Lord Chesterfield seems to warm against her as he proceeds in his picture. ‘Cunning and perfidy,’ he says, ‘were the means she made use of in business, as all women do for want of a better.’ This blow is dealt at one poor woman merely for the purpose of smiting all. Caroline, no doubt, was full of art, and on the stage of public life was a mere, but most accomplished, actress. It must be remembered, too, that she was surrounded by cunning and perfidious people. Society was never so unprincipled as it was during her time; and yet, amid its unutterable corruption, all women were not crafty and treacherous. There were some noble exceptions; but these did not lie much in the way of the deaf and dissolute earl’s acquaintance.
‘She had a dangerous ambition,’ continues the same author, ‘for it was attended with courage, and, if she had lived much longer, might have proved fatal either to herself or the constitution.’ It is courage like Caroline’s which plucks peril from ambition, but does not indeed make the latter less dangerous to the people; which is, perhaps, what Chesterfield means. With respect to the Queen’s religion, he says: ‘After puzzling herself in all the whimsies and fantastical speculations of different sects, she fixed herself ultimately in Deism, believing in a future state.’ In this he merely repeats a story, which, probably, originated with those whose views on church questions were of a ‘higher’ tendency than those of her Majesty. And after repeating others, he contradicts himself; for he has no sooner stated that the Queen was not an agreeable woman, because she aimed at being a great one, than he adds, ‘Upon the whole, the agreeable woman was liked by most people—but the Queen was neither esteemed, beloved, nor trusted by anybody but the King.’ At least, she was not despised by everybody; and that, considering the times in which she lived, and the discordant parties over whom she really reigned, is no slight commendation. It is a praise which cannot be awarded to the King.
Let us add, that not only has Chesterfield said of Caroline that she settled down to Deism, ‘believing in a future state,’ but he has said the same, and in precisely the same terms, of Pope and—upon Pope’s authority—of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. Here is at least a double and, perhaps, as we should hope, a triple error.
The popular standard of morality was deplorably low throughout the reigns of the first two Georges. Marlborough was ridiculed for the unwavering fidelity and affection which he manifested towards his wife. There were few husbands like him, at the time, in either respect. He was satirised for being superior to almost irresistible temptations; he was laughed at for having prayers in his camp—for turning reverently to God before he turned fiercely against his foes; the epigrammatists were particularly severe against him because he was honest enough to pay his debts and live within his income. But ‘his meanness?’ Well, his meanness might rather be called prudence; and if his censurers had nourished in themselves something of the same quality, it would have been the better for themselves and their contemporaries, and, indeed, none the worse for their descendants. One of the alleged instances of Marlborough’s meanness is cited, in his having once played at whist with Dean Jones, at which he left off the winner of sixpence. The dean delayed to pay the stake, and the duke asked for it, stating that he wanted the sixpence for a chair to go home in. It seems to me that the meanness rested with the rich dean in not paying, and not with the millionaire duke in requiring to be paid.
No man ever spoke more disparagingly of Marlborough than his enemy, Lord Peterborough, though even he did justice to Marlborough’s abilities; but Lord Peterborough was especially severe on the duke’s love of money. The latter spent wisely, the former squandered profusely, and cheated his heirs. The duke in the Bath-rooms, dunning a dean for sixpence, is not so degrading a picture as Peterborough, in the Bath market, cheapening commodities, and walking about in his blue ribbon and star, with a fowl in his hand and a cabbage or a cauliflower under either arm. Peterborough was lewd and sensual, vain, passionate, and inconstant, a mocker of Christianity, and a remorseless transgressor of the laws of God and man. He was superior to Marlborough only in one thing—in spelling. A poor boast. Compare the duke, leading a well-regulated life, and walking daily with his God, to Peterborough, whose only approaches to religion consisted in his once going to hear Penn preach, because he ‘liked to be civil to all religions,’ and in his saying of Fenelon that he was a delicious creature, but dangerous, because acquaintance with him was apt to make men pious!
Marlborough’s favourite general, Cadogan, was one of the ornaments of the court of George and Caroline down to 1726. They had reason to regard him, for he was a staunch Whig, although, as a diplomatist, he perilled what he was commissioned to preserve. His morality is evidenced in his remark made when some one enquired, on the committal of Atterbury to the Tower for Jacobite dealings, what should be done with the bishop? ‘Done with him!’ roared Cadogan; ‘throw him to the lions!’ Atterbury, on hearing of this meek suggestion, burst out with an explosion of alliterative fierceness, and denounced the earl to Pope ‘as a bold, bad, blundering, blustering, bloody bully!’ The episcopal sense of forgiveness was on a par with the sentiment of mercy which influenced the bosom of the soldier.
But Marlborough’s social, severe, and domestic virtues were not asked for in the commanders of following years. Thus Macartney, despite the blood upon his hand, stained in the duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, was made colonel of the twenty-first regiment six years previous to the Queen’s death. General Webb, who died two years previously, was thought nothing the worse for his thrasonic propensity, and was for ever boasting of his courage, and alluding to the four wounds he had received in the battle of Wynendael. ‘My dear general,’ said the Duke of Argyle, on one of these occasions, ‘I wish you had received a fifth—in your tongue; for then everybody else would have talked of your deeds!’
Still more unfavourably shines another of the generals of this reign. Lord Cobham did not lack bravery, but he owed most of his celebrity to Pope. He did not care how wicked a man was, provided only he were a gentleman in his vices; and he was guilty of an act which Marlborough would have contemplated with horror—namely, tried hard to make infidels of two promising young gentlemen—Gilbert West, and George, subsequently Lord, Lyttelton.
Marlborough, too, was superior in morality to Blakeney, that brave soldier and admirable dancer of Irish jigs; but who was so addicted to amiable excesses, of which court and courtiers thought little at this liberal period, that he drank punch till he was paralysed. And surely it was better, like Marlborough, to play for sixpences, than, like Wade, to build up and throw down fortunes, night after night, at the gaming-table. But there was a more celebrated general at the court of the second George than the road-constructing Wade. John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair, was one of those men in high station whose acts tend to the weal or woe of inferior men who imitate them. Stair was for ever gaily allowing his expenditure to exceed his income. His sense of honour was not so keen but that he would go in disguise among the Jacobites, profess to be of them, and betray their confidence. And yet even Lord Stair could act with honest independence. He voted against Walpole’s Excise scheme, in 1733, although he knew that such a vote would cost him all his honours. He was accordingly turned out from his post of lord high admiral for Scotland. Caroline was angry at his vote, yet sorry for its consequences. ‘Why,’ said she to him, ‘why were you so silly as to thwart Walpole’s views?’ ‘Because, madam,’ was the reply, ‘I wished you and your family better than to support such a project.’ Stair merits, too, a word of commendation for his protesting against the merciless conduct of the government with respect to the captive Jacobites; and, like Marlborough, he was of praiseworthy conduct in private life, zealous for Presbyterianism, yet tolerant of all other denominations, and, by his intense attachment to a Protestant succession, one of the most valuable supporters of the throne of George and Caroline. Both the men were consistent; but equal praise cannot be awarded to another good soldier of the period. The Duke of Argyle, when out of office, declared that a standing army, in time of peace, was ever fatal either to prince or nation; subsequently, when in office, he as deliberately maintained that a standing army never had in any country the chief hand in destroying the liberties of the state. This sort of disgraceful versatility marked his entire political career; and it is further said of him that he ‘was meanly ambitious of emolument as a politician, and contemptibly mercenary as a patron.’ He had, however, one rare and by no means unimportant virtue. ‘The strictest economy was enforced in his household, and his tradesmen were punctually paid once a month.’ This virtue was quite enough to purchase sneers for him in the cabinet of King George and the court of Queen Caroline.
In the last year of the reign of that King died General Hawley, whose severity to his soldiers acquired for him in the ranks the title of lord chief justice. An extract from his will may serve to show that the ‘lord chief justice’ had little in him of the Christian soldier. ‘I direct and order that, as there’s now a peace, and I may die the common way, my carcase may be put anywhere, ’tis equal to me; but I will have no more expense or ridiculous show than if a poor soldier, who is as good a man, were to be buried from the hospital. The priest, I conclude, will have his fee—let the puppy take it. Pay the carpenter for the carcase-box. I give to my sister 5,000l. As to my other relations, I have none who want, and as I never was married, I have no heirs; I have, therefore, long since taken it into my head to adopt one son and heir, after the manner of the Romans; who I hereafter name, &c.... I have written all this,’ he adds, ‘with my own hand, and this I do because I hate all priests of all professions, and have the worst opinion of all members of the bar.’