“But it was all in vain; a transient smile might have been excited at such palpable absurdity; some partial good was perhaps effected; but fashion and faction were far too strong to be acted upon by wit, or argument, or eloquence, or satire. At a time when a low-bred, artful, ignorant bedchamber-woman, with no more sense than would have sufficed to smooth a crumpled ribbon or comb a lapdog, possessed supreme power, and Swift, Arbuthnot, Harley, and Bolingbroke were dancing attendance in her anteroom, it was in vain to preach to women the forbearance and reserve proper to their sex, to point out the confined sphere of their duties, or to remind them of the advice of Pericles to the Athenian women, ‘not to make themselves talked of one way or another.’ Mrs. Masham ruled the queen, but she was herself the contemptible tool of a set of designing men. In the end she and her tutor Harley triumphed; the Tories prevailed; the Whigs were all turned out; Marlborough was not only disgraced at court, but, by a sudden turn of feeling produced in the popular mind by the calumnies and contrivance of his enemies, he became an object of contempt and hatred; and he whose victories had been hailed with such national pride and exultation, found himself ‘baited with the rabble’s curse.’ This might have been contemned, for mere popular clamor dies away, and leaves no trace on the dispassionate page of history; but when Swift, the political gladiator of that time, collected all his terrible powers of invective and satire, and sarcasm, and fell upon the devoted general, branding, stabbing, and slashing at every stroke, he left the duke standing like a column scathed by the thunderbolt, and the lapse of a century has hardly enabled us to distinguish the truth from falsehood of his rancorous libels.”
The brilliant victories of the Duke of Marlborough, in alliance with the German princes under Prince Eugene, had filled all Europe with wonder. In 1704, the victory of Blenheim was achieved, and notwithstanding Marshal Villars’ heroism at the battle of Malplaquet, in 1709, the victory was gained by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, though so great was the loss of the allies, that Villars wrote to Louis XIV.: “If God permits us to lose such another battle, your Majesty can count on your enemies being destroyed.”
Marlborough had joined the Whigs because they were in favor of war; but now the Tories were gaining the ascendency in England; and with their coming into power peace was declared, and the Marlboroughs were deposed from their high places.
Wearied of the ill-temper of the haughty duchess, which broke out in most violent language even in the presence of the queen, Anne at last determined to rid herself of her overbearing companion, whose strong will had for so long a time awed her into submission; while the necessary military generalship of the illustrious duke had long kept the queen from daring to dismiss the insolent duchess, who at length forgot even her politic behavior in her fits of anger, and endeavored to scold back the favor of the queen which had been lost to her by her own impolitic arrogance, and through the wily cunning of her own relation, Mrs. Masham, whom she had herself recommended to the queen for the position of bedchamber-woman, never imagining that this poor ignorant relative would usurp her own place as royal favorite.
Before Anne had ascended the throne, a little incident occurred which eventually led to the downfall of the duchess. The Princess Anne was one day alone in her private drawing-room at St. James. The Duchess of Marlborough entered the anteroom where the princess’ waiting-woman, afterwards Mrs. Masham, was in attendance. Observing a pair of gloves upon the table, the duchess, thinking they were her own, drew them upon her hands. Whereupon the attendant remarked that the gloves belonged to the princess, who had sent her to get them, as her mistress was about to enter her carriage. “What! have I touched anything that has been upon the hands of that odious woman!” exclaimed the duchess in a fury of ill-temper; and tearing them from her fingers she threw them on the floor and retired, little thinking that the insulting words had been overheard by the princess in the adjoining room. From that moment the ultimate disgrace of the imperious duchess was determined upon, although, owing to her husband’s victories and her own threats of publishing the confidential letters of her “loving Mrs. Morley,” her downfall was long delayed.
Queen Anne had not ceased to be a loving wife, when she became a sovereign; and the death of her husband in 1708 was a terrible blow to her. As the queen sat by her dead, though she was the monarch of a vast realm, she was the slave of court etiquette; and as the Duchess of Marlborough still held her office as mistress of the robes, this tyrannical etiquette required that the hated duchess should invade even the sanctuary of Anne’s beloved dead, and lead the queen from the funereal chamber.
But the days of the ascendency of the brilliant but terrible virago were nearly numbered. In 1710, the Whig ministry was deposed, and the Tories came into power.
“Anne could not cope with her discarded favorite in eloquence and violence, but she could resist and dissemble; above all, she could hold her tongue.” Influenced by the Tories, who gained the ear of the queen through the connivance of Mrs. Masham, it was secretly arranged that the Whig ministry should be forced to retire; that the Marlboroughs should be disgraced, and that peace should be negotiated with Louis XIV. The proud duchess had not yet been publicly informed of her impending downfall, but rumors had reached her of the queen’s animosity. Hastening to Kensington, she forced herself into the presence of the queen, and demanded with the air of a sovereign rather than a subject, of what she was accused. The queen, aware that her only weapon against the sarcastic and voluble tongue of the duchess was silence, remarked with cutting composure: “I shall make no answer to anything you say.” This was more than the enraged duchess could bear, and she launched forth into such a terrible tongue-lashing of violent vituperation, that the incensed queen turned to leave the room; whereupon the duchess exclaimed, “I am confident you will suffer in this world or the next for so much inhumanity.”
“That is my business,” retorted the queen, as she lifted the portière and retired, leaving the discomfited duchess to weep in a fury of rage and humiliation.
They never met again. When the Duke of Marlborough returned from his campaign, not all his condescension in begging on his knees that the golden key,—his wife’s badge of office,—might be retained by her for a few weeks sufficed to appease the queen. “I will have it in two days,” exclaimed the angry Anne; and upon reporting his failure to his indignant wife, she also hurled upon his poor head her invectives of wrath, and throwing the golden keys upon the floor, the haughty virago, who had lost all power over her queen, but still maintained her ascendency in her husband’s heart in spite of all her outbursts of temper, sullenly retired, leaving her humiliated spouse to pick up her tardily relinquished badge of office and meekly bear it back in shame and sorrow to her offended sovereign. Hard fate for a man to fall into the snare of playing the go-between of two angry women, especially when one is his wife and the other his sovereign.