Years had passed away since these favours had been shown to Mr. Hill, and he was now a partisan of those who were foes to his benefactors, having long since forgotten by whose means he was raised from abject poverty to respectability.
It was concerning the promotion of Mr. Hill to the command of a regiment, vacant by the death of the Earl of Essex, that the first open rupture between the Queen and the Duke of Marlborough occurred. The plot which Harley and the Masham party had woven, appeared now, according to the opinions of the Duchess, in undisguised colours. Already had they induced the Queen to prefer bishops who were not acceptable to the ministry; and it was now their successful aim to lead her Majesty into another snare. They therefore persuaded her to make military appointments without the consent of her general; and the choice of Mr. Hill for the purpose of mortifying the Duke was, it must be allowed, eminently successful, if they wished to lower the authority of that great commander. A double design was thus intended. If the Duke permitted his relative’s promotion, the whole army would feel the injustice done to their profession; if he resisted it, it would lend new force to the arguments by which the weak and credulous mind of Anne was perpetually assailed, namely, that she was but a cipher in the hands of the Marlborough family; and thus, the Duke and his wife were by the same dexterous arrangement equally injured, or at any rate insulted.
The wary but high-minded Duke resented this measure loftily and stoutly. He waited at first on her Majesty, and endeavoured respectfully to change her resolution, by representing the injustice which the promotion of a young and untried officer would be deemed by the army. He argued earnestly upon the encouragement which would be given to the party adverse to the ministry, by promoting Mrs. Masham’s brother. But he could extract from the sullen Queen no kind expression, and only the cautious reply, “That the Duke would do well to consult with his friends.”[[157]] Godolphin, at this time writhing under the agonies of a mortal disorder, which his cares and vexations must have aggravated, went also to the Queen, and sought by persuasion to change her obstinate, Stuart-like determination; but without success.
Marlborough, indignant, left London, on the fifteenth of January, on a council day. Her Majesty took no notice of his absence; but the world spoke resentfully of an injustice done to their great and once popular general; and the House of Commons testified by some votes their sense of the impropriety of Anne’s conduct. Eventually she was obliged to yield; for her new counsellors perceived that they had gone too far, and her Majesty was obliged to write word to the Duke that he might dispose of the regiment as he thought fit, and also to order his return to court, and to “assure him that he had no ground for suspicion of change in her Majesty’s good intentions.”[[158]]
This seeming disposition to relent in favour of the Marlborough family was, however, the effect of a deep policy. Anne, naturally obstinate, and close in her expressions, had been taught lessons of duplicity, and rendered more than ever the tool of a faction. Mrs. Masham’s influence was, indeed, becoming too notorious to be endured, not only by the Whigs, but by men of influence and popularity, who were not especially attached to either party. The sway of the lofty and arbitrary Duchess had been, for many reasons, endured with a degree of patience which the world could not extend to her rival. The great associations with the name of Churchill, the extensive patronage which the Duke and his Duchess possessed, the intermarriages of their beautiful and admired daughters into families of influence; and perhaps, not least of all, the habit into which society had grown of considering the rule of the Marlborough family as indestructible, had lessened the disgust which men evince towards female domination, and had reconciled the public mind to that of which all could complain, but of which none could anticipate the decline. Besides, there was something imposing in the ascendency which the high-bred and intellectual Duchess haughtily assumed—something almost magnificent in the unfair, yet lofty habit of rule which suited her so well, and to which she seemed born. The Duke, by common acclamation the first of subjects, seemed to merit such a companion, such an ornament of his greatness, a star always conspicuous in its steady brilliancy on the political horizon.
But when the artful, humble, prudent Mrs. Masham crept into royal favour, and planted herself behind that throne near which the Duchess had proudly stood, the odious features of intrigue appeared despicable in comparison with the fearless demeanour, and open defiance of her enemies, which the Duchess had exhibited. Anne, that automaton moved successively by secret springs of different construction and power, seemed to the world to have degenerated in her greatness when she fell into the meaner hands of the lowliest of her waiting women, one who had been a “rocker” in the royal household, scarcely of gentle blood, and whose ready subserviency spoke so plainly of her early initiation into those prying, petty ways which a long apprenticeship in the services, still menial, of the royal bedchamber, was likely to produce.
It was during the heat of Sacheverell’s business, and before that notable comedy had been brought to a close, that several of the privy counsellors, disgusted by Mrs. Masham’s influence, consulted privately as to the expediency of moving an address for her dismissal from the royal confidence.[[159]] These conferences, which were held late at night, were kept profoundly secret. They were attended by Lords Somers, Wharton, Halifax, and Sunderland, the Chancellor Cowper, and the Lord Treasurer. Halifax and Wharton, the most violent of the party, with all duty to the Queen, are said to have insisted modestly, that evil counsellors of one sex might be as well removed from the royal councils as those of another, by the advice of parliament. Somers, Godolphin, and Cowper were of a different opinion, and judged that such a remonstrance could not be made, consistently with the laws of the land. Sunderland was violent and impatient, and bitterly inveighed against the moderation of Somers, formerly his oracle, but now no longer able to control the rash spirit of his once enthusiastic votary. Marlborough, also, resisted the impetuosity of his son-in-law; and whilst he had proved himself capable of frustrating, by manly determination, the arch-enemy’s plans, resolved, with Somers, to wait until a favourable opportunity of annihilating her influence should occur; not, unconstitutionally, to force the Queen to abandon her favourite, as Sunderland required. Even in his chariot, when setting off for Holland, Marlborough is reported to have refused the importunities of his son-in-law.[[160]]
The Queen, meantime, fearing, lest some motion relative to Mrs. Masham should be made in parliament, rallied her friends around her, and occupied herself in sundry closetings, which included many avowed enemies to the Revolution, and gave, says the Duchess, “encouragement to the Jacobites, who were now observed running to court, with faces as full of business as if they were going to get the government into their hands.”
The Queen, elated with the notion infused into her, that she was by these preferences gaining a victory over the Marlborough family, became more and more estranged from one to whom she had, in her ignorance of the meaning of the word, professed true friendship. It was reported, that as the peers returned out of her closet, she said to them severally, “If ever any recommendation of mine was of weight among you, as I know many of them have been, I hope this one may be specially regarded.”[[161]] It is difficult to say whether, at this time, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were most injured by their professed friends, or by avowed enemies. It is, perhaps, a problem which we may often vainly endeavour, in our progress through life, to solve, whether injudicious zeal or open enmity should most inspire us with apprehension. Enthusiasm in friendship is the parent of indiscretion; and what is termed devotion, in a human sense, has so often as its source a fund of selfishness, that we are apt to consider ourselves safer when encountering indifference, than when constrained to bend to the persuasions of ardent attachment.
Godolphin was, undoubtedly, amongst all the band of adherents, the only true friend whom the Duke and Duchess possessed. His attachment to them was genuine; their confidence in him was entire. No variations of temper—no differences of opinion, seem to have disturbed that perfect accordance in sentiment, that respectful admiration on one side, and that reposing of every thought or wish on the other, which is the true elysium of affectionate hearts. Godolphin now experienced, in the decline of his fortunes, the mutability of all other friendships, the hollowness and selfishness of public men. It is easy to the interested to persuade themselves that they really contemn those who are not only no longer useful to them, but whose friendship might even be prejudicial. The Duke of Somerset, once the friend of Marlborough, as his Duchess had been of the Duchess—a man of great pride, and of considerable influence—now seceded from his once intimate associates, piqued by the Duke’s refusing a regiment to his son. The Duke of Argyll and the Earl of Rivers had already made a friendly compact to divide between them the offices which they expected soon to be vacant, on the disgrace or resignation of Marlborough. Other noblemen were drawn in by their necessities to desert to the opposite party. But the most remarkable defection from the Whig party was that of the Duke of Shrewsbury, the early friend of Lord Somers, but now the partisan of Harley, the associate of Swift, and the husband of a Roman Catholic wife, an Italian lady, who had followed him to Augsburg from Rome, and whose ardent passion for the accomplished Shrewsbury had induced him to make her Duchess of Shrewsbury.