The duchess did not heed this advice of her clear-headed husband, but kept herself up to a pitch of excitement at what she called the barbarity, ingratitude, and wickedness of the queen. She accused her, too, of intrigue, though why the conversations she held with one of her attendants at the bedside of her declining husband should be so called it is difficult to understand. Her majesty treated Abigail Masham with confidence and consideration, because she assisted in the care of the prince-consort, who suffered from fearful attacks of asthma, and it was this attendant's duty to sleep at night on a pallet in the ante-chamber of her majesty's bed-room, within call.
Not long after the duchess discovered the marriage, when she was alone with the queen one day, she took her to task for having kept it secret, and told her that it plainly showed a change in her majesty's feeling towards her. The queen replied, "That it was not she who was changed, but the duchess," and added, "I believe I have begged Masham a hundred times to tell you of her marriage, but she would not."
This confession convinced the angry duchess that she had been a subject of discussion, and she became more indignant than ever to think that so humble a person as her cousin Abigail should presume to speak with her majesty about so high and mighty a creature as herself. She determined to give the young woman a sound rating, but changed her mind, and wrote her an angry, undignified letter instead. But Sarah of Marlborough was not particularly well educated, and made as grave blunders as did her majesty in her attempts at letter-writing. Mrs. Masham, on the other hand, was a woman of talent, and wrote so well in reply as not only to astonish her correspondent, but to convince her that with the pen, at least, she was far her superior, and a person who could ably defend herself against any attack made on paper. Perhaps it would have been well had she explained the accident that caused the queen to overhear the duchess express her loathing and hatred of herself the day when she had put on the gloves by mistake. Abigail Masham might have written, "It was your shameful ingratitude, your offensive remarks, that changed her majesty's heart towards you;" but the secret was not hers, and there is no evidence of her having betrayed her royal mistress all the while she served her.
The queen's unwise consent to witness the secret marriage between Abigail Hill and Samuel Masham was all the proof the Duchess of Marlborough needed that she had been supplanted in the royal favor, and from that moment whatever change she observed she laid at the door of her successor. Some one has very wisely said of Mrs. Masham's turning her back on the duchess: "She was her near relative, and the defect of base ingratitude seems to run in her family. The duchess should have chosen her watch-dog on the queen, when she became too grand or too indolent to perform that needful office, from a better breed." Previous to her majesty's removal to Windsor for the summer, a very odd circumstance occurred, which we will leave the duchess and her wrangling for awhile to relate. It is about Prince Matveof, ambassador of Peter the Great of Russia. Having been recalled to Russia, the prince attended the queen's levee for the purpose of taking formal leave of her. No sooner had he left the palace than he was arrested for debt on a writ of Mr. Morton, lace dealer of Covent Garden, and locked up in the bailiff's house. The noble Russian had fought desperately, without seeming to understand why he was seized, and wounded several of the bailiff's men quite seriously. The next day the bill of fifty pounds was paid, and the matter explained; but, as the prince had not had the slightest intention of defrauding the tradesman, he was justly indignant, and left England thoroughly disgusted. When he got home the czar resented the indignity offered to his ambassador by putting a stop to intercourse of trade, adding a threat of declaration of war. Queen Anne entered into an elaborate explanation, and assured the czar that the insult did not originate from any wrong intended by her or her ministers, but arose from the rudeness of a tradesman. But his Russian highness was by no means satisfied, so he wrote a very formidable document requesting "the high and mighty Princess Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, to return him, by bearer, the head of Morton, the lace dealer of Covent Garden, together with the heads and hands of any of his aids and abettors in the assault upon Prince Matveof that her majesty might have incarcerated in her dungeons and prisons."
The queen was perfectly amazed at this demand for the heads and hands of her subjects, and requested her secretary "to assure the czar that she had not the disposal of any heads in her kingdom excepting those forfeited by the infraction of certain laws, which Mr. Morton and his assistants had not trespassed." The czar either could not, or would not, understand that Englishmen did not have their heads and hands chopped off at the caprice of the crown, and an angry correspondence was continued between the Russian and English governments for two years. At last a happy idea struck the queen, and she sent Mr. Whitworth, a gentleman who understood Russian customs, to say, "that although nothing had been acted against Prince Matveof but what the English law allowed, yet those laws were very bad and inhospitable ones, and that her majesty had had them repealed, so that his imperial highness's ambassadors could never again be subjected to such an injury."
This was no compliment, but a fact; for from that incident laws were caused to be made that protected ambassadors and their suites from arrest, which are in force to the present day. Such laws were sadly needed during Queen Anne's reign to prevent scenes of violence; for ambassadors took precedence according to the supposed rank of the sovereigns they represented. This being the case, the representatives of France and Spain, the two countries that were always at war, had a regular fight, aided by their retinues, at all public processions; they even went so far as to cut the traces of each other's coaches, lest the line should be broken and one dash in before the other. It is needless to say that the London populace immensely enjoyed such contests, and the "roughs" invariably gathered where the "mounseers," as they called them, were most likely to begin the fight. Sometimes they were quite serious, and more than one man lost his life while combating for position.