William of Orange might rest—his work was accomplished.
Chapter XXXIII.
Queen Anne
War Of The Spanish Succession
(1702-1714).
"The master workman was dead," says Burke, "but his work had been conceived according to the true principles of art, and it had been executed in his mind." William of Orange was dead; after a reign incessantly contested, unpopular and stormy, scarcely had he breathed his last, when all he had done, and desired, was attacked, censured and disputed on every side. The edifice, however, was too firmly constructed, was founded upon moral principles too true, and based upon political necessities too serious, for the storms of party passion to overthrow. The coalition of Europe was to survive the loss of its chief; the liberties of England were forever delivered from the yoke of the Stuarts.
Queen Anne was proclaimed without opposition, and but few even of the Jacobites affected any astonishment at seeing her ascend the unoccupied throne. Their prince was still a child, and the last act to which William III. had put his hand was a bill of attainder against the Pretender, as King James III. of the Court of St. Germain began to be called in England. The queen had successively lost her seventeen children; the hope of the Jacobites changed its nature, and henceforth they confidently awaited the future.
Anne was thirty-seven years old, her health was poor and her intelligence limited; she was honest, and sincerely attached to the Church of England. Although naturally good and universally popular, grand views or great political and moral considerations were foreign to her; she never comprehended them, and allowed herself constantly to be controlled by some favorite that she frequently changed for frivolous reasons or caprices of management. These favorites were of both parties, but she showed a marked predilection for the Tories. The Whigs long governed during her reign, and to them belongs the honor of having continued the work begun by William III. Queen Anne, however, always regarded them with aversion and distrust. In the depths of her soul she had remained attached to the house of her father; her Protestant faith alone separated her from that brother whose birth she had stigmatized. She was timid, yet at the same time obstinate, indolent, and passionately attached to her royal prerogatives; unable to strike a great blow against public sentiment, but henceforth the mistress of England by the preponderant action of the House of Commons. Her favorites, all powerful while they were around her, had to learn the limit of their influence; their personal faults, and the grave errors of their conduct, were not the only reasons that led to the fall of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Soon constrained to rely upon the Whigs, as they alone seriously desired the war, Marlborough, but recently Tory and half Jacobite, was to fall with them.
Queen Anne.
Marlborough was still counted among the Tories, when Anne ascended the throne; he shared with Lord Godolphin the political confidence of the queen. The Duchess of Marlborough, haughty, violent and avaricious, naturally powerful and domineering, as well over her husband as over the queen, was the intimate friend of this little council. The influence of the Duke of Marlborough, as well as public sentiment, induced Anne to favor the war and fulfil England's engagements. The first speech from the throne clearly announced her resolution to continue, on this subject, the policy of King William III. "We cannot encourage our allies too much in their efforts to destroy the enormous power of France." Marlborough was sent as envoy extraordinary to the Hague, to assure the States-General of the intentions of the queen. As skilful a negotiator as he was great as a general, he knew from the first how to gain the confidence of Heinsius, and to give to the European powers a firm assurance of the maintenance of the Grand Alliance. On the 4th of May, 1702, a declaration of war was simultaneously promulgated at London, Vienna, and the Hague. Marlborough was appointed general-in-chief of the combined English and Dutch forces. After his first campaign upon the Meuse, although the successes were very insignificant, Anne raised him to the rank of Duke. She overwhelmed her favorite with the most lucrative offices. Finally, to perpetuate the splendor of his house, she demanded that parliament confer, with the title which she had given to the illustrious general, a pension of £5,000. The houses refused. The queen multiplied her personal favors; accepted with repugnance, or magnanimously refused at first, and subsequently reclaimed with avidity. When, in 1712, the Duchess of Marlborough had forever lost the favor of the queen, she demanded and obtained all the arrears of a pension of £2,000 that she had refused from the privy purse of the queen in 1702.