Queen Anne's decisive and unexpected action was mainly due to personal causes. The domestic tyranny which the Duchess of Marlborough had exercised over her for so many years, had at last reached the point at which it became unbearable. The duchess had grown harsher and ruder with advancing years, and treated her royal friend with such gross impertinence that even the placid Anne became resentful. She gradually transferred her friendship to a new favourite, Mrs. Masham, one of her ladies in waiting, and a cousin of the Tory leader Harley. Provoked by some final explosions of the jealous wrath of the duchess, the queen sought the secret advice of Harley, and suddenly dismissed her from her offices, and bade her leave the court. After a scene of undignified recrimination with her mistress, the disgraced favourite was forced to retire: on her departure she completely wrecked, in a fit of anger, the rooms which she had so long occupied in St. James's Palace (1710).
Godolphin and Sunderland dismissed.—A Tory ministry.
Godolphin and Sunderland were dismissed from power immediately after the disgrace of the duchess, and Harley and the Tories were at once installed in office. They left Marlborough in command in the Netherlands for a time, but began at once to open negotiations for peace with France. This was an honest attempt to carry out the Tory programme, but it was made in an underhand way, for the Dutch and Austrians were kept entirely in the dark, and received no news of the step that England was taking.
Marlborough superseded.
Meanwhile Marlborough fought his last campaign in France; Marshal Villars had endeavoured to stop him by a long system of entrenchments and redoubts stretching from Hesdin to Bouchain. But Marlborough always laughed at such fortifications: he deceived Villars by his skilful feints, and easily burst through the vaunted lines, which the Frenchman had called his ne plus ultra. He took Bouchain, and was preparing to advance into Picardy, when he suddenly received the information that he was dismissed from his post and recalled to England. Harley had found the French ready to treat, and was resolved to stop the war. He gave the Duke of Ormonde, a Tory peer, the command of the English army, with the secret instructions that he was not to advance, or help the Austrians in any way (1711).
His peculations exposed.—He leaves England.
Marlborough returned to England to protest, but found himself involved in serious troubles when he landed. The Tories had laid a trap for him, which his own avarice had prepared. He was accused of gross peculations committed while in command in Flanders. It was proved that he had taken presents to the amount of more than £60,000 from the contractors who supplied his army with food and stores. He had also received from the Emperor Joseph a douceur of 2-1/2 per cent. on all the subsidies which the English ministry had paid to Austria. More than £150,000 had gone into his pocket on this account alone. The discovery of these instances of greed blasted the duke's character; it was to no purpose that he pleaded that the money was a free gift, and that such transactions were customary in foreign services. He found himself looked upon askance by all parties, even by his old friends the Whigs, and retired to the continent.
The treaty of Utrecht.
In 1712, Harley, who had now been created Earl of Oxford, brought his negotiations with France to a close. They resulted in the celebrated treaty of Utrecht. By this agreement England recognized Philip V. as King of Spain and the Indies, stipulating that Austria and Holland were to be compensated out of the Spanish dominions in Italy and the Netherlands. France ceded to England Newfoundland, Acadia—since known as Nova Scotia—and the waste lands round Hudson's Bay. Spain also gave up Gibraltar and the important island of Minorca. Both France and Spain signed commercial treaties giving favourable conditions for English merchants. Even the long-closed monopoly of Spanish trade in South America was surrendered by the Asiento, an agreement which gave England certain rights of trade with those parts, especially the disgraceful but profitable privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves. Spain and France also recognized the Protestant succession in England, and agreed not to aid "the Pretender," as the young son of James II. was now called.