After the Blenheim victory the enthusiasm for the duke was very great; even those who hated him and those whom he had cheated were ready to greet him with frantic cheers.
The queen informed the house of commons that she desired to present the palace and grounds of Woodstock to the great hero and his heirs forever, and the act was passed a few weeks later. Her majesty ordered a portrait in miniature to be painted of the duke, which was sur-rounded by brilliants valued at eight thousand pounds, and the picture itself was covered with a diamond instead of glass. This magnificent gift was presented to the Duchess of Marlborough as a souvenir of the victory of Blenheim.
It need scarcely be said that while her husband stood so high in the royal favor, the influence of the Duchess of Marlborough remained unabated, and she compelled the queen to appoint all her officers of government from the Whig ranks. When her majesty hesitated, the upstart tyrant would vulgarly exclaim: "Lord, madam! it must be so!" Thus she secured for her friend, William Cowper, the high post of keeper of the Great Seal. The privilege of disposing of the church livings had belonged to the sovereign, but Lord Keeper Cowper now claimed it, and subsequently it was taken out of the hands of the crown entirely. The Church of England was never in greater danger of destruction than during Queen Anne's reign, because most of the dignitaries had been connected with some species of dissent. The prince consort was a Dissenter; but, worst of all, the violent duchess, her majesty's favorite and ruler, headed a strong band of free-thinkers, who hated the church.
A.D. 1705. In April her majesty, accompanied by her husband, made an excursion to Cambridge. She was received by the Duke of Somerset, who was then chancellor of the university, and attended an exhibition, where she distributed honorary degrees among the noblemen and gentlemen of her court. But the most memorable of Queen Anne's actions connected with this visit was the bestowing of knighthood on Dr. Isaac Newton at Trinity College. After holding a grand reception, dining at Trinity Hall, and attending divine service at the beautiful chapel of King's College, the royal party returned to Newmarket, where her majesty made a long sojourn.
A.D. 1706. Another great victory was won at Ramilies by the Duke of Marlborough, and another splendid thanksgiving procession took place at St. Paul's to celebrate it. At this period all the great offices of state were in the hands of the Marlborough family. The last of the appointments was the result of a serious contest between her majesty and the duchess, in which the latter came off victorious, as usual. This was the nomination of her son- in-law, Lord Sunderland, to the important office of secretary of state. When the queen yielded this point, the commander-in-chief and the lord treasurer were, one a son-in-law, the other father of a son-in-law of this ambitious couple. Their connections filled lucrative posts, besides, their daughters were ladies of the bed-chamber, and the mother herself, as mistress of the robes and groom of the stole, governed all the officials and the queen into the bargain. Never was this creature more insolent than when such was the state of affairs. She had contrived, by fair means or by foul, to appropriate the enormous income of ninety thousand pounds of the public funds, and the poor queen was miserable on account of what she had been made to suffer at the hands of the woman who was indebted to her for all she had, and for all she was. When she could no longer fail to perceive that the affection of her royal mistress had become estranged, the duchess began to inquire what new favorite had interposed to create ill feeling; for it was not in the nature of this woman to blame herself for anything.
She could not fix upon any one until the regular season for the distribution of the queen's cast-off clothing came around; then Abigail Hill, her cousin, excited her suspicion. Although the duchess pretended to act with perfect justice in dividing the old gowns, mantles, and head-dresses among the bed-chamber women and dressers of her majesty, they all declared that she invariably kept the best of them for herself. Seeing that Abigail Hill fared badly in the distribution, the queen made her some liberal presents, as well as Mrs. Danvers, whose dismissal the jealous duchess had frequently urged. But this liberality only increased the squabble over the old clothes, and the duchess declared that they were all hers by right.
Once when this Mrs. Danvers, one of the bed-chamber women, was so ill that she believed herself to be dying, she sent for the Duchess of Marlborough, and implored her to transfer her position with the queen to her daughter, who would be entirely unprotected after her death. The duchess declared her inability to do so, because of her being on bad terms with her majesty. Finding that to be the case, the sick woman told a long story about Abigail Hill's wickedness and general bad behavior, and wound up her narrative by informing her visitor that said Abigail had long been her secret enemy.
Queen Anne may have been desirous of dispensing charities, but the Duchess of Marlborough held the purse-strings so tightly that she was unable to do so. When she demanded a small sum of money, that tyrant would frequently tell her that "it was not fit to squander away money while so heavy a war lasted," though at that very time vast sums of the public funds were annually supplied for the building of the duke's house at Woodstock. A touching case of distress came under her majesty's notice in the sad fate of Sir Andrew Foster, a gentleman who had spent most of his life in the service of James II., and who had been ruined by his adherence to that sovereign. He died of starvation, in a miserable hut just outside of London, and Queen Anne was so shocked when she heard it that she determined, as it was too late to relieve the unfortunate Jacobite, he should at least be decently buried. For this object she was forced to borrow twenty guineas of Lady Fretchville, for she could not command so large a sum herself; and yet the Marlboroughs were then drawing sixty-four thousand pounds per annum from the public purse. Later the sum reached ninety-four thousand pounds.
A.D. 1707. The queen carried one extremely important point in violent opposition to the powerful duchess, and that was the union between Scotland and England. This measure was passed in both countries, signed and ratified in great state in the presence of the Scottish commissioners, the English ministers, and both houses of parliament. When Queen Anne signed this important ratification she said, "The union with Scotland is the happiness of my reign."
On the same day, April 24, her majesty dissolved the English house of commons, and summoned the first united parliament of Great Britain to meet the following October. The signing of the union was then celebrated by a grand national festival, and a few days later her majesty went in solemn procession to St. Paul's Cathedral to return thanks for the successful completion of this matter.