The foregoing opinion was the last expressed by this well-judging and warm friend, concerning him upon whom the fondest hopes were placed. How gratifying, yet how mournful! Yet the noble youth was prepared for that better sphere to which he was thus early called, to spare him, in mercy, from the snares and troubles of the world, in which he might otherwise have acted a conspicuous, but probably not a happy part.
The letter was followed by alarming intelligence. The small-pox, in its most malignant form, had attacked the darling of these distinguished parents. The Duchess hastened to Cambridge, and found her son in great danger. She sent to London for additional medical assistance, and the Queen, feeling as a mother bereaved, and acting with her usual consideration, despatched two of her own physicians in one of the royal carriages. The medicines were also sent by express from London. But the cares, the fears, the hopes, the efforts of all those who were interested in the young man, were unavailing. The fatal disorder ran rapidly its devastating course. Dr. Haines and Dr. Coladon, the court physicians, hastened in vain to aid the expiring youth. The grief of the highest, and the sympathy of the lowest, individuals in her Majesty’s realms, availed not: for his hour was come. How far we are, in such instances, to look to secondary causes, it is difficult to say; but it is easy to suppose that the imperfect knowledge of disease in those unscientific days, the unnatural and irritating mode of treating it which prevailed, even within the memory of man, may have aided that consciousness of the importance of his recovery to his parents, and the painful observance of their grief, in increasing the danger of the amiable and lamented youth.
The Queen took his illness to heart, as if it had been the scene of her own sad deprivation acted over again.
“I writ two words to my dear Mrs. Freeman,” she says, addressing the Duchess, “and could not help telling her again that I am truly afflicted for the melancholy account that is come this morning of poor Lord Blandford. I pray God he may do well, and support you. And give me leave once more to beg you, for Christ Jesus’ sake, to have a care of your dear precious self; and believe me, with all the passion imaginable, your poor, unfortunate, faithful Morley.”
Lord Godolphin, in a calmer, but equally kind, equally friendly strain, thus proffers the valuable consolations of a sympathetic heart. “The best use of one’s best friends is, to assist and support one another under the most grievous afflictions. This is the greatest trial of your submission and resignation to the Divine Providence that God Almighty could possibly send you, and consequently the greatest opportunity of pleasing Him, by that respect and submission which is always due to his severest trials; and, at the same time, the greatest occasion of letting the whole world see that God Almighty has blessed you with a Christian patience and fortitude, as eminent as the reason and understanding by which you are justly distinguished from the rest of your sex.”
The concern of a friend is expressed in the foregoing fragment; the anguish of a father in those passages which follow.
The character of Marlborough, the great, the affectionate, the good, the pious, shines forth in these extracts.
“I am so troubled at the sad condition this poor child seems to be in, that I know not what I do. I pray God to give you some comfort in this great affliction. If you think anything under heaven can be done, pray let me know it, or if you think my coming can be of the least use, let me know it. I beg I may hear as soon as possible, for I have no thought but what is at Cambridge.
“I writ to you this morning,” he adds, “and was in hopes I should have heard again before this time, for I hope the doctors were with you early this morning. If we must be so unhappy as to lose this poor child, I pray God to enable us both to behave ourselves with that resignation which we ought to do. If this uneasiness which I now lie under should last long, I think I could not live. For God’s sake, if there be any hope of recovery, let me know it.”[[478]]
These mournful anticipations were followed by the too probable result. Within a few hours after the unhappy father had written this letter, he set off for Cambridge, where he arrived only in time to see his son expire, on the morning of Saturday, the twentieth of February, 1704.[[479]]