contrived to command.

“Flattery, madam,” says her bitterest assailant, “is what you never happened to be accused of, nor of temporising with the humours of your royal patroness. The peccadillos you have been supposed answerable for, are of a quite contrary class—of playing the tyrant with your sovereign, of insisting on your own will in opposition to hers, and of carrying your own points with a high hand, almost whether she would or not.”[^[124]]

Yet, with the inconsistency which often accompanies invective, this foe of the Duchess adds: “Flattery does not always imply fulsome praises and slavish compliances; none but the grossest appetites can swallow such coarse food. There is a species, of a much more refined and dangerous nature, which never appears in its own shape, but makes its approaches in so happy a disguise, as to be mistaken for truth, simplicity, and plain dealing. Your Grace had discernment enough to find that the Princess had an aversion to the first; so you, very adroitly, made use of the last; and, as you confess yourself, found your account in it.”[^[125]]