Descended from an ancient family in the province of Guelderland, Bentinck was first page to William Prince of Orange, and afterwards gentleman of the bedchamber. When William was made stadtholder, Bentinck continued near him, and was with him when the Prince was attacked with the small-pox, a disease which had been peculiarly fatal to the stadtholder’s family. On this occasion, and during the progress of a disorder then shunned with as much alarm and horror as the plague and cholera have since been, and the first symptoms of which were regarded almost as the signal of death, Bentinck never deserted the sick room of the Prince. He administered medicines to his master, and was the only person who lifted him in and out of bed.[[206]] The first day of the Prince’s convalescence was the commencement of Bentinck’s illness. He begged of William to allow him to return home, as he could no longer combat against the symptoms of disease. Happily, William had not to grieve that the life of his devoted servant had been sacrificed by his tender care. From that time Bentinck was peculiarly favoured by the reserved but not ungrateful Prince; yet so little dependence is there to be placed on human affections, so constantly are we to be admonished that nothing is stable, nothing wholly satisfactory, in this life of chances and changes, that the generous Bentinck afterwards found himself supplanted in his sovereign’s regard by Keppel Earl of Albemarle; and, whilst he still retained the confidence of William, perceiving that his personal influence with the King was gone, in 1698 he retired from court, leaving those offices which he had so long held in the household to be performed by deputy.
During the first six or eight years of the reign of William and Mary, Lord Portland, however, enjoyed all that favour and those distinctions which his prudence, and the courage which he had displayed both in military and civil affairs, so well justified. The avowed favourite of the King, and deriving considerable grants from the crown, he spent the sums for which he was indebted to the Treasury and to British lands, in promoting the welfare of the English peasantry. Besides daily extensive charity among his poor neighbours, Lord Portland built and endowed a charity school on his estate in Buckinghamshire; and passed his days in the domestic, and dignified, and useful retirement of an English nobleman of the old school; visiting Holland every summer, but living mostly in England. It was before going as ambassador to negociate the peace of Ryswick, that he endeared himself to the English nation by being actively instrumental in saving the noble edifice of Whitehall, in which a fire had broken out, which was chiefly checked by the zeal and liberal aid of this noble foreigner graft upon our English nobility.[[207]]
The Earl of Portland became eventually one of the richest subjects in England. But, as there is a dark spot on all human brightness, he rendered himself unpopular to many, notwithstanding his extensive charities—notwithstanding his profusion “in gardening, birds, and household furniture,”—qualities truly English,—by a frugality which, in the continental nations, is carefully instilled into youth by education and practice, but which is uncongenial to the habits of the English nation. The resentment of Queen Anne and of the Duchess of Marlborough was shown in a manner not displeasing to the public, when, on her accession, the Queen deprived Portland of “the post of Keeper of Windsor Great Park.”[[208]]
Whilst we accord to Bentinck every merit due to one so estimable, it must be allowed that his relationship to the Villiers family contributed greatly to the support of that rank which he held in the King’s esteem, whilst it was at the same time the cause of the hostilities afterwards declared between his lordship and the vehement lady whom he had the fortune mortally to offend. By his first marriage with Mrs. Villiers, fourth sister of the Earl of Jersey, Lord Portland strengthened his interests doubly. Lady Jersey was the confidante of Mary; Lord Jersey was in high favour with William; whilst Elizabeth Villiers, afterwards Lady Orkney, was the mistress of the gloomy and grave, but, as it seems, not altogether faithful husband of the subservient and devoted Mary Stuart.
There was, however, an intermediate person, a third sister of Lord Jersey, the Viscountess Fitzharding, one of the favoured few who were prized by the Countess of Marlborough, but, as it seems, a spy upon her friend, and a betrayer of her secrets. This lady held a confidential situation in the household of the Princess of Denmark, and was also one for whom Lady Marlborough entertained what she truly calls “a very singular affection”—a possession of which she shamefully availed herself, by repeating all that she heard, and perhaps more than what she heard, in the Princess’s family. The pernicious effect of such repetitions, even between relatives affectionately attached, may readily be conceived; but in the dissensions of two sisters, whose earliest instructions, when they referred to conduct to each other, had in all probability been those of distrust—whose interests clashed, whose relative position was every way awkward, whose husbands were on indifferent terms, and who resembled each other only in one respect, that of displaying filial ingratitude to a misled and culpable monarch, but an affectionate father—it was certain that a spark would kindle a flame between spirits so ready for combustion.
At length the smothered discords between Mary and her sister broke out, and once blazing, they were never entirely extinguished. The imprudence, vulgarity of taste, or rather deficiency in feeling, of the Princess and of her favourite, in their ordinary conversation and correspondence, cannot be justified. It is often from errors apparently trivial, though originating from coarseness of mind and violence of temper, that the most serious inconveniences, sometimes the greatest misfortunes, originate. The Princess and her favourite considered it high diversion to vent their dislike to the King, in applying to him opprobrious terms, the most decorous of which was “Caliban,” whilst others will not bear repetition.[[209]] These offensive expressions, though, after the death of Queen Anne, carefully expunged by the Duchess even from her original letters, as well as in her “Conduct,” were, however, acknowledged by Lady Marlborough, in the indorsements of letters from Lady Orkney to her ladyship; and they were carefully collected and repeated by Lady Fitzharding, whom the malcontents supposed to be in their confidence. The hour of disgrace was, however, at hand—disgrace inflicted in the tenderest point, and calculated to humble, if any thing could humble, the lofty spirit of Lady Marlborough. That, however, which would have crushed a gentler spirit, scarcely pressed upon hers; as appears by her subsequent effrontery, which even her own skilful defence could not extenuate.
But even if the comparative grossness of the times, and the aggravations received from the court, cannot justify the Princess and her “dear Mrs. Freeman,” neither can the petulance, meanness, and love of power which Queen Mary displayed, be excused.
There is always something in feminine altercations that is ludicrous as well as painful. Few women know how and where to stay the course of anger; when it once begins to flow, every charm, every grace so fondly prized by the sex, is obliterated, when retort follows retort, and retaliation grows vigorous; and dignity, to assert which the fair sex is oftentimes so valiant, takes its departure immediately we become vociferous in its defence.
One evening, in the interregnum between the quarrel concerning the settlement and their final feuds, the Queen, who had lived outwardly on tolerable terms with her sister for some time, “began,” as the Princess Anne expressed it, “to pick quarrels,” upon the sore subject of the annuity, and to intimate that supposing some twenty or thirty thousand pounds were to be taken off the fifty thousand allowed, the Princess, she presumed, could live upon it “as she had done before;” upon which an indecorous altercation ensued.[[210]] On the following day, Lord Marlborough, after performing his usual duties as lord of the bedchamber, received, through Lord Nottingham, the humiliating intimation that he was dismissed from all his employments, both civil and military, and forbidden the court. This blow is said to have been totally unexpected by the Earl, from whom the King had parted on that very morning in the usual manner.[[211]]
Lord Marlborough received the intelligence communicated by Lord Nottingham with the composure of a superior mind. “He retired,” says one of his biographers, “with the calmness of the old Roman dictator, wishing to be succeeded by a better servant, and by one more concerned for his Highness’s honour.”[[212]]