Refused by Miss Hamilton, whose affections were engaged to the gay, the captivating, the admired, the profligate Grammont, Lord Tyrconnel had next wooed, and nearly won, the capricious Frances Jennings. In both these instances he had the good sense and good taste (only to be mentioned as remarkable in such days as those) to select women of reputation—with our modern ideas, we can scarcely say of virtue—for the objects of his adoration. But whilst he laid at Miss Jennings’ feet the honours, in prospect, of a peerage, and the present respectability of an ancient name, though represented by an impoverished family—though his wealth tempted her, and the elegance of his person and manners, in a court where the art of good-breeding was the only art studied, were acknowledged, he had been again, as it has been seen, unsuccessful. In this mortification the vanity of the rejected suitor was solaced by the languishing attachment of the automaton, Miss Boynton, one of those young ladies who enjoyed the reputation of performing fainting-fits upon the slightest occasion, and who had formerly won his regard by swooning away upon his account at their first interview. To this languid lady, a contrast to the lively Frances Jennings, Lord Tyrconnel had been eventually united. Affected in manners, weak in mind, and uninteresting in person, she proved perhaps a better helpmate to this determined Jacobite than his equally resolute and more intriguing second wife, to whom, after the death of her first husband, he was united.
Such is the account of that historical romance by Grammont, to which we owe the very questionable advantage of an intimate acquaintance with the court of the second Charles.
To those personal gifts which appeared so dangerous in the eyes of Miss Boynton,[[219]] the Duke of Tyrconnel added the still more important acquisition, derived from the habit of frequenting the best company, of knowing how to recommend himself to others by that knowledge, which seems in a man of the world a sort of instinct, of the dispositions, the weaknesses, and wishes of those with whom he converses. With prodigious vanity, much cunning, and little principle, Tyrconnel displayed some noble qualities. By James the Second he had been appointed to the command of the army in Ireland; by James raised to the Peerage—first to an earldom, then a dukedom; by James he was appointed Viceroy of Ireland. Upon the invasion of Ireland by the Prince of Orange he bravely defended it, nor could the offers which were held out to induce him to submit, make any impression upon his integrity.[[220]]
Tyrconnel sank into insignificance after the battle of the Boyne in 1690, but the English court still jealously watched his movements; and his close connexion with the Earl and Countess of Marlborough was not forgotten by those who envied the high qualities of the one, and disliked the proud spirit of the other, and aggravated, doubtless, the secret dislike which Queen Mary indulged towards the Countess of Marlborough. Since the origin of most mischief is attributed to women, an imputed act of indiscretion, on the part of that lady, was alleged, at any rate, to have been made an excuse for the sudden disgrace of her husband.[[221]] The Earl, it was reported, had mentioned to his wife, in confidence, a scheme which had been confided to him, to surprise Dunkirk—a project which had been concerted by William, and had proved abortive. Lady Marlborough, as it was also rumoured, had spoken of this plan to the lady of Sir Theophilus Oglethorp;[[222]] and it had been carried, in some manner, of course, to Lady Tyrconnel, and from her to the French court.
The author of “The Other Side of the Question,” in confirmation of this report, has stated, but on no assigned authority, that four persons only in England were privy to the design on Dunkirk; namely, “the King, Lord Marlborough, and two more; that one”[[223]] of these four communicated the secret to his wife, who, as it was said, sold it to Lady —— for what she could get: that in consequence, the said design miscarried, and those concerned in it abroad were hanged: that upon this, the King sent for his three confidants, and having with some trouble found out the leak, expressed himself, on the occasion, in his dry way, as follows—“My lord, you have put a greater confidence in your wife than I did in mine.”
This conjecture, or tradition, however,—for though a prevalent report at the time, it is nothing more,—is refuted by the fact that the design against Dunkirk was not projected until the month of August, 1692, whereas the Earl had been dismissed from his employments in the previous January;[[224]] and although every possible obloquy that could be cast upon the Countess of Marlborough was likely to be propagated in the court, where she was known to be out of favour, yet it is certain that no misconduct of hers, nor indiscretion on the part of her husband, on the score of the projected siege of Dunkirk, could have occasioned the harsh usage which his lordship had experienced.
Lord Marlborough, although disgraced, was not without advocates, as the King soon perceived. Admiral Russell, one of a family noted for magnanimous courage in the cause of justice, “put himself on ill terms with the King,” as Lediard relates, by pressing to know the grounds of the Earl’s disgrace; and almost reproached William with his oblivion of the Earl’s services, who had, as he said, “set the crown on the King’s head.”[[225]]
This generous interference, and the regret for the occasion of it which the Princess of Denmark evinced, only irritated the King and Queen more and more against their oppressed sister-in-law and her favourite. On the twenty-ninth of January, the Princess received an anonymous letter, informing her that a dangerous cabal was formed among the Portland and Villiers family against the Earl and Countess of Marlborough, and apprising her that their misfortunes would not end with the Earl’s dismissal, but that he would be imprisoned as soon as the prorogation of Parliament had taken place. The unknown friend who wrote this letter, added, that the interview which Marlborough had held with his friends Godolphin and Russell, on the day of his disgrace, had excited the jealousy of the court; whilst the tears which the Princess had herself been seen to shed since that event, had added to the irritation of her sister and brother.[[226]]
Perhaps the Princess Anne might, in the midst of her tears, remember with a pang the indulgent conduct of the father whom she had deserted, and who, according to a writer contemporary with her favourite, had twice paid debts which the mercenary spirit of that favourite, according to the same account, which must be taken with some reservation, had led the Princess to incur.[[227]]
Whatever were Anne’s feelings, those expressed by Lady Marlborough were quite in accordance with her high spirit, which, with a hardihood which certainly has the effect of disguising our faults far more than the varnish of dissimulation, she avows in her own peculiar way.[[228]]