Whilst encountering many enemies, both male and female, whose hostility the Countess of Marlborough might set down to the score of envy, she possessed one friend who, through life, influenced all her actions, and who has been supposed to have gained her affections.
It would be a libel upon human nature to imagine, that the cherished wife of John Duke of Marlborough could be fascinated by the lesser constellation of talents and of virtues, displayed in the character of the minister Godolphin. The impure and consequently illiberal judges of conduct, who pride themselves on what is called knowledge of the world, may decree that a cordial and confidential friendship, in the simple acceptation of the word, cannot exist between the two sexes, where similarity of age is joined to congeniality of temper and taste. But, happily for society, some men are honourable, some women high-minded; reliance may gratify one party, and approbation and esteem secure the kindly feelings of the other. A friendship firm, generous, and delicate, may exist between persons of different sexes; and where it has this pure source, it will ever be found beneficial, permanent, and delightful.
Resembling, in one respect, his distinguished friends, Godolphin had early in life been attached to the service of the Stuart family. The first situation that he held was that of page to Charles the Second; the last appointment that he retained under the Stuarts was the painful and precarious office of lord chamberlain to the blameless and unhappy Mary of Modena, for whose beauty, misfortunes, and interests, he ever expressed admiration, compassion, and regard.[[175]]
Queen Anne, it is said,[[176]] had been touched by the merits of one whom it required merit to appreciate, and had loved Godolphin when young, but was prevented by state necessity from marrying a subject.[[177]] After the revolution, in the progress of which Lord Godolphin acted the part of an honest statesman, yet forgot not the duty of a grateful subject, he was approved and retained in the Treasury by William, who appointed him also one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom in his absence. Godolphin, indifferent to the blandishments of rank, absolutely declined the honour of the garter; and raised, unwillingly, to the Peerage, was as disinterested in respect to the gains, as in regard to the honours of successful ambition. In this particular he displayed a character totally unlike that of the gifted woman for whom he has been said, by Tory writers, to have cherished a passion which influenced his political bias.[[178]] His disposition, in other respects, little resembled hers. He was of a reflective, inquisitive turn of mind; slow but unerring in his conclusions; possessed of exquisite judgment in all the affairs of life; yet of a temper so peculiarly amiable, possessed of sentiments so unusually lofty, that he might have lived in the most innocent retirement, from the purity of his motives and the elevation of his general character. Superior to the low practices by which weaker spirits toiled for ascendency, Godolphin never condescended to a courtier’s arts. His promise was inviolate; he detested not only falsehood, but, what in his situation was most difficult, he never permitted himself to have recourse to the more prevailing, and as it is believed safer, form of that vice, dissimulation. Like Marlborough, Godolphin, when asked to confer favours, softened his refusals with a kindness and frankness which propitiated even the disappointed.
The notions of economy, which this great minister adopted, not grounded on a passion for wealth which sullied the brightness of the great Churchill’s virtues, were applied with the same rigid care to the public means, as to the expenditure of his own private fortune. Grave even to sternness, he won universal esteem from his inflexible justice, and in society was the object of affection, no less than of respect. Disfigured in countenance by the small-pox, and severe in expression, there was yet something bright and penetrating in his eye, something engaging in his smile, which procured him the favour of the female sex,—to whom, with all his profound experience of men and manners, with all his infallibility of judgment, and his gravity of deportment, Lord Godolphin was, during the whole of his life, passionately devoted.[[179]]
The name of Godolphin (signifying a white eagle) was of ancient origin. His immediate progenitors, country gentlemen of the county of Cornwall, were distinguished for their loyalty to the Stuarts during the civil war.[[180]] According to Dean Swift, who mentions the circumstance in that casual, careless way which answers the intentions of malice without wearing its aspect, Godolphin was intended for some trade, until his friends procured him the office of a page at the court of Charles the Second.[[181]] From this humble station he rose rapidly into political consequence; for he sat in the first Parliament after the Restoration, as member for Helston in Cornwall, and was shortly afterwards employed in various high offices, until appointed to the commissionership of the Treasury, at the same time that he was called to the House of Peers. During the reign of James the Second, Godolphin enjoyed the favour of Queen Mary, to whom he was chamberlain, and of James, who reappointed him one of the Lords of the Treasury. Educated in high church tenets, Godolphin, like his friend Lord Marlborough, became a Whig when the Protestant succession was in danger. Yet, whilst he managed, with consummate prudence, to act as one of the commissioners appointed by James to treat with William at his landing, and was so skilful and so fortunate as to retain his situation of Treasury Lord upon the accession of William,—Godolphin, courageous, and, like most courageous men, tender-hearted, was among the few of the deposed monarch’s courtiers who gave him the solace of their attendance and sympathy. He accompanied the abdicated King to the sea-side when he quitted England, and maintained a correspondence with him until his death.
It is not always possible to calumniate noble and popular characters, but it is generally easy to ridicule the greatest and the best. Lord Godolphin’s weakness, according to one whose inimitable strokes of satire sink into the memory, were love of play and vanity.
“Physiognomists would hardly discover,” says Dean Swift,[[182]] “by consulting the aspect of this lord, that his predominant passions were love and play—that he could sometimes scratch out a song in praise of his mistress with a pencil and a card—or that he hath tears at his command, like a woman, to be used either in an intrigue of gallantry or politics.” Conformably to this devotion to dames and damosels was his lordship’s romantic admiration of the beautiful exiled Queen, Mary of Modena, whom he used to address in letters, in which love was ambiguously mingled with respect; “whilst little presents of such things as ladies like”[[183]] accompanied these epistles,—such tokens of regard to one so unfortunate and so interesting being always first shown to King William, though with the knowledge of James’s Queen. But in these minor traits, mentioned as inconsistencies and follies, there is a touch of generous sentiment, at the disclosure of which Lord Godolphin, amidst all his vast concerns and political pursuits, need not have blushed.
It was to this valued friend, both her own and her husband’s best counsellor, that the Countess of Marlborough applied for advice, about a year after the settlement on the Princess had been made, in a matter of some delicacy. The Princess, from gratitude for her friend’s exertions, wrote to offer her a pension of a thousand pounds. The manner in which this proof of a generous friendship was offered, speaks honourably for Anne’s goodness of heart and propriety of feeling.[[184]]
“I have had something to say to you a great while, and I did not know how to go about it. I have designed, ever since my revenue was settled, to desire you would accept of a thousand pounds a year. I beg you will only look upon it as an earnest of my good-will, but never mention anything of it to me; for I shall be ashamed to have any notice taken of such a thing from one that deserves more than I shall be ever able to return.”