The individuals to whom Lady Churchill applied for counsel were such as a woman of discernment, and of right intentions, would desire to consult. The female friend to whom she addressed herself was the illustrious Rachel Lady Russell, the beloved wife, counsellor, friend, the high-minded support and solace, of one of the most noble of men.
The tragedy in which Lord Russell terminated his life, was fresh in the remembrance of the public. Five years before the Revolution, he had been brought before his Peers on his trial, and being told that he might avail himself of the assistance of one of his servants to take notes of the proceedings in short-hand,—“I ask none,” was his reply, “but that of the lady who sits by me.” And when the assembly beheld the daughter of the virtuous Lord Southampton rising to assist her lord at this extremity, a thrill of anguish moved the spectators.[[141]]
But very recently, the loyalty, the good faith, the bravery of the Russells, had been recalled to public remembrance, even by the unhappy cause of their heartfelt calamity. When James, in his utmost need, had summoned a council of the Peers to ask their advice, in passing to the council chamber he met the Earl of Bedford, father of Lord Russell, who had offered a hundred thousand pounds for his son’s life—a sum which James, then Duke of York, had persuaded his brother to refuse. James, reflecting upon the probity and influence of the Russells, and catching, in his hopeless state, at any straw which could arrest his ruin, said to the Earl, “My lord, you are a good man; you have much interest with the Peers; you can do me service with them to-day.” “I once had a son,” was the heart-broken father’s reply, “who could have served your Majesty on this occasion;” and with a deep sigh he passed on.
To the widowed daughter-in-law of this venerable man Lady Churchill addressed herself. Nor would Lady Russell have permitted any step to be entertained, that was derogatory to the honour of her who sought such aid in her judgment; for in this noble woman, faithful in her grief to the memory of him whom she constantly prayed to rejoin, the gentlest qualities were united to the loftiest heroism. Her husband’s death was preferable in her eyes to his dishonour. In one long fixed look, in which the tenderness of the fondest affection was controlled on the part of her husband by great and lofty resolves, on hers by a fortitude which sprang from the deepest feelings, had the Lady Russell parted from her lord.
From the time of his death, Lady Russell, from a sort of common tribute, had taken a high place in society. She bore her sorrows with the patience of an humble believer in a future state of peace and of re-union with the lost and the beloved; but not all the too late tributes to the motives and excellence of him whom she had lost—neither the reversal of the attainder by parliament, nor the ducal honours conferred upon the family, nor even the universal respect and national sympathy—could recal her to the busy world, bereaved, to her, of all that was valuable. She lived in a dignified and devout seclusion at Bedford House, formerly Southampton House, in Bloomsbury Square, that beloved abode, at the sight of which the eyes of her noble husband had been filled with tears, as he passed to the place of his execution in Lincoln’s-inn-fields. Here, consoled by the society of the pious and the learned, cheered by the hopes of an hereafter, and honoured in her dark old age, Lady Russell resided, until death, in 1723, released her from an existence rendered still more mournful by blindness, brought on by continual weeping.[[142]]
One of the brightest ornaments of the age in which she lived, Lady Russell was as accomplished as she was high-minded. To her counsels the celebrated Dr. Tillotson often recurred. By him, as by all who knew her, she was regarded as the first of women;[[143]] nor could that woman continue her friend, whose motives were not pure, and whose conduct was not irreproachable.
The other counsellor to whom Lady Churchill put forth her case, was the good, the learned, but calumniated Archbishop Tillotson.
In this selection, also, she showed great prudence. Tillotson was the common friend of both the Princesses, and the spiritual adviser of Mary, who entrusted to him the chief charge of the concerns of the church, with which William the Third did not consider himself justified to interfere.
Tillotson was of a different temperament from the heroic Lady Russell, and it was perhaps for this very reason that Lady Churchill consulted him. With the soundest judgment and the kindest temper, this revered prelate had a sensitiveness of disposition which tended to render him cautious, perhaps timid, in his measures. “He was,” says his dearest friend, “a faithful and zealous friend, but a gentle and soon conquered enemy.”[[144]] But he was truly and seriously religious, without affectation, bigotry, or superstition; and it may be supposed that the dauntless thinker, Lady Churchill, whose original mind detested these prevalent defects, delighted in conversing with one of so enlightened a spirit. “His notions of morality were fine and sublime;”[[145]] and she might well feel that she could not go wrong, with one so scrupulously virtuous to guide her. The influence of Dr. Tillotson as a preacher, his sermons being then accounted the patterns for all such compositions, might also sway her in requesting his counsels; whilst “the perpetual slanders, and other ill usage,” with which, according to his friend, he had been followed, and which gave him “too much trouble, and too great a concern,”[[146]] might, she may well have thought, have taught him to feel for others, and induced him to double caution in pointing out the right path, to one beginning the weary road of public life, in which she, too, found that vanity and vexation of spirit went along with her on her journey.
It is not to persons such as these that we address ourselves, when we intend to follow a crooked line of policy. We may judge favourably of the purity of our motives, when we determine to question the wise and the good, upon the mode and spirit of our actions; and Lady Churchill, when she hastened to disclose her perplexities, and to unfold her intentions, to two persons of undoubted probity and of known piety, may have felt satisfied that she need not blush to confess them to a higher power.